Doctor Hamlet

David Tennant's acclaimed RSC portrayal of Hamlet gets the PBS Great Performances treatment tomorrow night as 8pm (EST, in New York). Confusing the matter of to be or not to be for the Tenth Doctor is Captain Picard...I mean, Patrick Stewart. While the play has been contemporized there is no truth to the rumor that Daleks and the Borg co-star.

(While we had our ups and downs with Tennant's madcap-ish portrayal of the Doctor we are two thumbs up, two episodes in, regarding the Eleventh Doctor, Matt Smith. The young actor has really silenced the skeptics with a neatly balanced performance and Karen Gillan makes a winning traveling companion. With Dalek and Weeping Angels programs scheduled for the next three weeks Doctor Who is definitely in.)

A tangled web

How the programming grid on my Time Warner box describes Vincente Minnelli's The Cobweb (1955), which airs tomorrow afternoon on TCM: "Psychiatric clinic director (Richard Widmark) handles crisis over new curtains." Yeah, that'll put butts on couches.

Thompy comes home

I don't often write about community topics, but my world-famous "stash spot" was rocked by a dognapping a couple of weeks ago, one that was publicized on various local blogs, TV shows, and newspapers. I wasn't expecting a happy ending, but sure enough a miracle occurred, and Thompy was located in Red Hook this morning. (The bastard who stole him, still roaming the streets, sold him to an unsuspecting family; a microchip implant proved his ownership.) Two things to note: watch your dogs, and never bet against Brooklynites who unite for the common good.

Aliens among us

Overpraise can hurt a playwright's career as surely as bad reviews, or no reviews at all. So I'm feeling a little protective of Annie Baker this morning. Yes, her new play, The Aliens, is good. But anyone who dashes off to the Rattlestick to see it based on Charles Isherwood's New York Times rave this morning is likely to come away unfulfilled. "At the risk of appearing hyperbolic, I’ll go so far as to say there is something distinctly Chekhovian in the way her writing accrues weight and meaning simply through compassionate, truthful observation," Isherwood writes--and, yes, it's risky.

On this we agree: Baker is a good playwright. Her Body Awareness was an unexpected delight when I encountered it at Atlantic Stage 2 a couple of seasons back (I went primarily because the somewhat MIA JoBeth Williams popped up in it) and Circle Mirror Transformation was a justified sensation at Playwrights Horizons last season. The Aliens is something of a pullback from those plays, putting me more in mind of of one of Richard Linklater's indie films. The focus here is on three men; more to the point, three guys, one adolescent, Evan (Dane DeHaan, pictured at left), and two adolescent of the overgrown variety (Erin Gann, center, as Jasper, and Michael Chernus, right, as K J). They meet in the backyard of the Vermont coffeehouse where Evan works and Jasper and K J loaf. Not a lot happens, at least, not initially--and the play flirts with a distinctly un-Chekhovian tedium as Evan can barely get a word out as the self-proclaimed "geniuses" in his midst talk about Charles Bukowski, play music (they were in a group called The Aliens, or maybe The Frogmen, or maybe something else), and bait him.

I was however confident that Baker, working once more with Circle Mirror director Sam Gold, was purposefully drawing us into something more purposeful, and I wasn't wrong. By the end of the first act, Evan has made his bones and is part of the group, as the three steer clear of an uncool Fourth of July celebration; in the second, the dynamic has changed dramatically, in a way that's not easily comprehended but that Baker makes comprehensible (yes, there's a crater-sized spoiler that I'm laboring to conceal). A show that was doodling along suddenly, forcefully grows up. The first act is about how cool it is for a young person to be accepted by older, worldwise friends, no matter that we may think of them as, well, losers; the second is about how to cope with the rupture of that bond, and the difficulty of moving on. Worthy subjects, movingly enacted (Chernus has a great Falstaff in him) and richly designed in an intimate space (Bart Fasbender's audio suggests quite a fireworks display, one that can't help but to shake the characters from their usual disdain)--but we do such a low-key work a disservice by loving it out of proportion. I mean, hey, what are trying to do here, drive Baker to movies and TV? Let's keep her to ourselves for a while.

Green Night

And I was there as Green Day took to the stage at the St. James last night to perform a couple of songs following American Idiot, the musical based on their album. It seems they're often there enjoying the show but this was the first time they'd become a part of it. The contrast between the show and the live performance was fascinating--if you think the show is loud, you ain't heard nothing yet--but they didn't upstage the adaptation, and rather complemented the piece with their own particular dynamism. That's star Spring Awakening Tony winner John Gallagher, Jr., a guy born to suffer in contemporary rock musicals, behaving himself in a relatively quiet moment from the production. Top that, Barbara Cook, I say, as I downshift into traditional musical theater mode for tonight's performance of Sondheim on Sondheim.

RIP Dede Allen

See a little of what made the film editor great. It's hard to believe she went without an Oscar despite her innovations, but the work, as always endures. Would there have been a golden era in 60s and 70s without her leading the way in the editing room, establishing its particular rhythms and idiosyncrasies? Her influence over her time is the mark of enduring greatness. Coincidentally, I just finished reading Mark Harris' superb "Pictures at a Revolution," which quite thrillingly tells the whole story of how Bonnie and Clyde, her signature credit, came to be. And there was so much else. What a resume--Odds Against Tomorrow. The Hustler (the first time an editor received sole credit for a film). Little Big Man. Serpico. Dog Day Afternoon (Oscar nomination). Night Moves. Slap Shot. Reds (Oscar nomination). The Breakfast Club. Wonder Boys (Oscar nomination). There are other key credits than those; indeed, more facets to her trail-blazing career than that particular skill. But her work on some of my favorite, generation-defining movies is what generations to come will remember.

