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May 30, 2008

'Sex' at midnight with dozens of women

It was fun to see “Sex and the City” last night at midnight at one of the area multiplexes with about 200 hardcore female fans of the HBO series.
I only counted four other men in the audience — who all looked like they had been dragged there by the women in their lives — so it was a little like attending a college sorority slumber party (without the pillow fights).
The anticipation for the movie has built to a feverish pitch this week and you could feel the excitement in the crowd last night when the lights went down and we were reintroduced to New Yorkers Carrie, Samantha, Miranda and Charlotte four years after they left us.
“Sex and the City” — the series — is a very hard act to follow because it was one of the most sophisticated sitcoms in TV history. It was produced for HBO, so the show had almost no limits when it came to the presentation of the women’s sex lives. There were situations and images in the series that probably would have earned some of the episodes NC-17 ratings if the producers submitted the material to the Motion Picture Association of America.
It was the frankness of the show that hooked me right away — for once sex was presented in a popular entertainment format without network and movie studio euphemisms. The adventures of the oldest woman in the quartet — Samantha — afforded Kim Cattrall the opportunity to score in some of the bawdiest material to be seen outside a burlesque house or porn theater. The early episode in which Samantha dates an aged multi-billionaire who is hooked on Viagra was one of the funniest 30 minutes ever recorded on film.
Critics claimed the show was actually about four gay men in drag — women just wouldn’t talk or act that way, the detractors said. Since everyone knows creator Darren Star and primary writer-director Michael Patrick King are gay, this was the same sort of thinly veiled homophobia Edward Albee faced in 1962 when some people suggested “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” was really about two bickering male couples.
If “Sex and the City” was simply a gay comedy in disguise I don’t think millions of straight women all over the world would find Carrie and her friends to be so endlessly fascinating. Star and King simply tapped into the new post-porn pop culture in which women discuss men in the same sexually frank manner that used to be called “locker-room” talk.
The HBO series did have a huge gay following because of the way that the four women were so open about sex and because there were so many gay men in their urban scene. The show also featured the deluxe production values and frequent excursions into the urban nightworld underground that are elements in so many gay cult films and TV shows (the Showtime series “Queer as Folk” which ran on cable during roughly the same period as “Sex and the City” was strikingly similar in its frank approach to nudity and vulgar langauge and an often surprising mix of comedy and drama).
The TV “Sex and the City” is peerless, but I think most fans of the series will enjoy the movie for what it is — a leisurely and beautifully produced reunion with four women we are very fond of.
The passage of time has shifted the original focus of the material away from the sexual adventures of 30somethings and toward the problems of 40ish women who are trying to find mature domestic arrangements with men without losing the desire for freedom that brought them to New York City.
The movie has more than a few strong scenes, but I missed the frank sex comedy of the early seasons of the HBO production. It is to Kim Cattrall’s credit that she scores some huge laughs despite the fact that Samantha has been largely neutered by the improbable continuation of her relationship with the much younger actor played by Jason Lewis.
Samantha spends a good portion of the film tending to the business affairs of the actor and doesn’t get the chance to cut loose the way she did on the first five seasons of the TV show.
“Sex and the City” was created to be consumed in tasty 30-minute portions on TV, so the expansion to a two-hour-and-20-minute feature film running time changes the whole set-up we grew used to on HBO.
Still, the movie is consistently charming and amusing and what a blast it is to see a contemporary Hollywood film focus on the lives of four women.

Posted by Joe on 2:34 PM | Comments (0)

May 29, 2008

The photo that launched a movie

The 2007 bio-pic, “Control,” about the short but influential life of the English band Joy Division, didn’t get much theatrical play in this country, but it is well worth seeking out on the recently issued DVD.
Director Anton Corbijn has become famous for the moody photographs he’s made of rock groups and musicians over the past 30 years, including many sets of photos with U2.
Corbijn took shots of Joy Division in the late 1970s and one image in particular (right) — in which the only face visible is that of lead singer Ian Curtis — became iconic because it seemed to visualize the dark poetry of the Northern England band.
The band had a meteoric rise and fall due to Curtis’s medical and emotional problems. The singer-songwriter was diagnosed with epilepsy and when he would occasionally ignore the medication he was supposed to be taking, concerts were interrupted by his seizures (which, of course, only added to the performer’s doomed-poet aura).
As a result of photographer Corbijn’s decision to bring the story of Joy Division to the screen, “Control” is unusually interesting from a visual standpoint — each wide-screen black-and-white image is beautifully composed and characters are placed with immaculate preciseness within each shot.
Although the film is a mixed-bag in terms of drama — Ian Curtis died at the age of 23 and “Control” can only speculate about the forces that killed him — the production values are so stunning that you probably won’t mind the gaps in the narrative and the perhaps-too-enigmatic protagonist .
It might seem that the transition from still photography to directing movies is a logical step, but Corbijn’s debut with “Control” is one of the few notable forays of a lensman into movies since Bruce Weber switched from stills to filmmaking with “Broken Noses” and then “Let’s Get Lost” in quick succession in the late 1980s.
Movies have become so dominated by stars who demand a whole host of photographic concessions that it is unusual to see a film in which the images come first and the story and characters are secondary to the look of the piece. “Control” is truly a feast for the eyes.

