Film
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Cutting Edge New Music Festival 2021
The Art of the 21st Century Trombone
By: - Apr 13th, 2021The Cutting Edge Concert Series 23rd season began this week. Victoria Bond has held this series through thick and thin. It comes to us live streamed and is a treasure.
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Berlinale 2021
A Virtual Berlin Film Festival
By: - Mar 08th, 2021The winners of the Virtual Berlinale, 2021, have received their Golden and Silver Bears and will return to Berlin in June for the award ceremonies and, so the world hopes, for a public viewing of their films.
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Opera Philadelphia's Channel Introduced
David T. Little's Soldier Songs an Inventive Triumph
By: - Feb 16th, 2021Without foregoing any production value, and in fact capitalizing on new opportunities, Opera Philadelphia has been leading the field in contemporary productions that attract new audiences. Over the past decade daring experiments have been undertaken, always with careful consideration. A warehouse was the setting for the production of an opera about Andy Warhol (reminiscent of a Factory?). Composers in residence have been encouraged to test the limits of an operatic stage, like Philip Venables’ Denis and Katya, designed as a social media transmission.
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Wave Theory Records Presents 3 Women
Legendary Score by Gerald Busby
By: - Feb 07th, 2021Wave Theory Records has released the original soundtrack from legendary filmmaker Robert Altman’s 1977 cult avant-garde film 3 Women, starring Shelley Duvall and Sissy Spacek. The strikingly dissonant score was written by American composer Gerald Busby,
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Song for 2001:A Space Odyssey, Just Released
52 years later
By: - Jan 13th, 2021Mike Kaplan is a producer, documentary director, actor, award-winning poster designer and marketing strategist. He is known for co-producing The Whales of August, (Lilian Gish’s last film.) A Clockwork Orange, I'll Sleep When I'm Dead, Robert Altman’s Short Cuts and more. In addition, he is noted for his collection of historic movie posters that have been exhibited in Museums from Los Angeles to Jacob’s Pillow. He is also a songwriter.
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August Wilson's Ma Rainey's Black Bottom
Astonishing Netflix Production with Viola Davis and Chadwick Boseman
By: - Dec 19th, 2020Previously, Denzel Washington produced and co-starred (with Viola Davis) in August Wilson's "Fences." Now he has produced Wilson's "Ma Rainey's Black Bottom" with the late Chadwick Boseman. Washington plans to film the other eight plays in Wilson's iconic Pittsburgh or Century Cycle. For the decade of the 1920s Wilson took a side trip to Chicago and a recording session with the Mother of the Blues the great Ma Rainey. The best news is that the new release is available to stream on Netflix. The production is destined for a bundle of nominations during awards season.
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Experiments in Opera Delivers A Podcast Series
Aqua Net and Funyums
By: - Dec 09th, 2020Experiments in Opera (EIO) is the company that gives most hope for the future of the form. They are fleet, inclusive and steeped in the history of the opera. Most importantly, they have extended the camp story-telling which characterizes the form. For all the beauty of classic operas, let’s face it: they are camp. A new podcast series has just been released by the group.
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Andy On Line
Classic Warhol Films
By: - Dec 03rd, 2020The artist Andy Warhol focused on making "underground movies" from 1963 to 1987. Drawing on his entourage they were primarily shot in his studio known as "The Factory." As art they were deadpan and amateurish. The "actors" were primarily drama queens with no professional training. Andy turned on the camera and let them be themselves. In so doing he captured the flavor and essence of an era. While often enervating to sit through the films offer insidious insights of what was cool and camp during an era of great invention and energy.
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The Last Vermeer
Art of Forgery
By: - Nov 21st, 2020“The Last Vermeer”, a TriStar Pictures film based on the book “The Man Who Made Vermeers” by Jonathan Lopez, opened in over 800 ‘live’ theatres on November 20, 2020; centers around one such court case and trial reparation event in the Netherlands in 1945.
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Tyshawn Sorey Plays His Deck
Alarum Will Sound in Video Chat
By: - Oct 31st, 2020Newark, New Jersey has given us Philip Roth and LeRoi Jones among others. Now we have Tyshawn Sorey, moved south to a studio in Philadelphia, 'conducioning' at a triptych of computer screens on which seventeen performers have gathered to create one of Sorey’s Autoschhiams, a spontaneous composition.
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Moliere in the Park Takes Flight
The School for Wives as Fresh as Now
By: - Oct 26th, 2020We have been introduced to streaming technology across the boards in this time of Covid. It is a global experiment, which, whether or not it is smooth and realizes the intentions of the creators, is welcome. It provides connection. Safe connection as we are socially distanced. An opportunity also for grand experiments. The School for Wives produced by Moliere in the Park leads the way.
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Howardena Pindell at The Shed
Artist, Filmmaker, Curator Brings Black Experience Close
By: - Oct 22nd, 2020Howardena Pindell exhibits at the Shed. "Working on my commission for the Shed has been a very rewarding and healing experience. It allowed meto conceptualize an idea as a result of an experience I had as a child. I put it forth as a performance piece to a group of white women artists at the AIR Gallery where I was a founder in the early 1970s. They turned it down. I was the only non-white member of the gallery.
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Images Cinema in Williamstown
Update on Lockdown
By: - Oct 07th, 2020Images Cinema, an art house in Williamstown. has been shut down going on eight months. Here is an update from executive director, Doug Jones.
