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24-hour musicals with no sleep
It was great to take a recess break from Bangladesh and Boston news to see One Night Stand, a documentary about the making of the 24-hour musical. This deeply euphoric film takes us on a back stage journey of this yearly show. It’s scary watching composers and lyricists try and come up with plots and songs in barely eight hours. Watching them sweat the process, hitting creative blocks and then standing up straight is like watching a blind ski team…anything can happen before they reach their six am finishing line.
Then the actors show up… talents like Cheyenne Jackson, Nellie McKay, Richard Kind and Rachel Dratch, getting their scripts, their direction and their choreography together from the morning until their 8pm curtain.
Directors Elizabeth Sperling and Trish Dalton do a great job in building the suspense by ‘dropping in’ on the groups during every stage of the process. Rachel Dratch admits to not having sung in years and watching her big eyes as she tries to squeeze out notes is a really lucky break for the film.
A play about phobias has a song about a disinfectant that is catchy even if the germs aren’t.
The adrenaline rush of the do it yourselfer musicals provides a necessary escape from all the bad news..creator Tina Fallon, says it’s very important for actors to be off book… so you can really feel the tension of them trying not to forget the words.
if a bunch of people can pull so much creativity out of themselves in a day, well what can the rest of us, humanity with thousands of years behinds us, say? At least say it with music.
The film plays at the Quad all weekend, then is on Itunes. And the next 24-hour musical is this Monday in Gramercy Park.
Lotus Eaters are hungry
Alexandra McGuiness’s debut film Lotus Eaters is oddly disturbing. It is shot so beautifully, in an ’80s soft black and white palette, with gorgeous close-ups of perfect young faces, as if torn from a fashion spread. So from the first frame, visual appetite is stirred, but very quickly dissipated by the backbiting, nastiness of this spoiled group of 25-somethings. These young Brits had me yearning for Eliza Doolittle. Who are these kids? Why aren’t they looking for jobs? Or doing their gap year in Tibet? And how can I share some of their lifestyle?
Lotus Eaters follows a group of young Londoners as they struggle to find meaning in their lives, by drinking, drugging and partying in beautiful castles. It seems that everyone is connected to old money, so it’s hard to feel too sympathetic for their plight. Instead of getting it all done and over with at Easter break in Florida they run around in costumes, picking on each other and getting high much too long. Perhaps if they were witty, but mostly they are mean… to each other, and ultimately to themselves. There are no gang rapes, but certainly a type of bullying goes on…feminists don’t exist in this realm.
Two of the leads, however, are so charming and intelligent and I want so see more of their work.Benn Northover, from Harry Potter and the Deathly Hollows: Part 2, found a way to make lost Felix attractive, despite his confusion over whom to love. Northover is a thoughtful actor and filmmaker who considers independent filmmaker Jonas Mekas a mentor.
His co-star, delicate Antonia Campbell-Hughes suggested that these characters are incapable of behaving differently from their parents — parents who have either over-indulged or simply disappeared. And her poot Alice, looking for someone to trust, puts her love in singer Charlie, (Johnny Flynn), pretty with giant addiction issues. Ms. Campbell-Hughes has an on screen presence of innocence that belies her fierce intelligence. She has just played the Austrian kidnapping victim, Natascha Kampusch in 3096 and will soon direct her first film.
The film is playing in New York.
Uh-ho, they’re here again, batten down the
hatches… looks like a whole new circus is in town and they’re ready to break the backs of tired old elephants and toss out the tear stained clowns. By this I mean, a new real estate epidemic is shaking the east village and with that the old guard are being subtly convinced that it might be easier to live in Idaho. Apparently a famous uptown real estate family are buying up east fourth street and have spent 29 million for a few buildings on east ninth. What this means for the tenants who have endured years of no heat, no water, and frontier like conditions for the priviledge of staying in their downtown, close to the heart center of a certain kind of NYU art/intelligentsia is more of the same, but worse. As the epidemics come in to turn tub in the kitchen cozies into AKEA brothels, they are made to endure contracting cnditions that would drive many people to Bellevue. From rude workers who are probably nervous about the INS themselves, to dust typhoons and bangings of heavy equipment against delicate wall structure, life has become a kind of hell on earth usually reserved for soldiers suffering flashbacks.
When the ceiling starts to crack and leaking from rusty pipes drips on your coverlet, you begin to wonder what karma you’ve earned to be paying for this fun. One tenant hit it perfectly… “the management is inept and without conscience.”
Money has become an uglier concept than even racism, because you know what that is. Money, the great seducer, has charmingly shape-shifted into crummy old apartments in a hot area, and everyone wants a piece. And screw the rest of us.
