David Greenspan sets the tone for a delightful evening of theater magic by jumping onto a jewel-box stage set at the start of The Patsy. There are no doorways on this set, nor is there a ceiling; it's a three-walled cube tastefully decorated with wallpaper and a few sticks of period furniture and props. In the nonstop 75-minute solo performance that follows, Greenspan resurrects a drawing-room comedy from the 1920s—three acts of family drama, witty banter, and romance, complete with a cast of eight characters. First presented on Broadway in 1925, the play, written by Barry Conners, centers on the Harringtons, a quarrelsome middle-class family. The father is a weary travelling salesman, the mother a social-climbing complainer, the elder daughter has just snagged a rich suitor, and the younger, bookish and disregarded by the others, harbors a secret passion for her sister's former, now discarded, lover. Without ever leaving the stage, Greenspan gleefully impersonates all the characters, which includes the girls' two young beaus and two walk-ons, charting their comings and goings and their emotional ups and downs, and setting the scene as needed by reading occasional stage directions as well.
A multiple OBIE winner and Drama Desk nominee, Greenspan is a frequent and distinctive presence on the New York stage. It's not exactly a surprise to see him turn out a bravura performance. Looking back at some of his career highlights, one doesn't easily forget his over the top Other Mother in Coraline, a musical he co-wrote with composer/lyricist Stephin Merritt; his exquisitely stylized portrayal of the acerbic Harold in the 1996 revival of Mart Crowley's The Boys in the Band; or the exasperating drag queen who delivers a moving rendition of "Over the Rainbow" on the eve of the Stonewall uprising in Terrence McNally's Some Men. Going even further back in time, you might also recall his one-of-a-kind turn as a neurotic artist obsessively channeling Streisand in the 1992 Public Theater production of his own The Home Show Pieces. No stranger to multiple roles, he has also breezed singlehandedly through his own The Myopia, a 25-character cavalcade extravagantly subtitled "an epic burlesque of tragic proportion," which was revived in January last year. Continue Reading »
The origins of the shadowy totalitarian forces lurking around many corners of Jesse Ball's The Curfew are left purposefully vague. The novel is probably set in Chicago, but it doesn't matter. William Drysdale, the book's protagonist, has a daughter, Molly, who doesn't speak. His wife disappeared some years ago, after some revolution began. No one inquires as to why Molly doesn't speak. It doesn't matter. William doesn't know why his wife was (presumably) murdered. It should matter, of course, but even if it does William can't let it. The Curfew's unidentified, rarely present narrator introduces the futility of truth or emotion in these circumstances this way: "I shall introduce this city and its occupants as a series of objects whose relationship cannot be told with any certainty."
That is: When there is no art, and no debate is tolerated, and when any passerby may be secret police (and you, therefore, to any passerby, may be secret police), notions of truth or trust are slippery. For William, what solace seems to exist comes from accepting the circumstances of life in a police state: He minds his own business and plays word games with his daughter. Continue Reading »
Christine Vachon, recently awarded NewFest's Visionary Award, spoke to an audience at Lincoln Center's new Elinor Bunin Munroe Film Center about her early years in the business, her collaborations with Todd Haynes, and how she's preparing for the future.
Chris Weitz reveals how his own family inspired his immigration drama A Better Life.
Ronald Bergan remembersGeorgy Girl director Silvio Narizzano.
Polly Platt, producer and designer whose credits include a slew of former hubby Peter Bogdanovich's films, passed away on Wednesday. She was 72.
Yay. Annette Bening will channel Snooki in Kristen Wiig's new movie.
Below, Louis C.K.'s appearance on Letterman yesterday:
Links for the Day: A collection of links to items that we hope will spark discussion. We encourage our readers to submit candidates for consideration to ed@slantmagazine.com and to converse in the comments section.
AMC confirms that Frank Darabont has stepped down as The Walking Dead's showrunner, replaced by Glenn Mazzara, a writer and executive producer on the show.
The Venice Film Festival lineup has been finalized.
Links for the Day: A collection of links to items that we hope will spark discussion. We encourage our readers to submit candidates for consideration to ed@slantmagazine.com and to converse in the comments section.
[Editor's Note: This is the latest entry in our annual "Summer of…" series, co-presented by Aaron Aradillas of Blog Talk Radio's Back By Midnight and Jamey DuVall and Jerry Dennis of Blog Talk Radio's Movie Geeks United!Howard the Duck was released in theaters on August 1st, 1986.]
