THEATER - "cloud:burst"

cloud:burst begins not with a bang, but with a whimper: appropriate for a show whose title refers to the death of the dreams clouds carry. It makes sense that Dominic spends this one-man show imprisoned in the crepuscular glow of a cross—his mistake led to his daughter’s murder. Little wonder he sputters in half-broken fragments and phrases: he can’t admit the guilt he feels. “When Natalie went out to play, on the day, I only had to . . . Words, Helen, I only had to say . . .”

For eight weeks, Dominic has at least had the cold comfort of the ever-listening media to balance his wife’s accusatory silence at home. However, the play picks up with those vans pulling away, ditching the passé story, though of course Dominic’s life—his story—continues. Haunted by vivid memories of his ten-year-old daughter, he tries harassing a reporter into writing more: he needs there to be more, so that this is not the end. This leads to a physical confrontation with his wife—tricky to stage, since Dominic is playing both parts. For all Graeme Hawley’s good work in this role, cloud:burst falters a bit in those moments of back-and-forth dialogue. Hawley doesn’t alter his voice, which keeps the perspective properly trained on Dominic, but it makes the heated scenes hard to follow.

Chris O’Connell’s work is generally clear, though it operates in subtleties. As a writer, he keeps the memories jagged, and as a director, he keeps all motion to a minimum, hounding his actor from all sides with a prison of lighting and a cacophony of sound. Unfortunately, his work is so reductive that it’s barely forty minutes. That’s good for the show, but to balance the evening (and the ticket price), the Brits Off Broadway program needs another one-act.

At least cloud:burst ends on a somewhat happy note. The cross seems more like the shadow of a tombstone by the play’s end, but Dominic has finally managed to step out of that ensnaring light, to make one final, hopeful statement: “Cloud. Life, burst. Begins.” He is neither forgiven nor guilty, but he is, at least. He is.

[published 6-6-06 in Show Business Weekly]

BOOK - William T. Vollman's "Uncentering the Earth: Copernicus and The Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres"

"Who said simplicity was simple?" Nobody, I guess. But that's not even a question in William T. Vollman's contribution to the Great Discoveries series, Uncentering the Earth. No, we never get to simplicity: all we prove is that difficulty is difficult. Vollman tries, with occasional bursts of humor (often at the expense of those silly, misguided scholars who believed the Earth went around the Sun), but he gets bogged down trying to describe a science that really is "slightly beyond [his] intellectual competence." Vollman is a genius, by the way; what turns out to be slightly beyond him is greatly beyond us, even more so considering that his presentation that of a muddled middleman:

"In this sad little tract of mine--incomplete crib of an unreadable, error-ridden soliloquy addressed to a future which is author might have fled--I cannot hope to do justice to many of Copernicus's mathematical narratives; nor do I want to."

Normally, I'd agree, but the emphasis of this series has been on communicating these big ideas--even those that are flawed versions that Newton and Kepler have changed. Furthermore, Vollman continues to insist that foraging through these texts, accurate or not, is important because of how they have shaped the world, paved the road, &c. It follows that while he is unable to do Copernicus justice, the historical coverage springs to life (or at least a semblance of lucidness). For all these disclaimers (and they are plentiful), for all this playful self-deprecation, Vollman's essay on astrology turns into Revolutions itself: "in thought-explorations which resemble the squat walls and heavy windings of Cracow's streets--and in prose of incomparable dreariness."

He's right to say that "this essay of mine cannot do much better": he is bogged down by trying to give a layperson-like description of how the universe itself works. His all too brief commentaries on the difficult circumnavigating of religious concerns also seems a bit trite considering that, in the end, Copernicus cheats prosecution by dying shortly after publication. Points are made, and then remade, and then made again, because Vollman understands the philosophical and contextual ramifications, not the astrology. And we are constantly reminded, for lack of mathematical explanations, that Copernicus "[o]ften, without sufficient data, or even for utterly wrong reasons . . . turns out to be completely right."

