According to certain people in the know – the über-successful producer Craig Zadan, for example, who, with his partner Neil Maron produced the Oscar-winning film, Chicago, among others – it never went away. And while we at The Report could have written a book on the return of Hollywood’s Golden Age of Musicals (calling all publishers…), we were asked, instead, to write an article for Dance Magazine (click here to read that).
But due to length restrictions and topicality, so many great movies and peeps (Lockers’ co-founder Toni Basil, we still love you), were not mentioned. Indeed, just the other night Turner Classics had a slew of films devoted to dance, specifically ballet. Starting with The Red Shoes (click here to read our story on how Michael Powell’s 1948 iconic work outshines today’s Black Swan, then click here for more on Ms. Natalie Portman, who did less than 15% of her own dancing in Darren Aronofksy’s horror-on-pointe flick), moving backward in time to Ballerina, a fabulous 1937 feature starring Mia Slavenska in a story dealing with a balletic rivalry, an accident and a young BIT, ballerina-in-training. (Hmm, this plot is perennial, no matter the profession, from acting – hello, All About Eve – to tapping…saluting Ruby Keeler in 42nd Street.)
And with a plethora of remakes coming up (Dirty Dancing…must they?), notably Footloose arriving in theaters this month (produced by Zadan and Meron), terpsichores and those who love dance, have ample reason to jeté for joy. And, for better or worse, there’s a slew of reality TV shows that we, in the long run, think are somewhat for the better, if only because they bring huge audiences to the art form.
In any case, we’ve already done numerous stories on that hot topic. With subjects ranging from Nigel Lythgoe (click here for our Dance Mag feature on the mega-producer), and the So You Think You Can Dance effect (click here for our take on that), to the various and sundry articles on the stars those TV shows have wrought, (click hereto read our cover story on Dancing With the Stars’ Cheryl Burke), all of this ink – and media saturation – does not necessarily mean it’s Hollywood’s Golden Age…Redux.
But, to quote Bob Dylan, “It’s all good.” We’re just wondering when the Hollywood powers that be will remake The Turning Point, White Nights and Center Stage. Or what about Saturday Night Fever? (Please, no, don’t do it, we’re just musing is all…). The list, nevertheless, would be endless, because there are no new stories under the sun – it’s all about presentation.
And while the presentation of today’s dancers may be sharper and more technically advanced (the same holds true for classical musicians and athletes), where is the personality, the artistry? Who is today’s Fred Astaire, Ginger Rogers, Rita Hayworth, Gene Kelly, Eleanor Powell. Talk about an endless list. And while we don’t exactly see Karina Smirnoff and Maksim Chmerkovskiy burning up the big screen, for us, at least, the more dance the better, so bring it on, please…
He’s so cool we can hardly contain ourselves. Indeed, after trekking down to Irvine the other night for a flamenco concert (click here to read our coverage of that, including our LAT review, the one in which we coined the phrase, “duende interruptus”…), we couldn’t sleep. At 4 a.m. we finally turned on the tube (after reading some of Tom Perrotta’s latest book, The Leftovers…not exactly holding our attention the way Jonathan Franzen does..), and there he was in all his Columbian/Big Apple glory: John Leguizamo playing a successful Bronx drug dealer wanting to better his status. The flick was Empire, from 2002, and also starred the always wonderful Peter Sarsgaard and, unfortunately, the risible Denise Richards. (She’s more famous for having married Charlie Sheen (and to think that we once introduced Sheen to that erstwhile permanent house guest, Kato Kaelin, but that is certainly another story, or maybe not.)
In any case: Legz has done more than 60 films, including To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything Julie Newmar. (Doesn’t Legz look great in Carmen Miranda drag, a role for which he earned a Golden Globe nomination.) But many of his films have been dark, drug-driven and dangerous, right up our noir alley.
Indeed, one near the top of our all-time favorite list is Carlito’s Way. That 1993 Brian De Palma gangsta flick saw Legz kill the Al Pacino character. It was also the film in which Pacino told Legz (off-camera), “You’re a clown, John. Just be yourself, you don’t have to clown around so much. HUA!” That bit of business lodged itself into Legz’ fertile brain and also helped contribute to the actor’s naming his latest one-person show, Ghetto Klown, directed by Fisher Stevens.
It’s Legz’s fifth one-man theater piece and the third to have played Broadway. (The first was Freak, which opened in 1998 and ran for a very respectable 144 performances.) Now we Angelenos can see this fabulous playwright, comic nonpareil and master of characters (he plays nearly three dozen different peeps), right here in the heart of Hollywood at the Ricardo Montalban Theatre thru October 16. (Another show has also landed in the heart of Hollywood – but it’ll be there for 10 years, so there’s no need to rush to Cirque du Shekels, er, Soleil’s Iris. Click here for our take on that over-priced extravaganza.)
