Backstage with Martin Sheen, a Mensch for All Seasons

Posted on March 6, 2010 by admin

Brian Geraghty and Martin Sheen in The Subject Was Roses at the Mark Taper Forum in Los Angeles.

By Victoria Looseleaf

If there’s a nicer, more fabulous movie/TV/theater star than Martin Sheen, I’d like to meet him. Sheen, who returns to the legitimate stage after a nearly 20-year absence, is tackling the role of the bullying, boozing Irishman John Cleary, in Frank D. Gilroy’s Pulitzer Prize–winning play, The Subject Was Roses. The cool thing is that Sheen played the son in the original 1964 Broadway production—effectively launching his career—and garnered a Tony nomination in the process.

The circle, as they say, remains unbroken. And so does Sheen’s huge talent and theatrical joie de vivre. Joining the former star of NBC’s The West Wing in the three-character drama are Frances Conroy (Six Feet Under) and The Hurt Locker’s Brian Geraghty. Have a listen to my interview with the Emmy- and Golden Globe–winning actor Ramon Gerard Antonio Estevez, then get thee to the Mark Taper Forum in Los Angeles to catch Roses, running through March 21. Ain’t life grand!

Posted in BRIAN GERAGHTY, FRANCES CONROY, MARTIN SHEEN, SIX FEET UNDER, THE HURT LOCKER | Comments Off on Backstage with Martin Sheen, a Mensch for All Seasons

Top Ten Events of 2000-2009 (And Quite a Decade It Was)

Posted on January 5, 2010 by admin

Cover of the first Spanish-language edition of Nowhere Man, 2003

By Robert Rosen

This is my very personal list of the ten events, good and bad, of the past decade that have had the greatest impact upon my life.

1. August 2000: Nowhere Man: The Final Days of John Lennon is published. I wrote the bulk of the book in 1982, and for 18 years the “experts” told me it was unpublishable. It becomes a bestseller in five countries and three languages. My life changes and the book’s impact continues to be felt to this day.

2. September 11, 2001: Mary Lyn Maiscott and I live a mile from Ground Zero. The first plane flies directly over our house. We hear it crash into the North Tower but can’t see anything and have no idea what happened. We go back to work. Twenty minutes later I call my brother. “Aren’t you watching TV?” he asks. We go outside to watch the towers burn. Our building is evacuated because of a bomb threat. It’s a false alarm, but the terror is real. Twelve firemen from the firehouse across the street die at the World Trade Center. It’s a cosmically bad day.

3. October 19, 2001: I marry Mary Lyn in a civil ceremony at the Municipal Building in downtown Manhattan. The ceremony is broadcast live on The Louie Free Radio Show. Mary Lyn and I had been together for 11 years. What were we waiting for, a terrorist attack? In the midst of ongoing horror, it’s a very good day.

4. May-June 2002: Delayed honeymoon in Mallorca. We spend five of the most idyllic weeks of our lives in an 800-year-old stone house in the tiny mountain village of Fornalutx. Thank you, Terry Bisbee.

5. September 2002: Just as the paperback edition of Nowhere Man is published by Quick American Archives, I’m subpoenaed to testify as a witness for Yoko Ono in the copyright infringement suit she’s brought against my former writing partner Fred Seaman. After having been called a liar, and worse, by a variety of critics, journalists, and anonymous Internet posters, the trial gives me the opportunity to testify under oath, before the world media, that the story I told in Nowhere Man is true.

6. March 2003: Nowhere Man is published in Spanish in Mexico, and the articles and excerpts that appear over the next six months in virtually every major newspaper and magazine in the country are unlike anything that’s ever happened before. I am, in short, flabbergasted on an almost daily basis.

7. October-November 2003: On the eve of the publication of the second Spanish-language edition of Nowhere Man, I go to Mexico City to meet the press. I feel as if I’ve entered an alternate universe where everything I’ve been working for, for the past 25 years, has come to pass in a language I don’t understand. Thank you for being my voice, Ramón De La Cruz of Random House Mondadori.

8. May 25, 2005: My father dies. I thought he was indestructible. He was not.

9. October 2005: On the occasion of John Lennon’s 65th birthday, I’m invited to Mexico and Chile to talk about Nowhere Man. It is, more or less, a replay of the 2003 trip, with an additional country added. And again, I’m bowled over by the interest in the book, and the warmth and hospitality of the people. This time, however, I can speak a few words of Spanish, and I’m able to say things like “Yo soy la morsa” y “Sí, fumo mota.” Gracias a Roberto Ponce de Proceso y Javier Foxon de Paniko.

10. Late 2008-Early 2009: The economy collapses. Like everybody who had a 401K in the ’90’s, I swallowed the propaganda hook, line, and sinker: “If you want to have enough money to retire, you have to invest in mutual funds.” I come to the painful realization that if I’d have been better off if I’d stuffed my money in a mattress.

