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about: Regina Weinreich

  • Gloria Steinem’s Salon: Honoring Jane Campion

    Gloria-steinem4 The talent sipping cocktails at Gloria Steinem's brownstone duplex last Tuesday was through the roof. Without emphasizing the evening's feminist thrust, the gathering, to celebrate Bright Star director Jane Campion, evoked the tradition of Gertrude Stein's early 20th century Paris salons: novelists Erica Jong, Meg Wolitzer, Caryn James, and Susannah Moore whose book In the Cut had been filmed by Campion were among the mostly female crowd, as was filmmaker Nancy Savoca, actor Sarah Jones, former news anchor and president of The Women's Media Center Carol Jenkins, Planned Parenthood president Cecile Richards. Jeanne Berney of Apparition, Bright Star's distributor, sponsored. The energy was palpable.

    Janecampion In an interesting twist, men were in the kitchen, and serving the yummy hors d'oeuvres. Is it PC to mention that? Yes, we are still mired in this paradox: we want to be honoring excellent work, fine filmmaking without that nod to gender. Do we say, man director? 

    The evening's engine was Melissa Silverstein whose site Women & Hollywood provides industry news. Truth is, Campion remains the only woman director to have won the Palm D'Or at Cannes; Campion is also one of three women directors to have been nominated for Best Director, for The Piano (1993). If nominators are paying attention, Bright Star should be among the ten-along with Kathryn Bigelow's Hurt Locker and Lone Scherfig's An Education–listed for Best Picture Oscars. 

    And by the way, note such crowd pleasers as Nora Ephron's Julie & Julia and Aviva Kempner's documentary Yoo Hoo, Mrs. Goldberg. Soon to join this group: The upcoming Nancy Myer's romantic comedy, It's Complicated–starring Meryl Streep (you can never say enough about Meryl Streep, wonderful too as Julia Child). Jodie Markell's beautifully rendered feature of a never before made Tennessee Williams screenplay, The Loss of a Teardrop Diamond, is sure to achieve Oscar glory for Ellen Burstyn in a Best Supporting Role. 

    In case you were wondering, Steinem, worried that she does not actually drive, is working on a “road” book. I chatted with Ann Curry about her travels to Darfur, her Today Show coverage shining NBC's ample light on still the most egregious human rights issue. Simply put, everyone I spoke to in this high-power group is on the move. 

  • Paul Shrader Eats Dirt: Israel Film Festival

    Festavil4 If you missed Paul Shrader's last film Adam Resurrected, you can find it at the 24th Israel Film Festival, now playing at the SVA Theatre on 23 Street through next weekend. An examination of the period after The Holocaust based upon Yoram Kaniuk's 1971 novel, “Adam Resurrected” with its disturbing depiction of a comic who survived the concentration camps as a Nazi commando's pet dog (Jeff Goldblum in an elastic Gumby defying role to Willem Dafoe's absurdist oppressor), mostly takes place in a post-war mental institution in Israel.

    On Saturday night, Paul Shrader was honored with an Achievement in Film Award presented by Jeff Goldblum who praised the director of such gutsy films as Mishima and Auto Focus for being a “champion of strange love between people.” He then explained something about Shrader's direction to the rapt audience. In one emotional scene, Goldblum's character visits the grave of his daughter and in his grief eats the flowers he brought there. Of course the prop people supplied edible blooms. But Shrader wanted to go further and directed Goldblum to eat the earth. So where was the chocolate simulated dirt? Shrader spontaneously showed Goldblum how to scoop up the ground-and he ate it. Accepting his green statue, Shrader urged everyone to see Goldblum's performance. “You won't be disappointed,” he said. 

    The same can be said for the festival in general, if the opening night film, A Matter of Size directed by Sharon Maymon and Erez Tadmor, is indicative. Let's just say, there's more exposed flesh in this film about four fatsos who want to be suma wrestlers than any I've seen this year–and most of it jiggles.

    Don Krim of Kino International, a film distribution company that has represented many Israeli films including those of Amos Gitai over the years was also honored with the 2009 Visionary Award, announcing his company's merger with Koch Lorber. Having attended the Academy Awards when Beaufort was nominated, Krim pointed out the richness of Israeli cinema as he has watched the industry grow. 

    The third award, for Lifetime Achievement, went to Elliot Gould, presented by Dr. Gabriela Shalev, Israel's UN ambassador, a proper looking diminutive woman who announced that she saw the actor in bed. Of course that movie was Bob Ted Carol and Alice from the year when ménages of all sorts were de rigueur. She also noted his performance in Robert Altman's Mash, “a film that still resonates with us.” Gould noted we are all at war with ignorance, desperation and fear. As Elliot Goldstein from Brooklyn, he wished all a Happy Chanukah filled with joy and light.

  • Serious Moonlight

    Serious women 2
    The real-life tragedy of Adrienne Shelly’s murder in a botched apartment robbery hangs over this, her last completed screenplay lovingly made into this sinister romantic comedy produced by her husband Andy Ostroy and directed by her co-star in Waitress, Larry David’s television wife, Cheryl Hines. Louise (Meg Ryan), a highpower uberwoman will do anything-yes, anything-to keep her husband, Ian (Timothy Hutton), from leaving her for a younger woman. Believing they belong together no matter what, she duct tapes him to a toilet. And that is just the beginning of the ensuing mayhem, reminiscent of the frightening Funny Games.