But we digress: Stalking the stage for more than two hours with volcanic moves and equally explosive tales from his trenches, this 47-year old force of nature and exceptional actor (he’s Lee Strasberg/Method-trained, after all), brings everything he’s got – and he’s got plenty. From portraying his old-school Latino grandfather, whom he adored, and his father (also old school, but this story’s a heartbreaker that involves legal wranglings), to his mother, girlfriends, ex-wife, best pal RayRay and a host of Hollywood types, including a Jewish father-son agent team, with the son a mega-coke sniffer, Legz delivers a bullet train of emotions, hilarity and grit as one wild and krazy dude. Hey: It may be Legz’ world (that could benefit from a bit of editing), but it’s great getting a peek into it – and into one of the most talented performers of his generation.
But don’t just take our word for it. Click here for a taste of the full enchilada: Legz in his own words, in our chat with him for 91.5 Classical KUSC’s Arts Alive.
There’s been so much written on this multi-billion dollar operation, that we really don’t wish to spill any more ink on the subject. (Is it even a publicly traded company, and if so, we should definitely have bought stock when we first saw Cirque du Soleil under its blue and yellow tent in downtown Los Angeles’ Little Tokyo in 1987.) But this being the digital age and one in which we’re blogging as fast as we can, click here for our Dance Magazine review of Iris (pronounced, in that inimitable French fashion, “Eeyrees”). Until then, click here for our Dance Magazine coverage of several Vegas Cirque shows, including the water-logged O. (We liked that one – it’s very Busby Berkeley – and went with our mother, who, however, opted out of going to Zumanity in favor of seeing David Copperfield, telling us she’d heard Zu was too obscene. Not true; indeed, not risqué enough. Oy!) In any case, click here for more from our Vegas trip, including foraying to the Liberace Museum, alas, now defunct.
For those of you interested in getting a bit of carpal tunnel syndrome, keep reading and clicking, as we also wrote a piece for Dance Mag on Jacques Heim (click here for that). Heim choreographed KÀ, the Cirque extravaganza directed by internationally famed theater guru Robert Lepage. That show, aside from Nouvelle Experience, the 1990 spectacle that was the first to feature the original Russian flier, Vladimir – and with whom we trysted – is, hands down, the best Cirque vehicle running. (To read more about Heim’s own dance troupe, Diavolo, click here. For more info on Vlad, sorry, we ain’t talkin’, but enjoy the picture below. He was, after all, anointed that year by People Mag as one of the 50 Most Beautiful Peoplein the World.)
And for the record: We also liked Alegrias, Corteo and the Vegas show Love (that last one is about the Beatles and reignited the passion we once had for the mop-topped quartet in their heyday). And though we may be accused of being jaded, cranky or downright nasty with regards to Iris, we at The Report gotta say it’s a gargantuan tourist trap, er, attraction, intended to partially fill the coffers of the Kodak Theatre 11 months a year – when it’s not hosting the Academy Awards ceremony – as well as to keep lining the pockets of Guy Laliberté, Cirque’s billionaire founder/entrepreneur/poker player/whatever, that last category one in which he’s “curated” (?) a book about space, Gaia, which can be had in a special hand-bound edition for a mere, uh, $875. And btw, we intensely dislike everything about that corner known as Hollywood and Highland, the mall wherein the Kodak roosts. The parking’s a nightmare, negotiating one’s way to the theater is even worse, and finally, there’s the venue itself, one for which Cirque shelled out some $40 million to “renovate.” Hint: The sight lines still suck.
Okay! Enuf already! We need to turn our attention to something more positive. How does the recent opening of the Los Angeles Philharmonic season at Disney Hall sound? It sounded just great, thank you very much. That’s because it was the gala opening of Gustavo Dudamel’s (aka The Dude’s) third season as music director, which he started with a big George Gershwin bang. Herbie Hancock, who holds the LA Phil creative chair for jazz, was the piano soloist in the Rhapsody, but the less said about that, well, the better. In the interim, click here to read about The Dude’s Hollywood connection concert from earlier this year, click here to read about his July performance with superstar fiddler Gil Shaham at the famed Hollywood Bowl, and click here to see how he was abiding back in February. We’ll be scribbling our thoughts about the real season opener this weekend, a program that includes a John Adams’ work and the U.S. premiere of Esteban Benzecry’s Rituales Amerindios. Meanwhile: As a personal favor to us, have a great life!
Our readers know that we absolutely love flamenco. What’s not to love, with its Gypsy roots, sultry moves, soulful singing and fabulous music, especially the guitar stuff. (OK, the clothes can be pretty cool, too, as seen in the above photo of the late José Greco.) We have certainly covered many a flamenco performance, from the sensational and the so-so, to the occasionally awful. Indeed, after covering a recent Israel Galván performance in Montpellier, France, we also had the pleasure and honor of interviewing the so-called “Nijinsky of flamenco” at a late-night party, with the aid of not one, but two translators. (Click here for our Dance Magazine review of the Montpellier festival; click here for more on Galván for the LA Times.)
