No Dazzle at the Oscars

“The fight is over, so tonight…welcome to the make-up sex!” jokes the host Jon Stewart in reference to the end of the writers strike as he opens the 80^th annual Academy Awards.

Steward, the comedian who is the host of the popular TV comedy central “The Daily Show” was the savior of the awards show this year. With only a week to prepare, the full genius of Stewart emerges when he delivers every line so naturally and comically.

He opens the show with a comedic monologue, addressing issues like the writer’s strike, the Iraq war, and the presidential elections. He jokes, “Tonight we look beyond the dark days to focus on happier fare: This year’s slate of Oscar-nominated psychopathic killer movies. Does this town need a hug? What happened? ‘No Country for Old Men’, ’Sweeney Todd’, ’There Will Be Blood’? All I can say is, thank God for teen pregnancy” referring to the feel good hit, “Juno”.

But other then Stewart’s witty comments, the entertainment value of the show was at an all-time low. The writers apparently couldn’t slap together enough material, as there were montages that highlight every single Best Picture, Actress, Actor, Director from the creation of the award show until the present.

They obviously needed something, anything to fill the three hours that the awards show spanned. George Clooney reminisces, “One thing that’s always consistent…it’s long…no I’m kidding… it’s unpredictable.”

Unfortunately, this year, the show was utterly predictable. “There Will Be Blood” and “No Country for Old Men” was up for eight nominations each and between the two, took home five major awards. “No Country” had four. Best Picture, Best Director, Best adapted screenplay and best editing. Not to mention, Javier Bardem who won Best Supporting Actor for his role in “No Country”. Daniel Day-Lewis won, for the second time, Best Actor, sealing his fate as an Oscar worthy talent.

The biggest surprise was when the small low budget movie “Once” won the Best Original Song for “falling slowly” when the Disney film “Enchanted” had three songs in the running.

Another surprise was the international theme of the show, with award winners from Spain, England, and France. All four acting prizes went to Europeans: Frenchwoman Cotillard, Spaniard Bardem, and the British Day-Lewis and Swinton.

But it’s noticeable that the iconic stars were absent. They were there as presenters and not as nominees. Matt Damon from “Bourne Supremacy”, Julia Roberts from “Charlie Wilson’s War”, and Brad Pitt from “The Assassination of Jesse James” didn’t even seem to be present at the event! Viewers waiting for their favorite celebrities were sadly disappointed.

Which leads to the question, why was Miley Cyrus even there? Was she a way of compromise that other famous pop icons were absent? Although she helped spark interest in the show among her following of preteen adolescent fans, she had no real reason for attending the classy celebrated award show for serious actors and actresses. Perhaps even she had nothing better to do on a Sunday night, than go to the Academy Awards.

Birds Sing, Glasses Wail, Storms rage, Seas Toss

A music review by Steve Smith on Wednesday, Feb 20 NYT

Steve Smith reviews a oncert by the Julliard Orchestra at Avery Fisher Hall this previous Monday night.

The title of this review sets the tone for the piece. The vivid images of seas tossing and storms raging brings up thoughts of drama in nature that is reflected in the music that Smith hears.

From the very beginning life of the review, Smith praises the performance as being one that “far surpasses expectations.” His tone remains positive and very complimentative throughout the review.

He gives evidence to his praise by informing the audience of the usual proficiency of Julliard performances then highlighting this particular performance and describing it. He uses naturalistic examples again “The electricity Mr. Valliaume mustered in Berlioz’s ‘Royal Hunt and Storm’ from ‘Les Troyens,’ was all the more impressive for the control with which he wielded it.”

From this review, it is obvious that Smith would freely recommend this performance as being an exciting and brilliant presentation of the music.

An Exercise of Wits

If there is one person that every student has encountered, it is the crazy professor. He doesn’t win the popularity contests and is often underestimated by all of his students; he is absent minded, but brilliant. As students, it is often imagined that these eccentric educators have no personal life outside of the college.

In Whose Afraid of Virginia Woolf a play by Edward Albee, a professor’s deteriorating personal life is shown in a dark yet hilarious manner. It is being showcased by the director Randy Wolfe at the Whole Arts Theatre in downtown Kalamazoo.

George, played by Richard Philpot, is an associate professor of history at a small town college. He is married to Martha, Marti Philpot, the daughter of the college president. George and Martha invite the new, very young biology professor and his wife to their house after a faculty party at two in the morning. Drunkenly they insult, berate and toy with each other, as well as the guests, in a comedic way before the plot takes a more serious turn. George apologizes to the guests, “Martha and I are merely exercising… that’s all, we’re merely walking what’s left of our wits.”