Posted by Joe on 6:39 PM | Comments (0)

May 28, 2008

Sydney Pollack, R.I.P.

Sydney Pollack was such a vital presence on screen and off for so many years that his death Monday was a real shock — it was only a few weeks ago that I enjoyed the 73-year-old actor-director’s very funny performance as Patrick Dempsey’s father in “Made of Honor” and I also recently watched a hilarious interview Pollack gave for a Stanley Kubrick documentary about working on that filmmaker’s final movie, “Eyes Wide Shut.”
Like John Huston, Pollack was a terrific actor as well as a filmmaker, so he got closer to us than the average Hollywood director.
Pollack stole every scene he had with Dustin Hoffman in “Tootsie” (1982), in the relatively small role of a frustrated agent, and then gave a major performance in one of the leading roles in Woody Allen’s “Husbands and Wives” (1992).
Although he came of age as a film director in the turbulent 1960s and ’70s, Pollack stood apart from peers such as Robert Altman and Martin Scorsese because of his seeming lack of interest in “personal” moviemaking. He was a throwback to the classical Hollywood careers and styles of men like Fred Zinnemann and William Wyler who always put storytelling and acting ahead of the flashy “cinematic” style of directors like Alfred Hitchcock. You could always spot the Hitchcock technique in his movies — Wyler and Zinnemann preferred to find the right style for whatever material they were working on.
What was interesting about the movies Pollack made in the 1970s was the way they eschewed the camera and editing fashions of that era; for this reason, pictures like “The Way We Were” (1973), “Jeremiah Johnson” (1972) and “Three Days of the Condor” (1975) haven’t dated as much as some of the more highly regarded productions of that period.
Pollack held on to the notion of the importance of old-fashioned movie star charisma in a time when Altman and Scorsese looked for gritty realism in the ensembles they put together in the 1970s. Pollack would never have cast Shelley Duvall in a leading role in one of his movies
Romance was in short supply in movies during the 1970s, so mainstream audiences took “The Way We Were” to heart immediately, despite the fact that reviewers tended to write it off as a throwback to 1940s Hollywood kitsch. Pollack knew that if he guided Barbra Streisand and Robert Redford to their best possible work, the flaws in the plot and the messy historical detail wouldn’t matter, and he was proven right by the huge success of the film in 1973 and the fact that it is now a beloved classic.
Pollack could have spun variations on “The Way We Were” for the rest of his career, but he never showed much interest in repeating genres or trying to rekindle elements of earlier hits (with the one notable exception of working with his old New York friend Redford throughout his career).
My favorite Pollack movie, “Three Days of the Condor” (above), was a hit when it first came out and was warmly endorsed by most critics, but it was viewed as a strictly commercial enterprise and didn’t register with the movie awards groups at the end of 1975. That was the year of "Nashville" and "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest."
It is only with the passage of time that the espionage thriller’s sheer craftsmanship, entertainment value, and extraordinary acting have become so evident. A picture many of us took for granted 33 years ago as a smart and clever thriller seems to get better with each passing year.
Pollack grounded a fairly standard paranoid thriller plot — about a rogue element within the CIA — in the sort of beautifully crafted physical production and superb performances we rarely get in a mainstream Hollywood entertainment these days.
Redford as the threatened agent Joe Turner is a character we care about, not just an excuse for a lot of chases and killings. And the spy-on-the-run’s brief relationship with a slightly icy Brooklyn photographer (Faye Dunaway) is more memorable than the full-blown love affairs in movies that focus on romance.
Although the puzzle plot fits together quite neatly at the end, Pollack dared to have enigmatic elements in the story, such as the strangely sympathetic European hit man played by Max Von Sydow and a final scene that leaves room for doubt that Condor (Redford) will totally vanquish his enemies.
“Three Days of the Condor” would, no doubt, be tightened and streamlined if it was remade in 2008 and a contemporary star might bristle at the size and importance of the “supporting” roles in the production.
Pollack was that rare modern director who brought new themes and new styles of acting to the Golden Age Hollywood belief in the importance of a well-told story.