Posted in 9/11, economic collapse, Fornalutx, Javier Foxon, Louie Free, Mary Lyn Maiscott, Nowhere Man, Paniko, Proceso, Roberto Ponce, The Final Days of John Lennon, Yoko Ono | Comments Off on Top Ten Events of 2000-2009 (And Quite a Decade It Was)

The Looseleaf Report’s Musings on the Decade, Including the Best, the Worst, and Those Anointed into Our Hall of Shame

Posted on December 27, 2009 by admin

Obama, Election night, November 4, 2008, Havana, Cuba. Photo by Victoria Looseleaf.

By Victoria Looseleaf

Because this would be an encyclopedia of egregious deeds if I included the horrendousness of 9/11, the invasion of Iraq, the Bush brigade, and all that came before November 4, 2008, I shall not dwell on those events and people, but instead start with the best: Yes, the very best thing to happen to America, if not the world, was the election of Barack Obama. And though your scribe happened to be in Cuba then (her most memorable destination of the decade, where she not only watches brilliant ballet, but revels with her novio Cubano), she found herself celebrating this incredible victory by, first, staring at disbelief at CNN Espanol, second, crying tears of happiness, and, third, finally shouting to the throngs gathered at Havana’s Hotel Presidente Bar, “Mojitos para todos.”

And while goodness is great, and greatness is good, The Leaf cannot resist a fabulous scandale—including the celebrity death—and we were gifted with some of the absolute best in the final year of the first decade of our new millennium. Is it crass to think that because the one and only Michael Jackson, who was brought to trial as a child molester as recently as 2005, died at the hands of an inept Houston doctor eager to inject propofol (and to collect $150K a month as the entertainer’s in-house physician), he was then turned into St. Michael of Hollywood? Seriously, Jackson’s prodigious talents as singer, songwriter, and mega-dancer somehow managed to put to rest his uber-peculiar past and those freakish foibles that characterized him for nearly 50 years.

As for the pure soap opera that is reality TV, here’s to the high-flying Heenes of Balloon Boy fame (let’s just hope that little Falcon has a good therapist); the Salahis, those White-House-party-crashing fools who give interlopers everywhere a bad name, not to mention that the wearing of a red sari is now verboten; and the most hated figure to ever buy diapers on this or any planet, Octomom. Let’s toast to what Joy Behar referred to as “Who knew she had a concierge working in her uterus?”

But for the Mt. Everest of falls from grace, we must turn to that once untouchable paragon of propriety: Mr. Tiger Woods. Yes, for best ongoing drama to continuously rock the nation and ensure that the end of the first decade goes out on a delectable note of debauchery, golf star Woods also has indirect connections to the reality genre. His mistress number two (with the count currently up to 16), Jamiee Grubbs, is a former Tool Academy hammerhead. Face it: The Woods’ unmasking is the coup de grace of graceless plummeting and couldn’t have been scripted better by Hollywood.

Which begs the question: Why? What is our neck-craning compulsion to delight in others’ misdeeds, also known as schadenfreude? Is it to escape the dreariness of our own lives that we retreat into the 24/7 world of dirt, deceit, and dastardly deeds? Is it because we are morally bankrupt as we continue to financially teeter on the brink of no return (and don’t even get me started on Enron or Bernie Madoff, the latter the biggest symbol of the Gordon Gekko, greed-is-good syndrome)? The Leaf could definitely write a book on the subject, but only if she’d get the funding by coming out as Woods’s mistress number 17.

Ah, perhaps we’ve hit bottom and we’ll soon be collectively climbing out of this abyss. Once in daylight, we then might actually choose to live in a more civilized society. I mean: Where is Emily Post when you need her? She’s Tweeting and Facebooking to the unseen masses who practice anonymous unaccountability. What other society, after all, could have bred the Gosselins, the Kardashians, and even Lady Gaga, whose manufactured image of art, fashion, and music takes Warhol’s 15-minutes-of-fame way too far. (Nothing would please me more than to see her float away in that ridiculous bubble dress and hook up with the late Timothy Leary’s ashes while she’s at it.)

But I digress. When you think about it, there probably is no reality other than what exists on the tube, the big screen, or in the media, including the digital world. At least that’s what tennis great Andre Agassi would have us believe, as evidenced in his best-selling memoir, Open. Written with Pulitzer Prize winner J. R. Moehringer, the book is a good read that spills some Agassi beans while provoking with Zen Buddhistic-like approaches to life. That the erstwhile wunderkind hated tennis every day of his life is only one revelation (along with the notion that he was a meth user who sported a Mohawk because he was actually losing his hair, thus warranting a hairpiece).

