Art, or Indecency?

Via the Livejournal of John Cowperthwait, without a doubt the best LJ I read:

Inside, police found a nude man, Joshua M. Culotta, suspended from the ceiling in an aerial harness that Schramm earlier called a "chandelier."

"He was in plain view," said Collins, the investigating sergeant.

Officers said they arrested Culotta, 26, for violating the city ordinance. The man, who is deaf, seemed confused and told a reporter, "I was just modeling." As officers handcuffed him, he started to cry.

"He'll be okay. Misdemeanor charge," an officer told one of the man's friends.

...

Collins said the police began an investigation Friday night after hearing that the gallery was displaying genitals while serving alcohol. He would not specify how they knew, saying he wouldn't reveal an investigative tactic.

I think the best part of the story is that all the massive drawings and sculptures of penises across the room were alright.

"Night at Gallery Ends in Arrest" [St. Petersburg Times]

Surprise! Media more negative towards Obama than McCain

The liberal media bias theory debunked once again. Another study breaking down the assumption that more media coverage is good media coverage, and showing that McCain is getting more of a free ride. Obviously Fox News skews the results. Still, the talk of liberal media bias is straight out of the Rove playbook, so it's good to see it fall apart.

The online literacy debate finally gets even-handed treatment

Kudos to Motoko Rich at the New York Times for promoting both sides of the debate on how online reading affects literacy. Both sides were represented fairly, without the old cranky doomsday scenarios. Quality explanatory reporting on a touchy subject is hard to find.

Theater Review: The Three Sisters by Anton Chekhov at Williamstown Theatre Festival

You could make a case that modern drama was redundant after Chekhov; he perfected what Ibsen started, and there would simply be no way to top the perfect equilibrium Chekhov reached between the strengths and weaknesses of his characters and their relationship with larger human struggles. Chekhov is the theatrical version of the sex and pizza theory: even a bad production of Chekhov is still pretty good. The strength of Chekhov's consistency, as expressed with equal strength by Paul Schmidt's distinctly contemporary translation, has certainly had its limits tested by the Williamstown Theatre Festival's production of The Three Sisters. Despite Chekhov being one of the purest, most finely-tuned purveyors of dramatic realism, Michael Greif's uneven production turns The Three Sisters into a play that feels like a distinctly pre-modern melodrama. It's the least Chekhovian production of a Chekhov play I've ever seen, and that includes Greif's inferior production of The Cherry Orchard at Williamstown back in 2004.

Whether the high melodrama and almost farcical tendencies of Greif's production are intentional I cannot conclude. The program notes emphasize Chekhov's understanding of human longing, and the pre-modern elements come in short bursts rather than extend for the entirety of the nearly 3-hour-long production. Greif has his actors act somewhat repressed and insecure, with the occasional screaming burst of insults and confessions. This is especially the case with Natasha (Cassie Beck). While smarter versions of The Three Sisters normally depicted Natasha as an Imperialist Russia townie unable to comprehend noble life, here she's seen as a loud, almost cartoonish brute of a woman. That's certainly a part of her character, but it's an exceedingly shallow interpretation to leave her at that.

The sisters themselves are the most consistent actors of the cast. While Aya Cash's Irina and Williamstown vet Jessica Hecht's Olga certainly have their moments, it's Rosemarie DeWitt's Masha that truly stands out. DeWitt is the only member of the cast who succeeds in breaking your heart on several occasions. But all three have a tendency to play with a continuous baseline anxiety with the occasional spike of emotion. The fact that this lack of nuance plagues all three sisters' performances indicates that the problem lies with Greif more than the actors themselves.

The men of the play are erratic and often oversimplistic. Keith Nobbs' Baron Tuzenbach is played like the archetypal foolish young upstart, lacking any real subtlety despite being one of the lynchpins of the play's social dynamics. Manoel Felciano certainly has his moments as Andrei, and his delivery is easily the most distinctive of the cast. But his pouting sometimes becomes too obvious, and he has a tendency to overact even to the back row. Meanwhile, Michael Cristofer's Chebutykin doesn't seem to know whether or not to play the drunk at any given moment, and his interpretation of senility and drunkenness are virtually indistinguishable. As Vershinin and Solyony respectively, Stevie Ray Dallimore and Stephen Kunken are the strongest actors in the cast and understand their characters the best. One wishes both of them had more stage time to show off their skills.

The play's aims to keep up Williamstown's technical level are certainly apparent, with a large-scaled set consistent of massive if unnaturally skinny birch trees and an excess of autumnal leaves in the fourth act. The play opens with a larger scene of social dancing, which I suppose is meant to set the tone for the life of crumbling nobility. Ultimately, it just serves as a weak, unnecessary add-on to an already overlong production. But worse than an excessive design of Chekhov is an excessive performance of Chekhov. It's almost as if Greif doesn't realize that Stanislavskian acting was invented with this playwright, as the acting seems to come from centuries ago. It may instead just be that Greif has a hard time conveying the deeper methods of expressing Chekhov's understanding of human emotion to his actors. That's not an unforgivable flaw: greater directors (and writers) have struggled with the same.

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Through July 27. The Cherry Orchard by Anton Chekhov. Translated by Paul Schmidt. Directed by Michael Greif. Sets by Allen Moyer. Costumes by Clint Ramos. Lights by Kenneth Posner. Sound by Walter Trarbach. Playing at the Main Stage at the Williamstown Theatre Festival. Photos by T. Charles Erickson.

Starring Jessica Hecht (Olga), Rosemarie DeWitt (Masha), Aya Cash (Irina), Michael Cristofer (Chebutykin), Keith Nobbs (Baron Tuzenbach), Stephen Kunken (Solyony), Roberta Maxwell (Anfisa), Peter Maloney (Ferapont), Stevie Ray Dallimore (Vershinin), Manoel Felciano (Andrei), Jonathan Fried (Kulygin), Cassie Beck (Natasha), Cary Donalson (Fedotik), and Joe Tippett (Rohd).

The Simpsons won't be cancelled soon

Via EW's PopWatch blog:

Groening fans were also given two nuggets of info: First, the team has "no intention" of wrapping up The Simpsons anytime soon — certainly not as long as "the ratings keep up," added Jean, "and they have."

A few years ago this would have enraged me, but show has been on the upswing over the last couple of years. It's not the same as its golden age, but it's still great, if different.

Internet Comments: The New Letters to the Editor?

When a new medium emerges and we don't know how to deal with it, it's helpful to compare it to the older media it is updating or replacing. Blog comments are as controversial of a new medium as we've seen since the emergence of the Internet. The above On The Media NPR segment addressed the obscenity, racism and hatefulness that can be found on Internet comments and Internet forums. But what purpose do comments serve, when compared with other media of the past?

Only a truly naïve person could argue that the Internet has made us more hateful. It's certainly made it easier to be hateful, and convenience has a long history of advancing hate speech. But hate goes to a much deeper part of the human psyche than a place that can be touched by 10-15 years of technology. Furthermore, hateful responses to published material is not a new phenomenon. It's best to think of Internet comments are as unregulated, uncensored letters to the editor.

Letters to the editor have been a part of the American media since there's been an American media—you could argue that the Federalist Papers were Letters to the Editor. But anyone who's worked on a paper can tell you that there are dozens of crazed, hateful screeds written all the time that don't get published. For every letter The New York Times has ever published, there are at least 20 letters that are not put in print, and most of them don't have a chance of making it to paper because of their offensiveness. If blog posts are published materials just like newspaper articles, they can inspire the same heated, infuriated responses that have always existed. The Internet doesn't encourage this kind of speech any more than angry letters to the editor do.

What the Internet has done is make it much easier to write a letter to the editor, and made it exponentially easier to have that letter made public. Most blogs, and even most print publications that allow online comments, don't try to restrict what commenters say. Anyone can post whatever they want, and as long as they can prove they're not a spam bot, it will be published. Let's compare that to what a person who wished to comment on an newspaper or magazine article would have to do before. The New York Times lists the following guidelines to letters to the editor:

Letters to the editor should only be sent to The Times, and not to other publications. We do not publish open letters or third-party letters.

Letters for publication should be no longer than 150 words, must refer to an article that has appeared within the last seven days, and must include the writer's address and phone numbers. No attachments, please.

We regret we cannot return or acknowledge unpublished letters. Writers of those letters selected for publication will be notified within a week. Letters may be shortened for space requirements.

