recent posts
- Marisa Tomei and Matthew Broderick at Guild Hall: The Plight of an Upper West Side Arts Space Gives A-List Actors The Big Chill
- Raul Esparza and Lily Rabe in The Winter’s Tale: Wet in Central Park
- Authors Night in East Hampton: If it’s Not One Thing It’s Your Mother
- Documentaries: Jocelyn Wildenstein The Lion Queen/ Tovah: How Jewish is It?
- Hamptons Journal: John Waters at Guild Hall: “Gay is not Enough” / “Cagney” at Bay Street/ “Signs” at the Bridgehampton Museum Tractor Barn
-
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. -
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.
-
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. -
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.
-
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 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.
-
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
-
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.
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.
-
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
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
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.
-
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!
-
The Year of Magical Thinking, a one-woman play based on Joan Didion's 2005 memoir of the same name, was a hit on Broadway in 2007, directed by David Hare. On Monday, the play was reprised for a farewell performance by the premiere actress of her generation Vanessa Redgrave, who as fate would have it inhabits the role in a most ironic way. Centered on the year when Didion lost both her husband, the writer John Gregory Dunne, and her beloved daughter Quintana, the play could resonate with anyone's loss, but Redgrave was meant to perform it just when her daughter Natasha Richardson died in a freak accident skiing with her sons, and it made last night's benefit for UNICEF at The Cathedral of St. John the Divine even more poignant. Vanessa Redgrave spoke the words of Joan Didion, explaining, magical thinking is when you decide not to throw away the deceased's shoes, as he will need them when he returns. It's a trick of the mind, a cushion if you will, against the full impact of the unbearable. A performance by a string ensemble, young musicians from the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra, created by Daniel Barenboim and Edward Said to promote a dialogue among Israelis, Palestinians and other Arabs, preceded the play. At the evening's end, both Redgrave and Didion took bows, each overwhelmed by roses. The audience: Lynn Redgrave, Wallace Shawn, Christine Baranski among those in the cavernous church, as well as another premiere actress of her generation, Meryl Streep, hung back for a while, unable to leave. Stephen Daldry observed of Redgrave, “She is one strong woman.” That goes for Joan Didion too.
-
If the view from under the Brighton Beach el is not quite today's world vision, it offers a nostalgia trip to the late1930's that is worth glimpsing, especially through Neil Simon's round lenses. The subject of Brighton Beach Memoirs, directed by David Cromer, is a budding writer's coming of age. Eugene Morris Jerome, a stand-in for the playwright played by Noah Robbins, a young actor who somewhat resembles Adrien Brody if he were a nerd, narrates the story of his family as he, post-Bar Mitzvah, still home, ventures toward young manhood. He is aided along the way by parents at a time when father knew best, and mother, worried and fed her brood-as fits their economy, liver and lima beans. From an upstairs bedroom in the two-story house, a set beautifully designed by John Lee Beatty, Eugene's brother Stanley (in an excellent performance by Santino Fontana) coaches his younger brother in the fine arts of masturbation and voyeurism, particularly centered around their cousin who along with her mother and sister is now living with them. A war on the other side of the world threatens to provide them with yet another set of relatives escaping Hitler, and you know that this household, though scrapping along between paychecks, would accommodate the expansion. The story follows the rhythms of each character, Eugene's widowed aunt, Blanche (performed winningly by Woody Allen veteran Jessica Hecht), the young sickly Laurie (Gracie Bea Lawrence) studying for her history test, her older sister Nora (Alexandra Socha) headed for Broadway, or probably not, as she goes out at all hours sporting red lipstick. Stanley, himself trying to figure out his next moment, may join the army, and while the upstairs bedrooms and porch provide places for family members to converse and conspire, all come together at the dinner table, where Eugene drops his napkin, the better to see what's under Nora's skirt, and where the others succeed or fail to speak their mind. Overseeing all is Kate Jerome (a good Laurie Metcalf in a role made famous by Linda Lavin) whose illogical logic as mom, through Simon's one- liners and a lot of rolling eyeball, is often the butt and source of the play's abundant humor. You see the hardship of this quintessential Jewish mother in her calculated shtick. But you wish for more warmth, a heimish-je ne sais quoi quality in Jewish family life that is missing and necessary to make this batter leaven and rise. Needless to say, Eugene finally sees the peaks of the Himalayas. You may think you know what this means but see the play to get the full funny impact. In November, this revival will play in repertory with its sequel, Broadway Bound, and I for one can't wait.
