Live Design: Awards and more

The Lincoln Center revival of South Pacific (pictured) snares a few awards in the high season for honors. And a bit of talk about Conor McPherson's new old show, Port Authority.

Taxing DVD issues

About this time every month I log on to Amazon.com and select a few DVDs for purchase in the coming weeks. I got a shock today upon checkout: starting June 1 New York will be charging state tax on my bounty. In a way, that's not bad news: It will take the guesswork out of figuring out how much to dun myself on my tax forms every year. [Note to the IRS: I say "guesswork" as a shorthand for readers. I calculate the actual amount to the penny and never, ever estimate. I am as honest as the day is long in this regard, and can provide at least three witnesses in my defense should you decide to pursue the matter.] But, obviously, it takes some of the fun off the online shopping experience--may as well go back to brick-and-mortar stores now, if there are any left. [I get a little pang every time I pass former Tower Video outlets.]

Then again, the fun ain't what it used to be. My purchases have plummeted this year. Part of this is because of a tight squeeze at home; to paraphrase the tagline of Dawn of the Dead, when there's no more room in my cabinets the DVDs will pile up in the closets, an unacceptable situation for this semi-neat freak. And part of it is because there just isn't all that much I want. Clarification: There's plenty that I want, but it doesn't seem to be coming to a vendor near me, and the glut of new releases of tired new movies and retread "special edition" titles bore me. Time is also a factor; DVDs I'm interested in at least renting are stuck in my Netflix queue, which freezes over for long periods, and my purchases are also in permafrost. [Those venerable Western titles I picked up last week, including Man of the West, will have to wait for the next roundup, partners.]

Blu-Ray? No way. Never say never, of course, but owning pricier HD editions of current movies that weren't that good in the first place, the bulk of the HD marketplace, is a non-starter for me. And having writhed through my share of careless transfers of standard-def titles like the wire-ridden War of the Worlds (1953) I don't trust the transfer poohbahs to know what they're doing with what they've got. Who can forget the Citizen Kane DVD blunder, where background rain was removed because the techs thought it was grain?

I was I could say that was an isolated incident, but according to the Digital Bits website it looks to become the norm on DVD. Today's consumers want their movies to be as clean and shiny as their playback systems, and if that means removing or reducing grain that a filmmaker deliberately put in so be it. Pan's Labyrinth without grain just isn't the Pan's Labyrinth it was meant to be. It doesn't "look bad"; it looks eerie and spectral and nightmare-like, which was the intent. But if it means selling more product to under-educated buyers who want the latest hit (and everything else) to conform to a false standard of glossiness on movie night, so be it. The grain goes.

It's a typically low-forehead approach to a market that could stand to use more edification. I'm thrown by the number of HD-owning shops and homes I enter where the TV is set to fill the screen, no matter that the image is ridiculously stretched to get rid of whatever "black bars" there are. This can only get worse with the mandated shift from analog to digital next year. The silver lining in this is that people with unusual body shapes will soon be embraced as the norm as wonkily set TVs change our perception of the human figure.

If this keeps up, I'm putting my money somewhere else. New York will surely suffer if I withdraw entirely from the DVD market.

Drama Desks: The show goes on...

...but happily last night's awards ceremony did not go and on, as it did last year. This was my first year as an attendee, and with Lora radiant in a black maternity dress we were treated to a zippily paced program that came in at the 2:15 mark. Much of the fun came from the presenters, the four-person cast of the Broadway-bound [title of show]--which was not nominated for Drama Desks in its original Off Broadway incarnation two years back, and which they were not shy to satirize. There were some terrifically funny speeches as well, from winners including Linda Lavin and August: Osage County author Tracy Letts, who got a big laugh wondering how his mammoth show will play "with a cast from the Love Boat" once its Steppenwolf members depart. And there were touching moments, too, notably from Gypsy winners Patti LuPone, Laura Benanti (who hoped her parents' server was working as they watched the live webcast on Theatermania.com), and Boyd Gaines. I liked the anything-goes vibe behind it, as well--anyone up there was free to curse, ramble, or behave very eccentrically (the last would be Boeing-Boeing winner Mark Rylance), unlike at the televised Tonys. The "Deskies," as the hosts called them, were clubby-comfortable without pretense, and I for one did not miss the production numbers and hoo-hah that slow or mar so many award presentations of its type.

