The New York Film Festival must have a thing for danger on the high seas. Last year’s opening night featured the fantasy ocean crossing Life of Pi: a boy on a raft with a tiger. This year: it’s the real life adventure of the Maersk Alabama with Captain Richard Phillips at the helm, invaded by pirates off the coast of Somalia. Tom Hanks stars as Captain Phillips in this gripping tale, co-starring with a bunch of lean Somalian actors who hail from Minnesota. Hanks, as always, his excellent Everyman, albeit no nonsense leader, registers fear in just the movement of an eye. And those pirates: You will not see a more menacing looking cast in any movie this year.
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The name Alabama has such beautiful assonance, its flow of “a” makes its own Southern comfort! So the sound of “Sweet Home Alabama,” one song in a stellar soundtrack for the documentary, Muscle Shoals, is proverbial music to the ears, an anthem to the Southern rock that flourished in this idyllic spot.A mecca for recording artists from the Allman Brothers to Simon & Garfunkel, Dylan to The Rolling Stones, Muscle Shoals, Alabama occupies a singular space in music history. Yes, there’s Memphis and Nashville, but Muscle Shoals had its own magical vibe. As Mick Jagger and Keith Richards testify, the place was integral to the recording of “Wild Horses” and “Brown Sugar.” With Fame studio founder Rick Hall as impresario, and central focus, this film under the able direction of Greg “Freddy” Camalier, limns a significant chapter of Americana, where Aretha Franklin recorded “I Never Loved a Man,” backed by the white soulful house band, a turning point in her career.
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Oy vey is mir! Everything hurts but, thanks to a carrot and a hug, I’m still here. That kvetch could sum up Beckett’s classic tragicomedy in any language. In Yiddish, as performed in a new superb production, a collaboration of the Yiddish Rep with the Castillo Theater starring Shane Baker, Avi Hoffman, David Mandelbaum, and Rafael Goldwaser, the human condition is pared down as only Beckett’s universal sounds can render its absurdity—well, why not? -
“I’m a sports nut,” explained Hugh Jackman, joyful that his son decided to join the school soccer team. The actor and song man was making his way around The Monkey Bar at a luncheon celebrating his new movie Prisoners on Thursday. He might just as well have been talking about the thriller’s opening scene, when he, as Keller Dover, praises his fictive son for killing a deer. The falling animal may prefigure deaths to come, or provide the occasion for a proud parent before Keller loses it when the unthinkable happens. His daughter is taken and he, albeit a good man, holds the alleged abductor Alex (Paul Dano) prisoner, torturing him. His wife Grace, played by Maria Bello, loses it too, withdrawing into a drug induced fetal pose. Bello said the film’s nightmare premise expressed the characters’ “shadow side.” -
Kevin Spacey still talks about the excitement of meeting Jack Lemmon when he was 13, and hearing him say, “You were a touch of terrific.” Now introducing 134 young musicians from 50 countries, at Lincoln Center this week, he recounted that story as a way of explaining the importance of encouraging young talent. The World Peace Orchestra performing on the anniversary of 9/11, with President Obama deciding the efficacy of a military strike against Syria, lent an extra air of authority to the stellar evening. Patricia Clark, a host of the special night remarked, how often do we go to a premiere that even has a concept of world peace, as Darlene Love, Susan Lucci, Kathleen Turner, Jefferson Mays, Celia Weston, Rosanna Scotto, Peter Cincotti, made their way up the escalator to Avery Fisher Hall. -
The biggest revelation in the new documentary Salinger is that The Catcher in the Rye author was not a recluse. Rather fame averse and a champion of innocence as his signature books show, he simply removed himself to a New Hampshire retreat and wrote more books without a plan for their publication. The second reveal, and more significant for book lovers: over the forty years he retreated from the public, he wrote books in a woodsy bunker, producing manuscripts that will now be published. Are they any good? No one in Salinger could say, but J.D. Salinger’s literary reputation will change, and contrary to the midcentury notion held by many writers–that we should know an author only through the books he wrote– the Salinger life story unfolds like a thriller. A literary Garbo, Salinger’s presence in absence remains catnip for celebrity culture. -
Is Alec Baldwin a good sport? At a pre-screening cocktail party at Mary Jane and Charles Brock’s East Hampton residence, a property complete with croquet and golf courses, Alec Baldwin M.C.’d a competition, kids against adults putting on the green to benefit the Hamptons International Film Festival. Of course one of the kids was Sky Sudberry, a 9-year old from Texas, second place at the World Championship of Junior Golf at Pinehurst, N.C. with poise to kill and a killer grip. As she was planning her swing, Baldwin was hacking a pretend cough. Sky just took it in stride besting him in this lawn competition. She is, after all, one of 8 kid sport stars in a new movie, The Short Game, directed by Josh Greenbaum, to open on September 20. To put it mildly, the documentary is killer cute, and funny, and as Alec Baldwin put it at the Q&A following the Guild Hall screening, he learned a lot.