Martha and George play games with one another to see who can get on top. Martha attacks George with a slew of names, “cluck”, “floozy”, “paunchy”, “swampy”, and the one that cut his pride “big flat flop”. With a bright red face and clenched fists, he violently throws and empty vodka bottle across the stage. Richard Philpot is perfect as the crazy professor pushed to his last nerve. His every facial movement and even the hunch of his back is believable, an especially difficult feat in a theatre in the round.

Three hours in a black, boxlike room in uncomfortable chairs listening to marital drama seems worse then lecture, but Virginia Woolf is theatre at its best. Using language such as “screw you” and “little bugger” the lines are delivered perfectly to shock and engage the audience. Not only are the lines well written, there is action! At one moment, George comes calmly onto the stage pointing a gun to Martha’s head. The guests scream and jump up in shock. He shoots and a red flag pops out of the gun. In a deadbeat tone, he says “pow”. The guests and the audience visibly relax, just to face another round of obscenity and profanity from Martha and George.

These hostile moments finally come grinding to a halt at the end of this crazy night. In these final moments, the death of an imaginary son occurs, the guests finally comprehend George and Martha’s games, and the illusions of their lives are set forward. It leads to the question, does everyone survive through illusions?

8 p.m. Feb. 22-23, 29 and March 1, Whole Art Theatre, 359 S. Kalamazoo Mall. $20, or $14 for seniors, $10 for students. 345-7529, or www.wholeart.org.

Interactive Theatre

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/10/theater/10ishe.html?_r=1&ref=theater&oref=slogin

When Audiences Get In on the Act by Charles Isherwood

Charles Isherwood seems to be the New York Times main writer for the theater section of the arts paper. Etiquette, one of the performances that he highlights, has a very interesting premise. The audience themselves act out the play in groups of two. He began the article with an interesting lede, stating that he had recently made his stage debut.

Isherwood contributes this growing popularity for the audience to interact with the idea that the general public likes to perform. On site like YouTube, anyone can post a video performance. The audience likes to be actively engaged in the performance. He highlights a past performance where the theatre have engaged such behavior, reviewing Masque. Where the audience wanders through a house setting where they find fragments of the story.

Isherwood highlights several more pieces of “interactive theatre” where he judges the medium as one that will draw audiences in, but could be difficult to pull off. He argues that focusing on the audience will draw the attention away from the plotline. Individuals cannot lose themselves in the acting. Many people go to the theatre to be passively entertained; what’s next? Interactive movies? Interactive music albums?

In Treatment Needs Some Treatment

The human brain is an amazing device. It is capable of having more ideas then atoms in the universe. It can also store countless memories and shuffle through them in a matter of seconds. This organ contains many mysteries to human behavior grouped into a large genre of the study of psychology. Given the widespread interest of the study of human behavior, HBO came up with a new series “In Treatment” which delves into the world of a psychologist.

For five nights a week in blocks of 30 minutes, “In Treatment” gives the viewer a glimpse of a therapy session in real time. During the first four nights, the psychoanalyst Paul Weston (Gabriel Byrne) treats a patient a night. The remaining night of the week, Weston goes to his own psychologist Gina (Dianne Wiest) for his problems and issues with his patients.

With impressively experienced cast members and an innovative premise, “In Treatment” falls short of the stunner it could be. The show opens with the name of the patient, the day, and the time of the session. This is the only information that the viewer receives before listening to 30 minutes straight of a therapy session, starting with the patient giving a dull 10 minutes monologue. The action is all woven into the words; there is little movement, hardly any sound, and no music. It’s difficult to compare to the other series on air with therapy sessions, because this is the only series which focuses on the psychologist life, with no other plot line or drama outside his home or his home office.

To offset this fact, the show attempts to be captivating by revealing information at a snails pace. Unfortunately, this method is not effective because the viewers aren’t previously engaged by the plotline. Even with the “near-death experiences, suspected infidelities and sexual dilemmas” as HBO.com advertises, each episode is surprisingly boring. To keep the audience entertained during these sessions, are bits of suspenseful tidbits about the characters. Only these tidbits are more confusing and frustrating then exciting. Imagine the hit television series “Lost” without the action or the dramatic music. If it was possible to get emotionally invested in Westin’s character, the viewer would most likely tune in for the next chapter of his story. Only it’s all just too easy to drowned out the calm mellow voices and contemplate personal psychological issues.