Cineaste on Facebook

The Sixties survivor is now a part of the 21st century. Hop on over and fan us.

Shows: Frank, Tony, and the Boys

Come Fly Away with Sinatra, Lend Me a Tenor, and The Scottsboro Boys as I pick it up again after spring break. Tenor stars Justin Bartha and Tony Shalhoub approximate how I feel to be back after a week on the Florida coast.

Stop the presses

Last year's political thriller State of Play was pretty much an elegy to newspapers, and to a certain kind of fast-talking, deadline-driven movie. Film Forum relives the days of ink-stained wretches with "The Newspaper Picture," a month-long extra that begins on Apr. 9. Kicking off with Billy Wilder's caustic Ace in the Hole (1951), the series encompasses all kinds of headline-grabbers, including the early color horror film Mystery of the Wax Museum (1934), Samuel Fuller's excellent Park Row (1952) and Shock Corridor (1963), and two movies vying with Dr. Strangelove as most revived, All the President's Men (1976) and Sweet Smell of Success (1957). A special section is devoted to the films of the garrulous Lee Tracy, who turbo-charged every movie he was ever in, burnt out scandalously, then came back with a last, Oscar-nominated hurrah in The Best Man (1964). Hard at work on the five star final is Dana Andrews in Fritz Lang's While the City Sleeps (1956).

Seeing Red

Alfred Molina is Mark Rothko in John Logan's new bioplay, at the Golden fresh from the West End.

Popdose: Ben Stiller in Greenberg

The actor achieves a career high as a low-as-he-can-go misanthrope in the new film from Squid and the Whale writer-director Noah Baumbach.

Popdose: Lad movies

Boys will be boys, as cult heroes The Boondock Saints return, and Sherlock Holmes gets some action, too.

For Godzilla's sake...

Get it right this time, guys. It's the least you can do for the Big G, and my 900th post. Don't screw it up as royally as you did in 1998, with a movie and monster so poor Toho spoofed the whole thing in 2004's Godzilla: Final Wars. With that studio giving Godzilla a rest it's incumbent that you do the following:

1) Use the original character with the original look;
2) Don't waste time on some half-assed origins story;
3) Don't use a comic/romantic relief interest who's never heard from again;
4) Don't use any romance, period. Some comedy, OK;
5) If Nineties perpetrators Roland Emmerich and/or Dean Devlin show up with "advice," show them the door, or better the window;
6) Bring in Rodan, Mothra, etc., from the get-go. Give Godzilla an opponent, something to be Godzilla against.
7) Just let me write the damn thing. Maybe direct it, And star in it, too. I'm big and tall...who needs CGI, just put me in the suit and let's rock.

Popdose: Michael Sheen, United and Undead

Hollywood's go-to Brit at the moment basks in the boxoffice glow of The Twilight Saga: New Moon, then finds redemption in the homegrown Damned United.

24 no more

After eight seasons the clock's run out on an old favorite, which perfected itself in its Emmy-winning fifth season and inevitably wore down like an old watch, with the show losing altitude after a disappointing Season Six. It's been more of a habit since then, though it can still surprise me; revealing Battlestar Galactica veteran Katee Sackhoff as a bad guy on Monday should keep the plot boiling through the May 24 series ender.

Memo to Fox: Keep Sutherland and the delightful Mary Jane Rajskub and get the movie out in two years max, none of this X-Files sequel footdragging. The clock is definitely ticking on audience interest.

How to milk your dragon

"Higher Prices Make Box-Office Debut: Tickets Get Costlier as Movie Chains Seek to Capitalize on Consumers' Willingness to Pay More for 3-D" is the headline of this morning's excellent Wall Street Journal story about the costly craze. The story is behind a paywall (oh, the irony!) but the bottom line is that in the absence of any consumer backlash the sky's the limit on those irritating surcharges for 3D and those damn glasses. Think $2, $3 or even $4 is a bit rich? "The exhibitors are trying to push the needle on ticket prices and see where it ends up," says Dan Fellman, Warner Bros.' president of domestic distribution. "So far charging a $3 or $4 premium has had no effect on consumers whatsoever, so I'm in favor of this experiment to raise prices even more. There may be additional revenue to earn here." And to hell with goodwill, as prices on regular old 2D movies also go up by an average of 4% beginning this weekend, as the latest CGI cartoon prepares to slay families with the 3D price gouge.

Thumbs down, permanently

An era ends. It ended me for at least a decade ago, when Siskel died (before that, actually, as the show became hard to find in New York). When Ebert left that should have been it, but it limped on. And now after 35 years in some form or another the show's over, and another standard-bearer of old media criticism (one hotly contested by the old guard until it became an institution of sorts) is extinct.

