Film: Sacro GRA (New Italian Cinema)

From the web:

SACRO GRA
GIANFRANCO ROSI, 2013
ITALY | ITALIAN WITH ENGLISH SUBTITLES | FORMAT: DCP | 93 MINUTES

The first documentary to win the Golden Lion for Best Film at the Venice Film Festival, the latest from Gianfranco Rosi (El Sicario, Room 164 and Below Sea Level), reveals the sheer diversity of life bubbling around the margins of Rome’s Grande Raccordo Anulare, the 43.5-mile highway that encircles the city, the longest in all of Italy. The absorbing and often moving individual portraits that emerge—an ambulance driver caring for his ailing mother, a scientist studying palm trees ravaged by beetles, an eel fisherman nostalgic for old traditions—give visibility and a human face to the places Sacro GRA drivers pass through but never see, while exposing the city’s striking contradictions. Inspired in part by Italo Calvino’s novelInvisible Cities, Rosi’s captivating chorale plunges the viewer into this paradoxical reality, allowing us a more direct, even sensorial experience of life in the shadow of progress.

http://www.filmlinc.com/films/on-sale/sacro-gra

Film: Quiet Bliss (New Italian Cinema)

From the web:

QUIET BLISS
IN GRAZIA DI DIO | EDOARDO WINSPEARE, 2014
ITALY | ITALIAN WITH ENGLISH SUBTITLES | FORMAT: DCP | 127 MINUTES

Three generations of women seek refuge in their family’s Salento olive grove after their small textile business collapses in Winspeare’s warm and vibrant drama. Against the backdrop of a radiant southern Italian landscape, Winspeare’s characters—serene Salvatrice (Anna Boccadamo), hardened Adele (Celeste Casciaro), loudmouthed Ina (Laura Licchetta), and aspiring thespian Maria Conchetta (Barbara De Matteis)—revive their lives in the wake of economic catastrophe. Turning to a back-to-basics existence as a means of healing the wounds wrought by the recession, they undergo transformations that the director renders with equal parts pathos, insight, and humor.

http://www.filmlinc.com/films/on-sale/quiet-bliss

Film: The Fifth Wheel (New Italian Cinema)

From the web:

THE FIFTH WHEEL
L’ULTIMA RUOTA DEL CARRO | GIOVANNI VERONESI, 2013
ITALY | ITALIAN WITH ENGLISH SUBTITLES | FORMAT: DCP | 113 MINUTES

Veronesi’s irresistible romantic comedy takes a journey through pivotal events in four decades of recent Italian history, as seen through the lens of Ernesto Fioretti’s unexceptional life. Played with charm and a disarming sense of humor by Elio Germano, Ernesto is a good-hearted, honest middle-class guy who struggles to keep up with changes and is always a step behind. His father disparaged Ernesto by likening him to the “fifth wheel of the wagon,” and his aspirations and involvement through the rise and fall of Socialism and the Berlusconi era are accordingly modest. But his protagonist’s apparent simplicity is precisely one of the strengths of this Tuscan director’s fifteenth feature, which opened the Rome Film Festival last year to great acclaim. Rich in emotions, its ups and downs coinciding with those of the country, Ernesto’s life serves as the perfect platform for abundant laughter and tears.

http://www.filmlinc.com/films/on-sale/the-fifth-wheel

Theater: Playing with Grownups

‘Playing With Grown Ups’ by Hannah Patterson at 59E59, May 2014

Reviewed in the NYTimes: http://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/08/theater/playing-with-grown-ups-by-hannah-patterson-at-59e59.html?_r=0

What happens when a career-minded married woman approaching age 40 has a child even though she's still not ready?  Joanna is suffering in her personal way, but it raises the question whether any successful career-oriented person can adapt well or easily to the waning of their career as they make the shift to having children.

Beautifully written and acted.