My first memory of Howard Pinter was sitting next to Sandy Mandel in a London theater and watching her head bounce up and down on her long neck during the Birthday Party. It was the same head that struggled to stay erect in front of the Trevi Fountain and at the opera at the Baths of Caracalla. We were young, it was our first trip to Europe and we hadn’t gotten much rest. And Pinter was probably way too sophisticated for our backpacking sensibilities. A few years later, I was living in London in a flat with a guy who was great friends with the actress Vivian Merchant and was regaled with gruesome stories about her difficult marriage to Pinter. But I still wasn’t tackling his material. In fact, it took me a long time to appreciate his nuanced style and even then I had to get over the fact…
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Pinter by Sands by nancy cohen-koan
My first memory of Howard Pinter was sitting next to Sandy Mandel in a London theater and watching her head bounce up and down on her long neck during the Birthday Party. It was the same head that struggled to stay erect in front of the Trevi Fountain and at the opera at the Baths of Caracalla. We were young, it was our first trip to Europe and we hadn’t gotten much rest. And Pinter was probably way too sophisticated for our backpacking sensibilities. A few years later, I was living in London in a flat with a guy who was great friends with the actress Vivian Merchant and was regaled with gruesome stories about her difficult marriage to Pinter. But I still wasn’t tackling his material. In fact, it took me a long time to appreciate his nuanced style and even then I had to get over the fact that I read he hated Americans — for the government’s policies…unfair, considering how Thatcher’s actions in Grenada, had little effect on my lifelong Anglophilia.
But a few years back I participated in a workshop at Cuny with Harry Burton that dealt with Pinter’s work with actors and my respect and admiration was deepened. And It was revived last night at a one man show at The Irish Rep called a Celebration of Harold Pinter, directed by John Malkovich and starring Julian Sands. Sands is truly a romantic actor… I loved him in Impromptu and A Room With A View, and have assiduously avoided seeing him in things like Warshlock . My gut feeling is that his comedic skills have yet to be exploited, though in this show, his improvisatory moments are very funny as well as his vulnerability.
Clearly Sands loves Pinter’s poetry and does it proud. When he is Pinter, his voice lowers to a gruffy basso and brings the outspoken man right back to life. Celebration covers many aspects of Pinter’s career, personality, politics and his very committed relationship to author Lady Antonia Fraser. Sands is so tight with Pinter that he was asked to read at the funeral ceremony in 2008, after Pinter succumbed to cancer. It is this kind of intimacy, both with the man and the material, that Mr. Sands brings to this show. Death is ever present in this show and Sands begins with a short poem that is equally cool and warm in its scope. Pinter emotionally takes no prisoners…his bold, raw style wouldn’t support Broadway, but had its birth in a country where art has been traditionally more supported. It is such a pleasure to have a better understanding on “the curse of the Pinter pauses” and beats in his writing… I would like a sequel…. Perhaps with even more silence to fully take in everything that he says. Generously, Mr. Sands mentioned that Rufus Sewell will be playing Pinter in the West End next year. Hopefully, Mr. Sands will carry on with this show as he has done since 2011.
SKYFALL
As a writer who refuses to give too much away, I will only say that Skyfall should be seen in the same theater as I saw it tonite… a huge 42nd street screen, large enough to encompass aa barrage of action, stunts and scenery…enough to satisfy even the most cynical viewer. With Roger Deakins on camera, the visuals almost feel 3D; I found myself ducking and tilting at the oncoming cars and cycles. The beginning credit art is sensational and dreamy, a nice counter point to the opening action scene. Daniel Craig is taut, and in better shape than any previous Bond. Javier Bardem has already proved his excellence in weird villainry in No Country For Old Men and does so again in this film, with the help of a blonde mop and piano teeth. A lot of the film is Judi Dench as M, a character that usually only gets a sidebar, but here is a real part of the central theme. Psychological issues are drawn – the abandoning mother, the orphan with a professional deathwish and the businesswoman who marries a poet. But mostly it’s fun… more corny than dry, though just enough humor to reduce the effect of the violence. There are no swarthy evil guys but there is an understanding that evil is different now and that terrorism is cyber thanks to Ben Whishaw’s Q, though mostly guys end up shooting at each other.
As for tradition, 007 gets his martini, bu the doesn’t criticize the barwoman for shaking not stirring. Is he softening? That ‘s what it seems like when he doesn’t pass his talent tests, but his real vulnerability only comes later with M. Though Albert Finney is gorgeous with a big beard, he seemed to have left his Scottish brogue back in London…still it’s nice to be in the Highlands and find out that James Bond actually had a childhood. Adele sings her heart out in the new theme written with Paul Epworth and I still get a thrill when Monty Norman’s original tune peeks in and out through the film.
All in all, what Danny Boyle did for the Olympics, Sam Mendes has done for Bond. Long live Brittania!
Nice Work If You Can Get It..who knew it was about love?