Bad reputations can follow films and their makers for years (even decades) after the initial theatrical release. Sometimes this stigma is completely unwarranted, like with Elaine May's scathing and brilliant absurdist comedy Ishtar. But in other cases, a film can actually high jump past their shit-status by leaps and bounds, cresting into a completely new realm defined by non-verbal astonishment.
Howard the Duck is one such cinematic atrocity. Audiences and critics knew it was terrible in August of 1986 when Lucasfilm and Universal Pictures released the film, and I damn well know it in 2011 having recently suffered through its nearly 2-hour runtime. Willard Huyck's clumsy melding of comedy, science fiction and film noir is so misguided you have to wonder if the filmmakers even understood the genres they were referencing. So if Howard the Duck has a rightful place in the canon of worst films ever, why the hell would anybody volunteer to write about it? Continue Reading »
The summer keeps going as we talk shop with Robert Greene and his new documentary Fake It So Real, which opens tomorrow at Rooftop Films in Brooklyn with a special post-screening wrestling match. We talk a bit about his previous doc, Kati with an I, and delve a bit into wrestling terminology just to make Vadim's eyes gloss over like a good mark would.
Then we go into a minor spoiler about the film, which you'd otherwise never learn; the cinema of grown men slapping each other around; and the rather intimate presentation that Greene brings to the week-in-the-life of this cultural event that is slowly becoming more and more commercial despite the local roots of the thing. I'd also add [INSERT COMMENTARY ABOUT INDEPENDENT FILM AND WRESTLING HERE]. It's very apt, no? But we go into the day-to-day of these men who want nothing more than a chance to break into an industry dominated by a single conglomerate (WWE) that does get name-checked—and has been in the news recently as one of their more high profile stars audibly broke character and then left.
And with that, the Grassroots podcast goes on hiatus as we deal with other things like the summer heat wave, possibly going to Cape Cod for a while and sitting in Film Forum for the remainder of the Pre-Code series. As always, if you see us at the bar, buy us a drink or get us our checks on time. Cheers! (JL) Continue Reading »
Most of the lineup has been released for this year's Toronto Film Festival.
Whit Stillman's Damsels in Distress is set to close the 68th Venice Film Festival on Saturday, September 10th. Related: Expect to see Roman Polanski, David Cronenberg, and Steven Soderbergh there.
Links for the Day: A collection of links to items that we hope will spark discussion. We encourage our readers to submit candidates for consideration to ed@slantmagazine.com and to converse in the comments section.
Judy Garland was a few hundred thousand dollars in debt. It was the early 1960s, and she was still paying off taxes from the early 1950s. Enter wily David Begelman, a talent manager who brokered a deal with CBS for Garland to host a weekly television show and draw a weekly television paycheck, allowing the always-troubled, often performance-averse singer to pay down her debts and gain a measure of financial security. Judy was ready for some financial security, and she pulled herself together and buckled down to make it work. Many of her performances on the series qualify as personal-best renditions of the classics she's still known for. The Judy Garland Show was the actress' final public flowering, a last-gasp, Camelot-era incarnation that ended soon after Kennedy was shot (right after his assassination, Garland broadcast "Battle Hymn of the Republic" across the nation's airwaves).
To read the rest of the article at Alt Screen, click here.
M83, "Midnight City." The first glimpse into what Anthony Gonzalez describes as his most "epic" album to date paints a clear portrait of an artist re-engergized and at the height of his creative capabilities. Bursting out of the gate with sharply serrated vocals backed by a heavy, assertive synth beat, "Midnight City" initiates with a resounding jumpstart and never hits the breaks from there. The song is a tightly knit sonic roller coaster, sparing no expense in exhibiting Gonzalez's understanding of what amounts to musical magnificence. "Kim & Jessie" this is not; there's scarce emotional substance at play lyrically, yet the overall vibe of the track absolutely glistens with the sheen of pure, wild elation. Mike LeChevallier
Why House Republicans are confident they have the upper hand in the debt-ceiling negotiations.
Download my girl Robyn's cover of "Every Teardrop Is a Waterfall" here.
Tune in to General Hospital today as the ubiquitous you know who makes a return appearance.
The muppets from Sesame Street break it down to my favorite Beastie Boys track.
Below is Michel Gondry's music video for Björk's "Crystalline":
Links for the Day: A collection of links to items that we hope will spark discussion. We encourage our readers to submit candidates for consideration to ed@slantmagazine.com and to converse in the comments section.
[Editor's Note: Our coverage of the San Francisco Silent Film Festival is cross-posted at Parallax View.]