Theater: The Heir Apparent

(from the web site: http://www.classicstage.org/season/productions/heirapparent/)
By DAVID IVES
Adapted from the play by JEAN-FRANÇOIS REGNARD
Directed by JOHN RANDO
Actors: Paxton Whitehead, Claire Karpen, Carson Elrod, Dave Quay, and Amelia Pedlow

From the ever-antic pen of David Ives (VENUS IN FUR and THE SCHOOL FOR LIES) comes his latest laugh fest based on Jean-François Regnard‘s comic masterpiece. Meet young Eraste. He has it all: good looks, a beautiful fiancée, and a huge inheritance from an ancient uncle. There’s just one little problem: the uncle won’t die and he’s bequeathed his entire fortune to a distant relative. Oh, and did we mention the uncle also intends to marry Eraste’s fiancée? What’s a fine 18th-century fellow to do? What else but enlist the aid of his resourceful servant, Crispin, who could “out-Figaro” Figaro.

Reviewed by the NYTimes:
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/10/theater/the-heir-apparent-by-way-of-david-ives.html?_r=0)

Film: The Lunchbox

The Lunchbox (Dabba)

Trailer - Photos - IMDb

‎1hr 44min‎‎ - Rated PG‎‎ - Romance/Drama‎
Director: Ritesh Batra - Cast: Irrfan Khan, Nimrat Kaur, Denzil Smith, Bharati Achrekar,Nawazuddin Siddiqui

A mistaken delivery in Mumbai's famously efficient lunchbox delivery system connects a young housewife to an old man in the dusk of his life as they build a fantasy world together through notes in the lunchbox. In the big city of Mumbai, that crushes dreams and recycles them every day, both characters find a dream to hold on to. Ila begins a fantastical affair with a mystery suitor, pouring her heart into cooking meals for him. Saajan looks forward to lunch box deliveries from a mystery woman every day. As the lunchbox goes back and forth, this fantasy becomes so elaborate that it threatens to overwhelm their reality. The film is the story of the life we dream of versus the life we live in, and of the courage it takes to turn our fantasies into reality.

Film: Ida

(From the Film Forum web site: http://www.filmforum.org/movies/more/ida)

Directed by Pawel Pawlikowski

In the early ‘60s, before taking her vows at the convent, a young novice travels to Warsaw to visit her aunt, her only living relative. Revelations about Ida’s past throw her future into turmoil. Both witty and serious, IDA is as moving as it is entertaining in its layered take on human nature.

Presented with generous support from the Joan S. Constantiner Fund for Jewish and Holocaust Film.

In Polish with English subtitles • Music Box Films

Director:

 Pawel Pawlikowski

Writers:

 Pawel Pawlikowski, Rebecca Lenkiewicz

Stars:

 Agata Kulesza, Agata Trzebuchowska, Dawid Ogrodnik 

Film: CUFF screens "All That Glitters"

All That Glitters

The den mother of a male drag queen must fend off a violent intruder to protect herself and the ones she loves.

Director: Saro Varjabedian
Writer: Demond Robertson 
Producer: Demond Robertson

Director of Photography: Andres Karu
Editor: Lashawn McGhee
Cast: Nikkole Salea, Terren Wooten Clarke, Joshua Warr, Phillip Theodore PaschalTotal Running: 16 Min
Capture Format: HD/ Sony F3

(from the web site: http://cufilmfest.com/?p=818)

Film: CUFF (Columbia University Film Festival) screens "Smut"

From the web site: http://cufilmfest.com/?p=858

Smut

On a class field trip to the landfill, two boys make a startling discovery that draws them toward adulthood.

