MOVIES

[Click here: For Hal Drucker’s Top 10 Movies of 2008.]

Zach Drucker

Jamal Malik plays Who Wants to be a Millionaire?
opposite game show host Prem Kumar.

Slumdog Millionaire
British director Danny Boyle has garnered critical acclaim over the years through such influential works as Trainspotting and 28 Days Later, yet his true masterpiece is the newly released Slumdog Millionaire. Millionaire opens with the investigatory inquisition and torture of an adolescent Indian boy, Jamal Malik (Dev Patel). Jamal is being accused of cheating in order to win millions of dollars on the Indian version of the popular UK-originated game show, Who Wants to be A Millionaire? By retracing his coming of age in the slums of Mumbai and the memories of a self-interested brother (Madhur Mittal), religious melees, and corrupt, money-hungry gangsters, Jamal reveals the key to his success: his destiny. The object of Jamal’s affection, Latika (Freida Pinto), a beautiful girl who consistently finds herself amidst a dangerous crowd, fuels Jamal’s will to win. All in all, the film provides an encompassing scope of life in Indian slums, while holding, at its core, a love story to which people of any ethnic background can relate. Starring obscure and upcoming actors gives Millionaire the realistic feel it intends to create, with excellent performances from Patel and the beautiful Pinto. Additionally, Anil Kapoor, a prominent Bollywood icon, shines as the Indian take on Regis Philbin: the crafty and sleazy game show host, Prem Kumar. Will Slumdog Millionaire be an Oscar contender this February? The final answer is a resounding “yes.”

Slumdog Millionaire is the story of Jamal Malik, an 18 year-old orphan from the slums of Mumbai, who is about to experience the biggest day of his life. With the whole nation watching, he is just one question away from winning a staggering 20 million rupees on India’s Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?

But when the show breaks for the night, police arrest him on suspicion of cheating; how could a street kid know so much? Desperate to prove his innocence, Jamal tells the story of his life in the slum where he and his brother grew up, of their adventures together on the road, of vicious encounters with local gangs, and of Latika, the girl he loved and lost. Each chapter of his story reveals the key to the answer to one of the game show’s questions.

Intrigued by Jamal’s story, the jaded Police Inspector begins to wonder what a young man with no apparent desire for riches is really doing on this game show? When the new day dawns and Jamal returns to answer the final question, the Inspector and 60 million viewers are about to find out. To find out the answer to the final question, check out your local bijou for Slumdog Millionaire which is ubiquitous in the New York Metro Area. The film is based on the best-selling novel Q&A by Vikas Swarup. (Zach Drucker)

Meryl Streep is Sister Aloysius in John Patrick
Shanley’s movie version of Doubt.

Doubt
This screen adaptation by John Patrick Shanley of his semi-autobiographical play about a martinet Catholic school principal (Sister Aloysius) in the Bronx who bares her fangs at a modern, young priest (Father Brendan Flynn), of the Bing Crosby/Father O’Malley school, is undercut by a performance by Meryl Streep that makes Margaret Hamilton’s Wicked Witch of the West seem like the girl next door. The problem starts with Shanley who as a first-time director, cannot leash in Streep to bring a scintilla of shading and restraint to her melodramatic, over-the-top performance. In a New York Times Magazine cover story, Philip Seymour Hoffman relates how Streep, prior to the movie’s pivotal confrontation scene in which she accuses Father Flynn of sexual molestation of a young student, said she’s going to “kick ass” when the cameras begin rolling. Putting her lack of marquee star power aside, Cherry Jones, who introduced the role of the Sister Aloysius on Broadway and, unencumbered by a wimple, won a Tony in the process, would have been a more nuanced, markedly superior choice. Now that Jones will be seen by multimillions as a U. S. president in Keifer Sutherland’s 24 this season, perhaps, at long last, she will have her pick of plum, big screen roles.

W
Oliver Stone has concocted a tolerable story about our late, unlamented president from the Lone Star State. Josh Brolin, who is in just about everything these days, does a commendable job as George W. and Richard Dreyfuss is spot on as Dick Cheney. Grade this one a W for winner.

Revolutionary Road
There’s that Winslet woman again, this time, reunited with her Titanic co-star Leonardo DiCaprio as April and Frank Wheeler in still another novel-cum-movie; your everyday handsome, excruciatingly banal couple who make Edward Albee’s rancorous Martha and George seem warm and fuzzy.

Dustin Hoffman and Emma Thompson stroll happily
along the Thames in Last Chance Harvey.

Last Chance Harvey
This charmer is a kind of caffeine-free Sleepless in Seattle, taking place in London and having two personable and reliable actors Dustin Hoffman and Emma Thompson. It should appeal to any man or woman old enough to belong to AARP.

