Berlin 2008: Too much moss on Scorsese’s Stones

Posted on February 7, 2008 by admin

Rolling Stones Berlin 2008 x650

By Ray Bennett

BERLIN – The Rolling Stones’ concert documentary “Shine a Light,” which had its world premiere tonight at the Berlin International Film Festival, is a major disappointment for anyone who hopes to see a film that captures the band’s live shows and reveals how they’ve kept going all these years.

Although he has a team of prizewinning cinematographers at hand, director Martin Scorsese does a lazy job of tackling the Stones legend and he uses tired old interview footage from decades ago instead of asking fresh questions.

It’s a not-bad TV concert show but as a document for the cinema it’s all wrong. It was filmed at the wrong venue (a small theatre) with the wrong crowd (for a Clinton benefit). The set list is boring and the sound mix distances the band from the crowd in the theatre and the movie audience.

Kirk Honeycutt in The Hollywood Reporter is right to compare it unfavourably with not only the current concert movies that feature U2 and Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young but especially Taylor Hackford’s expert 1987 film “Chuck Berry Hail! Hail! Rock ‘n’ Roll,” in which Keith Richards really shone.

Scorsese is content to film him as Widow Twanky while Mick Jagger hogs the show.

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THEATRE REVIEW: Lucinda Coxon’s ‘Happy Now?’

Posted on February 4, 2008 by admin

 

By Ray Bennett

An attempted out-of-town pickup prompts an overburdened wife, mother, daughter and businesswoman to question her grasp on happiness in Lucinda Coxon’s new play, “Happy Now?”

In its world premiere on the National Theatre’s Cottesloe stage, the play is a laudable attempt at finding the cracks in supposed contentment, and there are some well-made scenes and entertaining dialogue. But Coxon has not acquired the necessary skills with scalpel, ice pick and dental drill that suggest she’s anywhere near Pinter or Albee in dissecting marriage.

'Happy Now?' 2008 x325Kitty (Olivia Williams, right, with Anne Reid) is surprisingly intrigued by the out-of-town hotel room cynicism of Michael (Stanley Townsend), who is the kind of oleaginous creep who asks every woman he meets to sleep with him.

She turns him down, but his snide depiction of the everyday nature of relationships is enough to make her begin to second-guess life with Johnny (Jonathan Cullen). He has left the rat race to pursue his dream of being a teacher and be closer to their kids only to discover it’s not much different.

The couple’s closest married pals, Miles (Dominic Rowan) and Bea (Emily Joyce), are little help. Miles is a drunk, and Bea is obsessed with whether the walls of their home should be beige or off-white. They each envy what they believe is the carefree life of gay friend Carl (Stuart McQuarrie) while not really understanding anything about him. Kitty also must deal with her divorced parents — an unseen but very ill father and a mother (Anne Reid) — whose lifelong resentment is all too present.

The play touches on many of the things that tend to cause anguish in marriage, and the cast gets into the spirit of disillusionment with Williams especially relishing the best lines. But it’s all a bit shallow and naive.

Venue: National Theatre, runs through March 15; Cast: Stanley Townsend; Olivia Williams; Jonathan Cullen; Dominic Rowan; Emily Joyce; Stuart McQuarrie; Anne Reid; Playwright: Lucinda Coxon; Director: Thea Sharrock; Designer: Jonathan Fensom; Lighting designer: Oliver Fenwick; Sound designer: Paul Arditti.

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So long, Marko

Posted on February 1, 2008 by admin

 

Ray Bennett & Mark Schwed at Dan Tana's 1998

My friend Mark Schwed has died.

The Los Angeles Herald Examiner.
Corky’s bar at 11th and Broadway.
Dan Tana’s, Stoli rocks.
Poker nights, Marlboro Lights.
Enough laughter for a lifetime.
The best kind of newspaperman.
The best kind of friend.

Here’s the story in the Palm Beach Post:

Mark Schwed, a features and news writer for The Palm Beach Post for the past three and a half years, was found dead in his apartment Thursday. He was 52 years old.

Schwed had been in apparently good health until Monday, when he called in sick. A friend in California emailed him on Tuesday and never received a response. After two days of silence, a co-worker entered the home and found his body. A cause of death has not been determined.