Director: Tom Sveen
Writer: Tom Sveen
Producers: John Wakayama Carey, Sarah Dorman
 
Executive Producers: Constance Hofland, Craig Johnson
Director of Photography: John Wakayama Carey
Editor: Matt Strickland, Tom Sveen
Production Design: Taisa Rodrigues
Cast: Case Prime, Jack Hatzimemos, Leslie Lynn Meeker

Total Running: 10 Min
Capture Format: Super 16mm

Theater: Harry Melling in "Peddling" at 59E59, May 2014

(photo credit: HighTide Theatre on Twitter)

For the review in the NYTimes:
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/03/theater/peddling-in-brits-off-broadway-plumbs-a-youths-soul.html

Film: Bicycling with Molière

This description is from the Film Forum web site (http://www.filmforum.org/movies/more/bicycling_with_moliere):

WRITTEN AND DIRECTED BY PHILIPPE LE GUAY

 A warm, funny, literate comedy in which two French actors portray two French actors, friends at odds with one another in every possible way, except their love of Molière’s The Misanthrope.

Lambert Wilson (OF GODS AND MEN) plays Gauthier, tall, handsome, and the beneficiary of a leading role in a ridiculous soap opera as a beloved cosmetic surgeon who “saves lives.” Fabrice Luchini (who previously worked with Le Guay in WOMEN ON THE 6TH FLOOR) as Serge has met with much less success, becoming a middle-aged curmudgeon who has renounced the stage to live on the glorious île de Ré, off France’s Atlantic coast. Gauthier arrives on Serge’s turf to try to convince his pal (Luchini, in real life, a Molière expert) to return to Paris to play opposite him in a new production. When not arguing or rehearsing scenes while biking, they consider their options as personified by a local porn actress and an attractive Italian divorcée, as well as the lure of island real estate.

FRANCE • 2013 • 104 MINS. • IN FRENCH WITH ENGLISH SUBTITLES • STRAND RELEASING

Music: Room Full of Teeth at Brooklyn's Galapagos

It was a joy for us to hear our son Elliot Cole's "hanuman" performed by Room Full of Teeth on Sunday May 4th, 2014. Here is the solo demo version: https://soundcloud.com/elliot-cooper-cole/sets/hanumans-leap-solo-demo

Film: La Libertad

A young man has left his mother and his home to try to make money in the forest.
Is he liberated from his childhood life?
Has he forfeited his liberty by becoming a manual laborer, cutting trees in the forest from morning til night?

Or perhaps the title "La Libertad" does not refer to the young man at all?

I think that the title refers to the wild, unexpected, excitingly disruptive 60 seconds in the middle of the film when the camera operator takes a walk. His subject has gone inside the tent to rest during his mid-day break. Without a subject, the camera is liberated and becomes a character in the movie, walking briskly through the lush foliage, looking about freely. After that moment, the remainder of the movie has an invisible main character: the camera. The movie changes from being a "documentary" to being a film about the viewer's awareness of the camera in any movie making endeavor.  -dp


From the web site: Lincoln Film Society, Art of the Real series, 2014

LA LIBERTAD
LISANDRO ALONSO, 2001
ARGENTINA | FORMAT: 35MM | 73 MINUTES

Alonso’s landmark feature debut, based on months of closely observing its subject’s routines, follows a day in the life of Misael, a young woodcutter in the Argentinean pampas. Using long takes that are at once uninflected and hyper-attentive, La Libertad chronicles the stark facts and repetitive actions of Misael’s largely solitary existence: he searches for trees and chops wood, pauses to defecate or eat, prepares and transports the logs for sale, returns to his camp to build a fire and cook his dinner. The title crystallizes a question about this man’s life: is the cyclical daily grind a burden or a kind of freedom? Or does the title refer to Alonso’s conception of an anti-dramatic, materialist cinema, absolutely in-the-moment and liberated from the traditional confines of fiction and documentary? “An account of everyday work that transforms the banal into poetry, maybe even myth,” James Quandt wrote of La Libertad, named one of the top 10 films of the past decade in Cinema Scope magazine. Print courtesy of the Harvard Film Archive.

Theater: A Respectable Widow Takes to Vulgarity, and Clean

The Traverse Theatre Company, Edinburgh, presented a double bill: A Respectable Widow Takes to Vulgarity by Douglas Maxwell; and Clean by Sabrina Mahfouz. Directed by Orla O'Loughlin. April 2-27, 2014 at 59E59, NYC.




