tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28687461776936914342024-03-13T09:01:49.066-04:00entertaining views from cincinnatiDexterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02595287829693675510noreply@blogger.comBlogger770125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2868746177693691434.post-67175342706769064082016-06-28T22:53:00.000-04:002016-06-28T22:53:22.505-04:00Chicago Landscapes and Architecture<div style="font-family: Helvetica;">
<b>The Original Chicago Architecture Tour</b></div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Chicago Skyline South of the Chicago River</td></tr>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The Wrigley Building</td></tr>
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We recently took a few days to explore Chicago's architecture and gardens. We arrived a little early for the 2:45 tour on the famous Wendella boats, allowing us some time to explore the skyscrapers of Michigan Avenue. One of the earliest examples in the city is the Wrigley Building from 1924. The glazed terra cotta facade is one of the most recognizable along the Magnificent Mile. </div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Chicago Tribune Building with Artifacts from Around the World</td></tr>
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Across the street is the Tribune Building looking much like a gothic cathedral tower. Around the base are embedded relics from around the world including a moon rock and pieces from ancient constructions. All are well marked and make for a mini outdoor museum with considerable credentials. </div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Chicago Skyline from Lake Michigan</td></tr>
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Our boat tour began on a perfect spring day at the Trump Tower docks. Heading out to the lake, taking in the architecture along the Chicago River and Lake Michigan, the 75 minutes was full of Chicago history that changes yearly with new additions to the cityscape. One of the most striking newer buildings was Aqua (2009), an 80-story multi-use residential skyscraper designed by Jeanne Gang. The sculptured facade was created with irregular concrete slabs that form the balconies on the building. The second tallest </div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Towering Trump International Hotel and Tower</td></tr>
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skyscraper in Chicago is the Trump International Hotel and Tower (2009). It's hard to miss with the 2-story mogul's name strategically placed on the building's river side.</div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The Former Montgomery Ward Catalog Campus</td></tr>
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Heading north on the river, several residences appear from both newly-constructed and revamped structures. I was particularly impressed with the former Montgomery Ward (catalog) office campus that has repurposed three distinctively different buildings into condos with a view.</div>
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Chicago has always been known for innovative architecture, but one of the scariest is being constructed at 150 North Riverside. The 54-story tower has a narrowing base that allows it to fit between the river and the railroad tracks. It will be an eye-catcher in the years to come!</div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Willis Tower and 311 South Wacker Drive</td></tr>
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Two gems along the southern edge of the Chicago River are Willis Tower and 311 South Wacker Drive. Willis Tower now has four glass-bottom balconies, known as The Ledge, for viewing on the 103rd floor. The 311 building is best viewed at night when its tower appears as an oversized diamond ring.</div>
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<b>The Chicago Botanical Gardens</b></div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Spring Planter</td></tr>
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There are public gardens, and then there are public gardens. I've been to several in my life and this is my favorite. I've been there every season of the year (even after a newly fallen 10-inch snow) and they all are spectacular. The 385 acres of educational landscaping continues to grow and amaze.</div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Bonsai Collection</td></tr>
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We began with a tram tour of the perimeter. It's a great way to get your bearings and get an overall feel for how massive these gardens are. There are also tram rides through the inner gardens for those not wanting to walk through all of the 26 different gardens. We chose to stop at the Regenstein Center to start our walking tour. It contains the garden's extensive bonsai collection amidst simple, screened backdrops. From there we stepped out onto The Esplanade and then on to the Native Garden that showed off the spring blooms. Time for a lunch break, which we found at the </div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Lunch at the Garden Cafe</td></tr>
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Garden Cafe with a substantial selection. Eric and I chose the Pea Soup and French Onion Grilled Cheese. Both were tasty, but the grilled cheese was exquisite. </div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Heritage Garden</td></tr>
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Now that we were refreshed, it was on to the Heritage Garden. It's an area that used to be the front entrance, but still shows off some of the best plantings at the Gardens. It's a circular area that leads to the rolling Rose Garden that was </div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Waterfall Gardens</td></tr>
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only producing buds at that time. A stroll down the adjoining espaliered tree lane led us to the terraced Waterfall Garden that is best viewed from all levels. </div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">One of Three Japanese Garden Islands</td></tr>
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Then it was on to the Japanese Garden, my favorite. It consists of three islands, one of which is impossible to get to on foot—the Island of Happiness. The other two are full of Japanese structures and well-manicured landscapes. We happened to hit the azaleas in bloom. </div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">English Walled Garden</td></tr>
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Our final stop was the English Walled Garden, another highlight on my list. Its structured borders vs. curving hillsides provided a perfect backdrop to the English landscape architecture. It's also home to some of the most unique plant specimens.</div>
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<b>Northwestern University</b></div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Patrick G. and Shirley W. Ryan Center for the Musical Arts</td></tr>
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Our drive from the northern suburbs took us through Evanston, home to Northwestern University. It's Eric's alma mater so he was interested in seeing what had changed since our last visit. The new Music Building is a striking structure along the lake. There are views of downtown in the distance, giving a connection to the cultural mecca not too far away.</div>
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<b>The Robie House</b></div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Robie House Entrance</td></tr>
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Robie House is located on a small corner lot on the grounds of the University of Chicago in Hyde Park. That's both a statement and a forewarning. Parking can be difficult, depending on the time of your visit. There is no parking lot for the house. The tours are one hour and leave from the courtyard area after ticket purchase at the gift shop, which is located in what was once the 3-car garage. </div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Robie House</td></tr>
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Robie House is Frank Lloyd Wright's greatest example of the Prairie School style home, making it uniquely American. (To me, it seemed like an early prototype for the 70s tri-level home.) Completed in 1910 for the Robie family, it was only inhabited by them for a very short period of time. Through the years, it was sold to the Chicago Theological Seminary and threatened several times with demolition. After international support materialized for saving the structure, the university turned it over to the Frank Lloyd Wright Preservation Trust in 1997. Since then, the organization has been restoring the home to its original specifications. </div>
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The home is a little austere from the time one enters the foyer. Furnishings are sparse, if any. Much of the furniture created for the home has been lost or is on display at another site. Such is true of the dining room set, which is in the </div>
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UC Museum collection. It emphasizes the architectural and lighting of the home, but leaves one feeling very disconnected during the tour. One feature that is in the process of being completed is the color specifications that Wright chose at the time of construction. After seeing these example, Eric thought he should have left that to a more experienced interior designer, but one has to suppose that it was not an option or a subject to be addressed with Wright.</div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Frank Lloyd Wright Window Designs</td></tr>
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As with any Wright construction, there were experiments with ideas to make life easier and to conserve the structure. This was the case with self-watering built-in planters that used rain water as their source, as well as cornices that acted as rain gutters on the underside of the roof hence eliminating vertical downspouts that would ruin the horizontal lines of the house. On that same note, Wright used Roman bricks that </div>
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were narrower and longer to emphasize the horizontal shape. To accentuate it even more, the mortar between the horizontal bricks was painted the same color to make it one continuous line.</div>
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Our only quibble with visiting the Robie House was that its restoration and tour paled in comparison to Wright's Oak Park Studio and Home. The tour seemed a little long (and pricey) although the volunteer did a tremendous job with relaying information. in addition, there was a $5 up charge for taking interior pictures, a totally unnecessary fee as no one paid any attention and almost everyone on our tour was taking pictures and only one person admitted to paying.</div>
Dexterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02595287829693675510noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2868746177693691434.post-40519976459635841692016-05-25T07:00:00.000-04:002016-05-25T07:00:34.691-04:00When did Second City become so Self-Satisfied?<div style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px;">
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<a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-YaH2hHeh5dw/V0O6N2WG8QI/AAAAAAAAMyA/9P8LTRLPhmg9kE1FZJzaXjkuZd6KqybuwCKgB/s1600/FOOL_ME_TWICE_DEJA_VU_1920X1080_001.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="180" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-YaH2hHeh5dw/V0O6N2WG8QI/AAAAAAAAMyA/9P8LTRLPhmg9kE1FZJzaXjkuZd6KqybuwCKgB/s320/FOOL_ME_TWICE_DEJA_VU_1920X1080_001.png" width="320" /></a></div>
In today’s marketing era, an institution is one whose brand is indestructible, no matter whether the quality has slipped. Second City embodies this definition in its current main stage revue <span style="text-decoration: underline;">Fool Me Twice, Déjà Vu</span>. The concept was intriguing, but the execution was off-key and veered dangerously close to being amateurish. The set-up was that one cast member was in the now while the rest of the cast was in 1991. It was a time machine he’d invented and the others were visiting him. It was funny and the first act’s subtext was an examination of the extent to which American life and culture had changed over the past quarter century. The best scene involved three young mothers energetically celebrating “having it all.” The by-products were exhilaration, entitlement, and exhaustion.</div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The Cast of <u>Fool Me Twice, Déj<span style="font-size: 12px; text-align: start;">à</span> Vu</u></td></tr>
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The second act began as an off-kilter version of the first act’s beginning: the Déjà Vu effect squared. The twentysomething brother/sister behind me felt the need to point this out to each other, though it only needed explaining for the obtuse or feeble-minded. Although the variations, especially a family brunch scene, were droll and amusing, the ensemble made the fatal mistake of breaking numerous times. Though this can seem funny when it happens inadvertently, it became a motif where the cast members were more focused on entertaining one another and themselves than they were in pointing at truths to an audience. It’s narcissistic – the absolute opposite intention of improvisation – and lazy, which is the worst rip-off of a paying audience by professionals.</div>
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The fully improvised third act was sloppy. The first game was word/sentence association and went on three times longer than its natural ending, which was a hilarious example by Jamison Webb, who was the glue that held the ensemble together. I felt Daniel Strauss was checked out of this part. His best moments were one line in the first act and its repeat in the second act. Strauss broke the cardinal rule of accepting a detail given him by another cast member and going with it. Instead, he denied it and justified this by his character’s bad memory. I couldn’t reconcile this ‘variation’ on the orthodoxy of improv. Paul Jurewicz worked well, but the audience<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Rashawn Nadine Scott</td></tr>
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seemed primed to see another John Belushi just because he possessed girth. Rashawn Nadine Scott sparked in any audience interaction game, while Sarah Shook was kookily attractive, but willing to do anything for a laugh. I liked Kelsey Kinney a lot in a long improv about Google programmers, but she kept performing the same type of character continually in the first two acts.</div>
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None of this seemed to faze the audience, however. They were overly conversant with the legendary past of Second City and reacted as if they were watching then in their prime. Ten years ago or so we saw an excellent troupe exemplified by the Black Republican sketch and the ancient black grandmother giving shockingly honest advice to much younger listeners. I don’t know what happened to those performers, but they were excellent. I saw <span style="text-decoration: underline;">Paradigm Shift</span> in ’97 (partly written by Tina Fey) and found its quick retread of part of act one in the second act and final summative moments to be startlingly fresh. I still remember Rachel Dratch’s mother of a gargoyle. <span style="text-decoration: underline;">Fool Me Twice</span> isn’t fresh, especially in the negative stereotyping of southerners and the easy shots at straight white Anglo-Saxon males. They could have added Jewish males in the movie business as well, but they didn’t have the guts to go quite that far. The lack of liberal self-awareness was surprising. In the past, the ensemble has been able to poke fun at itself, but this was not an element of this production.</div>
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The three-generation family behind us – I figured out that the younger members were explaining what was going on to the grandmother. How she was able to get into the performance space in her wheelchair was beyond me, but she was sandwiched in like the rest of us. They left during the improvised set I assume because it was coarse and not very funny.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Jacob Shuda</td></tr>
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The musical direction was stellar and did a lot to punch up the pacing and underscore the specific scenes’ emotions. Musical Director and pianist Jacob Shuda looked like a star when he took his bow. The cast should take a cue from him.<br />
