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María de Buenos Aires
That which is good about Beth Greenberg’s production of Ástor Piazzolla’s MARÍA DE BUENOS AIRES for Opera Hispánica is so very good that one doesn’t even want to think about that which is awkward or even bad about it. The supertitles are dreadful, no matter how difficult the surreal imagery of Horacio Ferrar’s libretto is…
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Ginger & Rosa
The pleasure I took in Sally Potter’s GINGER & ROSA was deep, and a little quiet, more the sort that I associate with burying myself in a novel than going to a movie. The film felt as though it might have been semi-autobiographical, a portrait of the filmmaker as a young woman, and a cursory…
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Cat on a Hot Tin Roof
The plays and dramatis personae of Tennessee Williams are basically abstractions of emotions and other states of being. Stanley and Blanche are masculinity and femininity abstracted; in a very real sense they are detached qualities rather than people, even in the limited sense that fictional creations aspire to be. I think of the dreamy sentimentality…
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Cata
“Cata” means “tasting” or “bit or sample” in Spanish, and so the experience of the so-named Iberian bar and restaurant on the Bowery is best understood less as tapas bar and more as do-it-yourself tasting menu. The tapas are for the most part traditional, with very few modernist touches, simply prepared, the flavors rich and…
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The Turn of the Screw
The aesthetics of the ghost story and of horror in general are essentially those of the Symbolist movement that spanned the 19th and the 20th centuries. Phenomena that are perceived by the senses, say the sight of a ghost or the sound of a raven tapping on the chamber door, intimate the existence of a…
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Side Effects
I can’t imagine a subtler thriller than Steven Soderbergh’s SIDE EFFECTS, if, that is, it is a thriller at all. For one is never quite sure, until the whole thing is over, just what sort of movie it is – if then. It begins ominously, the camera moving in on a window behind which something…
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Amour
The critic Stanley Kauffmann once listed what he saw as the key differences between theatre and film. His most interesting and yet least developed point was that what he calls “the effects of death” are at their most powerful on film. He meant that, since the screen actor’s work, in all of its lifelike detail,…
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Istanbul Meets New York
FADA is a friendly bistro in Williamsburg with tango on Tuesdays, live music on Fridays, a good Sunday brunch, and excellent French food. The restaurant has a Turkish connection too, which was celebrated Monday evening with ISTANBUL MEETS NEW YORK. There were mezes (small or shared plates), traditional with an occasional twist, from food artist…
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Picasso Black and White
The Guggenheim Museum was the perfect place for PICASSO BLACK AND WHITE. The creamy white spiral, and the muted grey light filtered through the great central skylight, seemed made for the display of the blacks, whites and greys of the artwork itself. I am glad to have gotten to the exhibit on its final day.…
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Iris Dement
I have changed since last I heard Iris Dement live, sometime in the late ‘90s soon after the release of what, until now, was her last album of original songs. She was for me in that decade the premier artist of that conglomeration of bluegrass, gospel, country, acoustic protest, blues, and anthemic individualism that we…