FILM REVIEW: BURMA VJ

The real and real monk-ey/e business of Burma VJ.

Big Buddha iswatching you.

By Ed Rampell

Are you sick of the corporate mainstream media, like I am? The paid off pundits shilling for private interests that are rarely disclosed? The lack of firsthand reporting and coverage of world events replaced by a narrow scope of stories examined by an even narrower range of viewpoints, usually from the center to the hard right, with “commentators” such as Karl “The Architect” Rove, Bill “Wars- Are-Us” Krystal and John “Torture Boy” Yoo? The endless titillations and celebrity gossip that poses as journalism? The incessant commercials and ads, especially on cable and satellite radio, so that viewers/listeners are, in essence, paying for unwelcome, unsolicited, time consuming advertisements? The Judy Miller school of lying us into bloodbaths? And, as Yul Brynner said in The King and I, “etcetera, etcetera, etcetera.”

Brynner may have played a monarch from Thailand in that classic 1956 musical, but don’t miss another film being released about a different Southeast Asian nation: Burma (renamed “Myanmar” by the ruling junta), which has been in the news lately, due to the dubious intrusion by an American swimmer onto the grounds of Nobel Peace Prize winner Aung San Suu Kyi, suspiciously violating the terms of her house arrest, just as it had been scheduled to end soon and elections scheduled for 2010 neared. The documentary Burma VJ: Reporting From a Closed Country is one of the best, most moving, gripping and even entertaining films I’ve seen recently.

National League for Democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi, who is glimpsed onscreen in Burma VJ, is the daughter of one of the heroes of Burma’s independence movement against Britain. In 1962, a military coup led by General Ne Win (General “Nit Wit” appears to be the junta’s current leader, LOL) ousted the government, ushering in decades of brutal dictatorial rule. During part of this time the acronym for the junta was “SLORC”, which sounds like the perfect name for a totalitarian regime. Aung San Suu Kyi overwhelmingly won a 1990 election, but the military viciously cracked down on the pro-democracy movement, placing Aung San Suu Kyi under house arrest, where she has languished for most of the last 19 years.

Burma VJ is about the latest mass uprising, 2007’s so-called “Saffron Revolution”, which was led by Buddhist monks, with wide public support. The saffron robe-clad monks play a pivotal role in Burmese society, as moral authorities due to their religious standing, and as an organized force that was beyond complete governmental control. This revolt is one of the few contemporary examples where, in the struggle between church (or temple) and state, the former is the more progressive force.
In addition to the monks, and an outrageously bold young woman who openly defies authorities at a demo (I’d love to meet her!), the other protagonists in Burma VJ are the latter: “video journalists” who dare to not only surreptitiously film the rallies, riots, etc., but somehow manage to make their often amateurishly shot footage available to CNN, the BBC, and the outside world, whose journalists are denied entry to the closed country. One foreign reporter who did manage to get in, a Japanese photojournalist, is seen as he gets shot and killed by Rangoon goons. It is a cinema verite moment as disturbing as the murder committed by Hell’s Angels that the Maysles Brothers caught on celluloid in their 1970 Rolling Stones documentary, Gimme Shelter.

The camerawork by the VJs of the nonprofit collective called the Democratic Voice of Burma (see: http://english.dvb.no/) is often shaky, out of focus, obscured, etc., but this real/reel life videography only serves through its form to heighten the content, and the fact that we are viewing forbidden fruit. Burma’s despotic regime surveills its citizenry with a network of spies, infiltrators, undercover plainclothesmen, etc. George Orwell had served in the security forces in Burma back when it was a British colony, so, to paraphrase the author of 1984 (and of Burmese Days), in Burma, “Big Buddha is watching you.”

The courage and resourcefulness of the VJs is a case study in not only how to use modern technology such as mini-cam cameras and the Internet to report at home and abroad, but in a journo bravado that is sadly lacking in our overpaid anchormen/women, talking heads, etc. Burma’s VJs put America’s MSM to shame.

Three cheers to the director of Burma VJ, Danish documentarian Anders Ostergaard, may he end up in Asgaard. Kudos, too, for the faceless VJ called “Joshua”, who hides his camera in his bag as he confronts the despotic regime and eventually runs for his life. Hip hip hooray for the other VJs who, unlike most of our coddled press corps of professional supplicants, risk life and limb. Blessings to the courageous Buddhist monks, and most of all, to the people, the doc’s mass hero, who took to the streets to fight for democracy. Maybe America should give Burma our First Amendment, since we rarely use it anyway.

