Hollywood can learn a thing or two from the French, its film industry and joie de vivre. Mathieu Amalric, attending this year’s Rendez-vous with French Cinema, the Film Society of Lincoln Center’s annual popular series in collaboration with Unifrance, presented his film Barbara, homage to a chanteuse, not so famous anywhere but France. Best known to American film lovers for his acting in such films as Julian Schnabel’s Diving Bell and the Butterfly, and for Steven Spielberg’s Munich, and most recently Arnaud Desplechin’s Ismael’s Ghosts, featured in this year’s New York Film Festival, here Amalric directs. On hand with the film’s star, Jeanne Balibar, incidentally the mother of his two sons, Amalric apologized for Barbara’s lack of plot to an opening night audience that included John Waters and James Ivory, just back from L.A. after winning his Best Adapted Screenplay Oscar for Call Me by Your Name.
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- Documentaries: Jocelyn Wildenstein The Lion Queen/ Tovah: How Jewish is It?
- Hamptons Journal: John Waters at Guild Hall: “Gay is not Enough” / “Cagney” at Bay Street/ “Signs” at the Bridgehampton Museum Tractor Barn
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Maybe all theater is behavioral study, characters in a petri dish. Edward Albee’s At Home at the Zoo is a pair of two-handers yoked together thematically with Peter (Robert Sean Leonard) a foil for two outsized personae; in the first, Homelife, his wife Ann (Katie Finneran) baits him in one way, and in the second, The Zoo Story, Jerry (Paul Sparks), a seemingly aimless sort, provokes Peter in the park. As staged at the Signature Theater, under Lila Neugebauer’s fine direction, the production now so popular it was extended twice: Be ware of those who want to talk. -
Yes, G. E. Smith previewed Guild Hall’s first annual guitar masters festival, to take place in July, but that was not the only music at this year’s winter celebration of Guild Hall. Honored for her career in the visual arts, Audrey Flack, brought her History of Art band to The Rainbow Room to perform her tribute to Jackson Pollock on banjo and spoons. Her feminist take on the iconic painter dovetails with the current Me Too movement, and as she is quick to tell you, “he came on but nothing happened. He was way too drunk.” -
“Music, champagne, dancing—wonderful things that make you forget, until you find something to remember,” Ute Lemper laughs dramatically perched on a barstool close to the Café Carlyle’s grand piano, skin showing through her skirt’s slit. She chides the audience, “Stop looking at my legs. They are not that good. I just know what to do with them.” This was opening night of Ute Lemper's show at the Café Carlyle, “Rendezvous with Marlene,” this week, and many of her fans attended to hear the leggy redhead recount the history that forms this tribute performance to the legendary Marlene. -
Feminists come in all shapes and sizes. JC Lee’s Relevance, an MCC production at the Lucille Lortel Theater, presents a clash between a seasoned author and old school academic, Theresa (the formidable Jayne Houdyshell), and a freshly minted writer Mesmaji (Pascale Armand), given to texts, tweets, and social media. Age and looks aside, these two spar on a panel moderated by the ambitious and opportunist Kelly (Molly Camp), Theresa must have been something in her day. In a hotel room with her agent (Richard Masur) we learn of a long ago affair, but now she’s hit a time when all attention is on the new improved version: smart, sexy and African-American. But shouldn’t feminists be on the same side, fighting against economic inequity and gender harassment? In Relevance, the old and the new do not even speak the same language. -