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Among the many pleasures of the Grease-themed benefit for the Prostate Cancer Foundation this weekend in Wainscott, was seeing Michael Milken in a letter sweater like the reformed Danny Zuko at the end of that 1978 movie set in 1959. At East Hampton Studio, a vintage Chevy parked outside, women channeled either Sandy in bobby socks and saddle shoes or edgy Rizzo in tight black capris and off the shoulder tops with red neckerchiefs. Like many a felt flare skirt, Colin Cowie’s table treatments featured cut out poodles. Formica and steel chairs and gym bleachers went far to keep the ‘fifties fantasy going. Only the white bling of an Elvis impersonator seemed to come out of another era. Many talents went into the production of this special night including those of guest chef David Burke who created a cafeteria style buffet dinner for the occasion: chicken, mashed potatoes, coleslaw, onion rings, chocolate pudding—comfort food. But the entertainment, the band Hall & Oates, perfectly hit that nostalgia mood performing their signature tunes without feeling old: “She’s Gone,” “Man Eater,” “You Make My Dreams Come True,” “Your Kiss (is What I Miss).” In their words, “I Can Go For That.”
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An intimacy with the protagonist of the movie, The Patience Stone, is immediate. We see the young mother, performed by Golshifteh Farahani, at home, revealed in casual dress. In the street, she must cover up so completely, even her eyes are shielded by the cloth grate of her burqa. More remarkable: the intimacy goes further. We hear her voice. The caretaker of her husband who is in a coma, the woman speaks her mind, protecting him from soldiers and other invaders at a difficult political time, but not from her inner world.Struck by the film’s freedom, I interviewed the story’s writer and film’s director Atiq Rahimi via email.
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On a field of lights, on a stage bare except for a podium, a big chair, and a neon rectangle that could have been a James Turrell design, Laurie Anderson performed violin, made vocal sound, and mused on many topics at Guild Hall Saturday night. What if we renamed the planet Dirt, she challenged: “Then we could have Dirt Day.”Much of what this edgy performance artist had to say in this hour and half tour de force evening turned on language, tautologies, syllogisms, puns, and mechanisms of voice such as the pillow speaker Anderson demonstrated in her mouth, distorting her sound so well suited to monologue. The neon rectangle turned into a screen for a home movie featuring her dog Lulabelle, taught to play piano.
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The most stunning film of the year, Wong Kar Wai’s The Grandmaster displays a fight genre as ballet, limning a history of Ip Man, Bruce Lee’s martial arts teacher. Introducing the movie at its U.S. premiere last week, with Samuel L. Jackson, Susan Sarandon, Lou Reed and Laurie Anderson in attendance, director Wong said, “People think of kung fu as chop suey. It is not chop suey.” Although what looks like the slicing of hands is part of the movement, as designed by Yuen Wo Ping, choreographer of The Matrix, Kill Bill and Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, the martial arts are less violent, even when blood flows, and more poetry. A courtesan differentiates the styles for Ip Man (Tony Leung) with Ziyi Zhang, who plays Gong Er, learning her father’s tradition of Bagua style, a lethal “64 hands” technique by secretly watching him. Viewers who might avert their eyes at such spectacle will be awed, in particular at a fight scene set against a moving train in the snow. Quite simply, you are watching an exquisite silent movie, independent of dialogue, in thrall to evocative music. In close-up much of the time, the actors’ faces large across the screen, an intimate drama unfolds even as the settings in Southern and Northern China are epic, and meant to show the passing of an era.