Posted by Joe on 5:14 PM | Comments (1)

May 27, 2008

Preparing to be surprised in New York City

The way that New York City has become home to millions of wildly diverse people over the past century is explored in the documentary/essay film “Home,” a collaboration between the Irish immigrant writer Alan Cooke and native born director Dawn Scibilia.
The film was shown on Channel 13 on St. Patrick’s Day and has been screened around the city for the past several months, but I just caught up with “Home” on the recently released DVD version.
It’s a beautiful study of the way each person sees the city in a slightly different light. Cooke gives us his own account of coming to New York a few years ago, falling in love with an American woman, and deciding to start a new life there.
In his attempt to figure out what makes New York so alluring despite its many challenges, Cooke interviewed a great gallery of writers and actors, including Pete Hamill, Fran Lebowitz, Susan Sarandon and Rosie Perez.
Cooke also sat down for terrific chats with two fellow Irishmen who now call Manhattan home — Frank and Malachi McCourt.
Scibilia did the camerawork on “Home” as well the direction; one of the greatest strengths of the film are the gorgeous shots of the city at all hours of the day and night. Ken Burns has called the movie “a visual poem” and that’s an apt way of describing the mix of urban images and the smart commentary.
Hamill tells Cooke that he thinks it is impossible to truly “know” New York because it is always changing. Nostalgia plays a big role in the life of almost any New Yorker, Hamill says, because people and places keep changing from era to era. What New Yorker of the 1980s would ever imagine a skyline without the World Trade Center? But a New Yorker of the 1950s would be just as shocked by the absence of the original Penn Station on West 34th Street.
“Prepare to be surprised,” is Hamill’s advice to Cooke on living in the city.
Sarandon talks about the surprises you can find on any walk in the city and the weird way you can run into people you know anywhere you go in Manhattan.
“If you’re in L.A. and you run into somebody, you’ve been in a car accident,” the actress says, with a grin.
(For more information on “Home” visit the film’s website at homethemovie.com)

Posted by Joe on 4:15 PM | Comments (0)

May 25, 2008

Blissed out at 'La Fille du Regiment'

Doomsayers have been predicting the end of live performance due to the new century’s explosion in media, but don’t tell that to Peter Gelb, the general manager of the The Metropolitan Opera, whose regime change has included HD simulcasts of live performances all over the country as well as the addition of hundreds of free recordings and videos to the arts institution’s Website.
Gelb’s decision to make opera more available (and less elitist) has increased ticket sales to the live performances in Manhattan at the same time that it has generated new audiences in movie theaters and at college campuses all over the country (Fairfield University hosted some of the HD transmissions this season).
It was thanks to Gelb’s decision to send opera out into movie theaters that I found myself in the audience last weekend at the season closing performance of “La Fille du Regiment,” where stars Natalie Dessay and Juan Diego Florez (above) gave two of the most thrilling (and thrillingly LIVE) performances I’ve ever seen.
So, how did HD deliver me to the Met?
Well, thanks to the new policy, a great friend of mine from Philadelphia started going to the HD transmissions near her, was turned on to the power of opera, and this season decided to drive to Manhattan for as many performances as she could fit into her busy schedule.
When my friend’s daughter was unable to join her mom at the Met, I got to see several performances, including the powerhouse finale with Dessay and Florez.
It is hard for me to describe the electricity in the house generated by these young and vibrant singer-actors (not to mention the literally show-stopping pandemonium that erupted in the audience after Florez hit nine high Cs in a row during the notoriously difficult Act One aria “Pour mon ame”).
I had a few great times at the opera in the 1980s and 1990s, but the need to study up for a performance in a foreign language made it seem a bit like schoolwork, so I drifted away — it always seemed easier to go to a homegrown play or musical.
But the addition of Met Titles — subtitles that run continuously on the back of the seat you sit behind — make every moment easy to follow.
And the newer stars of the Met — Dessay and Florez and Renee Fleming whose heartbreaking Desdemona in “Otello” was another of my wonderful nights with my Philly benefactor — are as exciting to listen to as they are sensational to look at. Obviously, the time has come to retire that cliché about the “fat lady” and her singing.
Do yourself a big favor and go to an HD transmission at Fairfield University when the new season begins in the fall or better yet plan an outing to Manhattan. Dessay and Florez are set to do “La Sonnambula” next spring and another starry couple, Roberto Alagna and Angela Gheorghiu, are teaming up for “La Rondine,” in December.
On June 20, Gheorghiu and Alagna are also re-energizing the Met’s tradition of free New York City parks concerts with a performance in Brooklyn’s Prospect Park at 8 p.m.
Check out the great website at www.metopera.org for all the planning info you will need, along with lots of free entertainment, thanks to the visionary leadership of Peter Gelb.

Posted by Joe on 5:40 PM | Comments (0)