Dedicated to celebrating courageous and audacious women leaders, the Athena Film Festival captures the Zeitgeist. Under the auspices of Barnard College, Athena honored J. J. Abrams, presenting him an Athena Leading Man award, among its stellar women in film honorees this year, Amma Asante, Athena Breakthrough awardee Bridget Everett, and Barbara Kopple its Laura Ziskin Lifetime Achievement Award. In accepting, awardees are asked to speak about a woman influence, excluding mother. Introduced by Lena Dunham, Abrams spoke about his wife, Katie McGrath. You’ve gotta love a man who honors his wife. She and Abrams run his Bad Robot production company. She is also one of the forces in the Time’s Up movement; many at Athena wore the pin, the much talked about accessory at the Golden Globes. And then, defying the rules, he did thank his mother. What a mensch! -
Now that’s a Broadway musical! One breathtaking moment in Hello, Dolly is Dolly, professional meddler, glamorous in red descending the stairs. As in the grand tradition of Dolly Levi before her, Bernadette Peters takes her turn in the superb revival of Hello, Dolly at the Schubert Theater, replacing the much-adored Bette Midler. At a recent performance, we did not miss Bette, as good as she was. Feisty, petite and taking Dolly as a practical businesswoman, Peters fits the role like a fine kid glove, dancing, and oh that voice. She’s a Broadway star without the diva posture and best of all, she has chemistry galore with Victor Garber as the curmudgeonly Horace Vandergelder. These Broadway musical veterans look like they are having a wonderful time in old New York, and watching them, so are we. -
In honor of Yoko Ono’s birthday this weekend, Laurie Anderson led guests at Guild Hall in a face-reddening scream. The occasion was a talk between Anderson, who now looks remarkably like Christopher Walken with spiky hair and otherworldly pallor, and curator Christina Strassfield, who is putting together a show of Anderson’s work at Guild Hall set for this summer. Among the many stories that kept Anderson riffing for over an hour, was the story of Ono’s primal scream following the election of Donald Trump. The audience complied and screamed with relish. -
A Valentine’s Day tradition at the Cafe Carlyle, John Lloyd Young’s dreamy tenor conjures romance better than a box of chocolates. Some men just don’t get old: Dark glasses cannot hide John Lloyd Young’s dimple-chinned prom date good looks, but then again, his music does not age either. As he says about “Sherry” from Bob Crewe and Bob Gaudio, before crooning “Sherrrrreee Baby,” some songs just follow you around. Ditto for his signature hits: “Can’t Take My Eyes Off You” from the same songwriting team, and “Jerry Fuller’s “Show and Tell.” Exuding confidence, this “Jersey Boy” leaves the stage allowing his superior band: Tommy Faragher on piano, along with a cool Bashiri Johnson on percussion, and a nice touch, Gokce Erem on violin, to show their chops. Not only a sideman, Tommy Faragher is also a writing partner. The ensemble performed their “Slow Dawn Calling,” and “Almost There.” -
The McKittrick Hotel is well known for unusual theatrical events—cue the long-running immersive Sleep No More. Now fresh from Edinburgh’s International Arts Festival comes Flight, a much-awarded incomparable narrative art installation. Plucked from the headlines of refugees fleeing war, Flight tells the story of two brothers on a journey escaping Afghanistan, adapted by playwright Oliver Emanuel from journalist Caroline Brothers’ novel Hinterland. The brothers—Kabir (Nalini Chetty’s voice) and Aryan (Farshid Rokey)—composites of the author’s interviews with many young people on such a nightmare odyssey, appear as figures in diaramas as they rotate on a carousel; the viewer accompanies them across Europe as they encounter a not so nice “smiling man,” bird police, a freezer truck filled with hanging carcasses. The tale goes light as they invoke the name Bruce Willis for inspiration, and, when some rich American-Iranian tourists buy them food and new sneakers in Paris. But this story, told in Kabir’s 8-year old voice—well conceived with fine lighting and music—while enchanting, is no fairy tale.