I have one small gripe with this Oscilloscope/HBO Documentary Films production: There is a disclaimer stating that Burma VJ includes some reenactments, which I commend the filmmaker for noting. However, in the interests of journalistic accuracy, I think those scenes that are reconstructions should be labeled as such. But this is a minor quibble indeed.

Quite appropriately, Burma VJ took part in the Joris Ivens Competition, named after the Dutch director who helmed classic such as 1937’s Ernest Hemingway-narrated documentary, This Spanish Earth. Like the crusade against Generalissimo Franco’s fascists, the movement against Burma’s despots is an epic story ably told with all the verve and commitment of not only Ivens, but of Soviet documentarian Dziga Vertov. Burma VJ is one of the best revolutionary documentaries made since Vertov’s Kino Pravda (“Film Truth”) series – for those who love freedom and film, don’t miss the Video Journalists’ chronicle of their years of living and filming dangerously!

Free Aung San Suu Kyi!

THEATER REVIEW: LA TRAVIATA

A scene from the L.A. Opera production of Giuseppe Verdi's La Traviata

Bye bye Verdi

By Ed Rampell

Giuseppe Verdi’s La Traviata is based on the same Alexandre Dumas novel about a doomed paramour that the 1936 Greta Garbo classic Camille is also derived from. Because of Verdi’s music, the operatic version is less maudlin than George Cukor’s movie adaptation, although both are highly melodramatic.

La Traviata’s first act is enlivened by some lovely fast paced music, with lyrics espousing insouciance and gaiety. Act I takes place in 1847 at the Parisian home of courtesan Violetta Valery, who was played by Marina Poplaskaya at the premiere (coloratura soprano Elizabeth Futral takes over the role June 10-21). The music paints a transcendent vision of a hedonistic lifestyle, especially as Russian soprano Poplaskaya angelically hits the high notes. After flirtations and protestations of true love, Violetta and Alfredo Germont (played by Italian tenor Massimo Giordano from opening night through May 30, to be replaced by Alexey Dolgov June 3-21) decide to embark on a passionate affair.

But after the couple moves to Violetta’s country home, their idyll of love does not last long -- as it often has a nasty habit of doing, fate intervenes. The second scene in Act II takes place at the party of another courtesan, Flora (mezzo-soprano Margaret Thompson), in what seems to be a bordello. This is scenery and costume designer Giovanni Agostinucci’s only La Traviata set that sparkles. For many L.A. Opera aficionados the sets can be co-stars, and the rest of sets are ho-hum. They lack the flair and verve displayed in recent L.A. Opera productions, such as the cathedral and fortress sets in Tosca, the nightclub and plaza in Carmen, the laboratory in The Fly, etc.

During Flora’s party masqueraders garbed as gypsies and matadors perform lively, enchanting dances in the brothel. But as the tale of star-crossed lovers unfolds, the story, Verdi’s music and Francesco Maria Piave’s Italian libretto become increasingly depressing. Poplaskaya excels as the lady of the camellias expires, but the deathbed routine is a bit too much. To tell the truth, in our day and age of endless war and economic collapse, it’s hard to have much empathy for these self-involved characters obsessed with their own petty lives and affairs, and with little else. La Traviata ends in 1848, the year Karl Marx and Frederick Engels wrote The Communist Manifesto and revolution swept Europe, but -- with the possible exception of the snobbery and moralizing of Alfredo’s father, Giorgio Germont (Polish baritone Andrzej Dobber, May 21-June 6 and baritone Stephen Powell, June 10-21) --one would never know it from this opera. (Who knows -- maybe Europe’s proletariat and peasantry revolted in 1848 to get rid of self-indulgent people like those depicted in La Traviata?)

Relating to the story's bourgeois fripperies today is increasingly difficult to do while Rome burns, and this opera seems oddly out of place with our life and times. Even Richard Wagner’s Ring Cycle, with its themes of destiny, warfare, greed and power struggles, and which L.A. Opera is in the process of presenting, seems more apropos, even though this saga based on Aryan mythology is set eons before La Traviata takes place. Not long ago L.A. Opera presented Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill’s The Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny, which also has courtesan characters and wherein the male lead is tried for the high crime of not having any money. Somehow, this seems to be the type of relevant work opera needs more of during our present hard times.

La Traviata is being performed at L.A. Opera at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion. For more info: 213/972-8001; www.laopera.com..

EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW: LIAM HOWLETT

Invaders Must Die but So-Cal audiences are welcome to check out Prodigy.

The no-politics of dancing

By John Esther

A revered band in certain foot-stomping/patting/cutting arenas, Prodigy hits Southern California for two concerts this week. Tonight, Prodigy will be playing at The Grove of Anaheim. Tomorrow night they will be in Los Angeles at the Palladium.

Coming strong off Prodigy's most successful record to date, Invaders Must Die, the band will feature songs from from the fifth release plus songs from the past. A dance band feeding off live responses, Prodigy is quintessentially a band to experienced from the stage than from a studio.

We recently spoke to Prodigy co-founder/composer/DJ Liam Howlett on what to expect this time around.

JEsther Entertainment: What can audiences in Los Angeles expect from Prodigy this time around?
Liam Howlett: We got a new album. The band is in really good shape. We’ve been playing these tunes for seven or eight months. We just came off of a UK-arena tour. We’re just ready for it.

JE: How does that differ from your previous performances in Los Angeles?
LH: How does any band differ when they play? We’re not going to suddenly burst into flames. We’re there to play the songs.

JE: How does an audience dictate or influence a narrative of a concert? Does it alter which songs you will play at a given time?
LH: The set can change if things feel like they need to move on quicker, if we need to pick up the energy. The songs are programmed, locked down. We tweak shows as the go down, but we’re pretty much locked down.

JE: Will you be playing older songs as well? Are you focusing on the new release?
LH: We play six or seven of the new tunes and some old ones. Some of the old tunes are a bit mixed up, chopped up. It’s more for our benefit really because we’re trying to keep it interesting to ourselves.

JE: Moving onto the new release, what does the title Invaders Must Die imply?
LH: It’s probably the most meaningful title to us as a band. The album is about what happened to us as a band over the last six or seven years. We’ve been through a few internal problems. In 2003 me and Keith weren’t really talking. We didn’t really communicate for a year and a half. People were really happy like, instead of getting us back together, they were all happy to say, “Oh, I hear Keith’s working with him.” It was a lot of kind of anger ‘round me at that time. Later on Keith and I felt we had been invaded. That became one kind of meaning. As time went on we just felt it was a good album title; it seemed to have a good, solid meaning for the band and what we’d been through. It’s almost biographical, you know.

JE: So it is rather personal rather than a reference to the grander scheme of things going on in the world right now?
LH: Yeah, absolutely, Man. We don’t get involved in that shit. This band has always been about escapism, hedonism. That’s what we want, to keep it primal, you know. We’re not interested in politics or world issues.

JE: Is that because the political bands are filling a place and you guys are filling in a void somewhere else?
LH: It’s boring. I see a lot of bands and I don’t think any band has pulled it off. I get really bogged down with issues and shit. I don’t want to see a band that bogs me down in shit like that. It’s a very hard thing to pull off. Rage Against the Machine were very good at it. There hasn’t really been any other bands that have pulled that off.

JE: What are the primary concepts behind the band’s direction with Invaders Must Die?
LH: Basically when we got back together and we were really excited about doing a record; the main thing with this album is that it had to be a “band album.” We weren’t really interested in any other vocal collaborations. We wanted to make a record that incorporated everything good about the band. We wanted to push the vocals more, keep it more melodic. Slightly more melodic without losing what we got. That was the main aim. Halfway through, once we recorded six tracks, we all felt we had something solid here.

JE: The new release sounds more refined than your previous efforts.
LH: For me it feels like a long road to come out of all that personal shit. It feels like it’s up. We really didn’t set out to make an “up record.” It came out quite uplifting. The dark stuff didn’t really materialize.

JE: I especially like “Warriors Dance.” What went behind that song?
LH: That particular track wasn’t meant to be in the record. We were playing at a big party, rave, in England. I’d been in the studio for about five months, haven’t really written anything I was really happy with, and Keith suggested, “Let’s forget about the album. Let’s write a track for that party.” We had 20 years of acid house, it was that kind of celebration going on, so we used that as a kind of focus. Basically we wrote that track. It’s a sample chop-up track. It harks back to early 1990s style. It came really quickly, but it was just meant to be played at that party. We played it a couple of times and then it became like a bit of an anthem. It felt like a really good direction for the record. That was the track that kind of shined a light on maybe some of the other tunes on the album. After that track we rolled on with the other tunes.