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A revival of A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum is always welcome, with its lively music, antic humor, acrobatic sight gags, and Feydeau-like farce. Minus the slamming doors, it’s a carnival with a plot at Bay Street Theater.This colorful production in Sag Harbor, the third of Bay Street’s summer offerings, is especially engaging family fun: featuring Peter Scolari as the ingenious slave Pseudolus. Switching happy/sad on the proverbial dime, he has what it takes to be a free man, shrewdly bargaining with his young master Hero (Nick Verina) to win his autonomy if he can help this lad woo the girl next door, a virgin courtesan-in-waiting named Philia (Lora Lee Gayer); a vacuous beauty, she has been sold off to a soldier, a hunky Miles Gloriosus (Nathaniel Hackmann). These three are delicious stock characters: under Marcia Milgrom Dodges’ deft direction, Hero is the equivalent of a Jewish son preparing to become a doctor, Philia puts a new spin on the concept of dumb blond, and Miles Gloriosus is conceit writ large.
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By the time we got there, the tent at Gardiner’s Farm was chockablock with browsers and book buyers, especially at one table where Gwyneth Paltrow signed copies of her It’s All Good: Delicious, Easy Recipes That Will Make You Look Good and Feel Great. Oglers snapped shots of her and Apple and Moses and Chris Martin. Nearby Robert A. Caro sat behind a pile of his now classic The Power Broker and newer biographies of Lyndon Johnson, Eric Fishl signed his autobiography, Bad Boy: My Life On and Off the Canvas, and Clive Davis autographed The Soundtrack of My Life, excited for the book party to follow at Larry Gagosian’s. Kitty Pilgrim and Kitty Kelley had books, as did Philippe Petit and Nile Rodgers, although by the time we got to them, they had sold out. On the far side, Dr. Ruth in orange print had an assortment of her sexual how-to guides. Overheard: a fan said she looked like sherbet. He could eat her with a spoon. Not missing a beat, the pint-sized sex therapist replied: I’d like that. -
“This is our best show ever,” exulted Guild Hall Executive Director Ruth Appelhof, repeating what she says every August, as she greets guests for the late summer exhibition. She may be right this time. Chuck Close’s signature portraits writ large occupy the elegant space like old friends, one gallery devoted to recent work, the other to earlier work, like a graphic self-portrait on a simple grid from 1974, bespectacled with flowing hair. His new self-portrait on tapestry hung alongside Lou (as in Reed), Lucas (Samaras) and Roy (Lichtenstein) is a rich evocation of himself, bald. You can feel every wrinkle. In a colorful dashiki print suit, the artist wheeled in on his customized chair, designed, he once told me at an exhibition at Pace Gallery, so that he can crane up and chat at cocktail parties, eye to eye. Eying the tattooed visitor who asked him to pose for a photo, Close said he wanted a tattoo, the image on signs for handicapped parking. -
In the new movie about Apple Computers founder Steve Jobs with Ashton Kutcher in the lead, Jobs drops acid, eh, windowpane, with a woman he has just bed, and takes another tab for his girlfriend. You could call that ‘70’s “rude.” Cut to a blanket spread outdoors, where, between his best friend and girlfriend, he stares at the sky, thinking different. In realizing his window on the world so to speak, he will damage each of them. For every inspirational speech introducing yet a new more inventive product than the last, Jobs, so focused on his vision, loses his connection to those who love him. That is what makes him so compelling a figure, so flawed; in Joshua Michael Stern’s film, he’s in a league with Picasso. -
Famous for casting many of the Woody Allen films, including the most recent Blue Jasmine, Juliet Taylor made her way around the rooftop at the Gramercy Park Hotel, among actors Dana Delany, John Ventimiglia, Sakina Jaffrey, after a screening of a film she did not cast. Finally recognized for their important contribution to films, casting directors take center stage in the documentary Casting By, directed by Tom Donahue whose prior credits include the satiric, Guest of Cindy Sherman. Shining a light on one aspect of the film art so under the radar, casting directors do not have an Oscar category, the film, which also features footage from that great era of filmmaking, the ‘70’s, asks, shouldn’t they? After all, who do you remember from Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid? Redford and Newman, of course. Juliet Taylor said she had a great time getting Blanchett for Blue Jasmine, as she always does casting Woody Allen’s films, and, like Penelope Cruz and Dianne Wiest, Best Supporting Actresses, Cate Blanchett may achieve Academy recognition.