    Ryan, the reigning queen of romantic comedy in Nora Ephron’s Sleepless in Seattle and You’ve Got Mail, her lines in Rob Reiner’s When Harry Met Sally are quotable. Here, as Louise, she loses the sweet edge that made her roles so charismatic in these Meg Ryan classics. Still wily and comedic, she is more cunning-as she was in the recent The Women remake, so you feel less invested in her winning, even as Shelly’s script deftly maneuvers your sympathies in favor of marriage.

    Though this is Hines’ directorial debut, said cinematographer Nancy Schreiber at the screening’s after party at Rouge Tomate, she had a vision for how to make the film, and worked like a seasoned pro with the actors. Everyone exulted in the audience’s laughter at the humor in Adrienne Shelly’s creation, a bittersweet reminder of her loss. The foundation created in her name awarded a director’s grant to Christina Beck.

    Hines, in a red cocktail dress could not have been friendlier, even after I veered away from Serious Moonlight to ask her about her character Cheryl’s breakup and final reconciliation with television husband Larry on Curb Your Enthusiasm.

    That romantic view of marriage resonates: “You know, they just belong together,” she said sweetly

  • Villains in The Lovely Bones

    Lovely-bones
    In case you don't already know, the subject of The Lovely Bones as well as Alice Sebold's best-selling book on which the new movie is based is that most horrendous of nightmares: the murder of a 14-year old. Imagining the challenge of making such an event watch-worthy, even enjoyable, I marvel at the ingenuity of Peter Jackson, the talented director of the Lord of the Rings trilogy and Heavenly Creatures, among other favorites of mine. 

    As in the novel, Susie Salmon (Saoirse Ronan) speaks from the beyond, micromanaging the affairs of those left mourning her loss. But where exactly is she? In a pastel paradise evoking the paintings of Peter Max. You could say that this colorful imagery is excessive, as if strawberry and lime lollipops could soften the somber tones of hell on earth, what cannot ever be made palatable. As such, these scenes where Jackson attempts to get into Susie's dreams “once she has left her body,” as he told me at the movie's premiere, don't always work. 

    But no matter, this is a must-see movie, particularly for Stanley Tucci's brilliant performance as Mr. Harvey. Adorable in Julie & Julia and in Devil Wore Prada, here he is a menacing loner, mopping his sweaty brow as he peers through his suburban windowpanes at joyful children. Susan Sarandon is the show-stealing cool, kooky grandma Lynn who gives facials and advice on kissing to the young teens. New Zealand actress Rose Mciver is excellent as Susie's sister Lindsey, as is Michael Imperioli as the cop who cares. 

    Just back from the London premiere hosted by Prince Charles and Camilla, this cast was joined by a diverse crowd of well-wishers at the Oak Room: Cathy Moriarty, Aiden Quinn, Sylvia Miles, Patricia Clarkson, Steve Buscemi, Bob Balaban. Saoirse Ronan, from a small town in Southern Ireland, told me she got the part of Susie after her father made a video of her reading her lines. You may remember her as the young girl in Atonement-the villain, as I called her. Yes, said Saoirse, “if you have to hate anyone in that movie, that would be me.”

  • Gotham Awards

    Gothem 1 Quips comparing the Gotham Awards with the Oscars ran rampant last night, so Academy Awards hovered in the cavernous Cipriani Wall Street air. Mostly, speakers agreed, the Gothams, honoring indie films, are like a younger, cooler brother: acting out, presenters feel free to speak their minds in whatever non-prime time terms. Focusing on Willem Dafoe seated ringside, who would later pay tribute to Hurt Locker director Kathryn Bigelow, Rosie Perez wanted to know whether that was his real ample-“you know”-in the ample sex scenes in Antichrist. After he nodded affirmative with his great Cheshire cat grin, she purred as only Rosie can, “Well hello Willem Dafoe.” 

    Gothem 2 Here's a category you are not going to see on Oscar night: Best Movie Not Playing in a Theater Near You. Presented by Sam Rockwell and Patricia Clarkson, that award went to You Won't Miss Me directed by Ry Russo-Young, starring Stella Schnabel. Breakthrough Actor went to the Chilean Catalina Saavedra, for The Maid. Food, Inc. won the documentary award, Robert Siegel for Breakthrough Director (Big Fan). 

    Jim Sheridan, director of her most recent film, Brothers, paid tribute to the be-sequined Natalie Portman, who thanked him for making her, at 26, believable as the mother of an 8 year old by giving her the tits. 

    The meticulously non-glamourized Meryl Streep led the tribute to her Devil Wore Prada/ Julie & Julia co-star, Stanley Tucci. Noting that if you're not a supporting actor, you are not an actor, she glowed, he more than supported; “I felt buttressed by him,” and further praised his expertise at mixing martinis. 

    The Coen brothers, thanking Working Title's Tim Bevan and Eric Fellner, recounted their various pitch lines, each funnier and less likely to be made than the one before: The Man Who Wasn't There, in black and white about an unhappily married barber who wants to be a dry cleaner, O Brother, a riff on The Odyssey, and Fargo, about an unhappily married . . . You get the picture. The rest is movie history. But for the current A Serious Man, the Coens made the green light sound iffy. Accepting their award, Bevan and Fellner protested, “We knew it was a hit.”

