Theater/Film Reviews
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Race
It's David Mamet, so we expect bad language. It's David Mamet, and the cast includes a woman, which predicts that the woman is going to throw a monkey wrench into the works, as she does in "Oleanna" and "Speed-the-Plow." It's David Mamet, which means we're in for an Indianapolis-type pace, sudden moves and some very
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Pina
Perhaps good things do happen if you wait — I finally saw a movie in 3-D where the process belonged, and actually made the movie more enjoyable. Of course, it’s a spectacularly beautiful piece of work, a documentary about the great German choreographer and dancer, Pina Bausch, written and directed by Wim Wenders, a leader
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Oscar-Nominated Shorts
The Academy Awards are a very big deal to moviegoers and fans, as well as to the film community. The short subjects get very short shrift. I understand that short shrift is better than no shrift at all, but the 10 candidates for Best Short Subject — five Live Action and five Animation — go
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Playland
Athol Fugard, the great South African playwright and anti-apartheid crusader, used to be seen regularly on St. Louis stages. He's been away for a while, driven by nothing more than coincidence, but is back at the Mustard Seed Theatre. A solid production of his 20-year-old "Playland," with passionate performances by Erik Kilpatrick and Charlie Barron,
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Urinetown: The Musical
Political theater stands tallest, hand-in-hand with satire, which continues to laugh, take curtain calls and ignore George S. Kaufman's remark that it's what closes on Saturday night. They're the leading players in "Urinetown: the Musical," which opened at the Tower Grove Abbey last night in a wild and woolly, foolish and frantic, perfectly delightful production
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Way to Heaven
The theater is an excellent place to look at what is real and what is false, and whether what is occurring on stage actually happened, and why, or if the playwright is taking us along on a leap of fantasy directly from his, or her, imagination. "Way to Heaven," which opened last night as a
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Albert Nobbs
With Glenn Close and Janet McTeer providing dazzling performances, the sad, intimate, always-reaching-but-never-touching story that is "Albert Nobbs," falls short of excellence, a conclusion I intensely disliked having to reach. But the movie, which opens here today, fails to strike the necessary chord. Perhaps the brilliant Close is just too tightly wrapped, disappearing into herself
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Man on a Ledge
We're not very far into "Man on a Ledge," when we realize that Nick Cassidy (Sam Worthington) is no more going to jump off the Roosevelt Hotel window ledge than you and I. But what's he doing out there? That comes clear a little while later as this hodge-podge of a movie combines dozens of
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Oleanna
Clarence Thomas has been a U.S. Supreme Court Justice since 1991, approved by the Senate in a 52-48 vote, the narrowest confirmation margin ever, amid a lot of sexual harassment discussion involving Anita Hill. A year later, "ripped from the headlines" in "Law & Order" style, "Oleanna" opened on Broadway as David Mamet's take on