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<a href="http://www.secondcity.com/shows/chicago/venue/chicago-mainstage/"><span style="color: #990000;">secondcity.com</span></a></div>
Dexterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02595287829693675510noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2868746177693691434.post-66616451551127605772016-05-23T21:57:00.000-04:002016-05-23T21:57:10.663-04:00Mary Page Marlowe at Steppenwolf<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-64PgMXEb9kk/V0Oz4sKYtZI/AAAAAAAAMxc/NI9ZhWlnfsczmidWIEOox1VpSz-2VQP3ACKgB/s1600/1459094741_12890917_10153494513803587_7742525054041384100_o.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="174" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-64PgMXEb9kk/V0Oz4sKYtZI/AAAAAAAAMxc/NI9ZhWlnfsczmidWIEOox1VpSz-2VQP3ACKgB/s320/1459094741_12890917_10153494513803587_7742525054041384100_o.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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Neil was interested in seeing Tracy Lettts’ <span style="text-decoration: underline;">Mary Page Marlowe</span> (MPM) because it was premiering at Steppenwolf and we wanted a reason to visit Chicago; I was interested after I read a rave in <span style="text-decoration: underline;">The New York Times</span> (yes, bloggers can be review whores). Letts has deservedly earned a reputation as a major American dramatist and he’s focused on the middle of the country with intelligent, quirky characters finding themselves in situations that begin mundanely and turn horrific. With <span style="text-decoration: underline;">Superior Donuts</span> (2008) and now <span style="text-decoration: underline;">MPM</span>, he’s examining the details of ordinary lives, the type of people watching the show or people that viewers know.</div>
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Baby boomer Mary Page Marlowe, living in Dayton and then Lexington, leads a life that many women of her generation did (and do) in being raised by parents who came of age before World War II, listened to records and thought about boys in the ‘50s, graduated from college in the ‘60s, got married and worked professionally, had a family, divorced, and I won’t go on from there because I don’t want to spoil the story, which depends on its specific details and the order of their revelation. Although these were turbulent times that changed the culture in the U.S., MPM is not a leader in any movement. She’s an ordinary middle-class woman and this frustrates her, along with her tacitly acknowledged Catholic guilt, resulting in behavior she regrets.</div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Madeline Weinstein, Jack Edwards and Rebecca Spence</td></tr>
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Letts’ coup de theatre is to portray scenes from her life out of chronological order so that the audience has clues to figure out MPM’s personality and motivations and also renders what could be commonplace when told like an obituary as various startling and defining moments. Director Anna D. Shapiro has cast six actresses as Mary over the decades. Rebecca Spence and Blair Brown are standouts in the role. I’d like to have seen more of Spence, but the next scene she might have played chronologically was cast with another actress. I wish we could have seen Carrie Coon since she was fierce in <span style="text-decoration: underline;">Gone Girl</span> (2014), but her understudy was playing instead and was very good, though her wigs looked like wigs. </div>
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All of the actors in the large cast performed beautifully, especially newcomer Madeline Weinstein as Mary’s daughter Wendy and the veteran Steppenwolf member Alan Wilder as Mary’s final husband. Without ever underlining, the production demonstrates the time periods easily through Todd Rosenthal’s set design and Linda Roethke’s costumes. Large screen projections were integral to the scene changes (as they were in the Shaw’s production of <span style="text-decoration: underline;">Sweet Charity</span> last year), but Sven Ortel’s are decorative and thematic, rather than being descriptive.</div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The Final Scene with Blair Brown</td></tr>
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The one problem with the performance was its ending. Rather than a dramatic climax, though there were fraught confrontations earlier, the final moment is one of quiet epiphany. However, there wasn’t an arresting conclusion with lighting or sound to draw the applause it deserved. An understated, eloquent play was left hanging and I think Shapiro needs to re-think the moments after the final image so that the audience can react properly.</div>
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MPM runs through June 5, 2016.</div>
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<a href="http://www.steppenwolf.org/"><span style="color: #990000;">steppenwolf.org</span></a></div>
Dexterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02595287829693675510noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2868746177693691434.post-5980933729386222022016-04-20T22:03:00.000-04:002016-04-20T22:03:09.395-04:00Forno Osteria & Bar<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Forno Osteria & Bar</td></tr>
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Cincinnati needs another mid-range plus priced Italian restaurant like Columbus needs another restaurant chain. Cristian Pietoso is also the chef owner of Via Vite on Fountain Square, which is one of our favorite places for either casual or nicer meals. His father owns Nicola’s and that’s still one of the loveliest restaurants in the region. Forno Osteria & Bar is in ‘Hyde Park East’, which I think is really south Oakley, on Erie Avenue. It’s a risky location because although many restaurants have made this a glossy district, few of them have survived more than a couple of years. The exceptions have been Bangkok Bistro and Sake Bomb. I still miss the unassuming and charming Pasta al Dente, but that’s another story entirely. Like Forno, it also made its own pastas. </div>
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Kris, Karn, and Helen were visiting and Karn wanted to check out one of the most talked about restaurants right now. We decided on Forno because we hadn’t been there. The indoors/outdoors element of the space will be very popular in the summer, but I thought the dark wood felt like an Italian monster sized version of Lincoln Logs. The tables are close together; I was able to hear everyone’s order and the servers’ recommendations at the three tables around us. The entrance was awkward because the manager was on the phone as we were leaving and we had to squeeze past.</div>
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The food, on the other hand, was mostly very good. Karn, Kris, and Neil had the Fresh Artichoke soup with Parmigiano Reggiano and crostini. It’s puréed, but with a little texture and has a lovely, golden color. The taste has a real brightness about it, but I wouldn’t have guessed it was artichoke if I hadn’t known. Helen had the Margherita pizza with the mozzarella, but without the leaf basil. We finished it off the next day and I liked it, but I didn’t think it was anything special; it’s not better than Dewey’s.</div>
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Kris chose the Roasted Atlantic Cod with arugula pesto and soffritto. The cod was a little drier than I expected with a slight fishiness, but the pesto and soffritto were both excellent. </div>
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Karn went with the Tortelloni Gorgonzola—a rich and full-bodied dish covered with veal Parmigiano glace, mushroom and thyme. Neil was attracted to the Gnocchi with Leek Parmigiano fondue and speck (a form of bacon). This was a charming dish; the potato pasta was light and the sauce had senses of citrus and smoke about it. </div>
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I ordered the Braised Honeycomb Tripe because it’s a specialty and I haven’t seen it on other menus. It had a texture somewhere between octopus and mushrooms and was covered in a red wine tomato sauce. It was rich enough to be a small entrée on its own. I would certainly order it again, but probably consider soup or a salad with it instead. </div>
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I went on to the Whole Wheat Pappardelle Cinghiale with beer braised wild boar ragout, which was basically like pulled beef with a tomato Bolognese sauce. Pietoso always generates a full, rounded base to his red sauces with a complexity of notes in the spices and the alcohol.</div>
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People that would want to visit should do so sooner than later because turnover in this part of the city is quicker than one might assume.</div>
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<a href="http://fornoosteriabar.com/"><span style="background-color: #eeeeee; color: #990000;">fornoosteriabar.com</span></a></div>
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<a href="https://www.zomato.com/cincinnati/forno-osteria-bar-hyde-park-mount-lookout" target="_blank" title="View Menu, Reviews, Photos & Information about Forno Osteria & Bar, Hyde Park/Mount Lookout and other Restaurants in Cincinnati"><img alt="Forno Osteria & Bar Menu, Reviews, Photos, Location and Info - Zomato" src="https://www.zomato.com/logo/17843383/minilink" style="border: none; height: 36px; padding: 0px; width: 130px;" /></a> </div>
Dexterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02595287829693675510noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2868746177693691434.post-49290867851862044432016-04-06T22:02:00.000-04:002016-04-06T22:02:21.337-04:00Eye in the Sky: A contemporary British cross between Alfred Hitchcock’s ‘50s period and Kathryn Bigelow’s war movies<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Though Helen Mirren has been featured as the star and has valiantly promoted the movie, <span style="text-decoration: underline;">Eye in the Sky</span> depends upon a strong ensemble cast and an impressive script to achieve its goals. It presents a number of hot button topics: the geographically expanding Islamic war against the West; drone strikes; first world citizens becoming radicalized; gender equality in all manner of professions; inclusive casting; the Western literary tradition as a blueprint for modern cinema. That sounds heady, but the movie is a wartime military thriller, a black comedy about indecisiveness at the highest levels, and a small-scale tragedy resulting from international conflict.</div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Helen Mirren as Colonel Katherine Powell</td></tr>
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Mirren plays a Colonel tracking a radicalized British citizen that she wants to capture. However, that goal changes as a number of other factors suddenly present themselves and collateral casualties have to be calculated. Mirren looks to be no older than when she began playing Jane Tennant on <span style="text-decoration: underline;">Prime Suspect</span> in the early ‘90s. However, since we have a history with her, there are moments when I felt like telling some of the other characters, “Don’t you know she’s the Queen and Jane Tennison? Just do what she’s requesting. We know she’ll be right; she has been for decades.” We considered whether the character was a metaphorical reflection of Hillary Clinton.</div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Aaron Paul</td></tr>
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Neil wondered if Aaron Paul will draw a younger audience, especially since he gives a gutsy and sensitive performance as the pilot of the satellite controlled drone bomber. </div>
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In one of his last roles, Alan Rickman displays both gravity and an ironic levity in dealing with the highest-level politicians and bureaucrats. Barkhad Abdi, the chief pirate in <span style="text-decoration: underline;">Captain Phillips</span>, plays the main spy on the ground, who finds himself in an almost impossibly suspenseful situation. It’s a variation on Hitchcock’s definition of suspense, but substitutes a missile for a bomb.</div>
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The British are uncertain and pained to unnecessarily destroy; their American counterparts portrayed by an unrecognizably corpulent Michael O’Keefe and an eager Laila Robbins (wonderful as Masha in John Doyle’s Playhouse production of <span style="text-decoration: underline;">Three Sisters</span> a few years ago) display no second thoughts whatsoever. At different points in the movie, </div>
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it’s difficult to know which view is more appropriate. The justification raised a number of times is that many people could be killed in a mall such as what happened in Nairobi in 2013. Though filmed in South Africa, the setting is an older, shabbier suburb where the modern, westernized downtown can be seen. Africa looks golden in Haris Zambarloukos’ cinematography whereas Mirren seems to be working out of a high-tech cave – the military version of <span style="text-decoration: underline;">Batman</span>? Will the huge crowds attending dreck like <span style="text-decoration: underline;">Batman vs. Superman</span> attend <span style="text-decoration: underline;">Eye in the Sky</span>, which presents the actual principal world conflict?</div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">A Drone's Perspective</td></tr>
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Guy Hibbert’s script works on a number of levels simultaneously and it pulled in the small audience with whom we saw it at The Esquire. People were talking at the screen as well as checking out one another for reactions. It’s the type of experience that electrified Classical Greek Theatre audiences. Hibbert uses “In war, truth is the first casualty” by Aeschuylus as an epigraph, referring to the fear of public relations in conducting various rules of engagement. However, that oversimplifies both the humor and the humanity of the story. The movie seemed to be a contemporary descendant of the more mercurial Greek dramatist Euripides. I don’t want to gave away much of the plot, but I think most viewers will want to yell out, “Buy that bread! Buy that bread!”</div>
Dexterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02595287829693675510noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2868746177693691434.post-31222832644478423032016-04-03T22:48:00.001-04:002016-04-03T22:48:55.874-04:00Delhi Palace: Unassuming but essential Indian cuisine in the region<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Delhi Palace on Montgomery Road in Silverton has been open for a couple of years and it’s turned into our go-to destination for its lunch buffet. I don’t know why we haven’t reviewed it before now, but I suspect it’s because like a comfortable shoe, we take it for granted even as we’re checking out something more glamorous that doesn’t fit well. </div>
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The menu is extensive, but some of the favorites at Delhi Palace show up at the terrific (and reasonable) lunch buffet. It’s worth starting there and returning for dinner a la carte on another occasion.</div>
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Delhi Palace can nail chicken every time. Regardless of the dish and the protein’s preparation, it’s always tender, which can be harder to pull off than one might initially imagine. The Chicken Tandoori is tasty and served in smaller portions than at other restaurants. That’s a good thing because a whole thigh or breast can sometimes be tough in spots. Plus, it gives the diner more room on the plate for </div>
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some of the other dishes. Chicken in Butter Sauce is beautifully flavored, though mildly spiced. It’s a rich sauce like others at this restaurant, but it’s worth it. Their version of Saag Paneer, a staple on local Indian menus, is hands down the best in town. It’s creamier than others, but also more complexly seasoned. The Dal (Lentil) Soup has a citrus after-bite, which is intriguing. The Tomato Soup was also very good when I had it in the past. The Mango Lassi has a purer mango flavor and color than other versions I’ve drunk in the past.</div>
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The dining room has been spruced up recently, which has cut all decorative ties with the previous restaurants in this location. Unlike some other popular or well-established Indian restaurants in the region, Delhi Palace always looks neat and there isn’t spilled food from maladroit patrons. The gentlemen that serve and host are invariably competent and friendly in a quiet manner. One caveat: whether dining buffet style or a la carte, the portions are far more filling than they initially appear. </div>
