Weighing in at a cool four hours, Amir Bar-Lev’s epic documentary Long Strange Trip records the artistic journey of an American band over decades of cultural change, but it also illuminates the personality of a kind of American hero only America could produce. The band itself, The Grateful Dead, were sloppy and spontaneous, or blissful and beatific, depending on which concert you attended. In any case, fans were not disappointed. But like Americans before him, helmsman Jerry Garcia was not prepared for the kind of adulatory fame his art would receive. The writer Jack Kerouac was a prototype of achieving huge fame and the destruction it wreaked. Known as the King of the Beats, Kerouac suffered his image. While the connection to the beat literary movement is made in the film, the poignant story of Garcia’s parallel journey to Kerouac’s speaks volumes about a culture and the heroes it creates and consumes.
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The evening was not unusual. Just a screening of a documentary, Icarus, for a roomful of leading documentarians: Academy Award winning ones like Alex Gibney and Barbara Kopple among many others, for purposes of Oscar nominations. The unusual part was having Lance Armstrong participate in the post-screening panel at 1 Hotel Brooklyn Bridge. The movie, Netflix’s powerful expose of doping among Olympian athletes, directed by Bryan Fogel and produced by Dan Cogan shines a light on Lance Armstrong’s scandalous use of drugs during his stellar award-laden cycling career. You would think he would shy away, ashamed. But the film’s main protagonist, a Russian scientist named Grigory Rodchenkov, now in hiding as the Russians have called for his execution, was the real focus of attention. A whistleblower, Rodchenkov created the testing for steroids, as well as a method to defy the testing for them. He was willing to talk to Bryan Fogel about state sponsored doping. -
No one had to complain about anyone’s misconduct, not sexual anyway, at last night’s New York Film Critics Circle Awards dinner at Tao in the meatpacking. Every honoree, including the great Molly Haskell who picked up the group’s Special Career Achievement Award for her lifetime of serious reviewing, actresses Saoirse Ronan and Tiffany Haddish, and the men, as in Willem Dafoe who was awarded Best Supporting Actor for his motel landlord role in The Florida Project or Timothee Chalamet who got his Best Actor for his star turn in Call Me By Your Name exuded the confidence of a job well done. At 22, Chalamet has three significant roles this season: aside from starring with Armie Hammer in CMBYN, he’s killed off early in Hostiles, and he thanked Greta Gerwig, winner for Best Picture last night, recounting a scene in a bar where someone noticed him, “Hey, isn’t that the douchebag from Lady Bird?” He loved the recognition. -
Do you believe in magic? The first thing magicienne Belinda Sinclair tells you at her Hell’s Kitchen salon where she conjures, misdirects, fans cards and sets fires in her highly entertaining magic show, is that she cheats. Believe her. Even as your eyeballs are a few feet away, she’s able to find your card in a well-thumbed stack, or affix yours to your lover’s to create a unified one. Providing the history of conjurers in this neighborhood now known for Broadway theater, on and off, she tells you about the women who came before her in an industry more showy for the men. And because you are most certainly in a library and period-adorned living room, her formally clad assistant serves tea and home-baked cookies during intermission. Prepare to be thoroughly enchanted. -
A dressmaker’s model can be erotic, or comic. Just look at the women who wear the extravagant frocks designed by Reynolds Woodcock as played to austere perfection by Daniel Day-Lewis in Paul Thomas Anderson’s film Phantom Thread. You have Barbara Rose, a wealthy rotund patron with the great Harriet Harris in the role, and you have Alma, a young Vicky Krieps, a waitress Woodcock brings into his life, who seems quite malleable until she learns how to take charge. House of Woodcock runs with efficiency, led by Cyril, Woodcock’s sister. In this role, the elegant Lesley Manville turns icy and knowing commanding seamstresses, fitters, and her brother, while understanding his whimsical needs. Set in London’s couture world of the 1950’s, Phantom Thread starts as a period drama, a love story for a character ruled by aesthetics. This tale—with its domestic detail– turns kinky and subversive without becoming perverse. Yeow!!!! -