“We were crushed by the news,” said Post managing editor Bill Rose. “Mark was a bright light in the newsroom, a kind and helpful soul who wrote smart stories and endeared himself to those who worked with him and, often, to those he wrote about.”

Here’s a guest book for his friends

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THEATRE REVIEW: Eileen Atkins, David Haig in ‘The Sea’

Posted on January 25, 2008 by admin

 

'The Sea' 2008

By Ray Bennett

A curious blend of Charlotte Bronte, Oscar Wilde and M. Night Shyamalan, Edward Bond’s eccentric play “The Sea” brings together drawing-room comedy and alien conspiracies in a storm-laden English setting in 1907.

In the second production of Jonathan Kent’s new artistic season at the Theatre Royal Haymarket, it’s a combustible mix that would implode if not for the wonderful acting on display.

Bond is known for such earthy and provocative 1960s plays as “Saved” and “Early Morning,” but “Sea,” first produced in 1973, is more ambitious. It aims at worldly insights and cosmic truths but succeeds only in providing an excellent cast with some incongruous but very entertaining characters to play.

The imagery works well, too, with a bleak and rocky shoreline well rendered and the roiling sea depicted in video on a vast canvas. It begins with a huge storm in which a young man is lost at sea while his best friend Willy (Harry Lloyd) tries desperately to save him, not helped by the recalcitrant Hatch (David Haig, pictured with Eileen Atkins), a draper on nightwatch duty.

It turns out that Hatch — in what is perhaps intended as a foreshadowing of World War I — believes an alien invasion is taking place and that the dead man and Willy are in on the plot. Hatch bullies the locals, including a dolt named Hollarcut (Russell Tovey) and the gullible Thompson (Jem Wall), into accepting his wild imaginings.

Meanwhile, he must do business with the aristocratic and domineering Miss Louise Rafi (Eileen Atkins), who rules the village ladies with expert eyebrows and a punishing vocabulary. She torments Hatch with her demands for expensive cloth and fashionable gloves, often later rejecting her selections and leaving the poor man in debt to his suppliers.

Scenes shift from the draper’s shop to Miss Rafi’s parlor to the barren shore with an abruptness that is sometimes hard to follow, but the set pieces are often very funny. In one, Miss Rafi leads her pliable throng, including her addled companion Jessica Tilehouse (Marcia Warren), in rehearsals for a local dramatic society reading of the Orpheus myth. In another, the increasingly demented Hatch scissors an enormous amount of cloth to pieces while excoriating his pitiless customer. And there’s a priceless scene involving the scattering of the dead man’s ashes on a windswept clifftop.

It doesn’t add up to much, but it looks great, and the performances of some gifted players, especially Atkins and Haig, make it well worth seeing.

THE SEA

Venue: Theatre Royal Haymarket, runs through April 19; Cast: Eileen Atkins; David Haig; Harry Lloyd; David Burke; Marcia Warren; Russell Tovey; Mariah Gale; Selina Griffiths; William Chubb; Jem Wall; Emma Noakes; Sarah Annis; Philippa Urquhart; Playwright: Edward Bond; Director: Jonathan Kent; Set designer: Paul Brown; Lighting designer: Mark Henderson; Sound designer: Paul Groothius; Music: Steven Edis; Projections: Sven Ortel.

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Suzy Bogguss on the road in the UK

Posted on January 21, 2008 by admin

By Ray Bennett

LONDON – Country music radio in the United States has never known what to do with its mavericks, as Emmylou Harris and Steve Earle can attest, and among the brightest talents to suffer from its blinkered ways is Suzy Bogguss.

Suzy Bogguss sweet dangerSteeped in country tradition but with a musical sensibility that draws from many different sources, Bogguss has a crystal clear voice that reflects her wit and intelligence. She put out many albums and had some hits before first radio and then her big-time label dropped her.

But parting ways with a major record label these days doesn’t mean much to someone with immense talent and a loyal fan base. Boggus continues to put out albums and tour. Her latest release is titled “Sweet Danger” on the Loyal Duchess imprint and she’s at the Round in Newcastle Jan. 26, Memorial Hall, Sheffield Jan. 27, the Purcell Room on London’s South Bank Jan. 28 and the ABC Glasgow Jan. 29.