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Now prominent among music legends, Bette Midler reminisces about her stint as a Harlette back in the day in the much celebrated documentary Twenty Feet from Stardom. Along with Sting, Bruce Springsteen, Mick Jagger, she acknowledges the mega talent of the backup singers—now famously Merry Clayton, Judith Hill— who make the superstar performers look and sound even greater. Having made the twenty foot leap herself, Bette Midler was perfect for this job: in an inspired moment Peggy Siegal who has a genius for these connections, asked her, superb in her one-woman run as Sue Mengers on Broadway, to front, ah, host a special lunch on Monday, in celebration of this, perhaps the most successful documentary of the year. At the Mandarin Oriental Hotel, in a dining room overlooking Central Park, guests Bernadette Peters, Susan Sarandon, Julie Taymor, Celia Weston, Dan Hedaya, Albert Maysles chatted about the making of documentary films, meeting Prince for the first time, and Ava Gardner’s memoirs.
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Even Lady Gaga in her most monster-friendly would merely blend in at the Watermill Center’s annual summer benefit, themed Devil’s Heaven. A woman in a red cocktail dress with matching angel wings was a random guest. Artist Evangelia Rantou performed a solo with chairs from Medea, collapsing her stilt-like props mid-pool. A tethered artist struggled Sisyphus-style grasping at dry ground. Another met the crowds at the entrance; hung, he stood for hours on his toes, dangling from a noose. And Hugh Jackman, more song & dance man than Wolverine, played peek-a-boo with performers painted to blend into trees. Coming up on one, with her leg held so high, her most private genitalia at eye level, I had to gasp until she draped herself around her tree. Surely a Satan’s heaven would be Hell, no place for shock, or the demure. Always the benevolent if devilish host, Robert Wilson roamed about the ample space making everyone feel right at home. -
Blythe Danner in an evening gown? Yes, of course. How about a clown suit? She does that too, and she sings and dances in the medley of one act plays, Tonight at 8:30, penned by Noel Coward and directed by Tony Walton now showing at Guild Hall. The third play, “Red Peppers,” features Danner in a vaudeville duet with Simon Jones. This sublime actress, as comic as DeNiro’s wife in The Focker movies as she was playing Matthew Broderick’s socialite mom in Nice Work if You Can Get It on Broadway, channels Lucille Ball. -
“Jasmine was a gift of a role,” said Cate Blanchett at the New York premiere of Blue Jasmine, Woody Allen’s new movie. As the wife of a shady financial wheeler-dealer who has bankrupted his clients and was, by the way, a philanderer as well, Blanchett’s Jasmine is Ruth Madoff, fragile by way of Blanche DuBois, even though, as she said, “We never discussed that,” that is, the resemblance to the tabloids or Tennessee Williams’ Streetcar Named Desire: “her downfall is so present for a lot of people.” Of course, Woody was absent for the star-studded premiere, sending a text that was read out loud at MoMA: “I am in the south of France and cannot attend. I truly wish I were in New York and cannot attend.” In fact, he is shooting his as-yet-unnamed French movie with Colin Firth and Emma Stone. While his films are not in competition with each other, he has to go far to best Blue Jasmine, one of the finest in his prolific career, turning in this one from his signature comedy to tragedy. -
Mason, as played by The Newsroom’s John Gallagher, Jr. does not scream sexy when we first see him in the new film Short Term 12. Recounting an incident involving a runaway from the facility for difficult teens where he works, he describes a moment of taco tummy, when his body fluids give out all over his shorts and sneakers. Eeew, TMI, you think, thanks for sharing, but as this movie progresses and you see his dedication to helping his charges extends to anything that will reign in their impulse to act out, he becomes more and more appealing. A foster child himself, lucky to have landed in a loving family, Mason especially adores his girlfriend Grace (Brie Larson), the soul of this movie.