The Lucille Lortel Theater has been sold out for weeks, ever since the MCC production of School Girls; or, The African Mean Girls Play arrived with its stellar cast of young women. Set in 1986 Ghana, Jocelyn Bioh’s play can be seen as an African variation of Tina Fey’s Mean Girls, with the action unfolding in a school cafeteria. A group of girls are abuzz, anticipating the arrival of a representative of a global beauty competition, clearly a way out of the provincial town. But just as Paulina (Maameyaa Boafo), the class bully with cocky self-absorption takes her candidacy for granted, Ericka (Nabiyah Be), a new girl arrives. The light skinned daughter of a local cocoa tycoon, Ericka grew up in the States. Light skinned, of course, equates with beauty, and when the rep, Eloise (Zainab Jah), arrives, Miss Ghana of 1966, as she repeats endlessly lest you forget this woman’s climb, she sees her own ticket to promotion in the new girl. -
For her new show at Joe’s Pub, the latest in her New Year’s tradition of guiding her fans into the future, Sandra Bernhard has turned “Sandyland” into “Sandemonium,” registering our current political times. As she told me in a recent phone conversation, her new Sandy show, from December 26 through 31, is a nod to craziness, and with the wisdom and sanity of someone who’s been here before, plus a touch of her signature sass and snark, her plan is to teach us how to escape despair and still have fun. “This too shall pass,” she consoles. “Trump’s not going to be president forever. We had Nixon. We had Attila the Hun, and humans lived through that. -
When Warren Beatty was honored by the Museum of the Moving Image last year, his wife Annette Bening, the star of Mike Mills’ Twentieth Century Women gave a speech. This year, with Annette Bening as tributee, Warren Beatty rose to the occasion, introducing the clip for Bening’s work in his Bugsy, which just happens to be the movie they were making when they fell in love. With a what-the-f–k attitude, Annette Bening wowed the gala crowd with a 23 minute speech, including the story of just how she managed to corral this longtime boulevardier known to consort with many ladies. “He tells it better,” she began, and launched into their dialogue: -
“Every time you make a documentary,” said Errol Morris accepting a lifetime achievement award at the 2nd Annual Critics’ Choice Documentary Awards ceremony in November, “you get to reinvent the form. When I sold my series, Wormwood to Netflix, I sold it as the Everything Bagel.” This week, at a celebration for Wormwood at the Campbell Apartments, tucked into Grand Central Station, Peter Sarsgaard, who plays Frank Olson in reenactments of the events of 1953, when a real life scientist mysteriously (maybe drunk, or having a bad LSD trip) “jumped” out of a window at the Statler Hilton Hotel, could not reveal all of the ingredients of this finely wrought hybrid documentary, Errol Morris at a new level of invention. -
Comedian Tina Fey and Don Katz founder and CEO of Audible, Inc. were honored by New York Stage and Film at their winter gala this week. Attending the dinner at Pier Sixty with the hope of scoring some tickets to Hamilton—yes, still—I was soon apprised that the bidding for them started at $4,000. I could dream on. This was a night for funny with Tina Fey feted, introduced by Andrea Martin, and with Dana Delany introducing Don Katz. Tina Fey’s posse included some funny women Carol Kane and Ellie Kemper. But first an incredible line up of actors including John Slattery and Jayne Houdyshell read vignettes to illustrate the magic of Audible. -
“Fairy tales are not for children,” said Guillermo del Toro, introducing his fabulous film The Shape of Water at a special screening this week. “They were created during times of war, pestilence, famine,” he went on, explaining the oft occurrence of violence, mutilation, and monsters. His masterpiece, Pan’s Labyrinth, a fable seen through the eyes of a child is now updated in this movie full of awe and unlikely romance featuring a creature from the sea as his new “innocent.” His savior is a mute cleaning woman in a Baltimore research facility, Elisa, a gorgeously realized role from Sally Hawkins. Early on during this award season, this performance, a tour de force of facial expressions and fanciful nods to movie musical genres, was high on the list for Best Actress. Now with the opening of the film, Sally Hawkins should be first up on that list. For many, The Shape of Water is the film of the year. -