But fond memories I have of watching Sneak Previews as a teen, on my old black-and-white TV on PBS. I learned a lot, took note of movies I should see, or wished I could see, and treasured the "Dog of the Week," a feature that ended when the grindhouses and drive-ins that played them went toes-up. I now know that some of those dogs weren't so bad. But the show helped develop my faculties, and I'm glad to have shared the aisle seat with Siskel and Ebert.

Big deal(s)

Alarm in the blogosphere as the Great Satan, Michael Bay, announces that John Malkovich and Frances McDormand have sold their souls to him and will co-star in the next Transformers movie. As if these two laureled thespians, neither an A-lister (and one, Malkovich, a Madoff victim) are expected to live in monasteries...and as if they haven't grabbed a paycheck or two already. No one takes a vow of poverty to work in Hollywood. As I said, "The shorter and more interesting list is, which actors never 'sell out'? It may begin and end with Daniel Day-Lewis." Others have been suggested. The norm, though, is that integrity and Megatron go hand-in-hand in showbiz. And, another shocker--Transformers 2 was hardly the worst movie I saw last year.

Plays: I'm Walken here

The ghoulish comedian (which is pretty much what he is these days) returns to Broadway in Martin McDonagh's A Behanding in Spokane, while other good ensemble casts lose their cool in the drama When the Rain Stops Falling and The Pride. (Praise, too, for the New Group revival of Sam Shepard's A Lie of the Mind, which closed on Saturday. Shepard himself found the piece "rickety" but its fine cast, ably directed by Ethan Hawke, found some life in it. Interestingly, for a piece that deals with some painful themes, there was no "adult language" in it at all. The absence of profanity is more startling than its presence.)

Popdose: Wonderlands

Down rabbit holes with Alice in Wonderland, Matt Damon in Green Zone, and a new inmate in the prison-set melodrama A Prophet (un Prophète), an Oscar nominee from France.

Popdose: Up in the Air on DVD

Oscar nominees George Clooney, Vera Farmiga, and Anna Kendrick give Jason Reitman's observant comedy a lift as it takes off on DVD.

RIP VCR Plus +

I remember how excited I was when these codes started appearing in the paper and TV Guide about 20 years ago. VCR Plus + was the old media version of the DVR, just pop in the code and be done with all that programming bother. Now TV Guide is dead, newspapers are dying, and the VCR is a relic; I still have a small box of tapes, and a player, neither of which have seen any use in years. The P.C. Richard & Son near me is still selling VCRs, for $40, which seems an unrealistic price point at this late date. But if you're going to buy one now and live off the grid with it I doubt you'll need sissy stuff like programming codes.

Popdose: Revanche on DVD

The Criterion Collection does justice to a Foreign Language Oscar nominee from last year.

The full Monty

OK, not a complete retrospective, but tonight BAM kicks off an excellent career overview of Montgomery Clift with The Heiress (1949), one of my favorite films. And the hits featuring the handsome, sensitive, wounded actor keep coming, including Red River (1948), A Place in the Sun (1951), From Here to Eternity (1953, pictured), Wild River (1960), The Misfits (1960), and John Huston's little-seen Freud (1962), his final noteworthy credit. My wife and I looked for his grave within Prospect Park's Friends Quaker Cemetery, a lovely, wild spot that is occasionally open for tours. We didn't find it, but this presentation, not too far away from his final resting place, is apt tribute to a remarkable, influential talent.

Down with 3D surcharges

I saw Alice in Wonderland last night at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, which now has a 3D screen. I'm hoping they'll find some better use for it other than the mostly dull Alice (retrospective programming perhaps? Would love to see Flesh for Frankenstein in comin' at ya form again). As a BAM member I paid $8 for the film-but there's no break on the $3 rental surcharge on the glasses, the standard price here in New York (I think it was $2 or $2.50 when I saw Avatar in Baltimore).

Off with its head, I say. It's all the same Real 3D process so one size fits all, whether you're seeing Avatar or Alice or Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs or Coraline. And the only movies that really benefit from 3D at all are the ones conceived with the process in mind from the get-go, like Avatar or the surprisingly promising Tron Legacy, due at Christmas. Many of the rest, like Alice and the Clash of the Titans redo, are converted afterwards, for a few unremarkable, fall-down-the-rabbit-hole cheap thrills. Nothing to see here, folks--so why pony up the extra dough? Families coughing up an extra $2 or $3 per member must fume at this something-for-not-much deal. Enough ire from ticket buyers and the 3D "revolution" (already a bit of a snooze) will be stopped dead in its tracks.

I recommend seeing the 2D versions of the non-event ones. Trust me, Alice gains little in the format. Re; 3D, until the studios drop the surcharge (which they'll be loathe to do given the golden eggs it's yielding) the work-around is to hang onto your glasses the next time you see a 3D movie, pay to see a different, surcharge-less movie when it's time to see another, and sneak into the 3D auditorium with your purloined specs. I don't condone this kind of sneaky behavior but the 3D surcharging is a ripoff in any dimension.

Popdose: Smackdown with Tony Jaa

You'll get a kick--and a punch, and a crushed windpipe--out of Thailand's martial arts sensation as he goes back to the beginning with Ong Bak.