JE: Do you enjoy playing some songs more than others?
LH: Yeah, we played most of the album out. We definitely got our favorites. “Take Me to the Hospital” is a big live tune. We played “Thunder” live, but it needs a bit more work. Nine times out of ten, when I’m usually writing the tracks in the studio, we think about what we can play live -- to go straight from the studio to the stage. Some of them work better than others.

JE: Do you keep your audience in mind when you are composing or is it the kind of music you want to hear?
LH: I definitely keep it mind, a bit. A good Prodigy tune is a tune that connects.

JE: Has there ever been surprising reactions to particular Prodigy songs when you play live? LH: We’re more aware of it than other people. There are tunes we’ve only played once on stage. You pretty know if it’s working or not. It has a certain feel. There’s been songs we worked on for a month, played it live and never heard it again. It’s just a feeling you get.

JE: Which leads me to my last inquiry. What do you think about interviews where you talk about Prodigy and the music? Does it serve the music? Should the music speak for itself?
LH: People should check us out live. That’s where it makes sense, a bit. I guess it’s frustrating to try and explain what it is because I don’t know what it is, you know. It’s kind of dance music. To me if people aren’t sure what we’re about they should see us live.

So-Cal Prodigy Dates: Tuesday, May 26th, The Grove of Anaheim 2200 East Katella Ave., Anaheim, 92806, 714/712-2700. Wednesday, May 27, The Palladium 215 W. Sunset Blvd., Hollywood, 90028. 323/962-7600.

THEATER REVIEW: A NUMBER

One of A Number of scenes from the Odyssey Theatre.


One is the loneliest number

By Ed Rampell

When was the last time you saw science fiction presented by a live theatre company? Aside from theatrical productions based on works by Ray Bradbury, I never saw sci-fi produced onstage. Usually, this distinctive genre requires onscreen high tech special effects or a fiction reader’s free ranging imagination.

British playwright Caryl Churchill, noted for socially conscious plays such as the 1987 stock market satire called Serious Money, has tried her adept hand at the futuristic genre usually associated with writers such as H. G. Wells, Arthur C. Clarke, Robert Heinlein, Isaac Asimov and, of course, Bradbury. A Number centers around one of the biggest scientific breakthroughs of our time: cloning.

A Number is a creepy and chilling drama. The interactions between fathers and sons can be complex enough, but in A Number the parent-child relationship is complicated by cloning. The proverbial curtain rises as an adult son, Bernard (deftly portrayed by the appropriately named Steve Cell, who seems to commit a sort of cellular reproduction in multiple parts), confronts his father, Salter (John Heard). Bernard demands to know the deep dark truth: is he the result of cloning? And are there other Bernard look-alikes out there in clone-land? As Bernard pursues the answer – like Mary Shelley’s hubristic Dr. Frankenstein found out long ago – all hell breaks loose when the natural order of things is disrupted by manmade intervention.

The two-man (or, depending on your point of view, five man) one-act play is skillfully directed by Bart DeLorenzo. Cell excels as, shall we say, Bernard squared. Cell’s stage credits include a Broadway production of Death of a Salesman and he has appeared on the 24 TV series. Heard’s IMDB-busting credits include a recurring role on HBO’s The Sopranos series and in movies such as Home Alone. In 2007’s The Great Debaters Heard played a redneck Southern sheriff -- a great piece of ironic casting, as he is actually one of Hollywood’s most progressive actors, who makes a more true to form compelling antiwar speech in 2008’s The Lucky Ones. In A Number, Heard returns to the stage, where he began, winning Obie Awards for off-Broadway productions such as Othello in the 1970s. Heard’s nuanced depiction of Salter, as he slowly comes to grips with science running off the rails, shows that this is one actor who hasn’t “gone Hollywood” and can still trod the boards.

This is a gripping piece of theater, as Bernard and Salter discover that they might not be – well – home alone.

A Number plays through June 21 at the Odyssey Theatre, 2055 S. Sepulveda Blvd. (near Olympic). . For more info: 310/477-2055; www.odysseytheatre.com.

FILM REVIEW: BIG MAN JAPAN

Eye is going to get you. A scene from Big Man Japan.

Beware! This stink monster is coming to a theater near you!

By Don Simpson

Like a folding umbrella or dehydrated seaweed, Big-Sato (Hitoshi Matsumoto) gets big when necessary; which, in Big-Sato’s case, is when big bad monsters (such as The Strangling Monster, The Evil Stare Monster and the Stink Monster) invade Japan. He is always on call; he can never relax, always waiting for the next monster attack. When he gets a call to “bake,” he hops on his moped (or train – depending on the distance) and heads over to the nearest power station to power up. When small, he is a longhaired good for nothing slacker; when big, he resembles Don King in purple briefs.

