FILM - Tribeca 2006: Day 5

Who has time to be sick when there are all these movies to see? I'm having a blast. So's my nose. Day 5 Riccio . . .





--- Air Guitar Nation
AIr Guitar Nation is a documentary about the Air Guitar World Championships (a proud product of Finland), and America's entry into the 2003 games courtesy of David "C-Diddy" Jung and the resilient Dan "Bjorn Turoque" Crane. The concept is funny enough, and it only becomes more laughable when we follow around the people who take it seriously. It also boasts more quotable lines than any scripted film, quirky zen absurdities like: "To air is human, to air guitar is divine." Then again, as one of the "guitarists" points out, it's actually a lot less absurd to watch than figure skating, if you really, really think about it.

Though their "craft" is ridiculous, the desire to be the best in the world at something is a compelling quest, and the characters are all so sincere that it's impossible not to get sucked in. Also, so far as performance art goes, watching people play an invisible guitar in visible (and wholly ridiculous) outfits is a lot of fun. (Also a little disturbing, such as one totally nude performer who plucks away at his, er, his, um, his . . . "banjo.") No matter how wacky, Alexendra Lipsitz's direction keeps the film steady, and the narrative arc is quite satisfying, if not a little too pat (as if it were scripted, even).

For a movie that is literally about nothing, in the purest sense of the word, Air Guitar Nation hits a lot of the right notes, and is anything but a bunch of hot air.

--- American Cannibal: The Road to Reality
American Cannibal, a surprisingly sleek and scathing documentary by Perry Grebin and Michael Nigro lacks only one thing: full access to their subject, "American Cannibal," a reality TV show pitched by two out-of-work TV writers (Gil S. Ripley and Dave Roberts) and bought by Kevin Blatt (distributor/"publicist" of the famous Hilton sex tape, A Night in Paris). As in Lost in La Mancha, everybody in this film seems to be out of control, save for the documentarians, but as informative as they are about the whole process of making TV, from pitch to production, their final act gives us all the brush off. That's more than a little rude, considering how much they make us invest in the film to that point.

American Cannibal works because it has resonant characters, a lively pace, and plenty of good humor about the whole reality TV subject. It's almost painful to watch everyone shit all over their good intentions, though as with most reality projects, there's a certain pleasure in watching a friendship (and their production company, KanDu) crumble, too. Also, it's hard to feel completely bad for them, given that the show they're producing goes beyond exploitation. The cast believes they are filming "Starvation Island" (to see who can last the longest without food); the plan is actually to test how they'll react to the prospect that they might have to resort to cannibalism. The frightening thing is that with just a little more luck and a lot more experience, "American Cannibal" might've been on your television instead of premiering at a film festival.

American Cannibal is good, solid film-making, and it's entertaining to watch. And, so far as we know, nobody died. What more could you ask of reality? (And isn't that the point?)

--- Mini's First Time
There is a first time for everything: Mini's First Time, a pitch-black comedy about a rebellious daughter who sleeps with her stepfather and uses him to kill her mother, is actually hysterical fun. Most of that has to do with the pitch-perfect casting: Alec Baldwin as the morally sketchy stepfather, Carrie-Anne Moss as the drunken whore (i.e., the mother), and Jeff Goldblum as the neighbor/pedophile. I'm sure one of those is a stretch. As for Nikki Reed, who plays Mini, she's no Lolita, and this film's a reverse on the whole concept: if anybody is using other people, it's Mini, who gets a thrill out of "firsts." That's how she first sleeps with her stepfather, in fact: being an escort is just another experiment for her.

Of course, after the murder, a persistent cop (Luke Wilson) starts closing in on the two deviant lovers (though Woody Allen might disagree), and it turns out that things aren't all fun and games. That's not entirely true though: writer/director Nick Guthe keeps all the disgusting violence as fun and games, and that's exactly what makes the whole thing so deliciously entertaining. There's no room for guilt, so it's just pleasure pleasure the whole way through, and that's a sin I don't mind committing.

--- The TV Set
The TV Set, directed and written by Jake Kasdan, is not a documentary, but I can believe that it's a fairly accurate depiction of the struggle pilots undergo to make it on air, and of the constant compromises artists endure in order to get their work through an assembly line of executives who think they know better. The casting is a little humdrum (save for Sigourney Weaver's brilliant performance as the bitch of all bitch executives), but it's not that they're bad in their roles so much as that they're playing such ordinary roles. David Duchovney (the writer) may never escape typecasting, and Ioan Griffudd (the second-in-command) is almost hiding (from Fantastic Four, perhaps?) in his role.

Like I said, The TV Set almost works better as a documentary (or, like Pittsburgh, as a docu-comedy): some of the scenes are quite slow (by necessity) and the narrative structure is a little bland and uncompelling to those who aren't looking for semi-subtle parody (it's certainly far from over-the-top). Anybody in the industry will no doubt laugh about this film over a couple of drinks, but they'll have earned those laughs. The rest of us have to work harder to appreciate the film, and that's the last thing you want out of a comedy, even a nice, simple, decent one like this.

--- Lockdown, USA
I'm sure this statement will cause someone to simply write me off as a racist, but I assure you, there is nothing sinister in my harsh assessment of Lockdown, USA as a poorly made documentary. I disagree with the message of the film (that the drug laws are "too" harsh). This is not because I want to see more people in jail; this is because Lockdown, USA hasn't convinced me that the current policy is wrong. Their linchpin case is Darryl Best, and I sympathize with the fact that an innocent man may have to spend a minimum of fifteen years behind bars (thanks to the Rockefella laws), and that his family is suffering. But that's not really the fault of the Rockefella laws so much as with the whole system of conviction; the problem is that Best's lawyers could not prove reasonable doubt against an aggressive D.A. None of these questions arise in Lockdown, USA, but that's because the film is agitprop: it isn't interested in solutions, it just wants to glorify Russell Simmons, and with him, hip-hop as a socially-conscious and mobilizing force. (If anything, it does the opposite.)

Given its presentation, Lockdown, USA is practically a comedy: Simmons doesn't know much about the law he's trying to abolish (nor, apparently, do any of his hip-hop peers, like Fat Joe). But he's got money, money he's willing to throw around in an effort to show the "power" of hip-hop (and his own munificence). This makes him look incredibly stupid (as the filthy rich often do), and is a strong argument against people like Simmons getting involved in politics. (Too bad that's not the point of this documentary.) I always had this image of Russell Simmons as the nice, laidback guy who comes out at the end of HBO's Def Poetry Jam: it's weird to hear him cursing and saying "nigger." In any case, for some "unexplicable" reason (heavy on sarcasm), he alienates the political lobbiests who recruited him to their cause in the first place, and winds up being a scapegoat for the minimal reform that Pataki eventually passes off as a "huge" achievement.

All in all, Lockdown, USA points out some interesting statistics about the increasing market for prisoners as a commodity (and hence the necessity for harsher laws to keep them there), but the whole film seems so unfounded and unfocused that it's actually hard to follow. This one-sided piece of unobjective drivel will play well to its target demographic--huge hip-hop fans--but to everyone else, it will appear simply as it is: aimless propaganda for a hopeless cause.

FILM - Tribeca 2006: Day 4

This photo doesn't show it, but at this point
I'm really, really sick. As if that's going to stop me.