Today, the Times also has tips to getting your letter published, the emails of the editors, and phone numbers to call. Up until a few years ago, that wouldn't be there. The only way to know where to send a letter would be one sentence in the masthead of a paper. Then you have to follow the guidelines, use your own paper and ink, lick the stamp, pay postage and go outside to stick in a mailbox. All those steps have now been eliminated. The Internet has democratized the stupid, hatefully speech writing process, just like it has democratized everything else in the media. Democracy, as I think we can all attest, doesn't make people smarter.

What's particularly frustrating is that newspaper journalists get up in arms over Internet comments. They're stressing over the same kind of response that they throw in the trash in the newsroom. Journalists are already supposed to have thick skin , but with the Internet, they just need to add extra layer or two of skin.

The purpose of comments differ depending on the type of publication. If you're a small blog like this one, comments are the best way to create discussion and gain attention to your site. If you're the website of a major paper, you should treat online comments like letters to the editor and heavily regulate it. It's true that people will complain that you are stifling free speech. Just like everyone who hasn't gotten their letter published in a paper thinks their opinion is being stifled.

Theater Review (NYC): The Artistical Process of Mark and Andy by Jeff Sproul

(This review was originally published on Blogcritics).

Anton Ego, the food critic from the movie Ratatouille, rightly pointed out that not everyone can be a great artist. If every potential artist who dreamed the dream could be a success, art itself would cease to be interesting. But where does that leave the lower tier of artists, those who dream the dream but simply aren’t capable of achieving it?

It’s no small act of bravery that playwright Jeff Sproul and No Tea Productions, a company barely a year and a half old, should address the issue. For a company that is more than two degrees off-Broadway, the subject could be too painful. How lucky they are, then, to have produced The Artistical Process of Mark and Andy, a play that is wickedly smart, skillfully executed, and unflinchingly honest. Mark and Andy is certainly conscious of its modest situation, but has turned that very situation into a production that shows the company has all the tools to lift it out of a basement on St. Marks.

The Artistical Process of Mark and Andy is centered around two losers who have the conviction to make great art, but are utterly clueless about how to do it. This is not an unusual problem, but what plagues Mark and Andy, and their even less creative friends, is their lack of awareness of how clueless they truly are. Mark and Andy are not writing their paranormal cop show for fun—they’re legitimately trying to break into an artistic world that may as well be located on Mars.

As amateurish as their talents are, their self-righteousness and sense of paranoia and jealousy are of the kind usually seen in much greater men. Mark in particular shows an ego, volatility, and temper that we usually think of when we think of Oliver Stone or Quentin Tarantino. But Mark is certainly no Tarantino, and that only amplifies his pettiness.

The play would be a much lesser accomplishment if it focused simply on the absurdity of Mark and Andy’s dreams. Andy’s girlfriend Janine is the most consistent spokesperson for reality in the play, more so even than her filmmaker friend Rachel (Dana Rossi), who is too defensive of her professionalism to gain a proper perspective. Every real human emotion in Mark and Andy, and all its desired sympathies, are funneled through Janine, and Sabrina Farhi does an admirable job handling the most challenging role of the play.

Janine, however, is not the most sympathetic character, nor is Rossi’s performance the true standout. That distinction goes to Matt Sears’ Andy, who, despite his slacker tendencies and laid-back demeanor, is the closest thing to a hero in this play. He still humors the hopeless dream, but not to the point where he loses his sense of right and wrong. Andy wants to pursue his goals while remaining inclusive and making everyone happy; stepping over someone for success is the last thing on his mind.

From before the lights even go up, Sears naturally sinks into the role, moving and acting like a loser, but one who is nonetheless exceedingly likable. Yet Andy, who is incapable of taking leadership of any project, is not perfect himself, in the same way that Mark, acted by the playwright Sproul, is still a redeemable character despite his general dickishness.

If Mark and Andy are unaware of their surroundings, the play’s creators, including director Lindsey Moore, are finely in tune with their own. Towards the end of the play, Mark and Andy rent out a tiny theatrical space—a space not unlike the diminutive UNDER St. Marks Theater. We are treated to a play within a play that is painfully bad but hilariously appropriate, even if the stupidity is overplayed a little bit. Moore and Sproul have deftly used the minute scale of the production to suit their purposes. This kind of theatrical thrift puts to shame the ineffective extravagances of most higher budget shows.

The Artistical Process of Mark and Andy is by no means a perfect play: the tone of the dialogue struggles with consistency, and the low-budget production often commits the kind of gaffes that the play itself seeks to mock. But the real success lies precisely in Mark and Andy's modesty. That a play this minor could succeed so greatly even in New York is a reason for hope for American theater.

Mark and Andy comes at the same time as [title of show], a play that has self-consciously made it to Broadway through sheer willpower. That play, however, has used the same motivation to simply make it at all. No Tea Productions has taken what’s been given to them and, through seemingly nothing but sheer ingenuity and enthusiasm, created a work of theater that surpasses its space and all that could be expected from it. Anton Ego was right that not everyone can be a great artist. He was also right that a great artist could come from anywhere.

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Through August 9 at the UNDER St. Marks Theater. The Aristical Process of Mark and Andy was written by Jeff Sproul and directed by Lindsey Moore. It stars Sproul (Mark), Matt Sears (Andy), Sabrina Farhi (Janine), Jeremy Mather (Collin), Timothy Maher (Brett), Dana Rossi (Rachel), Alicia Barnatchez (Amber), and D. Robert Wolcheck (Jay). Tickets can be purchased online at SmartTix. Photos by Wolcheck

Theater Review (NYC): What To Do When You Hate All Your Friends by Larry Kunofsky

(This review was originally featured on Blogcritics).

Having graduated college less than two months ago, right now I’m at one of those points in everyone’s life when the real friends start to distinguish themselves from the people I will never speak to again. We’ve all had the experience of being a friend (with a lowercase “f”) as opposed to being a Friend (with the cultish connotations of the capital “F”), and we all know there are certain types of personalities that have different kinds of dynamics with their friend situation.

What To Do When You Hate All Your Friends is a hilariously stark exploration of that distinctly contemporary phenomenon, a play that breaks down how we view our friends into its more preposterous basic form. Larry Kunofsky’s remarkable play is as funny and absurd as it is poignant to modern adult life, one that sees through all the bullshit and gets down to the nitty-gritty.

Kunofsky is not one to treat the subject with a situation that bears any semblance to reality. In addition to breaking down the fourth wall in a manner closer to Brighton Beach Memoirs’ Eugene Jerome than to Our Town’s Stage Manager, Kunofsky has developed a social hierarchy for the friends situation that is obviously satirical, but comes to dominate every moment in the play. The upper-case Friends have a personal ranking system that updates on a month-by-month basis. The Friends can mark demotions in those rankings by clearing their throats, and, if necessary, can occasionally demand that a fellow Friend “be honest” when an isolated problem slips through the cracks. There’s also the prole-like “friends,” those who are sometimes invited to parties but not allowed to obtain any of the perks of being a Friend.

What this thoroughly developed system leaves out is any trace of individuality, and the ultimate inability of a network of friends to cope with reality with their own absurd mechanisms leads the Friends absolutely haywire. If the structure of the Friends is meant to stand in for a more realistic structure of friends, it is here where the play transcends its own machinations. Has today’s bourgeois society become so isolated, even among those closest to us, that we have set up a social system that robs us of our true character?

Of course, the play also works on its own internal terms. The breakdown of the Friends is in part orchestrated by Matt (Todd D’Amour) the character referred to in the play’s title. Matt is a violent, gruff individual who’s grainy voice rivals that of Christian Bale’s Batman. Despite his general misanthropy, Matt still has human needs, which lead him to at least try to build a relationship with Celia (the hilarious Carrie Keranen).

Celia is Matt’s polar opposite, someone who is everyone’s #1 Friend. Yet, she shares Matt’s inability to relate to other people on a much deeper level. The fact that Matt and Celia’s perspectives meet at opposite ends of the spectrum is probably what draws them together, even though their relationship is turbulent from the start.

Susan Louise O’Conner and Josh Lefkowitz serve as an effective greek chorus of friends and Friends, each cast in several roles ranging from the alcoholic Friend with a plummeting ranking, the lawyer who keeps his Friends from his cynical wife, and the hopelessly cheesy losers doomed to eternal friend status. O’Conner and Lefkowitz display remarkable range in their eclectic roles, even if some of their performances succumb to the play’s more cartoonish tendencies.