Then there was our first visit to Cuba in 2006, when Farruquito and family were performing. They were also staying at our hotel, El Presidente, where Farruquito would tickle the ivories during late night jam sessions. How great is that! Too bad, though, that the Mediterranean sensation discovered that upon his return to Spain he’d have to begin serving a jail sentence for having committed a hit-and-run killing several years earlier. Ouch! Happily, though, Los Farruco, the group, made a 2009 appearance at Royce Hall, sans the heartthrob, however, who was credited with conceiving and directing the show but was not seen in any of his terpsichorean glory. (Click here to read our review of that evening.)
Our point is this: We’re no flamenco newbies! That said, we’ve also been writing about the New World Flamenco Festival in Irvine for years, including having penned a preview article on the festival in 2003. (Click here for that piece, in which our reporter only had an email correspondence with Galván; click here for our 2008 LAT review; click here for our 2007 coverage.)
It goes without saying, then, that we were looking forward to the 9th edition of the festival, dubbed Semana Flamenka. (We always leave early for Irvine so as to avoid two-hour traffic jams, generally catching a film beforehand. On this occasion we opted to see The Help, a flick we believe is highly overrated and perfunctorily directed by Tate Taylor, who also wrote the screenplay from the Kathryn Stockett bestseller), though it does feature several fine performances, notably those by Viola Davis and Octavia Spencer. Hello, Oscar noms!)
But we digress. The festival, co-founded and directed by Yaelisa (she’s based in San Francisco but has flamenco running through her veins, see photo below), is an asset to our town, and we’re ecstatic to see the festival continue, especially in these economically challenged times. That it’s not always consistently fantastic – but what is, really – we understand. As you’ll read, the testosterone factor needed to be amped up – and where were the bare chests! In any case, click here for our LA Times review of the latest New World Flamenco Festival offering. Enjoy and keep dancing – like Oscar Valero – on the right! Olé
While he is hopefully enjoying a marvelous and happy 75th birthday (October 1), Edward Villella, founding artistic director of Miami City Ballet, had recently announced that he’s stepping down from his post at the end of the 2012-2013 season (April, 2013, to be exact).
And what steps those have been: Villella was one of New York City Ballet’s brightest stars under George Balanchine, who, along with Jacques d’Amboise helped make ballet popular for boys. (Click here to read our coverage on d’Amboise, including our recent LA Times story.) Or at least make the art form more masculine, Eddie having come from a boxing background. (Click here to read our LA Times story written on location in Miami, where we at The Report, were privileged to hang with Eddie and company for an entire day in 2006.)
Taking the sands of Miami Beach – a cultural wasteland some 25 years ago – and turning them into a glorious ballet company, Eddie Villella did in Miami what is still trying to be accomplished in Los Angeles. (Los Angeles Ballet recently completed its fifth season…click here for our coverage of LAB, a troupe we continually applaud and support.) But we digress: Eddie had star quality, yes, but he also had a fantastic vision and he realized it. Triumphing on his home turf of Manhattan several years ago, critics raved about the little company that could – and did. This summer Eddie took his dancers to Paris. They came, they danced, they conquered. (Above photo: Eddie in dance trunks, Mr. B on the right)
Mr. V. says he will pursue other dance-related projects when he leaves his beloved company. Of course, we look forward to those plans, but with a heavy heart and, well, leaden feet. In the interim, MCB’s current season brings a new ballet by Liam Scarlett, as well as a feast of Balanchine and Robbins works – dances for which the company is known – along with great stuff from Twyla Tharp and Chris Wheeldon, and classics, including Giselle, Coppélia and, of course, The Nutcracker. We at The Report have family in Florida who are subscribers to MCB and wouldn’t miss a performance. Wish we were there, but instead, when the troupe last came to LA in 2008, we were honored to chat with Eddie again, this time in his own words for the radio (click here for our KUSC interview).
MCB principal dancers & real life Romeo & Juliet: Jennifer Kronenberg & Carlos Guerra
In short, we love you, Eddie Villella. Have a most happy birthday October 1 – and long may you jeté – in whatever form!
Audience fashion faux pas abounded, and the curtain came clunking down – not once, but twice – on opening night of Los Angeles Opera’s 26th season. Funny that, as the curtain also “lurched” when Plácido Domingo sang Otello a quarter century ago to inaugurate the opera company that’s served as a kind of ground zero for the performing arts in the City of Angels (the LA Philharmonic, notwithstanding, though that they are now standing in Walt Disney Concert Hall has also helped put our erstwhile cow town on the cultural map).
The production was Tchaikovsky‘s Eugene Onegin – a company first, but one imported from London’s Royal Opera – whose original director, Stephen Pimlott, died in 2007. (It’s not quite as bad as Mel Gussow, a New York Times writer who penned an obituary of Elizabeth Taylor when she died in March, six years after he himself croaked …click here to read that and click here for The Report’s coverage of La Liz). Pimlott’s duties had been passed on to Francesca Gilpin, who did a crack job on LA Opera’s The Turn of the Screw last season (click here for our coverage), which she handled with skill in this mounting, if not scintillatingly so.
Full Disclosure: We at The Report did love the first act scrim featuring a painting of a crouching male nude, which, we believe, is a symbol of Tchaikovsky’s own tormented soul – gay, libidinous, repressed and/or otherwise.