--- Pittsburgh

Thank god for Jeff Goldblum. Not that he's an amazingly deep actor, or an incredibly varied performer, or anything Oscar-worthly like that. But he is sincerely insincere, and for that, we love him. His new film, Pittsburgh, is a narrative documentary that looks at Jeff Goldblum's turn as Henry Hill in a regional production of The Music Man. Goldblum quickly gets himself in too deep, drawing scorn from his agent, the love of his girlfriend, and the skepticism of his best friend (Ed Begely, Jr.). The difference between Pittsburgh and the fourth season of Curb Your Enthusiasm (where Larry David joins the cast of The Producers), is that Goldblum really did perform in the two-week production, which makes the line between reality and improvisation a lot harder to see. And that's all the merrier for the audience, since it makes the self-deprecation and parody more potent.

A couple of things don't work, such as a side-plot about Ed Begely, Jr.'s "Solarman 2000" (a portable solar device), and most of the training footage is spliced into an unsatisfying montage format. One also wonders exactly why Moby is in this film (amusing as it is to picture him as a sleazy rock star who gets off on pictures that his female fans send him of themselves masturbating). There are a lot of disconnects like this (which is bound to happen when you try to cobble together 400 hours of footage into a narrative), but when the movie sticks on point (and it usually does), it is hysterical. As the days grow longer and the performance approaches, the commentary on movie stars tackling real theater becomes more exciting, and the barbs (mostly at Goldblum's expense, e.g., the director's unkind words to him) grow ever more amusing.

There's a lot to like about Pittsburgh (the movie, at least), and it's a feel good comedy. And nobody (not even Goldblum) was hurt in the making of this film.


--- Lonely Hearts

For all the beautiful camera work and lush 1949 stylings, there's something very . . . well, lonely about Lonely Hearts. Todd Robinson does fine as a director, and he handles his actors well, but there's something oddly disconcerting about the script's dramatic structure. The violence is stark enough, but just as the troubled cop (John Travolta) is left feeling troubled at the film's end, so is the audience. It's not that justice hasn't been served, and it's not that Jared Leto and Salma Hayek don't channel pure evil as the Lonely Hearts Killers (Hayek especially) -- it is perhaps the lack of any real sideplot or anything beyond just the chase itself, and its Hollywood ending. The drama seems to have been sucked dry: we may study these characters, tortured individuals all, but we can't hope to understand them, nor are we really drawn into the struggle. There's just not enough for us to get attached to.

This is a good vehicle for all the actors attached (with the exception of James Gandolfini, who is, and will always be, a trademark character), and the vehicle itself looks slick. But by spoiling the end of the film at the beginning, and by a lot of other narrow-minded choices, Robinson doesn't actually take us anywhere, except around in a big, pointless circle.

FILM - Tribeca 2006: Day 3

--- Walker Payne
In Walker Payne, a period piece about a ne'er-do-well miner (Jason Patric) and his efforts to win back his two daughters from his bitter ex-wife (Drea de Matteo), the town itself isn't the only thing that's depressed. Through the sharp lens of director Matt Williams, the whole picture is a bleak tale--even at its most romantic--about men with limited means whose best just isn't ever good enough. By keeping the landscape and situations run-down, Williams manages to evokes sympathy for even the ex-wife (who is holding Walker's children hostage until he pays her child support or a lump sum of $5000 for her to walk away).

The stage is set for some Greek drama, for some heavy, heavy loss to go down, and the one failing of Williams is that he seems to shy away from the brutality of every shot. He struggles to find the upbeat in even the most bleak of scenes, and that lessens the raw emotion that he evokes by introducing the film's get rich quick plan: dog fighting. Despite all that Walker lacks, he's blessed with a faithful, lovable dog, one that happens to have pit-bull in him, and if he wants his children back, he'll have to gamble the life of his most innocent and loyal friend. Sam Shepard, who plays the huckster Cyrus, exudes sleaziness at every turn, and he's the one unlikeable character in the film (which also makes him quite impressive as an actor). Ultimately, it's Jason Patric's commanding performance as a haunted, desperate man that steals the film, but for some reason, villains are always more fun to watch.

The film's inevitable conclusion should come as no surprise, but it packs a sucker punch thanks to a neat little plot twist. Williams still shies away from how violent the film could have been (far from, say, Amores Perros), but for most American audiences, Walker Payne will be a welcome story of struggle, thoroughly sad and poignant.

--- Civic Duty
So it is possible for a bad director to mess up a good script. In Civic Duty, Jeff Renfroe manages to ruin good performances from Peter Krause and Khaled Abol Naga (as well as a fine appearance by West Winger Richard Schiff, more or less playing himself) and a decent (if not overly straightforward) script by Andrew Joiner. How does Renfroe pull off this magic act? A poor choice in original score, awful lighting design, and shaky camera work that doesn't fit the slick feel of the dialogue.

You could argue that Renfroe chooses the shakiness to depict Krause's increasing paranoia of his new Middle Eastern neighbor. You might say that the perpetual gloom of even the daylight outside is meant to shroud all the niceties in the darkness of suspicion. But these are technical arguments meant for a dissertation: in terms of enjoying the film, they make everything look blackwashed and given the film's already made-for-TV soundtrack, keeps the whole production very basic and redundant.

If there's suspense in the narrative--that is, if we're intrigued by Krause's unusual discoveries about his neighbor, or caught up in his meetings with a grumbly FBI agent (Schiff)--all that drama is worn away by more nagging questions, like "Why doesn't anybody turn on the lights around here? Why is it always raining? What kind of man, terrorist or otherwise, continues to provoke his neighbor?" These silly questions eclipse the more important issues of racial profiling and the American propensity for fear (and ultimately, the script's lackluster denouement seems to promote fear as our civic duty).

Civic Duty is a hot topic that grows colder every day, and the best thing for audiences everywhere might be if this film just gets iced for good.

Aaron is drowning in films!

FILM - Tribeca 2006: Day 2

You love the festival for its crowd. There's nothing better than seeing a films in a theater packed with people who actually want to see them (because they were in it, or otherwise). Even waiting in line for my press ticket . . . you go to a film festival in part for the experience itself.

--- Hatchet

A gory throwback to slasher films of yore, the only thing sharper than the hatchet in question is Adam Green's script (his directing ain't bad neither). Hatchet is surprisingly entertaining given the flimsy premise, and though we've all heard the horror schtick before ("I ain't even supposed to be here!"), when it comes right down to it, nothing beats a bunch of teens trapped in a mystical New Orleans swamp, hunted by the spirit of ol' Victor Crowley. (The choice to make two characters glorified strippers -- boobies everywhere for the first half-hour -- that doesn't hurt Hatchet's target demographic either.)

The acting is also surprisingly first-rate: these characters make their shallowness funny by playing it straight, and both the token black guy (Deon Richmond) and sassy Asian (Parry Shen) rise above stereotypes to be genuinely endearing (well, at least at times). The only problem with Hatchet is that it's more of a bludgeon than a hatchet. The entire film comes at you in brutal rushes, and the killing is never especially clever, just especially bloody. That's fine for robust horror fans, but for anyone outside that niche audience, the violence gets a little old. Luckily, Green balances the "interludes" with comedy (a certain scene with a raccoon in the bushes comes to mind), and the laughing serves as enough of a diversion to whet our appetites for more (even if it's more of the same).