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Black Words Matter from New Federal Theatre
Poetry Jam
By: - Sep 22nd, 2020Leave it to Woodie King, Jr. mastermind of the now fifty years young New Federal Theatre, to get our new streamed delivery form better than anyone else (Irish Repertory Theater excepted). For two evenings, starting on September 21 and then on September 28, the NFT is presenting Poetry Jams. The first one, hosted by Rev. Rhonda Akanke' McLean-Nur is a marvel of commonplace images elevated to song. The Reverend at first sees herself as strong black women in history. She admits that neither she nor the Queen of the Nile bear much resemblance to Elizabeth Taylor.for starters.
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Royal Ballet Company
PBS Great Performances
By: - Sep 19th, 2020Classical ballet as performed by England’s Royal Ballet Company in this new film version by filmmakers Michael Nunn and William Trevitt, feature two new sublime, glittering, and accomplished principal dancers.
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More on Alex Ross, Wagnerism
Ross Captures The Meister's Voice
By: - Sep 14th, 2020Alex Ross’s depiction of Wagner in America, in his new work "Wagnerism," is focused at the start on the author Willa Cather. Ross finds Cather and Thomas Mann the most musically educated and sophisticated of the many literary figures who infused their work with the ideas of the Meister. The boundless scope of a work, its inclusion of ancient myth made present, and leitmotifs bound together to organize a story, are key elements of the Wagner style.
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Demi Moore as GI Jane
An Oldie but Goodie
By: - Sep 09th, 2020When the 1997 movie “G.I. Jane” was released women in Israel were already hardened combat veterans. In the US. Military, however, women trying to integrate the male dominated ranks of combat soldiers were met with severe resistance from the heads of the armed forces. “Women will become a distraction and a liability in combat. Combat requires physical strength as well as stamina to handle the rigors of war and combat”.
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I’m Thinking of Ending Things
Daunting Charlie Kaufman Film on Netflix
By: - Sep 06th, 2020Charlie Kaufman's "I'm Thinking of Ending Things" is being touted as one of the best new films of what proves to be a rather thin year. It is available on Netflix. You will need to see it at least twice. The first time to immerse in its convoluted twists and turns. Then, read the reviews, and follow the clues to figure out what the heck it is all about. Trust me, this is a work of genius, and while at times agonizingly, enervating and slow, it's well worth the time and effort.
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Hidden Figures a 2017 Gem
Streaming This Month on FX
By: - Sep 02nd, 2020Set in 1961 “Hidden Figures”, centers around the true and factual story of three brilliant African-American female mathematicians who worked at the Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia, during America’s odious Jim Crow Law era – from 1887 to 1964. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 finally nullified the repellent second-class distinction Jim Crow law, by recognizing that all citizens of America are to be accorded full and equal protection under the law authorized by the US Constitution.
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Without Gorky a Netflix Documentary
Film by the Artist's Granddaughter Cosima Spender
By: - Aug 27th, 2020The artist of Armenian heritage, Matin Mugar, reviewed "Without Gorky" in 2012. Cosima Spender filmed the tragic story of her grandfather the surrelist/abstract expressionist artist Arshile Gorky. He came to America as a survivor of the Armenian Genocide in which his mother died from starvation. Growing up in Watertown as a young artist he took the name Gorky and denied his heritage remaining distant with little contact to relatives. His wife Agnes, then in her late 80s, convyed memories of terrible suffering and its impact on their two daughters.; particularly coming to terms with his suicide. Gorky was among the greatest artists of his generation. This superb and compelling documentary is now featured on Netflix.
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Irish Repertory Theatre Streams Love, Noel
Steve Ross and KT Sullivan Delight
By: - Aug 12th, 2020Players Club ,where the Irish Repertory production of Love, Noel is set, seems like just the right elegant space. Edwin Booth felt he had to make up for the assassination of Lincoln by his brother. Booth realized that a club where actors could socialize with the elite and elevate their status from rabble-rousers to artists was what New York needed. In 1888, he founded The Players Club at 16 Gramercy Park South together with fifteen other incorporators, including Mark Twain and General William Tecumseh Sherman. Players is the oldest club in New York City that’s still in its original location. Love, Noel graced its halls.
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Lawrence Brownlee and Friends
Lyric Opera of Chicago Streams a Virtual Concert
By: - Jul 28th, 2020Lawrence Brownlee is an ambassador of song. He is not only a great bel canto tenor, but also leader in discussions on our racial divide. Identifying as a descendant of Africans and a person of dark skin tone, he has mentored young singers and helped direct the conversation on race in the arts and in the world about us. Yet he does not like the designation of Ella Fitzgerald as part of Black Heritage, her position on a postage stamp. Rather he sees her as a great American singer. Blacks are part of a larger community, not self-segregated.
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The Weir by Conor McPherson
Irish Repertory Theatre Screens Performance
By: - Jul 27th, 2020The Irish Repertory Theatre has come up with the perfect play to stream. The Weir is a quintet, Four men living in a remote Irish country town are joined by a pretty woman from Dublin. Stories are told by four characters and the camera focuses on them during the telling. The scene broadens to include reactions. Sometimes Director Ciarán O’Reilly has an actor face the camera, deeply involving us in the drama.
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Downton Abbey the Movie
Sequel to PBS Series
By: - Jul 15th, 2020Just how successful was the popular TV series phenomena known as “Downton Abbey”? Mind boggling and totally entertaining and one of the most endearing and engagingly written Masterpiece Theatre/ BBC co-productions in the history of Public Broadcasting Service (PBS). It ran for six seasons with audiences clamoring for Julian Fellowes to write another season. He authored all 70 episodes of the series.
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Kendall Messick's The Projectionist
An Outsider Artist's Secret World
By: - Jul 09th, 2020How one man lovingly – and obsessively - constructed his very own movie palace in the basement of his suburban home.
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