The Changeling
You might take a baby aspirin, prior to seeing this movie, in the event you get a case of the flutters while eyeing a depraved axe-wielding psycho (Jason Butler Harner),having at a gaggle of squirming young boys. If you can divorce yourself from that image, you might very well be taken by this artfully directed (by Clint Eastwood), authentically driven motion picture based upon historic happenings in the ‘30s and bona fide representations of those times that resonated with me, a child of that decade, from squeaky corduroy knickers, to milk wagons to a telephone supervisor on roller skates, the old-fashioned metal 4-wheel variety. It deals with the strange disappearance of Walter the young son of Christine Collins, that phone supervisor, portrayed impeccably by Angelina Jolie and the even stranger reappearance of a boy – who, with the dogmatic concurrence of the LA police Chief (Colm Feore) – claims to be her son. One jarring note: the crusading Presbyterian minister who sides with Collins is played by John Malcontent aka Malkovich who is as understated as a bulldozer.

Burn After Reading
When will the Coen Brothers get it right? After their classic Fargo in 1996 they have made seven movies, and not one is worth crowing about. The running gag that pervades their latest film t has George Clooney as a U.S. Marshall and adulterer and Brad Pitt and Frances McDormand as nitwit gym trainers who find a disk containing what they sense to be secret spy material, but which in reality are the memoirs and financial records of an ex-CIA agent (John Malkovich). Their plan is to blackmail him; and when that doesn't work, they try to sell it to the Russian embassy, she to obtain the moolah for a face lift and a tummy tuck. I like George Clooney’s acting immensely and I admire his politics, as I do Pitt’s humanitarianism, but comedians they’re not.

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
Six years in its conception and execution, this movie has caused more stir, pro and con than any flick of the season. By now you are aware of the conceit behind the film, to wit: a man who ages in reverse. Benjamin is played by Brad Pitt and only Brad Pitt, thanks to a motion-capture software system known as Digital Domain that transforms Pitt’s face from his 80’s, 70’s, 60’s etc. to infancy. In some instances other actors’ bodies are employed wearing special headgear, repositories for Pitt’s scanned features. As a technological breakthrough: applause, applause. As a theatrical contrivance, the movie – curiously - failed to rouse my emotions in spite of a virtuoso performance by Cate Blanchett as Benjamin’s lifetime love Daisy, a prima ballerina, and vivacious free spirit who ages gracefully from flowering youth to bedridden dowager.

Chazz Palminteri, Tom Guiry , and Christine Lahti
in Yonkers Joe. Photo: by Joshua Jose,
courtesy of Magnolia Pictures.

Yonkers Joe
Here is a true sleeper, a little film I would liken to Stanley Kubrick’s The Killing, which without fanfare or indulging in the production excesses of Casino (good though it was) and the Ocean’s 11 series, has genuine high-stakes excitement, heart-tugging emotion and stellar acting by the triumvirate of Chazz Palminteri. Christine Lahti and Thomas Guiry. Just as important it is directed by a young man Robert Celestino who knows his way behind a craps table or a poker game. Palminteri, fresh from his splendid one-man performance of The Bronx Tale, is the title character, a dice-switching hustler determined to make one last grab for a big score in Vegas, whose blue collar gaming vocation is complicated by the expulsion from a special needs residence of his mentally challenged son, Joe Jr., achingly believable and sympathetically portrayed by Thomas Guiry. Lahti, whom I saw off-Broadway this season in a gem of a play, A Body of Water secures her stature as one of our most versatile actresses as Janice, Palminteri’s salty and big-hearted inamorata.

Cargo 200
The movie title refers to the euphemistic code name for the returning bodies of slain Soviet soldiers arriving with regularity from Afghanistan in 1984. The protagonist of the piece, a police officer named Zhurov (Alexey Poluyan), abducts, brutalizes and who knows what else? - to the innocent daughter of a Communist Party official (Agniya Kuznetsova) while his mother in a room next door, is as oblivious to the goings on as Madame Defarge. English subtitles.

(c) Sony Pictures Classics.

Waltz With Bashir
(Reviewed by Len Elman. Mr. Elman, an avid reader of My Kind of New York and respected cinema buff, takes exception to my omission of Waltz With Bashir from my top 10 film list for 2008.) 