The highlight of the cast is without a doubt Amy Staats’ Enid, a mentally unstable but consistently lovely woman who is fully aware of her “friend” status, and uses narrating as therapy. Though Staats looks like Ana Gasteyer, her performance more closely resembles Molly Shannon’s Mary Katherine Gallagher in her overwhelming eagerness to impress and the embarrassment that ensues. She’s as funny and sympathetic as any quirky female character you’ll see on the stage.

What to Do When You Hate All Your Friends lets those damn rankings and rules overtake the play in the second half, to the point where the play’s initial charm begins to sag. But while dramatically the play eventually loses its appeal, the gags and laughs remain throughout the evening. Even in the clunky second act you can get by with its characters having perpetual “Meltdowns,” the coup Matt stages in the Friends system, or Enid’s constant unprovoked interjections.

The play could have been a greater success if it focused more on its armchair sociology than on giving the play-by-play of its own set of rules. Nonetheless, the intelligence of Kunofsky’s breakdown of the plight of 21st century adult friendship remains the theme that sticks with you in the long haul. After seeing What To Do When You Hate All Your Friends, you’ll start applying the show’s rules to your own friend situation soon enough. Don’t be surprised if it fits surprisingly well.

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Through August 23 at the Lion Theatre on Theatre Row. What To Do When Your Hate All Your Friends is written by Larry Kunofsky. Directed by Jacon Krueger. Sound design by Ryan Maeker. Set design by Niluka Hotaling. Lighting Design by Gina Scherr. Costume Design by Melissa Trn. Photos by Martin R. Miller

Starring Todd D'Amour (Matt), Carrie Keranen (Celia), Josh Lefkowitz (Garret, James, Bob, Phil), Susan Louise O'Conner (Holly, Nancy, Amanda, Tiff), and Amy Staats (Enid). Tickets can be purchased online at TicketCentral.

Bush is not Batman!

If he was, he would be the Batman and Robin version of Batman (though seeing Bush's nipples in a rubber suit may make me vomit). Apologies to Fire Joe Morgan, but I must use their style to call out Andrew Klavan of the Wall Street Journal for his Republican wet dream. Trying to milk The Dark Knight for his own political purposes, Klavan has drawn a comparison (for which there could be "no question") between Chris Nolan's Batman and Dick Cheney's President Bush.

A cry for help goes out from a city beleaguered by violence and fear: A beam of light flashed into the night sky, the dark symbol of a bat projected onto the surface of the racing clouds . . .

Oh, wait a minute. That's not a bat, actually. In fact, when you trace the outline with your finger, it looks kind of like . . . a "W."

Yes, because when Bob Kane and Billy Finger created Batman in 1939, they actually had superhuman future predicting powers, and could predict the middle name of their President/superhero 69 years later. Additionally, God must have been a Bush supporter50 million years ago when he designed the bone structure of bats to coincide with the development of the Roman alphabet around Jesus time and the middle name of the President today. God is on Bush's side after all.

There seems to me no question that the Batman film "The Dark Knight," currently breaking every box office record in history, is at some level a paean of praise to the fortitude and moral courage that has been shown by George W. Bush in this time of terror and war.

Yes, there's no question that everyone loves Batman because of they also love Bush. The 27% of the population that approves of Bush, and the part of the world population that doesn't want him imprisoned for war crimes (or dead), accounted for all $200 million+ the film has made worldwide. Also, Chris Nolan, an Englishman, is secretly a right wing American stooge. Just like Obama is a secret Muslim Manchurian Candidate.

Like W, Batman is vilified and despised for confronting terrorists in the only terms they understand. Like W, Batman sometimes has to push the boundaries of civil rights to deal with an emergency, certain that he will re-establish those boundaries when the emergency is past.

Um, in case you have forgotten, Klavan, Batman doesn't kill anyone. And since 9/11, there hasn't been an active threat in America on the same level of bombing hospitals, blowing up ferries, and murdering mayors, cops, judges, and police commissioners. The civil liberties violations have occurred well after the emergency has past. I'm also pretty sure Batman is against waterboarding, which is probably worse than breaking people's ankles by throwing them off two stories of a building. Furthermore Bush hasn't only sometimes pushed boundaries; he's violated fundamental human rights and human dignity at all times whether or not it's been helpful to fighting terrorism. Batman's actually accountable for his actions, and also takes the blame for crimes he hasn't committed for the good of Gotham. Compare that to "we don't torture people."

And like W, Batman understands that there is no moral equivalence between a free society -- in which people sometimes make the wrong choices -- and a criminal sect bent on destruction. The former must be cherished even in its moments of folly; the latter must be hounded to the gates of Hell.

Except Batman doesn't kill people. The Joker does. And if there's no moral equivalence, how come Batman is seriously disturbed and insane? Did you even see Batman Begin? I guess that would kill the mood of the wet dream.

"The Dark Knight," then, is a conservative movie about the war on terror. And like another such film, last year's "300," "The Dark Knight" is making a fortune depicting the values and necessities that the Bush administration cannot seem to articulate for beans.

Therefore, you are full of shit. You're saying that 300, a nearly panel-by-panel adaptation of a comic book published in 1998, and The Dark Knight, a move directed by and starring Brits, are both Bush propaganda pieces. Really? Maybe Bush can't articulate it because he isn't as hot as Gerard Butler or Christian Bale.

Conversely, time after time, left-wing films about the war on terror -- films like "In The Valley of Elah," "Rendition" and "Redacted" -- which preach moral equivalence and advocate surrender, that disrespect the military and their mission, that seem unable to distinguish the difference between America and Islamo-fascism, have bombed more spectacularly than Operation Shock and Awe.

Why is it then that left-wingers feel free to make their films direct and realistic, whereas Hollywood conservatives have to put on a mask in order to speak what they know to be the truth? Why is it, indeed, that the conservative values that power our defense -- values like morality, faith, self-sacrifice and the nobility of fighting for the right -- only appear in fantasy or comic-inspired films like "300," "Lord of the Rings," "Narnia," "Spiderman 3" and now "The Dark Knight"?

Yes, because liberal Hollywood—wheat grass-drinking, hybrid-driving Hollywood, requires you to be a Bush propagandist in order to get a movie financed. Never mind that 27% approval rating, or the fact that just about everyone wants us out of Iraq immediately. We all know that Bush is right, but can only realize it in an allegorical form. So basically, the only way Bush would be right is if Batman, Spider-Man, and Narnia were real.

The moment filmmakers take on the problem of Islamic terrorism in realistic films, suddenly those values vanish. The good guys become indistinguishable from the bad guys, and we end up denigrating the very heroes who defend us. Why should this be?

The answers to these questions seem to me to be embedded in the story of "The Dark Knight" itself: Doing what's right is hard, and speaking the truth is dangerous. Many have been abhorred for it, some killed, one crucified.

Or, you know, that real life is not a comic book. If soldiers could get killed in Iraq and then hit restart again like it was Halo, then yes, maybe the war wouldn't be so bad. If we could die as many times as Superman or Captain America, then it wouldn't be that bad. But then again, Jesus came back to life, so why can't we all? I guess it's liberals fault we can't all be Jesus.

Leftists frequently complain that right-wing morality is simplistic. Morality is relative, they say; nuanced, complex. They're wrong, of course, even on their own terms.

Left and right, all Americans know that freedom is better than slavery, that love is better than hate, kindness better than cruelty, tolerance better than bigotry. We don't always know how we know these things, and yet mysteriously we know them nonetheless.

Yes, and Christians are better than Muslims (and Jews), liberals are worse than conservatives, and Bush is a better president than a sack of doorknobs. 27% of Americans can't be wrong! Wait, what does this have to do with Batman again?

The true complexity arises when we must defend these values in a world that does not universally embrace them -- when we reach the place where we must be intolerant in order to defend tolerance, or unkind in order to defend kindness, or hateful in order to defend what we love.

So basically, as Tom Lehrer said, there are some people who don't embrace tolerance, and we should hate people like that. Or else Batman will kick their asses?

When heroes arise who take those difficult duties on themselves, it is tempting for the rest of us to turn our backs on them, to vilify them in order to protect our own appearance of righteousness. We prosecute and execrate the violent soldier or the cruel interrogator in order to parade ourselves as paragons of the peaceful values they preserve. As Gary Oldman's Commissioner Gordon says of the hated and hunted Batman, "He has to run away -- because we have to chase him."