Every Bogguss CD is on my shelf and having seen her perform at the Troubadour in Los Angeles a few years back, that Purcell date would be a can’t miss, but MIDEM beckons in the south of France.

Paul Sexton wrote about her and Shelby Lynne in the Sunday Times:

“You don’t have to be Willie Nelson to be a country outlaw. For any Nashville cat or kitten with a broad musical palette, the current rules of the genre are just begging to be broken. They may have burnt their bridges to country radio in the process, but Shelby Lynne and Suzy Bogguss are two of the artists proving what can be achieved.”

Read more about Suzy Bogguss

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Suzanne Pleshette dies

Posted on January 20, 2008 by admin

Bob Newhart Suzanne Pleshette

By Ray Bennett

Suzanne Pleshette, who made her movie debut in “The Geisha Boy” with Jerry Lewis in 1958 and achieved lasting fame as the missus on “The Bob Newhart Show (1972-79, pictured), died Saturday night at home in Los Angeles. She was 70.

A major bonus of being an unapologetic childhood fan of Jerry Lewis was to be introduced via his films, at a formative age, to what in those days were inoffensively termed dames or broads: Shirley MacLaine and Dorothy Malone (“Artists and Models”), Lori Nelson (“Pardners”), Martha Hyer (“Delicate Delinquent”), Marilyn Maxwell and Connie Stevens (“Rock-a-Bye Baby”), Joan Blackman (“Visit to a Small Planet”), Stella Stevens (“The Nutty Professor”).

For a boy barely into his teens, the discovery of Suzanne Pleshette in “The Geisha Boy” was quite wonderful, and meeting her many years later in Los Angeles was to have your best instincts confirmed.

Pleshette in person was the uncensored version of the classy dame who appeared on the Johnny Carson show with a lascivious mind as scattered as her imagination and a wit as sharp as her shining eyes.

Here is the Los Angeles Times obituary.

Suzanne Pleshette x650

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THEATRE REVIEW: Ben Woolf’s ‘Angry Young Man’

Posted on January 18, 2008 by admin

Angry Young Men 2008 Photo by Geriant Lewis x650

By Ray Bennett

Four clean-cut young men in suits on a small stage — bare apart from two stools and two chairs — become many characters, men and women, including a doctor from Eastern Europe who is lost in London in Ben Woolf’s very entertaining short play “Angry Young Man.”

Named Yuri, the young surgeon lands at one of London’s less accessible airports, from where the taxi ride to the center leaves him penniless and without luggage. There is a job appointment awaiting him if he can survive without shelter in an unforgiving city, but soon unpleasant racists and pleasant liberals are giving him equal trouble.

He is not so much angry as bewildered as well-meaning do-gooders land him in just as much difficulty as ugly skinheads, and his introduction to Britain becomes one damned thing after another.

Woolf tells Yuri’s story in an engaging mix of narration and dialogue as the guileless medical man bounces from one dilemma to the next. It’s observant and funny stuff, but the reason it works so well is because of the quartet’s tightly choreographed movement and ability to don and doff exotic characters in a flash.

Hywel John, Gary Shelford, Hugh Skinner and Alex Waldmann each play Yuri at different times, and one of the slyest gags is the difference between the highfalutin English that he hears himself delivering and the bumbling speech he actually utters.

All sympathy is with the young man, however, as various English stereotypes are dispatched with incisive wit. The four actors switch accents, genders and social classes with wicked ease. They are all very good as Yuri in different moods, with John especially deft. Shelford makes a posh young liberal suitably swinish, while Waldmann convinces as his flirty girlfriend. Skinner adds to the laughs with feigned reluctance to portray various animals and inanimate objects.

Together, under playwright Woolf’s smart direction, they turn a moderately interesting hourlong tale into fine and amusing entertainment.

Venue: Trafalgar Studios, London, runs through Feb. 2; Cast: Hywel John, Gary Shelford, Hugh Skinner, Alex Waldmann; Playwright-director: Ben Woolf; Set designer: Will Holt; Lighting designer: Richard Howell; Presented by the MahWaff.

This review appeared in The Hollywood Reporter; Photo by Geriant  Lewis.

