Extra Criticum

Search Extra Criticum

Extra Criticum now features its very own search engine, courtesy of Lijit. Enter any text in the little pink "search" box in the upper right corner of the main page and your search will automatically call up every post from the E.C. archives featuring that text or phrase. Try entering the name of your favorite actor, writer, title or a specific concept or locale. You'd be surprised by what pops up!  -------->

Taking Us Above and Beyond Our Wildest Expectations: Miss Coco Peru is Undaunted

Just got home from seeing Coco Peru's show, Miss Coco Peru is Undaunted in the basement of the West Bank Restaurant on 42nd (a.k.a. the Laurie Beechman Theatre). Generally speaking, when you step into a cabaret room and the performer on stage is a guy in a dress, there are natural expectations. You expect to be amused. You expect for there to be some singing (or possibly lip syncing). You probably also expect for a few off-color remarks.

What you wouldn't necessarily expect, however, is a fully-realized and thoroughly well-crafted evening of theatre.

Laziness or Lack of Vision? Why are most musical theatre directors neglecting the chorus?

 
If you've been to see a Broadway musical in the past few years, you've probably experienced this:

There's a big musical number, featuring the entire chorus, which means anywhere from 15 to 40 bodies are suddenly on stage. They're all singing at the top of their lungs. The sound is glorious. But, wait! What's this? They're not really moving. They're just... standing. That's right. Standing. In rows, facing either the audience or each other as they sing.

Huh?

Note to board: Please don't recline during board meetings!

This post'll be short.Apologies for being absent from the blog for awhile but the Fall production schedule here has been brutal.

But something happened this past weekend that really got my panties all in a knot. (is that the expression? well, you know what I mean).

Scariest Movies of All Time

Just read Martin Scorsese's list of the 11 scariest movies of all time.

These lists are totally subjective, I mean, duh, so I'm not going to argue with his selection. Instead, here's my 11 scariest movies of all time. Like that Facebook quiz that asks me to list 15 books I'll always take with me, I'm not spending any time on this. Great horror is visceral, and this list is jotted down viscerally.

We're Going to Zombieland!

BY  B R E N D A N    H A Y

As Extra Criticum's go-to zombie guy, I'm proud to say that Zombieland is a fine additional to cinema's zombie canon. It fits into the sub-genre of zombie comedies and is on par with that category's previous best efforts Shaun of the Dead and Dead Alive.   However, it also stands out from both of those films by being an out-and-out comedy.  There is a fair amount of gore in Zombieland, but its focus is always laughs.  And character-based laughs at that.  The script actually feels more like a TV pilot at times, really taking the time to set up who our remaining human characters are.  As such, you really grow to like these folks and not only don't you want them to die, but you're actually even happy to just hang out with them when there isn't a single zombie on screen.  It's been quite some time since I watched a zombie flick where the humans were more interesting then the living dead.  Not even the last two George Romero flicks were able to reach that bar. 

Are openly gay actors stranded in sitcom land?

In LA Weekly, Patrick Range McDonald wonders how Hollywood, so vocal in favor of gay rights, still keeps actors in the closet:

In 2009, this situation seems incredible to those who have watched the tremendous success of Neil Patrick Harris, who became a star on Doogie Howser, M.D. Harris came out nearly three years ago. His recent widely accepted and positively reviewed hosting of the Emmys seemed almost like a globally televised message from one side of Hollywood to another: It’s okay to cast leading men who are gay, so get over it, studio heads. Harris continues to win audiences over, playing womanizer Barney Stinson on the CBS hit show How I Met Your Mother.

I love NPH, but his post-coming-out career has been limited to comic roles;

What's It All About?

When I'm not thinking about sex, cars, the documentary, or food, I'm thinking about how social networking, blogging, and good old web sites fit in the grand scheme of promoting one's work, and frankly, I'm a muddle.

My "company," has a web site that contains information about the films I've made and me the professional filmmaker. I have a Facebook page that probably has way too much  information about my personal life and some information about my professional life. I'm on Twitter. The documentary, A Life's Work, has a dedicated web site, a Facebook Fan page and a blog. Here's a diagram of how these things interact when I post something to the film's blog and how that post can reach the person at the other end of the wires.

Garland Wright is dead and it makes me so so sad... even 10 years out.