There are some good sections where Vollman strays from Copernican history, runs from Aristotle and Ptolemy, and hides from solar mathematics: these interludes are edifying breathers that cover physics and scripture instead. They're also--like David Foster Wallace's previous book in this pop-science series, Everything and More: A Compact History of Infinity--understandable. But these are just breaks, explanations of the tangentials that allow us to delve back into the density of terms like "precession" and "parallax." Granted, this is not my school of study, but I feel exhausted from all the re-reading I've done, and in need of some great Rosetta stone, the likes of which can only be found in a talented professor's gentle rephrasing.

Still, when Vollman manages to stand back and draw philosophical conclusions, we see the glimmer of hope in this tortured volume: "The more we peer into the pre-Copernican universe, the more harmonies we find. It is both our gain and our loss that those now seem ludicrous." Those card tricks that used to dazzle us as children: the question is not how did we ever fall for them, but why can't we still be amazed? This sums up to another sad truth: "Observation slowly overcomes intuition." For all the work of our gut, it turns out to be wrong quite a bit. That, unfortunately, is true for this book as well. My gut wanted Vollman to make a miracle out of a muddle, but observation has proved that there are some topics--astrology among them--that are better left to the stars.

THEATER - "The History Boys"

As a comedy, The History Boys is simply brill. It’s an ace work that demonstrates the profound ridiculousness of high school, especially the extra preparatory classes for college. Although it’s a British import, things are pretty much the same there as here, save for a few lexical issues, and it’s good that they’ve implanted the whole cast, since they’re bazzin’. The problem is, The History Boys is not presented as a comedy—at least, not entirely. There’s a niggling undertone of dramatics, involving a beloved but eccentric teacher, who has the slight habit of molesting his children, often while riding them home on his motorcycle.

[Read on] at New Theater Corps

FILM - "X-Men: The Last Stand"

In a more perfect world, I could just say that this film is bad and you'd believe it, and I wouldn't have to relive the trauma of watching it in order to paint you a more descriptive picture. In a better world, I wouldn't have to use words at all, I could just use action sequences so hideously poor that you wouldn't even be able to read the review, let alone watch the film, without flinching. In a decent world, there'd be a quick cure, like in X-Men: The Last Stand (a.k.a. X3), for mutant growth, and we could use it on the director, Brett Ratner, and be rid of him and his unnatural ego (he's correct in calling this "A Brett Ratner film," but that's not something to be proud of). Even in an awful world, we could at least slit our wrists with the ten dollar bill and choke ourselves with the three quarters and die a horribly slow and agonizing death before willingly handing our money to the perfunctory ticket-sellers.

That just goes to show you what a downright despicable world we live in, where a film like X3 goes unpunished. I didn't like X2 much, but compared to this, it's a masterpiece. Now we've got even more Oscar-winning Halle Berry inaction (See Storm! See Storm fly! See Storm rage! Rage Storm, rage!), and it's rubbed off on Hugh Jackman, too, who now grunts more than he speaks, which is okay, since, as Wolverine, he mostly speaks with his fists. Gone is the brilliant Alan Cummings (Nightcrawler) -- replaced with an enjoyable Beast (surprisingly, Kelsey Grammer). And once again, Rogue, Iceman, Kitty Pryde and Colossus sit around with nothing much to do. At least Jean Grey (Famke Janssen) kills Cyclops before he grows too irritating, and then joins up with Magneto (Ian McKellen, who's just old and predictable by now), where we don't have to pay much attention to her. In fact, most of the recurring characters are quickly killed or cured, eliminating both their whining and special-effect costs. The franchise peters out here because both the script and the director are working with recycled material, and they make the social relevance of the film's discriminated-against mutants a laughing matter, or simply fodder for the choppy plot.

