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Rendez-Vous with French Cinema: Women Directors Flouish

March 14, 2016

Rendez-Vous with French Cinema, a popular film series at Lincoln Center, was particularly robust this year. Following upon the American Academy Awards season, Rendez-vous was especially refreshing with so many films directed by women. In general, the French film industry seems less mired in obsessions with political diversity, and P.C. poses. Men and women act in one another’s films with such fluidity, it is hard to label any one filmmaker as simply director, actor, or writer. How do you get a movie made? Well, the process starts with a good script. Julie Delpy’s Lolo, Alice Winocour’s Disorder, Emmanuelle Bercot’s Standing Tall, and Maiwenn’s My King were all scripted and directed by these talented women. Bercot starred in Maiwenn’s feature. And Alice Winocour co-wrote Deniz Gamze Erguven’s Mustang, one of this year’s Best Foreign Language Oscar contenders. Of the full-length fiction features, Mustang’s was the only woman director. During Rendez-vous, which ended last night, I had an opportunity to speak to several filmmakers about their work, and the challenges of making film in France. Great news: these films are all coming to a theater near you.

Julie Delpy’s comedy, Lolo opened this weekend to strong reviews. This actor/writer/director is well-known to American audiences, notably for Two Days in New York which starred Chris Rock as the straight man to utter eccentrics.

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Michael Shannon Stars in a Sci-Fi Thriller: Midnight Special

March 11, 2016

Cults, car chases, a kid with lazer beam eyes, a satellite from outer space! What more could you want in a movie? As director Jeff Nichols said over high tea at 21 this week, “I wanted to make a sci fi-chase movie.” As he did in his film Take Shelter, Nichols cast Michael Shannon as his alter ego, a man exploring new roles in his life as he marries and becomes a father. In Midnight Special, the typical family is complicated by the paranormal, and the bizarre codes of “the Ranch,” led by Sam Shepard who needs the boy and his powers. The only recourse is to flee.

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Helen Mirren in Eye in the Sky: Debating the Cost of War

March 10, 2016

What a coup! Publicist Peggy Siegal exulted in the day’s headlines: drones taking down 150 al-Shabab inductees in Africa. The occasion was a luncheon at la Grenouille to celebrate the movie Eye in the Sky. Directed by Gavin Hood and starring Helen Mirren, with Alan Rickman in his last performance for the screen, this nail-biting drama, a behind the scenes look at what it takes to fight terrorism could not be more relevant, and Siegal feigned taking credit for planting the story to support the film opening this week.Mirren plays Colonel Powell, who displays the remarkable cool and determination necessary in the decision making process. Do we proceed, and bomb three wanted terrorists and two men wearing suicide vests, when there is possible collateral damage in the person of a single little girl selling bread nearby, or do we risk the possibility of the martyrs killing dozens in a marketplace or other densely populated location just to save the girl? The movie teeters on this narrow edge. Alan Rickman delivers a key line: “Never tell a soldier that he does not know the cost of war.”

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Sarah Jessica Parker’s Ruse at the Guild Hall Gala

March 9, 2016

Sarah Jessica Parker is a terrific actress. That’s what artist Eric Fishl, in his role as Guild Hall’s President of the Arts and gala host, said on Tuesday night at the Rainbow Room where the Sex & the City star was being feted for a Lifetime Achievement Award in the Performing Arts. On the red carpet, she gave her insider East Hampton shopping tips to one reporter and told another about her new HBO series Divorce: “I play a married woman, sort of.” And then accepting her trophy, she deftly segued to delivering an awards presentation to Ruth Appelhof, Guild Hall’s executive director, now retiring after sixteen years. We should have realized the bait and switch: husband Matthew Broderick was nowhere in sight, in fact attending the opening night of Disaster! Then again, where was she last year when he was awarded? Doesn’t “lifetime achievement” mean anything?

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Lupita Nyong’o in Eclipsed: Girls Interrupted

March 7, 2016

A local Liberian warlord’s women in a bare hut in Eclipsed at the Golden Theater are called wife #1, #3, and #4, but as written by Danai Gurira, they could not be more individual if you knew them by their mother-given names. Unseen, when he comes by, “C.O.” beckons them. Each returns to the room, hollow eyed, and sponges off her private parts. #2 has taken arms: gun toting and tough, she bears rice and vitriol. They only way to keep the warring men off, is to fight. This all woman production, directed by Liesl Tommy, is feminist, empowering in the proverbial world gone mad. Finding humor and heart in the most atrocious circumstance, this transplant from the Public Theater is essential theater.