16

Not my worst Oscar showing (that may have been last year's 14) but far from my best--when will we have another Return of the King-type sweep? The big categories were locked-and-loaded and had been for months (oh, Sandra!); I fell down on the shorts, cinematography, adapted screenplay, foreign film, etc. Serves me right looking to The House Next Door for guidance to fill in my blanks. Oh, well. There's a broken wrist for every handprint outside Grauman's Chinese, or something. Oscar season fatigue seems to have extended to the show itself, a listless affair--and those mawkish actors' tributes to their peers (plus that intro to the Top 10) have got to go (the Brits must find them excruciating in the extreme). With nothing pithy or insightful to say, I say, "Next!"

My Oscar ballot

"Let's shoot this fucker!"--Oscar winner Martin Landau as Bela Lugosi in 1994's Ed Wood

PICTURE: The Hurt Locker
ACTOR: Jeff Bridges
ACTRESS: Sandra Bullock
SUPPORTING ACTOR: Christoph Waltz
SUPPORTING ACTRESS: Mo'Nique
DIRECTOR: Kathryn Bigelow
ADAPTED SCREENPLAY: Up in the Air
ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY: Inglourious Basterds
ANIMATED FEATURE: Up
FOREIGN LANGUAGE: The White Ribbon
FILM EDITING: The Hurt Locker
ORIGINAL SONG: "The Weary Kind"
ORIGINAL SCORE: Up
CINEMATOGRAPHY: The Hurt Locker
ART DIRECTION: Avatar
COSTUME DESIGN: The Young Victoria
SOUND MIXING: Avatar
SOUND EDITING: The Hurt Locker
VISUAL EFFECTS: Avatar
MAKEUP: Star Trek
DOCUMENTARY: The Cove
DOCUMENTARY SHORT: China's Unnatural Disaster: The Tears of Sichuan Province
ANIMATED SHORT: A Matter of Loaf and Death
LIVE ACTION SHORT: Instead of Abracadabra

TCM, incidentally, is counter-punching the kudosfest by airing the glass-mountain-of-success camp classic The Oscar (1966) tonight at 8pm. "I hope the Oscar keeps you warm on cold nights!"

Popdose: Sandra Bullock revisited

Rebooting and revisiting a three-year-old blog post as my crush object prepares her Oscar speech. "I'd like to thank Bob Cashill at Between Productions..."

The Spring issue of Cineaste, online and on sale

The season starts early with a bumper crop of web-exclusive articles and other Spring issue content, including an overview of repertory film programming today, a tour of Cinecitta, book reviews of titles dedicated to Psycho and Singin' in the Rain, a review of the controversial Chinese film City of Life and Death, and much, much more.

Film Forum's Fleming fest

I enjoyed reading Michael Sragow's Victor Fleming: An American Movie Master last summer, and now it's inspired a Film Forum retrospective of his work, which runs through March 18. Among other speakers Sragow himself will be on hand for some of the screenings, including the highly entertaining Red Dust (1932, pictured), which will be shown tonight and tomorrow. A number of these films haven't made it to DVD yet, and seeing them on the big screen is a treat. Of particular interest is a double bill of the Spencer Tracy-starrers Test Pilot (1938) and A Guy Named Joe (1943); I hadn't seen the former until I'd read the book, and the biography informed a rewarding re-viewing of Joe, which I'd never particularly liked.

Though Sragow makes a convincing case for Fleming's ultimate ownership of 1939's Gone with the Wind and The Wizard if Oz, two troubled productions that landed in his lap, it won't settle auteurist arguments over the matter. I have a hunch, too, that readers will be disappointed with Fleming's miscast, unsuited-to-MGM Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1941), which Sragow waxes about. The series concludes with Fleming's other challenged credit with lover Ingrid Bergman, 1948's Joan of Arc, his last film before his premature death. But there's a lot here to hooray-for-Hollywood about.

New York Theater News: The Miracle Worker

The story of Annie Sullivan (played by Tony nominee Alison Pill) and Helen Keller (Little Miss Sunshine Oscar nominee Abigail Breslin) returns in a 50th anniversary season production, reviewed here.

On TCM: Heaven's Gate

It's a little late to celebrate, but TCM's "31 Days of Oscars" salute contained what I believe was its first telecast of Michael Cimino's reviled, now rehabilitated, Heaven's Gate. True, it came in the dead of the evening, and "Classic" is sometimes a bit of a stretch given what the channel airs, but there it was, proudly enshrined in a pantheon of sorts. Its Art Direction-Set Decoration nomination, incidentally, was awarded on the basis of the short version that was given a tiny release in 1981, a few months after Cimino's preferred version tanked. But TCM, and other channels, and the home video market, have long since embraced the long version--as has critical opinion. It's an uneven, indulgent, puzzling, but genuinely rewarding vision if you give it a chance, and TCM should give it many chances.

The shadowy Veit Harlan

There are certain movies that cultures would just as soon forget. In America it's Disney's Song of the South; in Europe it's Veit Harlan's outraging Jew Suss (1940), which is today banned from exhibition on the continent. I saw a few clips in a German history class I took in college and was startled at how blatantly anti-Semitic the film was. But this product of Goebbels' propaganda machine was a hit in this day, sympathetically reviewed by, of all people, then-critic Michelangelo Antonioni. Then again, from a distance, we revere Riefenstahl's Triumph of the Will, for its filmmaking if not its message.