Yes, the plot is more choppy than a random stuntman after fighting Wolverine. Random moments are strung together, half-assed sub-plots involving mutant romance are desperately thrown out to sea (and left there), and the action scenes -- few and far between -- are brief and, if anything, jaw-raising. They're poor excuses to show off the CG department's ability to make things levitate, or to light things on fire, neither of which are very impressive. By emphasizing the "Phoenix" subplot (now just a handy split personality for Jean Gray, rather than a possessive alien entity), the film focuses on mental feats over the physical, though it's a proven fact that the fans really just want to see Wolverine punching something, hard.

Then again, Brett Ratner does as Brett Ratner does. That's his mutant power. Deal with it.

THEATER - "Dark Yellow"

Julia Jordan’s Dark Yellow is a natural, fluid drama sandwiched between the elements of something noir and something sinister. Thankfully, the two ends are thin-crust, and the middle is stuffed full of extra meat, so the play balances itself out like a hearty double-decker, and winds up being a savory morsel of theater. The opening is so crisp that it dilutes some of the surprise flavor for the bulk of the show, and the ending is too ambiguous to be satisfying, but that center . . . oh, that center!

[Read on] at New Theater Corps

THEATER - "Sucker Fish Messiah"

Ryan Michael Teller’s Sucker Fish Messiah is the story of two brothers, Len and Paul, played by Darren Ryan and Shannon Jones. The older Len is a once-prosperous salesman who is on the verge of a nervous breakdown; Paul, on the other hand, is a successful songwriter who is preparing a move to LA. Len lives in the past, dreaming of his ex-wife, (unaware that she’s on her way to win him back), and he is haunted by vivid memories – especially one about the "sucker fish" they once owned. These qualities make the character even more endearing once he starts to unravel (kudos to Ryan, who plays him so convincingly). Len is the obvious star of Sucker Fish, but unfortunately he’s an interesting character trapped in an otherwise terrible play.

[Read on] at Show Business Weekly

MUSIC - The Subways, "Young for Eternity"

Do they say something negative about idle hands? The Subway’s first CD, Young for Eternity is a strong argument for spending time just tooling around, finding a feel for the rhythms and working out the chords, i.e., learning exactly what you can do if you want to rock. Thankfully, Billy Lunn has already fretted about the frets, and he’s put his finger on the right fingering, and along with Charlotte Cooper on the bass and Josh Morgan on drums, The Subways have produced a solid rock album.

[Read on] at Silent Uproar

THEATER - "Faith Healer"

Brien Friel’s play, Faith Healer, is not about hope. It’s about hopelessness: three companions, Frank (the faith healer), Grace (his wife), and Teddy (his promoter), who are alone and adrift, even after the twenty-odd years they have spent together. There are very real things that they want—Frank (to be needed), Grace (to be acknowledged), and Teddy (to be loved)—but these things are forever out of reach, even when they are right beside them. The play’s structure, four scene-long monologues (each essentially a one-act play), is therefore quite fitting: together, these stories complete their history, but each appears separately, dismally, and alone. In the end, we realize there is one thing worse than hopelessness: hopeless hope.

[Read on] at New Theater Corps

THEATER - "Worth"

You can have your cake and eat it too. That is, if your cake is family drama and your idea of eating is getting to watch some exotic dancing (or perhaps that’s just the frosting). Worth has convincing acting, though it’s a bit overwrought, and a nice script that, although basic, lives in something very real. Okay, so if you have your cake and eat it too, it won’t be fit for a queen—but a Ho-Ho can be satisfying too.

[Read on] at New Theater Corps

BOOK - Ben Marcus's "Notable American Women"

Ben Marcus’s Notable American Women takes the linguistic ideas of Derrida, couples them with the technical prose of early Borges, and then minces a psychotic philosophy into novel form (chopped up is the only way it’ll fit). The result is accordingly a minute, elegant study that’s crazy, often verbose, and extremely difficult. It is, ultimately, a harmless (and therefore pointless) postmodern jaunt into—where else?—Emotional Dysfunction.