As for plot, it’s typical operatic fare, with Onegin (baritone Dalibor Jenis), rejecting girly girl Tatiana (soprano Oksana Dyka), before killing his best friend Lensky (tenor Vsevolod Grivnov) in a pistol-packing duel. Eventually seeing the folly of his ways when he encounters Tatiana in the last act, Onegin realizes he really does/did love her. Alas: Tatiana is now a Princess, having married an older titled dude, and though she, too, loves Onegin, she won’t abdicate her metaphorical throne, choosing, instead, to abide by society’s dictums that insist she stand by her man. And about that famous Act I letter scene (the story is based on Alexander Pushkin’s verse novel), Dyka delivered what is one of opera’s longest arias in a good, if not goosebump-evoking performance.
Oh, and speaking of duels, we gotta say: We love ‘em and wish they were still de rigeur, au courant, en vogue, cuz there are several persons we can think of whom we would be shooting, with glee, we might add, given the opportunity. But then that’s another story…or two.
Back to Onegin: To have nary a star belter on opening night is a bit puzzling, although the aforementioned warblers – all making their LA Opera debuts – acquitted themselves just fine, including the sprightly mezzo Ekaterina Semenchuk as Tatiana’s sister, Olga. So, too, were small parts, presented with diligence: Bass James Creswell (Prince Gremin), was an LA Opera Young Artist a decade ago, so it was nice to hear him in full, er, flower; mezzo Ronnita Nicole Miler assayed Tatiana’s nurse, Filipievna, with verve; and Margaret Thompson (pictured above with the nude), also passed mezzo muster as Tatiana’s mother, Larina.
Ultimately, though, it’s Tchaikovsky’s music that thrills. And with Maestro James Conlon giving his customary all in the pit, the Russian’s lush melodies, rich harmonies and enticing rhythms quickened the pulse and opened the heart, temporarily taking us away from the workaday world we know and transporting us somewhere else…far, far away. Whatever Conlon’s on, we at The Report want some, as the energy, passion and stamina needed to make music as he does, boggle the mind.
As for danceable tunes (this production is being touted as “From the composer of “Swan Lake” and “Nutcracker” – oy…so click here to read our Black Swan coverage), the original choreography is credited to Linda Dobell, with the Finn Ulrika Hallberg doing her best on what effectively ends up being a very crowded stage: Anthony McDonald’s set includes a rural tableau as well as a “river” which, when frozen, becomes a pond for Hans Brinker types (erstwhile Olympic skater Michelle Kwan, seen above with Domingo and Conlon, was in the house; so much for attracting glitz to the opening night of the so-called fall season). McDonald also designed the costumes, which were lavish and luxe, but occasionally looked as if they could have come from Hoarders, the pile-up quotient too much for the room. A pity, as the dancers barely had space enough to sashay in the ballroom waltz scene, with the area looking more crowded than a Tokyo subway at rush hour, albeit better lighted, courtesy of Peter Mumford’s original design.
Speaking of dancers, we at The Report recommend Eugene Onegin the ballet, which is in the repertory of more than 20 ballet troupes, including Boris Eifman Ballet, Stuttgart Ballet and National Ballet of Canada, with choreographers such as John Cranko and Eifman (click here to read our take on his Don Quixote, including our review for the LA Times), putting their imprimatur on the story where, simply put, everybody lives unhappily ever after.
In short: If not exactly overwhelmingly sumptuous, this Onegin was far from bloodless and could very well improve with age.
Finally: What’s a gala opening night without a gala party? The pre-performance soiree, chaired by actor Emmy Rossum, was closed to The Report, but the after-party, which went for broke – at least as far as the “talent” was concerned – welcomed us. Dare we mention that the serving dames looked like, well, working girls imported from Brighton Beach. (We don’t watch Lifetime TV’s reality show, Russian Dolls, but we’re familiar with their ilk, one that’s been featured in shows such as our favorite, The Sopranos. Who can forget the one-legged FICA-favoring bookkeeper, Svetlana, or Tony Soprano’s hard-drinking galpal, Irina.)
Whatever: The glorious gala gals were dressed in all-white, serving up piroges, White Russians and fig-infused vodka drinks, all to the sounds of a 12-piece cover band, also white-clad. Everything was white, actually, as a way of paying homage to Russia’s famous White Nights Festival – which, unfortunately, happens to be in June. Still, seeing a fetching babe dancing around the room wearing a huge, dessert-laden table was kinda cool – or beyond kitsch, in any case.
“Do we eat off of her skirt,” we wanted to know, wondering, as well, where the Hopak-kicking Cossacks and caviar were. Ah: Just another night on the town for the hard-working scribes of The Looseleaf Report.