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Mavis! On HBO: I’ll Take You There

March 1, 2016

Aretha’s no Mavis! The declaration gets a laugh in Jessica Edwards’ documentary Mavis! on HBO. Last week’s premiere screening at the Alliance Francais, was the film party of the season: inspiring at 76, Mavis Staple is a dynamo. When Edwards heard her perform at the band shell in Brooklyn’s Prospect Park, she knew she had to make a film about her. Mavis Staples started making gospel 65 years ago with her family, The Staples Singers. She’s influenced Bonnie Raitt, Prince, Wilco’s Jeff Tweedy, and Bob Dylan, who, as a young folksinger when they used to tour together, asked her dad for her hand in marriage. “You’d better talk to Mavis,” he said.

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Rita Wilson at the Café Carlyle: Picturing Tom Hanks

February 26, 2016

“I’m in a roomful of people I know,” Rita Wilson began her intimate set at the Café Carlyle on Thursday. Though this was not opening night, the room took on an extra glow: on one side sat Michael J. Fox, on the other, Tom Brokaw, Carolina Herrera, Ken Auletta, Richard Cohen, and William Ivey Long who told me he dressed Wilson for her role as Roxy Hart in “Chicago.” Sprinkling her songs with anecdotes involving her husband, she’d say, “Picture Tom Hanks,” and you could see him trying to mollify a disgruntled guest at the hotel. Though she claimed he’s the opposite of every thing she thought she wanted in a man, you could see he’s the love of her life. Another refrain was the unforgettable title of her new album, “Rita Wilson.”

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Carol Composer Carter Burwell: An Interview

February 21, 2016

Todd Haynes’ film Carol, an evocative love story set in the 1950’s, adapted from an edgy Patricia Highsmith novel, The Price of Salt, is nominated for six Academy Awards including Best Original Score, composed by Carter Burwell. His music can be heard in several current movies including the Oscar nominated animated Anomalisa, and the Coen Brothers’ Hail, Caesar!. I caught up with the Carol composer by phone in early February, when he was in Hollywood for the pre-Oscar luncheon for those nominated, to talk about Oscars, his work on Carol, and the Motion Picture Academy.

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“Til it Happens to You:” Diane Warren’s Oscar-Nominated Collaboration with Lady Gaga

February 19, 2016

The Hunting Ground, a powerful documentary from filmmakers Kirby Dick and Amy Ziering, shines a light on the widespread phenomenon of rape on college campuses. The film’s music supervisor Bonnie Greenberg called Diane Warren to write the music. The prolific and popular songwriter with 7 Oscar nods immediately said yes. Now, with “Til it Happens to You,” that makes 8 nominations for Original Song. In a recent phone interview, I asked her about this song, and collaborating with Lady Gaga.

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“This Place” at the Brooklyn Museum: Outsiders Photograph Israel

February 18, 2016

In the fall of 2012, the French-born photographer Frederic Brenner took me to a swimming hole in the Bet Shean valley in Israel. Crowds sat on the edge of rocks waiting to jump in. Brenner exulted in the place, where the Romans, he told me, came in ancient times, a site I “dare not miss.” He had taken a hand-picked group of photographers there, as part of a briefing for a grand project he had devised. The photographers were then commissioned to take pictures of Israel. After exhibitions in Prague, Tel Aviv, and West Palm Beach, this project reaches its next great moment at the Brooklyn Museum in “This Place.”

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Simple Song #3 in Youth: An Interview with Composer David Lang

February 15, 2016

In Paolo Sorrentino’s movie Youth, Michael Caine plays a retired composer on holiday at a spa in the Swiss Alps. He hears a young student practicing the composition for which he is best known. The precocious boy says his professor finds it easy to learn, and continues, “It’s more than that. It is beautiful.” Caine’s character replies, “I composed it when I loved.” The music, “Simple Song #3,” is now nominated for an Oscar for Best Original Song. Last week the Pulitzer Prize winning composer David Lang, known for his work in classical music, stepped out of the class in music composition he was teaching at Yale to talk to me about making music for movies.

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Linda Lavin in Our Mother’s Brief Affair

February 12, 2016

At first inRichard Greenberg’s Our Mother’s Brief Affair, as described by her son Seth while she is on her deathbed, Linda Lavin’s Anna appears to be cut from the familiar cloth of Great Neck moms, ambitious for their children and somewhat lost in suburban torpor. But Anna has a secret, actually two, that she needs to impart to her children. Abby (Kate Arrington) flies in from California, and the siblings learn about their mother, the narcissistic woman with great gams, they’ve grown to distrust—she was nostalgic for a time that never happened, says Seth (Greg Keller). Well, according to Anna, a great adventure enlivened her boring past.

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John Lloyd Young at the Café Carlyle: A Jersey Boy Goes Rogue

February 11, 2016

Trading in the tux for leathers, John Lloyd Young used aviator glasses to hide his prom date good looks, but this makeover did not deter his devoted fans on opening night of his set, “Yours Truly,” at the Café Carlyle. Yes, there was no shortage of Jersey Boys hits with “Sherry” and “Can’t Take My Eyes Off You,” but first he opened with a warbling “Stardust,” then to “My Prayer,” before he talked tough to his music director and keyboard man Tommy Faragher, “Let’s open a vein,” he said, leading to “Hurts So Bad” and channeling Roy Orbison for “Say No More.”

