Mash Note: Lucky Them, reviewed.
Chris Klimek
Thomas Hayden Church and Toni Collette in Lucky Them.
My review of Lucky Them, wherein the great Toni Collette plays a rock journalist assigned to write about her former lover, is up at The Dissolve now.
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Freud Where Prohibited: The Last Days of Judas Iscariot and Freud's Last Session, reviewed, and In Praise of Frank Britton
Chris Klimek
Today in the Washington City Paper, I review two plays that mull over free will and the existence of God, both of which feature Sigmund Freud as a character. The better of the pair, Stephen Adly Guirgis' The Last Days of Judas Iscariot, features a towering performance from Frank Britton as Pontius Pilate.
Around 2:15 Tuesday morning, after he'd left the cast party that followed Judas' opening-night performance, Britton was assaulted and robbed by four or five unidentified attackers near the Silver Spring Metro stop. He underwent surgery at Holy Cross Hospital to treat a broken cheekbone. Britton does not have medical insurance. A crowdfunding campaign to cover his hospital bills (donate here) has raised over $45,000 so far.
I've known Frank for years. I think we first met in 2008, when my then-girlfriend was in a production of Temptation with him at Constellation Theatre Company, but it might've been earlier than that. Everyone I know who's involved with theatre in DC loves him. He's a talented, hardworking, generous artist.
He's going to miss at least a couple of performances of Judas Iscariot as a result of his injuries, which is a shame, because I've never seen him in anything where he was better. (Thony Mena, who already appears in the show as Simon the Zealot and other characters, will stand in for him.) Michael Dove, the artistic director of Forum Theatre, which is staging Judas, visited Frank in the hospital Tuesday and reported him to be in high spirits and eager to get back to work. I hope he will, soon. His current project is a stirring production of a funny, provocative play, and Frank is a huge part of why it's so powerful.
Unfortunately, the production photos Forum made available for Judas do not include any shots of Frank as Pontius Pilate. You'll just have to go see the show, which you should do anyway, if great, intimate theatre is a thing that matters to you. It's at Round House Theatre Silver Spring, next to the AFI Silver cinema, through June 14.
UPDATE: My pal Rachel Manteuffel, who saw Judas Iscariot with me on Sunday, has pointed out I erred in my WCP review when I said that Annie Houston is silent throughout the play after her (excellent) opening monologue. In fact, she has another scene where she is called to the witness stand to testify against her son. I simply forgot it. As I said, it's a long show! I apologize for my mistake.
All photos: Melissa Blackall/Forum Theatre.
Rebel Without a Horse: Age of Uprising: The Legend of Michael Kohlhaas, reviewed.
Chris Klimek
Sometimes even very strong films can be a chore to sit through. My review of Arnaud des Pallières' 2013 Palme d’Or nominee Age of Uprising: The Legend of Michael Kohlhaas, starring Danish actor/prop Mads Mikkelsen, is up at The Dissolve today.
Back to the Future (Past), or You Can't Keep a Good X-Man Down
Chris Klimek
I enjoyed X-Men: Days of Future Past, Bryan Singer's return after a decade-long absence to the surprisingly resilient superhero franchise he originated. This movie is based on a 1981 story from The Uncanny X-Men comic book that I first read when it was reprinted in probably 1989 or 1990.
The movie alters the tale as necessary to unite the cast of 2011's 60s-set X-Men: First Class with the players from the earlier X-pictures, set in the present day -- or rather, as a title card at the top of 2000's X-Men tells us, "the not-too-distant future." I'd feared this timeline-straddling -- Days of Future Past is set in some unspecified year in the 2020s, -ish, and in 1973 -- might make the movie as dull and incoherent as the Star Wars prequels, but it's funny and light on its feet.
This time-travel movie triggered some sympathetic time-travel on my part. I bought my first issue of X-Men in the summer of 1988, and I stuck with the title for about four years after that. Since then, I've looked in on the X-Men infrequently, whenever I've heard that Grant Morrison or Joss Whedon or Matt Fraction was up to something interesting with them.
Anyway. For NPR, some ruminations on how time-travel helps to keep long-running movie franchises fresh.
SEE ALSO: Another thing I wrote for NPR, about a quite different time-travel flick last year.
Infrared Dawn: On the James Webb Space Telescope in the July 2014 issue of Air & Space / Smithsonian
Chris Klimek
And now for something completely different, and completely intimidating -- at least initially. The current issue of Air & Space magazine has my first-ever astronomy story, about the James Webb Space Telescope, the remarkable $8.8 billion dollar replacement for the aging Hubble Space Telescope.
As JWST orbits the Earth from a million miles away, its six-meter mirror of gold-coated beryllium will collect light that's fainter, farther away, and billions of years older than we've ever been able to see, showing us some of the earliest objects that formed in the universe after the Big Bang. As with most of NASA's flagship projects, JWST has taken longer and cost far more than NASA had said and Congress had hoped. It's now set for launch in October 2018.
Read MoreJust Like Starting Over: The Love Punch, reviewed.
Chris Klimek
Timothy Spall, Celia Imrie, Emma Thompson, & Pierce Brosnan walk in slow motion in The Love Punch. (Etienne George)
My review of The Love Punch, a disappointing romantic caper featuring the appealing pairing of Emma Thompson and Pierce Brosnan, is up now at The Dissolve. Somebody give these two a better movie to costar in, stat.
Air-Conditioned Fun in the Summertime: 10 Movies I Want to See in the Next Three Months
Chris Klimek
Time was, the summer movie season -- when blocks got busted and Oscar contenders got out of the way -- began Memorial Day weekend and had shot its wad by mid-July. Once in a while you’d get a great late-summer picture, like The Fugitive, released Aug. 6, 1993 (and nominated for Best Picture, come to that.) But generally the big action pictures, which gradually gave way to the superhero flicks, needed six or seven weeks before kids got marched back into school so studios could benefit from repeat business.
In the 21st century, the summer movie season advanced to the first weekend in May, a date that in recent years has belonged to Marvel Comics adaptations, whether they’re made by Marvel Studios, like The Avengers, or by other studios, like the Spider-Man pictures (both the Raimis and the Webbs) from Sony, or the X-Men series, from Fox.
Nowadays, of course, the cinema calendar is a lawless Thunderdome: Liam Neeson starts kicking ass in January, and Bond flicks and Hunger Games adaptations come out in November.
Anyway. I filed my rundown of the 10 summer movies I was most anticipating to my editor at The Village Voice before I'd seen any of them. I saw X-Men: Days of Future Past last night, and I've no regrets about including it on the list. I left Life Itself, Steve James's documentary about Roger Ebert, off just because it's a documentary. I'm very curious about Ari Folman's The Congress and Dawn of the Planet of the Apes or whatever that one's called, too.
The Career of Tom Cruise, X-Men, Han Solo, and the Wrath of Cannes. I'm on the Voice Film Club podcast this week.
Chris Klimek
I had a great time sitting in on this week's Voice Film Club podcast with my Village Voice editor Alan Scherstuhl and L.A. Weekly film critic Amy Nicholson. Alan invited me on to talk about my essay demanding the death of Han Solo, but before we get to that we have a long chat about the perplexing career of Tom Cruise (working off of Amy's marvelous cover story about him) and Amy's review of X-Men: Days of Future Past, which I won't get to see until tonight. You can hear the podcast above or here.