Talk about a long shelf life: Cabaret originally began its theatrical run as a play, I Am a Camera, by John Van Druten. Penned in 1951, this work, in turn, had been based on several short stories by Christopher Isherwood. (See Isherwood’s portrait below, as rendered by his lover, Don Bachardy.) As such, it was set in 1930 Berlin, when the Nazis were ascending to power. It’s centered around Sally Bowles, a cabaret performer in the seedy Kit Kat Club, Cliff Bradshaw – Isherwood’s doppelgänger and the young American writer Sally becomes involved with – and characters of the edgy, threatening world they inhabit. Yeah, it’s all decadence and debauchery before the party crashes to a shrieking halt with the doom and gloom of Hitler, the Holocaust and World War II.
The play became a musical in 1966, with Joe Masteroff writing the book and John Kander doing the compositional honors, punctuated by Fred Ebb’s deliciously punchy, provocative lyrics. Directed by Broadway powerhouse Harold Prince, the play ran for 1,165 performances, winning eight Tony Awards, including Best Musical, with Joel Grey playing the Master of Ceremonies in a performance that effectively launched his career.
While none of us here at The Report were, well, privy to seeing the original staging, it was Bob Fosse’s film version of Cabaret that is, perhaps, seared into our collective consciousness. Released in 1972, the flick reaped a bounty of awards – snagging eight Oscars – with statuettes going to Fosse for Best Director, Grey for Best Supporting Actor and Liza Minnelli for Best Actress in her indelible portrayal of Ms. Bowles.
Bob Fosse, after being presented his Best Directing Oscar by Julie Andrews and George Stevens, 1973
So, puhleeze: There’s absolutely no use sitting alone in your room, not when you can come to the Cabaret. The 1998 revival featured the late Natasha Richardson and Alan Cumming (see photo below), while regional productions dot the landscape like so many Seurat paintings. Now we’ve got Reprise Theatre Company’s staging at the Freud Playhouse in Los Angeles. The only bad thing about the production, splendidly directed and choreographed by Marcia Milgrom Dodge, is that the limited run ends too soon, on September 25.
Wiping out any memories of Grey and Cumming – and making the role completely his own – Bryce Ryness as a lanky, lithe emcee, slinks, preens, prances, prowls and lights up the stage like a firecracker. His face is über-expressive, accentuated by a patrician Roman nose. Then there’s his way with a song (he appeared on Broadway in the Tony Award-winning revival of Hair), with this performance a dazzling star turn.
Lisa O’Hare’s Sally Bowles is reminiscent of a young Julie Andrews, one who can assuredly knock her knees together in Dodge’s flapper-era choreography. This lass seems to be having quite the career recently – one that could be dubbed a bit bi-polar: In her last few roles, Ms. O’Hare played Mary Poppins in a London West End production, and, earlier this year, she assayed the titular role in Gigi in another Reprise staging.
Lisa O’Hare as Sally Bowles. Photo by Ed Krieger
With Cabaret so much about The Kit Kat Club, including an eight-piece onstage all-girl band led by Christy Crowl, we, of course, expect plenty of sex, booze and barbs, which are here delivered in spades. So, too, does John Iacovelli’s scenic design – glittery blood-red curtains, a requisite disco ball – hit the mark; while a number of other actors also comport themselves with conviction: Mary Gordon Murray as Fraulein Schneider and Robert Picardo as the German Jewish fruit seller, Herr Schultz, give us a touching portrait of a December-December romance, one destined for disaster, however, by the era’s encroaching insidiousness.
Oy: Trouble is just around the corner. We know it. Jeff McLean’s Cliff knows it. Isherwood knew it. And history proved it.
But part of that long reach of history has, at least, given us this canny, cool musical. Cabaret was – and still is – a potent brew. It’s also ripe for staging in 2011, says director Dodge, whom we at The Report had the pleasure of interviewing for KUSC (click here to listen). Our own political climate is volatile, we’re in a double-dip recession and hate crimes are still being perpetrated all too often. We go to the theater, then, to escape our ordinary lives, to be entertained, sure. But to be taken to a higher level – to have a peak emotional experience while sitting in the dark with others – that’s even better. Cabaret takes us to that place.
“Start by admitting, from cradle to tomb, isn’t that long a stay. Life is a Cabaret, old chum, only a Cabaret, old chum, and I love a Cabaret!” (A 21st century perk: Kander and Ebb’s fabulous ditty is now available as a ringtone. Who knew?)
There’s a slew of reasons why Harold and Maudeis not only a cult classic, but an all-purpose, bona-fide classic. One: Directed by Hal Ashby with an original screenplay by Colin Higgins, it was startlingly fresh. Two: It featured the fantastic Ruth Gordon as a Boho octogenarian and a completely winning Bud Cort in a star turn as the suicidal rich teen. Three: The icing on this sumptuous 1971 cake was music by the erstwhile Cat Stevens, knocking the whole film out of the celluloid ballpark.
Now this is a kooky, quirky, memorable love story.