Big-Sato is the sixth generation of Big Man Japans. Previous generations were well compensated, celebrated and had servants; but work for Big-Sato has slowed down and the glamour, compensation and servants of his ancestors have gone away (his compensation includes a small government salary and advertising revenue from sponsors whose logos are affixed to his body like a human NASCAR).

It would be an understatement to say that Big-Sato is underappreciated; he is downright despised by the people of Japan. He is separated from his wife – she did not want their daughter (whom Big-Sato occasionally meets at the Big Boy restaurant) to follow in her daddy’s footsteps. Big-Sato’s grandfather (the fourth) has dementia and lives in a nursing home, but he occasionally electrocutes himself in order to grow large and terrorize Japan – but every family has its problems.

Written and directed by and starring Japanese comedian Hitoshi Matsumoto, Big Man Japan is a painfully dry and deadpan mockumentary revealing the humble reality of an unreal superhero. Matsumoto playfully pokes fun at the giant superheroes of Japan’s cinematic past (such as Godzilla), as Big Man Japan showcases just how tedious movies about giant superheroes can be.

FILM REVIEW: KASSIM THE DREAM

From guns to punches: A scene from Kassim the Dream.

Fighting His-story

By John Esther

From the terrains of Uganda to the rings of Philadelphia, PA, Kassim "The Dream" Ouma has been fighting for various reasons throughout his entire life.

As chronicled in Kief Davidson's worthwhile documentary, Kassim the Dream, Ouma was kidnapped by the Lord's Resistance Army of Uganda at the age of 6 and forced to kill.

(What the LRA was fighting for is not explained in the film. To put it simply, it was a military power grab in the name of God).

While kids in America were practicing shooting human beings and monsters in their imaginations, video games and play, Ouma and many other kids like him were torturing their fellow men, women, and children. Unlike American kids who may be grounded for not playing fair, failing to prey by the LRA resulted in torture and death. For a child whose only concept of resistance is tyranny a la the LRA, Ouma could not envision anything but cooperation -- something he has not entirely outgrown.

As Ouma grew older his conscious developed along with his boxing skills. At the symbolic age of 18 when Americans officially become adults, Ouma took on a grave amount of responsibility for himself and defected to the United States. This transgression against those now in power back in Uganda resulted in the torture and murder of Ouma's father.

Homeless and unable to speak English, Ouma persevered in America. As he picked up English Ouma also rose up in the boxing ranks, eventually becoming the Junior Middleweight Champion of the World.

Yet the horrors of his childhood continued to bother Ouma. Although he managed to bring his mother and first son to America (he already had one son here), the 29-year-old Ouma wished to return to the homeland. But if he wants to do that he has many questionable obstacles to overcome, some the viewer may wish to cheer for more than others. As Ouma trains for a world title fight against Jermain Taylor in Little Rock, Arkansas, he also needs to appease the notorious government of Uganda that was responsible for his abduction and father's murder if he wants to get home.

A contradicting mixture of joviality and melancholy, courage and cowardice, insight and stupidity, Ouma is a complex character I found worth cheering for at times and sneering at during others. Ouma can crack jokes and wain reflexive on the differences between his grand life in North America and the tragic one back on the African continent. Ouma may have the heart to train heavily before the big fight, but he does not have the discipline to refrain from smoking pot and consuming alcohol (although he does manage to keep his "grease").

Ouma understands the utter poverty of his homeland but embraces, without seemingly any pause, the materialism of his new one without ever noticing the two are indeed connected. That his trainer, "Uncle" Tom Morgan, a strident anti-Bush artist and politically minded American, fails to instill this in the young man warrants some inquiry .

A moving portrait of a complex character who gradually matures as the film goes by, it would be interesting to see what Ouma has done for himself, his past, and his two countries in the future.

THEATER REVIEW: THE ACCOMPLICES

While the Roosevelt administration and American Jewish establishment fiddled, Auschwitz's ovens burned

By Ed Rampell

Bernard Weinraub's The Accomplices, which scored a Drama Desk Award nomination for Best New Play in New York in 2007, was performed to sold-out audiences at L.A.’s Fountain Theatre last season and is now being reprised at the Odyssey Theatre.