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Jane Fonda at Caroline’s Comedy Club: Championing the Equal Rights Amendment

February 8, 2016

Photo: Paula Schwartz

Sunday night’s Superbowl may have been the focus for a majority of Americans, but a rival event took place at Caroline’s Comedy Club, with Jane Fonda as M. C., introduced by Gloria Steinem. Calling herself a quintessential late bloomer to feminism, Jane Fonda recalled that she really did not understand what it was till she was 64, when she saw Eve Enssler in The Vagina Monologues. “I cried and laughed. How can you be a feminist, leaving the essential part of yourself behind as I did with my father, husbands, and lovers? My feminism dropped from my head into my body.” And so began a night of comedy featuring Rosie O’Donnell, Gina Brillon, Michelle Buteau, Judah Friedlander, Wyatt Cenac, Sarah Jones, and Sasheer Zamata, who riffed with Fonda in several personae, including a character named Bella, named for Abzug.

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Christopher Plummer in Remember: The Uses of Dementia

February 5, 2016

In Atom Egoyan’s new feature, Remember, Christopher Plummer, more commonly seen as a German—think The Sound of Music—plays a Jew, a survivor of Auschwitz. In the assisted living facility where his wife Ruth has just died, a fellow survivor Max (Martin Landau) now asks him to live up to a promise, to avenge the concentration camp blockfuhrer who had murdered their families seventy years ago. So Remember becomes a rather unusual road movie, with Plummer’s aged Zev, a man afflicted with dementia, on a revenge mission. Not since Inglorious Basterds, to which this more somber movie should not be compared, have we had such a compelling fantasy plot seeking justice

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Mike Nichols: Beloved American Master

January 28, 2016

When PBS announced their American Masters documentary on Mike Nichols, I was relieved. Like so many admirers of his work –as a comedian with his partner Elaine May, as a director of theater (Death of a Salesman starring Philip Seymour Hoffman, to name one) and film (The Graduate, THE film of its era, to name one), I grieved when he died in November of 2014. Perhaps a film would bring closure. Deeply satisfying, the film that airs on January 29, directed by Elaine May and produced by Julian Schlossberg, features so many who have worked with him: Dustin Hoffman, Meryl Streep, Tom Hanks, Steven Spielberg, Matthew Broderick, Nathan Lane, but best of all, it has Mike Nichols.

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Erin Markey’s Main Squeeze: A Ride on the Irish Cream

January 22, 2016

Opening night for Erin Markey’s new musical, A Ride on the Irish Cream at the Abrons Arts Center was so packed, cushions had to accommodate viewers on the floor. Okay, an opening is usually friends and family, and judging by the crowd, Markey and her partner Becca Blackwell have an ample supply, but now this entertaining romp through Markey’s childhood has been extended, and that’s good news.

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David Bowie: In Memoriam

January 18, 2016

I was a huge Bowie fan back in day, which made it really strange that I did not recognize him when I met him backstage at The Bottom Line during a Steve Reich and his 18 Musicians concert. This light haired, well-groomed guy stood there in an argyle vest and pegged pants. Maybe I was clueless because he wasn’t wearing lipstick or glitter. The preppie guy and I talked about the lizard on top of the Lone Star Café at 13^th Street and 5^th Avenue very near home for me in the West Village. As we chatted, a room full of people leaned in. I could feel the heat of their bodies and curiosity. What were we talking about, rapt and oblivious to them?

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Maggie Smith in The Lady in the Van: An Interview with Alan Bennett, Nicholas Hytner, and Alex Jennings

January 15, 2016

With Downton Abbey back in its final season, Maggie Smith as the Dowager Countess of Grantham is back too, in all her vinegar wit and finery. She’s also back in the movie of Alan Bennett’s stage play, The Lady in the Van, by contrast, an eccentric living in modest accommodations, downsized to her vehicle. Penned by Alan Bennett after a true experience, The Lady in the Van is about a mysterious elderly woman on the lam, perhaps after leaving the scene of an accident. He allowed her to park her van in his driveway in North London for three months that extended to 15 years, in an entrance within view of his writing desk, and a place where visitors became privy to her powerful odors. Of course you cannot really smell her, nor would you want to, but comic and shabby, Maggie Smith gives off a whiff of the irresistible as the cantankerous Miss Shepherd. In November, 2015, Alan Bennett was in town, honored at the New York Public Library Lions Gala. He brought with him director Nicholas Hytner and actor Alex Jennings, who plays him. I met with them at The Four Seasons Hotel. Here is an excerpt from our interview:

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Oscar Nominations: Reflections on a Stellar Season

January 14, 2016

If you’ve been following the Oscar prognosticators, you know the big favorites have been Spotlight, The Big Short, The Revenant, and Carol. All but Carol were honored with nominations this morning. With such a good year, other awards groups, the Golden Globes, the Directors Guild, the New York Film Critics Circle, and more, groups that often give clues to what will happen at the all important Oscars, shed love on these films and other excellent work. Personal favorites: Bridge of Spies and Brooklyn. How pleasing to find some surprises—sort of—on the academy members’ lists!