Anthony Lane, in his New Yorker review of the Israeli film, Waltz with Bashir, described it as an “adult psycho-documentary combat cartoon.”  David  Edelstein, in New York, called it an “Israeli animated masterpiece,”and both a “detective story and head trip,” a film which erases the boundaries “between documentary and fantasy, reality and dreams, life and art." The story concerns a group of former Israeli combat soldiers (including writer, director and main character Ari Folman) who, 25 years earlier had served in the 1982 Lebanon war, and had witnessed the massacre by Christian Phalangists of hundreds of civilians in the Shatila and Sabra refugee camps in retaliation for the assassination of their leader-elect, Bashir Gamayel.  Each member of the group wonders why he has no distinct recollection of what he saw and did; only occasional dreams. Folman’s efforts to discover what he and the others had forgotten is told through extraordinary animation, which makes the group’s combat experiences more realistic and, at the same time, more lyrical and dream -like, then if actual performers had been used.  To me, it is the best war movie since Stanley Kubrick's Paths of Glory  and a “must see.”

THEATER

Speed-the-Plow
Ethel Barrymore
243 W. 47 th St.
212-239-6200
Through Feb. 22
I look forward to reviewing this revival of the 1988 David Mamet play (which I attended) in the next issue, when William H. Macy appears with Raúl Esparza and Elizabeth Moss.

Saturn Returns
Lincoln Center Theater
Mitzi E. Newhouse
150 W. 65 th St.
212-362-7600
Limited run completed.
The notion that the planet Saturn returns orbitally to its original position approximately every 29.5 years is the premise behind playwright Noah Haidle’s moderately interesting play. This phenomenon allows him to home in on one man - Gustin (played in reverse chronology from ages 88 to 58 to 28). Since, thank heavens we are not dealing with a single actor with digitally re-scanned faces, we are content to witness the performances of three actors as Gustin, played respectively by the always reliable John McMartin (the best of the trio), James Rebhorn and Robert Eli, - as he confronts the three women in his life (all played by Rosie Benton).

MUSEUMS/GALLERIES

Pierre Bonnard (French, 1867-1947)
The French Window (Morning at Le Cannet)
1932 Oil on canvas, Private Collection

Pierre Bonnard (French, 1867-1947)
Dining Room Overlooking the Garden (The Breakfast Room)
1930-31 Oil on canvas, The Museum of Modern Art, New York.
Given anonymously 1941.

Pierre Bonnard (French, 1867-1947)
Corner of the Dining Room at Le Cannet
1932 Oil on canvas, Centre Pompidou, Paris.

Metropolitan Museum of Art
1000 5th Ave.
Pierre Bonnard’s
The Late Interiors
Jan. 27- April 19
The entirety of this arresting exhibition focuses exclusively on the radiant late interiors and still lifes of Bonnard (1867–1947). His 80 paintings, drawings, and watercolors on display date from the artist’s later years, when his painting activity took place in his pink stucco home overlooking the Mediterranean in the village of Le Cannet. Working in a converted upstairs bedroom, Bonnard transformed the rooms and objects that surrounded him into iridescent subjects, noteworthy for their color, light, and vision. It is these luminous late interiors that characterize Bonnard’s modernism and prompt a reappraisal of his reputation in the history of 20 th century art.

Two Cups and Saucers in the Form of Flowers.
Sèvres factory, France, ca. 1817

Royal Porcelain from the Twinight Collection,
1800-1850
Metropolitan Museum of Art
1000 Fifth Avenue  
Reported by Slice of New York Arts Correspondent Nancy Treiger.
Through August 9, 2009

This exquisite exhibit of Royal Porcelain, is 1/10th of the Twinight Collection of Richard Baron Cohen, which in totality is considered to be one of the major repositories of early 1800s European porcelain. The production of this porcelain centered in  Berlin, Vienna, and Sevres in the early 1800s. The exhibit has been organized according to subject matter rather than factory of origin. Ancient history, contemporary events, the natural world and cityscapes were the chosen themes of the artists. Popular at the time was interest in scientific categorization of the natural world. This is depicted in the exacting detail of the painting of birds and flora.  The artists worked from prints, views of cities, landscapes, buildings and monuments. The accuracy of the work has become an important visual record of the period. Cameo carving was a revered art in ancient Greece and Rome.

Susie MacMurray
A Mixture of Frailties, 2004
Inside-out yellow washing gloves stitched onto calico

Johnny Swing
Nickel Couch, 2001-2008
Approximately 7,000 nickels, 35,000 welds;
substructure of stainless truss work using
350 feet of stiffing rods