Marcus uses a brazen verbal deconstruction and a descriptive maximism, and at times he makes English nothing more than a Clockwork plaything. In his rural Ohio, people spend their time being incarcerated in “socks” (or worse, buried under the earth, bombarded with words), drinking “behavior water” (for feelings are merely “an absence or surplus of water in the body”), or coolly regarding the prospects of their family slash project’s goal to “launch the child” into the world.

These are amusing concepts, pieced together by a real intellect and used with an even more intelligent wit, but they consume the plot, the characters, and the momentum, until Notable American Women lives only as a screed on the behavior and beliefs of a fictional cult (the Silentists), book-ended by two monologues from each of the narrator’s parents. The narrator, incidentally, is a retarded, soft, stilted child named Ben Marcus (think Mark Haddon’s Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, only nowhere as endearing). As for his parents’ sections: if you were to read only those sixty-odd pages (out of the full 240), you’d more than understand the fundamental point of the novel: our parents shape the world. The rest of the book only severs the reader’s emotional connection to anyone in it, and is a profound waste of time, somewhere between an alternative history and a technical manual. Neither realism nor magical realism, Notable American Women is pure mechanism, a clever artifice, dot dot dot. It is, fittingly, an oxymoron: brilliantly dull.

Here’s an example:

“1979. Jane Marcus occurs in Deep Ohio. She has an accurate walking style and can converse in one language. She sleeps lying down, and uses a filter called ‘hair’ to attract her mates. The small people in her house call her ‘Mother,’ and she answers them by collapsing the tension in her face, a release that passes for listening.”

This is a near perfect paragraph; it is strikingly original, deviously clever, and very well put. However, it occurs in the midst of a recurring chapter called “Dates,” which lists various events in this alternative history, none of which really tie into anything or even really tell much of a story. Rebellions are begun and quashed in the same paragraph, and there’s no personal investment or payoff for digesting these not-quite-informative fragments.

The other recurring chapter, even worse, is called “Names”: it is a study of the power of various names, and the effect of each name when it is used on the narrator’s sister (she dies, eventually, from the name Mary, and we are warned that the name “Lisa . . . is more dangerous than the words ‘fuck’ or ‘fag’ or ‘dilch’”). The other 12 chapters are usually as redundant or off-topic as these two, though they at least mention Ben Marcus (the character) once in a while. The meta-referential sections, like “Shushing the Father,” have momentum for brief moments (long enough to describe how Jane Dark, the figurehead of the Silentist movement, installed herself at the Marcus home), and then, like the stillness-obsessed Silentists themselves, all motion ceases. We get lengthy nonsense treatises like this:

“The chief way to determine the gratuitous bone content in the female head (shabble) is to tap its surface with a facial mallet over a period of a month or more, using a mallet style more like worrying than actual smashing. Worrying the same area of the head with the mallet will eventually break down the excess bone matter, much of which is at the back or crown of the head, and it will pass naturally from the body, through the tears or saliva or sweat. Any bones that can be shed this way are not important to the life of the body, but are a disposable shell that simply needs to be cracked free and passed.”

For a book that mostly details how a cult is attempting to restore balance to nature by ceasing to disturb the wind with their bodies and (especially) their mouths, this is a lot of hot air. Yes, Marcus is remarkably inventive, and he’s got a made-up phrase for everything (sometimes even using familiar words), but you have to ask yourself what the point is of a hot-air balloon ride in the middle of a total eclipse. Wouldn’t you rather see something, even if you had to stay on the ground to do so? Marcus occasionally treats us to a bold descriptive phrase (“his gait is a stooping apology against motion”), but all too rarely.

If there are nuggets worth salvaging in Notable American Women, they are philosophical. Though the narrative is rarely serious, it does occasionally hit upon valid points: that “unbidden emotions” is a redundant phrase, for instance, or “that wherever I go, I do damage to what was there, by either killing or displacing it, that my presence encourages something else’s absence, that the term ‘my body’ implies no one else’s body, that by moving through air and time, I kill what was attempting to rest or habituate or hold steady. I remove that thing from its chosen space and effectively deny its reentry. I act as a warden of a prison in reverse, since wherever I am, no one else can be . . .”