Doesn't this sound like it should be read by Don LaFontaine? So I guess the soldier who kills civilians and the waterboarder is basically the equivalent of the loose cannon cop called out by the chief of police. But dammit, he gets the job done. Except when he doesn't. As in real life.

That's real moral complexity.

Lethal Weapon is morally complex?

And when our artistic community is ready to show that sometimes men must kill in order to preserve life; that sometimes they must violate their values in order to maintain those values; and that while movie stars may strut in the bright light of our adulation for pretending to be heroes, true heroes often must slink in the shadows, slump-shouldered and despised -- then and only then will we be able to pay President Bush his due and make good and true films about the war on terror.

Yes, Bush is in the shadows. That's why his torturing, wiretapping, and War are still firmly imprinted in America's mind. And keep in mind that Batman confessed to a crime as a cover up for Harvey Dent. He didn't actually do anything wrong. Does that make Dick Cheney Two-Face? That would assume Cheney was ever once a crusader for good. So I guess what he's saying is that we'll be sorry when Bush is gone. Maybe, but with a country more likely to have another building blown up after Al Quaeda has gone unchecked, with a country more likely to go underwater because of global warming (or just another hurricane Bush would ignore), a country that has innocent people tortured and guilty people giving false testimonies under torture, we'll be sorry alright. But for a different reason.

This makes me never want to watch 24 ever again.

Darren Aronofsky to direct RoboCop remake

This may be the most depressing Killer Robot movie ever made. [THR]

Stephen A. Smith and Skip Bayless discuss the Dark Knight

I have tried to work up the courage to watch this video, but I simply can't bring myself to do it:

The only redeeming thing is the headline Junior (a.k.a South Park consultant Alan Yang) gave the requisite post on Fire Joe Morgan.

Theater Review (NYC): Stain by Tony Glazer

(This review was originally featured on Blogcritics.)

Stain feels like what would happen if Vincent Gallo wrote a play and didn’t have a disciplined editor at his disposal. It takes a lot to politically offend me, and Stain is the first play that has done so in quite a long time. The play has not-too-obvious right-wing leanings, a racist dad who would be comical if he weren’t so repulsive, and misogyny that rivals Strindberg's. I’m fine with offensive politics and dialogue if there’s an interesting story, as well as believable, if not sympathetic characters, and true human struggle. But rather than inject some creativity and careful thought into Stain, playwright Tony Glazer has instead given the play a hopeless string of cliché’s and confused character motivations. The result is a play where the harshness cannot be justified.

Allow me to list the number of supposedly controversial themes addressed in Stain: abuse, racism, rape, molestation, teen parenthood and confusion over biological parents, incest, divorce, drugs, unprotected sex, and legal manipulation. Glazer left murder out of an otherwise complete set, but his casual assumption that abortion is murder has it there by proxy.

Playing with a glut of themes along these lines is not necessarily doomed to failure—in fact, this year Pulitzer winner, August: Osage County, also featured a seemingly endless string of similar catastrophes. But where August offered real human struggle, black humor, and broken human lives, Stain instead offers stunning plot twists for the sake of stunning plot twists. Glazer mentioned in a recent interview that he wanted to address the repercussions of not being honest with your family, and that point is certainly jammed down our throats repeatedly. But with such confused character motivations and dubious melodrama, there’s not enough else going for the play to overcome the clichés, other than a handful of witty lines.

The play centers around how a bunch of adults have been wholly unfair to one extremely unlucky fifteen-year-old named Thomas (Tobias Segal). In addition to Arthur, the said racist, borderline-alcoholic dad (Jim O’Connor), Thomas has a repressive, manipulative mother, Julia (Summer Crockett Moore), a botox-using, saintly (if Republican) grandma Theresa (Joanna Bayless), and a pot-smoking, insult-trading buddy George (Peter Brensinger). There’s obviously a secret everyone is keeping from Thomas about his parents’ divorce, and he spends most of the first act asking for it. We also learn that he’s knocked up a 32-year-old Puerto Rican lawyer, Carla (Karina Arroyave), who, rather than facing statutory rape charges, plans to raise the baby on her own and ignore Thomas altogether while still demanding child support once Thomas turns eighteen.

The play struggles with consistency and believability throughout. How can Thomas, so wiry and awkward, have convinced an educated women that he was of the age of consent, much less be smooth enough to convince her to sleep with him? How could Theresa, at once batty and immensely grounded, have been so oblivious to the true history of Thomas’ birth? How could anyone not think of calling the cops on Carla, despite her legalese?

Perhaps most offensive, however, is Glazer’s brazen sweep over the question of abortion. Thomas’s situation seems like the kind of case Roe v. Wade was made for, but rather than at least seriously considering all possibilities, the issue is shot down by both Carla and, less believably, Thomas’ family. When Carla mentions she’s not having an abortion, Theresa casually declares, “We’re Republicans.” When your fifteen-year-old son’s future is on the line, you simply cannot shoot down the possibility so easily because of a political conviction, even by a family that believes “liberal” and “welfare” are appropriate crossword puzzle solutions to the description “destructive.” At the very least, you could consult a lawyer much more quickly.

Segal’s performance as Thomas may be the most redeeming element of Stain. A recent Drama Desk nominee, Segal is ironically the most mature and professional actor in the cast, effortlessly gliding through Thomas’ range of emotions while never dropping his overwhelmingly adolescent glaze. Hopelessly clumsy, he looks to have outgrown his body. Through pure charm, he almost allows you to forgive Glazer’s poorly thought-out decision to make Thomas a drug user and lawyer-seducer. Bayless’ Theresa would have given the other noteworthy performance as the capricious grandmother, who seems to be on more drugs than botox. Unfortunately, Bayless struggles with her lines too often for her performance to really shine.

Stain is a willfully obnoxious play, one that doesn’t try to make its audience happy or play to viewers' political sympathies. In a way, we should be seeing a lot more of this kind of attitude in the New York theater scene. But without a proper play to back up that attitude, the obnoxiousness translates to something more sophomoric than productive.

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Through August 23. Stain, written by Tony Glazer. Directed by Scott D. Embler. Scenic Design by Eddy Trotter. Costume Design by Cully Long. Lighting Design by Nick Kolin. Sound Design/Original Music by Andrew Eisiele. Photos by Orlando Behar.

Starring Tobias Segal (Thomas), Jim O'Conner (Arthur), Peter Brensinger (George), Summer Crockett Moore (Julia), Joanna Bayless (Theresa), and Karina Arroyave (Carla).

Theater Review (NYC): TRACES/fades by Lenora Champagne

(This review was originally published on Blogcritics.)

I did not have a chance to write this review of TRACES/fades, the second show of the Ice Factory festival, until a week after its premiere. As I began to try to recall the play for this review, I began to fully appreciate its point about how the loss of memory robs us of our vitality and makes us shed some of our distinctly human qualities. Yet I don’t think it was writer/director Lenora Champagne’s intention to emphasize that point by creating a play that was so forgettable.

TRACES/fades is the kind of show that gives experimental theater a bad name. Certainly, fragmented memory and displaced humanity are material ripe for the avant-garde. But instead of taking a turn towards dada, or even towards the theater of cruelty, this play comes across as a lazy, whiny think piece.TRACES/fades’ manipulations are painfully obvious, and its lack of notable dramatic development is more a drag than a thought-provoking device. However worth exploring the themes of TRACES/fades may be, it will take a much more intelligent, creative treatment than what Champagne has produced to give a complete theatrical expression.

The play centers on three generations of females, Ann (Joanne Jacobson), the grandmother with the fading memory, her daughter Claire (played by the playwright, Lenora Champagne), who is a leftist political operative, and granddaughter Rose (Amelie Champagne Lyons), named after Ethel Rosenberg, and trying to rediscover her grandmother’s past. Champagne clumsily weaves scenes of Rose and Claire’s poorly rendered mother-daughter relations, Rose assisting her grandmother, and Ann at the nursing home where she is carefully assigned. All these scenes feature abstract dialogue that wavers between non-magical realist melodrama and dream play extravagances. These scenes would be much better off if Champagne picked one atmosphere or the other.

There are also moments when the actors speak directly to the audience, usually in speeches about politics, feminism, and global warming. There’s also the occasional singing of an anti-war song. The transitions between the more realistic scenes and the fanciful are poorly executed, a product both of the script and of Champagne and Robert Lyons’ co-direction. The use of a giant, continuously changing video in the background distracts more than it assists the flow of the production, even though its faded images are an obvious stand-in for the loss of memories.