Silent cinema was uniquely suited to shooting in extreme conditions. Without worries of sound recording, cameras could be taken almost anywhere a person could go, especially in the twenties, as equipment became more portable. But even in the early days of silent cinema, cameras were being hauled all over the world to capture parts of the world most American audiences had never seen and likely never would, except through the cinema eye. It began with the Lumiere "actuality" programs, which took the travel lecture slideshow and transformed them into packages of moving picture postcards and sent them to theaters where everyone could see them. (See Kino's Lumiere Brothers First Films for a well curated selection of these early travel films.) But that was only a hint at the wonders to come.
That's a grand introduction to a pair of films that share little more than extreme snowy climes (Antarctica and the wilds of Northern Sweden) and a determination to film in the extreme conditions of said locations, but I use it as a reminder that the silent cinema was far more adventurous in taking cameras to otherwise inhospitable and difficult locations than the subsequent sound era, when the machinery of moviemaking became much more cumbersome. Of course, things changed when lightweight news cameras and, more recently, digital video made it easier to carry cameras into difficult situations, but that was years later. Until then, films like The Blizzard (1923) and The Great White Silence (1924) were the great true-life adventure cinema of the 20th century. Continue Reading »
Amid the apocalyptic overtones of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2, a moment of real magic and rare levity occurs when Minerva McGonagall (Maggie Smith), after summoning an army of knight statues to protect Hogwarts from impending attack, excitedly admits, "I've always wanted to do that spell!" Yes, professor, and we've always wanted to see you perform it; or, at least those of us who have slogged through seven books and seven movies. To see Maggie Smith deliver these words with the wonderment of a child fittingly captures the sentiments many viewers will have about seeing this long film journey reach its end. Most of the characters shown in the moments to follow—as an orb-like shield slowly forms around the castle—have either played a key role in one entry in the series or have been in the background through many of them. But that hardly matters; because after so many films these faces become embedded in a world we have seen unfold across a decade's worth of cinema.
The aforementioned scene is a microcosm for Deathly Hallows: Part 2. Director David Yates seems to want this final installment in the series to capture the excitement of the moment but also to strike up nostalgia for all that has gone before. It achieves both of these in various moments throughout, but it doesn't quite sync with what has building in the previous two or three films, somewhat to my disappointment. To try to make sense of this requires some back-pedaling, if you will indulge me. I have written these commentaries from the perspective of knowing many of the ins and outs of author J.K. Rowling's opus. I have argued that as the films have grown more confusing to those who have not pored over the novels, they have grown more interesting filmically on a roughly parallel track. Despite the often-clunky writing and plotting, each of the films (perhaps with the exception of Goblet of Fire) dating back to Prisoner of Azkaban has developed its own beat and affective state. I have noted previously that Alfonso Cuarón's Azkaban will likely be recalled as the film that allowed much of this to happen. Continue Reading »
Amy Winehouse, the Grammy-award winning singer who has battled addiction problems for years, was found dead on Saturday at her apartment in London, the police said. She was 27.
Michael Cacoyannis, the Cyprus-born filmmaker and screenwriter who directed the 1964 film classic Zorba the Greek, starring Anthony Quinn, has died at an Athens hospital. He was 89.
Related: Christopher Hitchens wonders why so many "experts" declared the Oslo attacks to be the work of Islamic terrorists.
The end of July means the start of the awards season. Click here for The Guardian's 50 Oscar tips, ranked in order, from bottom to top.
David Sterritt reviews Todd Solondz's Life During Wartime, out tomorrow on DVD/Blu-ray from the Criterion Collection.
Yesterday, same-sex marriage became officially legal in New York. Two women, both grandmothers, became the state's first legally wed came-sex couple. And below, Michael Furey and Bienvenido Amagna were the first ever gay couple legally wed in Brooklyn:
Links for the Day: A collection of links to items that we hope will spark discussion. We encourage our readers to submit candidates for consideration to ed@slantmagazine.com and to converse in the comments section.
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1 (2010) is the first film in the series not to be based on a full novel. It is instead rigorously adapted from roughly the first three-fifths of J.K. Rowling's final tome. Both the studio and filmmakers took heat when they announced that the book would be split into two movies. To categorize this decision as anything other than a ploy to generate more revenues would be difficult; suffice to say that it was perhaps inevitable for reasons of storytelling, as well. For starters, Rowling's exposition-heavy approach in the later novels veers on exhausting. This, coupled with the strict established approach of Steve Kloves' adaptations, dictated that the film follow the novel closely and all but demanded that the adaptation be cut down the middle. Given the circumstances, Deathly Hallows: Part 1 inescapably feels truncated. As such, it lacks concrete structure and is more episodic than other installments. These might be considered flaws if we're measuring by a certain standard. But as an experiment in stuttering and disrupting the narrative flow established and honored over the six previous entries, the movie is a curiously compelling beast.