    Gothem 3 Not surprising, given the award buzz it has already received, The Hurt Locker was the big winner of the evening, for Best Ensemble and for Best Feature. True, wisdom dictates you don't want to be the front-runner too soon. So, when asked about anticipating Oscars, Kathryn Bigelow demurred, “It's too soon to think about that.” 

    Regina Weinreich

    Graphic Design: Salpeter Ventura

  • Jim Sheridan Touts Brothers at the Monkey Bar

    Brothers

    The affable Jim Sheridan held court at the Monkey Bar last Monday, talking about his new movie, to open this Friday. Given that the first rate Brothers is a redo of a 2004 Danish film directed by Susanne Bier, now set in the America that continues to deploy troops to Afghanistan, you would not necessarily tap this Dublin-based director -no matter how distinguished his track record for such superb films as My Left Foot, In the Name of the Father, and In America–for this job, but producer Ryan Kavanaugh insisted that Sheridan direct-with excellent results.

    This smart and gripping drama concerns the Cahill brothers, Sam (Tobey Maguire), a decorated Marine about to go off for his next tour and Tommy (Jake Gyllenhaal) a ne'er do well just out of prison. Sam Shepard, plays their father, an ex-Marine himself who denies his own problems with alcohol and makes no effort to repress his favoritism among his sons. Let's say, Freud hovers here. Sam has married his high school sweetheart Grace (Natalie Portman), more than once noted as gorgeous-and she is. Portman's child career included her star turn with Jean Reno in The Professional (1994) and on Broadway, the teen Anne Frank. As the mother of two girls, Grace marks a transition, and indeed, a special pleasure of this movie-about what happens in a Midwest family when the husband/father is presumed dead-is seeing her as a grown up, as well as these brothers as family men.

    Leaning into our table while the lunch crowd–including Sam Shepard and Terrence Howard–enjoyed the signature Monkey Bar burgers, Sheridan recounted a defining moment from his past: When he was a teen, his 10 year old brother died of a brain tumor. Ostensibly, the war may be an utterly American subject, but closely observed through Sheridan's lens, it is about families. Despite some brutal scenes in Afghan caves, like The Messenger, Brothers brings the war home, to an undercurrent of violent emotion that threatens more profoundly than any battle on foreign ground. If you look at Jim Sheridan's body of work, it is all about putting families back together.

    Expect to see Jim Sheridan on Best Director lists, and these stars nominated for Best Actor Oscars. In the meantime, Sheridan is off to Toronto to begin filming Dream House with Daniel Craig.

  • Burn the Floor

    Burn-the-Floor_jpg_
    Jazz or improv is one part of the international dance style featured in Burn the Floor, the thrilling show choreographed by Jason Gilkison at the Longacre Theater, running since last August. An ensemble of 24, ballroom competition winners that have been touring since 1999, from Latvia, Russia, Italy, Latin America, Australia, as well as the U.S. let their passions rip in one of the most exhilarating, athletic and breath-taking events I've ever seen on Broadway. Beginning with the cha cha, and moving through the Viennese waltz, foxtrot, rumba, swing, the lindy, and tangoes, this non-stop sexy revue dazzles for its pace, 4-piece band (although some of the music is recorded), and vocalists. The set is a club's dance floor with a disco ball overhead casting its glitzy, syncopated sheen. From number to number, favorites with fringes aswirl, sequins, marabou, and spandex emerge, and fade, to be replaced by new favorites. Peta Murgatroyd, a lithe blond seemed to take the floor most prominently, as in a sequence with six male partners, their pecs bare. For the finale, to the tunes of “Proud Mary” and “Turn the Beat Around,” performers shimmied into the aisle, pelvises gyrating. Dancing hard, sweat flying, they looked like they could go forever.

  • Jazz Baroness on HBO

    JazzBar-r6bFINAL Herbie Hancock remembers Pannonica, the Rothschild heir who so loved American jazz that she abandoned an aristocratic European life of castles where royalty dined, to live in New York, surrounded by cats (felines and players), and make her rounds from club to club in pursuit of the music. Driving her Bentley, she chauffeured Hancock and Barry Harris from the Five Spot to midtown one night without stopping for a single light, this jazz legend told me at a premiere screening of a documentary film about her at HBO last Thursday. The film will air on HBO on November 25.

    In the jazz world Pannonica is herself legend: Charlie Parker died in her suite at the Stanhope Hotel. Friends with Thelonius Monk, she housed the piano genius for the last decade of his life until his death in 1982, while he was married to Nelly to whom he was devoted. 

    Famous in this coterie, for her relatives she is an obscure branch on a family tree-that is until Hannah Rothschild, Pannonica's London-based grand-niece, a documentarian for the BBC, began to investigate. Filled with the music she loved, interviews with Sonny Rollins, Clint Eastwood, Thelonius Monk, Jr. who all testify to Pannonica's essential support of the musicians in matters from health care to groceries, and with Helen Mirren reading her words, this film illuminates Pannonica's unusual choices to take on the role of jazz “angel.”

    The film is especially good as it limns the story of the filmmaker hoping to glimpse a piece of her own family history. Having in the '70's cut my teeth as a journalist covering jazz for The Village Voice and the now defunct Soho Weekly News, I was pleased to talk to Hannah Rothschild, happy that Nica will receive her due in this musically rich documentary.