The overwhelming video display suggests that for what Champagne has in mind, TRACES/fades might be better suited for an art gallery than for the theater. The play is stuffed with enough imagery, mixed media, and vague thematic allusions to make a fascinating gallery exhibit. What it lacks is cogent drama, which is a death knell for even an hour-long theatrical work. No matter how crucial the topic matter may be, TRACES/fades is an insufferable work of theater that is more likely to have you block it out of your memory than to make you think about memory itself.

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TRACES/fades ran from 7/16-7/19 as part of the Soho Think Tank's Ice Factory Festival '08, which runs through 8/23. Written and directed by Lenora Champagne. Music by Daniel Levi. Video by Lauren Petty and Shaun Irons. Production design by Liz Prince.

Tickets for remaining Ice Factory Festival shows can be purchased here.

Rethinking audience interaction in theater for the YouTube era

George Hunka had an excellent post up today on the staging of Beckett's television and fiction work to the stage at the Lincoln Center. Hunka rightly notes than in an era with as strong media saturation with distinctly non-theatrical media, integrating things like film and prose into theater is inevitable. This is especially true when that production happens to have a lot of money.

I commented that Beckett one-acts are perfectly suited for viral video. But that got me thinking about what happens to the theater and its audience if plays go to YouTube and the web. On the one hand, some of the core distinctions of the theatrical medium—an organic creation, live audience, using a theatrical space—get lost. At the same time, audience interaction in general does not get lost. It may actually even get bigger.

The web has created unprecedented possibilities for media access, whether or not the business side of the media world has caught up yet. YouTube has already been used as a promotional tool to get people to see shows. But what's stopping a taped, live, organic performance from streaming on the web? What if a free broadcast of a staged production gets orders of magnitude more viewers than a $50 per viewer live staging. What if a web broadcast gets audience comments that, in effect, serve the same purpose as audience feedback slips in the program?

These kind of innovations would no doubt be maddening to theater traditionalists, but they may be essential to moving theater into the Web 2.0 (soon to be 3.0) era. Audiences aren't going away, they're just going to nontradional places. Trying to redefine the theatrical audience is certainly a tricky proposition that could easily fail, but it's time someone at least had the guts to try.

Theater Review (NYC): The Strangerer by the Mickie Maher

(This review was originally featured on Blogcritics.org)

The Strangerer is a 90-minute attempt to murder Jim Lehrer that goes nowhere. The premise of a theater-loving, existential hero Bush is absurd, and the format of reinterpreting the first 2004 Presidential Debate only adds to the absurdity. What is the point of committing such a pointless, arbitrary act for the purposes of theater? The point, my fellow Americans, is that the premise of The Strangerer demands it, a fact of which playwright Mickie Maher was only too self-conscious.

This experimental work of meta-theater, which coyly plays with the fundamental conventions of theater and examines the theatricality of life outside the black box, has arrived Off-Broadway in New York on the strength of its almost unilateral raves by Chicago critics. Its fate will be a litmus test for the future of creativity in New York theater. For as enticing a labyrinth of themes as the play presents to theater-minded New Yorkers who know what they’re looking for, it will be an alienating, exhausting bore for just about anyone else.

The same was said, of course, when Waiting for Godot opened. The Strangerer also alludes to a particularly experimental production of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? that provided the fictional inspiration for this version of the Bush/Kerry debate. It’s a fitting parallel for a play that continues in the grand tradition of a Beckett/Albee baffler, a format that has drawn as much praise for its structural innovations as it has criticism for its obtuseness.

But the play’s got creativity up the wazoo to back up its weighty goals. It takes the presidential debate format, one of the most overtly staged and artificial contemporary theatrical practices, and turns it into a wildly unpredictable and constantly shape-shifting event. It inverts our commonly held beliefs about figures we've known for years. The absurdity of the evening raises the question: how far from The Strangerer does the subtext of an actual debate actually stray?

On the political end, it’s taken two of the most important world figures of the past decade—figures whose mannerisms have caused us to tune them out instead of challenge them—and forces us to listen to them speak as nakedly as possible. It’s the longest 90-minute play I’ve ever attended. No matter how aware you are of the intellectual nuances of the play, The Strangerer’s sheer banality in its first half begs you to tune out to some degree. The twist is that the actual dialogue of the play directly attacks the audience for doing just that. It’s very hard to tune out a mockingly narcoleptic Kerry (played by Maher himself) and a Bush (Guy Massey) who, despite using the same grammatical weaknesses we’ve heard for the past eight years, has explicitly promised to commit a murder before the night is over.

Yet, the play’s early boringness is precisely what will turn some attendees away. The play’s creators, who do not include a director, underestimate just how adept an audience is at zoning out. Some critics in Chicago called the play nearly flawless, but in order for a play to be perfect, I don’t think it can by its very nature induce its audience to engage in exactly the kind of activity (or inactivity) it purports to oppose. If the play fails with a much less intellectual and insular New York audience than it had in Chicago—and the show I attended had multiple empty seats—it will be because of its creators’ hubris.

That doesn’t discount the fact that The Strangerer, which takes its name and inspiration from Bush’s brief encounter with Camus two summers ago, remains one of the better existential comedies of recent memory. The debate on the method of murder is undeniably farcical, and features props of switchblades, guns, kerosene, cyanide, a pillow, and a Balinese kris meant for ritualistic murder. But the play is rife with contradictions inherent in theater, not to mention in general human existence. What is the value of excessive, unapologetic performance, and what gets lost under the guise of maintaining an air of mystery? Is it worth living a boring, neutral life? How can an act that is horrifically destructive be considered entertaining?

Questions like these abound in The Strangerer, and the play answers none of them. Its ingenuity is virtually unparalleled in today’s mainstream New York theater. The question is whether Theatre Oobleck’s faith in its audience pays off.

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Through August 2. The Strangerer was written by Micky Maher. It stars Maher (Kerry), Guy Massey (Bush) and rotates Colm O'Reilly and Brian Shaw (Lehrer). Set design by Maher. Lighting Design by Martha Bayne. Sound Design by Chris Schoen. Tickets can be purchased at Telecharge. The play runs 1 hour and 30 minutes with no intermission.

Album Review: The Hold Steady, Stay Positive

I posted this one on Blogcritics, so I can post it here.

It’s understandable why The Hold Steady wanted to release Stay Positive digitally well over a month before its official release date. The album is so overstuffed with summer jams, ballads of rejection, and meditations on Americana, that it has already succeeded in becoming the definitive summer album of 2008 well before it was even released this week. Stay Positive is also one of those albums with enough diversity in song styles and pure rock transcendence to have us keep coming back to it for as long as we love rock.

Forget the Springsteen comparisons. I’ve always advocated that The Hold Steady’s major influences were the godfathers of alternative rock, in Craig Finn’s native Twin Cities, The Replacements, and especially the oft-forgotten Hüsker Dü. Finn even looks like Huskers guitarist Bob Mould. The influence has never been more apparent than on “Constructive Summer,” a 21st-century response to “Celebrated Summer,” arguably Hüsker Dü’s most famous song.

True, Stay Positive never reaches the titanic heights of Boys and Girls of America, just like New Day Rising didn’t reach the heights of Zen Arcade. But like New Day Rising, Stay Positive takes the populist charm and natural songwriting hinted at by the band’s previous album and streamlines it into one, glorious package. It’s the Hold Steady’s most accessible album yet, one that takes the band out of its bar band roots and puts the band at the forefront of all discussions of rock this decade.

With so many current indie bands trying in vain to break new ground, one of Stay Positive’s greatest charms is the dues it pays to the past. There are nods to Led Zeppelin, Iggy Pop, Joe Strummer directly in the lyrics, as well as in the music. Traces of CCR, the Band, Cream, and even Bob Dylan can be found all over the place. “Constructive Summer” is followed by a tragic tale of romantic desperation in “Sequestered In Memphis,” which leaves the tragedy to subtext.

Though there’s not a bad song on the album, some tracks really do go to levels that rock bands of any breed rarely touch. The devastating “Lord I’m Discouraged” tells the tail of an unattainable women caught in life-destroying circumstances, with the perfect chorus “Excuses and half truths and fortified wine.” “Joke About Jamaica,” the band’s obvious homage to Zeppelin, features some of the finest chops the band has ever displayed that keeps up with the band's heroes.