Victor Crowley is no Jason (no offense to Kane Hodder, who plays them both), but there's a big fat "yet" attached there, as the one is a throwback to the other. In the meantime, this is an enthusiastic film for horror enthusiasts, one that chops to the heart of an often dull genre.

--- Fifty Pills
If you mixed American Pie with The Rules of Attraction and kept the whole thing really light, you'd get Fifty Pills, a teen coming-of-age comedy about a freshman on the verge of expulsion who turns to selling exstacy as a way out. If he can sell his roommate's fifty pills by the end of the day, he can pay off his college bills; if not, he can kiss everything he loves goodbye. This plot, based (loosely?) on writer Matthew Perniciaro's experiences at NYU leaves a lot of openings for cheap college humor, and both Perniciaro and director Theo Avgerinos leap at the chance to showcase Darren's deviant peers.

The problem they face in Fifty Pills is that none of their situations are particularly funny. Darren's roommate, Coleman (John Hensley) is a likeable bastard, but unfunny. And Darren's reactions to him (spoken through the fourth wall to the audience) come across as forced. Of the quirky cast, Darren's crush, Gracie (Kristin Bell) comes across as shallow, and the various peers get too little screentime to be anything more than anecdotes. The S&M queen who shares an apartment with her grandmother doesn't go anywhere, and while Eddie Kay Thomas is hysterical as Ralphie, a Diff'rent Strokes-obsessed addict, his reappearence later in the film is a desperate plea for laughs. Maybe the writer and director realized that the "villain," Eduardo (Michael Pena) stops being funny after the first time he mentions "crapping his pants during the hammer dance," or maybe they just don't know how to write a scene devoid of gags.

In any case, Fifty Pills operates as an average teen comedy, and since that's already well below the standards of good cinema, this is one film you can skip.

FILM - Tribeca 2006: Day 1

Three films and four hours of work later: Day 1 Riccio.

--- Day Break

Not just based on a true story, but grittily filmed and as painstakingly real as a true story, “Day Break” is a powerful Iranian film about Islamic law. At first, we enter this world through a fictional documentary, watching two prisoners on death row prepare for execution. They take a medical exam, they write out their wills, and then they walk into a large room, where they meet the families of those they have wronged. According to the law, only the next of kin can sentence a murder to death, and if they choose retribution over forgiveness, they must carry out the execution themselves. The odd case of Mansour, then, is that this is his third time to the execution chamber . . . and the third time that the family has not appeared. Mansour is now a victim of the system, and when he learns that he must wait another forty days without knowing if he is to be forgiven or killed, his in-between status becomes a torture that uses his memories and visits from his wife and family as the implement.

The whole film is powerfully acted, and, due to the camera’s close presence and early establishment of routine, unflinchingly real. When Mansour returns to the prison, still awaiting his fate, “Day Break” drops the nicety of a documentary and goes inside his head, using flashbacks to make us sympathize with his anguish. Killer or not, nobody deserves the agonizing torture of not knowing. Within these 84 minutes, director Hamid Rahmanian even manages to widen the scope to Mansour’s family, and the effect shows that going eye for an eye will not only leave the world blind, but emotionally dead.

I can’t speak for the authenticity of the film, but even simply as a psychoanalytical commentary on life, “Day Break” is extremely effective. The stark, sometimes grainy images are haunting, and the prison walls of this story are inescapable. It hardly matters: this is the film to see.

--- The Elephant King

Oh, what a difference a little change of pace can make. Seth Grossman’s story of two brothers who are polar opposites is nothing new, but his location, Thailand, makes it an immersive film. If images of elephants walking through city slums and drug-fueled jaunts through the local color don’t amuse you, Jonno Roberts, who plays the manic brother, Jake, is just as fascinating. He hits so many notes at once that his every step is a discordant symphony, and he’s a polarizing presence onscreen: things light up around him. This is a lucky find for Grossman’s script, which tends to dull things down, especially given its by-the-books approach to the cathartic final act. (You can tell this by the way Ellen Burstyn, who graces this film as Jake and Oliver’s mother, sleepwalks through her all-too-few scenes.)

As a distraction technique, shooting exotic locations is equally effective. The audience seems to forget that Jake is a con artist who fixes kickboxing fights, even when his crimes turn on him, and it’s not likely that you’ll care how haphazardly all the side-plots are discarded, like the cheap Thailand hookers Grossman loves to depict. No, we’re stuck watching Jonno Roberts traipse through Thailand like some latter-day Hunter S. Thompson in Vegas, and it’s a wild, wild ride. To Grossman’s credit, it ultimately goes somewhere creative, and given how easy it would be simply to stick with the scenery, it’s a bold choice. Beautiful and bold (but rarely both at once), “The Elephant King” is a testament to shooting on location: the real mystique will always overpower the artificial.

--- The Promise

Beauty is one thing; quality is another. Kaige Chen’s new film, “The Promise,” is China’s most expensive film ever, but you can’t buy happiness, and you can’t buy a good movie either, especially with a lackluster plot. No matter how magnificently exotic the sets are, they all come across as artificially as the characters, for there is nothing propping them up. There’s just some threadbare “promise,” one that has already been broken by Chen—that of a good film.

The introduction is jibber-jabber (for lack of a better word): for all the talk of Gods on earth, there’s only one who shows up (she gets the worst FX treatment), and she doesn’t even fight. For an epic Chinese swords-and-sorcery film, this dearth of jaw-dropping martial arts and exquisitely shot romance is inexcusable. If anything, all the effects merely clutter up the fighting sequences and love scenes: it obscures the action.

There are some interesting, if stereotypical, characters, including a slave (who is actually more than a slave), a brave general (who is actually not so brave), a beautiful princess (who is actually cursed), a mystical assassin (who is actually a nice guy), and a ruthless tyrant (who is actually . . . well, he’s actually badass). If only there were something to make all these stock characters tick. Instead, they just pose for the camera, in the lush and relentlessly awesome set, and do exactly as directed. There’s no spirit in the fighting, in the acting, or even (really) in the cinematography, which is ultimately just a lot of bloated cash rendered into sundry special effects on screen.

“The Promise” is a technical exercise, the result of cash sweeping away a director. Rather than putting together a powerful film, he shows off all that he can do, and it’s unsatisfying and far from epic. Looks are deceptive, especially if all you get is looks. (Nor are all the scenes beautiful: a stampede of bulls early in the film is sure to win the Razzie for worst CG; that, or what appears to be a “cage match” between two rivals.)

FILM - Tribeca 2006: Day Zero

Hey there, testing, testing, one, two. Is this thing still on? Today marks the grand experiment: take a full-time worker, expose him to ten days of festival screening, and see what happens to his mind. The following is a bit of cheatery, that is, films I watched prior to the festival starting. I apologize for the tomfoolery, and I'll list 'em, as always, in order of likeability.

--- Wah-Wah

Two films and Nicholas Hoult (About a Boy) is already typecast as the weird British kid who comes of age. It's only a matter of time before he grows up too much, but he's becoming a fine actor, Wah-Wah, a thoroughly British film, is also a thoroughly fun film. Yes, fun, despite the fact that his father (Gabriel Byrne) is the kind of alcoholic who not only pulls a gun on his son, but fires it. And yes, fun, even though his mother (Miranda Richardson) has a physics-defying stick up her ass, one that we see another man screwing around with while Ralph (Hoult) "sleeps" in the backseat of the car. It's a charming sort of evil, lavishly shot in any case, and one of those neccessary crimes, you know, the kind that keep the plot moving.