The night got a real lift from the before and after parties besides. The Hawaiian Tropic lounge on 49th Street always looks to me like a better place to get a lap dance than a dinner, and was a slightly ironic choice given how pallid relentlessly showgoing Drama Deskers look by the end of the season. But the food was excellent (and plentiful) and the service with a smile and a tan followed suit. Afterwards John's Pizza on 44th kept the pasta and slices coming, and I didn't make it home till well after 2am.

As for the winners, well, we nominators presented a very mixed menu, and the voting members pretty much selected from the Broadway entrees, as if often the case. (With interesting results: The 12-"Deskies" nominated A Catered Affair was shut out, and the singly-nominated The Seafarer and Cry-Baby were lauded.) For some this is a crisis. I would however place that word in quote marks. The many Off and Off Off Broadway nominees I talked to consider the nomination itself a win, given the staggering amount of potential competition they're up against (I know, I weeded through it). The "problem" would seem to be that not enough voters see the smaller shows. But to fix that, publicists would likely be obliged to dole out free tickets to more of the membership, which for obvious reasons they are disinclined to do (they are usually happy to accommodate voters who find them, but you do have to look hard sometimes). A larger problem is getting a shrinking number of media outlets interested in the less glitzy, more gritty productions. There is no incentive for voters to see more of the smaller shows, and publicists to allow access to them, if the editorial gatekeepers aren't that interested. It's no conspiracy, or "conspiracy," that the Broadway shows win.

I am, however, satisfied that my nominating committee discharged its duties superbly. What am I to do with myself now? There are, of course, more shows to see; there are always shows to see. Oh, and that event in August...

[Pictured is the "Deskie"-winning musical, Passing Strange, with winner Stew, at home prepping for tonight's Obies, at the left, and nominee Daniel Breaker at the right.]

Too much information

The money quote Sony Pictures Classics is spotlighting in print ads for the fact-based Children of Huang Shi, which opens on Friday, is a wee bit overstuffed. Whatever four-star paean critic Karen Durbin wrote for Elle magazine has been blurbicized into:

"A Feel-Good Treat! Jonathan Rhys Meyers plays an idealistic journalist almost too shy to woo Radha Mitchell's fearless nurse on horseback as they rescue sixty Chinese orphans."

Now, I've seen the movie, and that's not an inaccurate description. Rather top-heavy, though...and unintentionally funny. [I don't recall him wooing her on horseback, either.] Somehow I don't think it's going to lure audiences away from Indiana Jones.

Popdose: Prince Caspian and Young at Heart

Movies for young and old this week, as the Chronicles of Narnia roar at Iron Man and singing seniors try out Sonic Youth.

Too much Sex?

According to the mixed Variety review, the bigscreen continuation of Sex and the City runs 145 minutes, or the length of five back-to-back episodes. Unless the feature (opening May 30) is padded with robot battles and swordfights, that's a mighty long time in the sack, even with these four babes. Doesn't anyone know how to make these movies shorter, friskier, punchier, and more concise?

RIP John Phillip Law

Who is that masked man? Many years before I could answer that question, I remember my parents taking me to see The Golden Voyage of Sinbad, when I was about eight years old. I thrilled to the Ray Harryhausen creatures, of course (it was the only one of his pictures I saw first-run on the big screen) but liked the Sinbad, too. Law, who died yesterday at age 70, followed me around as I pursued my cinematic education, turning up in grade A to Z movies.