There hasn’t been a Hold Steady album yet without a mammoth, inspiring ending. On Boys and Girls, the band relied on personal comfort and safety in the face of adversity to carry them out. But here the band truly takes it to another level, with a theatrical, rock operatic final two tracks, "Jamaica" and "Slapped Actress," that take on how the band sees the struggles of making it in a jaded industry. It’s one of the first times the Hold Steady has critically addressed the current state of indie rock, and while this has always been a band quicker to build bridges than burn them, it’s of no small importance that Finn has turned his pen squarely at his peers.

While the Hold Steady has traditionally tended to rely on that pen, this is the first Hold Steady album where Finn is more part of an ensemble than the lead. Stay Positive would be nothing without the foundation provided by Bobby Drake's drums or the tough, disciplined lead guitar of Tad Kubler. The Hold Steady has always been something of anomaly in the indie rock world, but here they become one of a kind. All while still sounding like they’ve been with us forever.

Charles Isherwood needs to get out more

Attending the festival for a few days as an observer, I was quickly swept up in its strange atmosphere. Just before heading to Applebee’s for a burger, I sat on a bench outside the Lied Center organizing some notes. Nearby a pack of students broke into a spontaneous chorus from a song I recognized.

What was it? Sondheim? Don’t think so. Certainly not Rodgers and Hart or Rodgers and Hammerstein. Could it possibly be Andrew Lloyd Webber? Then it hit me — it was Queen’s “Bohemian Rhapsody,” the first time in a while I’d heard anyone of any age sing pop or rock, and it was weirdly disorienting. A few minutes later the kids segued into a chorus of “Mr. Cellophane” from “Chicago,” and the world righted itself.

International Thespian Festival Offers the Smell of Greasepaint for 2,000 High School Students - NYTimes.com

Quick update

Have a party to go to, but I thought I'd give a quick update. First, saw the Bacchae today. Very well done. The R & B theme to the chorus worked, the sets and acting was mostly fantastic, and seeing the play in the Rose Theater space made it really feel like you were in 4th century Athens. And of course, this is the role Alan Cumming was born to play.

Also, Mike Daisey gave me a shout out today, which has me theater geeking out. Equally geeky is learning that Hal Brooks has a blog, where he most recently gave fellow of U of C alum Jason Zinoman props. Cool deal.

Now I'm off to drink in Park Slope, two weeks after taking the magical G train to the same house two weekends ago. For a Manhattanite, this is like entering Willy Wonka's chocolate factory, all the way down to the purple vomit on the subway car floor. I may be taking the G train again tomorrow to see the Breeders at McCarren park. This is a bad omen for the apartment hunt...

The Don Hall/Mike Daisey/Scott Walters/Adam Thurman debate

The breakdown:

• Theaterforte calls on Mike Daisey to define his view on how theater exactly fails America more clearly.
• Daisey responds, calling for a culture where the artist is nurtured and not desperate for income.
• Scott Walters gives his take on Daisey's point, advocating to keep it simple and return regional theater to its core values.
• Don Hall calls Daisey and Walters out, arguing that if restructuring American theater was so simple, it would have happened already. Hall makes a parallel to a professional gambler complaining about lacking health insurance-it's his choice, after all.
• Here's when the shit really starts to hit the fan. First, Daisey lashes back at Hall, claiming Hall misrepresented his argument and shoots down the blackjack parallel:

  This is just dumb. I don't know where to start--do I start with how art isn't much like gambling? Or how what society gains from art is wildly different than what it gets from gamblers? Or do we talk about how one form of activity (gambling) is on the ascendency, while theater has been shrinking...oh, I give up. It's just a really facile analogy, and I'm not going to parse it.
  
  The only part of this that is true is that being a working artist *feels* like being a professional gambler. Otherwise, it's worthless.

• Then, out of nowhere, Adam Thurman swoops in. He takes Hall's comparison one step further, drawing a parallel to the World Series of Poker and how nearly 90% of the players are "Dead Money." This is just like the theater world, Thurman argues. A handful of people who have enough skill and have learned to take advantage of the system, and lots of people who have foolishly jumped into the fold and will never make it.
• Daisey goes apeshit on Thurman, arguing that theater is not a zero sum game where the success of one person depends on the failure of another. Theater is not competitive, and one person's success does not entail another man's failure.
  
• Walters give his two cents on the Hall-Thurman analogy, breaking down their artistic Darwinism and noting that there's an element of luck to it. This post is followed by a particularly nasty comment trolling session between Walters, Hall, and others.
• Thurman strikes back with what he claims to be a hard-line economics stance on how Daisey and Walters are unrealistic, with a post entitled "The Power of Scarcity."
• Walters argues that Hall and Thurman disagree with him and Daisey on whether fixing American theater is a normative or descriptive problem. Despite being the only academic in the group, Walters takes the normative side. Hall leaves a nasty comment calling Walters cracked.
• In his Friday roundup, Hall calls Thurman's article the "Best Fucking Theater Post of the Week"

And then they all called it a week and went out and had tea. Sheesh, I guess if you don't want drama in your blogging life, don't blog about drama.

My Take:
For one, I think Hall is right to point out that fluffy, oversimplistic talk accomplishes nothing. I also think Thurman is right to point out that there is an inherent talent gap in all fields, be it theater, poker, or law. That's a side of the starving artist argument that is often ignored. What I will say, however, is that Daisey is right to point out that there's no need for theater to be competitive. Thurman claims to be taking the realist economic stance, but he makes an egregious error in his view of scarciy.

Yes, resources are scarce in the arts economy, just as they are in the world economy. But the economics of art, just like the economics of the world, is not like a poker tournament. There's not a fixed amount of money involved, and there's no fixed pie for each person to acquire a percentage of. One theater professional's success does not need to mean another one starves. Walters is right that Thurman has taken a descriptive stance, but he's overlooked how flawed his descriptive stance is.

If you're going to talk economics, why not use an example from actual economics, instead of a poker tournament? When India developed a tech industry, did America's tech industry crumble? No. Instead, India provided an extended pool of resources that has helped the U.S. and world economy much more than it has hurt. If it wasn't for India's economic development, there would be no Citigroup today.

Contrary to Thurman's assessment of scarcity, more theater would not mean that there is a shortage of pieces of the pie to be had. It would instead mean that the pie gets bigger. The argument is not that a bad theater artist should make as much as good one, but he should be able to make an income that's sustainable. Healthcare should not be dependent on your success. A bad lawyer can still make six figures, while an exceptional one can make eight figures. Theater artists should be able to make a living the same way.

The economic explanation for why most theater artists do starve is that a theater professional is not as heavily demanded as a laywer, and there is an an abundance of theater people over what is demanded. This creates a surplus of theater workers, which means more unemployment. Demand, however, is elastic, and it can increase. If steps can be taken to shift a demand curve to the right, then there will be more theatrical professionals making more money. The demand could increase by creating more lively, cheaper theater. Lively and cheap theater requires artists who can take risks without worrying about starving because their medical bills are so high.

When a basic standard of living is met, theater jumps back into the world like a spring. Theater artists can take more risks and ticket prices go down. People start coming back to the theater, putting money into the system. A theater artist's expected income increases, meaning more people can live that life, and have more of an incentive to do so. The normative goals are met by descriptive economics. Simple as that, people.

Person Don Hall

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Movie Review: August

It’s an inauspicious coincidence that August runs 88 minutes long. While the film’s premise is more Wall Street than Dog Day Afternoon, August and 88 Minutes are comrades-in-stupid. Together, they represent a new, indefensible breed of bad movie. These are genre films with marquee actors and modest budgets that have scripts so amateurish, incoherent, and illogical that it poisons everything and everyone associated with the film.

The difference between August and 88 Minutes is that the latter starred Al Pacino, an actor with more than enough of a track record to be given a pass for a lone flop. August, on the other hand, stars Josh Hartnett, a young actor with an inconsistent career in desperate need of an unqualified hit. Hartnett at least tries to go in a new direction by taking on a Gordon Gekko meets Mark Zuckerberg kind of role. Yet, his performance is so painful to watch—and he gets no help by screenwriter Howard Rodman—that you’re reminded that the actor’s breakthrough came with Pearl Harbor.

August focuses on a hotshot tech mogul of Web 1.0 who, after skyrocketing onto the scene in March of 2001, has seen his fortunes erode to 1% of their peak by August. The film’s trailer makes it seem like he spends the month trying to build his fortune back, but don’t be deceived. There’s no attempt to regain fortunes, or even any plot conflict to make you believe its possible. Hartnett’s Tom Sterling, CEO of Landshark, talks a big game, but has no authority to back it up. Sterling’s like an 8 year old who tries to be a bully but just ends up looking even more pathetic.