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Stars turn out for new National Theatre season

Posted on January 16, 2008 by admin

Major Barbara 2

By Ray Bennett

Oscar winners Jeremy Irons, Vanessa Redgrave and Juliette Binoche plus Ralph Fiennes, Claire Higgins and Simon Russell Beale are among the stars to perform and the fabulous “War Horse” will return in the new season at London’s National Theater announced this morning.

Jeremy Irons will play British conservative Prime Minister Harold Macmillan in a new play by Howard Brenton titled “Never So Good” to be directed by Howard Davies on the Lyttleton stage in March. Vanessa Redgrave will star in “The Year of Magical Thinking” by Joan Didion, based on her bestselling memoir. Directed by David Hare, the production transfers to the Lyttleton from New York at the end of April.

Juliette Binoche and Akram Jhan will co-direct and perform in the Lyttleton a new work designed by Anish Kapoor and co-produced by the National in September. Fiennes will take the title role in “Oedipus” by Sophocles in a new version by Frank McGuinness directed by Jonathan Kent on the Olivier stage in October.

Simon Russell Beale and Claire Higgins star with Hayley Atwell and Paul Ready in George Bernard Shaw’s “Major Barbara” (pictured). Nicholas Hytner’s production opens March 4 as part of the Travelex £10 Tickets program.

Other productions in the Travelex program, presented on the Olivier stage, are “Fram,” a new play by Tony Harrison about the Norwegian explorer Fridtjof Nansen, directed by Harrison and Bob Crowley and featuring Jasper Britton and Sian Thomas; Thomas Middleton’s Elizabethan play “The Revenger’s Tragedy,” directed by Melly Still with Rory Kinnear as Vindice; “Her Naked Skin,” a new play by Rebecca Lenkiewicz set during the suffragette era to be directed by Howard Davies; and a revival of “Every Good Boy Deserves Favour” by Tom Stoppard and Andre Previn.

“War Horse” which was sold out this winter in its opening run, will return to the Olivier in November. Marianne Elliott and Tom Morris direct Nick Stafford’s adaptation of the Michael Morpurgo novel.

Other highlights at the National this year will include a new play by Michael Frayn titled “Afterlife,” which examines the life of Max Reinhardt, Austrian impresario and founder of the Salzburg Festival; Simon Russell Beale (above) in Harold Pinter’s “A Slight Ache”; “The Pitmen Painters,” a new play by Lee Hall, writer of “Billy Elliot,” and a new production based on Dostoyevsky’s “The Idiot” starring Ben Whishaw, who is soon to be seen with Hayley Atwell in a new feature film based on Evelyn Waugh’s “Brideshead Revisited.”

 

 

 

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Oscar clues among the Golden Globes winners

Posted on January 14, 2008 by admin

'Atonement' Cliff

By Ray Bennett

No acting prizes for “Atonement” (pictured) in the Golden Globes but its richly deserved win as best film drama makes an Oscar nomination appear certain although last year’s Globes winner, “Babel,” lost to “The Departed” at the Academy Awards.

Last year’s Globes winner for best comedy or musical, “Dreamgirls,” didn’t get a look in at the Oscars but this year’s victor, “Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street,” probably will.

Julian Schnabel’s Globes win as best director for the excellent “The Diving Bell and the Butterfly” (which also won the foreign-language film prize) throws both the helming and best picture categories wide open at the Oscars.

Last year, Martin Scorsese won both prizes but fewer Academy voters will have seen Schnabel’s picture and that lets in Tim Burton with “Sweeney,” the Coen Bros. and “No Country For Old Men” (especially given their Globes screenwriting prize), Joe Wright with “Atonement” and possibly Justin Reitman and “Juno.”

This year’s dramatic acting winners Julie Christie for “Away From Her,” and Daniel Day Lewis for “There Will Be Blood” not only look good for Oscar noms but also become favorites given that last year’s honorees, Helen Mirren in “The Queen” and Forrest Whitaker in “The Last King of Scotland” went on to Academy Awards glory.

The comedy and musical acting prizes didn’t fare so well last year although Meryl Streep was Oscar-nominated for “The Devil Wears Prada.” But Sacha Baron Cohen’s performance in “Borat” was ignored. This year’s Globes winners in that category may fair better: Johnny Depp in “Sweeney Todd” and Marion Cotillard in “La Vie En Rose” have each won critical plaudits for their performances.