Not perhaps the most facile actor, the Hollywood-born Law was rather perfectly cast as a granite-hard TV executive named Robin Stone in the 1971 film of Jacqueline Susann's The Love Machine, accompanied by Dionne Warwick's title tune. (Catch it on cable; it's good camp.) After a charming co-starring debut as a seductive Soviet The Russians Are Coming, The Russians Are Coming, Law was cast in prestige pictures that weren't, notably Otto Preminger's back-to-back disasters Hurry Sundown and Skidoo; The Sergeant, as a love interest for a hysterically conflicted Rod Steiger; and Dennis Hopper's ill-starred The Last Movie (1971). A spaghetti Western, Death Rides a Horse with Lee Van Cleef, is held in some esteem. He had his best luck in fantasy films, amidst settings and situations that offset his handsome stolidity: the swashbuckling Sinbad was one, the blind angel Pygar, rescuing Jane Fonda in 1968's Barbarella, another.

His signature role was as the masked anti-hero (pictured) in that same year's Danger: Diabolik, a comic book fantasia wittily and stylishly directed by Mario Bava. The DVD, in which Law talks about the film with Video Watchdog's Tim Lucas, is good fun, and has as a bonus a Beastie Boys video made in homage to the devilish character. Seeing it at New York's Film Forum, with a large and appreciative audience, was a terrific experience, and thanks in no small part to Law's straight-ahead performance it holds its own against bigger-budgeted, but less imaginative, competition in the adaptations arena.

Sinbad was his last major role as part of the Hollywood food chain, and he worked mostly overseas on a variety of features, which more determined buffs than I have tracked down. [He was a popular guest at movie conventions, with an enthusiastic attitude toward a blown-sideways-through-celluloid career.] I do recall him checkmating Burt Lancaster and Ingrid Thulin at the close of 1977's The Cassandra Crossing, a favorite B-grade disaster film from the Carlo Ponti/Sophia Loren cheese factory. It was a nice treat to see him in the trippy movie-within-the-movie of Roman Coppola's CQ (2001), which has a Diabolik/Barbarella backbeat. He looked as if he had been preserved in amber, deep, deep down in Diabolik's lair.

Lost souls

Some time ago Cineaste received a fine interview with writer-director Christian Petzold, which will soon be featured on our website. The article is timed to coincide with Friday's release of his fourth feature, Yella, via Cinema Guild. Given the quick decimation of foreign-language arthouse releases, even award-winning ones like Yella, see it lickety-split if you can; its lead performance, in particular, will linger by the time the piece makes it to pixels.

Subtitles give audiences pause, and I must say if I'm not thoroughly engaged with a film my aging eyes tend to droop as a barrage of words comes at me from the screen. No such problems with Yella. For one thing, it's not that talky; the business-like characters play it close to the vest as they jockey for advantage. For another, Petzold admires American genre pictures, and Yella is essentially his version of Herk Harvey's Carnival of Souls, played straight. It's a nightmare of naturalism, reprising key moments from its source in a new, capitalistic context.

Yella is portrayed by Nina Hoss, who won the Silver Bear at the 2007 Berlin International Film Festival for her anxious-under-the-surface performance. The plot straddles what used to be called the two Germanys, now reconciled but still divided by class and economic opportunity. Yella lives in a backwater East German town, but is planning her exit, which seems to become more permanent than planned when ex-husband Ben (Hinnerk Schonemann) reenters the scene. The emotionally disturbed Ben takes Yella on a car ride that ends with a plunge into the Elbe River, which only Yella survives. Restoring her equilibrium after her ordeal is a smooth-operating venture capitalist, Philipp (David Striesow), who hires her as his aide-de-camp in his ventures (the actor played the commandant in The Counterfeiters). Yella adjusts to a new routine in the wealthier environs of the former West Germany, and she and Philipp, who reminds her of her ex, strike up a more intimate sort of partnership. But there is a price to be paid, and what appears to be Ben's ghost materializes to exact it.