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<span style="background-color: #eeeeee;"><span style="color: #990000;"><a href="http://www.delhipalaceindia.com/">delhipalace.com</a></span></span></div>
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<a href="https://www.zomato.com/cincinnati/delhi-palace-cincinnati" target="_blank" title="View Menu, Reviews, Photos & Information about Delhi Palace, Deer Park/Madeira and other Restaurants in Cincinnati"><img alt="Delhi Palace Menu, Reviews, Photos, Location and Info - Zomato" src="https://www.zomato.com/logo/17117648/minilink" style="border: none; height: 36px; padding: 0px; width: 130px;" /></a> </div>
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Dexterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02595287829693675510noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2868746177693691434.post-39930034857577219442016-03-26T13:17:00.002-04:002016-03-26T13:25:55.460-04:00Annapurna at Ensemble: Powerful but Uneven<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Sharr White’s <span style="text-decoration: underline;">Annapurna</span> (2011), directed in its regional premiere by Lynn Meyers, starts off as if it’s the sequel to one of Sam Shepard’s classics. Those crazy, intense lovers in their surreal spaces end up twenty years later in a trailer park. However, as the play progressed, it became apparent that it was the last embers of a romantic tragedy. As I said about Ensemble’s earlier production of White’s <span style="text-decoration: underline;">The Other Place</span> last season, I don’t want to give too much away about the story behind the plot because it becomes far more intriguing than it initially appears. </div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Parlato and Pugh*</td></tr>
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Dennis Parlato gives a masterful performance as Ulysses, immediately establishing a complex, all-encompassing rhythm. He’s playing a semi-legendary character (sort of what Denis Johnson might have been like if he hadn’t kicked drugs and alcohol) faced with a major figure from his past. Unlike his namesake, he’s not going anywhere; he’s running out of time and is trapped in space. It took me a while to warm up to Regina Pugh as Emma, even though I have always admired her work. Susan and I thought she seemed as if she was in a light comedy at the beginning, while Katy and Lisa thought she was finding a way for her character to cope with the initial situation. Pugh always makes definite choices in her acting, which I respect, but they didn’t all work for me here. However, after the first half hour, she began to match Parlato beat for beat, resulting in a powerful climax. </div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The Horrifying Set</td></tr>
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When we sat down as a group, Neil said, “Eric will have a tough time with this set.” It’s the type of design that gets a Tony nomination and three cheers to Brian c. Mehring for it and for the lighting and to Shannon Rae Lutz for the properties. It’s a life-size singlewide trailer that was built in the late ‘70s (my Mom has the same kitchen cabinetry) and has been inhabited by someone who’s somewhere between a nuclear slob and a toxic hoarder. I kept looking for the mummified pet that shows up on <span style="text-decoration: underline;">Hoarders</span>, but fortunately Ms. Lutz didn’t go that far. I tried to avert my eyes from looking at it full on because it was like driving by a head on collision.</div>
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There are some clarifications needed from the script. Annapurna is a collection of mountains in the Himalayas and becomes significant because of Ulysses’ writing. Katy pointed out some inconsistencies in the exposition details. This is an established script so it cannot be changed, but I wonder why the original director or a dramaturge didn’t point this out to White. Also, did Emma buy groceries in Missouri because there isn’t a Piggly Wiggly in Colorado – the setting of the play? Is this in the script or a choice by Lutz? </div>
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<span style="font-size: xx-small;">*Photo from Ensemble Theatre website.</span></div>
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<u>Annapurna</u> runs through April 10, 2016.</div>
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<a href="http://www.ensemblecincinnati.org/index.php/shows/annapurna"><span style="background-color: #eeeeee; color: #990000;">ensemblecincinnati.org</span></a></div>
Dexterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02595287829693675510noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2868746177693691434.post-75994889104005776412016-03-23T22:22:00.000-04:002016-03-26T21:36:02.141-04:00Mothers and Sons: Almost There<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Terrence McNally’s <span style="text-decoration: underline;">Mother and Sons</span> (2014) has been directed with clarity by Timothy Douglas in the Thompson Shelterhouse space at Playhouse in the Park. When I read it in his <span style="text-decoration: underline;">Selected Works: A Memoir in Plays</span> (2016), I found its characters’ sense of loss and rage, tempered somewhat by the passage of two decades, poignant and moving. I warned Neil that there would be tears at the finale. There were, but unfortunately they weren’t mine.</div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The Cast of <u>Mothers and Sons</u>*</td></tr>
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The play is a sequel to McNally’s teleplay <span style="text-decoration: underline;">André’s Mother</span> (1990), where André Gerard had died of AIDS and his lover Cal, Cal’s family and their friends hold a memorial service for him that his mother attends, but she’s unable to come to terms with any of it or fully express herself. Twenty years later, Katharine, André’s mother, unexpectedly visits Cal. He has married a younger man and they have a son. This is a ghost story in which André haunts both Katharine and Cal in very different ways. The tone moves from politeness to anger, regret and, finally, reconciliation. </div>
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Alvin Keith and Ben Cherry are very strong as respectively Cal and his husband Will. Stephanie Berry has the elegant demeanor and beautiful legs called for in the script. She’s a technically accomplished actress, but she’s emotionally warm and seems accepting, which goes against the initial essence of the character. The payoff of her character’s thaw seems more muted than in the script. During the preview we saw, she had a couple of struggles with her lines. There’s an intriguing, unspoken edge in casting Keith and Berry that strengthens this production, which wouldn’t be there with white performers as in the initial New York productions. Austin Vaughan plays the youngster Bud with vivacity. </div>
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Junghyun Georgia Lee’s set design evoked an upper-middle class apartment in New York’s Central Park West; the color and proportion of the chaise couch rooted the play in its milieu. The lighting was sharp except for the peculiar last cue (and it’s in the script) where it brightens intensely before the blackout. Neil thought it was supposed to be symbolic and I think he’s right, but it wasn’t necessary because that came across in the relationship between the characters. The costumes were appropriate, but Katherine’s dress didn’t fit as well as it could have; I caught Berry discreetly pulling it down.</div>
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All in all, this is a good production of an important contemporary script that shows how much life has changed for gays and straights in the decades since AIDS was an immediate death sentence.</div>
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<u>Mothers and Sons</u> runs through April 17, 2016.</div>
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<span style="font-size: xx-small;">*Photos from Playhouse in the Park website.</span></div>
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<a href="http://www.cincyplay.com/index.php?option=com_production&id=96&Itemid=439"><span style="background-color: #eeeeee; color: #990000;">cincyplay.com</span></a></div>
Dexterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02595287829693675510noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2868746177693691434.post-7802451832430133022016-03-15T21:14:00.000-04:002016-03-15T21:19:33.551-04:00Actors Theatre of Louisville still takes risks with The Humana Festival<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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It’s always worth a trip to Louisville in March-April to see one of the world premieres at Actors Theatre of Louisville (ATL) as part of the Humana Festival. This is the 40th year of the festival and the line-up of plays seems intriguing this year. We decided to call for a couple of tickets, stop for lunch at Havana Rumba (or Jack Fry’s or Hammerheads or the new Game, take your pick), and go to a 4 p.m. matinee of Sarah Ruhl’s <span style="text-decoration: underline;">For Peter Pan on her 70th birthday</span>. The synopsis told us something, namely that it was about a woman who’d played Peter Pan onstage when she was younger and her family living in Iowa.</div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Kathleen Chalfant</td></tr>
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We discovered while reading the program that the cast included Kathleen Chalfant, a great stage actress we’d only seen on film and TV, Scott Jaeck, whom I saw a number of times in Chicago while I was in college, and Keith Reddin , author of some of the most stylistically adventurous comedies of the 1980s including <span style="text-decoration: underline;">Rum and Coke</span> and <span style="text-decoration: underline;">Highest Standard of Living</span>, and other top actors we’ve seen on various TV series as guest stars. Les Waters, artistic director at ATL, directed as he has four other works by Ruhl. Amy Wegener, ATL literary manager, was the dramaturg. (This means she does lots of research for directors and actors on existing plays and works as an editor with new plays, especially world premieres like this one). London based designer Annie Smart was responsible for the set. Everything sounded great.</div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The Entire Cast in the Hospital Scene*</td></tr>
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During the prologue, Chalfant immediately connected with the audience as the central character Ann (I wondered if the audience was mesmerized by the actress or the character and I have to say in retrospect it was Chalfant’s magic) and got things off to a bright start. Then the curtains were pulled back to reveal a naturalistic hospital set that looked more contemporary because of its color scheme than the 1990s mentioned in the program. An elderly man was dying, surrounded by his grown children and for anyone who’s been at a deathbed, it’s not something that’s immediately entertaining and Ruhl did little to make the experience specific to that group of characters or deeply resonant to an audience.</div>
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The cast was challenged by a number of factors that it met head on. First, Chalfant’s Ann never made sense as someone who never grew up and needed reassurances from her brothers. However, she valiantly made this as truthful as she could. Lisa Emery’s Wendy, the youngest sibling, had all the desperation of a middle-aged person lost in the family shuffle and unwilling to deal with anything difficult or mature. Ann seemed like a second mother to her brothers, namely the iconic Wendy, whereas Wendy made much more sense as Peter Pan. Second, Ruhl loves to shift gears between a gently realistic comedy-drama and a whimsical approach to fantasy and connections to myth (Greek in the past, but J.M. Barrie here). It seemed charming and original a decade ago in <span style="text-decoration: underline;">The Clean House</span>, but this script never went deep enough in fleshing out the siblings nor strongly enough in connecting them to the Peter Pan archetypes and then the actual Pan characters and situations in the third scene. Where was the dramaturg in this? When was this draft of the script completed? </div>
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The major challenge at this matinee was an elderly audience member who fell up some stairs about halfway through the performance and what seemed like a dozen audience members and the house management staff tried to assist. No one whispered so it was pretty obvious what was going on. At one point, the house doors were opened to the street for the EMT to assist and then transport the patient. The performance never wavered, which the audience credited to the cast with a standing ovation. However, no one from the theatre ever informed the audience what had transpired at the end of the performance and the situation continued for about a half hour. If Ruhl had been present, she would have seen something remarkable: the audience, for the most part, was more interested in what was going on with the audience member that fell than it was in the story onstage. </div>
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If this were reported to her, I’d hope she’d consider revising the play. The first thing Neil observed was that it wasn’t finished and he was right. The fantasy elements, while lovely, are not woven densely enough into the texture of the aging Iowa siblings’ story and the relationships between those characters are not detailed enough for an audience to really care. There’s nothing that would offend any audience member even though the specter of political discourse is raised yet quickly dropped and that’s a problem. It’s a safe, mild play in which a group of wonderful actors provide far more substance to the proceedings than the play merits at this juncture. Ruhl’s very hot right now (she’s actually a little overrated) so I doubt any of this will be recommended to her and most likely this current script version will be produced elsewhere because of her name.</div>
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However, we don’t mean for this review to keep audiences from attending the Humana Festival at Actors Theatre of Louisville. There are other scripts and productions going on that are probably wonderful. We’ve seen other terrific shows there in the past and we’ll certainly return. One note to Waters and Wegener: what about reviving one of Reddin’s scripts? I bet they still hold up.</div>
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*Photos by Bill Brymer for ATL</div>
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<a href="http://actorstheatre.org/"><span style="background-color: #eeeeee; color: #990000;">actorstheatre.org</span></a></div>
Dexterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02595287829693675510noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2868746177693691434.post-68769499392642453602016-03-03T06:30:00.000-05:002016-03-03T06:30:21.294-05:00Don’s Party<div style="font-family: Helvetica;">
<b>Smart, rude, and relevant</b></div>
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Bruce Beresford’s <span style="text-decoration: underline;">Don’s Party</span> (1976) was barely released outside of Australia, but thanks to TCM (and probably Netflix), it’s available. It’s a party movie that really gets wild. As the character that becomes the political butt to everyone else, says, “I’ve never met so many university educated people that are uncouth.” Like <span style="text-decoration: underline;">Shampoo</span> (1975), <span style="text-decoration: underline;">Don’s Party</span> takes place during what was an important election. In this case, it was 1969 and the Labour Party was supposed to narrowly defeat the two-decades incumbent Liberal Party. </div>
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Most of the characters support Labour and met in college fifteen years previously as either students or instructors. Unlike the American college reunion movies <span style="text-decoration: underline;">The Return of the Secaucus Seven</span> (1981) or <span style="text-decoration: underline;">The Big Chill</span> (1983), there’s neither sentimentality nor nostalgia for the past. Most of their lives haven’t worked out the way they thought they would, but that doesn’t really come out until the end and it’s not the reason they behave the way they do. The one really successful couple, which has been more recently added to the mix, is cold, narcissistic, and single-minded.</div>