And while one can never really know what is fact in the memoir genre (remember James Frey, the fictioneer posing as truth teller, plugged—then chastised—by Oprah, whose departure in 2011 I await eagerly), the nadir of the decade on basically all counts is none other than Sarah Palin.

A stealth bomber in stilettos spouting sick rhetoric (death panels, anyone?), who totes around her Down’s syndrome baby, Trig, like so much moose juice, Palin is the perfect storm of politics, celebrity, and narcissistic personality disorder. That her book, Going Rogue, created an even bigger monster from the one last seen leaving her Alaska governorship for the more lucrative book-tour trail—one where she charges $16 to pose for photos—is an insult to journalism, decency, and, dare I say it, the human race.

I’ll take Levi Johnston, her former son-in-law-to-be, any day (if Kathy Griffin can give him up, that is). His lunkheadedness is refreshingly real next to Palin’s outright lies and inanities. For 2010 to be a good year, we need this woman to fall into a melting glacier and then get fished out as frozen food.

But before that ever happens (one can wish…), The Leaf wants to give a shout-out to the Lee Daniels film Precious, Meryl Streep in anything she does, and the documentary Four Seasons Lodge, Andrew Jacobs’s film about a group of Holocaust survivors who vacation for 26 summers in the Catskills. I also loved Richard Curtis’s Pirate Radio (talk about escapism), and Bob Dylan’s Christmas in the Heart, with his jagged, wildly lived-in vocals as wonderful as his giving all the proceeds to feed the hungry around the world. As for dance, Nacional Ballet de Cuba rules, as does Mariinsky ballerina Diana Vishneva and the incomparable Desmond Richardson.

And now it’s time to bid more formal adieus, including to the Susan Sarandon-Tim Robbins marriage. Pfft! Is nothing sacred anymore? Apparently not, as we in Los Angeles mourn the death of Public Access (fans can still tune in to New York’s Time-Warner Cable, where The Looseleaf Report still airs every other Thursday at 3:30 p.m. EST on channel 56). Meanwhile, The Leaf continues to rue the passing of The Sopranos, Eunice Shriver, Teddy Kennedy, and choreographers Pina Bausch and Merce Cunningham.

The beautiful Barbaro.

It’s also a fond farewell to Barbaro, the racehorse who won the Kentucky Derby in 2006 only to lose his battle for life after shattering a leg, after which numerous operations failed to keep him on his well-shod hooves. This equine creature captured the heart of a nation with his courage and dignity, proving a more shining example of heroism than our cheating politicians (the list grows exponentially, with Larry Craig, Mark Sanford, Eliot Spitzer, and John Edwards only a few who are doing their best—or worst—to keep their DNA in—or out—of the news).

Alas, the list of the departed is long, so I wish to also make mention of photographer Irving Penn, actors Heath Ledger, Brittany Murphy (news of her cardiac arrest will continue to emerge), Jennifer Jones, and Karl Malden.

After noting the myriad deaths, misdeeds, and triumphant-in-the-face-of-adversity acts, including airline passengers subduing would-be terrorists (and okay, we gotta mention Captain Chesley Sullenberger—but a two-book deal, including one of inspirational poetry…?), what do we have left after the climate and economic meltdowns are added to the mix?

We have a world that has become colder, starker, nastier, sadder, deadlier, and bleaker. But there is one thing we can still hang onto: hope. Obama campaigned on it and it’s what makes the glass half full of Veuve Clicquot, not half empty. Hope: It’s a beautiful thing.

So happy 2010, readers. May you enjoy a year of health, joy, prosperity, abundance, irony, gossip, all good things, and, above all, love—lots and lots of love.

Posted in ANDRE AGASSI, BARBARO, Bob Dylan, JOY BEHAR, LABELS: OBAMA’S ELECTION, LEVI JOHNSTON, MERYL STREEP, MICHAEL JACKSON, OCTOMOM, PRECIOUS, Sarah Palin, TEDDY KENNEDY, TIGER WOODS | Comments Off on The Looseleaf Report’s Musings on the Decade, Including the Best, the Worst, and Those Anointed into Our Hall of Shame

A Love Letter to–and from–Amsterdam (With a Shout-Out from Den Haag)

Posted on December 14, 2009 by admin

Houseboats on the Prinsengracht, Amsterdam. Photo by Victoria Looseleaf.

By Victoria Looseleaf

Ah, Amsterdam, thy name is freedom, beauty and culture, with your denizens, the hearty and wonderful Dutch folk, making it all possible.

Freedom, of course, includes the many marijuana coffee shops and a, well, vibrant red-light district. Beauty is everywhere, with thousands of 16th, 17th and 18th century buildings adorning Holland’s capital, their resident gargoyles akin to lovable sentries. And, as for culture, it’s wildly kaleidoscopic, seeping, as it does, into one’s very soul at seemingly every turn.