Still, the cruder Jew Suss is harder to rationalize. While anti-Semitism remains a vexing problem we know longer have to live with the film--but the family of its director, Veit Harlan (pictured), does. Opening today at Film Forum in New York Felix Moeller's Harlan--In the Shadow of Jew Suss is pedestrian filmmaking, the documentary equivalent to Harlan's own stodgy, sentimental pictures, which are shown in excerpts. But Moeller gets into a fascinating subject, one that tantalized Stanley Kubrick, who married Harlan's niece Christiane, who does talking head duty here. How does a family deal with a legacy of shame that persists on the cultural record?

For Thomas, Harlan's son, the answer is relentless activism, and criticism of his father, which antagonizes his family. They prefer to view the matter in perspective. His grandchildren, while aware of the taint, can't quite wrap their heads around the troubling legacy their grandfather's "creaky old movie" represents as a museum showcases his work, safely under glass. No one is entirely satisfied with Harlan's "just following orders" self-defense, or that he fell out with his patron, Goebbels, over the editing of the epic Kolberg (1945), which was the basis for the patriotic film-within-the-film in Inglourious Basterds (the poverty and violence that Harlan wanted to leave in, a fact on the ground for German audience members as the war effort collapsed, Goebbels ordered sanitized). But these served him well enough through two controversial war crimes trials (he was acquitted both times) and allowed him to make more movies, in his same flat, fussy style. Harlan retired to an aerie on the island of Capri, where he's buried. The juxtaposition of its beauty and his notoriety is most startling contrast Moeller offers as his family muddles on.

On TCM: Not a Dream adaptation

TCM's "31 Days of Oscar" unearthed the flat-footed 1966 version of Norman Mailer's high-strung An American Dream, a nominee for Best Song (Johnny Mandel's "A Time for Love"). I suspect the writer was singing the blues over how this one turned out, a film that needed the nervous urgency of a John Frankenheimer but instead got a director of TV shows (Robert Gist) to shepherd a cast of TV familiars, or soon-to-be TV familiars (Stuart Whitman, Barry Sullivan, Lloyd Nolan, Murray Hamilton, Warren Stevens, J.D. Cannon, Paul Mantee, and in smaller parts Harold Gould and George Takei), on TV production value sets--it's like a more posh 70s TV movie, or an impoverished Ross Hunter or Joseph E. Levine feature. Whitman is an anti-cop, anti-mob TV pundit who lets his shrewish heiress wife (the underrated Eleanor Parker, vivid as always) plunge to her death following a brawl on their penthouse balcony, with staging that reminded me of the final fight in Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein (and, it must be said, a memorably awful, though bloodless, finish 30 floors down). This puts the cops and the mob on his tail, with Janet Leigh (with cropped platinum blonde hair) as a former flame who now flickers for the Cosa Nostra. The effect, with most of the actors leadenly intoning hard-boiled dialogue, is more like The Oscar than Mailer--but that has its own appeal, and if the beautiful letterboxed (1.85:1) print shown turns up in the Warner Archive (it was a WB release) I'd consider it. Trivia for Hammer fans: This was the first of the two films the lovely Susan Denberg appeared in, the other being Frankenstein Created Woman.

And what do you know...two days after posting this on the Mobius Home Video Forum it did turn up in the Warner Archive. Still considering it, but love the noir porn box art, under its original title, featuring Parker. Was it really exhibited somewhere as See You In Hell Darling? Was the retitling Mailer's idea?

Popdose: Shutter Island and The Ghost Writer

In turbulent times for film culture, Martin Scorsese and Roman Polanski show that old masters still have something to teach.

Live Design: Tempests of various kinds

The Bridge Project production of The Tempest across the street at BAM, and the gay-themed musical Yank! (pictured), are part of this week's roundup.

So goes Ohio

Unhappy news from the New York theater front, regarding a venue where I saw many a provocation:

"The Ohio Theatre, a pillar of New York’s downtown theatre scene for 29 years, will close on August 31, 2010. The new landlord has issued official notice and no further negotiations are scheduled.

Located at 66 Wooster Street, The Ohio Theatre was one of Soho’s pioneering performance spaces and is now one of the last remaining. The not-for-profit theatre company Soho Think Tank runs the space under the direction of artistic director Robert Lyons. Lyons says, “It’s where Tony Kushner produced his first play out of college, where Philip Seymour Hoffman made his professional acting debut, where Eve Ensler performed Dicks in the Desert, a decade before writing The Vagina Monologues. The Ohio Theatre has been an incubator and platform for New York’s most exciting and innovative theatre artists for almost 30 years. Its closing emphatically punctuates the end of an era in Soho, and stands as a high profile casualty in the relentless decimation of the lower Manhattan theatre landscape.”

To mark this traumatic event, the Ohio Theatre will be providing a space on their website, where artists and audience members will be able to post their thoughts, memories and experiences at the theatre. Robert Lyons goes on to say, “There will also be a place for artists who have performed at the Ohio Theatre to post production photos. We especially encourage those with pre-digital photos to take the time to scan and post them. Literally thousands of theatrical events have taken place at the Ohio over the last 29 years and we would like to have them ALL represented. We also encourage people to make a donation to help us through what promises to be a difficult transition.”

In the meantime, the current season continues, including preparation for Ice Factory 2010, as well as plans for a major dance party some time this summer.