This is a superb piece of political theater about the struggle to save European Jewry during WWII. It turns out that Adolph Hitler and Adolf Eichmann were not the only ones responsible for their extermination during the Holocaust. According to journalist-turned-playwright Bernard Weinraub, many Jews also perished during the "Final Solution" due to the insidious policies of the United States' Franklin Delano Roosevelt administration, the British government and – most stomach-turningly of all -- establishment American Jews. While they fiddled, Auschwitz's ovens burned.

One of the most exciting things about theater and film is how they can dramatize actual figures and events, especially those long ago and far away. Weinraub and director Deborah LaVine artfully bring this real life drama alive, as Jewish activists join forces with a playwright to fight the power and anti-Semitism in the land of the free. Stellar Steven Schub is no schlub as Peter Bergson, the activist from what was then called Palestine, who takes on the kingpin of official American Jewry, Rabbi Stephen Wise (Malachi Throne plays the wise guy) and even Roosevelt (Time Winters), during the winter of European Jewry’s discontent and dismemberment.

Surprisingly, one of the heroes of the crusade to save Europe’s Jews from the gas chambers is that Hollywood Golden Age golden boy, Ben Hecht, who won the first original screenplay Oscar, for Josef von Sternberg’s 1927 Underworld, and was La-La-Land’s highest paid screenwriter. In addition to crime stories such as the latter and 1932’s Scarface the former Chicago newspaperman specialized in screwball comedies -- notably William Wellman’s 1937 Nothing Sacred starring Carole Lombard and The Front Page, including various adaptations, such as Howard Hawks’ 1940 His Girl Friday.

During the 1940s Hecht, the son of Jewish immigrants, turned his acid dipped pen, energies and pocketbook to shaming FDR and establishment Jews into rescuing European Jewry from Nazi genocide. As The Accomplices details. Hecht joined Bergson and Merlin (William Dennis Hurley), writing and co-presenting a 1943 memorial pageant entitled We Will Never Die at Madison Square Garden, starring Edward G. Robinson and Paul Muni. It included a reading of Hecht’s harrowing Remember Us, which gave voice to the Shoah’s victims and is dramatized in The Accomplices. Actor Dennis Gersten, who is also (appropriately!) a playwright, portrays Hecht with great verve.

The Accomplices plays through June 14 at the Odyssey Theatre, 2055 S. Sepulveda Blvd. (near Olympic). For more info: call 323-663-1525;or log onto www.FountainTheatre.com.

Editor's note: Although we were having technical difficulties with this article we went ahead and published it due to time constraints.

FILM INTERVIEW: TROUBLE THE WATER

A scene from Trouble the Water.

Directors Tia Lessin and Carl Deal talk about America drowning

By John Esther

The Oscar nominated documentary, Trouble the Water, looks deep and hard at America before, during and after Hurricane Katrina led to the flooding of New Orleans and, in particular, the Bush Administration's typical gross incompetence in responding to the catastrophes.

For an exclusive interview with Tia Lessin and Carl Deal, please click on to: https://www.greencine.com/central/troublethewater

THEATER REVIEW: OUR TOWN

The Actors’ Gang is just Wilder about Thornton

By Ed Rampell

When I think of the Actors’ Gang, I conjure up visions of Clifford Odets storming the theatrical barricades with agitprop, such as the Gang’s productions of the antiwar dramas, The Trial of the Catonsville Nine and Bury the Dead. So my curiosity was piqued by my favorite theater company’s decision to present Thornton Wilder’s 1938 Our Town, for which the playwright deservedly won the Pulitzer Prize (Wilder also won a 1928 Pulitzer for his novel, The Bridge of San Luis Rey). How would this quiet (except, perhaps, for Brian Kimmet’s drolly played not-so-simple Simon Stimson, the high strung church organist and village drunkard) play fit in with the rallying cry canon of the Gang? I was curious to see Wilder get the Gang treatment.

As opposed to the rootin’ tootin’ rousing call of arms in Gang productions such as the Iraq War farce Embedded by artistic director Tim Robbins, Our Town is a philosophical look at small town Americana, and at the big questions of love, life and death. Over the course of three acts the action takes place in Grover’s Corners, New Hampshire, following a series of hayseed New Englanders from 1901 to 1913.

