The Oscars will have come and gone by now; it will remain only to be seen whether we win a dozen free passes to the Piedmont Cinema by completing the Oscar Trivia Quiz correctly AND, in case of a tie, guess correctly who won the Bald Guy in the top categories.  We'll have two chances since my partner and I collaborated on the Quiz & made two entries.  Our only difference is in the Supporting Actor Category.  I think it'll go to Alec Baldwin & he thinks Tim Robbins. Alec hasn't even been nominated before & he's got the sympathy vote for letting himself go, whereas Tim was astounding, but too outspoken politically.

I'm already so soaked in contemplation of the qualities & limitations of the nominated films (as evidenced by my tediously bloated & overwrought reviews) that I may not have any more to say about them, more's the pity.

FILM

Miracle

Yes, hockey players do skate backwards, but I have to cop to only having a 'moment' during one of the trailers I accidentally saw when I realized that this must have been a really big deal for those guys to win; after that I was too conscious of the flagwaving to care.  Kurt Russell does his real-life counterpart Herb Brooks proud.  

Japanese Story

I once worked at a temp agency job fresh out of high school with an 'older' woman (probably all of 25 years old) name of Patty, whom Toni Collette always reminds me of.  Patty would sit across the table from me while we did our mindless sorting tasks & we would talk Life & Men & would Bobby Kennedy win & where a good place is for lunch.  Her face was like a mud fence—I often found it hard to look at her, but then she would have an idea or inspiration & her face would become positively transformed with feeling & interest.

We already know that Toni takes risks as an actor and that risk-taking can lead to things like erotic car crash movies (Holly Hunter) or watch-while-I-shoot-up on the bathroom floor for no particular reason (Harvey Keitel), OR it can lead to full frontal male in the kitchen (Dennis Hopper) or bald with alien drool (Sigourney Weaver).  

What I positively adored about this film is that Director Sue Brooks took Toni and, showing monumental restraint IN the face OF Hollywood & bottom lines, just let the story tell itself.   Australia & a cute leading man, Gotaro Tsunashima, and all the other elements in the production team not withstanding, it's all in Toni's face.

 My Architect

What promises to be a fascinating exploration of architect Louis Kahn turns out to be the second half of the film's title: A Son's Journey.  Nathaniel Kahn almost obsessively & with no small amount of intrusion elbows his way in front of his dead father's life to talk about what he didn't do—for him, for his half sisters, for his mistresses, for his colleagues—when a less accusatory stance, and by extension far more powerful view, would have allowed the architect's work to speak for its creator. Ironically, Nathaniel is unable to prevent the buildings' mute presence from accusing him as a filmmaker.

 Kitchen Stories

You have to wear a sweater & a muffler to watch this Norwegian buddy flick, but it's worth it. Gratuitous pickled eggs, canned Baltic Herring, sausage & cheese care-package from Mom in Sweden.

Touching the Void

I've always hated Magic shows in which the naked performer climbs handcuffed into a bag onstage & 30 seconds later in a puff of smoke, appears in the balcony seats wearing the same clothes he had just cut to ribbons for our benefit. It's impossible.

That is why I spent most of this film fretting endlessly about the dangers involved in recreating scenes of a mountain accident that by their own admission the filmmakers caution is in the Climbing books as legendary.  If it's so fraught, what the blazes are they up there doing it again??!! Careful examination of the credits on the imdb shows a skeleton crew—no mention of medics or nurses or even a first aid kit.  Technical specs show that it was shot on film, not video.  Of course it's all guys, too.

Moving Malcolm

SF Indie Film Festival  Not recommended, of course we can't speak for the whole movie, since we left after 45 minutes and there was still another hour to go.

THEATRE

Yellowman

Directed by Les Waters and running January 23 through March 7 on the Thrust Stage at Berkeley Rep, 2002 Pulitzer nominated play by Dael Orlandersmith, with the riveting Deidrie N. Henry & Clark Jackson multiplying themselves to give us a panoramic view of personalities that formed Alma and Eugene. Waters' direction is so generous that any feel of 'staging' is invisible.

There is a scene in Spike Lee's Jungle Fever in which several women of color are sitting around dishin' and the topic segues from interracial dating to the skin tones of those present.   If you are not a person of color, you not only don't enter into this particular discussion, you are not even in the same room. That is what pops this two person drama into full 3D:  it brings into flesh and heartbreak the precise attitudes that separate us by the paper bag test. If you're dark, forget it.   It curiously has no limits by gender or conceivably by race.  Anyone can do it to anyone.  Dark is bad, period. 

My Fair Lady

Directed by Scott Fryer, running February 20 through March 13 at Crossroads Theater in Pleasant Hill.

A snappily trimmed & compact production of the old chestnut that Cole Porter apparently saw fit to attend at least a dozen times.   I know it pretty well, been in a couple of productions, feel some tug & pull at the same slow spots, or bits that never quite thrilled, BUT, it amazes me to this day that Frederick Loewe & Alan Jay Lerner devised this whole show full of tunes that git under your skin, AND slapped words on them that tickle & also manage to do service to Shaw.

In this version, watch out for Nancy Jo Sale as Mrs. Pearce, Michele Krapp as (find out for yourself), and Charlie Levy as Freddy, with particularly spiky, yet chummy John Blytt as Pickering and the multifaceted & thoroughly unHarrison Higgins of John Edward Clark.   

My partner & I disagree on Tielle Baker's Eliza to some degree—he enjoyed her voice more than I—although I think we do agree on the cause of the general discomfort with her portrayal.  She makes strong choices & certainly follows through consistently & winningly, however her Dialect Coach, Bettina Devin does her no service in letting her get this far without taking her out in the hall & giving her a smack: my dear, you cannot play Eliza with that accent.

Times Like These

Written and Directed by John O'Keefe, running January 22 to February 29 under the auspices of Travelling Jewish Theatre.

Even with a title such as this and its inevitable connection to our present day America, the core of this drama is really how actors manage to bring out great performances, and how this affects their non-acting lives.   

A Jew who doesn't "know what a Jew is", Meta, (Laurie O'Brien) is a great star of the Berlin stage banned from the theater. She can't leave their apartment but exercises her creative muscles in tutoring husband Oscar (Norbert Weisser), "Aryan" and not a very good actor.  Oscar blossoms on stage, Meta disintegrates at home.  When he is given the role of Hamlet, she pushes him to transform the Danish Prince into Horst Wessel (the young Nazi killed in a 1920's clash between a Brown Shirt street gang and a group of Communists. who became a rallying cry of the Nazis through their anthem: The Horst Wessel Song).

Oscar ultimately is so successful in finding his "inner Nazi" that his treatment of Meta changes.  At the same time she becomes a half crazed, ranting, screaming Jewish victim.  For the most part the transformations work, especially in the stage movements and gestures of the two actors though Meta's voice never quite achieves a fully believable change. This brilliantly written absorbing play also deserves a worthy ending:  the clichés of a dying speech are unnecessary & undercut the chilling final sound effect.     

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