-
The anticipation for Memphis, a new musical with an original book, was palpable. As far as Broadway musicals go, it's been a long season of revivals. But, despite its entertaining, energetic appeal, Memphis sounds like something you've heard before. Take a bit of Hairspray (crossing the race divide in music) and sprinkle with Dreamgirls (black showgirl on the rise) and you get the genre. The music by Bon Jovi's David Bryan and Joe DiPietro evokes period rock, blues and gospel, managing to miss the real Memphis, especially its sound in the '50's, aching with themes of interracial romance and cultural change. Martin Luther King Jr. died in Memphis. Memphis was Stax Records' home. Failing to utilize the unique Memphis sound is a big mistake, a failed opportunity that makes you wonder why the talents who put together this show chose this historically rich city at all. Still, Chad Kimball winningly plays Huey Calhoun, a white boy who stumbles into a Beale Street black saloon one night lured by the sound. There he meets the love of his life, a fired up singer named Felicia (Montego Glover), her brother Delray (J. Bernard Calloway) who owns the joint, and a bartender Gator (Derrick Baskin), silent after seeing his father lynched. After following his passion for this music, transgressive for the time, Huey becomes the number one DJ at the radio station where he befriends James Monroe Iglehart as Bobby, a janitor whose dancing is especially good, defying his robust figure. Over all, Sergio Trujillo's choreography soars. Huey's mother (Cass Morgan) is not too keen on her son's fixation with the black subculture but by Act II, she's joined their church. On opening night, the legendary ducks from Memphis's Peabody Hotel were imported for publicity, providing a nod to that great American city. To know its authentic musical history, though, see D. A. Pennebaker's documentary, Only the Strong Survive: Rufus Thomas and his daughter Carla, now that's Memphis.
And, this past weekend Marilyn Maye wrapped up an eleven-night reprise of her homage to Johnny Mercer at the Metropolitan Room. Front row center in this intimate club sat her regulars, the guys who attended every performance for this sharp 81 year old whose energy seems as unstoppable as her voice. Scattered elsewhere were Frank Langella, Tyne Daly, Phyllis Newman and Michael Feinstein. If you want to talk about authentic saloon singing, it was right here
-
What can you say about a woman who vanishes in the proverbial thin air? The mysteries about the remarkable Amelia Earhart and her disappearance in 1937 with her navigator Fred Noonan (Christopher Eccleston) over the Pacific Ocean persist and make ideal fodder for biographies and biopics. As Amelia, in the new movie directed by Mira Nair, Hilary Swank sports a boyish haircut that reminds us of her Oscar winning role in Boys Don't Cry. Earhart is the ideal and idealized woman of her time, a role model for young aviatrixes, and women everywhere. When asked for advice, she says, Don't let anyone turn you around, a great message for anyone gifted with her passion. Aside from flying, she also has a knack for finding wonderful, enabling men: her husband George Putnam (Richard Gere still a heartthrob with silver hair) and lover Gene Vidal (a debonair Ewan McGregor). Yes, there is a cameo of his son, the young Gore Vidal, but my favorite is scene-stealing Cherry Jones as Eleanor Roosevelt when Amelia takes the first lady for a midnight spin. The movie features many in air scenes of canyons, deserts, gorgeous views galore shot in radiant light, as well as the pilots in their storm-hounded cockpits. Also highlighted is how Amelia Earhart was marketed in her time, posing for clothing ads in trendy plaid shirts and jumpsuits, endorsing a line of luggage. That aspect of her career was underscored at the movie's world premiere on Tuesday night with an afterparty at Bloomingdale's also sponsored by Vanity Fair. Celebrants-Harry Connick Jr. and Julie Taymor among them–filed past the purses, ascended the escalator to the third floor, and munched on hors d'ouevres amidst the Missonis. Fashions worn by the fictional Earhart were on display. This glossy film works best as a romance thrillingly propelled by the tragic irony of the lead's demise. Hilary Swank is surely on her way to well-deserved nominations and awards for her performance. As a portrait of a historic figure, Amelia Earhart remains elusive, flawlessly imagined, and as vapid as the mists.
