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Like Robert De Niro and Daniel Day-Lewis before him, Jake Gyllenhaal transformed his body to play a boxer.
Those who're skeptical of the doctrine of self-mastery through sweat probably won't find much to hold their interest in Southpaw, a boxing melodrama so old-fashioned it's almost new. But I dug it. If my NPR review contains slightly fewer cliches than the movie does, it's not because I took a dive.
Tally Sessions and Laura Jordan as Hannibal Lecter and Clarice Starling in the musical parody The Silence of the Lambs demanded. (Igor Dmitry)
Studio Theatre served fava beans as snacks on press night of Silence! The Musical. Tasteful! fuhfuhfuhfuhfuhfuhfuh.
I review the show in today's Washington City Paper.
I just got home from attending a two-week criticism institute, wherein I was one of 14 working arts journalists, aged twentysomething to fiftysomething, to benefit from the instruction of critics for The Chicago Tribune, The New York Times, The Guardian, and other influential publications. That's where I was on Wednesday morning when I got a mass e-mail from Scott Tobias indicating that The Dissolve was shutting down, effective immediately. In its two years of life, that site had firmly established itself as the best place on the web to find smart, enthusiastic, formally inventive writing about movies new and old, famous and obscure. I'd declined a review assignment from Scott only days before, citing my wall-to-wall schedule during the institute.
Scott's e-mail came just as I was heading into a session on restaurant reviewing conducted by Sam Sifton, the Times' food editor. I've always had a chip on my shoulder about food coverage. I don't usually read it, and I often find it precious and/or pretentious when I do. To me at least, it's obvious that food is not art. Yes, it's an important component of culture. Yes, cooking is an admirable skill. But a meal cannot express emotion. An entree cannot communicate an idea. There are sad songs and sad paintings, but there are no sad foods, unless you're buying your dinner at a 7-Eleven.
Read MoreI'm a few days late posting this. For the past two weeks I've been taking part in the Eugene O'Neill Theatre Center's National Critics Institute — a professional boot camp for early-to-mid-career critics under the command of Chris Jones, the Chicago Tribune's chief theatre critic and a fine teacher of the craft of criticism, too. It's been an intense couple of weeks of living in a spartan dormitory with a roommate, and hitting overnight deadlines almost every night. I'll write about that a bit more once I've recovered.
In the midst of all that, I had to finish the cover story in this week's Washington City Paper, about the 10th Capital Fringe Festival, which kicked off Thursday evening. I hope you will find it answers all your most pressing questions about Capital Fringe and co-founder/Executive Director Julianne Brienza's plan to take it higher. I mean that literally. She wants to add three floors to the building she bought last year in Trinidad on Florida Ave. NE.
I wrote a prior cover story about CapFringe in 2010, and I covered the festival every summer from 2010 through 2014 as the editor of Fringeworthy (née Fringe & Purge), WCP's dedicated all-things-Fringe blog. This year, I decided I'd rather attend the NCI than run the blog a sixth consecutive time. I've handed off the keys to a very capable successor.
Arnold Schwarzenegger as a long-serving T-800. (Paramount/Skydance)
Skyped in from the Eugene O’Neill Theatre Center in beautiful New London, CT to dissect Terminator: Genisys (sic) — the underwhelming reboot of/fourth sequel to one of my favorite movies — with Pal-for-Life Glen Weldon. While I was taking in this movie in the “Luxury Seating” equipped Waterford 9 Cinemas, several of my fellow Critic Fellows, all ladies, were next door enjoying Magic Mike XXL. My proposal for a double feature was summarily rejected.
A T-800 goes shopping for clothes at the Griffith Park Observatory, May 12, 1984.
I haven't seen the by-all-accounts underwhelming Terminator: Genisys yet, because I've been busy being a "Critic Fellow" at the one-of-a-kind Eugene O'Neill Theatre Center in the wilds of Connecticut. But I did indulge in some quippy dramaturgy on the wandering-ronin Terminator franchise, for NPR.
Audrey Hepburn & William Holden in a promotional image for Billy Wilder's Sabrina, 1954.
I reviewed Audrey and Bill: A Romantic Biography of Audrey Hepburn and William Holden, a crummy book about the two stars' affair during the making of Sabrina in the early 50s, for The Washington Post. If decades-old Hollywood gossip is your bag, I recommend Karina Longworth's podcast You Must Remember This. The author of Audrey and Bill, Edward Z. Epstein, is a former publicist; Longworth is film critic and historian. It's a crucial difference.
UPDATE: Whoops, You Must Remember This already covered Hepburn and Sabrina. I should've checked that. Also, I stumbled upon this 10-year-old Slate piece about Arnold Schwarzenegger's incredibly luxe deal for Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines, by one Edward Jay Epstein. It's richly reported and has a strong point of view, two qualities Audrey and Bill lacks, in my opinion. Having written for Slate myself, I know that their editors encourage this sharper, more argumentative tone, but even allowing for that, this Schwarzenegger piece and Audrey and Bill still don't read like the work of the same author. Probably because they're not: Edward Jay's site is here; Edward Z.'s is here. But that's still a pretty big coincidence.
Luke Mitchell has a mask and a gun but not much of a plan.
I like Michael Mann and I love Heat in particular, and I love Wes Anderson. But 7 Minutes, a nicely-shot hybrid of Heat and Bottle Rocket, Anderson's debut, is less than the sum of its influences. I reviewed it for The Dissolve.