Soho Think Tank’s short-term priority is to find a home for their signature programs: STT PRESENTS and the Obie award-winning ICE FACTORY Festival. Toward that end, they are currently in discussion with other downtown venues, including HERE Arts Center, Dixon Place, PS122 and The Public about their next season.

As for long-term goals, Soho Think Tank has begun discussions with some of the core theatre companies of the Ohio Theatre community about forming a coalition to secure a new space.

Robert Lyons explains, “For 29 years, the Ohio Theatre has embodied the living history of the neighborhood of Soho, continuing the spirit of community and cutting-edge artistic practice that once defined the area. It’s been a host to a generation of the finest, most exciting and widely recognized companies working in NYC in the last three decades and has cultivated a diverse and growing community of artists who are collectively changing the cultural landscape of New York and beyond.”

The critically acclaimed work of these artists and companies has garnered innumerable OBIES, Drama Desk nominations, Off-Broadway transfers, national and international tours, including multiple Edinburgh Fringe First Awards. In 2002, the Ohio Theatre received the Ross Wetzsteon OBIE Award, in recognition of its sustained artistic excellence and contributions to the theatre community.

Today, the Ohio Theatre is one of the last non-commercial arts centers remaining in Soho. It continues to foster an environment of generosity, dialogue and inspiration, where artists take risks and try out new ideas, bringing their work to a new level. One of the most beautiful venues in lower Manhattan, it remains a boon to emerging artists and the viability of experimental theatre in New York City. For this, the Ohio Theatre is widely recognized as an indispensable pillar of downtown Manhattan’s cultural life.

“This is a great loss for the city on many levels. It is the loss of a historic institution, the loss of a vibrant ongoing platform for new work. And it is yet another contribution to the loss of Manhattan’s cultural identity,” says Robert Lyons.

Outrage

The imbecility continues within a Douglas-Sirk-has-cooties thread that erupted at Hollywood Elsewhere yesterday, and has spread to include Powell and Pressburger films, Mildred Pierce, and other undeserving victims. There are a lot of morons on Jeffrey Wells' site (including, in duller-witted and inadvertently revealing moments like this one, himself) but they've rarely been as misogynistic and embarrassing. Joan Crawford, you will be avenged.

Popdose: R.J. Cutler on The September Issue

The documentarian who co-produced The War Room enters the battlefield of fashion with Vogue editor Anna ("Nuclear") Wintour in The September Issue, out on DVD today.

Enemy returns

I'm always griping that the only Ibsen play revived in New York with any constancy is Hedda Gabler, with an occasional visit to A Doll's House. So I was happy to trek over to the West 30's to attend a Barrow Group Theatre Company production of Enemy of the People, which I only know from reading (I wrote a well-received paper about the playwright in high school) and an out-of-it Steve McQueen's curious 1978 film version, which I saw on cable and has resurfaced on DVD-R in the Warner Archive.

Very superficially, the play anticipates, of all things, Jaws. Except that here the menace isn't an outsized shark but the potential of slow death from chromium poisoning, which has been found in the hot baths that are a tourism moneymaker in the town where the production is set. Leading the crusade to shut down the baths for an overhaul is the town's physician--but the support he receives from his family and a socialist newspaper and other individuals erodes in the face of reasoned opposition from local business interests, not least his cagey father-in-law. Dr. Stockmann (Larry Mitchell) is shunned, and faces the scandal of being branded "an enemy of the people" as his damaging report is swept under the rug.

Seth Barrish and K. Lorrell Manning have freely adapted the play, beefing up the female roles and adding some sore-thumb colloquialisms ("ballistic!") to Ibsen's original. To a degree the overhauling, making the piece "meaningful" for our craven-to-business times, works, not that that aspect of it needed a push. The modest staging is however somewhat logy, and the acting uneven. (The "bad guys" have the edge, performance-wise, over the good.) But my desire to see this play staged has been satisfied, and anyone needing an Ibsen fix is encouraged to seek it out, through March 8.

Popdose: Schickel on Eastwood

Go ahead, make your day, as Time critic and documentarian Richard Schickel talks about a candid new film that accompanies a massive new collection of Clint on DVD.

Silent, but not quiet

Chris Jones has penned a beautiful feature story for Esquire about Roger Ebert's cancer-riddled decline...and emotional and spiritual upswing as he continues to write and write. What a devastating--and inspiring--piece. Thumbs up--way up.

Popdose: The House of the Devil on DVD

Follow a college student into a satanic lair in a new chiller that mixes 80s decor with 70s dread. Or are you afraid of the dark?

Lincoln Center Over the Edge

This year's "Film Comment Selects" program kicks off on Friday with a screening of Jonathan Kaplan's searing Over the Edge (1979), a teen favorite of mine that went over extremely well when I showed it to my movie-watching group (20 years old and still going strong) last month. It's an interesting coincidence that we're all going "over the edge," so to speak. In any case here are some of my notes to Nous Allons au Cinema about the film, which inspired Kurt Cobain and director Richard Linklater, and probably Quentin Tarantino, whose Inglourious Basterds ends with a somewhat similar fit of violence:

"Today HBO is more about original shows than movies, but when I was a film-struck teen in the late 70s and early 80s it was like having a really good theater in your living room. Films that never played anywhere near where I lived, like John Carpenter’s Assault on Precinct 13 and the first Mad Max, inspired a lot of water fountain conversation in high school the next day. I remember talking about The Tin Drum and Bergman’s From the Life of the Marionettes—mostly, to be fair, about the nudity, or lack thereof. (Cinemax, which came along later, provided the booty.)