Graphic Design: Salpeter Ventura
-
The revival of David Mamet's 1992 Oleanna in current production at the Golden Theater stars one of my favorite actors Bill Pullman whose elastic face and frenetic movements are on full display in this theatrical pas de deux with the patrician, cool Julia Stiles. They play John, a professor on the verge of tenure and closing on a new house, and Carol, a student who is failing his class. As with all Mamet's plays-most recently seen in last year's superb production of “Speed the Plow”-the subject is language, the rapid fire staccato of one liners, half completed words, thoughtful and thoughtless arguments that make up contemporary conversation, confrontation, and conflict. Oleanna became topical in its day as it coincided with the Clarence Thomas/ Anita Hill contretemps, which was its good fortune and bad. Something is lost when Mamet is used to exemplify sociology or current events. Post scandal for 2009, Oleanna has been resurrected to examine these issues anew. That seems to be the premise of the talk-backs scheduled at play's end to engage the audience with issues of possible sexual harassment. Whose side are you on? Experts-in legal fields, psychiatry, want us to engage in this discourse as led by the jovial comic radio host Lionel last night. (Other hosts will fare otherwise, I'm sure.) Well, I am on the side of good theater. I am also drawn to Bill Pullman who, even when his character is rudely and tragically taking calls on his cell phone instead of giving Carol her due attention, is still mesmerizing, a good reason to see this play. A confession, I never understood how Meg Ryan's character could abandon him in “Sleepless in Seattle.” In “A League of Their Own,” I understood Geena Davis' character leaving baseball when he returns from war. And, when Sandra Bullock's character falls for him in “While You Were Sleeping,” I was already there. The eminent culture critic Greil Marcus in his book “The Shape of Things to Come” waxes poetic on the subject of Bill Pullman's face in David Lynch's masterpiece, “Lost Highway.” Pullman, for his part, is as proud of the fine work he does in theater as he is in the romantic comedies for which he is best known: he performed on Broadway in Edward Albee's “Who is Sylvia? or The Goat” and more recently in “Peter and Jerry,” and wrote a play that was produced in San Francisco. Not surprising, in person his face is extraordinarily expressive as he enthuses about his roles. In the movie “Bottle Shock,” for example, he said about shooting one pivotal scene in which lacking a corkscrew, he assails a bottle with an unsheathed scabbard. The bottle was scored, he said, and at first the top just flipped over limply instead of flying off with gusto. That's an apt image for this play: veering off Mamet's prodigious verbal strength, even at the end when John and Carol get physical, this Oleanna has the same flat effect.
