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My summer movie autopsy is up on the Village Voice site today. Please enjoy at your leisure, now that Labor Day is past and you don't have to look out overhead for the computer-generated debris from collapsing skyscrapers.
I also have a couple of short film reviews up on the Voice today, of the documentary Herb & Dorothy 50 x 50 and the the romantic drama And While We Were Here.
Sarah Marshall and Kimberly Gilbert do battle.
My review of Round House Theatre's new production of Martin McDonagh's first play, The Beauty Queen of Leenane, is in today's Washington City Paper.
G. Alverez Reid and Jacobi Howard in Broke-ology
My review of Nathan Louis Jackson's somber family story Broke-ology -- Theater Alliance's savvy choice to christen the new Anacostia Playhouse -- is in today's Washington City Paper.
Ubiquitous director Jeremy Skidmore's tenacious production of A Few Good Men, the play that gave us Aaaron Sorkin, cuts a dashing figure in its dress whites. Reviewed in this week's Washington City Paper, available wherever finer alt-weeklies are given away for free.
Photo by Paul Gillis, courtesy Capital Fringe
And with this, my four-week-and-change tour of duty covering the Capital Fringe Festival for a fourth consecutive year comes to an end.
This year’s Fringe might’ve been the best yet. I didn’t get to do as much writing as I wanted, what with my dayjob being more demanding than in Fringes past and with Fringe & Purge running 96 “Hip Shot” reviews this year—about a third more than we’ve ever published before, the overwhelmingly majority of them edited by me.
I did get to record, edit and post six episodes of the Fringe & PurgeCast; again, fewer than I managed last year, but at least a couple of them turned out well, I think. My favorite was this one with Live Action Theatre company, obviously.
Saturday is my birthday, and I need a rest, so I’m going to take this weekend off. But I’m available. Editors, I shall entertain your offers.
1. Pop Culture Happy Hour
I was delighted to sit in on this week’s Pop Culture Happy Hour podcast, a Very Special Episode we -- okay, I -- have decided to call "The Cavil Over Henry Cavill." The A-topic this week was the arrival of Man of Steel, the muscled-up, darkened-down reboot of Superman film franchise that is, we all agree, short on humor. Also short on height. Zing!
Any regular listener to the show will know that Glen Weldon, my pal-for-life and 25 percent of the show’s regular lineup (along with host Linda Holmes and Stephen Thompson and Trey Graham), just spent the better part of two years researching and writing the marvelous Superman: The Unauthorized Biography. I recently ran a freezing cold 12-mile death race wearing a Superman T-shirt, so our credentials are roughly equivalent.
But they didn’t exactly need a second longtime Supes fan. I snuck in by mocking Henry Cavill’s average-ish height. He is, for the record, exactly as tall as I am if you believe IMDB, an authority on which actor heights seem to be self-reported.
“I think he makes you feel short,” Linda teased me during the show.
Ouch. But I am not alone. My film-critic crush Dana Stevens said on the Slate Culture Gabfest this week -- an episode featuring the Gabfest debut of one Glen (Superman:The Unauthorized Biography) Weldon -- that she kept picturing Cavill “standing on a milk crate. Amy Adams seems strapping compared to him.”
Cavill’s performance in the movie is the one element we all agreed worked splendidly. Otherwise we differed in our assessments, although it’s clear I liked it more than Linda, who liked slightly more than half of it, and more than Steven, who hated it.... which means he still may have appreciated it more than G-Weld, who in various podcast appearances this week has called the film “small” and “evil” and likened it to a Transformers film. I understand why he said that, but that’s still way harsh, guy.
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Crashonda Edwards & Julian Michael Martinez play real-life artists Samella Lewis & John Biggers.
So I ended up with a few more hundred words of real estate in which to unpack what I consider be the very earnest and honorable Hampton Years' very earnest and honorable shortcomings. And also the rather less honorable shortcoming of my published review, wherein I reported that the artist Elizabeth Catlett, a character in The Hampton Years, is still alive. In fact, Ms. Catlett died last year. I apologize for my stupid, sloppy error.
The inevitable Marc Maron. (Max S. Gerber/courtesy IFC)
You see? I managed to make even my interview with comedian and podcast host Marc Maron mostly about 60-year-old musicians. But we talked about some other stuff, too. That's on Arts Desk today. Maron plays Sixth & I tonight, promoting his new essay collection, Attempting Normal.