But Over the Edge was the movie that got everyone excited. Here was a “teenage movie” that treated the problems and concerns of disaffected youth in an adult way, sympathetic, but also wary. (Kaplan deliberately used few closeups, so we wouldn’t identify too strongly with the kids.) It’s a movie that’s hard to imagine being made today with the same cautious interest—and it was a movie that Orion Pictures wished it hadn’t made. Concerned by reports of teen violence emanating from theaters playing The Warriors and Boulevard Nights as Over the Edge was readying for release, Orion shelved it after a few token engagements. (Perhaps just as well, given a ridiculous horror movie-ish poster.)

But the Public Theater, which had a film program, ran it for a couple of weeks in 1981. Joe Papp was a big fan. Vincent Canby at The New York Times took note in his Dec. 20 column.

“Jonathan Kaplan's ''Over the Edge,'' made in 1979 but only now having its first New York engagement at the Public Theater, is not a great film but it's more expressive of some aspects of American life than most big-budget, supposedly serious melodramas, including ''Taps.'' ''Over the Edge,'' produced on a comparative shoestring is, in form, not much different from other movies about misunderstood youth, including the way in which it romanticizes its youngsters, but it is unusual in that the villains are not simply preoccupied parents but architects and urban planners, the people responsible for New Granada, where the story takes place.

New Granada is representative of those tacky suburban communities that were conceived and built in the late 60's, more or less all at once, from the ground up, to provide ideal environments for those who could afford condominiums or less expensive flats in apartment blocks. According to Mr. Kaplan, the director, and Charlie Haas and Tim Hunter, who wrote the original screenplay, the planners built a community ideal only for land speculators, forgetting that one-quarter of New Granada's population would be 15 years old or younger.

The New Granada tots and teen-agers, with no place to go and nothing to do, turn to drugs to calm their nerves and vandalism to pick them up. When they are threatened by a bullying policeman, who has accidentally shot one of them, they explode in a riot of violence in which they come close to wasting all of the community.

It's to Mr. Kaplan's credit that he makes New Granada look just as boring and alienating to us as it does to the unfortunate children who live there. Not since King Vidor's film version of Ayn Rand's ''The Fountainhead'' has any American film taken architecture so seriously. I hope it isn't sacrilege to suggest that ''Over the Edge,'' though often overwrought, is far more entertaining and to the point. “

Canby highlights the planned community aspect that gives the film some of its fascination. In 1973, Haas, a writer with The San Francisco Examiner, penned a story about a wave of teen vandalism that was hitting Foster City, CA, which he and Hunter and Kaplan used as the basis for the film. (Still good friends, they participated in the DVD commentary with producer George Litto, best known for his Brian De Palma movies.) They “found” the fictionalized New Granada in Colorado, which according to Danny Peary’s entry in his book “Cult Movies Three” (1988) had a school district that needed money, so the town fathers looked the other way as the film crew trashed the place. (The five main kids, including Dillon and Spano, were cast in New York; the rest were all local, and everyone had a great time participating in the destruction.) Funny thing is, when I was a kid, I remember being appalled—not so much at the awful buildings, which recur from state to state, but at the endlessly flat expanse of land. I’m sure it’s all ugly houses now, but given how they look in the movie it’s hard to lament those godforsaken plains." (My suburban prejudice showing, which I also graduated from.)

Pictured is the jacket of the (excellent) soundtrack LP, which friend and Nous Allons member Sara recently got from her brother. Probably worth a few bucks today. The movie is timeless, and priceless.

Popdose: Roberto Rossellin's War Trilogy on DVD

The Criterion Collection's 500th release honors one of the milestone achievements in film with a stellar box set that bundles new editions of Rome Open City, Paisan, and Germany Year Zero.

The Popdose Interview: Michael Stuhlbarg

"It doesn’t get any easier trying to bring these characters to life," says the acclaimed New York stage actor, who is the star of the Oscar-nominated Coen brothers film, out now on DVD.

Popdose: Tops, Flops, Oscars, Razzies

From Avatar to the Transformers sequel, from Up in the Air (pictured) to the depths of Obsessed, a look back at the highs and lows of 2009 as awards season takes shape.

Also, 11's, or other movies that stayed with me for some reason or another: Coraline; The Cove; Duplicity; Fantastic Mr. Fox, (500) Days of Summer; The Hangover; Humpday; I Love You, Man; The Informant!; Killshot; Me and Orson Welles; Moon; Observe and Report; Public Enemies; Red Cliff (US version); A Single Man; Sin Nombre; Sunshine Cleaning; Tony Manero; Tetro; Trick 'r Treat; Two Lovers; Up; and Watchmen.

Top DVDs 2009

I reviewed some of these for Popdose and Cineaste, but some I picked up, or they just sort of materialized (as I fret a major, overdue culling and reorganization of my DVD cabinets). The catalog (i.e. "old movie") market got a real boost from DVD-on-demand programs like the Warner Archive, though the naysayers gripe about price, disc quality, lack of extras, etc. I share their pain, but as the market matures and the studios turn to recycling hits on Blu-ray the situation we're in is the situation we're in. Hail Columbia for continuing to release standard, extras-packed discs (for now, as cutbacks sweep Sony); I have to say that these DOD programs, revealing buried treasures, did give my interest in the format a shot in the arm.

