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July 31, 2008

A TV reporter in over her head

My pal Drew Taylor, who writes so well about pop culture for The Fairfield Weekly, holds down a day job as “head geek” at Media Wave in Fairfield — an independent video store that is the equivalent of a great portable art house.
Drew emailed me today about a special screening of the Spanish film “(Rec)” at the store tonight at 10 p.m.
An American remake entitled “Quarantine” is set for wide release Halloween weekend, but we all know how most foreign horror flicks have fared when Hollywood gets its hands on them (what REALLY scares me at the movies these days is the idea of seeing another Japan-to-Hollywood remake with those foolish little ghost children running all over the place!).
Drew writes, “The movie is a brilliant, totally creepy little story about a female news reporter who’s doing a story on a local fire brigade, when they’re called away to help out an apartment building where something sinister is going on inside…It’s shot handheld, in the tradition of ‘Blair Witch,’ ‘Cloverfield’ and ‘Diary of the Dead,’ but is scarier than all of those combined.”
“I don’t want to say too much and ruin the surprise, but you should see it now, because it’s not available in the United States,” he added.
The picture opened in Spain last fall to rapturous reviews, including one that called it “the next turn of the screw in the history of this genre…(Director) Jaume Balaguero manages to master the false documentary style to create a really scary atmosphere.”
If I didn’t have another commitment tonight, I would be there to check out what sounds like a terrific horror flick.
Concessions will be on sale at the store and Drew will lead a discussion of the film after the free screening. Those who attend are being asked to bring their own chairs.
(For more information on the screening call 255-8643. Media Wave is at 1596 Post Road in Fairfield Center.)

Posted by Joe on 1:58 PM | Comments (0)

July 30, 2008

Better than her material

Those of us who have become fans of Maria Bello have learned to take her wherever we can get her — she has one of the oddest resumes in modern film — but it is really depressing to see the actress serving as Rachel Weisz’s understudy in “The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor.”
Bello possesses a devastating combination of talent, charisma and sensuality that reminds me of those great European actresses of the 1960s and ’70s. Stars such as Monica Vitti, Anna Magnani and Jeanne Moreau who helped to shake up Hollywood notions of what constitutes a female movie star.
I first noticed Bello in the 2000 Jerry Bruckheimer film, “Coyote Ugly,” in which she was very funny as the tough owner of the Manhattan Meatpacking District bar that gave the movie its title.
In what was to become a trademark Bello move, the actress made a rather unbelievable character so interesting that some of us wished the film was about the bar owner rather than the sweet bar maid played by Piper Perabo.
The actress moved on to much better roles in “The Cooler” (2002), “A History of Violence” (2005) and “World Trade Center” (2006), but still seemed to be off the radar of much of the press and the movie audience.
Bello appears to be a no-nonsense woman off-screen. She has never tried to hide her age (41) and has been publicly critical of the movie ratings problems suffered by “The Cooler,” going so far as to give an interview in the scorching IFC expose, “This Film is Not Yet Rated” (2006).
The actress is fine in “The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor” — which is opening on Friday — but the movie never lets her cut loose. What a waste to strand this major talent in the middle of a senseless CGI spectacle.
Fortunately, Bello has just finished filming what sounds like a much more substantial vehicle, writer-director Rebecca Miller’s “The Private Lives of Pippa Lee,” which was shot in Connecticut last spring and will be released next year.
In this 2009 ensemble piece, Bello will be seen with Julianne Moore, Monica Bellucci and Winona Ryder.

Posted by Joe on 10:19 AM | Comments (0)

July 28, 2008

Shakespeare under the stars

There is something magical about seeing Shakespeare outdoors on a beautiful summer night.
A large and appreciative audience gathered at Bridgeport's Beardsley Park Zoo Friday night to see the delightful Connecticut Free Shakespeare production of “Much Ado About Nothing.”
The show started just as daylight was ending and it was wonderful to see the stage lights come up slowly as darkness descended on the park.
Director Ellen Lieberman has given the romantic comedy a very amusing — and provocative — twist by setting the action during the summer of 1973 when the full implications of President Nixon’s Watergate scandal began to emerge during congressional hearings.
In Lieberman's version, Shakespeare’s free-thinking heroine, Beatrice (Katrina Foy), is part of the exploding feminist revolution of the early 1970s and the equally prickly and independent Benedick (Eric Nyquist) is just returning from a tour of duty in Vietnam.
Thanks to a few revisions in the text, Lieberman deepens the play’s subtext and opens it up to some terrific period musical interludes (supervised by Nyquist who is musical director of “Much Ado” as well as its very appealing male lead).
The beauty and informality of the park setting — with the theatergoers enjoying picnic dinners before the performance — added to the powerfully direct connection between the company of actors and an obviously thrilled audience.
(“Much Ado About Nothing” will be presented this Wednesday through Saturday at 8 p.m. at Beardsley Park and then will move on to the Guilford Green for performances Aug. 6 to 10 at 7:30 p.m. For more information, visit the company website at www.ctfreeshakespeare.org)