-
Beat era poet Ira Cohen eloquently sets the mood for Abel Ferrara's new movie, Chelsea on the Rocks about the legendary hotel on 23rd Street, reciting his own verse. Ferrara, the downtown filmmaker who recently made Go Go Tales, one of the hits of last year's New York Film Festival, seems to want to mark the end of an era showing how the hotel is turning a corner from being a haven for down and out artists, writers and rock stars, and a locus for anyone coming to town with a yearning for bohemia or just wanting to be hip, to becoming a cash cow for a new set of corporate type owners. Famously, Sex Pistol's Sid Vicious killed Nancy Spungeon there, and then killed himself. What was it like in those glamorous years? Tenants used to say, you didn't want to share an elevator with this pair. They just might fall on you. Including interviews with Dennis Hopper, Raymond Foye, Zev Greenfield and others, the film is more a tableau of a historically rich and hash feuled milieu akin to the Beat Hotel in Paris in the late '50's and early '60's than a traditional documentary. Prior hotelier and art lover Stanley Bard famously gave Ethan Hawke a free room when his marriage to Uma Thurman broke up. The nostalgic mood is, we will never see his like again.A photo of William S. Burroughs with Andy Warhol hanging out at the Chelsea is resonant. This marks the 50th anniversary of the publication of Burroughs's iconic Naked Lunch. This guru of the beat movement will be feted at St. Mark's Church, New York University, Columbia University and School of Visual Arts., and will feature a group reading by Genesis P. Orridge, John Giorno, and Simon Pettet on Wednesday at St. Mark's Church, a panel of Burroughs influenced writers on Thursday at NYU including Penny Arcade and Jurgen Ploog. On Friday, Columbia University presents an exhibition of manuscripts at Butler Library as well as panels featuring biographer Barry Miles and Grove Press publisher Barney Rosset who first put out the outrageous Naked Lunch in America. On Saturday, at Visual Arts Theater on 23 Street, a film program including the East Coast premiere of the Danish documentary Words of Advice and excerpts from Alan Govenar's Beat Hotel is followed by performers and poets: Anne Waldman, Eric Anderson, and Michael McClure. Saturday Night Live's Hal Willner brings surprise guests to the table, hosted by yours truly. For more information: http://www.nakedlunch.org.
-
In his introduction to the iconic book of photographs, The Americans, Jack Kerouac wrote, You Got Eyes, honoring photographer Robert Frank as if he were a jazzman, You Can Play. Now these words are writ large at the Metropolitan Museum's fine show, Looking In, exhibiting the 83 photos that were published in the original book from the mid-1950's, some contact sheets that reveal much about how this artist made his choices and cropped his work, as well as earlier photo sequences and related essays and correspondence. The result is a thrilling glimpse into the development of Frank's unique sensibility, and a prophetic time capsule. There aren't many works that changed the way people see: this book is one of them.
The Americans, like Kerouac's On the Road, reflects a cross-country car trip. Its vision is a sad America of individuals caught in a wide expanse of highways, connecting, but not, disenfranchised from the American Dream. Robert Frank, having recently arrived from Switzerland, made the trip on a Guggenheim scholarship in 1955-6, and its look at America is one that you could argue can only be seen by an outsider: An empty chair in a barbershop seen through a screen door in McClellanville, South Carolina. U.S. 285 in New Mexico, the line dividing the road leading to a hazy horizon. Drugstore in Detroit, the black counter woman serving whites with large posters advertising “Orange Whip 10 cents” looming overhead. A movie premiere in Hollywood shows a glamorous blond with a far off gaze, background animated onlookers in focus. Robert Frank's family huddled in the back seat of a car, its headlight beaming.
The catalogue accompanying the exhibition features excellent essays providing the backstory to Frank's road trip as well as the history of the book's critical reception. Luc Sante relates the vision in The Americans to another Frank/Kerouac collaboration, the film Pull My Daisy. “The intersection of the two men may have lasted less than two years, finally, but it was momentous, with echoes that have persisted ever since. The road they separately traveled and chronicled has done nothing but expand in the popular imagination, becoming the site for a paradigmatic rite of passage.”