Emily Watson's powerhouse performance as the convention-shattering American (Ruby) who marries Ralph's father (the "shaker-upper" for those who are unfamiliar with the coming-of-age genre), that's what really keeps the film moving. A historical piece, set in the last days British rule in Swaziland, Wah-Wah is just a bunch of random noise and babble until Ruby, a real gem of a character, gives us a translation we can relate to. I never knew Watson could play such a vivacious part: Wah-Wah's real success comes from allowing her to.

Perhaps there's too much crammed into Wah-Wah's two hours: it does seem like a chaotic carousel, going around and around (where it stops, no one knows). But I wouldn't give up the shots of Carousel rehearsals, the brilliant South African landscape, or the quite moments of Ralph playing with his puppets. Well, okay, maybe I could do without the latter. The one flaw of Richard E. Grant's story and direction is that he has saddled almost all of his characters with endearing but unnecessary mannerisms, and while Aunt Gwen's (Julie Walters) constant "sun stroke" (a euphamism for inebriation) is hysterical, Ralph's facial spasms are inexplicable.

Then again, a film like Wah-Wah being more than another standard-issue coming of age . . . that's a bit inexplicable too. (Translation: Emily Watson.) But it finds charisma, grace, and some rare moments of beauty out in the desert, so here's to hobbly-jobbly breaking free of hodge-podge and making some damn jolly sense.


--- Flock of Dodos

“Flock of Dodos,” the first documentary to touch on the big Kansas debate between pompous evolutionists and shadily-backed Intelligent Designers, is a homegrown, low-budget affair that’s more often pleasing than irritating, but far from a finished product. Randy Olson, the native Kansas man behind this project, keeps a too-passive eye on the debate, ultimately eschewing sides to point out that the real issue is whether or not evolutionists can adapt (like the Dodo) to America’s need for “simple answers to complex questions.” Along the way, he paints a nice picture of the Red states as being peaceful debaters who just speak their unique common sense, but that side is as much a whitewash as the more polarized films that make southerners into fanatics and loons. Worse still, Olson’s balance is off, and the only evolutionists we see come across as being unhinged, unapproachable, and really, really pompous.

Olson also has the mistaken impression that he needs to clutter his narrative with graphic animations and in-jokes that could very well be straight out of “Super Size Me.” He doesn’t have Spurlock’s charm, or Michael Moore’s presence in front of the camera, and his circus acts are exactly what they appear to be: needless clowning. Where he excels is in his earthiness, a preternatural affability that makes him the guy next door. He’s best at his simplest, which is probably why his shining cinematic moment involves shit.

Rabbit shit, that is. In his most lucid moment, he illustrates the biggest counterpoint to intelligent design out there: the clear presence of unintelligent design. Nothing is stupider than the rabbit’s digestive system, which ferments food in the anus and forces them to re-eat what they excrete to survive. As he and his “homeboy” watch a tape of their rabbit “totally doin’ it,” it strikes the audience as just how real this moment is. Away from all the cartoons and stoic interviews, Olson actually finds a way to be honestly entertaining.

For all his unwarranted dabbling and shoddy camera work, Olson’s documentary frequently hits on bright little moments like these, and while the movie feels disjointed as a whole, these individual scenes are worth mentioning. So is his overall point: these are people just like us, but with different beliefs, and if we simply look down on this so-called “other half” of America, we’ll be the extinct ones . . . the ones who can’t adapt.

--- Lunacy

Lunacy, a Czech Republic interpretation of two Edgar Allen Poe short stories with a Marquis de Sade-type character (not too subtly called "The Marquis") lives up to its name. Erratic, often confusing, and filled with fits of meat-puppetry (stop-motion animated meat), Lunacy is a weird film, but far from the philosophical horror film it's billed as. Lunacy isn't even a horror film: aside from what we see happening to meat, we don't see anything happen to the characters, and the implications are a bit too cartoonish, caught in Jan Svankmajer's disinterested gaze. The only character who seems to fit is the protagonist, Jean Berlot (Pavel Liska), who lists across the screen like the camera itself. Because of his own idle nature, we can get swept up in what is happening to him, since he rarely does anything on his own. Unfortunately, the things that happen to him are too episodic to link together, and the heretical Church scene clashes with the mistaken burial scene, and even more so with the film's main narrative thrust in an insane asylum that is perhaps being run by a madman. Don't worry if that didn't make sense: Lunacy is meant to be crazy. It's just not mad enough.

--- Kiss Me Again

William Tyler Smith is a strange person. As a writer, he explores the illogical emotion called love, watching a “perfect” relationship succumb to the lust of bigamy and the thrill of experimentation. But as a director, he keeps everything as logical as his protagonist’s demeanor: he talks a good game, but when it comes to exploring the exotic and the irrational, he’s as scripted and solid as a Showtime special. Kiss Me Again is nothing special: it’s tame, and it’s safe, and it’s boring.

One scene stands out, in which the married couple, looking for a way to spice their way out of a romantic rut, visits a house of couples to participate in some weird communal orgy. The whole scene runs like a carnival freak show, replete with weird angles, illusions, and a whole tray full of sex toys. This sequence is disturbing and excellent . . . and it doesn’t fit the rest of the movie at all. Does Smith want to show us deviants or to does he want to peel off that stereotype, to show the normalcy beneath our sexual urges. Does he want to show us that maybe monogamy isn’t for us, no matter how good we have it?

I couldn’t tell you. Kiss Me Again is a rough hodgepodge of scenes that dance around the edge of a touchy subject. The dance all too rarely gets erotic, and the dancers stay far from the flames of passion. Casting Darrell Hammond as the best friend is an act of desperation: yes, he makes Jeremy London look better (and he’s a dead ringer for Brendan Frasier in looks only), but not that much better. By the end of the film—as the threesome gets more complicated, tangled in heartstrings—everybody is in tears, but that’s just a poor makeup job. Good news for the ASPCA, I guess: no hearts were harmed in the making of this film.

BOOK - "Liquidation"

Imre Kertesz’s novel, Liquidation, reads like one of Paul Auster’s meta-fictional detective stories. However, Kertesz isn’t interested in exploring the elements of chance that influence our life: tragedy and suffering have already written our destinies, and luck has nothing to do with it. It does require a certain wit though, and so the author allows a Nabokovian narrative to lead the first third of the text: Kingbitter is obsessed with a play called “Liquidation.” The script, often cited in the book, also has a character named Kingbitter, and this character also analyzes a play called “Liquidation.” This contextual epaulette doesn’t come across as a trapping: it flows giddily across the page, giving breath to the parallel stories: Kingbitter is trying to cope with B.’s death, and B. is struggling to come to terms with the legacy of his birth (a life founded on death).

Kingbitter happens to be a literary editor, and as such constantly flagellates the shallowness of his prose. This device allows Kertesz to find pockets of brevity in the serious material and shows the paradox of human suffering: we must know happiness to know sorrow. Another tactic used is the repetition of adjectives—not for lack of a thesaurus, but to stress the parallels: “A new day had just begun, just as superfluously as I myself was standing there superfluously in my nightdress.” The other is an unflagging use of irony: “The reason we are able to live here, the reason we have any dwelling at all, is because, luckily, the original owners were exterminated.” Perhaps this short novel does have to do with luck after all.