The show should have introduced the character in some way before allowing the audience to sit in on the therapy session. Perhaps by Weston writing information in his chart, or a narrator discussing a case study the patients problems can be made clearer. This way, the audience can understand the small hidden meanings behind the patient’s words and understand fully why they say the things they do. For one who is educated in the intricacies of psychology, maybe this would have been redundant, but for the general public, necessary.

The actors, however, did have reasonable performances where each patient behaves exactly as would be expected of them. Unfortunately, the dullness of the show overshadows what would be a best actor/actress nomination. Also, the script makes it all too easy for the patients to reveal their problems. The show is more of a treatment to overcome boredom, then the treat it almost is. It would be amazing if the viewer leaves the show with their sanity intact.

THE CRITIC'S WORTH

Renoir, Monet, Picasso, and Dali. When people look at these names, they picture a great artist whose work is still worth more money then most people make in their lifetimes. Would these great paintings still be worth so much, if it weren’t for the popular opinion about the glory of the painter? Then it stands to ask, who creates the public opinion. In The Critic as an artist, Oscar Wilde defends the need for critics by philosophically arguing that the critic is necessary for art to survive.

By proving this point, however, he also implies that the critique of a piece of art is more important than the art itself. As one who influences the thoughts of many, an art critic must be educated in the art form as well as in the art of writing a critique. Perhaps in society today, his position on the importance of the critic is accurate. The general population relies on critics to tell it what it should enjoy and only read the critisms that it wants. In this capacity, the witty yet knowledgeable critic is highly important in telling society what it wants to believe. 

Kael: Pan or Rave

It’s not often that a writer comes along where absolutely all his or her readers have strong feelings of love or hate. In the case of Pauline Kael, everyone seems to be on the edges of the continuum, either rave or pan. In Afterglow; A Last Conversation with Pauline Kael, the narrator and interviewer Francis Davis is a fan of Kael, to put it lightly. Not only is he a fellow critic, albeit of music, he was also a personal friend of Kael’s. Due to the fact, it is difficult to listen to his ravings and feel that everything he gushes about Kael is not embellished or at least slightly biased. Then at the other end of the spectrum, Renata Adler in Canaries in the Mineshaft, pans Kael’s literary style. Literally from the types of words or sentences that are used in Kael’s critiques to the analogies made are attacked. Adler describes Kael’s method of questioning in her literature as “bullying, insulting, frightening, enlisting, intruding, dunning, rallying” (334) The language that Adler uses to describe Kael’s words is, at best, hostile. Her strong feelings also make her view of Kael seem biased.

So the question remains, is Pauline Kael as brilliant as the New York Times claims as “the most influential film critic of her time” in an Arts piece by Lawrence Van Gelder or is she overrated? That question can only be answered by observing her work. In the entertainment aspect, Kael accomplished her goal. Even if it was only obtained by the shock value of her words, her easily understandable critiques were entertaining, even when the movie critique did not critique the film itself. Kael often found the story behind the story of whatever film she was writing about. For art films, she blamed the intellectuals for raving the movie just for the sake of raving art films.

Kael appeals to the dark side of the public. The mass of readers who do not know technical “filmic” words such as filmic. The same group of people who enjoy lowbrow film, the kind that “excites them sexually”(34), she says in her interview in Afterglow. Adler attacks Kael’s interests in the following quote, “She (Kael) has, in principal, four things she likes; frissions of horror; physical violence depicted in explicit detail; sex scenes, so long as they have an ingredient of cruelty and involve partners who know each other either casually or under perverse circumstances; and fantasies of invasion by, or subjugation of or by, apes, pods, teens, bodysnatchers, and extraterrestrials.” (129) Adler goes on to state that these are the necessary evils that Pauline Kael subscribes to in a film. Yet it seems that many of her readers agree with her in enjoying somewhat sick and twisted situations. She appeals to the dirtiness of humanity and acknowledges the pleasure one retains from it. Even her words, as Adler points out, aren’t necessarily the classiest. She often uses words such as “whore”, “trash”,”pop”, and “crud” to describe her emotions.

Perhaps in the critical sense of the word, Kael is not a great critique, as she does not critique the film itself for its actors, plot, or scene. Yet, her pieces are interesting and engaging, something that is highly valuable when writing to sell newspapers and ultimately, a lot harder to do.