Home to an astonishing 51 museums, this haute hamlet of less than a million boasts 206 Van Gogh and 22 Rembrandt paintings, including the latter’s famed “Night Watch.” Even more impressive, perhaps, are the 16,000 concerts and theatrical performances on view annually, amounting to a staggering 40-some a day, in theaters ranging from the majestic Concertgebouw to the uber-modern Muziektheater. The Concertgebouw, built in 1888 in Neo-Renaissance style, drew season ticket holder Audrey Hepburn, who lived in Amsterdam after World War II, with the venue continuing to attract sophisticated patrons today, your peripatetic scribe included. And it’s not every concert hall where I can do a Sunday brunch of quiche, shrimp croquettes and Dutch pancakes before listening to Mariss Jansons conduct his celebrated Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra!

Between performances, I like to cruise the canals, getting a duck’s-eye view of the elegantly narrow houses with their hoisting hooks, as well as many of the 2500 houseboats lining the bustling waterways. And since I once owned a houseboat-aptly named the Victoria L—which was moored on the Prinsengracht and served as my base of European operations when I was a concertizing harpist, I hold a special place in my heart for this amazing city, one, I might add, that also has fabulous shopping.

Now armed with fewer Euros due to our sinking dollar, I can still be found strolling the heart of the western canal belt known as the Nine Streets. Not far from the Royal Palace in Dam Square, the area teems with art galleries, boutiques, gift shops and cafes, including the quintessential Browns. Neighborhood watering holes named for their interiors’ dark wood–made more so by years of tobacco smoke—the Browns are perfect for après-spending and knocking back a beer and some hapjes—light snacks of cheese, olives, nuts and bitterballen (fried balls of meat and potato).

But being a frites addict, I need my fix of Holland’s crispy, crunchy thick fries in a paper cone. Topped with gobs of high-calorie mayo and found on nearly every beautiful block (as is another Dutch staple, herring), frites are my idea of culinary heaven.

On the hotel front, Amsterdam boasts accommodations for all size wallets. When flush, I make a beeline for the splendid Grand Hotel Amrath. A stone’s throw from Central Station, this former shipping house from 1913 is considered the first fully constructed building in the Amsterdam School Style. Converted to a fabulous five-star hotel in 2007, the 165-room Amrath still retains the romance of the ocean, its deluxe interiors aglow with polished woods, gleaming marble and elegant statuary.

At Central Station, I hop a train for the 45-minute ride to Den Haag, where balletic history was made when Anna Pavlova died there in 1931. While on tour in Holland’s political capital, Pavlova contracted pneumonia and, clutching her “Dying Swan” tutu, she expired in her room at the elegant Hotel Des Indes. A plaque commemorates the Russian ballerina, where once she, too, might have enjoyed a lunch of goose-liver, pigeon breasts and sweetbreads in the sumptuous, chandelier-festooned dining room.

In addition to Den Haag being home to the World Court, it’s where the acclaimed Netherlands Dance Theater began a half-century ago. This year, the three-week biannual Holland Dance Festival celebrated the troupe’s first 50 years, with NDT’s artistic director/choreographer, Jiri Kylian, passing the torch to America’s own Jim Vincent. (For my Dance Magazine review of the festival, click here.)

I’m also wild about Den Haag’s small-town, yet urbane vibe, which is evident in the fabulous 20-room Paleis Hotel. Situated on the walking/shopping street, Molenstraat, the beautifully appointed lodge is owned and operated by Elizabeth L. le Clercq-van Raalthen, who staffs it with exceedingly helpful—and gorgeous—girls. The Dutch fashion awards were also in town, prompting a visit to the wonderful Gemeentemuseum for a preview of its “Voici Paris! Haute Couture” exhibition (opening February 20-June 6, 2010). I also popped into a variety of pop-up stores where the hippest designers were showcasing their coolest creations.

The Mauritshuis in Den Haag, home of Vermeer’s “Girl With a Pearl Earring.” Photo by Victoria Looseleaf.

Talk about cool: Den Haag’s Mauritshuis, a stately mansion housing a number of 17th century Dutch masterpieces, is home to Vermeer’s sublime “Girl With a Pearl Earring.” Gazing at the painting that’s inspired a book, a film and who knows what else, I learned that “The Girl” was not fashioned from one of Vermeer’s real-life models, but is, instead, a “tronie”—an imaginary head.

And since heads—or head shops—dot Amsterdam like so many daubs in a Seurat painting, I’m drawn back to the capital for a final infusion of coffee – and more art. Squeezing in return visits to the Reijksmuseum and the Van Gogh, I’m glad to be getting in gratis, thanks to my ‘I Amsterdam Card.’ A 24-, 48- or 72-hour card for travelers of all stripes, this is one of Europe’s best deals, providing discounts for restaurants, canal cruises, concerts and the like.