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The acting ensemble – stars in Australia, but little known here – possesses a force that reminded me of really good American movie acting from the ‘40s or ‘50s. The rhythm felt partially improvised and the primary emotions of lust, frustration, and anger roll in waves. Neil thought it looked like 1969, though I was somewhat unsure. Director Beresford made more movies in Australia (including the great war tragedy <span style="text-decoration: underline;">Breaker Morant</span> in 1980) before following Hollywood’s siren call in the 1980s. </div>
Dexterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02595287829693675510noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2868746177693691434.post-40781985272410957592016-02-29T19:05:00.000-05:002016-02-29T19:05:17.537-05:00Mavis Gallant – The Writer’s Writer<div style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px;">
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I’ve always wanted to read Mavis Gallant since Fran Lebowitz opined on Charlie Rose that <span style="text-decoration: underline;">The Collected Stories of Mavis Gallant</span> was one of the books of the year. She sounded fascinating because she was a Canadian who spent most of her adult life in France. I read a couple of her really short stories from that collection after it went into paperback in Joseph Beth, but didn’t actually buy it. (I only feel somewhat guilty about that since I’ve purchased a couple trees worth of books at JB). She died last year at 91 after a lengthy career, though she wasn’t published in Canada until the ‘70s. Her American reputation was made because over a hundred of her stories appeared in The New Yorker (only John Cheever saw more of his short fiction published there).</div>
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I saw <span style="text-decoration: underline;">Paris Stories</span> (2002) at this darling independent bookstore in Niagara-on-the-Lake so I bought it and started reading it almost immediately and it ended up taking me about two and a half months even though there’s only fifteen stories. What happened? They’re densely detailed and intricate works that were physically difficult to read because the font was so small. Either Canadians have better eyes than me – quite possible – or they’re used to this font. Maybe it’s cultural. </div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Mavis Gallant in Paris</td></tr>
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In this collection, Gallant focuses mainly on Paris as well as other parts of France and Switzerland while presenting French natives, ex-patriots from North America, and refugees from Eastern Europe. The stories cover over fifty years from the immediate aftermath of World War II through the 1990s. An underlying theme is that Europe has never fully recovered from that war and the subsequent conflicts between democracy, communism, and fascism. Having lived in Europe, it felt like a collective lived memory to me, but I don’t think most American readers would be as entranced. </div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Mavis Gallant Writing in Postwar Paris</td></tr>
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In “Forain,” Gallant encapsulates her overarching theme in an image of an immigrant writer’s funeral:</div>
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<i>Only a few of the mourners mounting the treacherous steps can have had a thought to spare for Tremski’s private affairs. His wife’s flight from a brave and decent husband, dragging by the hand a child of three, belonged to the folklore, not the history of mid-century emigration. The chronicle of two generations, displaced and dispossessed, had come to a stop. The evaluation could begin, had already started. Scholars who looked dismayingly youthful, speaking the same language, but with a new, jarring vocabulary, were trekking to Western capitals – taping reminiscences, copying old letters. History turned out to be a plodding science. What most émigrés settled for now was the haphazard accuracy of a memory like Tremski’s. In the end it was always a poem that ran through the mind – no a string of dates. </i></div>
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Like her compatriot Alice Munro, Gallant writes stories that are much bigger than the form. Munro’s stories have the psychological detail and complex plot structures of novels whereas Gallant’s stories are the essence of entire cultures and histories. The major difference between them is that Munro always has one character in a story with whom a reader can empathize; Gallant never identifies with any specific character, but regards them with, as Mary McCarthy termed it, “a cold eye.” That may be the reason that Gallant didn’t have as broad a readership as Munro.</div>
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However, this approach works brilliantly in the chilling “August.” Here’s part of a letter that a young woman writes to her psychotherapist about what she sees as their failed professional relationship:</div>
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<i>“What help can you give me?” she wrote. “I have often been disgusted by the smell of your dresses and your rotten teeth. If in six months you have not been able to take your dresses to be cleaned, or yourself to a dentist, how can you help me? Can you convince me that I’m not going to be hit by a car when I step off the curb? Can you convince me that the sidewalk is a safe place to be?“ </i></div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Mavis Gallant at Le D<span style="background-color: white; font-family: "guardian text sans web" , "helvetica neue" , "helvetica" , "arial" , "lucida grande" , sans-serif; line-height: 16px;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;">ô</span></span>me Restaurant in Paris*</td></tr>
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<i> </i>I’m glad I finally read Gallant. She’s daunting and somewhat involved. I took much longer with her book (about two months) and this review (about four weeks) than I initially expected. Perhaps that’s the result of examining work that is classic rather than timely. Or it could be a result of my lack of focus. </div>
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<span style="font-size: xx-small;">*Photograph by Paul Cooper</span></div>
Dexterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02595287829693675510noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2868746177693691434.post-71485670239715422532016-02-24T22:15:00.000-05:002016-02-24T22:19:11.343-05:00Awaiting the Oscars<div style="font-family: Helvetica;">
<b>The movies don’t thrill, </b></div>
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<b>but inclusion and diversity might</b></div>
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The Oscars are around the corner and there probably won’t be a lot of surprises with the winners. However, there should be some verbal fireworks from Chris Rock. I hope so because there isn’t much diversity in movies or television except for white, able-bodied straight boys. The recent Annenberg study confirms what we know: Hollywood executives make obscenely expensive B-movies for boys (and the girls who want to date or stay married to them) to see and preferably more than once. </div>
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Historically, blacks have always led the charge for equality, followed by women, other ethnicities, LGBTQ, and the disabled. When was the last time a disabled character was in a movie or TV show? Although TV has done and does a better job of including female characters, the recent increase of action professionals’ shows (cops, hospitals, firefighters) and superhero shows and decline of family oriented dramas (except on Freeform, which was ABC Family) and both daytime and nighttime soap operas has resulted in more tokenism and greater inequality.</div>
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So, Hollywood trots out its “Art” from late September to mid-December and has to rely heavily on the Independent studios, some of which are boutiques of the majors and that actually care about entertainment and edification. The take-away from the Annenberg study is that a female director or series creator will result in more diversity in front of the camera. Spike Lee thinks that more diversity in executives would lead to more diverse projects getting the green light. I think black, Latino, and female stars need to singly or collectively become moguls. It’s how <span style="text-decoration: underline;">Féla</span>, <span style="text-decoration: underline;">On Your Feet</span>, and <span style="text-decoration: underline;">Selma</span> were recently produced.</div>
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Rock will address this in some way, though he was almost as awkward in 2005 as David Letterman was in 1994 so here’s hoping the script is better this time. The problem is that outside of the diversity issue, there isn’t much that will surprise. However, in 2009, the Oscars changed up Best Movie from five nominees to up to ten. Couldn’t the acting nominees be variable based upon number of votes?</div>
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Movie: We loved <span style="text-decoration: underline;">Brooklyn</span>, a wonderful romance, and <span style="text-decoration: underline;">The Martian</span>, which was the smartest, most spectacular comedy of the year. Neither has a chance because neither is nominated for Director. <span style="text-decoration: underline;">The Revenant</span> will win because it’s won all over. Will we see it? I don’t know. Brenda described it in enthralling detail to me, but she thought it was violent and a bunch of hairy bears (animal and human) dragging through the mud for two and a half hours could be more of a slog than I can take.</div>
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Our take: Couldn’t <span style="text-decoration: underline;">Steve Jobs</span> have been nominated? Couldn’t <span style="text-decoration: underline;">Straight Outta Compton</span> have been nominated?</div>
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Director: Alejandro Iñárritu for <span style="text-decoration: underline;">The Revenant</span> is a lock because the movie and director are generally conjoined categories.</div>
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Actor: Leonardo DiCaprio for <span style="text-decoration: underline;">The Revenant</span> because he’s won everywhere else, this is his SIXTH nomination, and he’s made billions for Hollywood and, oh yes, he’s incredibly talented.</div>
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Our take: We thought Michael Fassbender was pretty great as <span style="text-decoration: underline;">Steve Jobs</span>. Couldn’t Michael B. Jordan have been nominated for <span style="text-decoration: underline;">Creed</span>? Stallone and DeNiro were nominated for boxing roles.</div>
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Actress: Brie Larson has won everything so far for <span style="text-decoration: underline;">Room</span>, a movie we want to see, and she’ll take this too, though we loved Saoirse Ronan in <span style="text-decoration: underline;">Brooklyn</span>.</div>
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Our take: Couldn’t Lily Tomlin have been recognized for <span style="text-decoration: underline;">Grandma</span>?</div>
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Best Supporting Actor: Sylvester Stallone in what will be a touching moment.</div>
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Our take: A strange group this year because I thought Billy Crudup gave the best supporting performance in <span style="text-decoration: underline;">Spotlight</span> and why couldn’t Idris Elba have been nominated for <span style="text-decoration: underline;">Beasts of No Nation</span>? I haven’t seen the movie, but he’s sensational in the clips and that’s all most viewers will see on the Oscars anyway.</div>
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Best Supporting Actress: A competitive category because female actors find more secondary than leading parts thanks to the overriding sexism of the movie industry. It would be a lovely moment to see the great Jennifer Jason Leigh win on her first nomination for <span style="text-decoration: underline;">The Hateful Eight</span>! I can think of a number of times when she could/should have been nominated and she’s taken more risks than almost any other actress of her generation. However, the movie didn’t take off in the way Tarantino’s most recent ones have. Rachel McAdams is a joy in anything, but I think her nomination for <span style="text-decoration: underline;">Spotlight</span> is about recognizing the ensemble, rather than her specific work. However, Kate Winslet gives a quietly devastating turn in <span style="text-decoration: underline;">Steve Jobs</span>, pulls off the tricky accent, and is practically unrecognizable. She’ll win.</div>
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The tragic (and I use that term correctly) <span style="text-decoration: underline;">Amy</span> and the simultaneously joyful and heartbreaking <span style="text-decoration: underline;">Inside Out</span> were the best movies I saw this year so I hope they win their respective categories – documentary feature and animated feature. </div>
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I’d like to see <span style="text-decoration: underline;">The Martian</span> win in its technical categories since hundreds (thousands?) worked on the movie and its production design is sumptuous. <span style="text-decoration: underline;">Brooklyn</span> should have been nominated and won for costumes. Since it wasn’t, I don’t care. <span style="text-decoration: underline;">Carol</span> had the artiest – not necessarily the best – cinematography so it will probably win. </div>
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For many people, the Grammys and the Oscars have become fashion shows. Many do not see the movies that are nominated so they are more interested in the clothes. However, how many tube dresses are really that fascinating?</div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Anne Hathaway and James Franco at the 2011 Oscars</td></tr>
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Dexterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02595287829693675510noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2868746177693691434.post-18868691149006762472016-02-20T20:23:00.002-05:002016-02-21T13:58:39.385-05:00Le Bar à Boeuf<div style="font-family: Helvetica;">
<b>This needs polish </b></div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Le Bar à Boeuf Lounge Area</td></tr>
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The first restaurant we reviewed on this blog was Jean Robert’s Table. For the most part, his restaurants have been ones we’ve returned to on numerous occasions. I’m not so sure we’ll have the same relationship with Le Bar à Boeuf. It’s located in The Edgecliff in Eden Park, which has been the black hole destination for a number of reputable restaurateurs over the past few years. It was a curse I hoped would be broken, but…</div>
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I’d made the reservation online and indicated that it was a birthday. When we arrived, there was no maûtre d’ around so the bartender kindly came over and seated us. The maître d’ bopped by quickly to say hello and nothing else after conducting what seemed like a twenty minute conversation with the next table (obviously the couple were regulars) that was all about being a mutual admiration society. After he departed, this couple argued for about thirty minutes before leaving. She was a sophisticated suburban shrew; he was passive aggressive. I couldn’t tell if this was a primary form of communication for them or if it was a mating dance. Unfortunately, it was more intriguing than anything else during the evening.</div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Medium Rare Bison Burger and French Fries</td></tr>