Narrative structure is one of the steadiest elements of the Potter films. Each tale picks up at the end of the summer with Harry and company preparing to return to Hogwarts. After some rudimentary setup they arrive at school, where the story generally stays put. Here, Hogwarts has no presence. Harry (Daniel Radcliffe), Ron (Rupert Grint) and Hermione (Emma Watson) dodge their final year to journey across Britain in pursuit of horcruxes that hold pieces of Voldemort's soul. The urgency to find the horcruxes is counteracted by the trio's lack of leads as to how to acquire them. Throughout their journey, Harry, Ron and Hermione return to places they have visited in films past—such as the Weasley home and the Ministry of Magic—before ending up in the wilderness, away from most of civilization but not from danger. Continue Reading »
In my previous essay, I noted that Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix was the first work to recognize the limitations that come with functioning as part of a larger mosaic. It provided fewer restatements of common themes and less background for its developments. The irony is that while Phoenix more heavily depended on a keen familiarity with its predecessors, the considerably richer and challenging visual language elevated it to become a distinctive vision unto itself. Its successor, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (2009), furthers this progression in a different fashion. The novel's central plot device involving Harry's discovery of an old book belonging to "The Half-Blood Prince," from which he learns mysterious new spells, is barely a footnote here. However, that the film's title is rather inconsequential turns out to be a major asset, as director David Yates shirks narrative unity and instead concentrates intensely on the feelings of pain, guilt, and anxiety that underlie the proceedings.
Harry (Daniel Radcliffe) and Dumbledore's (Michael Gambon) relationship provides the emotional core of the film. Together they seek to understand Voldemort's power by investigating Dumbledore's memories of the Dark Lord from when he was a student at Hogwarts. These memories are held in small vials, which, when poured into the Pensieve, enable one to live them out. The visualization of these memories is composed of several conventions of the movie dream sequence, including distorted sound and washed-out colors. Although the memories themselves are not exceptional, the film on the whole has an inimitable dreamlike characteristic. Many scenes and images unfold with little attention toward logical progression. Yates' assured and sensory aesthetic sets the film apart from previous installments, even his own predecessor. The director revels in the dimensionality of cinematic space, weaving through tighter and more vertical alleyways (such as in Diagon Alley) and around staircases and hallways in Hogwarts. Angles are pronounced, movements are slow, and distances have depth and focus. Bruno Delbonnel's darker and earthier photography suggests a more human focus and a moody atmosphere, and composer Nicholas Hooper's score is restrained and (perhaps in a nod to John Williams' music for the third film) often accentuates a single instrument with a light sound that fills the image. Continue Reading »
David Greenspan sets the tone for a delightful evening of theater magic by jumping onto a jewel-box stage set at the start of The Patsy. There are no doorways on this set, nor is there a ceiling; it's a three-walled cube tastefully decorated with wallpaper and a few sticks of period furniture and props. In the nonstop 75-minute solo performance that follows, Greenspan resurrects a drawing-room comedy from the 1920s—three acts of family drama, witty banter, and romance, complete with a cast of eight characters. First presented on Broadway in 1925, the play, written by Barry Conners, centers on the Harringtons, a quarrelsome middle-class family. The father is a weary travelling salesman, the mother a social-climbing complainer, the elder daughter has just snagged a rich suitor, and the younger, bookish and disregarded by the others, harbors a secret passion for her sister's former, now discarded, lover. Without ever leaving the stage, Greenspan gleefully impersonates all the characters, which includes the girls' two young beaus and two walk-ons, charting their comings and goings and their emotional ups and downs, and setting the scene as needed by reading occasional stage directions as well.
The origins of the shadowy totalitarian forces lurking around many corners of Jesse Ball's The Curfew are left purposefully vague. The novel is probably set in Chicago, but it doesn't matter. William Drysdale, the book's protagonist, has a daughter, Molly, who doesn't speak. His wife disappeared some years ago, after some revolution began. No one inquires as to why Molly doesn't speak. It doesn't matter. William doesn't know why his wife was (presumably) murdered. It should matter, of course, but even if it does William can't let it. The Curfew's unidentified, rarely present narrator introduces the futility of truth or emotion in these circumstances this way: "I shall introduce this city and its occupants as a series of objects whose relationship cannot be told with any certainty."
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