In the limited story of Notable American Women, it is revealed that Ben Marcus (the character) has failed to fulfill his parent’s designs. Rather than rising through adversity, he has grown to accept it, and allows himself to be used and abused without remorse—rather, he finds the perverse pleasure of a mental masochist. It must equally be revealed to you, the reader, that Ben Marcus (the author) has failed to fulfill his own design (or that, in succeeding, he has alienated the reader). “We must,” as one of the Marcus’s writes, “always be prepared to admit when a theory is merely lyrical, but fucked in practice.” Ladies and gentlemen, the practice—this book—is fucked.

THEATER - "Bone Portraits"

“You’ll notice I’ve compressed time a bit here,” says a very jocular Thomas Edison (the excellent Gian-Murray Gianino), the inventor cum sideshow narrator cum ringleader of Bone Portraits, a fantastically theatric new play. Edison pauses for a moment, adjusting a minute wrinkle on his bright red jacket. “Or maybe you won’t.” Another beat. “Kids these days,” he says, dismissively, walking behind a homemade proscenium (of ghost-white curtains), as he reveals more about the x-ray’s accidental birth and consequences.

It’s a lovely bit of meta-narrative, filled with knowing asides to the audience. Fitting, too, since there are moments where Deborah Stein’s carnival of a script is more confusing than a hall of mirrors, and you won’t know what’s going on. No matter: the incredibly talented director, Lear deBessonet, throws so many visual bones your way that you won’t care. “I’m a scientist and a showman,” Edison says (which explains why the show’s antics are so digestible). “Back then, there wasn’t that much of a difference between the two.”

[Read on] at New Theater Corps

THEATER - Stadttheater's "Slipped Disc" and "The Woman Before"

What happens when an already experimental theater (the HERE Arts Center) teams with the even edgier GTA (German Theater Abroad) program? Two US premieres of wild, boundary-pushing German works, three symposiums on the role of theater, four new staged readings, and the mission statement "no fun, no profit, no previews." This is Stadttheater, a month-long showcase that's as likely to impress as it is to disturb.

Featuring remarkable control of stagecraft (even when ill-used to obfuscate), these shows are likely to inspire directors and playwrights simply from the wide variety of approaches to storytelling and production. This is dialogue-opening material, and not just because certain effects will make your jaw drop. However, for the casual theatergoer, each hour-long show inevitably grows tedious or annoying -- the price of throwing so many darts at the wall. Still, the quality of work, at least on a visual level (the translations are sometimes uneven, or the narrative style too thick) merits the attention of all theatergoers on the lookout for an experience (that all too rare effect of modern theater).

-- Slipped Disc
The stronger (or simply more relatable) of the two mainstage Stadttheater productions, Slipped Disc - A Study of the Upright Walk looks at the inner lives of five office drones. The conclusion, which is also the impetus for the entire show, is that the modern worker is an emasculated creature, one who lives by the will of their whimsical and often cruel boss. Quitting, in the world of Slipped Disc, would accomplish nothing: they'd simply be unemployed (for there is no shortage of labor). And so these five people lap up humiliation after humiliation, all of which is artfully displayed by literal knives in the back or metaphorical displays of pathos that include eating toilet paper (i.e., shit). When they return to their office floor (where they are surrounded on two sides by audience members), they quickly take it out on each other, defining themselves by the cruelties they inflict on others.