Top 10 (alphabetical):

Columbia Pictures Film Noir Classics I (Sony)
Dusty and Sweets McGee (Warner Archive)
The Exiles (Milestone)
The Films of Michael Powell: A Matter of Life and Death and Age of Consent (Sony)
The Important Thing is to Love (Mondo Vision)
Icons of Sci-Fi: Toho Collection (Sony)
Messiah of Evil: The Second Coming (Code Red)
Nikkatsu Noir (Criterion Eclipse)
People Like Us: The Complete Series (BBC)
The Stepfather (Shout! Factory)

11's: Ashes of Time Redux (Sony); Black Rain (AnimEigo); Classic Film Noir Collection Vol. 3: The Amazing Mr. X and Reign of Terror (VCI); Danton (Criterion); Husbands: Extended Cut (Sony); Monty Python: Almost the Truth (Vivendi); Nora Prentiss (Warner Archive); Repulsion (Criterion); Suspense (Warner Archive); The Terminal Man (Warner Archive); The Three Stooges Collections Vols. 6 and 7 (Sony); Who is Killing the Great Chefs of Europe? (Warner Archive)

Popdose: Paris, Texas on DVD

The Criterion Collection goes down the road again with Wings of Desire director Wim Wenders as the German filmmaker creates a classic portrait of America. So I didn't care for it the first time.

Live Design: Beginning of 10

Regrouping from my "End of 09" entry a whole month after the year and decade began...in the company of set designer John Lee Beatty and LD Peter Kaczorowski as they collaborate on two new plays, Time Stands Still with Laura Linney and Venus in Fur at Classic Stage Company, plus the revival of A View from the Bridge with Liev Schreiber and Broadway debutante Scarlett Johansson (pictured).

Film Forum at 40

There are many ways to salute New York's Film Forum, my home-away-from-home in my 30s, on its 40th anniversary year. Starting today the Museum of Modern Art is going all out with a retrospective of its non-fiction programming, curated by its director, Karen Cooper. Some of the ones I've seen at Film Forum include Bruce Weber's riveting Chet Baker portrait Let's Get Lost (pictured), Crumb, The Battle of Chile, and My Architect, all a window onto the world.

Oscars: More MOR than ever

Last year the movie world trembled when it was announced that the number of Best Picture Academy Awards would double from five to ten, returning it to where it had been in the mid-1940s. The intent--to jack up the ratings for the sagging telecast by pulling in the likes of The Dark Knight--was purely commercial, a move to placate the popcorn picture crowd that's illiterate about, say, The Reader. Not a terrible idea; maybe Star Trek would get in. Then, the second thoughts, the doubts, the night terrors--would the Globe-winning Hangover get nominated? Or something even...worse?

The fears were allayed this morning. While I wouldn't have minded a big broad hit like either of those two to compete the whorehouse is secure...and Oscar is more middle-of-the-road than ever. The overrated District 9 and The Blind Side (picture), which I'm now obliged to see, are the only challenges to the established order, and don't pack all that much rooting interest. Why not, say, the edgy-charming (500) Days of Summer, 2009's only real indie success/surprise story, and a movie to pull in the prized younger demographic that made it a hit in the first place?

Unless Transformers hottie Megan Fox reprises Pink's hot wet dance Grammys number at the Oscars expect the ratings to go up not much more than a tick, as lovers of A Serious Man and An Education wheel themselves in front of the TV at the retirement center. Kidding: All things considered it's not a bad list, and not so different from my own Top Ten, but the wow factor just isn't there. What was the point?

A few thoughts:

So I'm stuck seeing The Blind Side, though I'm pleased at the rehabilitation of my long-faltering crush object Sandra Bullock.

Jeremy Renner, Christopher Plummer, fist bumps!

I've never missed a Peter Jackson picture but The Lovely Bones may be it, sorry, Stanley Tucci--why not a nod for Julie & Julia? (Jackson gets the District 9 nods as a consolation prize for its failure.)

Matt Damon? Invictus? Seriously? Not going to see an Eastwood picture that his acolytes in the press wrote off. The hoariest nomination was Freeman's.

Maybe its tiny distributor will give The Messenger the chance to deliver a few more viewers.

Maggie Gyllenhaal, Anna Kendrick, Vera Farmiga, nice going, too bad about the Mack truck in front of you.

More kudos: Nick Hornby and the In the Loop writers, keeping the British end up in a more American-centric field than usual.

A surprise to see some tech love for The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus. On the other hand it's Avatar all the way in seven of its nine categories, with Hurt Locker stealing director and picture thunder.

I hate to say it, but Sherlock Holmes really did have the most flavorful score of the year. I may need reminding on Fantastic Mr. Fox, though.

Disney's at it again, swiping Best Song noms. But "The Weary Heart" is a lock.

The Secret of Kells? What?

A Prophet (une prophete) is the best foreign-language film I've seen in recent months. Riveting.

The Cove for Best Doc. Dead dolphins, tears, outrage.

Best title: A Matter of Loaf and Death (Animated Short).

The Oscars air March 7.