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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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. -
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. -
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.” -
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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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 -
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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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. -
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 13th Street and 5th 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? -
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: -
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! -
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. -
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. -
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. -
Samuel L. Jackson accepted a special award for The Hateful Eight composer Ennio Morricone at the New York Film Critics Circle 81st 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. -
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. -
Billed as “Back to Where it All Began,” David Amram’s program for last week’s engagement at The Theater for the New City, was a continuation of his 85th birthday celebration, a party that maybe began on his actual birthday in November, but knowing David, may never actually cease till his 86th. It was supposed to end at midnight, but was still going strong at 12:30 A.M. when folks of lesser constitution left the still packed room. That may be because the program was so content rich, with Amram’s greatest hits as a composer and performer for all these decades. A week later, the evening may still be in its infancy. -
Two of the most powerful performances in movies this year have perhaps the least dialogue: Leonardo DiCaprio in The Revenant and Benicio del in Sicario.For a two-and half hour movie, the dialogue in Alejandro Gonzales Inarritu’s The Revenant could probably fill a page. The story, about a survivor of a bear attack seeking revenge in the American frontier, is all action, much of it brutal. The bear attack pits man against nature: a mother bear goes after the man, mauling him badly, but the landscape itself cold and harsh too seems a malevolent force for the Indians, trappers, and cavalry in these wilds in 1820. Leonardo DiCaprio, bearded as Hugh Glass, is not his usual handsome self but a primal force seeking out John Fitzgerald (an excellent Tom Hardy), the man who took what was most precious to him, and left him for dead. The acting is all in Leo’s eyes.
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The Bolshoi Ballet, the very symbol of Russian culture around the world, gets a backstage look in the new documentary Bolshoi Babylon, to air on HBO on December 21. The film has made the rounds of festivals including DOC NYC in November, when I had a chance to talk to the filmmakers: Nick Read and Mark Franchetti, a journalist based in Moscow, a correspondent for The Sunday Times of London, said they had no interest in the Bolshoi before three years ago, when Sergei Filin, the Bolshoi’s artistic director, was attacked with acid outside his home. Three weeks later, a soloist, Pavel V. Dmitrichenko, was arrested for this horrific crime, ordered because of a casting decision: his girlfriend had been overlooked for the role of Odette-Odile in Swan Lake. The filmmakers came together to examine what this shocking incident said about the ballet, and Russia itself. -
The eight gunslingers in Quentin Tarantino’s The Hateful Eight really are hateful, so why do we like watching them so much, and so long, 3 and a half hours, give or take, including an overture and intermission. Not only can’t you take your eyes off them, you want to catch every word of Quentin Tarantino’s clever script. Utilizing the tropes of Westerns—he claims The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly was a big influence– Tarantino’s Western borders on horror, as the eight come together in a cabin in a snowstorm. Act I features a stagecoach: John Ruth (Kurt Russell), a bounty hunter, wants to bring his charge, Daisy Domergue (Jennifer Jason Leigh), to Red Rock for hanging, and for the reward. Another bounty hunter, Major Marquis Warren (Samuel L. Jackson), wants a ride. He wisely advises, better to bring her in dead. Driving past a Christ on the Cross, this company arrives at a storm hounded pit stop, and the rest of the bearded group: Bruce Dern, Tim Roth, Demian Bichir, Michael Madsen, and Walton Goggins. You might say, after watching these mesmerizing events, for these men crucifixion might be a blessing. -
In the era of television, Susan Lucci reigns supreme. In Joy, David O. Russell’s latest movie, the Mangano household, an alternate universe of domestic dysfunction, Joy’s mom Terry has taken to bed, and to watching a soap with Lucci in the lead. A gun is an option for solving the soap’s operatic greed. In Joy’s story, life follows daytime drama. Joy’s menagerie includes her mom Terry (Virginia Madsen), dad Rudy (Robert De Niro), half sister Peggy (Elisabeth Rohm), her ex (Edgar Ramirez and her kids. She must provide. If a gun is on the table she’s going to pick it up, but it’s just the business we’re in. Keep your enemies close.
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Steve Jobs, a biopic about the famed Apple founder starring Michael Fassbender, opened in early fall, and has been holding steady in the wake of the award season roll-out. Audiences will be taking another look at this excellent film now that Steve Jobs is getting some awards attention: Golden Globes, SAG, among them. -
A film set in Auschwitz, Son of Saul is the one to beat for the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar. As this import from Hungary makes its rounds through the festivals, achieving accolades and nominations galore, a question arises: is it that juries favor Holocaust films, or is Son of Saul a really good film? Speaking to the film’s ingenuity, another question arises: how do you make a film set in the horror of genocide, where every image –like the pile of human bones– is a cliché, and much of the nature of the place has been fetishized, or deemed better left to the imagination? What exactly do you see? -
Like the comedy teams of old, Laurel and Hardy, Abbott and Costello, Fey and Poehler offer irresistible side splitting guffaws in Sisters, their new movie that opened this week at the Ziegfeld with a party at MoMA. The art museum’s lobby was transformed into a lavish party space with a tropical theme, echoing the party central to Sister’s plot: James Brolin and Dianne Wiest play parents, still vibrant and sexy; their late launching 40-ish daughters stage one last adolescent Animal House-style fling in their just sold family house in Florida. Rachel Dratch, Maya Rudolph, Kate MacKinnan, and scene-stealing Bobby Moynihan pop up, providing SNL worthy laughs. The movie party gets raucous and raunchy, and the sisters grow up, sort of, in Paula Pell’s superbly riotous script that hones close to home. Pell’s parents came up from Florida for this premiere, attesting to truth in comedy. -
It was compelling 20 years ago and even more compelling now: The O.J. Simpson story has not left the public imagination. FX has made a 10-part series called American Crime Story: The People v. O.J. Simpson based on Jeffrey Toobin’s book, to air in February. The two parts screened this week brought back the story, adding more to the historic events that ushered in the eras of tabloid news, reality television, with its volatile themes of domestic violence and race in America. There is no doubt: this will be another kind of sensation: a television drama of a drama that unfolded on television.
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