In fact, everything about Landshark suggests childishness. Tom’s immaturity is matched by his awkward, nebbishy, kid slang-using brother Joshua (a completely lost Adam Scott), his employees whose average age must be about 15, and Robin Tunny and Andre Royo as annoyed fellow executives. It’s one thing for a movie to focus on a poorly-run company. It’s another when a non-farcical movie presents a company so hopelessly incompetent, employed by workers no skills to speak of (and equally ineffective acting skills), and then expects you to believe this company could be worth $100 million.

The workings of Landshark are much closer to a bunch of grade schoolers playing business. In perhaps the most telling scenes of the childishness of the characters, a scene which is obnoxiously intentional, Tom and Josh meet at a strip club, but rather than stare at breasts, they’d rather play pinball. The closing scene of the film has the two actors returning to the pinball machine, fighting over who gets the next game.

The premise of August is marginally interesting, if for nothing else than it occurs with the shadow of 9/11 hanging over it and could make some interesting points about overeager tech investors. The problem occurs within the fundamental execution of this premise. August would have been much better, or at least competant, if it was called March-August, focusing on the rise and fall of a tech company with a little too much hubris. In its actual form, Landshark is doomed from the start, and you spend the entire film knowing its going to crumble, if not before 9/11, then after.

If the film wins any Razzies, which it certainly could, I’d like to propose a new category for which it would be a lock: Most Gratuitous Use of David Bowie. Bowie plays Cyrus Ogilvie, something of a gender-bending Mr. Burns, who eventually takes over Landshark and buys Tom out. Bowie, along with Rip Torn as Tom’s Yosemite Sam-resembling father, is at least in touch enough to play the role with a level of camp silliness reflective of the silliness of the film. There may be some intended significance to Tom being the only one to cash out before 9/11, considering that Ogilvie’s office is located in the World Trade Center. Yet the film is too incoherent to make that point, and considering that Tom is bought out at 15% of market value of a stock that’s already under a dollar per share, morality is insignificant anyway.

The film's allusions to Marshall McLuhan and Un Chien Andalou seems like its filmmakers were going, “Look at us! Were cultured!” Rodman, a professor at USC, should know better than to tell rather than show. His previous screenplay was the recently released Savage Grace, which received mediocre reviews, but was based on a much better book with a lot of quality source material to work with. He seems lost on his own. Equally lost are director Austin Chick and especially editor Pete Beaudreau, who have included multiple scenes that agonizingly extend for minutes too long and ultimately go nowhere. The filmmakers are just as childish and amateur as Tom and Josh themselves.

When I was walking out of theater, wondering how a film like this could ever make it to the screen, I immediately got my answer. Two females in their early twenties were walking behind me, and one of them stated "it was pretty bad, but he [Harnett]’s just so cute though.” Not only are Josh Hartnett’s looks the only reason anyone could justify seeing August, but they’re also the only thing that can salvage Hartnett’s career at this point. There’s been some debate as to whether or not Hartness is, or can be, a skilled actor. August answers the question with a commanding “no.” He just better pray that he ages well.

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In theaters July 11. Starring Josh Hartnett (Tom Sterling), Adam Scott (Joshua Sterling), Robin Tunney (Melanie Hanson), Andre Royo (Dylan Gottschalk), Rip Torn (David Sterling), and David Bowie (Cyrus Ogilvie). Directed by Austin Chick. Written by Howard A. Rodman. Still photography by Jessica Miglio Distributed by First Look Pictures. The film is Rated R. This review was originally featured on blogcritics.org.

Theater Review (NYC): Life in A Marital Institution by James Braly

As a native of the Upper West Side of Manhattan, I see playwright-performer James Braly as a mirror image of the cool dads half my friends had growing up. Those were the dads who disproportionately ended up divorcing the moms, often for a younger woman. But Braly, who gave up his Central Park West apartment to improve his family life, has not divorced his wife Susan, despite having ample reason and opportunities to do so over the past twenty years. Having inherited an unstable family life from his childhood, Braly is a man who can’t thrive unless there’s a minimum baseline of chaos in his life. To use a phrase my mom used for my dad, Braly has two speeds: fast and off.

Braly got his expensive apartment as a speechwriter, and his skills as a writer are apparent throughout Life in A Marital Institution. The script never misses an opportunity for a punch line; one can easily see a politician using Braly's seemingly endless reservoir of verbal jabs. But more important than his natural sense of humor is Braly’s ability to distribute the blows equally among family, friends, and himself. Life in A Marital Institution achieves a balance between Braly’s self-righteousness and self-loathing that is rare in a one-man show. After years of writing speeches where the focus is on artifice, Braley has two decades' worth of truth-telling in store that the monologue format allows him to blurt out for an hour.

As easily as writing comes to Braly, he is not a natural performer. This is a double-edged sword for the play's overall impact. On the one hand, his plain old regular-guy storytelling performance style is a welcome relief, keeping things fresh throughout the evening. On the other hand, Braly’s performance will often betray his writing, as some lines don’t hit as hard as they should. In part to overcome his lack of an actor’s instincts, Braly has a tendency to mug with an annoying smirk when he delivers a particularly smart line. Once things turn serious, however, that smirk vanishes. As a performer, Braly is at his best when he is most vulnerable.

The tribulations of married life aren't exactly a new concept for drama, but Braly’s marital circumstances are legitimately exceptional. No primetime sitcom would touch James and Susan’s marriage, which includes planning on breastfeeding their two sons until the age of seven, having the entire family sleep in the same bed, and holding dinner parties where parents discuss eating their wives' placentas.

Susan’s Eastern spiritual leanings are a constant source of frustration for James (in what may be the best one-liner you’ll hear in New York this summer, James comments that "[he’s] never put 'exorcism' in the memo box of a check before"). In the play’s most emotionally taxing scene, that frustration becomes a matter of life and death. Yet Susan is as much a source of comfort to James as she is a source of rage. In James' family, a long-lasting marriage is an exception rather than the rule. Consider his dying sister who's marrying a violent Australian, a father who can’t hold down a marriage, or his more clueless sister, who owns a salon un-ironically named “Façade.”

While a one-man show usually makes its director invisible, here Hal Brooks establishes himself as this generation’s premier director of the format. Between Thom Pain, No Child, and now Life in A Marital Institution, he’s built a signature style of quick shifts, segmenting a play by lighting changes, and brief, abrupt audience engagement. The guidance he has provided Braly’s performance has proven to be invaluable.

After a few years of an identity crisis after Spalding Gray’s death, the monologue has made a triumphant return with a bevy of new, creative plays. Life in A Marital Institution opens as Mike Daisey’s How Theater Failed America, a similarly, frank, honest one-man show, just finished a heralded run a few blocks away. In today’s culture of theatrical excess, there’s a premium on unassuming, direct plays that cost a lot less but resonate a lot more. Life in A Marital Institution succeeds precisely because of its small goals. Who would have thought selling an apartment on Central Park West would be worth it after all?

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Through August 31 at the Soho Playhouse, 15 Vandam St. Written and performed By James Braly. Directed by Hal Brooks. Tickets can be purchased here. The show runs 1 hour, 5 minutes. This article was originally posted on blogcritics.com. Photo by Jaisen Crockett.

It's Obama's election to lose

Zogby has posted an electoral college map using their state-by-state poll predictions, and even with 105 electoral college votes too close to call, Obama has over 270 electoral college votes. The more conservative map at 270towin.com has Obama up 185-174, but this is still a clear indication that Obama is the prohibitive favorite at this point. He'd have to try really hard to fuck this up, or have Michelle say "whitey" sans rickroll.

Connecting New York and Chicago: A Four Year Theatrical Odyssey

(This article was originally posted on blogcritics.org)

On Monday, below the fold on the front page of the New York Times Arts section was a review of Superior Doughnuts at the Steppenwolf Theatre. It would make sense that the review was featured this prominently; it was Tracy Letts' first play since August: Osage County won just about every theatrical award known to man.

Charles Isherwood's review of the new play was decidedly mixed, cautiously recommending the play despite considering it "insubstantial and sweet, with virtually no nutritional value" (for what it's worth, Isherwood was not a fan of Letts' more risqué pre-August work such as Killer Joe and Bug). But what the review actually said was insubstantial. What was more important was that the New York Times, the paper of record, particularly for the theater press, was strongly emphasizing a play from Chicago in the same position it normally places Broadway or prominent off-Broadway plays. That would have been virtually impossible four years ago.