Writing a novel like this—an ouroboros of solipsism—can easily slip into rants, but Kertesz keeps the narrative steady and forceful, as if speaking from real need (which, so to speak, he is). Furthermore, his frequent conclusions (despite all that’s unsaid) at least give the illusion of progress (though it is clear no such ‘ending’ can ever be realized in life). “Only from our stories can we discover that our stories have come to an end, otherwise we would go on living as if there were still something for us to continue (our stories, for example); that is, we would go on living in error.”

My one regret is that the translation (or perhaps Kertesz himself) grows convoluted, sprouting incongruous sentences that break up the natural rhythms of the casual dialogue. For instance: “...in B.’s untidy yet for Kingbitter readily legible handwriting.” That’s just not a friendly phrase. Nor are the dense references to other fictions: “...like Lohengrin lying unawakened in Elsa.” I can see the point for it, and it doesn’t take too long to Google, but it makes Liquidation almost a bit too heady for its down-to-earth conclusion. A shame too, since Kertesz so simply puts Bee’s plight into words: a revolutionary must always be fighting for something, and so it figures that such a figure may eventually grow tired of “seeking new prisons.” So true: we live to find ways to keep ourselves occupied, tying ourselves to our work as if we might otherwise float away (which we, perhaps, might). This is certainly what happens to Kingbitter, who spends his days re-reading “Liquidation” (the past) and spending his present trying to find a mysterious novel that he is sure his dear friend must have left behind (the future). Kingbitter’s story is probably the most human, trapped as he is between two ever-changing moments, and his “unspeakable” affairs aren’t horrible, just horribly human.

That—life’s unfortunate truth—is something Kertesz never shies from, and his inescapable language draws the reader in: “Her face puffy, steeped to a red-raw sponge.” The one escape he offers is that of any novel: escapism. After all, “Man may live like a worm, but he writes like a God.” Auschwitz transmutes into a miracle (of birth), and then back into the tragedy of the son who cannot escape that original sin. “He did not understand my huge, unpardonable blunder of acting as if the world was not a world of murders, and of wishing to settle myself snugly down in it.” I think Bee understands too well; it is the ability to accept it that he lacks. That, perhaps, is tragedy enough.

THEATER - "Devil Land"

There are many good things about Devil Land. Unfortunately, there are also a lot bad things. Given that the play (which deals with the abduction of a young girl by a religious fanatic and her abiding husband) presents the sometimes violent story in the guise of a Seussian narrative interrupted by some disturbing and haunting scenes, let’s go through the first few highlights and problems in rhyme. If I’ve learned anything from Devil Land, it’s that an innovative presentation is like a spoonful of sugar: it helps the medicine go down.

The set is quite impressive; it’s a boiler-room from Hell,

The use of tricky lighting just accentuates the spell.

Dark shadows become thicker and the lights let in the grime,

It makes the presentation like some Freddy Kruger crime.

Down here in hot, hot Devil Land (where the bad kids go to burn)

Does crazy Beatriz (her kidnapper) simply wish to help her learn?

Can it really be a crime, goes the plot, to sin for good old God?

The bible warns us, after all, to save the child, spare not the rod.

Of course, these simple rhymes and tricks can only say so much

And when indulged or used too much, they come off like a crutch.

By the second act—I swear it’s true—the narrative works no more,

And the vicious, vicious dénouement is too mystical at its core.

Ahem. That is to say, Devil Land loses itself in the second act trying to be overly creative despite still having plenty of realism left. The pivotal revelation may be obvious to the audience, but it forces enough of a character shift to render the need for metaphorical lunacy unnecessary. Furthermore, Beatriz (played perfectly by the playwright, Desi Moreno-Penson) is already crazy enough in the physical: the play’s own regression gives her too much humanity back. It also changes Destiny (the on-again-off-again Paula Ehrenberg) from being an innocent girl to a world-weary spiritualist, and suggests too strongly that her imaginary friend, the Grinch, is more than a figment of her imagination.

Whereas we could relate to her precarious situation in the first act—chained to a bed, stuck between a burgeoning pedophile (Miguel Sierra) and his crazy wife—she seems overconfident and snide in the second, as if she were never in any danger at all. The voice of the narrator (DJ Thacker) reassures us that it’s all just a harmless story, and that it will all work itself out in the end, as good stories do, and even as it gives Devil Land a unique spin, it also takes away some of the surprise.

Thanks to the set, lighting, direction, and generally convincing performances, Devil Land manages to exude a grim mood and an unsettling realm of possibilities. It’s just a shame that it chooses to eschew those gifts for an easy copout in the meaningless world of magical (un)realism.

THEATER - "Zarathustra Said Some Things, No?"

It’s true: Zarathustra said some things. In fact, I believe he even spake, if we’re going to split hairs about it. But Nietzsche’s philosophical opus is hardly digestible, and Trevor Ferguson’s obfuscating drama, Zarathustra Said Some Things, No? is hardly lucid. The play opens, mid-afternoon, with all the normalcy of heavy binging the night before. Ricky (Brett Watson) is passed out underneath the bed, and Adrienne (Lina Roessler) wakes up mid-scream (that we never learn why is the first of many disappointments). Once they’ve gone through the motions of breakfast (Fruit Loops and coffee), Ricky goes out on the balcony and announces that there is not a cloud in the sky. Today is perfect.

Now, unless you’ve read a plot synopsis, the two characters spend the rest of the play avoiding saying outright what they’re planning to do on this perfect day. When finally announced, a climax of fear and loathing in Paris, the effect is minimal; the audience thinks, well finally, at last, good, get on with it. It’s a death pact: Ricky and Adrienne, in addition to being half-siblings who first met (and fucked) across opposite ends of their mother’s coffin, are planning to leap from their balcony, any day now, really . . . maybe.

It’s hard to know, really, what is going on, because these two are twisted people who happen to be in a sadomasochistic relationship, former drug (and sex) addicts both, and rather than speaking lucidly, they like indulging in power plays and word games. Oh, and to tie things back to Nietzsche, Adrienne has the power to climax when Ricky quotes from Zarathustra. Given the level of fucked-up-ness here, it’s not surprising that Zarathustra Said Some Things, No? doesn’t make much sense, and if you’re looking for a deviant theatrical experience, these two actors are certainly committed enough to deliver. But wading through malicious and unexplained behavior for ninety minutes before reaching any sort of climax isn’t for the ordinary theatergoer, and in all honesty, the climax is a bit of a let down. It’s just one more sick game for the sadomasochists, and that means ultimately that nothing has happened.

Of all the things Zarathustra Said Some Things, No? wastes (talent and time), it’s also a misuse of Katka Hubacek’s brilliant set, a snug little apartment that at least forces the two actors to interact on a physical level, not to just mince words. The biggest risk is placing the balcony center-stage, so that the audience must look through a physical window to watch the action (some of which is occasionally obscured). It succeeds, making us voyeurs, and gives the show an ominous presence, one that director Robin A. Paterson does not shy away from during the play’s final act. Unfortunately, the problem with the set’s brilliance is that it exposes even further the shallowness of the script: all we see through that window is a lot of hyperactive, hyperbolic bullshit, and all we think is, keep the damn blinds down next time.