    Q: Why was it important for you to tell this story?

    HR: I had to think about whether or not I was making a film about someone I would find interesting even if I had not been related. The answer was yes. 

    Q: What do her children think of the film?

    Originally her children were keen on it. They got cold feet when they realized they wouldn't have final control. That would ultimately rest with the person who paid for it. The BBC. They got nervous. Now that the film is made, I don't know. I hope they like it. I am sad it is not something we could have done together.

    Q: What about the rest of the Rothschilds?

    The others did not know very much about what she had done, for example, the missions she had flown in Africa during World War II. They didn't understand her. And in America: Why was she going to prison? Saying the drugs were hers? Living this strange dissolute life? She was in a different world and had slipped out of the family's consciousness.

    Q: Take me through the stages of how you got this film made.

    HR: I have made films for the BBC since I graduated from Oxford. This one took 9 years. In the early '90's, I interviewed Nica's sister Miriam, doing the filming myself. All music is pre-recorded, some from BBC archive. I was lucky to have footage: Michael Blackwood and Christian filmed Monk in 1968, around the Five Spot and different places. 

    I cold called Bruce Ricker. I saw his name on Straight No Chaser, [an excellent Monk documentary he made with Charlotte Zwerin]. Ricker [co-producer on Jazz Baroness] found an old interview. I suddenly had her voice on the tape recorder. He was helpful in getting Helen Mirren. Bruce called her up. She said yes. Then, I had the absolutely terrifying experience of directing Helen Mirren. 

    Q: Your film features interviews with jazz greats and aficionados. How did you make your choices?

    HR: The people I asked to be in the film were Nica's friends. For example, Clint Eastwood got in touch with her when he made Bird, the Charlie Parker movie. He met with her and some of her children at the bar at the Stanhope, Nica's, named after her. She helped him with research. She saw Clint's film before she died; someone asked, what did you think? She replied, “I looked like a constipated horse.”

    Q: Did anything about Nica surprise you?

    HR: It takes something to completely walk away from your life, from what is familiar. I don't know many people who've done that. I couldn't. Then you realize that she created another version of her life. She left a comfortable life in Europe and became a hausfrau in Weehawken. She just switched locations. The musicians presented a different form of family. Monk was a nightmare to live with. According to the new biography by Robert Kelly, Nelly was having their 4th child and Monk was off in a crack den. He didn't go to his mom's funeral. He turned up for part of the wake. A wonderful man, much loved by his kids, he was not easy. It would be difficult not to be bewitched by Monk's story. He was a great genius. She was there to facilitate, his patron. Nica left the Jewish aristocracy and joined the jazzocracy.

    Q: What is it like to be a Rothschild?

    We are pretty normal now. When Nica was born they were the wealthiest family in Europe. Prime Ministers would come to see them. The guest book was filled with shahs and presidents. Today the family has the vestige of great inheritance without any real power. I am proud that my brother and father are quite successful. Obama would be welcome.

    Regina Weinreich

    Graphic Design: Salpeter Ventura

  • Penelope Cruz in Red, and White

    Penelopy Cruz
    Pedro Almodovar's love affair with his leading lady is legend, as is his romance with movie stars of old. In his new movie, Broken Embraces, the Closing Night feature of the recent New York Film Festival that will open this Friday, he casts Penelope Cruz as a call girl/ actress in a movie within the movie; with wigs and wardrobe, she morphs into Sophia Loren, Marilyn Monoe, Anna Magnani, Audrey Hepburn. He also plays with the now familiar Almodovar tropes: dual identity in the case of Mateo Blanco/ Harry Caine (Lluis Homar), his surrogate filmmaker, and the young man Diego (Tamar Novas) who will find out who his father is. Early on in this melodrama of revenge and art restored, Mateo/Harry tells the story of Arthur Miller and his Down Syndrome son with the photographer Inge Morath, which essentially becomes a tale of son-to-father forgiveness. Teasing out these strands of psychological connective tissue is one of the many pleasures of watching Almodovar films. Another pleasure here is seeing Cruz in her red Dior suit and platforms — red is surely the color of passion, and these pumps are meant to topple. At a special screening on Tuesday night at the Crosby Hotel attended by Liz Smith, Billy Crudup, Donna Karan, Michael Imperioli, among others, Cruz wore a demure white, and introduced this film saying Pedro was sorry he could not attend. “You will miss him, and I will miss him more,” she says of the man who she acknowledges nurtured her progression into international stardom. Evident of her post-Oscar stature, she is one in the sisterhood of Nine, the much anticipated film based on the Broadway musical to open in December. Her Nine co-star Marion Cotillard joined Cruz for the after party at the Standard Hotel in the Meat Packing District with its extraordinary panoramic views. No, she did not keep those red shoes, Cruz told me. Those belong to her character.