Reviewed in the NYTimes:
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/14/theater/a-respectable-widow-about-an-unusual-friendship.html

Theater: The Great Immensity at the Public Theater, April 2014

Photo: NYTimes

Written and directed by Steve Cosson
Performed by The Civilians

Humans are hard to organize and they resist changing their collective behavior. The play "The Great Immensity" asks us to imagine if countries and people could galvanize and mobilize around the world's climate summits if it was understood that the consequence of unchecked climate change was the extinction of the most "charismatic megafauna" on earth.

Ingeniously written and executed, with elaborate visual media, powerful voices and lightning quick costume changes. The cast was fabulous! And the play hit its heart-wrenching target.  -dp 

Read the review in the NYTimes:
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/25/theater/the-great-immensity-gives-environmentalism-its-own-lyrics.html?_r=0

Theater: The Strange Undoing of Prudencia Hart, at Bass Concert Hall, Austin, TX in February 2014

The Strange Undoing of Prudencia Hart - 2014 Trailer from National Theatre of Scotland on Vimeo.

The National Theatre of Scotland: The Strange Undoing of Prudencia Hart Created by David Greig and Wils Wilson Directed by Wils Wilson

Music: Attacca Quartet plays Haydn's "The Lark" March 2014

Another evening of Haydn string quartets was performed by the Attacca Quartet at the Holy Trinity Lutheran Church, NYC, on March 20, 2014, as part of their multi-year performance project called "The 68." 

My favorite was:
Haydn's String Quartet No. 53 in D major, Op. 64 no. 5 “The Lark” 
which can be listened to (played by unknown musicians, however) at this link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_string_quartets_by_Joseph_Haydn

Music: Buke and Gase with So Percussion - WQXR

Wednesday, March 26 - 7:30pm
The Ecstatic Music Festival
Merkin Hall at the Kaufman Center, NYC
their first collaboration with the duo Buke and Gase.

From the web: (http://www.kaufmanmusiccenter.org/mch/event/ecstatic-music-festival-so-percussion-buke-and-gase)

An essentially Ecstatic collaboration between two Ecstatic Music Festival alumnae groups, this concert brings together innovative percussion quartet So Percussion with master instrument builders and Brassland artists Buke and Gase, one of the most talked-about bands touring today. The two groups will perform new work together featuring new instruments built by Aron Sanchez from Buke and Gase, alongside So’s regular mess of traditional percussion instruments, electronics, toys and other noise-generating objects, plus Buke and Gase’s homemade instruments including the "buke," a six-string former-baritone ukulele; and the "gase," a guitar-bass hybrid. - See more at: http://www.kaufmanmusiccenter.org/mch/event/ecstatic-music-festival-so-percussion-buke-and-gase#sthash.wWe5zk81.dpuf

Of epic proportions and stellar execution was Bryce Dessner’s "Music for Wood and Strings."

In the near future, listen when it is posted online at
http://www.wqxr.org/#!/story/listen-live-buke-and-gase-so-percussion/

More from So Percussion:
https://soundcloud.com/so-percussion/sets/so-percussion

Film: Of Horses and Men, Dir. Benedikt Erlingsson, 2013

OF HORSES AND MEN
BENEDIKT ERLINGSSON, 2013
ICELAND | ICELANDIC, SWEDISH, SPANISH, RUSSIAN, AND ENGLISH WITH ENGLISH SUBTITLES | FORMAT: DCP | 80 MINUTES

Animal. Nature. Animal nature.
Human. Nature. Human nature.

An exquisite feature film based, reportedly, on a 19 page script. Nearly every member of the production team owns horses and this knowledge permeates every aspect of the film, from the interlocking human stories to the patient cinematography and the miraculous camera proximity to the majestic horses.