THEATER - "Love is in the Air"

As the saying goes, “Everybody loves a clown.” Even though parts of Love is in the Air are still rough around the edges and occasionally hard to follow (perhaps due to some technical gaffes with subtitles), the majority of this sixty-minute comedy succeeds. Even if you really don’t love a clown, you at least have to respect the man who flings himself across the stage and then dances his way back off again. Thankfully, the Kiek in the de Kök players are an affable group, and the silent film they are pantomiming has some great physical poetry, even if the plot is merely a device to abuse the aptly named Hapless Henry (Dustin Helmer, who also created the show).

[Read on] at New Theater Corps

BOOK - "The Good Life"

If there's such a thing as the 9/11 novel, Jay McInerney’s The Good Life isn’t it. While the events in this book occur around that fateful day (which McInerney coyly labels nine/eleven), the narrative proceeds more or less as dinner party, dinner party, infidelity, dinner party. McInerney has a talent for that rich hipster lingo, but his momentum gets tangled in pointless dialogue and misplaced scenery, not to mention more than a few unfulfilled sub-plots and characters that get swept away by that most basic of plots: lust. Trapped in the limited perspectives of his socialite characters, McInerney can be neither lyric nor epic, and his attempts to do so come across as stilted and underwhelming. His poetic statement of ash and terror is a near miss to the characters, but far from a hit for the readers.

Of course, it’s hard to be poetic when your grand story is so damned ordinary. Even after going through every Rich White American stereotype in the book, McInerney still comes up short of anything interesting to say. Beneath the woefully overdone romance, there’s a delinquent, drug-addicted child (starving for attention), a mother addicted to all the “P” drugs (Paxil, Prilosec, &c.), two failing marriages (for the price of one), and tragic monetary problems (like figuring out how to get over losing that third house in the Berkshires). Nothing we haven’t seen a million times before.

As it turns out, nine/eleven is just a convenient excuse for McInerney to publish glorified Chick Lit, just as it’s a convenient excuse for his characters to have midlife crises. None of it comes across as tragic, either: the two protagonists, Corrine and Luke, are cuckolds even before they meet, and that they fall in love in the light of falling ashes, or build their relationship on the carcass of a mass grave, under the thin guise of volunteering to help the rescue workers . . . it’s almost disrespectful.

If McInerney’s goal was to paint a picture of undaunted normalcy, or to chronicle the attempt to maintain its cracking veneer, he has failed at that, too. His prose is filled with designer labels, “keen” observations that laugh at themselves (so that you don’t have to), and uneven lines that consistently find the wrong synonym. “"Hilary was preserved, in Corrine's mind, semifrozen at the age of fifteen, the last year they'd shared a domicile, so that it was always a surprise to see her as a woman, and a pretty convincing one at that." Domicile? Come on. Or as McInerney writes later, "This barely articulate accolade flummoxed its recipient." Showmanship, perhaps, in a greater work; here it exudes the slimy charm of the used-car salesman and his five-dollar words.

We may perhaps attribute the unevenness of this book to McInerney’s rush to get The Good Life out before the whole nine/eleven thing becomes too passé. (If that’s a jarring statement: good. People out there are commercializing on it, and if they’re going to do it so obviously, they should be called out.) "From the window, Luke looked out over the water towers of Fifth Avenue to the park, studying the senescence of the daylight, which seemed almost viscous, ready to coagulate--trying to register that perfect moment of transition from day to evening, that instant when the light, in dying, was most nearly itself." This is an unfinished book, and while beautiful moments like that exist, they seem forced, rather than joyously stumbled upon, ala Bright Lights, Big City.

Worse still, when McInerney does stumble upon a truth (“the night was never long enough when you were falling in love”), or one of his vivid, believable memories, he writes a justification for it a few lines later. Rather than rolling with it, pulling us along with his electric charm, we get summary: “‘You know, when you gave me that sandwich,’ he told her later, ‘if I acted strange, it was because it took me back thirty years.’” Good for the reader who is blissfully skimming along, but to any other reader, it’s slap in the face, as if to say, “Why are you taking me seriously?”

At one point in the novel, Corrine’s husband, Russell, "saddled with gloom," (and perpetually so, since he’s one-dimensionally portrayed) hears a lewd joke about sushi, and how the joker only eats it once a year, "'On the wife's birthday.'" He goes two blocks before he registers the joke, and it's a perfect parallel for the ineffective charms of The Good Life. We're so preoccupied with the social life of these characters and so distracted by all the heavy interstitial images, that if there's anything good about this life, we don't notice it. Unlike Russell, though, we don't even notice it two blocks down. It just sits there, lifeless on the page, doing nothing for the reader, and—if one can be truly honest—nothing for the author either.

MUSIC - Richard Cheese, "Sunny Side of the Moon"

The Sunny Side of the Moon: The Best of Richard Cheese isn’t so much the best of Cheese as it is a re-recording of his original (and out of print) Lounge Against the Machine along with a few smash hits like Sir Mix-A-Lot’s “Baby’s Got Back” and Disturbed’s “Down With the Sickness,” and a few new songs, like the Ying Yang Twins’ “Badd.” However, those revamped songs from Lounge include songs like Limp Bizkit’s “Nookie,” the Beastie Boys’ “Fight for Your Right,” and “Badd” is worth the CD’s price alone.

[Read on] at Silent Uproar

FILM - Tribeca Film Festival 2006: An Introduction

Has it really only been five years since the Tribeca Film Festival first began in response to the post-9/11 decrease in downtown arts-related activity? Whether it’s the street cred of founding fathers like Robert DeNiro or the high quality of premiers screened at the festival or just the paucity of other high-profile venues for an avid movie-going public, 2006 looks to be a huge year for the festival. They’ve expanded their screenings almost as far uptown as 14th Street in order to accommodate the high demand and the 150+ films (not counting the shorts, the panels, the retrospectives, and enough other features to give even the hardened moviegoer a filmgasm).

[Read on] at Film Monthly

THEATER - "Awake and Sing!"

Oh, Clifford Odets’ piece on an extended family in the 1930s has not aged well. The romantic, Ralph (Pablo Schreiber) has been exposed as hopeless, the grandfather’s suicide has become meaningless, and all the bits in between seem melodramatic and sensationalized. The script is well intentioned, but all the compression leaves it filled with holes and its dreams of a better tomorrow are just that—dreams. That everything seems so shallow is the fault of the director, Bartlett Sher, whose idea of architectural beauty and openness doesn’t work nearly as well here as it did in his last production for Lincoln Center Theater, The Light in the Piazza.

Piazza was a romantic fantasy, set in a foreign land of possibilities, where anything might happen. Odets’ only fantasy is that America might become a better place, less obsessed with capitalism and more consumed with the soul. It seems a bit hollow and theatrical when Sher has the set itself gradually dissolve (the walls of the adjoining rooms raise in the second act, the windows fade before the third, and the doorways sink through the floor right before what’s supposed to be Ralph’s triumphant and uplifting final speech). Are we supposed to believe that possibilities are opening up to this family or that they are free of the superficial and material?

That’s a pretty optimistic reading of Odets’ work, and it clashes with all the misery left behind onstage in the final act. The script itself glosses over a lot: Hennie’s decision to leave her husband with a child that isn’t his¬—even if it is for the love of her life¬—comes across as brutal and callous, not as an act of at-long-last freedom. And there’s something about Schreiber’s voice and mannerisms (he’s acted pretty much the same way in the last two shows I saw him in, Manuscript and Mr. Marmalade) that makes me doubt his sincerity and his so-called happiness.

