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Tom Stoppard is considered the finest British playwright currently working – a master of language and sheer intellect. Rock N’Roll is his thirteenth work to grace the Broadway stage and has given him his eighth Tony nomination for best play. In celebration of his work, I’ve recently ranked his ten best plays (and yes, I’ve read all the originals. Not all the translations, but I excluded those from consideration anyway).

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With August: Osage County, we’ve had critics shouting hosannas that Broadway has a new Great American Play. Of course, epic (aka – long) plays on a (giant) canvas that are successful on Broadway (it’s already earned back it’s capitalization) are rare. Now, to be fair, Off Broadway regularly produces great works that deserve to stand the test of time, and the time when Broadway was giving us a majority original work that had nothing to do with Off-Broadway or London is forty years in the past. So, really, what were the last ten GREAT AMERICAN PLAYS. I’m going to define a GAP as a play written by an American (gasp) that deals particularly with American life in some way. While I think canvas size is generally important with plays acclaimed to these status (hence the stature of Albee, Miller, O’Neil, Williams) and most of the plays I selected either run a longtime or cover many years on stage, but that was a lesser criterion for me. So, here goes nothing: the last “ten” (in reverse chronological order) Great American Plays to grace the New York Stage (in my opinion, of course). Not to be confused with great plays by American authors (because I’ve left out a few of those) [Read more →]

He had ruined her life. He knew that now in a way he’d always tried not to know it – with certainty… What consolation could he give her now?

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Marked by two searing performances, Boy A is a beautifully nuanced work about an individual’s attempt to reintegrate back into society after a decade in prison. “Boy A” is the term given to Eric Wilson, a ten year old boy who, alongside a classmate, brutally kills a young girl. The movie makes the choice to show “Boy A” post rehabilitation – with a new name in Jack Burridge (played by Andrew Garfield) and the watchful eye of his social worker, Terry (played by Peter Mullan). Writer Mark O’Rowe with director John Crowley focus on his difficult attempts to re-enter society. Things initially look bright as he gets a job, a social circle and a girlfriend, but as is the case with a film like this, the obstacles get bigger and bigger. [Read more →]

This is a book review series dedicated to those works of prose and poetry that have found acclaim and prizes in some venue or other. Our definition of “prizes” is broad (though check out Awards Annals for books that are eligible), and hopefully, we’ll hopscotch through different genres, nationalities, and languages (though all in translation), chronically the acclaimed works of our (and others’) time. First up: Achmat Dangor’s novel, Bitter Fruit.

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Mister Lonely

Although director Harmony Korine’s films often deal with people who live on the fringes of society, this is probably the most accessible film he’s made to date. There are two parallel stories here, and the primary story centers on Diego Luna, who plays a Michael Jackson impersonator in Paris. He happens to meet Samantha Morton (in yet another interesting and complex performance), who plays a Marilyn Monroe impersonator who lives on a Scottish commune with a troupe of celebrity impersonators, including her husband, a Charlie Chaplin impersonator, her daughter who lives as Shirley Temple (interesting side note: the actress who plays Shirley Temple is also Morton‘s daughter in real life).

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As part of our continuing series of conversations on the great or not-so-great, the heralded and the ignored of films of the 20th and 21st centuries, here are McTeague and coco labouche talking about Luchino’s Visconti’s masterpiece, Death in Venice

Coco labouche: Briefly, Luchino Visconti’s Death in Venice is the tale of a composer, Gustav von Aschenbach, who travels to Venice to recuperate from illness. While staying at the Grand Hotels des Bains on the Lido, Gustav becomes increasingly fixated on a beautiful adolescent boy, Tadzio. The city of Venice, meanwhile, is in the midst of a cholera epidemic. As we watch the impact of these factors on Gustav, Viscont interrupts with flashbacks to his life in Germany, where we see a man resistant to his own senses and with rigid notions about the source and creation of beauty.

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by Rachel Schwartz (Above the Title)

By now you’ve heard the story. On last Tuesday’s performance episode of “American Idol,” judge Paula Abdul critiqued the now-fallen contestant Jason Castro’s second song before it had even been performed. Perhaps you’ve seen the numerous youtube incarnations or heard Abdul and various other “Idol” spinmasters taking a stab at explaining the gaffe. It’s been over a week now and the scandal that should have rocked the reality TV megahit has been successfully swept under the rug. “Idol” has its fair share of scandals every season - some likely fabricated to keep the watercooler talk to a maximum - but it feels like minor roadblocks like David Hernandez being a gay stripper got more press than the aptly named Paulagate. The mainstream media (with the notable exception of Michael Slezak on CNN) has seemed to either bought the party line or simply moved on to the next showbiz gossip. It’s very disheartening because after years of intense debates between fans over how off-the-cuff “Idol” is, how much is manipulated, whether the votes are actually fixed, we finally got to see the man behind the curtain and it resulted in almost no fanfare. [Read more →]