Posted by Joe on 12:15 PM | Comments (0)

July 27, 2008

Two degrees of separation

Have you ever seen “Heights”?
One of the dozens of American indies tossed into art houses in 2005, the picture sank without a trace, and even devoted movie buffs give a blank stare when the film is mentioned.
A few nights ago, I watched the picture again with a group of friends and was happy to be reminded of the high quality of Chris Terrio’s debut film. I saw “Heights” in 2005, and enjoyed it, but had forgotten what a sharp and well-acted portrait of Manhattan arts lifestyles Terrio had drawn.
The picture was made under the auspices of Merchant Ivory productions — famed for their genteel period pieces — and the young filmmaker clearly had enough funding to give the movie first-rate camera work and production design. But, Terrio also had a fine script (a collaboration with playwright Amy Fox) with which he was able to attract a strong ensemble of stars (Glenn Close), rising actors (Jesse Bradford, Elizabeth Banks), old-timers (George Segal) and real Manhattan artists (Rufus Wainright).
The movie is an episodic affair, centered on a New York stage and film star (Close) who is rehearsing a Broadway production of "Macbeth" while trying to convince her photographer daughter (Banks) to postpone — or even cancel — her forthcoming marriage to a handsome lawyer (James Marsden).
Other people enter the mix — a Brit journalist (John Light) in town to do a Vanity Fair story on a famous gay photographer who has slept with most of his models; an ex-lover of the Banks character (played by Matt Davis) who tries to lure her away from her fiance with a prestigious photo assignment in Eastern Europe; a young actor (Jesse Bradford,above) who is up for a role in a play that the famous actress plans to direct and who happens to live in the same apartment building as her daughter.
The drama and the fun in the movie derives from the unexpected collisions between these people and the surprising turns their lives take in one 24-hour period. “In this city there are only two degrees of separation,” the Close character says of the sometimes strangely small-town quality of life in Manhattan.
Most of the movie rings true and Close’s performance is one of her very best. “Heights” starts off with a real flourish, with the actress holding court at a master class at Juilliard, dressing down two ambitious students who decide to do a modern, “Sopranos”-style take on their Shakespeare scene.
The picture holds up well on television and should be added to your Netflix list if — like nearly everyone else — you missed it three years ago.

Posted by Joe on 4:08 PM | Comments (0)

July 24, 2008

‘Walking into a dog’s mouth’

Benjamin Kunkel’s funny and scary piece in the new GQ — “World Without Oil, Amen” — is must reading.
The article follows Kunkel’s attempt to figure out what might happen after we reach the point known as “peak oil” — “(when) diminishing global oil production will cause gas prices — steep enough already, you might think — to go up and up as supplies go down, with far-reaching consequences for the only world we know.”
Kunkel wrote the wonderful 2005 novel “Indecision” and is one of the founding editors of the journal n + 1.
He’s a writer who loves to explore the contradictions in modern American life — our well-founded anxious thoughts about the future while we luxuriate in the consumer comforts all around us (for the moment).
“Start thinking about oil and it’s in everything you see, taste and hear,” Kunkel writes of a trip to cover an oil futurist’s conference. “It was oil in the form of a passenger jet that had brought me to Atlanta and oil in the form of chips and guacamole that I’d eaten in the hotel bar before wandering outside to take in a view of oil and more oil: sluggish streams of SUVs and dark sedans slipping past the theater marquee, the dialysis-center storefront, and the emptying parking lot…The sight was the same wherever I looked — 87 million gallons a day keeping the global economy afloat.”
Kunkel explores the debate over what happens when we reach the point of diminishing returns as far as the earth’s supply of oil goes. He travels from Atlanta to Houston to Colorado, keeping an open mind about the subject, but also envisioning a “worst-case scenario” straight out of “The Road Warrior” — “neo-barbarians” slaughtering each other over an ever-dwindling supply of bubbling crude.
The gap between what we think we should be doing and the way we actually live is illustrated in a hilarious encounter with Howard Kunstler —“perhaps America’s most prominent scourge of suburbia…a hair-raising pessimist.”
Kunkel assumes Kunstler will agree with him about the absurdity of the meat-locker air-conditioned temperature in the Houston hotel where the “peak oil” guru is scheduled to speak.
“Well that’s true,” Kunstler says. “But if you go outside, it’s like walking into a dog’s mouth!”

Posted by Joe on 2:21 PM | Comments (0)