This latter date is key to understanding both Wilder’s original intent, as well as why the usually actor provocateur Gang chose to stage this period piece many regard as “quaint.” In 1913 both the Federal Reserve and income tax were introduced, and the planet was perched on the precipice of World War I. Wilder’s drama subtly shows America’s transition from a rural to an industrialized and increasingly globalized nation, as automobiles replaced horses in what was rapidly becoming more and more of a consumer society. This is the nub of why the Gang finds Our Town to be relevant now – it’s their contention that today, as we confront capitalism’s collapse that we, too, stand on the brink.

The Stage Manager (expertly, adroitly drawn by Gang stalwart Steven M. Porter) who breaks the fourth wall by directly talking to the audience while narrating Our Town says: “They’re waitin’ for something that they feel is comin’.” The Gang asserts that we are, too. The play’s relevancy also lies in its daring to ask those big eternal, existential questions underlying our lives: “What’s it all about? What does it mean?” Still relevant to ask, long after that medieval morality play, Everyman, asked (and unlike Wilder) answered those questions centuries ago.

The multiple character cast includes Andrew E. Wheeler (another Gang veteran who recently rocked the rafters as one of the prophetic Berrigan Brothers in Catonsville) as Mr. Webb, editor of the Grover's Corners Sentinel. In Embedded and offstage, Robbins has been extremely (and justifiably) critical of what passes for a media whose nose for news has been notoriously stuffed, when it comes to coverage (or lack of) of current events such as the Iraq War. So it is particularly interesting to see his theater company’s depiction of a turn-of-the-century journalist, who is sort of the town intellectual, while today’s pundits are often the village idiots who would probably perform character assassination on contemporary Wilders, just as they tried to do to Robbins and his partner, actor Susan Sarandon, for having the temerity of exercising their constitutional rights, and even worse, as things turned out, being factually correct in their dissent. (Say, where are those WMDs, anyway? Has Bush searched Grover’s Corners yet?)

Deftly directed by Justin Zsebe, the expert ensemble cast includes Chris Schultz as George Gibbs, who literally romances the girl next door, a winsome, wistful Vanessa Mizzone as Emily Webb. The play follows them from childhood to becoming sweethearts to, literally, the great beyond. While the second act may initially seem slight, in fact, when seen in the context and totality of the entire drama, it deeply adds to Our Town’s overall impact.

The spectral third act is visually realized by the scenic, lighting and costume designers -- Will Pellegrini, Jacqueline Reid and Suzanne Scott -- and is an optical tour-de-force that fully realizes Wilder’s vision. Our Town insists that everyday life is full of miracles, and that we should value each and every moment, and it is in this transcendental sense that I cherish the experience of seeing the Gang’s thought-and emotion-provoking production of this classic.

Our Town plays through June 6 at the Ivy Substation, 9070 Venice Blvd., Culver City. For more info: (310)838-GANG; http://www.theactorsgang.com/.

NEWPORT BEACH FILM FESTIVAL 2009

Call-kin back to the Lymelife.



Orange County's biggest film festival concludes

By Carlin Nguyen

The 10th Annual Newport Beach Film Festival (NBFF) fromwas more than I expected. The largest film festival in Orange Country was full of glamour, evening parties galore, expensive food, and plenty of popcorn to eat. While I’m still fighting off on popcorn withdrawal symptoms, this is what I remember.

Lymelife –- A nice opening to the festival, Scott Barlett (Rory Culkin) is a fifteen-year-old boy living in the suburbs of Long Island during the late 1970’s with his overly-ambitious father (Alec Baldwin), high-tempered mother (Jill Hennessy) and older brother (Kieran Culkin). A story about two families affected by scares of Lyme disease, director Derrick Martini's comedic, interesting and powerful Lymelife is well-made from the start.

Wake –- A movie where Wedding Crashers meets “Funeral Crasher," Carys Reitman (Bijou Philips) goes to one funeral without knowing anyone, then pretends to know the person who just passed away and finally meets a cute man. Her friend, Shane (Danny Masterson), works at the mortuary and advises against going to random peoples funerals. This movie was alright overall. The acting from the characters was good. However, I’d pass on watching this director Ellie Kanner's movie again.

Our Time –- Is the young generation of today ‘"spoon-fed’"? Not according to this movie. A movie consisting of interviewing people from all over the United States, the audience also gets to know who they are as individuals, Our Time is a raw and honest interpretation about a young generation of people. .