It was lovely to see Saoirse Ronan win the Best Actress Gotham Award for her role as “Lady Bird”/ Christine in Greta Gerwig’s debut film as a director. Especially so, because her mother, who lives in Ireland, was present at Cipriani Wall Street, and Gerwig initially titled the film, “Mothers and Daughters.” I saw the film for a second time at a recent screening at the Crosby Hotel hosted by Candice Bergen and Chloe Malle, mother and daughter. While Gerwig will admit the film hews close to some biographical detail, for example, that it is set in Sacramento, California, and she did in fact attend Catholic school, she veers off in many ways from her own story. Women of her age will surely identify with Ronan’s Lady Bird, her wrongheaded choices in boys, friends, habits like smoking, just about everything. -
As film celebrations go, Monday’s IFP Gotham Awards was the quintessential New York night with many honored acknowledging their Big Apple core: tributee Dustin Hoffman recalled the days when he first arrived in the city, his recent mention in the news on the list for misconduct, blissfully omitted. With John Cameron Mitchell as M. C., the event at Cipriani Wall Street avoided the politics of the day—sexual harassment, white supremacy, the void in good leadership—focusing, mostly, on the art of cinema. But that does not mean the night lacked political moment as Dan Rather, exemplar of truth to power journalism, presented a humanitarian tribute award to Al Gore who gamely got up to remind everyone of the progress of global warming, and the necessity to face the challenge of our planet now. -
Alexandra Dean’s documentary, Bombshell: The Hedy Lamarr Story, emphasizes the actress’ contribution to a world outside the shallows of Hollywood. The stunning brunette Hedy Lamarr defied the illogical adage: if a woman is beautiful surely she can’t have brains too. Then again, few people of any gender have the kind of brains Lamarr had; she was an inventor of a code, a communication system involving randomly operating frequencies, devised to help in the war effort. Who dares to think like that? In the context of our current discourse about sexual harassment, in her time the objectification of women was simply show business as usual. But whip smart, Lamarr managed, escaping a boring marriage in Vienna, finding her way out of Nazi occupied Europe to America aboard a ship on which movie mogul Louis B. Mayer was also a passenger, and making sure she got his attention. Her beauty took her far. -
Just announced, the movie Call Me By Your Name garnered six Independent Spirit Award nominations, more than any other film. On the same day, Andre Aciman and Luca Guadagnino, just back from Italy, spoke about the film at the New York Public Library at 42nd Street.“I hate the word adaptation,” said Andre Aciman, about, eh, the adaptation of his 2007 novel Call Me By Your Name by James Ivory for the new movie of that title, directed by Luca Guadagnino. Aciman addressed a crowded auditorium of fans at the Library: “They cut this and add that,” he explained, so authors complain, “but I could see that film can do things that cannot be done in a book.”
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Ever since the movie Get Out opened last February, people have been talking. Is this edgy horror story a vision of blacks’ worst nightmares? Or, are whites more disturbed by the social satire? Comedian/ writer/ director Jordan Peele’s smart movie puts this discourse on the table. For anyone still in the dark, the plot goes like this: Daniel Kaluuya and Allison Williams star as a mixed race couple. William’s Rose, maybe named for Rosemary’s Baby, brings her boyfriend Chris (Kaluuya) to meet the parents, in a country house deep in the woods. Let’s just say, deer crossing the road are not the only casualty. Part Stepford Wives, part Night of the Living Dead, the scariest movie of the year features faces frozen in civility, and the sinister sound of a spoon tapping a teacup.