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AAt the Majestic Theater last week, Renee Zellweger called her Blondie and Tommy Tune sang “The Way You Look Tonight” with pictures of him dancing the “East Texas Push” with her, but that was not the showstopper at Liz Smith’s memorial: The distinction went to a video of Liz crooning “I’m an Old Cowhand, from the Rio Grande” in duet with Ann Richards, each one in full cowgirl regalia. Joni Evans told the stellar crowd—a who’s who of actors and show biz types– about getting Liz Smith to write her memoir, Natural Blonde, taking a seven-figure contract to actually get the gossip columnist to sit down. One speaker after another, from Barry Diller to Lesley Stahl to Holland Taylor and Bruce Willis, attested to the key ingredient of Liz Smith’s success: she was nice. -
At an opening at the Morgan Library & Museum celebrating exhibitions of Peter Hujar’s photographs and Tennessee Williams’ memorabilia, a gentleman in a maroon jacket marveled that the Morgan, known for collections of old master drawings and manuscripts would now show photography, especially of the type created by Hujar. While Williams’ scripts and Playbills form the kind of closeted history right up the Morgan’s proverbial alley, well, Hujar’s work is something else. A decade older than Robert Mapplethorpe and Nan Goldin, Hujar too documented the downtown demimonde, its denizen in drag. Hujar’s portraits—black & white– haunt, testament to the era before AIDS, a vibrant artistic world in the autumn of life. -
When the category of Best Picture swells to nine, you can be sure that your favorites will be covered. Throughout “the season,” prognosticators haggled –with one another and themselves– over the supremacy of The Shape of Water over Three Billboards outside Ebbing, Missouri, Lady Bird over Get Out, Dunkirk over The Darkest Hour. An excellent solution is to award every one of them, and with the lineup announced today, every one of them gets the prize for showing up. But, it is safe to say, as one Academy member has reminded me year after year, this award is like no other. And so, I would like to think there is still mystery afoot for the winner, even though I am pretty sure of which are the real contenders on this awesome list, and which one will get the prize. -
Amidst the racks of multi-colored Missonis on Saks 4th floor, Shiva Rose led a meditation, a prelude to a panel featuring Naomi Watts, cover girl on the winter issue of Purist, the wellness themed brainchild of Cristina Cuomo. Just sitting with eyes closed, to a guided breathing contrasted with the commerce, bright lights and bustle of the store. And the event, to promote Onda, Watts’ all-natural beauty brand with her Australian friend Sarah Bryden-Brown and New Yorker Larissa Thompson, is also an attempt for Saks to offer something more in the shopping experience, in the age of online expedience. -
Okay, Michael Moore is not Jewish, but he’s a menschy guy who cannot abide injustice. Co-hosting—with Fran Leibowitz— a post-screening party for Netflix’s documentary, One of Us, this week at the Waverly Inn, the Oscar winning documentarian and recent Broadway star could not restrain his indignation at the plight of Etty, an Orthodox Jewish woman in her ‘30’s whose children were taken away from her when she left her abusive husband. One of three ostracized by the Hasidic community, featured in this award-winning non-fiction film by Rachel Grady and Heidi Ewing, Etty and her story especially seems to grab everyone by the throat. She is seen to be a loving mother. Clearly it is a crime against all human instinct and decency to take children away from such a mother. Leibowitz, who is Jewish, rightly pointed out that the current wave of extreme Judaism is not the Hasidism she knew growing up, but a more improvised, puzzling and arbitrary variant. -
Whenever I see Lee and Bob Woodruff, I know the event is going to be serious, and I’m going to laugh. At Variety’s inaugural Salute to Service luncheon this week at Cipriani on Broadway, the brainchild of Gerry Byrne, vice chair of Penske Media and a Vietnam War veteran, Bob Woodruff got up to introduce Caroline Hirsch of Caroline’s, the city’s premier comedy club. Their relationship goes back to when she saw a documentary about him, a correspondent who was severely injured in the Iraq War. She was looking for a way to help those returning from combat and they, with Lee Woodruff and Andrew Fox, began their annual Stand Up for Heroes event. Soon Bruce Springsteen, Jerry Seinfeld, Jon Stewart, and others, came to deliver the most outrageous monologues to benefit veterans and those who serve. What started at Town Hall, grew to the Beacon Theater, and now takes place at Madison Square Garden. It is a never-to-be-missed evening, with the most important attendees, our military and their families. -
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. -
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.
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