For instance, Kretzky (a suave Sanjit De Silva) laughs off every little embarrassment as if it's a joke, and it's a pleasure to watch his smiling facade dissolve as he gloats in one aside about how he'll get his co-workers fired. (The delight is watching this second layer of reality, the one we normally repress, rise to the surface.) Hufschmidt (John Summerour), on the other hand, physically abuses the others, in particular Kruse (a gleefully pathetic Ron Domingo), before he too loses his facade, at one point devolving into a growling dog. Schmitt and Kristensen (Danielle Skraastad and Andrea Ciannavei) play the two women: one confident and belittling, the other hopeful yet hopeless. The contrasts are well illustrated by director Simone Blattner, who artfully makes the action too close for comfort.

Much as this violence is admirable, Blattner has a habit for belaboring certain points. Those uncomfortable moments where a joke has gone on for too long often stretch on (and on) into the artificial. It isn't viscerally uncomfortable, it's just dull. For example, when Kristensen gathers the characters together to air their complaints, the five actors stand there, silent and complacent, as if running out a clock rather than actually having nothing to say. (This is also how the play opens: to sit down, you must walk across the stage, around the immobile actors, and onto an elevated portion of the set.) Ingrid Lausund's script (translated by Henning Bochert) isn't very deep to begin with; attempting to draw a deeper significance out of it, or to make the words (or lack thereof) more resonant doesn't always work. But when it does (mostly if an actor's charisma sustains it), it's effective: Kruse's lengthy acceptance of the fact that Hufschmidt slaps him around for no reason grows more and more pathetic, until we are drowning in pity.

We can easily be any one of these spineless characters (thankfully, none are caricatures), and Slipped Disc does well to remind us that we can more easily talk our way into acceptance of circumstance than out of a situation.

-- The Woman Before
The Woman Before, on the other hand, reminds us of and tells us nothing. It is a show discontent with being a show, and quickly spirals out of control into performance art (some of which is admittedly entertaining). It is like a postmodern hard rock, perpetually (and ambiguously) angry, and not afraid to show it. And, rather than smashing the instruments after the concert, The Woman Before prefers to deconstruct itself during the performance itself.

The show opens simply enough in a hallway littered with boxes; Claudia (Cynthia Mace) has left the bathroom to ask her husband Frank (Roland Marx) about voices she heard, when suddenly she picks up a box, revealing Romy Vogtlander (Christen Clifford). When is a box not a box? When it's a door. Director Daniel Fish finds many other artsy uses for the boxes in this wide, horizontal space, too, but none are as effective as this first moment of surprise. Suddenly, the lights shift, and we're watching a scene five minutes earlier, between Frank and Romy, who reminds him of the vow he made when they were lovers 24 summers ago: to love her forever. Again, a promising start, and an interesting narrative device, neither of which will be used as well again.

The constant shifts in perspectives, to allow different characters to tell this story, makes for some interesting and disjointed theater, but all the skipping around in time never actually goes anywhere (except deeply into metaphor) and more often than not simply seems like a way of making the old seem new (and the ridiculous seem plausible). Playwright Roland Schimmelpfenning (translated here by David Tushingham), is famous in Germany, and this emboldens him to take fantastic risks, the price of which is the plot itself, followed shortly after by the characters (who, after a while, simply become narrators or disconnected observers).

The Woman Before might serve as a parable for modern disconnect in society (we keep everything boxed away), but with each treadmill-like step forward (movement without progress), the play becomes riddled with metaphor until it serves as nothing more than a warning to other playwrights. We can accept stage directions being read -- even by characters involved in the scene, and even when they're supposed to be dead -- because it allows the minimalism of action itself. The full nudity (prudes beware) is acceptable as well, it conveys an openness that makes the violence it accompanies all the more tragic. Even the stilted, melodramatic dialogue works -- to a point -- because it serves the repetition of scenes and uses verbal cues as landmarks. But that all these devices should serve no greater good beyond the glib display of what is possible onstage . . . it seems needlessly cruel.