Alas, it’s time to bid adieu to Amsterdam. But I know it won’t be for long, as this is a city that never fails to delight, surprise and satisfy my Jones for living life large.

One of Amsterdam’s famed coffeshops. Photo by Victoria Looseleaf.

Posted in AMSTERDAM, AUDREY HEPBURN, DEN HAAG, MAURITSHUIS, NETHERLANDS DANCE THEATER, REMBRANDT, VAN GOGH, VERMEER | Comments Off on A Love Letter to–and from–Amsterdam (With a Shout-Out from Den Haag)

Tori Amos Puts Her Own Spin on the Season

Posted on December 10, 2009 by admin

As part of the music magazine’s SpinHouse Live series, Tori Amos gives an intimate concert at the Spin offices in Lower Manhattan. Photo by Ben Rowland.

By Mary Lyn Maiscott

Under black chandeliers, Tori Amos, her long hair nearly as red as her multi-gathered minidress—which, along with her gold stretch leggings, made her look like an exotic Christmas present—started her set at the Spin magazine loft Tuesday night with her song “Ophelia,” whispering at one point “I feel you.”

We felt her too. While not exactly going all Jerry Lee Lewis on us, the dramatic Amos would not be contained by anything so prim as a piano bench. She stretched out a glimmering leg, stomped a metallic stiletto, and at the end of “Wednesday,” her arms flying out behind her, appeared to be the eagle of her lyrics, about to land.

In a set of only six songs, the other four were from her new, seasonal CD, Midwinter Graces. Unlike Bob Dylan, who sings—rasps?—such holiday standards as “Here Comes Santa Claus” seemingly straight for his recently released Christmas in the Heart, Amos, a minister’s daughter, has delved into carols such as “Silent Night” and “Star of Wonder” to create her own rich works. Thus, “Silent Night” becomes “A Silent Night with You” (in which the singer at times sounds surprisingly like Madonna on a very good day).

My favorite from the album, however, is wholly original, the feel-good—you can almost see the confetti falling—“Pink and Glitter,” written, Amos explained while introducing the song, because in this time of celebrating the birth of a baby boy, she wanted to honor little girls (but nevertheless gave a smiling thumbs-up to the guys while singing the line “Little boys are getting an honorable mention from me”).

Her last song was the atmospheric “Snow Angel,” whose most memorable moment came when Amos briefly stopped, after making an undetectable mistake on the piano, and exclaimed “Fuck!” This only made her audience more delighted than they had been a second before—and I wouldn’t have thought that was possible.

Posted in Bob Dylan, Christmas in the Heart, Midwinter Graces, SpinHouse Live, Tori Amos | Comments Off on Tori Amos Puts Her Own Spin on the Season

Connubial War, Not Much Peace

Posted on December 3, 2009 by admin

Leo Tolstoy (Christopher Plummer) enjoys a rare light moment with his wife, Sofya (Helen Mirren).

The Last Station
Written and directed by Michael Hoffman
Starring Christopher Plummer, Helen Mirren, James McAvoy, and Paul Giamatti

By Mary Lyn Maiscott

Some movies appear to have all the elements for success and yet don’t work. Is it the script? The editing? With Michael Hoffman’s The Last Station, the problem would not appear to be the acting: Christopher Plummer plays the great Russian writer Count Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy; Helen Mirren is his wife—and literary assistant—of 48 years, Countess Sofya; Paul Giamatti plays his disciple Chertkov; and James McAvoy, acting as a stand-in for the audience, is Tolstoy’s new secretary, Valentin.

Valentin has arrived at a crucial point: Chertkov has nearly convinced the writer, whose Tolstoyan movement advocates the end of private property, to leave his wealth, and his copyrights, to the Russian people rather than his family. This causes Sofya—who has not only copied out War and Peace six times for her husband but has borne 12 children, 5 of whom have died—to nearly lose her wits. In one Lucy Ricardo‒esque scene, she, believing Tolstoy, in the company of Chertkov and Valentin, is about to sign a new will, climbs to a window in her nightdress and falls into the room, nearly taking the drapes with her. “Will somebody help me up?” she asks, and, remarkably—for god’s sake, she’s Tolstoy’s wife, a countess, and in her 60s!—no one does. Although we (capitalists that we are) and Valentin (sympathetic creature that he is) believe that Sofya has a good case—not to mention that Chertkov fairly oozes unctuousness and villainy—she comes across less passionate than hysterical. And despite her love for Tolstoy, she doesn’t seem to realize that in constantly bringing up the will she is reminding him of his perhaps imminent death.