I personally don't understand what makes Awake and Sing worthy of revival; it reminds me a lot of Raisin in the Sun (in that there's a dominating mother, a dreaming man, and a rebellious daughter, though in all fairness, those are archetypal characters). Granted, I prefer modern plays that allow actions to speak louder than words, or older classics that don't shroud those words in everyday prose (not that realism is bad). Awake and Sing! gets stuck in the middle somewhere, sluggish and safe, and for a character piece, we don't learn nearly enough about the characters to care (not even about their dreams).

The notes ring false (even if the accents sound nice), the environment belies the mood, and the dramatic tension is off-kilter and in need of a less meandering pace. Odets had a message when he wrote Awake and Sing!, but in revival, it lacks reason and focus and only allows the ensemble cast to show their period chops (which they do, and how). And that, sir and madam, is nothing to awake and sing about.

THEATER - "The Amulet"

The Amulet, an incredibly difficult and too-poetic play by Peretz Hirshbein, starts simply enough by detailing the relationship between a girl, Mirel, and her blind grandfather, Menashe. This terse yet tender relationship, ambiguous and unexplained, is quickly washed away by the mystic, in fact, by a literal deluge. No sooner does Mirel forgo her heritage, a strange protective amulet, than the house is suddenly flooded and washed away. The two evacuate to a hill, the literally blind leading the metaphorically blind, and if you want to read into it, this exodus could be construed as a spiritual crossing.

For further abstract allegory, a stranger then washes up on the hill, and practically rapes Mirel in an effort to share enough body warmth to survive the freezing night. He then offers to lead her to a palace and riches if she will follow him to “the other side” of the river, but she refuses to leave her dead grandfather behind who, by this point (thanks to the inventive staging) is no more than a jacket sitting atop a raked platform. The final duet in this trilogy of short scenes finds Mirel recovering some days later, with a woman named Yachne, but you’ll just have to make what you will of all this: explanations are not on the menu.

If you accept that “you don’t always have to understand, it’s better to feel,” then the plot doesn’t matter. That assumes, of course, that there’s something to feel. Hanna Cheek does a suitable job as Mirel, but her frenzy and logic skews to the point where we, baffled, hear only screeching. The Stranger, played by Daryl Lathon, is a moment of sanity, but he’s also a one-dimension figment, and once he exits, we forget he ever existed. As for David Little, the production’s Menashe—he doesn’t seem to have his lines down, which makes one wonder if even he understands them, or if he’s just standing there proselytizing.

However, if we ignore the acting and the script and just focus on the mood, then director Isaac Butler manages to intrigue us for this eccentric hour. His choices are ambitious but, more importantly, lucid—the one thing in the show we who are being swept away by all the imagery can hold onto. For example, having an onstage percussionist creates an insistent throb of angry water, and the first impression of the stage—a dark, smoky room filled with candles—is the stereotype of mystery. As for the stage itself, by creating a small wooden platform in the center, and restricting all the action to it, Butler makes a prison of an already small space, and that tension, if nothing else, is palpable throughout.

I don’t think a play like The Amulet, isolated from emotion and engaged in illusion, can really hope to be anything more than an effect (to his credit, Butler has that fire stoked). However, because the acting never sweeps us away, body and soul, he must still deal with the inevitable questions of “What was he trying to say?” and “What did it all mean?”

MUSIC - Lying in States, "Wildfire on the Lake"

There’s a simple rule about independent punk—if you demonstrate that you can do more than rage against the whatever, feel free to get your screech on. Lying in States, with their second album, Wildfire on the Lake, has only one frustratingly aggressive piece (“Both Sides”), but cushioned as it is by such accurately disconnected instrumentals, even this track merits multiple plays.

[Read on] at Silent Uproar

THEATER - "Little Willy"

Early in the play Little Willy, Adolph Hitler’s nephew, William Patrick Hitler, says of the German people that “they were good . . . just misled.” I’d like to believe it, just as I’d like to believe that Little Willy is a good show that somehow went awry. After all, Mark Kassen (who also wrote the show) is a dynamic, engaging actor, and the plot—an examination of how Willy came to live in New York—is a gold mine of possibility. Of course, even surrounded by gold, you may still dig up lead, and if Little Willy occasionally glitters, it’s only pyrite—fool’s gold.

The script follows a strict formula, though it is far from formulaic: each of the three “acts” begins with the voice of the real William Patrick Hitler reading from his letter to the US and then follows a cyclical progress through six short scenes. These vignettes portray Willy's morally-depraved standards as he doubletalks his way from Germany (where Hitler's good for business) to the US (where he goes on a political lecture circuit, bashing Hitler). The scenes segue into one another by use of projected images on the background and the different characters of Roxanna Hope, who plays “et al.”—that is, everybody else. The problem is, the more Hope changes, the more Kassen stays the same. No matter what she throws at him (each time a “scene” repeats during the next cycle, or "act," she grows more distorted), Willy remains a smug, unsympathetic man. If the audio tapes are any indication (and word to the wise: if you’re going to play source material, you’d better be really good at mimicry), Willy felt shame and humility; he wasn’t just an unctuous automobile salesman; he couldn’t have just been another womanizing Irish scoundrel.

By playing a caricature, Kassen prevents his own show from being a story of redemption or forgiveness, and if anything, advocates sleaziness so long as you can get away with it. (In this case, Willy blackmails Adolph and then uses that same information to secure citizenship in the US.) The script is already thin enough (just over an hour long): it doesn’t work for such a shallow person either. The writing itself is solid, and most of the speeches are entertaining, but was that really the point? All that material on William Patrick Hitler played just for laughs? If so, it’s fair to say that the epilogue, a PowerPoint-like presentation on Willy’s three sons, really was more informative and heartfelt than most of Little Willy. Then at least the set seem appropriate: with just two chairs, the huge space seems as wasted and empty as the show itself.

For all that, it’s hard to give Little Willy a negative review: the man, the play, and the actor all beg so much to be loved. But without substance backing it, this begging grows tiresome, pathetic, and ultimately embarrassing: one more thing Willy can’t talk his way out of.

MUSIC - Fivespeed, "Morning Over Midnight"

What is this, follow the leader? Fivespeed’s CD Morning over Midnight sounds like any other kind of commercial-friendly hard rock. We’re talking about simple and repeatable chords, a generic and throaty “singing,” and redundant songs. There’s so little originality on the album that it might as well be elevator music. (Even that’s too lenient - Ensure that nobody ever rides the elevator, and just in case, mute the CD.)

[Read on] at Silent Uproar

THEATER - "A Jew Grows in Brooklyn"

A Jew Grows in Brooklyn is billed as a "true story" musical comedy. I don't know why true story is in quotes, since that's about the only thing this lower-than-average autobiography is. Jake Ehrenreich's had an interesting career, among which include his international tour as Ringo in Beatlemania, but what he focuses on here are lounge renditions of 60s rock, slideshow presentations of kitschy achievements, and a lot of in-jokes on Brooklyn, the Catskills, and everything Jewish in-between. What it lacks, save for when Jake gets carried away playing the drums late in Act II, is any originality. Due to the way the stage is built, audience members have to cross it to get to their seats on the other side, but while I watched these people crossing, I couldn't help but think that any one of them could've told this same story (and probably have). Jake's one asset is that he's a performer, he looks good onstage, and he at least looks like he's having a good time.