Interestingly enough, the opening of the Met's exhibition coincides with the release of Michael Moore's new satiric opus, “Capitalism: A Love Story,” and the timing could not be more apt, as each reveals an underbelly of America, beatific citizens somehow left behind. With respect to Obama-bashers and their ilk, these are “real Americans,” for anyone with eyes. -
The Oak Room at the Plaza was chockablock with funny women, celebrating Joy Behar's new television show on HLN, to premiere on September 29, where this funny woman will opine on pop culture to politics. It's a yenta convention, observed one partier. Introducing Joy, Barbara Walters quipped that she thought it would be Star Jones or Rosie who would graduate from “The View” -neither was present. After Walters' very public contretemps, they were not expected. And Joy Behar who will retain that coveted View seat countered Barbara's accolades, saying that Libya's President Mouammar Kadhafi had a built a tent in Bedford just for his interview. He was waiting for Barbara now. (In fact, at the UN across town, world leaders were clogging the streets. Outside the Plaza, sat a motorcade with chauffeurs talked Turkish into their cell phones.) And so the evening went: Lorraine Bracco could not walk in her skyhigh platforms. “What was I thinking? She said stumbling over for a photo. My kids insisted,” said the former shrink on the Sopranos who told me she was on her way to LA to film a pilot for a new HBO series. Suze Orman was not dispensing advice on money for the evening, but for this occasion comedy is recession proof: champagne, filet and a magnificent salmon. Others on the scene: Joan Rivers, Angela LaGreca, Hoda Kotb, and guys too, like Larry King, Bob Balaban and Reverend Al Sharpton. Susie Essman said she wrote up the experience of having her bridal announcement on the pages of the New York Times-that's chapter 11 of her new book, “What Would Susie Say?” (October, 2009). “Curb Your Enthusiasm” just started its new season and, as Susie Greene, when it comes to Larry, she holds nothing back. I tell her she cracks me up giving it to that Larry David, unrelenting, even if he is an SOB. She laughs, “Oh, he can take it.”
-
Filmmaker Michael Moore apologized for being late to the premiere of his new movie, Capitalism: A Love Story. President Obama, a guest on David Letterman, was clogging traffic and Moore got caught up in his motorcade. “We could have just kept going,” said Moore from the stage of Alice Tully Hall before a packed and patient audience that included actors like Allison Janney, Tovah Feldshuh, and Wallace Shawn, as well as a family, the Hackers, who had been evicted from their home on land that had been owned by their family for decades. Their tale of woe is just one illustrating the ills of capitalism limned in this typical Moore satire. Yes, this big hearted guy is up to the old shenanigans, those high jinks we've grown to love from his Roger & Me, featured in the New York Film Festival 20 years ago, through such Moore classics as Bowling For Columbine, Fahrenheit 911, Sicko, only this time the ironies cut even closer to the bone. Sure, some of his visual riffs run inconclusive, manipulated to make a point about enemies as familiar as Bank of America, Citicorp, and Goldman Sachs, and a government who, since 1980, in Moore's estimation, runs our country like a corporation without compassion or even the checks and balances in place that made our country so successful in the post Depression era. Not only do you see people evicted from their homes, corporations that take life insurance policies out on their employees thereby benefiting from their deaths, but we also see civil disobedience: workers refusing to leave a factory without the pay owed to them, and a family squatting in the home from which they were evicted, the legal theft, a byproduct of capitalism. Moore shows clergymen denouncing capitalism as evil and, in a hilarious visual, Bush invoking national fear while the room around him crumbles. What is the cure to capitalism? Democracy, says Moore.Whatever you may think of Michael Moore and his movies, one great reason to see this one is the footage he uncovered in an archive in South Carolina of President Roosevelt's Second Bill of Rights which ensures the right of individuals to have a job, a fair wage, and health care. Said Moore in the Q&A with Tina Brown following the film, “Americans are going to see for the first time what Roosevelt hoped this country could be.” Someone from the audience then asked, does he think Obama has lived up to his expectations. “I want Obama to see my film,” he replied. “I think the Justice Department should conduct an investigation of Goldman Sachs. My movies are acts of patriotism and hope.”One further irony: large tour buses took the euphoric crowd downtown to a lavish after party in a penthouse one could only be describe as illustrating another side of capitalism: a show apartment with spectacular views and game rooms clearly meant for a Master of the Universe, or at least, a hedge fund guy from the 1990's.
gossipcentral.com 