Valentin, in the meantime, has fallen for a pretty young woman who works in the Tolstoyan commune, yet with a pronounced take-it-or-leave-it attitude. Although celibacy is apparently part of Tolstoy’s “ideal love” philosophy (one prim devotee blurts out to Valentin that he doesn’t court women because he’s “vegetarian”), Masha (Kerry Condon) thinks nothing of walking uninvited into Valentin’s tiny commune room and climbing onto him as he’s lying in bed. A harbinger of the modern, independent woman, she eventually takes off for Moscow (in contrast to Chekhov’s nearly contemporaneous, so to speak, three sisters, who only talk of going there).

The title of the movie, which is based on the novel by Jay Parini, who studied the diaries of Tolstoy’s associates, refers to the train station where the writer, gravely ill, alights and spends his final days. (Calling to mind events involving more recent international icons, such as Michael Jackson, camped-out reporters await every detail.) Here everyone’s true character comes into focus. Unfortunately—except perhaps in regard to Valentin (and Germany playing Russia in cinematic splendor)—for the audience the train has already left the station.

Posted in Christopher Plummer, Helen Mirren, James McAvoy, Leo Tolstoy, Michael Hoffman, Paul Giamatti, The Last Station | Comments Off on Connubial War, Not Much Peace

Ship of Fools

Posted on November 12, 2009 by admin

“The Count” (Philip Seymour Hoffman) bakes over the UK with rock ’n’ roll on his illegal late-night radio show.

Pirate Radio

Forget about the multiple intertwining plots: lovable longhaired outlaws vs. repressed government officials; DJ vs. DJ; boy’s search for father; boy meets girl, boy loses girl, boy gets girl back. Though occasionally affecting, they’re frequently clichéd, and they’re so all over the place, it’s as if writer/director Richard Curtis couldn’t decide what this movie was really about and didn’t have enough confidence in any one story line to stick with it. And though the acting ensemble—especially Philip Seymour Hoffman as The Count, Tom Sturridge as Young Carl, and Bill Nighy as Quentin—is wonderful, the best reason to see Pirate Radio is for the soundtrack, which is skillfully interwoven to reflect the various plot points. And, indeed, the energy and exuberance of the knockout opening sequence with Brits of all stripes dancing to the Kinks’ “All Day and All of the Night” as it blasts from the radio is hard to top. It’s rock ’n’ roll! It’s outta control!

What we have here is, perhaps, one of the best music videos ever made. Set on a pirate radio ship anchored off the coast of England in 1966, at the height of the British Pop phenomenon, when the BBC broadcast only two hours of rock per week, a wild and crazy crew of outlaw DJs and their helpers beam round the clock to a rock-starved nation such soon-to-be classics as “I Can See for Miles” and “My Generation” by The Who, “A Whiter Shade of Pale” by Procol Harum, “Sunny Afternoon” by The Kinks, “Sunshine Superman” by Donovan, “Jumpin’ Jack Flash” by The Stones, “For Your Love” by The Yardbirds, “Eleanor” by The Turtles, “This Guy’s in Love with You” by Herb Alpert and The Tijuana Brass, and a few dozen other songs of equally outstanding pedigree.

The soundtrack is so good you might not even notice the assorted anachronisms and the absurd absence of The Beatles. And—SPOILER ALERT!!!—you may even be willing to forgive an ending so Titanic-like, you’ll probably find yourself looking for Leo, Kate, and the iceberg. —RR

Posted in 1966, Bill Nighy, England, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Pirate Radio, Richard Curtis, Tom Sturridge | Comments Off on Ship of Fools

Jewiest Movie I’ve Ever Seen

Posted on October 2, 2009 by admin

Larry Gopnick (Michael Stuhlbarg), left, tries to act “adult” with Sy Ableman (Fred Melamed), his wife-stealing colleague.

By Robert Rosen

A Serious Man
A film by Joel and Ethan Coen
Starring Michael Stuhlbarg, Richard Kind, Fred Melamed, Sari Lennick, Adam Arkin, Aaron Wolff, Jessica McManus, and Amy Landecker
105 Minutes

Yes, I include Yentl, Fiddler on the Roof, and The Ten Commandments in the above statement. Which is not to say these films aren’t ultra-Jewy (perhaps I should mention here that I’m Jewish)—they are, but in a fairy-tale-like way. They take place long ago and far away, either in shtetls in the “old country” that no longer exists, or in the ancient Holy Land.

While A Serious Man does indeed begin in a shtetl as the Coens channel Isaac Bashevis Singer with a story about a dybbuk—the wandering soul of a dead person who enters a living person—it quickly switches to the New World: a nameless Midwestern suburb circa 1967, which could be anywhere in America where Jews and Gentiles (called goys in the film) live side by side, if not exactly in harmony, then with a surface tolerance that, to interpret the dreams of the central character, Larry Gopnick, a physics professor, only covers up the murderous hatred the goyim feel for their Jewish neighbors.