    Regina Weinreich

    Graphic Design: Salpeter Ventura

  • On The Road

    The-Road 2
     This is not a movie for sissies! 
    Based on Cormac McCarthy's Pulitzer Prize winning novel, The Road is a road movie on a landscape, barren after some unnamed cataclysmic event. Typical of the genre, this is also a buddy movie, father (Viggo Mortensen) and son (Kodi Smit-McPhee) make for a duo set on survival, foraging for food, fending off bands of marauders so debased they prey upon humans. By chance I happened to be seated next to Gabe Pressman at Monday night's premiere. We had met at the First Gathering of Holocaust survivors in Jerusalem in 1981; he was reporting for NBC, I was accompanying my mother, the late Pola Siedlecka Weinreich, a survivor of the Lodz Ghetto, and concentration camps at Auschwitz and Stutthof. Gripped by this moving story, which has all the tension of a well-wrought horror flick, we waited the long list of credits to speak, and say, how sad to think that men would behave such, if a disaster did occur, and knowing too, that we have every evidence that we would turn on ourselves, and who would be left to blame us. Fortunately, The Road looks toward the best of the human spirit. Its message is that the future belongs to those who possess the light within. Sounds hokey, right? Like believing that your life could be saved by a can of Dole fruit cocktail. Parents everywhere will be provoked into grappling with the dynamics of preparing children for such a world. How does one go on? The fine supporting cast of vagabonds and rogues includes a scene stealing Robert Duvall. Charlize Theron plays the mother who has abandoned hope early on. Guy Pearce arrives late in the film, bringing the boy into his fold. You could say that the unspoken star is the stark terrain itself. If it looks real to you, it is. London based Australia born director John Hillcoat explained his documentary approach: some of the footage came from New Orleans in the aftermath of Katrina, some from Mt. St. Helena. Much was shot in the cold climes of Pittsburgh; in color, a stony gray pervades and everyone has bad teeth. 
         When asked why he chose this potentially difficult subject, Bob Weinstein of the Dimension arm of The Weinstein Company said, “Either the material grabs you or it doesn't. I knew this film had to be made and I wanted to be part of that,” and added, “I have a son.” Writers, among them Calvin Trillin, Walter Mosley, Stanley Crouch, and A. M. Holmes were on hand at the SL afterparty to greet novelist Cormac McCarthy, author of  No Country for Old Men, the book on which last year's Best Picture winner was based. Similarly, expect to see this masterpiece, The Road, on many a top ten list for Oscars.

  • Ragtime Returns

        

    Ragtime-
    They had me with Houdini!
         About a minute into the Prologue of this monumental musical, the bound escape artist upended is lowered over this sweeping tableau in three tiers: immigrants living in squalor, rich whites in suburban splendor, blacks in subterranean piano joints plunking a fresh, transgressive sound. Originally on Broadway in 1998, with book by Terrence McNally, lyrics by Lynn Ahrens, music by Stephen Flaherty, Ragtime is newly relocated north from its revival at the Kennedy Center in Washington and, as directed by Marcia Milgrom Dodge, it is breathtaking.
        As in the groundbreaking 1975 E. L. Doctorow novel on which this epic vision of humanity is based, story lines reflect the titular music's ragged syncopation as fictional characters, emblematically called Tateh, Mother, The Little Boy, interweave with the historical: Emma Goldman, Evelyn Nesbit, J. P. Morgan, Henry Ford, Booker T. Washington, to tell the turn of the century history of America. While poverty consumes the refugee Tateh (Robert Petkoff) and his little girl (Sarah Rosenthal) on the Lower East Side, a black baby is unearthed in a garden in New Rochelle. Mother (a superb Christiane Noll) sings “What Kind of Woman,” and takes the child and mother Sarah (Stephanie Umoh) in. While ordinary lives are lived this ordinary way, the country is fixated on “the crime of the century,” the passion slaying of architect Stanford White by his lover's husband, and it's only 1906. The vaudeville star Evelyn Nesbit, in a career now ironically boosted by scandal, is “the girl on the swing;” staged in red velvet, the swing is a comic illusion of justice. The juxtaposition of the quotidian with tabloid news, gives Ragtime its shape and dimension, just as the props-a car, a piano-appear to be outlined cut-outs like the silhouettes Tateh sells on the street. At center is the story of race played out in Coalhouse Walker Jr.'s (Quentin Earl Darrington) infatuation with his Model-T, and secondarily, with Sarah, and his boy. Typical of many such stories in America, Coalhouse's end is sad and violent; it doesn't fit the description, and justice for all. But the narratives and high-minded music belong to a grander scheme converging in hope, represented by a single family, a mixture of economic classes and ethnicities, a true American melting pot.

  • The Messenger

    Messenger There's something hot about the guys in Oren Moverman's well-crafted movie The Messenger. Woody Harrelson and Ben Foster play a team of soldiers whose task it is to inform NOK's (Next of Kin) about the death of their loved ones in Iraq and Afganistan-not your typical sexy subject. And not your typical film about the military either. A buddy movie, this Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid takes the duo door-to-door, to the anguished howls of mothers, fathers, wives and children. Playing a bereaved dad, Steve Buscemi, spits in Ben Foster's face raging, why wasn't he over there, why didn't he die instead of his son, not knowing of course about the messenger's own wounds. War brings out the worst and perhaps the best of men; an unusual sensitivity emerges as Foster's Will defies orders, physically touching those grieving, particularly Olivia (a fine Samantha Morton), a mother of a young son. Oren Moverman, a veteran of the Israeli army and a noted screenwriter (I'm Not There, Jesus's Son) penned this script with Alessandro Camon, a Los Angeles based producer, and this is his directorial debut. When asked why he chose this film trusting a first-time director, Harrelson said simply, “Necessity. I had to after I'd read the script.” Both he and Foster rave about Moverman's deft work with actors, so evident that each one delivers an Oscar worthy performance. Rarely do you see men so naked, especially in uniform.