By sheer magical intervention I got row B seats for the above Gershwin boys musical. I was expecting more recycled tourist pablum… what could I have been thinking of? This beautifully directed show by Kathleen Marshall, induced better feelings than I have had in a year. The perfect antidote to global misery, a prohibition comedy, with a few updates for our even more insane time. Matthew Broderick is a dream, sweet, with a lovely voice and a perfect everyman persona. Sometimes I didn’t quite get his cartoonish vocal expressions..they seemed broader than his co-star’sKelly O’Hara’s more straight on performance, but he’s a real charmer who makes me want to dance again. Kelly (South Pacific) has a super clean voice and the rest of the cast are stars in this show too: Judy Kaye doing a stuffy biddy who gets released from her emotional girdle, Matt McGrath as lifetime gin runner,Robyn Hurder as the chorus girl who wants to be queen, Jennifer Laura Thompson, as a clumsy Isadora Duncan who Matthew must marry. In the show I saw, a stand-in for one of the hoods, Michael X. Martin, whose hang dog face with shades of Norton was irresistable.But enough for the live talent which also includes the great Estelle Parsons… the Gershwins wrote love songs that are still so psychologically in step that I wonder if they were channelling.I’ve always thought Someone To Watch Over Me was my theme song, although, But Not For Me seems more like it. Delishious has fun rhyme play and I’ve Got a Crush on You is sublime. But the big surprise is that I never realized that the word work in the title refers to love and how it ameliorates lots of life’s other problems… if you can get it. I got it. At least for an afternoon.
Barney’s blasted for playing with form…come on now!
As a petite woman who dreams of having legs that go up to my eyeballs next life time, I understand how the average female hates to be pitted against the likes of a Kate Moss… but the reaction that Barney‘s new Disney window display is provoking is absurd… the positive body image action group strikes me, excuse the reference to a competitor.. as.looney tunes. The conceit of taking classic figures like Mickey and Daisy Duck and putting them in designer fashion is just that… a whimsical conceit meant to curl the lips upward, not into the scowl it seems to be making in the plus size modelling industry. These are cartoon characters… of course, designer fashion looks special on a Zoe Saldana body, but the point of the window is just to take …oops, now a British reference, the mickey out on the whole thing… fashion and cartoon icons..stretched literally to ridiculous lengths… fashion is fun and absurd at the same time… designers can be absurdly serious…how hard it must have been to get their permission to dress cartoon characters in the first place…Did these people never see Fantasia, where forms are mutated like an acid trip. It’s all for art.
I have a Minnie Mouse doll and I’m going to dress her in Zak Posen… I’m sure she’ll look lovely at 8 inches high..the shoes give her another half an inch! Frankly, her womanly hips would work beautifully in a vintage Chanel I was saving for SnowWhite.
Come on guys..we got through the last debate… it’s a holiday window, not health care …ooops, I know, young girls are going to diet excessively to look like one of these stretched out characters… really? I don’t think so.
greg smith.. was that all there is?
Ok, I haven’t read the book, don’t know him personally or barely medially, but Sixty Minute’s interview with ex- Goldman Sachser Greg Smith, was just too swift to soak in the real story. Ok, couched between Medical Marijuana and ET-maker, Spielberg, it hardly stood a chance to get sexy attention.. After segment one, I was too busy thinking of whether I should move to Denver and open up a med headshop to really capture Smith’s story… but being someone who ridiculously took it upon herself to try and figure out the Abacus villains by way of a little laptop (http://www.zerohedge.com/article/big-trouble-little-goldmans-vpn-firewall-or-nyts-editorial-department) I thought I should hear the ideas of this maverick who quit the money tree on his own volition. He was asked whether he quit when he didn’t get a raise..like it’s impossible to do something for purely edthical reasons, especially when you’ve chosen the financial world for 12 years as your home base. Good question… but fair? Aren’t whistle blowers usually people who are somewhere for a long time and then hear or discover a fact that sends them reeling into new consciousness? Can’t that have been the case with Smith? The excuse that a Goldman Sachs’er gave for muppetizing their clients was weak and because the banks have had so much to do with the financial stress of this country, it would have behooved them to ask longer, deeper, questions…I understand finance so little that I can barely write an intelligent blog, but I’d like to know if others felt the same way… did Greg Smith actually get to tell his truth in his book or was the power of the company too great? We may never know.
Graham Chapman speaks out
A Liar’s Autobiography , is a strangely wonderful film adventure – a dolby 3d animated auto- biography of a dead man. According to the credits, no medium was used, only the good sense of Month Python’s Graham Chapman who recorded his voice two years before his early death at forty-eight.
Chapman, alcoholic and gay, straddled life’s highway, sometimes having his way with the world through his comic genius, and at other points, burdened with alcoholism and zealous sexual activity. As one person said upon leaving the theatre, “I’ve never heard so many versions of Sit On My Face before, referring to a musical extravaganza of this sexually liberating tune.
The film uses fourteen different animation groups to tell Graham’s story, from early childhood, through Eton, Cambridge and his success as a Python. The fantastic array of animation is aided by the real life voices of Michael Palin, Terry Jones, John Cleese and Terry Gillian all creating a breathing testament to this man’s life. Cameron Diaz also does a goofy Austrian Freud voice.
Bill Jones, Jeff Simpson and Ben Timlett direct and know their subject well. It’s a wonderful homage to the one Python whose career did not extend past being with the group. It’s often funny and quite adult and I particularly liked the Scarborough segment. Towards the end, the storyline seemed a bit dense, but perhaps that’s how his life was at the end. Still, it’s a magical mystery tour which does honor to his memory.
notjustaboutsex 