In fact, all the adult characters are covering up turbulent (if not murderous) emotion by speaking in a flat and disaffected way that ultimately becomes irritating, making A Serious Man a movie about annoying, repressed people who tend to wear thin long before the film ends.

When Larry Gopnick’s wife, Judith (Sari Lennick), tells him she’s leaving him for his pretentious colleague, Sy Ableman, she expects Larry to take it in stride, act like an “adult,” move into a motel, and take his freeloading brother, Arthur (Richard Kind)—who may be a bum or a genius—with him. Gopnick does, and then sets out to seek in Jewish tradition the answers to unanswerable questions. As his world collapses around him, Gopnick consults three rabbis, and deals with a divorce lawyer (Adam Arkin), a hot neighbor (Amy Landecker) who sunbathes in the nude, a pot-smoking son, Danny (Aaron Wolff), whose only concern seems to be the quality of his TV reception, a dissatisfied daughter, Sarah (Jessica McManus), who wants a nose job, a student who’s trying to bribe him for a better grade, and an impending decision on his tenure.

Yet, amid all this turmoil, A Serious Man’s depiction of modern American Judaism makes it almost documentary-like in a way that for me—in 1967 I was approximately the same age as the Gopnick children—is hyper-real. I’ve never seen a fictional film detail, often with lingering and loving close-ups, such things as numbingly repetitive Hebrew school lessons, the words on a Torah scroll, and the playing of a Haftorah record during a Bar Mitzvah lesson.

Like all the Coen brothers’ films, there are indeed hilarious moments, though the funniest bit is a disclaimer in the final credits: “No Jews were harmed in the making of this movie.” And like all their movies, A Serious Man is dark, with the smell of death always in the air.

While An Irritating Man would perhaps be a more accurate title, the film is, in the end, rescued by its offbeat quirkiness. There are no other movies I can think of where a great rabbi quotes Grace Slick, of the Jefferson Airplane, as if he’s quoting Holy Scripture. Still, a Hebrew/Yiddish glossary, like the one provided in the press material, may be required for full understanding.

Posted in 1967, A Serious Man, Adam Arkin, Coen brothers, Fred Melamed, Grace Slick, Jefferson Airplane, Michael Stuhlbarg, Richard Kind, Sari Lennick | Comments Off on Jewiest Movie I’ve Ever Seen

The Boys Are Slack

Posted on September 22, 2009 by admin

Still comin’ at ya: Drama (Kevin Dillon), Turtle (Jerry Ferrara), Vince (Adrian Grenier), Eric (Kevin Connolly), and Ari (Jeremy Piven).

Entourage: Season 6

By Mary Lyn Maiscott

As I cannot justify to myself paying for both HBO and Showtime and I love Weeds, I’ve only recently switched back to HBO and begun watching Entourage again (since Weeds is over for now, though Entourage may have to go when Showtime’s Californication comes back on Sunday—yes, I realize you can rent these shows but then you have to WAIT). Here are a few observations on and puzzlements re The Boys after my hiatus:

1) Has Eric picked up Vince’s “whatever” attitude toward life and especially women (unless, with Vince, inexplicably, the woman is the bland Mandy Moore)? He seems to hook up, cancel dates, get mad without really getting mad, walk away, come back, and walk away again without ever getting flustered. (And why, by the way, are these gorgeous, complicated women so into E?) Suddenly, Turtle—who has a serious thing going on with Jamie-Lynn Sigler, playing herself (perhaps helped along by, in a case of life imitating art, the two actors becoming a couple)—is the one who seems mature. Turtle?

2) A mean-spiritedness still occasionally rears its ugly head on this show. Last season Drama made a reference, supposedly humorous, to what amounts to sexual abuse of a girlfriend during adolescence that I wasn’t sure I fully caught but didn’t want to think about too much. This season’s examples are less troubling but more obvious: the gang laughing about how Seth Rogen is “too ugly” to get the pretty girl (this went on for a while); one of Eric’s young lovelies asking, “Who’s the fossil?” of his 70ish female receptionist. (Eric did tell her not to be mean, but didn’t take the hint that perhaps this was a girl to be avoided.)

3) Most important, über-agent Ari may be the first shark to have jumped the shark. He used to be the best thing about the show, his rarely tamped-down rage and ambition providing the kinetic energy Vince’s crowd lacks. Now Jeremy Piven (is it the mercury poisoning?) has lost whatever elusive quality it was that made Ari’s Type Ultra-A personality funny, and without that his spewing, demanding, abrasive ways are only dark and grating—just ask Lloyd.