But we digress: Restless, our movie du jour, directed by Gus Van Sant, is a two-fisted wannabe weeper without much going for it. Enoch, a depressed kid who lost his parents in a car wreck, goes to strangers’ funerals for solace in what is Van Sant’s nod, if not a direct rip-off of Harold and Maude (or as one reader of Michael Musto’s Village Voice blog dubbed it: Harold and Maudlin). Enoch even sports dashing ensembles meant to imply that he, too, comes from big bucks. And where he lives must be a very small town (it’s actually Portland, Oregon), but picturesque, of course – because Enoch, who meets Annabel at one of said funerals, keeps running into her. Finally giving in to her perky powers of pursuasion, he quickly learns that this pale-skinned angel will be dead of a brain tumor within three months, when those proverbially autumn leaves turn to glistening white snow. Cue violins!
Enoch is played by Henry Hopper (son of the late Dennis Hopper, remembered for such iconic films as Easy Rider, Blue Velvet and, er, Speed, as well as his photography, wives and volatile personality). Restless is Henry’s first film. Did he even have to audition or was his thespian DNA enough cred. Actually, he’s quite decent – and kinda gorgeous in that weird Hopperesque way. Too bad he had very little to do beyond saying, ‘Whatever’ a lot and looking pensively somber, his carefully gelled hair affectedly mussed. Aussie Mia Wasikowska has the unfortunate task of portraying Annabel, a bird-loving naturalist who wouldn’t hurt a flea – otherwise known as Siphonaptera – or other creatures she draws when she’s not busy getting blood transfusions, MRIs and worshipping at the altar of Charles Darwin.
But as much as Wasikowska nobly acquits herself, this story is doomed. Morbid. A no-win exercise in melancholia, Harris Savides’ Vaseline-lensed cinematography aside.
Adding more murk to this trifling plot is the ghost of a Kamikaze pilot, Hiroshi (a flat, uninteresting Ryo Kase, whose best moments come when he is not on screen, but reading the letter he penned to his love before taking that dive bombing plane ride). Of course, Hiroshi’s not actually real (and can only be seen/heard by Enoch), which might account for the invisibility of his acting.
Written by Jason Lew, this misguided venture, we learn from the press notes, began life as “a series of short plays.” Unfortunately, the entire kit, kaboodle and Kamikaziness still feel like vignettes. What we have here, essentially, is not only a failure to communicate, but a predictably gloomy fairy tale in which the talented Mr. Van Sant (his last film, Milk, was a keeper), once again trains his painterly eye on nubile young flesh (alas, never bared here), and beautiful, fresh-scrubbed faces.
Give us the delirious camp of the 1970 melodrama, Love Story, puhleeze, with the eternally quotable tag line, “Love means never having to say you’re sorry.” Making use of Francis Lai’s Academy Award-winning music as a relentlessly maudlin backdrop, that tearjerker featured a delectable Ryan O’Neal and the perennially mediocre if magnificent Ali MacGraw frolicking through Harvard Yard before she is hurled to her insanely sexy death. Now that was a perfect sob storm of a B-movie. In Restless, whose forgettable score is by Danny Elfman, we also have a B-movie, with ‘B,’ in this case, standing for brain dead.
Restless – and we at The Report wonder who came up with that insipid title –whose tag line should read, “Love means never having to grow up, grow old or go in debt!” – is fated to die a death quicker than Annabel’s.
Talk about a weird marketing campaign: Whose idea of playing dead was this?
Like the dud, One Day (click here to read The Report’s take on that flop), although not as wretched, this film is still a thankless downer. Death is bad, we move on. Let’s see what happens to Enoch when he turns 21 and collects his inheritance. Maybe he’ll meet an octogenarian, learn some real life lessons and make a film that doesn’t feel like a retread mash-up.
Hmm…Why does this scene from One Day with Anne Hathaway look so, well, eerily familiar?
The phone rang at a few minutes before 7 a.m., Los Angeles time. I was in the shower and hadn’t heard it. As usual, my radio had been tuned to KUSC-FM, which only broadcasts classical music and arts-related news. It was just another day.
But it wasn’t.
The phone rang again. It was my sister calling from Cleveland, telling me to turn on the TV. And there it was. Planes hitting the towers. Giant mushroom clouds rising. Panic spreading like the Ebola virus. Replays of the first tower, the North, going down at 8:46 a.m. Now the second, 9:03 a.m. Bodies hurling towards the ground… specks of dust…trying to escape the flames, the fumes, the sheer horror of it all. The horror. Marlon Brando’s Colonel Kurtz had nothing on this.
I didn’t know what to do. What to think. What to feel. My family was not in New York, but many friends were. I tried calling. Couldn’t get through. Then I started calling friends in L.A. One, my psychic masseur, called me. He said we should meet at the French Quarter in West Hollywood. (I know: psychic masseur; that he used to work on dancers, including Nureyev, had nothing to do with the reality or surreality of the day that neither he – nor anyone else – could ever have predicted.)
Have some pancakes and coffee, he said. This seemed insane to me. I went anyway. Ashes were coating New York and I felt like I was walking through my own soot-laden existence. A cloud of gloom. Uncertainty. Abject fear. We were all zombies floating in a collective fog in this normally danger-free zone of a coffee shop.