Jill Townsley
Spoons, 2008
9,273 plastic spoons, 3,091 rubber bands

Terese Agnew
Portrait of a Textile Worker,
Clothing labels, thread, fabric

Second Lives: Remixing the Ordinary
Museum Of Arts and Design
2 Columbus Circle
212-299-7777
Docent Alan Levine Hosts MAD’s Stunning Inaugural Exhibit That Transforms Ordinary Mass-Produced Objects into One-of-A-Kind
Works of Art.
Extended Through April 29th
Were it not for my friend Alan Levine, Docent Par Excellence for The Frick Museum and the new The Museum of Arts and Design, who insisted that I visit this remarkable new museum, which blessedly replaced the banal Huntington Hartford Museum and the mundane offices of NYC’s Dept. of Cultural Affairs, I would have missed out on viewing one of the most adventurous and rewarding exhibitions in memory. I refuse to let you make the same mistake, and while you’re about it, I insist that your grandchildren, as I have every intention of doing. The centerpiece of the museum’s inaugural exhibition program is MAD’s new special exhibition Second Lives: Remixing the Ordinary, featuring 51 contemporary artists from 17 countries who hav e painstakingly transformed discarded, commonplace, or valueless objects into compelling works of art. They include new commissions and site-specific installations, created from gun triggers, spools of thread, tires, combs, hypodermic needles, dog tags, nickels, old eyeglasses, and telephone books, among other manufactured and mass-produced objects. Highlighting the creative processes that repurpose these objects, the exhibition explores the transformation of the ordinary into the extraordinary and stimulates debate on function, value, identity and social commentary. Among the works I admired other than those pictured and captioned are:

• Madame C. J. Walker , by U.S. artist Sonya Clark, is an 11-foot high portrait of Walker (1867-1919), the storied African-American millionaire and philanthropist from Indianapolis, whose fortune was made from developing and marketing hair products and cosmetics for African-American women. Clark’s imposing portrait is constructed of thousands of black hair combs, which create a pixilated image of the woman.
• Trinity: Grandma, Spike, Bubbles ( 2007) by American artists Andy Diaz Hope and Laurel Roth. These custom-chromed chandeliers are designed in traditional neoclassical form, but are made of hypodermic needles, gelatin capsules and Swarovski crystal which reflect drug culture themes. While seductive in their beauty, the chandeliers are a chilling reminder of a darker side of contemporary life.

Joe Mirachi; Published 3 March 1980.
Melvin R. Seiden Collection, The Morgan Library & Museum © The New Yorker Collection 1980 Joseph Mirachi from cartoonbank.com. All Rights Reserved.

William Hamilton ; Published 29 January 1979. Melvin R. Seiden Collection, The Morgan Library & Museum © The New Yorker Collection 1979 William Hamilton from cartoonbank.com. All Rights Reserved.

On the Money:
Cartoons from the New Yorker
The Morgan Library & Museum
225 Madison Avenue , at 36th St.
212-685-0008
January 23 through May 24, 2009
A sense of humor when times are tough is the premise behind this series of approximately 70 original New Yorker cartoons from the Melvin R. Seiden collection. Tackling the theme of money are such cartoon luminaries as Charles Barsotti, George Booth, Dana Fradon, Lee Lorenz, J. B. Handelsman and the great William Hamilton . Since 1925 The New Yorker magazine has served as the leading forum for American cartoonists to reflect and comment on the nation’s social, cultural and economic environment.

COMEDY DVD

It’s Bad for Ya
George Carlin’s final DVD
Recorded March 2008
No matter how much he raised the bar beyond the Lenny Bruce Maginot Line I will always think of George Carlin as the genius who in 1975 once and for all articulated the difference between baseball and football without so much as a single expletive.

It's Bad for Ya is the 14th and final -- stand-up special. Taped in March of 2008, Carlin spends a lot of the hour preoccupied with the advantages of old age and prophetically … death. "Don't hesitate to ask me to do anything" Okay next time you come to visit, bring a plunger and clean up my toilet.”

As for turning 70, “You never have to carry anything heavy again. You want to pick up my suitcase? Fine, I’m going to Indianapolis.

“ You can leave a party early. And You can say what you think. F_ _ _ Dr. Phil; F _ _ _ Tiger Woods.”

“ As for kids, they’re too routine-ized, with workshops and Play Dates. When does a kid get to sit in the backyard and play with a stick?“ Release Date: November 25, 2008 Running Time: 68 minutes

CABARET

Debut of Singer Jane Monheit:
The Lovers, the Dreamers and Me.
Feinstein's at The Regency
540 Park Avenue at 61st St.
212-339-4095
Through Feb. 7
Tues., Wed. Thurs. -8:30 p.m.
Fri., Sat. 8 p.m. & 10 p.m. 
Jane Monheit first raised the consciousness of the cabaret world in 2000, boosted by the showcasing of Jonathan Schwartz's influential four-hour show on Public Radio. I confess to being one of his influencees. In my view, Monheit is now part of the rarefied cadre of such elite performers as Karen Akers, Maureen McGovern and Ann Hampton Callaway and the late Nancy LeMott and Joyce Carr.