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Handicapping The Fate of the Furious on Pop Culture Happy Hour

Chris Klimek

I'm on Pop Culture Happy Hour today for the first time since our bummed-out post-election Pop Culture Serotonin Spectacular. And it was all the way back in December 2015 that I last shared the studio with the great Gene Demby of the Code Switch blog and podcast, when we handicapped Star Wars: The Force Awakens. I always feel things have gone well when I'm with Gene; he's a calming presence I guess.  Most of this week's episode was recorded live on stage in Chicago at last week, and neither Gene not I were present for that, so we're in the first segment only. The topic is The Fate of the Furious, a film I reviewed... unfavorably. 

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categories movies, podcasts
tags Vin Diesel, Linda Holmes, Gene Demby, Stephen Thompson, F. Gary Gray, Jessica Reedy, Pop Culture Happy Hour, NPR, MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE, MAD MAX: FURY ROAD

Diesel Fumes: The Fate of the Furious, reviewed.

Chris Klimek

Xander Cage as Dominic Toretto. (Universal)

Xander Cage as Dominic Toretto. (Universal)

We all know the inexplicably prolonged Fast & Furious series can't touch Mad Max: Fury Road or even its closer competitor the Mission: Impossible franchise, right? We all know that?

Even by the series' own standards of allegedly intentional badness, the new The Fate of the Furious is a sour lemon. (136 minutes, four good scenes.) Here's my NPR review.

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categories movies
tags F. Gary Gray, Vin Diesel, The Fast and the Furious, NPR, film reviews, Jason Statham, Charlize Theron

Von Braun play Ad Astra, assessed for Air & Space

Chris Klimek

Two of my main beats—aviation/space and theatre—overlapped last week when I attended a reading of Ad Astra, a new play by James Wallert about the life of pioneering rocket scientist—and Nazi—Wernher von Braun. I wrote a post about that for Air & Space/Smithsonian, but at my editor's suggestion we removed a paragraph where I named the four actors who performed the reading. That was the right call for Air & Space's audience; after all, when Ad Astra gets fully staged it will likely be with a different cast. Still, the cast—all members of New York's Epic Theatre Ensemble, which Wallert co-founded—was terrific, so I'd like to name them here.

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categories theatre, space
tags Wernher von Braun, new plays, Epic Theatre Ensemble, James Wallert, Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company, history, biographies

Nasty Women, Repped: Dry Land and What Every Girl Should Know, reviewed.

Chris Klimek

Yakima Rich and Emily Whitford in Ruby Rae Spiegel's play Dry Land. (Forum Theatre)

Yakima Rich and Emily Whitford in Ruby Rae Spiegel's play Dry Land. (Forum Theatre)

My review of Forum Theatre's "Nasty Women Rep," comprised of Ruby Ray Spiegel's Dry Land and Monica Byrne's What Every Girl Should Know, took longer to appear than it should have, but it's up now. These two shows sustain Forum's reputation for bold, timely work, and I recommend them—Dry Land, especially.

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categories theatre
tags play reviews, theatre, Monica Byrne, Forum Theatre, Ruby Rae Spiegel, Yakima Rich, Lida Maria Benson, Amber Paige McGinnis, Washington City Paper

Imperfect Organism: Life, reviewed.

Chris Klimek

Jake Gyllenhaal and Rebecca Ferguson are better than Life. (Sony)

Jake Gyllenhaal and Rebecca Ferguson are better than Life. (Sony)

Life, the new anti-space-exploration space movie from Swedish director Daniel Espinosa and starring my beloved Rebecca "Ilsa Faust" Ferguson plus some other famous people, is no Gravity. Or Interstellar. Or The Martian. But it's aight. I reviewed it for NPR, and then, having finished reviewing Life, I recalled The Onion's lovely backhanded obituary for Roger Ebert from 2013.

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categories movies
tags Rebecca Ferguson, Jake Gyllenhaal, Ryan Reynolds, science fiction, Daniel Espinosa, Hiroyuki Sanada, NPR, film reviews

Sisters of No Mercy: Three Sisters and No Sisters, reviewed.

Chris Klimek

Kimberly Gilbert and Todd Scofield in No Sisters. (Studio Theatre)

Kimberly Gilbert and Todd Scofield in No Sisters. (Studio Theatre)

Studio Theatre is putting on a ballsy experiment for the next month or so, running a new production of Three Sisters and No Sisters—Aaron Posner's companion play—not in rep but literally on top of one another. I review both in this week's Washington City Paper.

FURTHER READING: My April 2015 review of Round House's Uncle Vanya. My January 2015 review of Posner's Life Sucks, or the Present Ridiculous at Theatre J. My June 2013 review of Stupid Fucking Bird. And my August 2011 review of the Sydney Theatre Company's Uncle Vanya, starring Cate Blanchett and Hugo Weaving.

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categories theatre
tags Aaron Posner, Kimberly Gilbert, Anton Chekhov, The Studio Theatre, Washington City Paper, Ryan Rilette, Jackson Gay