The Globes last year honored Eddie Murphy and Jennifer Hudson in the supporting categories and Hudson claimed an Oscar while Murphy stomped unhappily away from the proceedings. This year’s Globes winners, Cate Blanchett for “I’m Not There” and Javier Bardem (below) for “No Country For Old Men” both become best bets for Academy Awards.

Best original score awards this year were always going to see a tussle between two terrific works, the typewriter flourish of Dario Marianelli’s “Atonement” and Alberto Iglesias’ soaring music for “The Kite Runner.” Britain’s Marianelli copped the Golden Globe but last year’s choice, Alexander Desplat’s “The Painted Veil” lost out to Gustavo Santaolalla’s “Babel” at the Oscars, so the Spaniard remains in the hunt.

In the foreign-language film category, the Globes last year chose Clint Eastwood’s splendid Japanese language “Letters From Iwo Jima” over the German Oscar-winner “The Lives of Others.” The Eastwood film was ineligible for the category at the Oscars but copped a straight best film nomination anyway.

This year’s Globes foreign-language winner, “The Diving Bell and the Butterfly,” is also ineligible in the category for the Academy Awards, and so is “La Vie en Rose,” which leaves the door open to the brilliant Cannes winner, “4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days.” It would be great if Jiri Menzel’s enthralling “I Served the King of England” and Nikita Mikhalkov’s Russian epic “12” would also get a look in, but it won’t happen.

 

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TV REVIEW: ‘Moving Wallpaper’ / ‘Echo Beach’

Posted on January 10, 2008 by admin

Moving Wallpaper : Echo Beach 2008

By Ray Bennett

LONDON — Comedies set behind the scenes at television shows have met with varying success in the past, but Tony Jordan’s “Moving Wallpaper”/”Echo Beach” goes one step further by combining backstage antics with the finished product.

“Moving Wallpaper” is a sitcom about the people who are making a soap opera titled “Echo Beach.” The series are listed in U.K. schedules as two separate shows, but they clearly are of a piece, with setups from the first half-hour revealed in the second.

Jordan has impressive credentials as the creator of “Hustle” and co-creator of “Life on Mars,” both of which were made by this show’s producers Kudos Film & TV, which also is behind “Spooks.”

“Wallpaper” sees hotshot producer Jonathan Pope (Ben Miller) parachuted in 14 days ahead of launch to save a very somber soap opera set in a Cornish village on England’s southwest coast. One-liners fly thick and fast as Pope pays more attention to the design of his office than the show until it becomes apparent that it is on the verge of disaster.

Snapping to it, he changes the name of the soap to “Echo Beach” and orders it to be filled with glamorous people with a story line and production values designed to win British Soap Opera Awards.

He demands “wit, class and permanent erections” from sexy characters in a sultry landscape. Shot at Watergate Bay, the resulting visuals are gorgeous even if the beach parties appear to be happening in the cold.

Much will depend on whether audiences respond to the inside jokes and sly wit that spins off the sitcom into the soap opera. The two shows are very different in tone and look, but savvy viewers might well decide they make a handsome combination.

Airs: ITV1 9-10 p.m. Thursday, Jan. 10 2008; A Kudos Film & TV production in association with Red Planet Pictures; Executive producers: Tony Jordan, Jane Featherstone, Alison Jackson; Creator-teleplay: Tony Jordan; Production designer: Brian Sykes; Costume designer: Rosalind Ebbutt

ECHO BEACH

Cast: Jason Donovan; Martine McCutcheon; Hugo Speer; Ed Speleers; Christian Cooke; Hannah Lederer-Alton; Jonathan Readwin; Producer: Howard Burch; Director: Beryl Richards; Director of photography: John Daly; Composer: Steve Isles; Music supervisor: Ian Neil; Editor: Martin Sharpe.

MOVING WALLPAPER

Cast: Ben Miller; Lucy Liemann; Raquel Cassidy; Dave Lamb; Producer: Mark Hudson; Director: Dominic Brigstocke; Director of photography: Ian Liggett; Composer: Jonathan Whitehead; Editor: John Gow.

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