Ten best lists are notoriously subjective, but here are my bests in film and theater for 2018. Go ahead, argue with me. Make my day. FILM 1. Green Book – Yes, it is an odd couple road trip movie, but director/co-writer Peter Farrelly (right, the guy who gave us Dumb and Dumber and There’s Something About Mary) takes those familiar tropes and turns them into a slyly … [Read more...]
Archives for December 2018
St. Paul’s music director bids 2018 farewell with ‘Goldberg Variations’
It’s said that the insomniac Count Hermann von Keyserling, an ambassador from Russia to the royal court of Saxony, commissioned the work by Johann Sebastian Bach we know now as the Goldberg Variations as a sonic sleep aid to be played for him by one of the court’s musicians, Johann Goldberg. Although this monumental set of variations was out of the cultural mainstream for … [Read more...]
As critique of the zeitgeist, ‘Vox Lux’ falls flat
Any film that adopts as its subtitle “A Twenty-First Century Portrait” better be profound enough to live up to such a grandiose decree. Writer-director Brady Corbet’s Vox Lux does indeed have millennial zeitgeist on its mind, from the new normal of mass shootings to post-9/11 malaise to the deification of celebrity. But Corbet’s film is a purely academic exercise, written … [Read more...]
At Broward Center, ‘Hamilton’ shows it deserves the hype
If only my American history teacher taught with the same energy, passion and wit that Lin-Manuel Miranda brings to the tale of founding father Alexander Hamilton, I might have paid more attention in class. Surely you have heard of the monumental success of Hamilton, a cultural phenomenon by any measure. The biographical musical won 11 Tony Awards as well as the Pulitzer … [Read more...]
For PB Opera, it was a grand night of youthful singing
Time was when the Palm Beach Opera held a singing contest in April, inviting young opera performers from around the world to be heard in front of an elite panel of judges and a full orchestra. The contest is gone (though it may someday return), and with it the chance to hear a wide variety of new voices and not incidentally a broad sampling of repertoire that one will surely … [Read more...]
‘Vice’ takes on Cheney, but it’s a mess
When I think of actors portraying Vice President Dick Cheney, I’ll always jump to Richard Dreyfuss in W. first. Remember that scene around the war room, when he emerges literally from the shadows and outlines a sinister plot to take Iraq’s oil and establish permanent American hegemony in the Middle East? Dreyfuss didn’t sound much like Cheney — he sounded like Dreyfuss — but … [Read more...]
Touring ‘Dolly!’ reminds us just how strong this show is
The year was 1964 when composer-lyricist Jerry Herman, playwright Michael Stewart and director-choreographer Gower Champion adapted Thornton Wilder’s The Matchmaker into one of the high points of what we now look back on as the golden age of the musical theater. The show, of course, was Hello, Dolly!, which became, for a while at least, the longest-running production … [Read more...]
‘Divide and Conquer’ reveals secrets of Ailes the Dark Lord
Divide and Conquer, documentarian Alexis Bloom’s account of the fractious rise and ignominious fall of the late Roger Ailes, presents its subject as the lonely, fearful and paranoid arsonist of our present political dumpster fire, with delusions of grandeur worthy of Don Quixote and an ego as inflated as the Goodyear blimp. It’s not for nothing that Bloom’s interviewees compare … [Read more...]
New York Polyphony’s excellence muted by dry acoustic
If the Christmas season revives a rich body of American song for the holiday, it also is a door into the vast, centuries-old library of sacred choral music that amplifies the observance. Following by three days a concert by Miami’s Seraphic Fire that also explored ancient classical repertoire, the vocal quartet New York Polyphony made its first stop in Florida in seven years … [Read more...]
‘Tech Effect’: At Old School Square, Titian meets the terabyte
Want to be my friend? Technology asked Art. Cornell Art Museum answered with augmented reality, emojis and touch screens. On view through March 30, Tech Effect looks at contemporary art’s response to and adoption of technology with the help of 12 artists who marry technology and creativity and understand their relationship’s current status is not that complicated. The new … [Read more...]