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Heartless
In the mid-’80s I ventured to say in a published review of Sam Shepard’s True West that we were in a presence of a new dramatic genre, which I dubbed “the situation tragedy.” This notion was consistent, in retrospect, with a recognition on the part of Raymond Williams and others that circumstance had replaced action…
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Spaghetti Western Festival
A Spaghetti Western Festival at Film Forum? I am SO in. I started with THE BIG GUNDOWN, which I had never seen, and that contains the memorable line: “In America being quick on the draw is more important than precise shooting,” and am looking forward to hour after hour of sweaty gunmen, ambiguous heroes, some…
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Blackthorn
The myth of the American West, is, in Mateo Gil‘s BLACKTHORN, with an ingenious screenplay by Miguel Barros, still rugged and romanticized in its values, has neither loosened its grip on the imagination nor escaped the fog of nostalgia. One wonders what input Sam Shepard, in the leading role but also a master playwright on…
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A Quiet Place
The Leonard Bernstein-Stephen Wadsworth opera A QUIET PLACE was not well received when it premiered in 1985, but after seeing its first New York performance on Wednesday night, by the New York City Opera, I suspect that historical distance was the missing ingredient a quarter of a century ago. Alternating between the 1950s and the…
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Love Ranch
At its best, LOVE RANCH feels like some forgotten classic of ’70s Americana, an abandoned stepchild of Peter Bogdonavich or Bob Rafelson, with a dash of Roger Corman thrown in. There is a kind of nostalgic pleasure to be had in the affection it evinces for the kitsch and vulgarity that was at one time…