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Leonardo DiCaprio at the Golden Globes: The Revenant’s Secret Weapon

January 11, 2016

Leonardo DiCaprio had a formidable foe in Alejandro G. Inarritu’s The Revenant, and I do not mean the bear, a CGI construct, that some rumor raped him. Throughout the entertaining Golden Globes Awards Ceremony last night, there were murmurings of his real opponent, played by Tom Hardy. Jonah Hill’s cuddly bear head provided comedy that landed flat. DiCaprio’s Hugh Glass was on a revenge mission that gave him super charged strength, and you could say that chasing Tom Hardy’s John Fitzgerald provided the same fuel for DiCaprio’s acting. Leo thanked Hardy who is a friend, but as all the actors in this movie in extreme outdoor conditions were bearded and encased in fur, it was hard to really see Tom Hardy, and many say, that’s just the way he likes it.

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Fiddler on the Roof on Broadway: A Blessing on Your Head, Mazel Tov!

January 9, 2016

Our first glimpse of Tevye at the Broadway Theater in the splendid revival of the much beloved 1964 musical, Fiddler on the Roof, he looks like a tourist in a red parka, much like post-Holocaust Jews scouring European towns for traces of ancestry, and life before–before pogroms and genocide drove them out. Soon this figure transforms, becoming the patriarch of a lively family in “Anatevka,” Russia, a milkman in tzitzis with five daughters, a pious wife, and an ailing horse. As the musical acts go through familiar paces, from “Tradition,” to “Matchmaker, Matchmaker,” to “If I Were a Rich Man,” it is hard to contain one’s own delight in celebration of a fictive bygone world of Edenic bliss even when life is tough. But this is not just a trip down memory lane, with fresh choreography from Hofesh Shechter inspired by Jerome Robbins’ original, under Bartlett Sher’s expert direction, and starring Danny Burstein, the latest in the long line of Tevyes to hit Broadway.

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Kristin Stewart at the New York Film Critics Circle: Moving toward Oscars, or Not

January 6, 2016

At Tao on Monday night, at the New York Film Critics Circle Awards, Julianne Moore said she has known Kristin Stewart since the Twilight actress was 12, which would explain their close connection in last year’s Still Alice. In an awkward acceptance speech, Stewart found the Best Supporting Actress honor unexpected, given the movie Clouds of Sils Maria came out a year ago, but acknowledged that her work with Olivier Assayas was important to her because he was one of those directors able to “pull it out of me,” even though she is a global star of popcorn movies. While no one would argue with the award-worthy quality of Stewart’s work in this film, the choice to honor her this year may not translate to an Oscar nomination, the elephant in the room this week as academy voters assess the contenders.

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How to Be a Hater: The Hateful Eight at the Monkey Bar

January 6, 2016

Samuel L. Jackson accepted a special award for The Hateful Eight composer Ennio Morricone at the New York Film Critics Circle 81^st Gala at Tao on Monday night. Morricone was commissioned to compose The Hateful Eight’s elegant overture. Morricone’s note to the critics group for this stellar evening was addressed to all, including “The Haters,” eliciting a chuckle from the ever cool Jackson. I had to wait till the next morning, for brunch at The Monkey Bar to ask Walton Goggins what exactly that meant. The would be sheriff of Red Rock in director Quentin Tarantino’s fictive world explained that the eight of The Hateful Eight are now so close, they text each other multiple times per day to find out where they are, what they are doing; in short, they’ve continued their close knit, claustrophobic connection beyond the movie’s snow-laden log cabin.

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Sylvester Stallone’s Burgess Meredith Moment in Creed

January 5, 2016

Call it anything, but do not call Creed Rocky VII. Explaining why he agreed to come out of Rocky retirement for Ryan Coogler’s movie in which the illegitimate son of Apollo Creed persuades Rocky to train him, Stallone said it was Ryan Coogler’s vision. The occasion was a celebratory dinner at Patsy’s, the legendary Italian restaurant in midtown, and producer Irwin Winkler and co-star Tessa Thompson were there to talk about this movie. What you can say is, this role for Stallone in Creed is paying back big time as the actor makes his way through the award season having garnered several nominations for Best Supporting Actor, including the Golden Globes this coming weekend.

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