  • Finian’s Rainbow

    FiniansRainbow 2
    During intermission at a recent performance of Finian's Rainbow, I looked into the orchestra pit to find a musician, Wayne Goodman, anticipating Act II as much as I was. Marvelling at Burton Lane's great songs including such classics as “How Are Things in Glocca Morra?,” “Look to the Rainbow,” and “Old Devil Moon,” the trombonist pointed out that this 1947 show with a leprechaun, crock of gold, and three wishes, had real magic in the prescient lyrics by Yip Harburg and book by Harburg and Fred Saidy. Yip Harburg who also wrote The Wizard of Oz with its signature “Over the Rainbow” influenced generations of musicals. So why aren't we talking about Yip Harburg the way we talk about the Gershwins or Irving Berlin? That question may remain a mystery, even as we are awed by this outstanding late '40's entertainment and its first-rate revival at the St. James Theater. Old-fashioned as it seems among so many musicals that play like cabaret revues, this one has a rich story, and resonance for views that prevail today, providing more than a laugh, as when Woody Mahoney (a fine and magnetic Cheyenne Jackson) says that a little yellow paper is better than money-it's credit, or when a bigoted town official says, “My whole family has been having trouble with immigrants ever since we came to this country.” The Finian of the title (the superb Jim Norton, Tony awarded last season for The Seafarer) arrives in Missitucky, near Fort Knox with his daughter Sharon (a gorgeous red-headed Kate Baldwin), having appropriated the crock of gold from a leprechaun (Christopher Fitzgerald). The ensuing mayhem includes a white man turned black, a green one turned white, a bride accused of witchcraft exonerated, a mute dancer given voice, and a town gone gaga “On That Great Come and Get It Day” regaining its values, hope, and love. Never has calico been so appealing.

  • Fantastic Mr. Fox

    Fantastic-mr-fox As the voice of Mr. Fox in the movie version of Roald Dahl's classic, George Clooney reprises his role as Danny Ocean, a wily schemer in good suits. Maybe that's why dioramas of his woodsy world adorn the windows of Bergdorf Goodman's Men's Store on Fifth Avenue. Ophelia Dahl greeted guests at last night's Paris Theater premiere, recounting how at age 5 her father would tell them this tale. She also introduced her mother, the Academy Award winning Patricia Neal as well as the cast: Meryl Streep, Jason Schwartzman, Bill Murray, chef Mario Batalli, Eric Anderson, and director Wes Anderson and his writing partner Noah Baumbach. Grown-ups and kids alike marveled at Mr. Fox's antics in stop-action animation. He shines in his shenanigans, now a family man-er, fox, pulling one last caper, imperiling his community of rabbits, rodents, and other wild life. Among the delighted guests at the after party hosted by Quintessentially and Partners in Health: James Toback and his son Andre, a pregnant Jennifer Jason Leigh, the crew from the excellent The Messenger: director/writer Oren Moverman, Woody Harrelson, Ben Foster. Willem Dafoe wandered in after the evening performance of Idiot Savant at the Public, Fisher Stevens, Lillian Ross, Nora Ephron and Nick Pileggi mingled with cast and crew. And what was served at Rouge Tomate's buffet dinner along with duck and red cabbage? Well, field greens of course.

  • Superior Donuts

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    Snow falls, the Chicago wind whistles when the door opens at Superior Donuts, a cozy, if down and out mom & pop shop run by Arthur Przybyszewski (Michael McKean) with a counter and homey stools in Pulitzer Prize winner Tracy Letts' new play. You know what time period you are in when Starbucks vies for coffee control of the neighborhood. Hanging on to such an old fashioned coffee shop, a traditional haven for cops and hoodlums alike is but one of the themes of this bittersweet slice of American life. This play offers a glimpse of American issues: race, deracination, immigration, inner city violence, hope, as a set of quirky types come and go: Lady (Jane Alderman), an alcoholic senior with wanderlust, Officer Randy Osteen (Kate Buddeke), a redhead with a crush on Arthur, and Officer James Bailey (James Vincent Meredith) who has an obsession with Star Wars. When the play opens, the shop has been vandalized and a young man, Franco Wicks (Jon Michael Hill) with writerly aspirations and a manuscript approaches Arthur for a job. Arthur's ex has just died and he's not sure he wants to sell the place to Max Tarasov (Yasen Peyankov), an émigré from Russia with a secret weapon. You could say a whole lot happens in due course, some of it violent, but mainly you get to know these characters played lovingly by this superb ensemble cast. While Superior Donuts feels small compared to Letts' epic scale “August: Osage County,” its impact is understated. Franco's book is called, “America Will Be,” and that thought lingers.

