There is virtually no story in Paolo Sorrentino’s Youth, and it hardly matters. Cinematic visions this grandiose and immaculately composed don’t come but once a year, and Sorrentino is usually the one to deliver them. Sorrentino established his legacy as the heir to sumptuous late-period Fellini with the 2013 Oscar winner The Great Beauty. That movie’s depiction of wealthy … [Read more...]
Dramaworks’ Beautiful ‘Night Music’ perfect for your Florida summer night
From the 1970s — Stephen Sondheim’s most creative period, the decade of his major collaborations with director Harold Prince — comes A Little Night Music, their lush, irony-fueled tale of the follies of love. It kicks off Palm Beach Dramaworks’ latest summer of staged concerts, a hybrid format that trades in scenic challenges for evocative, stage-wide projections and focuses in … [Read more...]
A beautiful visitation for Boca Ballet’s ‘Swan Lake’
It’s too easy to compare the appearance of a major ballerina with a local company to the visitation of a swan, especially when the ballet in question is that of Tchaikovsky. And it also minimizes the contribution of the company itself, which in the case of Boca Ballet Theatre would be distinctly unfair. But this past Saturday night’s mounting of Swan Lake with New York City … [Read more...]
The View From Home 57: Films by Ray, Tarkovsky and Godard, plus a tribute to VHS
Late Ray: Satyajit Ray, India’s greatest world-cinema export, is most known for the flurry of raw but beautiful films he made in the ’50s and ’60s, such documentary-like rebukes to glossy Bollywood formula as Pather Panchali, The Music Room and Charulata. But he continued to direct films well up to his death in 1992, contributing new pieces to his humanist puzzle of Indian life … [Read more...]
Timeless, beautiful ‘Dances’ closes out MCB season
By Tara Mitton Catao On Friday at the Kravis Center, Miami City Ballet finished off its 2012-2013 season by presenting an evening that crisscrossed Broadway with ballet, and ballet with Broadway. The program featured two works of two great choreographers, Jerome Robbins and George Balanchine. The works were created by colleagues who seemed to have traded their signature … [Read more...]
ABT evening beautiful but skimpy
By Tara Mitton Catao On Saturday night at the Kravis, American Ballet Theatre, one of the most outstanding ballet companies in the world, made a long overdue visit to South Florida in a program that featured a mixed repertory including Agnes de Mille’s Rodeo, Mark Morris’ Drink to Me Only With Thine Eyes and the White Swan pas de deux from Act II of Swan Lake. It was a … [Read more...]
Handsome, beautifully staged ‘Romeo’ ends FGO season in style
The ultimate success of an opera or of a production finally comes down to the music – whether it’s good enough, in the first place, and in the second, whether it’s been sung well. But something needs to be said now and again about a good staging. Although Florida Grand Opera has had many fine directorial hands at work over the years, its current production of Charles Gounod’s … [Read more...]
Bruegel film beautiful, but too bloodless at the core
Film adaptations of plays, books and even video games are as common as rain in Seattle, but a movie adaptation of a painting? That’s an undertaking so ambitious – and probably presumptuous – that it’s hard to fathom it. Polish director Lech Majewski is up to the task in The Mill and the Cross, attempting to delve beyond the canvas of Pieter Bruegel the Elder’s famous The Way to … [Read more...]
Masterful Bach opens Stringendo series
Perhaps it was Johannes Brahms who said it best: “Using the technique adapted to a small instrument the man writes a whole world of the deepest thoughts and most powerful feelings,” he wrote to Clara Schumann, describing the celebrated Chaconne of J.S. Bach. “If I could picture myself writing, or even conceiving, such a piece, I am certain that the extreme excitement and … [Read more...]