When I was considering colleges, I knew I needed to have theater in my life. My trust in Chicago theater was built not by front page reviews of individual shows, but by annual features about Chicago's lively theater scene that usually crammed 20 plays into 1000 words. When I got to Chicago, I finally saw some of those plays that had previously been nothing more than paragraphs in my mind. My first plays in Chicago were the Second City revue Red Scare, the Neo-Futurists' legendary Too Much Light Makes The Baby Go Blind, a production of Equus by the Hypocrites Theatre Company, and Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? at the Court Theatre. I would later build connections at all four of those theater companies.

I quickly realized that compared to New York, the production values were laughable, especially in some of the smaller theaters. Yet, I also learned that theater need not follow the Broadway, Off-Broadway, and all-the-rest model. In Chicago, anyone can put on a play at virtually any time, be it in a squatters residence in Pilsen that's lucky to get six people a night, a converted art gallery where opening night is canceled because of paint fumes, or in an early 20th century lakeside parlor with the worst acoustics imaginable.

None of this should sound unfamiliar to anyone conversant with either or both cities' theater cultures. Yet, as those who have followed American theater over the past year or so know, the disparity between the two is shrinking. Chicago paradoxically used to be the most segregated major segment of American theater. While its grassroots model of theater was an inspiration, there was also virtually no interaction between Chicago theater and the rest of America. Today, all you need to do is look at some of the more heralded productions in New York of late (August, Orson's Shadow, The Adding Machine, the plays of Chicago native Sarah Ruhl), to see that Chicago's role in American theater is as prominent as it has been since the late 70s and early 80s, when Goodman Theatre product David Mamet and the Steppenwolf both first emerged.

It's not just a one-way relationship either. Most successful New York productions are now invariably given major treatment in Chicago. True, most transfers have been immense disappointments (the worst possibly being the Steppenwolf's version of The Pillowman, which featured none other than Tracy Letts and Jim True-Frost in its cast). In other cases, however, the Chicago productions did more with less than would ever be possible in New York theater. My frustration at missing the Broadway revival of Brian Friel's Faith Healer was alleviated by a superb production of the play by Uma Productions. Not only did that production feature a nearly flawless if less-heralded cast, it also made the experience more real by directing you to the patched-together basement space—like the space where a "real" faith healer would perform.

In some cases, Chicago performed what equates to a miracle in the theatrical world: reviving the fortunes of a play that failed on its first run in New York City. InFusion Theatre Company's production of Kate Robin's Intrigue with Faye featured a sparser set and a markedly less famous cast, but its actors had something that Benjamin Bratt and Julianna Margulies lacked: chemistry.

In the summer of 2006, Wicked's run on Broadway in Chicago had reached what was supposed to be its closing point. Its producers then decided to forgo the bigger media market in Los Angeles and stay in Chicago because of the show's overwhelming popularity. Broadway in Chicago was finally a success. This fact had many Chicago theater enthusiasts, myself included, in a frenzy. The fear was that this would create a top-down theater model like New York and kill the grassroots spirit of Chicago. That fear ignored the fact that when you can rent a theater space for under $1000 a month, anything can happen with the right people. It's that kind of open-mindedness that has blasted Chicago into New York's staler theater scene, and has seen both cities reap the rewards.

There's still no place like New York for American theater. Less than 48 hours after graduating from the University of Chicago, I found myself attending Ensemble Studio Theater's one-act Marathon, with work by playwrights no less prominent than Neil LaBute and actors whose credentials topped those found in most elite Chicago theater companies. And this was in a theater on the second floor across from the Police Athletic League and hidden behind a virtually abandoned car repair shop in Hell's Kitchen.

From whichever perspective you take, however, the creation of even the slightest cultural diffusion between the two scenes has dramatically improved both cities—and American theater in general. Some New York theatergoers seem impressed by how many good plays are coming from Chicago. I'm more impressed by how good American theater has gotten overall, whichever world I was considering at the time.

Dark Knight reviews start piling in

No sooner do I get home from Vermont than do I see the trade papers' reviews of The Dark Knight, which I had completely forgotten came out this week. Both reviews are quite positive, with THR's Kirk Honeycutt seeing slightly more flaws in casting and plot development than Variety's Justin Chang gave it almost unqualified praise. I will now spend the entire week waiting to get a chance to see it. Hopefully I can make arrangements for Friday

Theater Review: The Atheist by Ronan Noone

In How Theater Failed America, Mike Daisey's wonderful recent solo play, Daisey complained that building a giant new theatrical space means that a theater company was less inclined to take risks with that it put inside of them—at least for a few years. It seems that that grace period for the Class of '62 Center of the Williamstown Theatre Festival, which opened in 2005, has finally passed with the staging of the magnificent, bruising one man play The Atheist. Featuring Williamstown regular in Campbell Scott in a role that is alternately sympathetic and borderline sociopathic, The Atheist is one of the best character studies ever written about a yellow journalist, a character normally dismissed as a vulture or a leech.

The Atheist has all the makings of a breakthrough play for 38-year-old Irish playwright Ronan Noone. Unlike his countrymen Martin McDonagh and Conor MacPherson, Noone's tastes like squarely in Americana. A New England resident for the past two decades, Noone opens the play with a tale of bumfuck Kansas. The Kansas boy in that tale is the play's only actor and main character, Scott's Augustine Early, a contemporary H.L. Mencken fitter for a Tennessee Williams play than Inherit the Wind. From a young age, Augustine realizes his only way of escaping the trappings of small-town life is by lying, conniving and manipulating his way up the social ladder, a talent that suits him particularly well for the field of journalism.

Machiavellian characters are nothing new to drama, and the play would be a failure if it just focused on Early's hardened side. Indeed, with the harshness of the plays opening, which had some matinee attendees leaving the theater after the first ten minutes, it doesn't look like you'll want to stick around for the next hour and a half. Yet, the key revelation of Early's saga is his casual admittance that he does have a heart beneath his gruff exterior. In the middle of the first act, Early gives a speech about caring only for yourself, the kind of speech that would make Ayn Rand proud. The key to this speech, however, is his qualification, "It helps if it comes natural to you," setting the tone for the struggles he'll eventually face in subduing his conscious.

Throughout the play, Early is taping himself, checking his notes through a handful of composition notebooks, and wading through a stack of VHS tapes. Those that have seen Double Idemnity will be able to identify the confessional format at hand. Those who haven't may be infuriated at the use of video that at first seems completely superfluous. It's true that Justin Waldman's use of video to mark scene breaks takes away from the realistic narrative flow, and the play may have been better off in real time without an intermission. But Waldman more than makes up for this single technical indulgence with the hand he lends to Scott's natural stage presence.

Scott, who throughout his career has had somewhat of a hard time expressing larger emotions, initially doesn't seem like the right fit for the role, sounding more bitchy than visceral and not emphasizing the script's punchlines. But we later learn that Early is a very internalized man trapped in a corner of his own making, who refuses to feel sorry for himself. And gruffness is one of Scott's specialties.

Early is a realist; he understands how the media works, and doesn't try to question the ethics of its current state. Instead, Early decides to use the dark side of the media to promote himself as prominently as possible, as a method of overcoming all the obstacles of his upbringing and deeply flawed social relationships. He sees the play's tragic conclusion as means of enhancing his public image as opposed to affecting his private life, whatever that is.

When we think of an ambulance chasing, conniving journalist pushing for a story in a media circus, we tend to place the blame on the individual journalist himself. Far less often do we blame the industry for making him behave that way, and ignore his own individual motivations for doing so. Augustine Early not only personifies these nuances of yellow journalism, but pummels them into your brain, expressing his values with such forcefulness and conviction that he dares you to question his ethics. Like Tony Soprano, he's a monster, but he's also human. The Atheist is the best kind of drama: a tough savage work that makes you reconsider notions that have laid dormant for years. In an age with celebrity gossip and the paparazzi at unprecedented prominence, The Atheist is a vital testament to the humanity and honesty of the leech.

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Through July 6. Starring Campbell Scott (Augustine Early). Written by Ronan Noone. Directed by Justin Waldman. Set design by Cristina Todesco. Lighting design by Ben Stanton. Sound design by Alex Neumann. Costume design by Jessica Curtwright.
Photo by T. Charles Erickson

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