The Woman Before brings Sarah Kane to mind in its reckless energy and presentation, and the direction is admirable in that it achieves (at least during Romy's box-smashing mood swing) a total loss of control. However, there's no room for error when attempting to show chaos (paradoxical as that may sound). When actors start to trip over their lines and stumble across the stage, it looks slovenly, not chaotic, and the mania is clearly rehearsed (and off-pitch). If there is tragedy, it is in the ill-explored parallel of the father's son, Andi (Jeremiah Miller), and his last evening with his girlfriend, Tina (Diana Ruppe), whom he has also promised to love forever. But Tina is kept in the periphery, where she delivers monologues via a microphone, practically exploited in an attempt to deliver some of the author's grand and poetic statements about love. Stuck in the background, along with the plot and characters, the real thrust of The Woman Before remains difficult to fall in love with.

FILM - "Mission Impossible III"

For a summer action film that begins neither in summer or with action, Mission Impossible 3 is, impossible as it may seem, a thrilling spy movie. It has the exotic locations (China, Germany, Rome), it has the extreme stunt (BASE jumps), lots of chases (on car, on foot, by chopper), a great plot (filled with the requisite twists), and slick espionage (of the Impossible Mission Force kind). It also has Philip Seymour Hoffman, who plays a ruthless arms dealer in the most simplistic (and sinister) fashion. So okay, Tom Cruise is once again Ethan Hunt, but that's okay, and given the way J. J. Abrams kicks him around (Murphy's Law hurts), even the most stalwart Cruise-haters will enjoy this film.

The stakes are also higher than ever: the spy genre is usually devoid of anything beyond a one-night stand, but this film opens with Davian (Hoffman) about to shoot Hunt's wife (Michelle Monaghan) right in front of a very helpless Ethan; if that's not enough, he's also got a bomb in his head. The film then kicks back to happier days, explaining just why Davian is so ticked at Hunt (a kidnapping in Vatican City, i.e., the heist of all heists), and why Ethan's come out of retirement on the day of his engagement (the disappearance of one of his trainees). With the exposition done, the film lurches into a series of high-octane missions, all of which are aided and abetted by Hunt's lovable team (Ving Rhames, Jonathan Rhys Meyers and Maggie Q.). Take that, Oceans 13; this is a rougher, and therefore more exciting, version of what you do. That's not all the star power either: Billy Crudup and Lawrence Fishburne play the IMF executives overseeing operations, and Simon Pegg (of Shaun of the Dead) makes a cameo as the tech guy.

J. J. Abrams, who has perfected the art of mixing a little action with a lot of spying on TV's Alias, is the perfect director here, and brings the emphasis of the Mission Impossible series back to being about impossible missions. The action itself is the reward for all the stealthy sequences, and the script resembles a French dinner: the courses keep coming. There's no choice regarding whether or not to see this film: accept the mission and live vicariously for the next 126 minutes.

MUSIC - The Ark, "State of the Ark"

The Ark comes in on a fading wave of electronic static, and they ride that neon surf until all that glitters is bold. Caroming off a line like “We’ll go shim-shim shammey and get whimsy and get whammy,” the lead singer Ola Salo makes tracks like “Clamour for Glamour” a blitzkrieg of fun, even if those bombshells might need to drop some acid first to be real hits. Of course, some of those hits are abysmal craters, and halfway through State of the Ark, the band tumbles into it, as if “Let Me Down Gently” were an imperative rather than a track title.

[Read on] at Silent Uproar

THEATER - "The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial"

An exercise in character acting, The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial is a stage version of your weekly Law and Order TV programming. Here you’ll find eleven (mostly) fine male actors (supported by a dozen extras, or for all intensive purposes, “props”) giving long dramatic monologues ranging from naïve guilt to estranged guilt to aggravated guilt . . . the list goes on. Given the utter lack of stage direction or scenic dazzle, the entire production focuses on whoever is sitting center stage in the witness chair, and while it’s dull to watch, the script, just over fifty years old, crackles with some really good theatrical moments. (It goes without saying that, given those negatives, it would have to.)