I've been in Minneapolis for a few days working on behalf of the Dramatists Guild. A trip to this city for a theatre professsional would not be complete without a visit to the alarmingly gorgeous new facility that is home to the Guthrie Theater.

Coming back to the Guthrie after having spent a summer at the Minnesota Opera, brought back memories of what remains to this day one of the top five theatrical experiences of my life. It was 22 years ago, in the summer of 1987 that I bought a ticket to see a play I had read a few times, discussed in a theatre class, possibly done scenes from as well, but had never seen staged. The play was Moliere's Misanthrope and the production was directed by Garland Wright at the Guthrie Theater.

In a country without real govt. funding of the arts, this is what a project announcement looks like

As a big fan of my friend Taylor Mac's work, I eagerly opened the latest email from HERE Performing Arts Center announcing his latest show. What struck me about the following text is how much of it is devoted to financial support.

Check it out. It's mind-boggling. To make it simpler I've color-coded everything that has to do with funding in RED and everything else in GREEN.

How to Keep an Audience in Their Seats through the End Credits

I saw Bright Star the other night. It’s a wonderfully poetic film about the doomed love between a sickly poet and his muse. Fittingly, it is cinematic poetry, full of complex imagery (a sealed bedroom full of butterflies, a handsome young man reclining on the top of a tree canopy staring at the sky, an extreme close up of a needle being threaded and pulled through cloth), the kind of imagery that strikes you immediately because maybe you haven’t seen it before, but also stays with you, their multiple meanings revealing themselves as you dwell on them in the context of the film. It made me wish Jane Campion would make more films.

But as for the title of this post.

The Wisdom of Hippie Nonsense

I've never been a big fan of hippies. Humorlessness is one of the unforgivable sins in my book, and most hippies I've known are drearily earnest. Put another way, if you honestly don't know why we can't all just get along and make love not war, you're probably not someone I want to spend a lot of time talking to.

Don't get me wrong. I'm all for peace, love, and harmony. But I don't think sentimental ideas about human nature, aided by large quantities of drugs, are likely to help the cause.

My wife and I saw the Broadway revival of Hair last week. I took her for her birthday. My wife loves musicals the way few people love anything. At some point in virtually every musical, she weeps from an overload of joy. It is one of her loevliest characteristics.

Without Objectives, We're Adrift

There's a play on Broadway right now with a phenomenal cast. Acting this fine, you'll rarely see on Broadway. And at a recent performance I witnessed something fascinating. There was one moment, not so far from the end of what had been a very engaging evening of theatre, where an actor sat on stage and worked hard to "emote." Suddenly, it was as if the entire play had screeched to a halt.

Coughing erupted from virtually every corner of the house. Certainly, all these people could not have been suppressing coughs for the first 90 min, I thought. And it occurred to me that we go to the theatre to watch people struggle. We are entertained by characters and their conflicting objectives pitted against one another. Not a new concept, I realize, but still...

Tango in Japan

I must warn you, this post is going to get completely irrational. But first, the shameless self-promotion.

My film, Tango Octogenario will be embarking on a three city tour of Japan, Fukuoka (Oct. 11), Matsuoka (Dec. 18), and Beppu (Mar. 13, 2010). Tango is big in Japan; this is the third consecutive year it's playing at a film festival there. Unfortunately, I won't be touring Japan with the film. Closer to home, last I heard it's still showing on WNYC about once a month or so, but when exactly I'm not sure.

Now the irrational bit. 

Look, I'm not complaining, this short film has more legs than any short film has a right to have. I know many filmmakers that would love to have their work invited to festivals five years after it premiered. Its success pleases me.

But it also peeves me a little.

A Paranoid Conspiracy Theory of 21st C. PR: Could the Jackman cell phone video have been manufactured?

So most loyal readers of this blog know that it was here where the September 13, 2009 incident involving Hugh Jackman and a rude and oblivious Broadway ticket-holder first broke. So, I can tell you here that this really happened and I witnessed it and thought it worthy of sharing with y'all. [see: Hugh Jackman Talks to Woman in Row P]

That said... I couldn't help but wonder about the odds of something quite similar happening again not two weeks later at the same Broadway show but this time well within the sightlines of a hand-held videocamera so that within hours the video had gone completely viral.