Lightning strikes again at CityArts this week. Starting with Valerie Gladstone's dance preview and reviews of the films I'm Carolyn Parker and End of Watch, CityArts brings you the best in NYC's cultural offerings.
In "Lightning Strikes," Gladstone looks behind the scenes at the collaboration between choreographer Garth Fagan and musician Wynton Marsalis at the Brooklyn Academy of Music.
In "Diary of an American Survivor," Editor Armond White reviews the new Jonathan Demme documentary I'm Carolyn Parker about a charming, irrepressible woman who survived Hurricane Katrina and other personal natural disasters to be a real-life figure of spiritual resilience.
White's review of the new police procedural End of Watch examines the police genre and the current state of film acting by Jake Gyllenhaal and Michael Pena and how it changes the genre in his article "Cops Who Smile." Each of these cultural events strike like a bolt out of the blue and bring thinking back to the arts. |
|
Choreographer Garth Fagan and co-founder and artistic director of Jazz at Lincoln Center Wynton Marsalis met through their love of jazz. More than 30 years ago, Fagan took his company to hear Marsalis play, and afterward Marsalis caught rehearsals of Garth Fagan Dance. They were blown away by each other's artistry. "We share the same sensibility and worldview," Marsalis said recently on his way to a rehearsal in Brooklyn. "We believe in the oneness of expression." Read more here.
I'm Carolyn Parker must be categorized as a documentary since it is a nonfiction, slice-of-life account of a real person, but it transcends genre classification because it is really an extraordinary character study.
Director Jonathan Demme went to Louisiana after the Hurricane Katrina debacle in 2006, but he had a different purpose than those carpetbagger journalists and filmmakers who used the catastrophe to show off their bleeding-heart sanctimony. This film is part of Demme's original project to document the American issue of "right to return" when citizens of New Orleans' Lower Ninth Ward were denied the right to reclaim their flooded homes. Demme found a great subject in charming, articulate, middle-aged Parker, who survived an unsuccessful marriage, assorted career ventures and genuine tests of faith as well as a hurricane. Read more here.
The badinage between Jake Gyllenhaal and Michael Peņa as a team of L.A. cops in End of Watch might be the best tandem acting in any movie this year. This is worth noting given the absurd acclaim for the look-at-me performances by Joaquin Phoenix and Philip Seymour Hoffman in The Master. Gyllenhaal and Peņa don't seem to be acting; they seem to be having a good time creating the kind of casual camaraderie that happens in the workplace, only the venue is a patrol car prowling or careening through the streets of Los Angeles. Both men smile beautifully. Read more here.
|