[Read on] at New Theater Corps

MUSIC - Smoking Popes, "At Metro"

Their first performance after seven years, Smoking Popes’ At Metro is a reunion tour, a fast-paced and energetic live performance, a best-of collection, and a reason for the group to stay together. I’d never heard this Chicago-based band before, so I can’t compare this performance to their recorded tracks, but this DVD/CD makes it clear even to newcomers that Smoking Popes should stay in it for the long haul. Three brothers, three guitars, a drummer, and a cocktail of classic adrenaline-pumping shreds coupled with pop lyrics make for songs that will satisfy those in it for the music as well as those in it for the soul.

[Read on] at Silent Uproar

THEATER - "Screwmachine/Eyecandy"

There are only so many ways to beat a dead horse and C.J. Hopkins’ screwmachine/eyecandy or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Big Bob hits them all. The story centers on Patter-happy game-show host Big Bob, played by David Calvitto, who opens a political and philosophical cans of worms while interrogating his two contestants, Dan and Maura Brown, played by Bill Coelius and Nancy Walsh. But the proverbial worms here don’t catch any fish. They just grow less subtle by the second.

[Read on] at Show Business Weekly

FILM - Tribeca 2006: Day 6

--- Al Franken: God Spoke
Here is a mildly amusing documentary that need never have been made. Al Franken should be on tour, doing political stand-up, not mired in the factual depiction of his Bush-induced misery. The amusing moments come from learning more about Franken's past, replete with the obligatory SNL skits, and the mild portions are the rest of the film, which depict (in passing) the creation of Air America (the liberal talk radio), Fox News's abortive lawsuit against Franken's "Liars and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them," and the 2004 campaign trail. But really: when is enough enough? The problem with politics today is that rather than actively doing something, we continue to wallow in the past, and while it's swell that people like Franken point out the constant stream of lies currently passing as news (from both television and the government), this documentary accomplishes nothing new itself. Those who already thought Ann Coulter was a narrow-minded bigot will continue to do so, those who already knew Bill O'Reilly was a bully can feast on their affirmation. For the rest of the world, Al Franken: God Spoke will accomplish absolutely nothing.

Compared to Fahrenheit 9/11, this documentary captures very few gaffes from the hard right, and the mockery of them is quite limited. Not that a political documentary has to (or should be) funny, but it's actually quite dull and dry without the humor, and it's very surprising that a film starring Al Franken, and including jokes, skits, and biased commentary isn't. Al Franken: God Spoke is stuck between being a hands-on biased investigation of how the conservatives have bullied the media and being a passive observation of the same. This failure to be judgmental or unbiased makes the film ineffectual and, as stated earlier, unnecessary.

--- First Snow
Here's a rule: don't ever go to a fortune-teller. You don't want to know what's going to happen. In Jimmy Munson's case (as is often the case in psychological thrillers), he finds out that he's going to die. And not of old age. At some point after the titular "first snow," according to the requisitely bucolic psychic Vacaro (played perfectly by J.K. Simmons), Munson is going to die. As an actor, you'd think Guy Pearce, who plays Munson, would do better confronting his own death. After all, doesn't he almost always play someone who is in perpetual fear of death? In this case, he's sort of bogged down by destiny (i.e., the script), and no matter how he enunciates his lines, he can't get away from the by-the-numbers progression of scenes. Mark Fergus, to his credit, makes the whole thing look pretty good, but the suspense isn't edge-of-the-seat, let alone seat-of-the-seat, as most audience members will probably stand up and walk out of the theater midway through the film upon realizing that nothing is happening.

Perhaps it takes too long for Munson to start fighting his fate, i.e., to seek out the person who might wish him harm (his former best friend, Vincent), and perhaps he's too chummy with his girlfriend and new best friend. Maybe all of that fooling around belies (and negates) any hope of dramatic tension. Or maybe the whole "fighting fate" theme needs a new spin. Whatever the reason, you don't need your fortune told to avoid First Snow: just save your money (twice), and skip it.