We learned during the Q&A that Icelandic horses, closely related to the Arabian horse, are allowed to pasture in the wild high grounds all summer. When back among humans, they are still partly wild. This beautiful film is both a story and an experience worth revisiting.  -dp

http://www.filmlinc.com/films/on-sale/of-horses-and-men

Richard III by William Shakespeare, performed by the actors of Shakespeare’s Globe, London

 

(image of Mark Rylance as Richard III; image found online here: http://theatrelight.blogspot.com/2013/01/a-different-kind-of-animal.html)

I've combined some Wikipedia research about the facts of the historical time with the nuances of the play. Here is my un-authoritative synopsis of the history and characters of "Richard III" by William Shakespeare:

How are Kings made? It's a game of chess. 

Preface before the play: The War of the Roses

Henry VI was one year old when his king father died. He was a Lancaster.

His cousin was Richard, Duke of York. This man was also in a direct line to the throne from a previous king, Edward III - and Richard married and had 13 children. He is the father of the later kings Edward IV and Richard III.  Young Richard, born 12th of the 13 children, was raised to be a military man and given significant military roles from the age of 11.

For an interlude as an adult, King Henry VI had a mental breakdown - Richard, Duke of York was then made regent. When the king regained his sanity, Richard, Duke of York became his enemy. Battles ensued  between the Yorks and the Lancasters. Many of the York key defenders of this generation were subsequently killed in battle or executed. 

Henry VI, married to Margaret, had a son Edward who would have been the rightful heir to the throne. They, representing the Lancasters, were significantly defeated in battle by the Yorks. Henry VI was captured and murdered in the Tower of London. This murder, according to Shakespeare, was the work of Richard III. Queen Margaret pressed on in further battles, attempting to keep the crown for her son; she was also finally defeated, perhaps also to the credit of Richard III. 

The play: Richard III 

In this next generation of Yorks, three sons survive and are in Shakespeare's play: Edward, George (aka Duke of Clarence), and Richard. Edward is King Edward IV. 

(It is known that through their marriages the estates of Richard and George became legally entangled and so there was known cause in history for enmity between them. George, in fact but for reasons I don't know, was killed while imprisoned in the Tower.)

Richard's actual wife was Anne Neville, a close relative he'd met 12 years before; she was the widow of a man who had been a Lancaster and heir to the throne.

King Edward IV and his wife Elizabeth had two sons and a daughter. Elizabeth's clan is the Woodville family, and her brother and sons (from a previous marriage) are in the play. After the king's death, the marriage was declared invalid and the heirs illegitimate. Richard III became king; the young princes were never seen again. Their sister, Elizabeth, survived.

The Duke of Buckingham, once Richard's loyal ally, is later betrayed by Richard and becomes his foe. Buckingham then rallies Henry Tudor, who resides in exile in France, to fight against Richard. Buckingham was later captured by Richard's allies and beheaded.   

The loss of Buckingham was a grave blow to Henry Tudor's campaign. However, Henry Tudor ascended for a second battle through the agencies of female support; his staunch supporters included his mother, Buckingham's widow, the Woodville family of the prior Queen Elizabeth, and the female regent currently ruling in France. After he vowed to marry the surviving daughter of Edward IV, Elizabeth,  he was able to rally broad support to fight Richard's forces a second time. 

With Richard's forces outnumbering those of Henry Tudor, it might have been easy for Richard to keep his crown and his life.  However, there were significant defections of key allies on the battlefield.   

As in the game of chess, you win by capturing the king.  Richard III, the last of 300 years of ruling Plantagents, died on the battlefield, suffering numerous blows.  

Henry Tudor, supported by the Lancaster family, became the King of England and married Elizabeth, the surviving princess/daughter of Edward IV and Elizabeth. It achieved the unification of the houses of York and Lancaster.

-dp
(resources: http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/people/king_richard_iii, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_III_(play), http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_III_of_England, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/House_of_Lancaster#Henry_V_and_the_Hundred_Years.27_War_.E2.80.93_the_Lancastrian_war)