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The focus is on the burger, which was fun about eight years ago, but has become a little ridiculous when top chefs and restaurateurs want to charge $15+ for a big piece of meat. However, I really liked the burger at Salazar because it was closest to my Mom’s. Boeuf offers various types of meat (no bun, which was fine since the portion is very large), but the waiter didn’t point out that bison is best when cooked medium, but no more because it isn’t a juicy meat. Mine was good at medium rare, but Neil wasn’t as pleased with his medium well. There are various accompaniments; the Béarnaise sauce was excellent and since it’s difficult to pull off at home, it’s a great choice. I also liked the onion compote. </div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Bison Burger with Béarnaise Sauce and Mashed Potatoes</td></tr>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Creamed Spinach</td></tr>
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The mashed potatoes and the French fries were good, but not as terrific as they were at Jean Ro’s Bistro a decade ago. On the other hand, we liked the creamed spinach side. It featured the vegetable in a light, thin cream sauce. It was also big enough to share. </div>
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I wish servers weren’t so desperate to clear plates at the drop of a fork by a specific diner instead of waiting until all in the party have finished. Neil had to stop his plate from being taken because he hadn’t quite finished eating.</div>
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We had to ask for a dessert menu, but there’s a good selection. I overheard our server say that the host is more concerned about a server’s personality, rather than her or his ability to set a table. That’s fine, but the host still needed to instruct our server how to set for dessert. Neil chose the<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Jean Robert's Classic Chocolate Pot de Crème</td></tr>
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chocolate pot de crème, which has been a Jean Robert staple for a while and still wins. I selected the pineapple and rum pudding, which I naively thought would be either a creamy pudding or a variation on a pineapple upside down cake. <br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Pineapple and Rum Pudding</td></tr>
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It’s actually bread pudding. It’s good, though I don’t love bread pudding, but nowhere near as good as a version we shared at Bravo last year. </div>
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I make this sound like it was a downer of an experience, but it wasn’t because the food is good and isn’t obscenely priced. However, I expect more from Jean Robert and Le bar à Boeuf wasn’t so special that we’d think about returning anytime soon.</div>
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And the birthday celebration I had requested? It was never mentioned.<br />
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<a href="http://www.jrcincy.com/le-bar-a-boeuf/"><span style="background-color: #eeeeee; color: #990000;">jrcincy.com/le-bar-a-boeuf</span></a><br />
<a href="https://www.zomato.com/cincinnati/le-bar-a-boeuf-cincinnati" target="_blank" title="View Menu, Reviews, Photos & Information about Le Bar a Boeuf, Walnut Hills/Mount Adams and other Restaurants in Cincinnati"><img alt="Le Bar a Boeuf Menu, Reviews, Photos, Location and Info - Zomato" src="https://www.zomato.com/logo/17756551/minilink" style="border: none; height: 36px; padding: 0px; width: 130px;" /></a> </div>
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Dexterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02595287829693675510noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2868746177693691434.post-63832448506182127642016-02-07T19:17:00.000-05:002016-02-07T19:17:25.255-05:00Native Gardens Wins at The Playhouse<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-zzz7m7rWQiA/VrfahTgg-UI/AAAAAAAAMmY/8yIw9WR2WNg/s1600/pip_native-gardens-logo.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="235" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-zzz7m7rWQiA/VrfahTgg-UI/AAAAAAAAMmY/8yIw9WR2WNg/s320/pip_native-gardens-logo.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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<span style="text-decoration: underline;">Native Gardens</span> by Karen Zacarias moves swiftly in its world premiere at The Playhouse in the Park. We decided to see it for a number of reasons, not the least being that award winning Broadway triple threat Karen Ziemba is in the cast. Zacarias is hot right now, having five premieres at major venues around the country this year, but she has been writing and been produced for over two decades. It’s the type of play and production where an audience may wish it last another ten minutes or even delve deeper into the issues it raises.</div>
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The premise is classic: a young, liberal Chilean-Hispanic American couple move into a fixer-upper next door to a middle-aged, conservative Caucasian American couple in a beautifully restored and landscaped (by the husband) Italianate in a Washington suburb. The new couple find out that their property line actually extends two feet into the garden next door; the younger wife wants to plant a garden of native varieties whereas the older husband’s garden focuses on ornamentals. The situation could take place, however, in Mt. Adams or Mt. Lookout or the Historic district of Newport. The specifics in locale, personalities, and conflicts reverberate for anyone with neighbors. </div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The Neighbors*</td></tr>
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The Playhouse administration was smart to commission this script after the success it experienced with the earlier <span style="text-decoration: underline;">The Book Club Play</span> by Zacarias. In this new work, Zacarias offers a master class in one act comedy structure: current world, inciting incident, complications and reversals, crisis-climax, (very quick) denouement, new world. The denouement felt slightly off-kilter because I’m thinking there was an early light cue call, which caught the actors before they were on their marks. They reacted professionally, but the show felt like it was suddenly over.</div>
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The cast worked tightly and in concert. Ziemba, who could pass for a decade younger than her and her character’s age, provides smooth professionalism and support in the least showy role. She has a great bit with a chain saw and a contentious oak tree that looked incredibly realistic. Gabriel Ruiz displays an elegance and intelligence that are attractive until they shade subtly into condescension. The most intriguing roles are those of the gardeners: the younger Hispanic woman and the older Caucasian man. Sabina Zuniga Varela plays a very pregnant force of pragmatic Nature with a brightness that foreshadows a hopeful ending. </div>
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However, it’s John Lescault whose portrait of an aging, unknowingly entitled yet clear-eyed husband that is most indelible. Lescault moves with an exactness that borders on fastidiousness before exploding. His background in opera lends itself to the vocal notes he hits for laughs. These were debuts at The Playhouse. Here’s hoping they’ll return in the future.</div>
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Blake Robison directs seamlessly and stages one terrific scene where both couples are simultaneously strategizing like middlebrow, suburban Macbeths and use the same gestures. Joseph P. Tilford’s set and Mary Louise Geiger’s lighting are gorgeous. It’s a breath-taking moment walking into the Robert Marx auditorium.</div>
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<span style="font-size: xx-small;">*Photos from Playhouse in the Park Website</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12px;">Native Gardens runs through Sunday, February 21, 2016.</span></div>
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<a href="http://www.cincyplay.com/"><span style="color: #990000;">cincyplay.com</span></a></div>
Dexterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02595287829693675510noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2868746177693691434.post-29093320337468658462016-02-01T18:56:00.000-05:002016-02-01T18:56:41.152-05:00Does TV get much better than WAR AND PEACE?<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The Cast of <u>War and Peace</u></td></tr>
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We decided to tape <span style="text-decoration: underline;">War and Peace</span> because it was going to be long and we weren’t sure we’d like it. We started watching the first episode and thought we’d give it ten minutes or so. After half an hour, we decided to keep watching and finished the first hour, then watched the second hour the following evening. It plays simultaneously on The History Channel and, surprisingly, Lifetime and A&E. I thought A&E had given up on quality fictional programming. Produced by The Weinstein Company, it’s playing here a couple of weeks after being on the BBC. </div>
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The format is two hours each Monday at 9 p.m., though Lifetime shows the previous week’s episode right beforehand. Covering an over 1,200-page novel in eight hours with commercials requires some concision (the BBC’s 1972 version was fifteen hours), but it captures the sweep of Tolstoy’s epic of the Russian aristocracy during the Napoleonic Wars and details of the family relationships that defined the culture of that era. Tolstoy presented an entire world through his characters without a trace of sentimentality or condescension. </div>
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Besides the thrilling battle scenes that cleverly suggested even more soldiers than they showed and the elegant, serpentine camera movement during the key ball scenes, there have also been suggestive dream sequences, a wild incestuous relationship between two of the most selfish characters in popular culture right now, a quickly glimpsed yet graphic childbirth scene, and richly delineated scenes of rural life. Filmed in Lithuania, it strongly resembles St. Petersburg and Moscow and George Steel’s cinematography utilizes as much natural light as possible. </div>
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The acting leads really bring it especially Paul Dano as Pierre, looking for a way to use his intellect and help his serfs; James Norton as Andrei, looking for a way to explore the depths of love after a near-death experience and a tragic first marriage; and Jack Lowden as Nikolai, always trying to reconcile his impetuousness with a stumbling strength. Are they the Scarecrow, Tin Man, and Cowardly Lion of 19th century Russian literature? It’s good to see Greta Scacchi </div>
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after a long dry spell since Countess Rostova displays a sharpness that tempers her initial kindness, though as Neil said, “Gillian Anderson seems to be giving that Eleanor Parker performance” (Cate Blanchett seems to be resuscitating that acting style in <span style="text-decoration: underline;">Carol</span>. What’s with actresses lately moving into middle age and trading emotional grit for technical polish?)</div>
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For those viewers that aren’t able to recap from the beginning, here’s hoping that <span style="text-decoration: underline;">War and Peace</span> will be repeated in the near future.</div>
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Dexterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02595287829693675510noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2868746177693691434.post-34832377319798752242016-01-28T06:00:00.000-05:002016-01-28T06:00:07.066-05:00It Follows (veeerrrrrrrrry sloooooooooowly)<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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David Robert Mitchell’s <span style="text-decoration: underline;">It Follows</span> was released to very positive reviews earlier in 2015. It sounded like an update of a 1980s teen slasher flick with arty overtones. Neil’s not a fan of horror (cheap ass or art house) so I hoped it would still be on Movies On Demand for when my Mother visited. Fortunately, it was still available so we watched it on a drizzly afternoon.</div>
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If you have sex with someone, then someone you may or may not know, who’s generally only half-dressed, but is still showing too much skin, will follow and kill you unless you can pass this situation on to someone else by having sex. It’s a great set-up, but it took almost half an hour to get to that being explained. Instead, we dragged around with Jay, her sister, and her friends. After she was ‘infected,’ we dragged around some more with her just waiting with dreadful anticipation – the primary emotional response to a horror movie – for someone/something to get her. </div>
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The acting was pretty good. Maika Monroe, who played Jay, looks and has a manner reminiscent of Chloë Sevigny, but without the sullenness. The details of the situation didn’t add up. Though only the infected person could see the force slowly pursuing her, it could still break windows and climb on things, but it couldn’t pass through doors without busting them down first.</div>
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The music was great at setting mood, but then the story didn’t really pay off. I liked the Detroit setting because we’d just visited there. Mike Gioulakis’ cinematography had a depth of color, especially in its emerald greens and blues, and clarity of line that was elegant. It reminded me a little of the color in Antonioni’s <span style="text-decoration: underline;">Blow-Up</span> (1967); this felt a little like what a teen slasher flick would have been like if he’d directed one. And it would have had the same funereal pace.</div>
Dexterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02595287829693675510noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2868746177693691434.post-76183273079395360522016-01-26T02:30:00.000-05:002016-01-26T02:30:01.781-05:00The Secret Lives of Somerset Maugham by Selina Hastings<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Somerset Maugham (1874 – 1965) was one of the most popular and well-paid writers in the world from the 1920s through the 1940s. He experienced an unhappy childhood, became a doctor, and wrote on the side until it could pay him more than medicine. This happened quite quickly and by thirty, he was already a novelist to watch whose plays were being produced in London and New York. The real money at the turn of the 20th century was in playwriting and especially in adapting one’s novels to the stage.</div>
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From there, he went on to success after success, though he was never taken as seriously by critics and by the guardians of the canon as ‘the mandarins,’ which was his term for Joyce, Woolf, etc. His personal life was fascinating and it’s that aspect which is the engine for Hastings’ work. Not only was he gay at a time when it was illegal in England and the U.S., which was part of the reason he resided in the south of France for much of his life, but he worked for the British intelligence service during both world wars. He was probably one of the most well traveled authors of any era and it was those experiences that played into his work.</div>
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Maugham’s highly disciplined writing method depended upon him working four hours each morning on fiction culled from stories told to him by various friends, acquaintances, and strangers during his travels. He was incredibly prolific, writing hundreds of stories (he felt this was his métier), and dozens of novels and plays over a sixty-five year period. He had something acerbic to say about many things, including drunks, which makes sense since his most significant partner was an alcoholic. However, he was also very supportive of younger writers. He started an award – still given annually – for future generations of authors to travel and thereby enrich their work. </div>
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Selina Hastings’ research was extensive and Maugham lived a very, very long time. I felt I was dragging along month by month with him. It doesn’t help that although the binding on this Canadian edition is smooth and durable, the font seemed archaic and the point size miniscule. Yeah, I know I sound middle-aged with that comment. My biggest compliment to Hastings is that her 2009 biography has encouraged me to check out some of Maugham’s writing. Both <span style="text-decoration: underline;">The Casaurina Tree: Six Stories</span> (1926) and <span style="text-decoration: underline;">Cakes and Ale</span> (1930) sound enticing, especially after I disliked the script of <span style="text-decoration: underline;">The Constant Wife</span> (1926) in The Shaw Festival’s smart 2005 production.</div>
Dexterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02595287829693675510noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2868746177693691434.post-12899911751351902682016-01-23T15:45:00.002-05:002016-01-23T15:45:49.869-05:00When Will We Get Mad About The Big Short?<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Peter Finch’s Howard Beale proclaimed in the prophetic <span style="text-decoration: underline;">Network</span> (1976), “I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take it anymore.” <span style="text-decoration: underline;">The Big Short</span>, which was adapted from Michael Lewis’s 2010 book, should make audiences furious – at least the 99% of the population that was screwed over by the top 1% and their investment bankers. The media’s obsession with celebrities and sports overrides the two major stories of the past decade: our wars with Iraq and Afghanistan and the rising tide of international terrorism; and the continuing financial crisis in this country which exists because of greed, ignorance, and an over-preening sense of entitlement. </div>
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Director Adam McKay co-wrote the script with Charles Randolph and, though he usually makes comedies, the issues of how working and middle class families have been cheated by the financial industry’s greed, a continued lack of federal oversight, and the minimal punishment of those who ruined millions of lives worldwide were first addressed in his <span style="text-decoration: underline;">The Other Guys</span> (2010). <span style="text-decoration: underline;">The Big Short</span>, however, is anything but a comedy. It’s fueled by outrage and it never backs off. McKay and Randolph have laid out the complex elements and history that created the CDO (collateralized debt obligation) bubble in a way that makes it understandable. Tellingly, they don’t underline that the federal government led by Presidents from both parties were trying to give opportunities for more people to own their homes.</div>
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The movie’s tone feels like it’s possessed by attention deficit disorder, which reflects the situation where many took their eye off the ball of new investment products and the bizarre ways in which they made then lost money, such as derivatives, and didn’t give it much of a thought thereby initiating the financial crisis. McKay explains the products through self-serving narration by the most cynical character and celebrities and some experts breaking the fourth wall to instruct the viewer quickly. It’s clever and funny, but it feels like a leftover idea from one of his Will Ferrell vehicles, though those are much sharper and intelligent than their enormous box office receipts might lead a non-viewer to assume. That, along with Barry Ackroyd’s surprisingly tacky cinematography – there’s no visual point of view in the Vegas sequence; it looks like the Chamber of Commerce sprang for a second-rate photographer – gives it the sense of a prestigious cable movie as Neil said presenting a serious subject, but also trying to be adventurously satirical, while ending up like a series of smirking sketches (1992’s <span style="text-decoration: underline;">Barbarians at the Gate</span> and 2008’s <span style="text-decoration: underline;">Recount</span> immediately come to mind). </div>
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It has a <span style="text-decoration: underline;">Magnificent Men in Their Flying Machines</span> (1965) structure with a load of excellent actors in various groupings all after the same thing. Instead of a race to the finish, it’s hold on to the hedge fund investors until the housing market collapses. Some reviewers have said that spectators will root for the main performers until it understands that the worldwide economy collapses. How naïve do these reviewers think audiences are? I felt like everyone got it at the screening we attended and were stunned when they realized from the beginning how this catastrophe – and potential future ones – occurred. By cutting the real-life Meredith Whitney, who was in the book, the movie feels like a bunch of over-grown white frat boys and former academics jostling for money and validation. There’s tons of shouting, cursing, and worrying, but none of these characters does anything that seems remotely useful or necessary to society. However, I bet Ayn Rand would have loved them and she’s probably the only </div>
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novelist most of them read. I was relieved whenever co-producer Brad Pitt showed up because he was the only character that saw how toxic the culture was and realized he could only change it by leaving; he also didn’t yell or preen the way the others do. Christian Bale’s performance is interesting because the character is on the autism scale, but it’s nothing I haven’t seen Bale do before. Overall, the subject is fascinating, but the race made me sick, and the results were infuriating because they made me feel powerless.</div>
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Dexterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02595287829693675510noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2868746177693691434.post-36011151120771020392016-01-19T05:30:00.000-05:002016-01-19T05:30:06.702-05:00Two Great Singers: Adele and Darlene Love<div style="font-family: Helvetica;">
<b>Yin and Yang – </b></div>
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<b>One’s an unlikely superstar, </b></div>
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Doesn’t everyone love Adele? Would she have taken off in the U.S. if not for an appearance on <span style="text-decoration: underline;">Saturday Night Live</span> in late 2008 and a profile on <span style="text-decoration: underline;">CBS News Sunday Morning</span> in 2009? That combination is one of the best arbiters of the next big thing and it’s aimed squarely at the middlebrow that will take a chance on something new. <span style="text-decoration: underline;">19</span> quietly built a major audience and <span style="text-decoration: underline;">21</span> (2011) became a phenomenon. Not only did she possess an instantly identifiable contralto voice with the phrasing of a mature jazz singer, she also wrote her own </div>
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songs. After people realized she could be simultaneously bawdy and shy, she became a superstar. If only Sam Smith had a sense of humor, the hype about him would make a little more sense. </div>
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Adele’s pre-eminence was evidenced in her Holiday special from Radio City Music Hall this past December, which backed up <span style="text-decoration: underline;">25</span>, the biggest selling album of the year and the fastest selling since electronic tracking began in 1991. That special lived up to its name; she held an audience in her palm by remaining almost completely still. It was also the perfect length – one hour – for presenting her strengths. It’s obvious from that show and from her liner notes that Adele loves her fans. <span style="text-decoration: underline;">25</span> provides just what her many fans want: mid-tempo ballads about break-ups, getting over break-ups, hoping for another guy that are delivered by a big voice with scrupulous production, whether it’s in a symphonic pop setting or in a grittier R&B one. She’s sort of our contemporary Dusty Springfield. It’s a shame that the famously insecure and generous Springfield couldn’t have had a major popular success like one of Adele’s. </div>
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When I first saw the video “Hello,” I thought it was amazing there were still the traditional scarlet phone boxes in England. If there aren’t, then perhaps Adele is so big a star they found her one. She sounded great, though the song is a little mopey. Even though <span style="text-decoration: underline;">SNL</span> did a funny “Thanks, Adele” skit, I had to agree with the woman working at the BMV who said, when the song came on the radio, “this is the song you hear as you’re jumping off a bridge,” then immediately apologized because she hadn’t meant to say it aloud. </div>
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Perusing the album’s song titles made me wonder if Adele needs to talk with someone because things don’t sound good for her (“I Miss You,” “When We Were Young,” “Water Under The Bridge,” “Can’t Let Go,” “Why Do You Love Me”). The gorgeous “Million Years Ago,” reminded me of Charles Aznavour’s “Yesterday When I Was Young,” in terms of its theme and lyrics and the time signature. She sings it with ferocious regret, however, which is nothing like Aznavour, but does recall Shirley Bassey’s cover. Okay, I realize for Americans Aznavour and Bassey are – at best – footnotes, but they’re enormous in Britain. In some ways, Bassey is to the British what Aretha is to Americans as a representative cultural icon, though their repertoire and styles of singing have little in common. I’m certain either Adele or her intriguing mother are acquainted with Bassey’s work, though she doesn’t list her as an influence.</div>
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Adele will continue with a great career, there’s no doubt about it. That voice is still maturing and she has developed an even richer tone since recuperating from surgery. Her songwriting has also grown over the past eight years. However, I wish she’d try different types of songs in terms of tempo and lightness; there’s never a throwaway track on her albums, which means there’s never a moment for a listener to catch a breath. Fourteen tracks on the Target version of <span style="text-decoration: underline;">25</span> is generous, but three could have been cut. There were a number of producers and it amazes me that they were able to maintain such a consistent tone. Did they have to subsume their individual artistic personalities to the juggernaut that is That Voice? Perhaps, but the album would have been stronger if someone had said, “No, let’s keep this for the next album or let’s not use it.” </div>
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The most exhilarating album I heard this year was <span style="text-decoration: underline;">Introducing Darlene Love</span>, which covers a range of genres in American pop since the late ‘50s by one of the great voices of the last sixty years in an electrifying collaboration with producer Steven Van Zandt (yes, the guitarist of the E Street Band and Silvio Dante from <span style="text-decoration: underline;">The Sopranos</span>). To anyone that </div>
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loved the girl groups produced by Phil Spector in the early ‘60s or Letterman’s Christmas shows from 1986 on, Love needs no introduction. But radio, streaming, iTunes, and media publicists aren’t too interested in a 74 year old with a clear mezzo chest voice, which is a shameful indictment of American popular culture. “Still Too Soon To Know,” a duet with The Righteous Brothers’ Bill Medley should be a new standard if those running the music business had any memory or sense of excellence. </div>
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Love’s career has been about resilience and an optimistic attitude. She could have settled many scores (especially with Spector), but has refrained from doing so and has always taken the higher road. Most tellingly, she first thanks her backup singers in the liner notes. On disc and on screen, she emanates warmth and genuine humanity. There’s a smoky tone to Love’s singing that’s reminiscent of Etta James, but without the baroque phrasing that James employed in her later career. Rather than calling her a soul singer, I’d say she’s of the Spirit – her roots in the church as a minister’s daughter played into the call and response that Spector was the first white guy to turn into top 40 pop in the late ‘50s in New York while Berry Gordy was doing the same thing at the same time in Detroit. </div>
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Van Zandt’s three decade long friendship with Love has resulted in a work that moves from gospel tinged pop to an evocation of Spector’s Wall of Sound, R&B, ‘80s rock, contemporary rock, contemporary covers of some Brill era songs (where most famously Otis Blackwell, Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller, Jerry Goffin and Carole King, Jeff Barry and Ellie Greenwich, and Barry Mann and Cynthia Weill, composed) and closes with traditional Gospel. I’m not certain how Van Zandt did it, but he’s somehow reproduced the Wall of Sound, which involved recording all the musicians and singers on mono because recording technology did not involve multiple tracks until the mid-60s. However, the clarity on that Mount Everest of Brill Building songs “River Deep, Mountain High” indicates that he must have employed multiple tracks; I’m just not certain how many. </div>
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The list of great songwriters on this collection beside some of the Brill geniuses includes Springsteen, Joan Jett & Desmond Child, Elvis Costello, Jimmy Webb, and Van Zandt himself. Love does justice to all of them especially the generation that came of age after Glam Rock. She has the power and emotional range to actually find what Costello writes, but cannot quite sing himself and on Springsteen’s songs she sounds like the older sister who taught that scrawny white boy teenager from the Jersey shore what he needed to know about women. </div>
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I felt the natural ending point for the album was “Last Time,” a passionate and elegiac maybe farewell to a friend or lover or even life itself. However, as Neil said, “they’ll pull this full circle.” They do and it’s by emphasizing the importance to Gospel both to Love and, more broadly, to American music. I realize that the electronic chatterers are obsessed with the semi-talented, the pre-pubescent, the badly behaved, and some performers that combine all these qualities. Therefore, whatever else happens with Introducing Darlene Love, I’m grateful that it was released at all. And I hope that this review influences someone to try out something new that’s simply GREAT.</div>
Dexterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02595287829693675510noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2868746177693691434.post-84762618477817038152016-01-17T22:17:00.000-05:002016-01-17T22:17:56.118-05:00David Bowie – Au Revoir to Whoever You Were<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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As most anyone who cares about rock music knows by now, David Bowie died on January 10. It was a head scratching moment because there were no public reports that he was ill. However, Bowie’s career longevity was based on surprise and this was yet another and one that cannot be topped. He instinctively understood that popular music in concordance with the exploding media venues of the 1960s meant that physical image was as important as the song. He took Concept to its metaphysical end by turning his performing persona into a concept depending on what his next album required. He displayed discretion and maturity by rarely revealing much about his own personality or background – that was usually done by those around him looking to shine in his reflected glory.</div>
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Bowie was labeled as a chameleon so many times that it stuck even though I could always tell when he was singing. He had a voice that always sounded like it was on the edge of strain. His vocal tone was flat, though his gift for melody and joy in trying different production settings for his songs made up for it. Unlike Dylan whose voice declined over time, but who tried to make up for it with phrasing that veers from the obscure to the bizarre or Neil Diamond who successfully smothered his intriguing lyrics with a third generation commercial saloon veneer that verges on glop, Bowie kept his singing very real even with – or maybe despite – the wildness of his physical appearance. It was this incongruity that lent him power and longevity.</div>
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As a child in England, I thought he was weird, but secretly delighted that he was so public. I lumped him in my ten-year-old consciousness with Elton John, but I knew about half a dozen of Elton’s songs as compared with only “The Man Who Sold The World” and “Ziggy Stardust” by Bowie. My uncle who’d recently been a DJ sent me <span style="text-decoration: underline;">Lodger</span> as well as Pure Prairie League’s latest as a birthday gift in 1979. PPR was okay, but the new Bowie was an adventure in itself. I didn’t know quite what to make of it. Only when I started college did I find others who felt connected to Bowie, but were already looking on to The Talking Heads, The Replacements, and R.E.M. </div>