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The Oscar winning actress Gloria Grahame was hardly Hollywood royalty, a sulky blond bombshell playing bad girls and good. The movie Film Stars Don’t Die in Liverpool, directed by Paul McGuigan and based on Peter Turner’s memoir of his affair with the American actress, takes you from her saucy time meeting Turner, a Brit much younger than she, through her final days. The actress Annette Bening, Hollywood royalty for sure, is down to earth; despite critical praise for many glorious performances including last year’s Mike Mills movie, as the matriarch in Twentieth Century Women, she has not yet won an Academy Award. Bening’s Gloria Grahame as an older and wiser version of her character in The Grifters. Last year, her husband Warren Beatty was honored at the Museum of the Moving Image, and she will be feted this year at their gala in December. Is this sublime actress on the road to an Oscar nod at last? -
In The Band’s Visit, eight members of a police band from Alexandria, Egypt, uniformed in powder blue, peer out from the Ethel Barrymore theater stage looking for their airport bus connection. As in the 2007 movie on which this delightful musical is based, through miscommunications, humorous language blips, the band ends up in the wrong place, in a small town in the Israeli desert and must spend the night. Following the motif of strangers coming to a place and changing it—and themselves– forever, the play is a picture of diplomacy, with the band’s conductor Tewfiq (Tony Shalhoub) meeting Dina (Katrina Lenk), at the café where she works: “Welcome to Nowhere,” she sings, her ultimate perception of Arab men: Omar Shariff. Tewfiq could be a muted variation, once he takes off his hat. -
“Brooklyn is in the house,” laughs Spike Lee from the stage of the Paramount during his conversation with Maurice Wallace, a high point of last weekend’s Virginia Film Festival. The security at the historic theater is something akin to that in airports, producing long lines for avid film lovers. Spike Lee, in an astute bit of festival programming, was invited to show his documentary, I Can’t Breathe, an interview with Ramsey Orta who took the cellphone footage of Eric Garner dying at the hands of Staten Island police, screened in a double bill with his 4 Little Girls (1997). Before making a quick turnaround, flying back to Brooklyn for the premiere of his Netflix series, “She’s Gotta Have It,” based on his movie, Lee announced his next project teaming up with Get Out director Jordan Peele to make Black Clansman, starring John David Washington, Denzel’s son in the title role, and Adam Driver as the white man who portrays him in the clan. -
Guitarist John Pizzarelli and singer Jessica Molaskey are man and wife, and married in music. Headlining the Café Carlyle this week, their act is a sublime mix called “The Little Things You Do Together” after a Stephen Sondheim tune; they perform standards such as Jerome Kern and Dorothy Fields’ “A Fine Romance,” a Joni Mitchell favorite, “The Last Time I Saw Richard,” and Sondheim’s classic “Children Will Listen” and “Finishing the Hat.” Jessica sits back as John does “Baubles, Bangles, and Beads,” and then exclaims, “Now you know why we are together for 20 years. He had me at ‘baubles.’” Cute, yes, and their banter works as well onstage as it does on the radio, even when they plug their respective albums, such as her new “Portraits of Joni,” urging your purchase. (They have a kid in college.) Yes, they can sing! -
At the New York Public Library Lions Gala on Monday night, a Who’s Who of writers –and readers—gathered to celebrate five Tom Brokaw, Michael Chabon, Carla Hayden, Colson Whitehead, and Robert Wilson. The gorgeously refurbished readers’ room on the library’s third floor was transformed into a book-lined palace dining hall, for Norm Lewis performing Cole Porter’s “I’ve Got You Under My Skin,” followed by a red ribbon ceremony, “medalling” the literary “lions.” Unlike most events of this nature, few speeches got in the way of the fine dinner and din of lively conversation. -
“Every time you make a documentary,” said Errol Morris accepting a lifetime achievement award at the 2nd Annual Critics’ Choice Documentary Awards ceremony this week, “you get to reinvent the form. When I sold my series, Wormwood to Netflix, I sold it as the Everything Bagel.. -
A documentary by Jason Wise about Rose Marie, Wait For Your Laugh, is a trip down show biz memory lane. Reaching back to the early part of the 20th century, the anecdote-rich film reveals a remarkable career in vaudeville, radio and early television. At age 4, Rose Marie got her big break when the performer Evelyn Nesbit reached out into the audience at a club and lifted up the child who was singing with her. They did a duet, and the rest is history. -
When former vice president Al Gore was running for president, few thought he was the life of the party. That lack of pizzazz may have posed a problem for a presidential candidate, who, you may recall won the popular vote. Now comfortably removed from the White House scene, he’s way past that moment, raising awareness for environmental issues, particularly global warming. And last week, celebrating the DVD for An Inconvenient Sequel: Truth to Power at The Monkey Bar, he addressed the crowd, cracked jokes, and chatted with everyone. The party was his! -
In Marjorie Prime, in a not so far away future, humans will have primes, that is, hologram avatars of our deceased loved ones, enabling us to continue to work out the dicey parts of human relationships. This is the hopeful premise of Jordan Harrison’s award winning play Marjorie Prime, on which the movie of Marjorie Prime is based. Scripted by Michael Almeyreda who also directs Lois Smith, the original Marjorie Prime of the play, and an ensemble that includes Jon Hamm, Geena Davis and Tim Robbins, the movie hews close to the universal drama of family histories, how memory shapes and recasts the stories we tell about our intimate past.
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