All that charisma should make A Jew Grows in Brooklyn a great lounge act. Then Ehrenreich's call-and-response won't seem so hokey, and it won't look like he's pleading for people to like him not for what he is, but for what he represents (a nice Jewish boy come to terms with his history). I don't get the references, I don't know why we're playing Simon Says, and Jake's right when he tells people (half-jokingly) who don't remember when phone numbers had names to "get the heck out of here." A Jew Grows in Brooklyn has a very focused demographic, and there's no attempt to appeal to anyone who isn't a Jewish senior. Art attempts to transcend such shallow things as race; that makes this show pure, smarmy commercialism.

At the end of the show, Jake closes by asking the audience to look at something white onstage, and then at something brown. He points out what what we see in life is what we choose to focus on, be it good or bad. But in all honesty, I tried to focus on the good things of A Jew Grows in Brooklyn and still came up empty. I'm sure Mr. Ehrenreich's a good person, and he seems like a great father and husband, but this show is far too limited in scope, audience, and depth to run for more than a week, and billing a lounge act as musical comedy is just false advertising. If you fit the demographic, you'll no doubt kvell for this trip down memory lane, plotz at the cheap humor, and maybe even get ver clempt at the shallow examination of family, but for the rest of you wondering what those words mean, A Jew Grows in Brooklyn might as well be Greek.

THEATER - "Iron Curtain"

While Iron Curtain may have a steely, menacing title, this new musical premiering at Prospect Theater Company is actually a warm, friendly comedy. If it forgets to be funny in the second act, it’s just a momentary (and necessary) break to indulge in some sweet romance and a welcome pause that lets the audience catch its breath after all the laughing. The endgame still needs some work, and the pacing is a little too reliant on stream-of-consciousness punning (enough to beat a dead horse), but the casting is terrific and carries the day.

[Read on] at New Theater Corps

MUSIC - The Mars Volta, "Scabdates"

Scabdates, a mostly live recording of The Mars Volta, is the opposite of white noise: Painful chunks of discordant sound that make noise for noise’s sake. With the lack of studio polish, the improvisation spins out of control, and as soon as the electric orchestration finds beauty, it loses it again, a sacrifice to some unknown god of artifice. These are far from the “A” sides of Deloused in the Comatorium and even further from the “B” sides of Frances the Mute. These “C” sides—impossible as that sounds—are more a nightmarish warm-up than anything productive. Some fans will no doubt love the creepy dubs of babies wailing and overlapping voices on “Abrasions Mount the Timpani.” Hopefully, they and The Mars Volta will then wake up and realize that this, more than a distortion of sound, is a defilement of music.

[Read on] at Silent Uproar

THEATER - "In Delirium"

So imagine a Hamlet character comes onto the stage—in this case, a sparse, gray-walled asylum with a metaphorical chandelier collapsed in one corner and a chair leaning against another—to give the suicidal "To be or not to be" speech. This is already either immensely exciting or incredibly dull.

If we assume you are one of the former, then at first you think, "Oho, is this not fine? Here is a splendid actor, with such enunciation, taking us on a metaphysical journey of pain, loss, and sorrow." The actor concludes the speech, but something snaps in him, and rather than leaving the stage, he continues to rail against his misfortune at being out of love (so he is now Romeo, as well) and the monologue continues. Now you think, "Well, it's impressive, how he goes on." Ten minutes later, you think, "My, how he goes on." Twenty minutes later: "Is he still on?" This is the curious circumstance of "In Delirium: after the sorrows of young werther," a play based on—you guessed it—Goethe's seminal book on a young man's love-borne suicide, "The Sorrows of Young Werther." Whereas the book was revolutionary in 1774, it's more than passé today, although the so called "Werther effect" may come back into vogue if audience members, bored out of their minds, contemplate a little suicide themselves to pass the time. In that, at least, "In Delirium" has succeeded.

It has also succeeded, surprisingly, in all the technical aspects of a production. Lucrecia Briceno has done a startling job of using dramatic lighting to emphasis Werther's growing madness and discontent. These are cinematic moments: Joshua Randall (Werther) impaled upon the asylum wall by a beam of light, or imprisoned in the center of the stage by a sinister halo. Likewise, John Ivy's sound design throbs in pitch with Randall's temperament, the difference being that while Randall is somewhat limited in his vocal palette, Ivy is able to traverse the whole set of ambient sounds, which only heightens the unsettling mood. If this proves anything, it's that simple is best, which is probably why Gisela Cardenas' direction, which has Randall constantly in motion and always fiddling with something, is so wearisome. Why not just let the lunatic speak his piece in peace, as he goes to pieces?

All this would be excused—or at least not so noticeable—if Randall were up to the task of playing Werther. While the length and difficulty of the script makes his memorization of it impressive, I can't say that he's mastered it, which is more than half the battle. What good are reversals if you stay in the middle, never fully hitting the romantic highs, and certainly failing to reach the dramatic lows? The ambience is there, but Randall's tenor voice seems frightened of the frenzy that the text demands. Playing madness safely, from a distance, makes it cool, clinical, and boring.

Nor is the script safe from blame, though that should come as no surprise since I've already blamed its adaptors, Cardenas and Randall, of missing the point. This is a long winding treatise, and it's dense, oh so very dense. Such a presentation needs to be far livelier, and just a bit more playful (like say, "Thom Pain"), if it's to keep us intrigued; the sad truth is that nobody cares what Randall-as-Werther is going to do next. It's all pretty much the same, which makes "In Delirium" nothing more than a sad display of technical prowess.

MUSIC - Portgual, The Man, "Waiter: You Vultures!"

Portugal. The Man has a solid foundation for their model home of a CD, Waiter: You Vultures!. But all the rooms look very similar, and after a while, the homey yet homely voices (shrill one second, cooing the next) are claustrophobic and tiresome. It’s seems quite lively and livable, and Portugal. The Man gets the most out of the acoustics with some creative floor design, but the next minute, the wiring short-circuits again, and the toilet backs up. I want to like this CD, and I have no trouble listening to it, but I can’t find something good to say about it. Solid, but empty, this is a doll’s house—all exteriors, with fragile fillings.

[Read on] at Silent Uproar

THEATER - "Freak Winds"

Freak Winds is a clever thriller-cum-comedy that keeps the audience excited and guessing, and demonstrates that actor-writer-directors (e.g., Marshall Napier) aren’t all bad. Freak Winds isn’t very deep—it’s not even shallow—but while it may not be much of a pool, it twists enough to be a wicked fun slip-‘n-slide. The superficial is superb, and the lightning-fast lines are like fuel for the propellant plot.

[Read on] at New Theater Corps

THEATER - "Well"

Well, Lisa Kron’s semi-autobiographical "exploration" ("a one person show with other people") of illness and social dysfunction, is not just "well," it’s positively healthy. In fact, Well looks so good, that it makes other recent Broadway productions look anemic.

This cure for modern theater is, at heart, a play about a daughter dealing with her mother. This is, let’s face it, inevitable when you bring your vivacious, yet perpetually sick mother onstage with you (stage left, supine in the La-Z-Boy), especially if you plan on secretly using her as Example A.

[Read on] at Show Business Weekly