The horror movie elements give the picture a little jolt, though Yella is not a horror movie. [Nor is it strictly speaking a road movie, though it is a bit of that kind of film, too, punctuated by David Ackles' song "The Road to Cairo."] The quasi-thriller is about the difficulty of transitioning from one life to another, from the homey poverty of the ghost towns of the East to the colder comforts of the status-obsessed West. A romanticized portrait it is not: Both societies have their enticements and disadvantages, which keep Yella in a state not unlike suspended animation, unable to find her place. [Trains and cars, and the holding patterns they impose, are a motif.] When Yella accompanies Philipp on his rounds much of the film is about negotiation, and Hoss excels at listening, as she goes from pupil to peer under his tutelage. In asserting herself, what she can't shut out is her former life. Arriving is the payoff of travel, but in Yella the journey is complicated by conflicting emotions, and the destination a mystery.

Tony time: Another perspective

The nominations for the 2007-2008 season Tony Awards are out today, and I think it's true: The Drama Desks really are a bellwether for the Broadway event. Not for those of us who are Drama Desk nominators, mind you--our nominations are a solid mix of Broadway, Off Broadway, and Off Off Broadway shows--but for the Tony nominators, who seemed to have split the difference with us. We went for Cheyenne Jackson in Xanadu; they went for Kerry Butler. We gave the nod to Kevin Kline's Cyrano; The Tonys embraced Patrick Stewart's Macbeth. We nommed Marisa Tomei for Top Girls, they nommed Martha Plimpton for the same show. We dined out on A Catered Affair; they got all choked up over Cry-Baby.

A poor choice by the way, whatever support it has from the chattering classes. The reasoning must be that A) Rob Ashford's standout choreography, which we did nominate, will look good on TV, and B) the show could tour, if it gets enough audience support here. But it really shouldn't--a bad movie has made for a significantly worse musical. The nomination of Grease for best revival is equally embarrassing, but apparently Tony voters are obliged to vote for a full slate of nominees in all categories, quality be damned, so it got in on that outdated technicality.

Then again, I'm not knocking my brethren. I now know something about the calculus of awards decision-making now, and even if the Tony voters had only 35 shows to consider--a walk in the park, an obligation I could fulfill standing on my head--there are calls to be made, even if they turn out all wonky. But I must say that, with those same shows to consider plus hundreds more, our Broadway choices are a wiser mix. (And I must say that, as our nominations seem but a distant memory now.) It's better, I think, to have six discerning nominators rather than a committee of 21. That, however, is showbiz, and how different sets of rules play out.

A few observations:

*No surprise that August: Osage County and its powerhouse ladies, Amy Morton and Deanna Dunagan (pictured), were nominated. And no surprise that In the Heights got shown major love, too, after setting toes tapping at last year's Drama Desk awards. I did think it played better on Broadway, with the addition (finally) of a song for veteran co-star Priscilla Lopez, but not that much better. Too sugar-spun for my palate.

*So-called "mistakes" made by us were duly "corrected". (Broadway lovers can't see past our mandate of across-the-board excellence.) S. Epatha Merkerson got a slot, and The Seafarer found somewhat safer harbor. No suck luck, again, for the not-too-loved Cat on a Hot Tin Roof or November or the other shows that tumbled through the cracks, though Cat's James Earl Jones is getting a special award at our ceremony this Sunday. So, DD doubters: Did Tony get it wrong, too, or could it be that the shows just didn't add up?

*I liked Stew's performance in Passing Strange, but co-star (and co-Stew) Daniel Breaker does the heavier, leading-man lifting.

*I'm happy to see Bobby Cannavale, Mary McCormack, and A:OC set designer Todd Rosenthal being honored for their fine, and duly considered, work.

*Design dish: The 39 Steps is strong in every way except the minimal Tony-nominated set. The Tonys are to be commended for joining the 20th century a few years late and honoring sound, with play choices that should please Anglophiles. This I give to the Tonys: It distinguishes between design elements in a play and a musical, something the Drama Desk should do (and does do with sets), given the vast quantity of shows considered. On the other hand, only the Drama Desk honors projection, as of this this season.

The Drama Desk Awards are this Sunday, May 18. The Tonys are on June 15.