Couldn’t eat the wild blueberry pancakes. The Beach Boys were spewing from the sound system. Surfer Girl. What was I doing? Gotta go, I said. Back home I tried calling NYC again. To no avail. Decided to go down the street to a friend’s. An actor. Gregarious. Brilliant. Prone to melodrama. This WTC shocker was the real melodrama. Sans the melo. More people began showing up. There was a pool. We didn’t swim. Somebody named Carlo from the Bronx decided to make spaghetti. We put on a Frank Sinatra record – vinyl. It was scratched. We danced around. The end of the world is here. The end of the world as we know it. What else could we do but dance.
Slow dancing in simpler times
Calling NYC again, I managed to get through. Everyone was OK. As far as they knew. It would be days before I learned that a friend who worked in the South Tower was safe. She would eventually suffer a breakdown and never hold down a job again. Then there was American Airlines Flight 77 that flew into the Pentagon; and United Airlines Flight 93 goes down in a field near Shanksville, Pennsylvania. “Let’s roll,” became a new anthem.
We kept dancing. Barbra Streisand’s People. More Frank. Strangers In the Night. I talked to my sister again. It’s strange, because when I lived in New York it was my sister who called from Cleveland to tell me John Lennon had been killed on that awful night in December. Now it was an awful day/night/eternity in September.
September 11, 2001. 9/11. 911.
My brother was a captain with Delta Airlines. We talked about the hijackers and how one had trained at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University, the same school he attended before enlisting in the Air Force to learn how to fly jets. (My brother had been an anomaly: a Jew in the Air Force.) Several days oozed by. The New York Times began publishing its profoundly moving Portraits of Grief. I couldn’t stop reading. Watching the news. Sobbing. Pat Ast, an erstwhile Warhol star (pictured above with another Warhol icon Joe Dallesandro), would die from diabetes, but mainly grief, in L.A., having learned her dear friend Berry Berenson had been on American Airlines Flight 11 that launched itself into the North Tower like a guided missile. Each day following that day was filled with the same kind of nothingness, a gap that remains unfillable. Unknowable. Unfathomable.
Then there was Gilbert Gottfried’s post-9/11 Hugh Hefner roast three weeks later. “Too soon,” hecklers hissed during his joke about wanting to catch a plane but couldn’t get a direct flight, because “they all stopped at the Empire State building first.”
Irony was dead. I went to New York in December, as I always did, making a wobbly beeline to ground zero. I felt empty. Would we ever all be okay again? My pain was everybody’s pain. It was a primal cry rising up from the great abyss of Why.
We moved on. Or have we? Irony returned. We have the first African-American president. Steve Jobs blankets the world with iPhones. Twitter is king. Facebook brings billions of us together. Wars rage on. Bin Laden is dead. And on this September 11, 2011, I go see Eiko & Koma at the Skirball. They’re performing Water. I’m bringing Kleenex, an open heart and the impenetrable memories of that day. A Tuesday morning in September.
Being a freelance, er, human, and never having had what one would rightly call ‘gainful employment’ (a steady job with benefits, retirement fund, any kind of security), The Leaf’s concept of Labor Day has always been a bit oblique. Indeed, the two big thrills associated with that particular holiday (three if you count wearing white for the last time until Memorial Day, which, in actuality, does not hold true for living in Los Angeles), are lolling about watching a pair of shows on the tube:
Ah, checking out the quarter-final throes of the U.S. Open (from Connors, Borg and Agassi to Rafa, Rafa and Rafa – she’s never been a Federer fan, especially after seeing his mug plastered all over St. Marks Square in Venice – click here to read The Leaf’s take on that phantasmagorical city), in between gawking at Jerry Lewis veer from fresh-faced (at least for him, which over the years has meant his head blowing up to bowling ball sized-proportions and then, over time, deflating to average Joe-status), to his bedraggled self after spending some 24 hours in front of the camera on his legendary MDA telethon.
But as we all now know – and if you don’t where’ve you been these past few months – Mr. Lewis has been unceremoniously dumped from his own program, one he’s been helming since 1966.
And The Leaf’s point is? Besides missing Lewis, she’s really upset about the following – the Los Angeles Times – at least what’s left of it – has, on this Labor Day, 2011, devoted much of its entire Calendar section (which isn’t all that much when you think about it), to what it considers this summer’s hits: Included in this so-called “A season of sizzlers” – is one little book, Adam Mansbach’s Go The F-ck to Sleep and – get this – a frigging App. So, it’s T.S. Eliot’s The Waste Land, big whoop. Then there’s the Pop Music list, with Adele (fine, The Leaf likes Adele, but what’s with her hands?), coupled with…Odd Future (like The Leaf ever heard of the latter; should she?)
Continuing with The List: TV, of course – accentuating The Voice (ugh – it’s just too much, or, in reality, too little. What about BBC America’s The Hour (click here to read about that, with a particular thrust on The Leaf’s current objet de lust, Ben Whishaw); and Movies. Some taste is shown by choosing Woody Allen’s return to form, Midnight in Paris, which gets the bigger play, followed by the, er, last Harry Potter flick (never seen one, never will…never even cracked a J.K. Rowling book), and Bridesmaids also in a position of prominence. (So shoot her – when given the opportunity to see Bridesmaids, Terence Malick’s The Tree of Life or Hangover II in France, The Leaf jumped at Bad Trip Two, as the French dubbed it, and did not regret her choice, fersure.)
