Bob Stone, the founder, musical director and drummer for the Naples Jazz Orchestra (www.thenjo.com), gained renown by leading his popular self-titled big band from 1976-1989 in Chicago. Yet he didn’t exactly move to the west coast of Florida 25 years ago intending to do the same thing. “I was hitting the road with some major artists then, and flying out of O’Hare International … [Read more...]
No-holds-barred Mahler 7th ends NWS season in blaze of glory
Gustav Mahler is a composer whose vast constructs encourage interpretations that allow space for Mystery to inhabit some of his symphonies’ many rooms. For Michael Tilson Thomas, the surface perplexities of Mahler’s Seventh can be likened to the jump-cut film styles of the German expressionist filmmakers Fritz Lang and F.W. Murnau, who would follow Mahler in the cultural space … [Read more...]
The View From Home 60: Chabrol’s gumshoe, Risi’s road picture, a father’s vengeance, and the devil baby
The Inspector Lavardin Collection: Back in 1984, Claude Chabrol, one of the French New Wave’s darkest chroniclers of the human condition, emerged from a period of artistic infertility to introduce one of the most underrated detective protagonists of modern times. That’s when he directed his first film with Inspector Jean Lavardin, played by the French comic actor Jean Poiret, … [Read more...]
‘Railway Man’ too manipulative to earn redemption
The Railway Man is a few things: a war movie (mostly), a love story (nominally) and one of those myopic Liam Neeson-style revenge thrillers that seems to coalesce in a bloody catharsis between hero and villain. This adaptation of a best-selling memoir by British Army POW Eric Lomax is the sort of the hybrid that we’d decry as head-shakingly implausible if it weren’t kinda, … [Read more...]
Postcard From Broadway No. 6: ‘Bridges of Madison County,’ ‘If/Then’
What are you doing next Wednesday, April 30? Take some time that day and lift a glass to lyricist Sheldon Harnick with a toast of “L’chaim,” for he turns 90 that day. Yesterday morning, I spent some time with Harnick in his Central Park West apartment, interviewing him about his career, pegged to his milestone birthday and the release of a new double-CD retrospective album, … [Read more...]
Postcard From Broadway No. 5: ‘Bullets Over Broadway’ fizzles
One reason I usually come to New York this week each year is that it marks the deadline for Tony Award eligibility, and many shows open at the last opportunity, like doing homework in home room just before it is due. But the main reason is to catch The Easter Bonnet Competition, a two-day event that marks the end of the Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS fundraising season. To … [Read more...]
Strong singing stands out at fine FGO ‘Tosca’
Giacomo Puccini’s Tosca is, with the exception of the one-act Il Tabarro, the most veristic of the Italian composer’s works, and it needs a lot of good red blood to make it work. I don’t mean literal blood, of course, though there could have been some in several spots in the opera Saturday night at the Broward Center for the Performing Arts, but the figurative kind: A … [Read more...]
The View From Home 59: Hawking’s history, a gruesome morality tale, coming of age in the South, and more
A Brief History of Time: For years, Stephen Hawking’s A Brief History of Time has been sitting on my shelf, its spine ashamedly uncracked, waiting for the hypothetical day when I have hours of time on my hands and the irrepressible desire to read sentences six times before possibly comprehending them. Forgive me if I’d gallop a bit quicker toward completing an 84-minute movie … [Read more...]
Mickey Rooney: A titan, and a pain
Short of stature, towering with talent and a complete pain in the ass to interviewers, Mickey Rooney — one of Hollywood’s true greats — died Sunday at the age of 93. Born into a show business family, Joseph Yule Jr. first appeared on stage in his parents’ vaudeville act at 15 months, beginning a career that spanned eight decades. During that time, he was nominated for four … [Read more...]
Robert Morse, and how he succeeded
He is featured in a documentary, Broadway: Beyond the Golden Age, to be screened in the 19th annual Palm Beach International Film Festival, and his résumé includes a handful of Hollywood films. Still, Robert Morse is not really sure why he will be receiving the festival’s Lifetime Achievement Award. “I am absolutely overjoyed,” he says. “To be honored, whatever that means, … [Read more...]