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Kevin Pearce is lucky to be alive. When you see this expert snowboarder taking the near fatal plunge in Lucy Walker’s riveting documentary, The Crash Reel, to air on July 15 on HBO, you know the outcome won’t be good. His rival for competitions and the Olympics, Shaun White, was the subject of a 2008 documentary, Don’t Look Down, about this sport, which many think is not Olympic-worthy. White too has had his share of spills and, in this movie’s most painful moments, some athletes have died. But the movie is more than a cautionary tale about an increasingly more dangerous sport as athletes become more challenged. Detailing Kevin’s long period of recovery, the film is about the strong family that supported him along the way. You see Kevin blowing glass with his dad Simon, whose Park Avenue shop displays his state-of-the-art glassware. The film pays special attention to his brother David, who has Down Syndrome. When David pleads with his brother not to return to the sport Kevin loves, saying “I don’t want to see you die,” you see the tear-filled eyes of mom Pia, and the film’s tension is to see how Kevin will resolve his longing to compete in this sport, and his new reality. -
At the VIP (polo) lounge set up at Nova’s Ark, a Bridgehampton sculpture field, two giants went head to head: Edward Albee and Faith Ringgold. A former assistant to Larry Rivers was on the panel too, but David Joel, executive director of the Larry Rivers Foundation, did not get quite as many questions from a crowd that had gathered at this year’s ArtHamptons. Why did you choose Montauk? a woman asked of Edward Albee, honored for his philanthropy in the arts. Have you ever been there? was his cheeky reply, before moving on to a riff about the beauty, nurturing and relaxed atmosphere, of artists outside the commerce of art who are invited to his foundation set up at the remote end of the east end. What plays do you like? None that are popular now, was the reply. And what books are you reading? Zoobiquity, about the relation of man to animals, said the playwright of Zoo Story, pointing out, we are the only animals consciously creating art. Faith Ringgold, honored for lifetime achievement, a red scarf wrapped about her head, said she was inspired by Albee to make a painting, “Who’s Afraid of Aunt Jemima?” -
Introducing Bay Street Theater’s current production on Saturday night, of Charles Ludlam’s 1983 breakout masterpiece The Mystery of Irma Vep: A Penny Dreadful, the actor Richard Kind had to kill time. Opening on the same night as Sag Harbor’s fireworks, Vep was set for 7, but the audience, delayed by more than usual heavy Hamptons traffic, was still making its way, including Joan Copeland, Arthur Miller’s 91 year old sister, who was driving from Amagansett, from obstacle to detour. “Soon you will hear the sounds of a popcorn maker,” said Kind, and then the revival began its camp mash up of Daphne DuMaurier meets the Werewolf, Vampire, and Mummy. -
“It’s a film about justice and injustice,” said Harvey Weinstein, introducing Fruitvale Station, a debut film by Ryan Coogler who wrote and directed, based on a true story in San Francisco. That story is unfortunately echoed in a trial we are all watching on television, seeking resolution for the death of Trayvon Martin. In the 2009 case, a BART policeman shot Oscar Grant who was out celebrating New Year’s Eve with friends in Oakland, at the Fruitvale Station train platform. With a screenplay masterfully leading up to this fate, the events evolve like a thriller, and even though you know scene by well-constructed scene how it will end, you still root for Oscar, hoping the violence will never come.
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