Movie Death Match: "The Third Man" v. "Touch of Evil"

Our Noir-vember Death Match is a smackdown between two of my personal favorites, both monochromatic midcentury masterpieces featuring great heel turns from Orson Welles. In 1949’s The Third Man, written by Graham Greene and directed by Carol Reed, he was merely the actor who played Harry Lime. He rewrote and directed 1958’s Touch of Evil after star Charlton Heston asked Universal Pictures to invite Welles to assume these chief creative roles, after Welles had already been cast as crooked cop Hank Quinlan.

I’m especially delighted to welcome my pal Matt Gourley, representing The Third Man, to the Death Match cage-or-is-it-a-courtoom, for our third pod collaboration. I was on an episode of James Bonding with him, Matt Mira, and Mark McConville recorded at his home in 2017, and six years later he joined Glen Weldon and me to dissect the forgotten Patrick McGoohan-starring thriller Ice Station Zebra on A Degree Absolute! I’d not met Indiewire’s Anne Thompson, our Touch of Evil stan, prior to this recording, but she was a sharp and savvy delight. Check out the episode below.

Bull Session: "Ma Rainey's Black Bottom," reviewed.

Craig Wallace, Ro Boddie, Yao Dogbe, and Derrick Truby in an August Wilson classic. (Teresa Castracane)

My City Cast DC review of Round House Theatre’s superb revival of August Wilson’s Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom is here.

Movie Death Match: "Halloween" v. "A Nightmare on Elm Street"

Our Spooky Season Movie Death Match is a tale of two slashers. New York Times comedy critic and Shock Value author Jason Zinoman argues on behalf of John Carpenter’s 1978 landmark Halloween while Harvard University dream expert Deridre Barrett stans for Wes Craven’s 1984 A Nightmare on Elm Street.

The Hole Truth About "Digger"

Tom Cruise and Riz Ahmed in Digger. (Warner Bros.)

What a fascinating, irritating document is Digger. It’s a movie that sent me back to Anne Washburn’s play Mr. Burns, A Post-Electric Play, which premiered here in DC at Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company in 2012. My Washington City Paper review is here.

Yockey Stick: "Venus," reviewed.

Regina Aquino and Kimberly GIlbert in Venus. (Cameron Whitman)

Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company was one my favorite DC stage, a position it lost after co-cofounder Howard Shalwitz stepped down as its longtime artistic director for reasons too varied to reiterate here. My City Cast DC review of Venus, Woolly’s refreshingly weird but not-all-there season-opener from screenwriter Steve Yockey, addresses it.

Predator, Catch Thyself: "Primetime," reviewed.

The lurid, unsettling film Oppenheim has made dramatizing all of this isn’t a biopic, though Robert Pattinson’s flashy performance as Hansen is the basis of its promotional campaign. As demonstrated by the clipped, nasal line readings he gives of the catch phrases Hansen drops on his prey—“You see how this looks, right?” “Why don’t you have a seat right there?”—Pattinson is not attempting naturalistic mimicry of Hansen (who has condemned the movie, unsurprisingly), or of any human creature. The English star is giving us an Oily American even more obviously craven than the one he played in The Odyssey, wherein he and Tom Holland both affected American accents to play Bronze Age Greeks because that’s the mode of the film.

My Washington City Paper review of documentarian Lance Oppenheim’s feature debut Primetime is here.

Signature's "Merrily We Roll Along" is a delight from end to beginning

Jason Gotay, Melanie Field, and Jake Loewenthal as Frank, Mary, and Charley. (Christopher Mueller) 

When Stephen Sondheim died the day after Thanksgiving five years ago, he was 91 years old. That grand run wasn’t quite long enough for him to see Merrily We Roll Along, the 1981 musical that had stood for decades as the most destructive and demoralizing failure of his brilliant career, rehabilitated into a critically-adored, multi-Tony Award-winning, and profitable revival in 2023. It’s that version that has found its way today to Signature Theatre, the Sondheim specialists in Arlington, Virginia.

My CityCast DC review of Signature’s fine Merrily We Roll Along is here.

Movie Death Match: "The Last Waltz" v. "Stop Making Sense"

It Makes No Difference who wins: Hearing rock critic par excellence Steven Hyden assert the supremacy of The Last Waltz against Bright Wall / Dark Room editor Elizabeth Cantwell’s eloquent defense of Stop Making Sense is a Once in a Lifetime rhetorical contest. Listen below.