SEE HOW THEY RUN is a handsomely mounted period piece with a clever premise undermined by an irksome dithering about its tone and a rampant directorial lethargy. Calling out tropes from cinema and literary mysteries with the sort of wild abandon from which the pacing would have profited, this uneven comedy takes us to 1953,… Read More »
CYRANO, MY LOVE
CYRANO MY LOVE is an ebullient comedy of errors that recounts the fraught confluence of art, commerce, and egos that gave birth to Cyrano de Bergerac, the most successful play in French theater history. As witty and wise as that character himself, it is a love letter to the creative process that spares none of… Read More »
Priscilla Queen of the Desert: The Musical — John Fisher Interview
John Fisher is a busy man. Actor, playwright, and Executive Director of Theatre Rhinoceros, the longest running queer theater in the world. Simultaneously. Such a workload prompted me to ask him when he found time to sleep when we spoke on May 12, 2017. The larger subject was Theatre Rhinoceros’ production of Priscilla, Queen of… Read More »
MIDSUMMER IN NEWTOWN
The word “safe” comes up over and over again in MIDSUMMER IN NEWTOWN, Lloyd Kramer’s elegiac yet emotionally gripping documentary about the aftereffects of the Sandy Hook Massacre on the survivors. As in, the sense of being safe has been taken from everyone involved forever. The question becomes how to deal with it. Kramer’s film… Read More »
THE SALESMAN — Asghar Farhadi
When I spoke with Asghar Farhadi during the Mill Valley Film Festival on October 14, 2016 about THE SALESMAN, one of us (me) fully anticipated that it, like his Oscar™-winning film A SEPARATION, would be nominated for an Oscar™. Neither of us could have anticipated that when it was, in fact, nominated, Farhadi would not… Read More »
Al Pacino Exalts THE HUMBLING
THE HUMBLING is a throwback to a time when attention spans were longer, characters were created out of complex and even contradictory behaviors, and the story was an extension of the characters, not a glib contrivance. Based on the 2008 novel of the same name by Philip Roth, it is a study of Simon Axler, an actor crumbling as he feels his craft drifting away leaving him in limbo between reality and delusion, comedy and tragedy, meaning and nothingness.
Richard Linklater Richard & Christian McKay on ME AND ORSON WELLES
ME AND ORSON WELLES is a fascinating glimpse of what it might have been like to work with Welles during his enfant terrible period. The film, interesting though the subject matter is, succeeds because of the way Christian McKay become Welles in all his brilliant, infuriating glory. The first thing I wanted to know when I talked… Read More »
Tom Weidlinger Has A DREAM IN HANOI
I doubt that there’s ever been a documentary quite like Tom Weidlinger’s A DREAM IN HANOI. It follows the collaboration between an American theater company with a Vietnamese on on a production of Shakespeare’s A MIDSUMMER NIGHTS’ DREAM staged in Vietnam, and performed partly in English and partly in Vietnamese. The cast and crew blend… Read More »