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By the mid-‘80s, Bowie was enormous and everyone liked him. I think this was most evident in his “Dancing in the Streets” cover with Mick Jagger. He surprised again by backing off and re-thinking what else he wanted to do with his music and himself. I sort of lost touch with his music since my attention was taken by the American Alternative rock groups of the ‘90s and various other performers of the past fifteen years. However, I’m thankful that he was fearless in visually presenting whatever he might have been feeling or thinking about. It wasn’t until I heard he died that I realized how much he meant to me.</div>
Dexterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02595287829693675510noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2868746177693691434.post-86955179404296791512016-01-15T21:50:00.000-05:002016-01-15T21:50:13.525-05:00Youth: Surprisingly Wondrous<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Since <span style="text-decoration: underline;">Youth</span> is written and directed by Paolo Sorrentino, I expected it to be visually gorgeous and it is; since it stars Michael Caine, Harvey Keitel, Rachel Weisz, Paul Dano, and Jane Fonda, I assumed it would be well acted and it is; what I didn’t bargain for was how funny it is. Taking place at an exclusive spa in Switzerland and presenting both those that work there and the wealthy, influential patrons visiting, it gives every character her or his due. </div>
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Taking Fellini’s concentration on the ‘interesting face’ to the next level, Sorrentino shows all types of partly or completely nude bodies. It’s never done in a prurient way, which already tips the viewer off to the fact that this is not an American director. The spa setting feels like a tip of a new generation to the master’s fedora in <span style="text-decoration: underline;">8 ½</span> (1963). Luca Bigazzi’s cinematography is exquisite, but never for the sake of mere beauty; he regards Fonda’s wig and the young masseuse’s videogame dancing with a deadpan wit even as they’re lit perfectly. David Lang’s music provides the required sense of significance since the main character is a famous composer. The final scenes when that character, played by Michael Caine, conducts coloratura Sumi Jo are simply magical (and, guess what kids – some of them in the midst of mid-life crises – no special effects)! As with a number of other contemporary directors, the collaboration between Sorrentino, Bigazzi, and Lang creates a symbiosis that enriches each individual project.</div>
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Caine and Keitel, as a movie director working on a script with a group of young up-and-coming writers, make a great comic duo as friends, who’ve known each other for decades and who also happen to be in-laws. The composer has retired, but can hear music everywhere; like it or not, he cannot escape composing. The director is blocked, but willing to consider every possibility. The relationship is the linchpin for the movie’s themes and the plot. There are a couple of very significant lines: Caine’s “we have a good relationship; we only tell each other the good things” and Keitel’s “all we have are emotions.” Caine deliberately slows his movements to seem older than his actual age, while Keitel is both physically frisky and as off beat sexy as he was in <span style="text-decoration: underline;">The Piano</span> (1993).</div>
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Weisz delivers a blistering monologue about her growing up with aplomb, torn between her parents and simultaneously loyal to and betrayed by her husband and father. It’s great to see her spirited since the last time we viewed her was as the depressing wife in <span style="text-decoration: underline;">The Deep Blue Sea</span> (2011). Paul Dano performs as a young actor researching a role he might play and when we see the test make-up, it’s both shocking because of its accuracy, but also hilarious because of the other spa guests’ reactions. Fonda’s make-up is </div>
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also funny and chilling; she nails her scene with Keitel in which she’s imperious, self-serving, and ruthlessly honest.</div>
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It’s one of those movies where at the end, when the theatre remained in darkness, as Lang’s music continued, I was so glad. Well, until I heard the aged suburban couple behind me. He: It was good, but I preferred <span style="text-decoration: underline;">Spotlight</span>. She: This was arty, but that was more real. I hope they don't choke on an apple and an orange.</div>
Dexterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02595287829693675510noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2868746177693691434.post-10699814627029220542016-01-09T22:52:00.002-05:002016-01-09T22:52:52.677-05:00Trumbo: How Fragile was the First Amendment?<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="text-decoration: underline;">Trumbo</span> received pretty good reviews, but little business. Currently playing in the shoebox screen at The Esquire, it may not even be here when this review gets uploaded. It’s a solid biographical drama about leading Hollywood golden age screenwriter Dalton Trumbo. Written by John McNamara and directed by Jay Roach in a realistic, straightforward style, it cogently explores how the Hollywood Blacklist of the ‘40s and ‘50s was the highest profile manifestation of HUAC (the House Un-American Activities Committee). </div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The Hollywood 10 Protest</td></tr>
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It was fueled by fear of the Russian Soviets, the potential for communist infiltration of American institutions, and the self-interest of a number of ambitious people to keep or increase their power at the expense of others’ careers and lives. Hollywood moguls were intimidated by their fear of declining box office receipts and their desperation to keep their humble backgrounds discreet. I felt a wide streak of anti-Semitism on the part of the U.S. Congressmen and those Americans including John Wayne and Hedda Hopper who defended American values by denying some Americans their right to free speech and the opportunity to work. This was an era where bad publicity could kill literally a performer and her/his career. Nowadays, most performers including politicians seem to have been crossbred with cockroaches: the only bad publicity is no publicity. </div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The Real Trumbos vs. <u>Trumbo's</u> Trumbos</td></tr>
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Although the subject raises my ire, Dalton Trumbo himself maintained an almost Zen-like equanimity in the face of brutal chicanery and cowardice. He received incredible support from his family, but could be tyrannical in running them as hard as the moguls ran their studio personnel. The movie answers a question I’ve had for years about what people do to survive when they’ve been labeled as political dissidents and aren’t allowed to pursue their livelihoods. Trumbo got around it in an extremely creative way by using other writers as fronts for A-list work and writing hack screenplays for the Poverty Row exploitation producers the King brothers. The Kings displayed real guts in keeping blacklisted writers working. It was tougher on actors, who couldn’t hide. Many gave up when they couldn’t find work in the New York theatre. </div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Bryan Cranston</td></tr>
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Bryan Cranston gives a powerful land technically accomplished performance as Trumbo. However, when actual footage of Trumbo is shown during the end credits, it provides a contrast that subtly diminishes Cranston’s work. Trumbo comes across as feisty and tough, whereas Cranston embodies a patrician, avuncular man. I can see why the actual Trumbo was such a threat, but with Cranston it’s a little mystifying because he has such good manners. Diane Lane </div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Mirren as Hedda Hopper</td></tr>
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and Helen Mirren do their usual exemplary work as, respectively, Trumbo’s quiet wife, who finally comes into her own defending their children and Hedda Hopper, who really was vicious, though the final image of her face cracks through the evil. John Goodman and Stephen Root are like a middle-aged Katzenjammer Kids as the Kings and Louis C.K. provides heart as a composite of a number of communist screenwriters. I wish they hadn’t had to depart from the real details when there was so much drama in that era and this subject. Elle Fanning as Trumbo’s loyal but searching older daughter nails her two big scenes; her performance foretells wonders.</div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Elle Fanning</td></tr>
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Dexterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02595287829693675510noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2868746177693691434.post-51222925922063546132016-01-04T05:30:00.000-05:002016-01-04T05:30:16.095-05:00Female Friendship: Stage Door, The World of Henry Orient, Swing Shift, La Cérémonie<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Tiffany Vazquez Hosting Turner Classic Movies</td></tr>
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Turner Classic Movies (yes, they show more excellent movies than any other channel) recently asked super fan Tiffany Vazquez to guest program works centering on female friendship. If TCM gets really smart, Vazquez will remain in a long-term capacity with the network. She’s young, smart, and offers some intriguing insights into the specific movies. We checked out some of the selections:</div>
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<span style="text-decoration: underline;">Stage Door</span> (1937), one of those wise-cracking, heartfelt comedy-dramas that Hollywood produced like sliced bread during the zenith of the studio era – in this case, RKO – gave an opportunity for an extraordinary ensemble of young actresses to strut their stuff. Not revived as much as <span style="text-decoration: underline;">The Women</span> (1939), it’s far more positive about the support and genuine camaraderie that female friendship entails. Competing in the alienating world of the Broadway theatre, the women share joy, hardships, personal hopes and dreams, and are there for each other in the best and toughest of times.</div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The Women of <u>Stage Door</u></td></tr>
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Although RKO isn’t lauded now to the degree shown to other major studios, executives could assemble the following cast: Katharine Hepburn, Ginger Rogers, Andrea Leeds, Ann Miller, Eve Arden, Lucille Ball, Constance Collier, Gail Patrick, Adolphe Menjou, Jack Carson, and many others. Leeds married and retired soon after its release to breed racehorses, but she’s lovely as the young actress, who’s experienced success, but is already being overlooked for the next model. If this doesn’t presage the current TV singing shows and the eagerness to find the next thirteen year old with a thirty year </div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Ann Miller and Ginger Rogers</td></tr>
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old’s voice, then I don’t know what does. Ann Miller, incidentally, was fourteen during filming, but she looks at least five years older and more than holds her own in a nifty tap number with Rogers, set in a swanky nightclub where Patrick sneers at them while trying to capture producer Menjou’s long-term romantic attention.</div>
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There’s nothing dated about the movie, except for how fast, funny, and sarcastic the characters are. Oh yes, and they seem like grown-ups dealing with unemployment, sexual exploitation, aging, balancing work and love lives, depression, and suicide. They get all of this across in ninety minutes without cursing or showing much skin, though everything is suggested. If only Judd Apatow and Tina Fey could edit their genius to move at such a pace.</div>
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<span style="text-decoration: underline;">The World of Henry Orient</span> (1964), directed by George Roy Hill (<span style="text-decoration: underline;">Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid</span>, <span style="text-decoration: underline;">The Sting</span>), felt a little like a live action Disney movie from that period to Neil. </div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Merrie Spaeth and Tippy Walker</td></tr>
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That’s probably because it’s most focused on the two fourteen year old private school girls Val and Gil, played by Tippy Walker and Merrie Spaeth, and because New York City feels like a big playground, rather than the dangerous and alienated metropolis it had become – this was the same year as the murder of Kitty Genovese. Hill was known as a ‘buddy’ director and that already shone forth in the uninhibited friendship of the two girls, who play make believe games and display a naturalness that seems unscripted. Fortunately, this friendship doesn’t turn sinister as the similar one in <span style="text-decoration: underline;">Heavenly Creatures</span> (1994) between the girls played by Kate Winslet and Melanie Lynskey. Walker and Spaeth are the leads and they carry the production with their high spirits and honesty.</div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Spying on Peter Sellers (Henry Orient)</td></tr>
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Where <span style="text-decoration: underline;">Henry Orient</span> went a little wrong initially on its release was in making a big deal of Peter Sellers playing Orient. He’s a second-rate concert pianist trying to hide his Brooklyn background with what would later be termed a Eurotrash accent. Sellers is very funny playing a two-faced jerk; where he’s not as successful is in tying his character’s paranoia about the affair he’s having with a young, wealthy married woman, played winningly by Paula Prentiss. He believes the girls are stalking him. At first, they’re not, but coincidence turns into a new game and they look at him as a new fad. Sellers’ performance is not big enough or maybe the story of the girls is more compelling. </div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Angela Lansbury</td></tr>
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Angela Lansbury, however, in a small role about halfway into the story, may be a revelation for those who only know her from <span style="text-decoration: underline;">Murder, She Wrote</span> (1984 – 1996), her cozy amateur sleuth detective series on which she employed either has-beens from Hollywood’s Golden Age that older viewers may have thought were already dead and intriguing newcomers who got a solid TV start. In 1963, she was sick of the harpy roles she’d played incredibly well from her teens and was disappointed that her great performance in <span style="text-decoration: underline;">The Manchurian Candidate</span> (1962) was nominated for but didn’t win the Oscar. Yeah, I know Patty Duke was convincing as Helen Keller in <span style="text-decoration: underline;">The Miracle Worker</span>, but I’ve seen others also play the role as well. However, Meryl Streep didn’t do as well in the <span style="text-decoration: underline;">Manchurian</span> remake (2004). It’s because Lansbury could play yakky and daffy before turning it around to show Mrs. Iselin’s evil genius, while in the vulnerable spot of having to answer to the Soviet Politburo. Lansbury’s frustration comes across as the ice queen mother, who’s emotionally withholding, but quick to pursue a meaningless fling out of boredom and spite. </div>
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Within two years, Lansbury became a major star while in <span style="text-decoration: underline;">Mame</span> on Broadway. <i>Side note: </i> <span style="text-decoration: underline;">The Wiz! Live</span> on NBC a couple of weeks ago is the first of that annual series to work because they hired a cast that knew exactly how to perform. We think <span style="text-decoration: underline;">Mame</span> should be revived live and we nominate Anna Faris and Alison Janney as Mame and Vera Charles (Mayim Bialik would be a good Agnes Gooch too). I don’t know if they can sing, but they can act, which is the most important element of performing in musicals, believe it or not. Anyway, <span style="text-decoration: underline;">Mame</span> features female friendships in a complex manner. </div>