Beautiful –- Following rumors of abducted girls in their neighborhood, Daniel (Aaron Jeffrey), a quiet fourteen-year-old boy, along with Suzy (Tahyna Tozzi), the cute sixteen-year-old neighbor find many surprises along the way. Daniel has two obsessions: one is photography and the other is of course Suzy, the cute girl from across the street. How this movie unravels is amazing and at the end, what drives Daniel to find answers, one answer remains: are they really true or not? I would see this director Dean O'Flaherty's movie again once.

500 Days of Summer –- In director Marc Webb's film, Tom (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) meets Summer (a subtle Zooey Deschanel) and woos her. There’s definitely uncertainty on Tom’s face as he wonders how this relationship might turn out. A different kind of love story, NBFF's closing night film was an enjoyable way to end the festival.

FILM REVIEW: OUTRAGE

He da ho. In the toilet with Senator Larry Craig.


Dick’s doc discloses closeted homophobes who benefit by bashing gays

By Ed Rampell

The bold new documentary Outrage is the most explosive film about gay issues since 2008’s Oscar-winning Milk. Outrage exposes the masquerade of politicians and other notables who have anti-gay public records and private homosexual lifestyles. Writer-director Kirby Dick is more like Dick Tracy, as he deftly deploys the cinematic sleuthing skills he used to reveal the MPAA’s secretive censors in 2006’s This Film is Not Yet Rated to unveil closeted politicos with homophobic public stances.

Dick takes on Pasadena’s Congressman David Dreier (Outrage claims Dreier lost out on a high ranking congressional chairmanship because Christian conservatives suspect he’s homosexual), Florida Gov. Charlie Crist, Rep. Jim McCrery, former RNC Chair Ken Mehlman, former New York Mayor Ed Koch, various Reagan administration staffers, FOX News’ Shepard Smith, the late mogul Malcolm Forbes and the particularly despicable McCarthyite witch-hunter Roy Cohen, etc.

Like a good investigative journalist Dick reports on the policy makers’ votes against gay rights, such as same sex marriage, then rips the alleged facades off of their purported private lives. Former Vice President Dick Cheney’s lesbian daughter, Mary Cheney, is singled out for betraying the gay rights cause, while seeking to market beer and GOP politics to homosexuals, instead of trying to counter Republicans’ homophobic jihads. Dick also skewers the corporate media, including gossip columnists, for their complicity in what the doc calls “a brilliantly orchestrated conspiracy” concealing the secret identities of closeted homophobes in politics, as well as of supposedly straight celebrities in the world of entertainment, such as, allegedly, Calvin Klein. But while these celebs may lead double lives, Dick reserves most of his fire for clandestinely gay inhabitants of the corridors of power who benefit from using their heft to harm homosexuals by pursuing anti-gay agendas, which they also use as a mask to hide behind.

As Hustler’s former Features Editor, Larry Flynt assigned me to expose Idaho Sen. Larry Craig before the infamous Minneapolis airport bathroom bust (the police-recorded toilet tapes open Outrage). But Dick bravely goes far beyond Flynt’s largely unsuccessful attempt to expose the private lives of hypocritical “family values” right-wingers. Those being outted may consider Kirby to be – well – a dick, and it remains to be seen whether the lawsuits will be flying fast and furious after Outrage opens on May 8.

Dick’s interview subjects include: blogger Andrew Sullivan, Rep. Barney Frank, former Human Rights Campaign Director Elizabeth Birch, the first openly gay U.S. Ambassador Jim Hormel, ACT UP’s Larry Kramer, Angels In America playwright Tony Kushner, journalists Wayne Barrett, Michelangelo Signorile, Hilary Rosen, plus archival footage of Harvey Milk, etc. Former GOP Arizona Congressman Jim Kolbe and New Jersey’s ex-Governor Jim McGreevey talk about the liberating relief of coming out of the closet.

Among the documentary’s incisive points are how living a self-denying lie skews one’s world view and that according to one of the doc’s sources, Washington is, allegedly, “the gayest city in America” and couldn’t function without its numerous gay staffers – many of them Republicans. Outrage reserves a special seat in cinematic hell for what activist-blogger Mike Rogers calls “traitors” – homosexual politicos who profiteer from and literally cover their asses with gay bashing.

This is one of the most powerful, trenchant documentaries since the Tidal Wave of Dissident Docs began after 9/11, as Kirby Dick takes his rightful place in the contemporary nonfiction motion picture pantheon, alongside of Michael Moore, Robert Greenwald, Alex Gibney, Errol Morris and Morgan Spurlock. No matter what your sexual orientation is, if you value honesty, social justice and hard-hitting filmmaking, don’t miss the outrageous Outrage!