  • Werner Herzog’s Bad Lieutenant

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    Werner Herzog's sequel to an Abel Ferrara film starring Nicolas Cage and Eva Mendes belongs to the genre of drug fueled fantasies like “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas:” the imagery is just laugh out loud. We've never seen Cage like this, at times channeling James Stewart, which, when you consider the plot of solving a multiple murder in the heroin/cocaine trafficking districts of post-Katrina New Orleans, is a hilarious thought. While the material, reminiscent too of James Lee Burke's detective novels featuring Dave Robicheux, can be dark and violent, it most often plays like a spoof with standout performances by Jennifer Coolidge (her character's medium of choice is beer) and Denzel Whitaker as a sharp teen who happens to be a witness sheltered by his grandmother, an aide to an elderly rich lady. A new Oscar category for iguanas and alligators may have to be created. Eva Mendes, a vulnerable call girl with a heart of, well, white powder is sexy and fine as Cage's love interest. An underused Val Kilmer plays the straight-laced sidekick. Alvin “Xzibit” Joiner, Fairuza Balk, and Shawn Hatosy round out a cast of criminals. How bad is this bad lieutenant? He gets off on following couples from a club called Gator's Retreat making out in a parking lot. Frisking them, he might get lucky and find candy in the girl's purse, and he just might get lucky with the girl. Redemption for this rogue seems beside the point. Nicolas Cage could not attend the New York premiere on Sunday night, as his father had just died, leaving the able, beautiful Eva Mendes to handle publicity on her own. Producer Ed Pressman introduced his co-producers Alan and Gabe Polsky who praised Mendes as the next Marilyn Monroe. The crowd, including Susan Sarandon, Sylvia Miles, James Toback, could see her wince at the extravagant, or perhaps tragic, comparison. The party moved on from the Visual Arts Theater to Avenue where Skyy vodka flowed, the substance of choice.

  • Remembering Tennessee Williams

    Tennesee Williams Playwright John Patrick Shanley referring to Tennessee Williams as a “gorgeous unstoppable beast,” recounted an incident in a restaurant when he, a budding writer, maybe thirty feet away from the master dramatist, could not bring himself to say hello. Such is the power of “influence” that any person in theater would stand in awe of this writer of poetry, short stories and the extraordinary body of plays for which he is best known. Shanley was among two dozen speakers who paid tribute to Tennessee Williams at the Cathedral of Saint John the Divine on Thursday evening, themselves a Who's Who of American theater: Vanessa Redgrave who had originated the role of “Lady” in “Orpheus Descending” read from “Not About Nightingales,” Marian Seldes who created the role of Blackie in “Milk Train Doesn't Stop Here Anymore,” Sylvia Miles performed her role, Mrs. Wire, from the 1978 London production of “Vieux Carre.” Tandy Cronyn presented a postcard Tennessee had sent her late mother Jessica Tandy, the original Blanche DuBois, from Italy, reveling in how Blanche would love Rome. Her father Hume Cronyn had been instrumental in keeping the young starving playwright alive, optioning his 9 one-acts. Eli Wallach performed a scene from one with his daughter Kathryn. Eli and Ann Jackson who was in the audience met doing that play. Olympia Dukakis read from “Milk Train,” and John Guare read “As I stood in my room tonight.” David Kaplan, curator of the Provincetown Tennessee Williams Theater Festival, read from an essay Tennessee had presented at the cavernous Saint John the Divine in 1971, “We are Dissenters Now:” protesting the Vietnam War; overall, Williams proclaimed, “love for humanity will prevail.” On Sunday, Tennessee Williams will be inducted into the Poet's Corner, among Emily Dickinson, Robert Frost, Mark Twain, Walt Whitman, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Edith Wharton, and other American literary giants, becoming the first poet/ playwright to be so honored

  • Willem Dafoe: The Village Idiot and Our Town

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    It's a fact: folks will flock to see Idiot Savant, Richard Foreman's new play at the Public Theater just to see its star Willem Dafoe in a billowy blouse and skirt. Indeed, what a sight that is. Not to mention his hair in a top tail like a suma wrestler. There is no quirkier actor around-nor one so well suited to Foreman's madness. Then again, look at Dafoe's film roles: he stars in Lars von Trier's controversial Antichrist, in theaters as I write. The “idiot savant” of the play, Dafoe's elastic face does drooling and delirium with fresh verve. He is aided in his idiosyncrasies-i.e. inter-species golf with a giant duck– by two women: Marie (Alenka Kraigher), evoking the blond velvet of a pre-Raphaelite damsel and Olga (Elina Lowensohn), an accented dominatrix in chaps, and 3 limber servants (Joel Israel, Eric Magnus, and Daniel Allen Nelson). Plot? Idiot Savant is less formal than its distant uncle Hamlet, coincidentally current on Broadway, a fun meditation on the “magic” in “chosen words” as discerned in a dazzling array of verbal and visual hijinks. “The following will appear onstage,” promises a voice at the play's outset: a boxing bag, oversized golf ball and snake, two imitation rowboats, etc. When they do, as when Marie sports a cartoon rowboat affixed to her body looking like a cigarette girl hawking her wares (a pun on walking on water?), you are simply blown away.
       