Posted in Adrian Grenier, Entourage Season 6, Jamie-Lynn Sigler, Jeremy Piven, Jerry Ferrara, Kevin Connolly, Kevin Dillon | Comments Off on The Boys Are Slack

Reconciliation Is Not an Option

Posted on August 18, 2009 by admin

Sixteen-year-old Alistair Little, of the Ulster Volunteer Force, prepares to murder a Catholic.

By Robert Rosen

Five Minutes of Heaven
Directed by Oliver Hirschbiegel
Written by Guy Hibbert
Starring Liam Neeson, James Nesbitt, Anamaria Marinca, Mark Davison, Richard Dormer, Kevin O’Neill, Gerard Jordan, and Paula McFetridge
90 Minutes

Sometimes, it’s just not possible to bring together two people whose historical animosity runs deep, and allow them to discuss their differences in a controlled setting, as was done, for example, at the White House “Beer Summit.” Sometimes, the injuries are too personal, the wounds too raw. Sometimes, a better understanding cannot be reached—because there’s nothing more to understand, and the damage is undoable. Sometimes, revenge (served cold) is the only answer.

At least that’s the way it plays out when an Irish “reality” TV show arranges for Alistair Little (Liam Neeson), a Protestant former member of the Ulster Volunteer Force, to meet with Joe Griffin (James Nesbitt). Thirty years earlier, in Northern Ireland, Griffin witnessed Little’s assassination of his older brother, Jim (Gerard Jordan), for the crime of being Catholic—an act his mother (Paula McFetridge) held Joe responsible for. “Why didn’t you do something?” she screams at him in heart breaking despair.

Reconciliation is not an option in Five Minutes of Heaven, a title that should not be confused with the kissing game “Seven Minutes in Heaven.” Griffin most definitely does not want to kiss Little. Rather, he wants to plunge a knife into his heart with the TV cameras running. That’s the only reason Griffin has agreed to the meeting—the notion of the media trying to exploit his tragedy for ratings and drama disgusts him.

Five Minutes of Heaven—based on a true story and shot on location in Northern Ireland—is a physically and emotionally brutal movie. That brutality becomes clear in the opening minutes, as documentary footage of “the Troubles,” as they’re euphemistically known, shows the aftermath of various bombings, including one shot of a man whose legs have been blown off, crawling away from the site of the explosion.

It’s also a film filled with wrenching performances and almost unbearable tension. The sequence leading up to the killing of Jim Griffin is so detailed and realistic, it’s hard to watch. The camera follows Little, 16 at the time, and played by Mark Davison, as he prepares to murder his 19-year-old neighbor—so he can be somebody important, so he can walk into the local bar and have the men applaud his great achievement.

We see Little in his bedroom, dressing, digging out his gun, loading it, and then meeting up with his equally young accomplices. Meanwhile, in a nearby part of this gritty town, Joe Griffin (Kevin O’Neill), then 11, kicks a soccer ball against the wall outside his apartment as his brother sits in the living room and his parents get ready to go out.

The film then cuts to the present, where the adult Little and Griffin are traveling in separate limousines to the luxurious Belfast estate where the TV show featuring their highly anticipated rendezvous will be filmed. Little, cool behind his shades, is resigned to doing what he feels he must do. Three decades after the murder, including 12 years spent in prison, he realizes that his motivation for the horrendous act is no different than that of a Muslim suicide bomber. Griffin, nervous and having second thoughts about going through with it, tells his driver to pull over to the side of the road so he can have a smoke.

Anamaria Marinca, who plays Vika, a production assistant who immigrated to Belfast from Vladivostok, creates an especially appealing character. We get to know her as she prepares Griffin for the filming of the show and as they stand on a terrace of the manor house, smoking cigarettes. When Griffin tells her that he thinks Little is a celebrity who turned the murder of his brother into a lucrative TV career and is now leading the “life of Riley,” Vika sets him straight. Little, she says, is a “broken man.” She knows, she says, because she visited him at his home. Griffin goes so far as to tell Vika that he’s planning to kill Little. Why she doesn’t mention this to her bosses is hard to say. But it’s during this conversation that we learn the meaning of the movie’s title: “five minutes of heaven” is what Griffin says murdering Little will bring him.

Though the disparate elements of this sad and powerful film never completely jell as it flashes back and forth between past and present—one reason is that young Joe Griffin doesn’t quite look like the person who will grow into the adult Joe Griffin—the pace never lags, and the story is never anything but gripping, even with a clichéd ending that’s less than believable.

Posted in Alistair Little, Anamaria Marinca, Belfast, Catholic, Five Minutes of Heaven, Guy Hibbert, James Nesbitt, Jim Griffin, Joe Griffin, Liam Neeson, Northern Ireland, Oliver Hirschbiegel, Protestant | Comments Off on Reconciliation Is Not an Option