The Times gets the Fashion thing right with the blockbuster Alexander McQueen show, Savage Beauty, at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. But hello? You had to actually be in New York to catch that one, and with prices what they are, Europe is undoubtedly more affordable than a trip to the Big Apple. (To read The Leaf’s trio of European Dispatches, click here for Amsterdam, here for Zurich, and here for Montpellier.)
As for Theater, the paper of record touts – are you ready for this inanity – LesMisérables, the 25th Anniversary Tour show that kerplopped down at the Ahmanson for six weeks beginning in June (following, as it did, on the heels of the true hit – and gem – God of Carnage. Click here for The Leaf’s views on that, and here for a peek at Roman Polanski’s film, Carnage). Of all the fantastic theater in L.A. – and we do have it, including the summer season at the Theatricum Botanicum and the California International Theatre Festival – the Times decides to go for the road show warhorse. (It couldn’t have anything to do with advertising, could it?) Oy: God help us all.
And under Nightlife, the paper opts for CoLAboration Craft Beer Gardens – a roving craft beer garden. What the hell is that? “Save me, quick, before I die,” says The Leaf.
The best is reserved for last, though, mais oui: Under Arts, and rightly so, are MOCA’s Art in the Streets show and Tim Burton at LACMA – The Leaf gets that. But, puhleeze: Where are the classical music and dance concerts?!?
The Hollywood Bowl, currently celebrating 90 years, is the summer home of the LA Philharmonic. And quel glorious season is underway, with the orchestra’s music director, Gustavo Dudamel, having conducted four, count ‘em, four different programs, including two nights with superstar pianist Lang Lang, an evening devoted to Turandot and an all-Mozart program with famed fiddler Gil Shaham. (Click here to read The Leaf’s words on the Langster; click here to read about the Gil/Gustavo pairing.) And while The Leaf was out of town when Yuja Wang conquered the Rach 3 in the micro-mini dress that launched a thousand quips, your intrepid scribe is still setting an attendance record of sorts, having been to the Bowl some 22 times already – and loving every moment.
Yuja Wang in the dress that launched a thousand quips!
Okay, full disclosure: She is writing the program notes/scripts for the KUSC broadcasts of the LA Phil at The Bowl, which are also streamed for one week after each Saturday 2 p.m. airing. To that end, she recently chatted with violinist Josh Bell and the incroyable piano-playing duo, the Labèque sisters, whose picture graces the top of this blog post (wearing custom-made Jean Paul Gaultier) and whose concert was nothing short of mind-blowing. Bell’s and the Labèques’ programs will be broadcast September 10 and 24 respectively. Katia and Marielle will also be at Disney Hall November 11 with a world premiere concerto by Richard Dubugnon, conducted by Marielle’s husband, Semyon Bychkov.
Madonna’s favorite classical musicians? The Labèque sisters, mais oui!
As for dance, the poor stepchild of the arts, L.A. doesn’t have any kind of festival akin to Jacob’s Pillow, but there have been all sorts of wonderful performances from local artists this season. Diavolo, directed by Jacques Heim, did its hyper-physical thing for two sparkling July nights at Grand Performances. (This is a wonderful summer program offering free concerts in a beautiful environment; click here to read about Diavolo’s evening, courtesy of The Leaf, and click here to read her terpsichorean musings from overseas, Dance, Drink, Whatever.) And what about all the dance performances at the John Anson Ford Amphitheatre? Last year The Leaf wrote a piece for the Times on doing dance outdoors – click here to read that – and was also asked to cover half a dozen concerts – click here to read one of those reviews . There was plenty of dance at the Ford this summer season, but from the paper’s lack of reportage, you really wouldn’t know it. American Ballet Theatre also came to town on its annual jaunt to the Music Center, with Alexei Ratmansky’s The Bright Stream, albeit only for a weekend. Click here for The Leaf’s thoughts on that.
The daring dancers of Diavolo
To exclude the performing arts from the Los Angeles Times makes both the paper and the city look very backwater, devoid of the cultural fabric any and every noble city must have in order to claim greatness, gravitas and desirability. For shame!
Oh, well, guess The Leaf will just have to TiVo the tennis – definitely not tune in to the Lewis-less MDA thing – and find a barbeque to crash, a Patron to pour. There’s gotta be some saving grace to this Day of (non) Labor.
Pop the Patron, peel me a plantain and please…fire up the grill!
In any case, we’ve already done numerous stories on that hot topic. With subjects ranging from Nigel Lythgoe (click here for our Dance Mag feature on the mega-producer), and the So You Think You Can Dance effect (click here for our take on that), to the various and sundry articles on the stars those TV shows have wrought, (click here to read our cover story on Dancing With the Stars’ Cheryl Burke), all of this ink – and media saturation – does not necessarily mean it’s Hollywood’s Golden Age…Redux.