    Out Town There's been talk that the much lauded production of Thornton Wilder's Our Town directed by David Cromer at the Barrow Street Theater will move to Broadway. While the producers deliberate this move, let me say, you can really smell the bacon in this play-literally-and it is warm and nourishing. I was curious to see how Cromer had dusted off the old treasure, that can be played sentimental or melodramatic, especially after I had seen his ill-fated production of Brighton Beach Memoirs shut down after only a week's performances and very good reviews. Even his formidable direction could not save the Neil Simon classic. Our Town is such a beautiful work, it can be played as a period piece as in the superb opera production with music by Ned Rorem performed at Lincoln Center a few seasons ago, or pared down in Cromer's version to a bare set-tables and chairs– where the audience is asked to imagine every location, the church, cemetery, schoolyard– in Grovers Corner, New Hampshire. At Barrow Street, the work is intimately staged with actors pantomiming among the audience a la The Living Theater. Perhaps the move uptown will bring Our Town to the wide audience it surely deserves. In any case, don't miss this gem.

  • Who Shot Rock & Roll at the Brooklyn Museum

    Lennen The iconic and infamous cover the walls at the Brooklyn Museum's fine exhibition (on view till January 31, 2010), “Who Shot Rock & Roll.” Yes you will see many old favorites, like John Lennon wearing a New York City sleeveless tee in Bob Gruen's contact sheet from the familiar 1974 shoot. You will see him again in Richard Avedon's 1967 formal portraits of the Beatles, their mop hair newly coiffed. And again in Allan Tannenbaum's shot of John and Yoko in bed, NYC, 1980 just two weeks before he died. The text explains that Lennon liked Tannenbaum's work: “You really capture Yoko's beauty.” And that sums up the essence of this show's raison d'etre as curated by Gail Buckland who also edited the excellent catalogue, to focus on the photographers, how the subject inspired them and the photographic arts . What fascinates is remembering the B-52's as in George DuBose's 1978 photograph, or Ike and Tina in Memphis in 1962, as in Ernest C. Withers' photo that shows Ike's eagle eye trained on her wailing at the mike, or Amy Arbus' 1983 black & white Madonna in a boxy coat before Kabbalah and before she was buff juxtaposed with the dizzying 2001 “Madonna I” by Andreas Gursky emphasizing the pop star in the marketplace, that is, 15 combined exposures taken over a period of days from the same vantage point at the same moment in a concert with a tiny well-lit  singer to the bottom left, when lights flash, confetti falls, and people hang upside down from Mick Jagger scaffolding mechanically lowered from the stage. Epic-scale, monumental, the celestial shot overwhelms.  Buddy Holly on the bus in a 1958 Lew Allen photo, Dennis Hopper's James Brown in 1964, a wistful Elvis at the Peabody Hotel in Memphis by Lloyd Shearer in 1956, David Gahr's 1968 Janis Joplin, Jill Furmanovsky's Joy Division in 1979 and her 1977 Sid Vicious and Nancy Spungen, Ray Stevenson's Sex Pistols on Carnaby Street in 1976, William “Popsie” Randolph's shot of the Brooklyn Paramount where Alan Freed staged his rock and roll shows in 1955, Godlis' 1976 Patti Smith outside CBGB and Stephanie Chernikowski's 1978 “Debbie Harry CBGB NYC” take you down Memory Lane.  On opening night last Thursday, the museum featured photographer Josh Cheuse DJing, while many of the photographers-Godlis, Marcia Resnick, Bob Gruen, Allan Tannenbaum among them– milled about with a film crew in tow. Bob Gruen had a birthday party a few nights Little Richard before where Bebe Buell performed songs from her new CD “Sugar” with Ronnie Spektor in attendance. On this night, with the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame celebrating across the river, the Brooklyn Museum rocked with Blondie:  Debbie Harry in black wig and black satin suit with red glitter, performing her hits: “Call Me,” “Heart of Glass,” and “One Way or Another;” her cover of Michael Jackson's “Don't Stop” was evocative, like the rest of this show, of a rich, remarkable, and resonant music history.

  • This Is It

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    Longtime Michael Jackson friend Elizabeth Taylor weighed in on This Is It, twittering: it is the brilliant movie of all time. Well, if your mother insists you are beautiful, do you believe her?  This time, Liz may have a point. Last night, all screens at the Regal Theater multiplex on 42 Street were packed for Michael Jackson's This Is It, comprised of rehearsal footage of the London concerts that would never to be performed. New York was one of 15 cities worldwide where the movie premiered simultaneously. Music moguls like Clive Davis, movie people like Spike Lee, as well as folks who had won tickets on the radio attended. By the end, several journalists who had followed and critiqued the various scandals and family disputes surrounding the pop star were elated, proclaiming Michael Jackson's artistic genius. Kenny Ortega, Jackson's collaborator on the ill-fated London concerts and "This Is It" director, scored big time. "This Is It" is a hit, featuring Jackson's signatus here songs: "Beat It," "Thriller" (staged as a horror film), "Billie Jean," as well as the behind the scenes decision made regarding every aspect including casting, lighting, costuming, etc. Early on, the movie resembles "A Chorus Line," as back up dancers and singers speak about the work, and just being on stage with Michael Jackson. Ortega's finely edited documentary makes you realize not only how alive and well MJ was in planning his extravagant come back, but how top of his form he was during this period so near to his death. His moves even when he is standing still, his rehearsal clothes, his unique voice, his humility in talking to the cast and crew: God Bless, he says gently over and over. He was crafting a message to the world, about ecology and saving our planet, and everyhere his message included the word LOVE.You might say "This Is It" sugar coats this iconic figure, but it also says much about his considerable contribution to the world. Bravo!