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<span style="text-decoration: underline;">Swing Shift</span> (1984), directed by Jonathan Demme, but produced by and starring Goldie Hawn, came out a couple of years after Connie Field’s Oscar-winning documentary <span style="text-decoration: underline;">The Life and Times of Rosie the Riveter</span> (1980). When you see the non-fiction, you can tell what Demme was going after and when you remember <span style="text-decoration: underline;">Private Benjamin</span> (1980) and <span style="text-decoration: underline;">The Sugarland Express</span> (1974), you can see what he hoped for and almost got from her. Hawn has a sharp-eyed, cutting edge that can be a tonic for her commercial daffiness. However, she wanted the movie to be a cute comedy set during World War II when women built the machinery that basically saved democracy. </div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Goldie Hawn and Kurt Russell</td></tr>
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Hawn does a funny bit with a tablecloth in one scene, which was probably where she wanted things to go tonally. She looks great and could pass for late twenties, though she was ten years older. The problem is that both she and Ed Harris as her husband, who goes off to war, look and seem more mature than the high school sweethearts that haven’t been married very long. In trying to seem young in the early scenes, their acting ends up one note and shallow. When things become more complicated in a friendship with a tough neighbor trying to make it as a singer, played with conviction and heart by Christine Lahti, Hawn is up for the challenge. She also has real chemistry with Kurt Russell as her supervisor and also trying to make it as a musician; Russell looks like he could be the right age.</div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Christine Lahti</td></tr>
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The relationship between Lahti’s character and Fred Ward as a music impresario, who uses her, has more levels than the other romances. The other problem is that most viewers will hope that Hawn and Russell’s characters will end up together because they bring out so much in each other. The ending is more about bringing together Hawn and Lahti’s characters instead. Because the movie doesn’t work, it’s sort of fascinating. Lahti projects depth, but there are scenes where she looks like she’s in the mid-80s, rather than the ‘40s so no element works consistently.</div>
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Claude Chabrol adapted Ruth Rendell’s <span style="text-decoration: underline;">A Judgement in Stone</span> (1977) with Caroline Eliacheff for his <span style="text-decoration: underline;">La Cérémonie</span> (1995). Sandrine Bonnaire and Isabelle Huppert, both contemporary French cinema legends, give deeply unsettling performances, respectively, as a newly hired maid for a wealthy family and a small town’s bubbly and surly postmistress. Huppert, especially, can do things with her eyes and mouth that work against the rest of her body language. I’ve seen her in three or four films and she never moves, looks, or repeats her performances. Only the tone of her voice – more patrician and elegant than expected – remains a common element.</div>
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The major difference between the book and the movie is that Rendell tells what will happen in the first sentence and the suspense builds because the reader keeps putting the clues together towards what will be a tragic and shocking conclusion. The key element is illiteracy. Chabrol doesn’t do that. He drops hints in the plot and Bonnaire masterfully shows that her character has no imagination and, more importantly, very little empathy. Since Chabrol directs, the viewer probably expects that this will be a thriller of some kind and there seems to be an element of class struggle. </div>
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What Chabrol does instead and it’s chilling is to show the banality of evil and the curt, casual nature of murderous violence. I wish he had used a flash-forward of the final image, which involves a tape recording that inadvertently picks up the killings, at the very beginning of the movie. I think it would have intensified the viewer’s identification with the characters and the nature of the class conflict.</div>
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Anyway, cheers to TCM and Tammy Vazquez for going off the main line to check out some lesser-known or overlooked works that aren’t perfect, but deserve attention.</div>
Dexterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02595287829693675510noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2868746177693691434.post-64397609860602589542016-01-02T22:57:00.000-05:002016-01-02T22:57:33.821-05:00Carol: The Dead Cinema<div style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px;">
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I loved director Todd Haynes’ <span style="text-decoration: underline;">Far From Heaven</span> (2002) and <span style="text-decoration: underline;">I’m Not There</span> (2007), Cate Blanchett is one of the supreme actresses of world cinema, I’ve enjoyed many of Patricia Highsmith’s novels, and Cincinnati-Northern Kentucky is an unheralded, but pretty wonderful place to live; and despite all of that, <span style="text-decoration: underline;">Carol</span> is a beautiful cinematic corpse. It reminded me of Antonioni’s <span style="text-decoration: underline;">L’Eclisse</span> (1962), which as a series of stills or short scenes without dialogue was gorgeous, but had no thematic meaning for me because it didn’t seem to be linked to a plot. Writers had lauded it for over a quarter century so I thought I was just missing something. Some have already handed Haynes a backhanded compliment by writing that <span style="text-decoration: underline;">Carol</span> has the heart his earlier work lacked; I couldn’t disagree more.</div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Rooney Mara</td></tr>
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For some reason, Rooney Mara is a big deal right now. She resembles Audrey Hepburn in the early Greenwich Village scenes of <span style="text-decoration: underline;">Funny Face</span> (1957), but she has none of that incandescent star’s expressiveness. In Highsmith’s <span style="text-decoration: underline;">The Price of Salt</span> (1952), upon which this is based, the main character Therese is in her early twenties and trying to figure out her <br />
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identity. She does so through a romantic relationship with Carol, a wealthy suburban housewife and mother. Mara comes across as tentative; by the time she may have decided which emotion(s) to project, the movie has cut to the next<br />
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scene. Blanchett works in a style that seems to merge her own technique with something out of ‘50s MGM, almost as if she’s resurrecting Eleanor Parker with a mellifluous voice, a glamorous, professional demeanor, and discretion about honest feelings. While an intriguing choice, it doesn’t provide any connection with Mara, which is fatal. If the lovers don’t spark, then the love story doesn’t work and that’s what happens here.</div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Cate Blanchett</td></tr>
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Blanchett’s scene with Sarah Paulson as Carol’s long-time friend when their hands meet as they walk downstairs made me wish they’d ended up together. Kyle Chandler as Carol’s husband Harge also displays a passion that briefly breaks the movie’s placid, elegant demeanor. He looks a little like John Hodiak, but he’s more powerful and expressive. Jake Lacy, charming with Jenny Slate in last year’s <span style="text-decoration: underline;">Obvious Child</span>, has a wide-eyed innocence as Richard, Therese’s boyfriend who cannot emotionally grasp the situation. Local pros Amy Warner and Michael Haney nail their scene as Harge’s conventional, wealthier parents. Neil recognized Deb Girdler’s voice as the motel clerk in one significant scene.<br />
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Edward Lachman’s cinematography displays the beauty of Cincinnati as well as the automobiles, clothes, and interiors of the post-World War II era, but at times its embarrassment of riches goes against the storytelling. There’s an extraordinary reflection shot in a motel office’s window that shows an important piece of information, but I found my attention arrested by the shot and how it was done, rather than what was happening. There are a number of instances where the camera lingers over various objects to a degree that is fetishistic. Haynes seems more obsessed and aroused by the signifiers of that era, rather than the characters –especially those of Carol and Therese – in the plot.</div>
Dexterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02595287829693675510noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2868746177693691434.post-66342678690993563682016-01-01T00:23:00.000-05:002016-01-01T00:23:15.246-05:00Jennifer Lawrence embodies JOY<div style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px;">
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<span style="text-decoration: underline;">Joy</span>, directed by David O. Russell and co-written with Annie Mumolo, tells of Joy Mangano and her invention of the Miracle Mop. It may sound arcane, but Russell continues in his neo-Preston Sturges mode that began with the uproarious <span style="text-decoration: underline;">Flirting with Disaster</span> (1996), arguably the funniest movie of the mid-‘90s, and was reignited in his works starring Jennifer Lawrence and Bradley Cooper (<span style="text-decoration: underline;">The Silver Linings Playbook</span> of 2011 and <span style="text-decoration: underline;">American Hustle</span> in 2013). Russell has presented the American family as culturally and ethnically variegated and as a unit that both supports and hinders its individual members. Some might term them as dysfunctional, but that over-used term no longer possesses meaning or validity 80% of the time it’s used. Instead, it reflects the experiences of many Americans I know. Russell’s ace in the hole is Jennifer Lawrence; the movie wouldn’t be possible without her because she’s become his muse.</div>
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Though the plot marries a Cinderella tale with an entrepreneurial success docudrama, the story covers four decades in the life of a noted American and her family. It takes its time. In fact, Kaylee and Neil thought it was slow. The TV promos make it look faster and funnier than the actual deeper and darker movie that it is. It feels like a Holiday movie because of a couple of narrative elements that Russell employs: narration, long flashbacks, and visual imagery of small-town America in winter.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Lawrence and Cooper Reunite</td></tr>
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Russell tries some directorial touches that tonally work against the screwball comedy audiences may have expected. The Cinderella motif goes broad with a fairy godmother (Joy’s grandmother), two ugly stepsisters (her mother and older half-sister), her trickster figure of a father, and an evil witch (her dad’s girlfriend). There’s also Prince Charming, split into the two characters of her ex-husband and a QVC executive, who becomes a business colleague, and a faithful girlhood friend. Prince Charming does not instigate a romantic relationship and that could decrease the movie’s box office potential. However, in the strictest sense, this is a Romance because it is about a quest that results in finding one’s self through a search for a specific object. The stand-in for the Holy Grail, however, is about the successful promotion, production, and patent copyright of a kitchen mop – and yes, it’s in that order.</div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The Family Matriarchs</td></tr>
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At one point, Joy’s grandmother wishes that Joy would be a matriarch and she ends up presented that way in the final couple of minutes where she looks and behaves like Deborah Kerr in <span style="text-decoration: underline;">A Woman of Substance</span> (1985). However, a fake soap opera starring Laura Wright, Susan Lucci, and Donna Mills keeps showing up on Joy’s mother’s TV and in Joy’s dreams with the décor, hair, and costuming changing over the years. A scene between Joy and her best friend at a kitchen table, drinking coffee and discussing personal issues, looks like something out of <span style="text-decoration: underline;">Secret Storm</span> or <span style="text-decoration: underline;">Ryan’s Hope</span> in the ‘70s. Wright, Lucci, and Mills play tongue in cheek, parodying the genre, but Lawrence and Dascha Polanco perform naturalistically and the disparity doesn’t work. Is Joy’s life a soap opera? Isn’t anyone’s over time? In the final scene, Joy seems superior with a colleague, who first promoted her mop and the interaction leaves a sour note. Lawrence is styled like a soap opera doyenne, rather than a matriarch, and comes across as stiff and as if she’s playing at being middle-aged. Wasn’t Joy fighting against a traditional, classist approach to business in her go for broke manner? Has a feminist entrepreneur become a quasi-patriarchal administrator-tycoon? Mr. Russell, please don’t turn this generation’s Barbara Stanwyck into Dina Merrill.</div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Joy Inventing the Miracle Mop</td></tr>
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Otherwise, Lawrence carries the movie by moving believably from a teenager to thirty-four, nailing the accent, and by providing a mixture of optimism, moxie, and sheer grit that enlivens every scene. Some of the best sequences include Joy moving her Dad back into the basement, selling her mop for the first time on TV, and a wonderful gunfight without guns in a historic boutique hotel in Texas. I wish the movie had ended right after that scene. We got that she found her mojo and wouldn’t look back – we didn’t need to have it underlined with a coda that felt like a montage out of a second-rate Broadway musical. </div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The Ensemble Cast</td></tr>
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The rest of the acting ensemble is crackerjack from pros like Robert DeNiro, Diane Ladd – she matches up perfectly as Lawrence’s Grandmother, Virginia Madsen as the frightened, agoraphobic mother obsessed with the soaps, and Isabella Rossellini as a misguided, weaker than she appears venture capitalist. Edgar Ramirez (2011’s <span style="text-decoration: underline;">Carlos</span>) does charm as Joy’s ex-husband, who is actually looking out for her. The bilingual aspects of the story indirectly hit a bull’s eye at the xenophobia in the current presidential election warm-ups. Russell, thankfully, doesn’t include subtitles so any non-Spanish speaking audience members need to pick up the context visually. Bradley Cooper plays an inverse character arc to Lawrence’s. He’s on top when she first meets him, but he gets across an air of nervous frustration through his eyes and hair texture in his final scene with her. Elisabeth Röhm, another Russell stalwart, is a hoot as Joy’s lively, malevolent half-sister. I wish I knew the name of the little girl playing Joy’s daughter because she doesn’t pull any cutesy or precocious move. The bond between her and Lawrence is immediate and strong. The climax is when Joyo melts down and seems as if she’ll give up and her daughter’s face registers that more betrayal more acutely than the others.<br />
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The production design captures the look of the mid ‘70s to the early ‘90s without having to resort to titles. Like the rest of the movie, it’s achieved in an understated manner. There wasn’t one car out of period or interior setting that didn’t reflect the times and this was underscored by the hit tunes that actually speak of what’s happening in the scenes</div>
Dexterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02595287829693675510noreply@blogger.com0