Actors Equity has re-elected its top two officers in membership voting that also filled 19 open seats on the union's national council.
Equity president Mark Zimmerman, whose Broadway credits include "The Rainmaker" and "Brigadoon", and actress Paige Price, who has returned as first vp, were uncontested. Figures weren't immediately available for how many of Equity's 45,000 actors and stage managers voted in the election.
Zimmerman and Price, who will serve until spring 2009, were first elected to the posts in the fall after the late Patrick Quinn resigned as Equity president to assume the role of executive director.
In the Eastern region of council races, Christine Toy Johnson, Margot Moreland, Paul Ames, Ira Denmark and Thomas Jay Miller were elected in the principal category for five-year terms and Bob Knapp for a four-year term.
In the Eastern chorus category, Jeffrey Bateman and Roger Preston Smith will serve five-year terms and Craig Meyer will serve a three-year term. Eastern stage managers elected to five-year terms are Lisa Jo Snodgrass and John Atherlay.
Equity president Mark Zimmerman, whose Broadway credits include "The Rainmaker" and "Brigadoon", and actress Paige Price, who has returned as first vp, were uncontested. Figures weren't immediately available for how many of Equity's 45,000 actors and stage managers voted in the election.
Zimmerman and Price, who will serve until spring 2009, were first elected to the posts in the fall after the late Patrick Quinn resigned as Equity president to assume the role of executive director.
In the Eastern region of council races, Christine Toy Johnson, Margot Moreland, Paul Ames, Ira Denmark and Thomas Jay Miller were elected in the principal category for five-year terms and Bob Knapp for a four-year term.
In the Eastern chorus category, Jeffrey Bateman and Roger Preston Smith will serve five-year terms and Craig Meyer will serve a three-year term. Eastern stage managers elected to five-year terms are Lisa Jo Snodgrass and John Atherlay.
This review was written for the festival screening of "Fay Grim".PARK CITY -- A story of literature, international intrigue and family loyalty, Hal Hartley's "Fay Grim" exists somewhere between The Marx Brothers and an espionage thriller. A sequel -- something rare in the indie world -- to his 1998 hit "Henry Fool", the film stars Parker Posey in the kind of strong and quirky role that has made her the darling of Sundance. This is definitely not a mainstream item, but it could attract an audience ready for something completely different.
A Hartley film is like an inside joke -- if you get it, it's funny; if not, you will probably come away scratching your head. His films are more about atmosphere, characters (usually eccentrics), snappy dialogue and outlandish plots. "Fay Grim" is no exception.
Since the first film eight years ago, Fay's idiot savant husband Henry Fool (Thomas Jay Ryan) has been on the lam from the law; her brother, Simon (James Urbaniak), a Nobel Prize-winning garbage man/poet from Woodside, Queens, N.Y., is incarcerated for helping Henry escape; and her 14-year-old son Ned (Liam Aiken) has been expelled from school for bringing in pornography.
It turns out that Henry's handwritten confessional filling seven or eight notebooks, the subject of the first film, is really encoded revelations he wrote for the CIA. Threatening to unhinge the balance of power in the world, the notebooks become the subject of an international hunt ranging from New York to Paris to Istanbul and thrust Fay into the midst of terrorist activity.
Hartley obviously loves the Grim family and uses them as a prism to look at some of the mayhem in the world today. When CIA agent Fulbright (Jeff Goldblum) tricks Fay into going to Paris to retrieve Henry's papers, she learns quickly how to handle herself in dangerous situations. She is smart but unsophisticated -- a representative American -- and becomes the target for all sorts of feelings about the U.S. But much of the time, the characters seem more comical than threatening.
Among the people Fay encounters are a Russian flight attendant (Elina Lowensohn), who was Henry's lover, a beautiful British spy with a bum leg (Saffron Burrows) and a bumbling French operative (Harold Schrott). All roads lead to a real live Afghani terrorist (Anatole Taubman), Henry's best friend, who is keeping him in captivity, perhaps for his own good.
It doesn't all quite add up, and even Hartley admits there are some holes in the plot. He seems more interested in testing Fay in situations, watching her grow and teaching some life lessons along the way. Fortunately, Posey, who has worked with Hartley three times before, is an actress who can pull off this kind of material that borders on the absurd but has a deep reservoir of human emotion. In fact, the whole cast, headed by Goldblum, Urbaniak and Lowensohn, seems to be in on the joke.
Working in HD for the first time, Hartley brings some interesting off-kilter camera angles and stylistic touches to the film, like flashing words on the screen to spell out how Fay is putting ideas together in her head. On a small budget, cinematographer Sarah Cawley Cabiya makes international locations like the Bosphorous and Turkish streets look big.
"Fay Grim" is the kind of film you might not get at first (or ever), but the next morning you might find that something about it has embedded itself in your consciousness. That's Hartley's subversive sense of humor at work.
FAY GRIM
Magnolia Pictures
HDNet Films presents a Possible Films production in association with This Is That and Zero Fiction, with the support of Mediaboard Berlin Brandenburg
Credits:
Screenwriter-director-editor: Hal Hartley
Producers: Hal Hartley, Michael S. Ryan, Martin Hagemann, Jason Kliot, Joana Vicente
Executive producers: Ted Hope, Todd Wagner, Mark Cuban
Director of photography: Sarah Cawley Cabiya
Production designer: Richard Sylvarnes
Costume designers: Anette Guther, Daniela Selig
Cast:
Fay Grim: Parker Posey
Fulbright: Jeff Goldblum
Simon Grim: James Urbaniak
Juliet: Saffron Burrows
Ned Grim: Liam Aiken
Bebe: Elina Lowensohn
Carl Fogg: Leo Fitzpatrick
Angus James: Chuck Montgomery
Henry Fool: Thomas Jay Ryan
Running time -- 118 minutes
No MPAA rating...
A Hartley film is like an inside joke -- if you get it, it's funny; if not, you will probably come away scratching your head. His films are more about atmosphere, characters (usually eccentrics), snappy dialogue and outlandish plots. "Fay Grim" is no exception.
Since the first film eight years ago, Fay's idiot savant husband Henry Fool (Thomas Jay Ryan) has been on the lam from the law; her brother, Simon (James Urbaniak), a Nobel Prize-winning garbage man/poet from Woodside, Queens, N.Y., is incarcerated for helping Henry escape; and her 14-year-old son Ned (Liam Aiken) has been expelled from school for bringing in pornography.
It turns out that Henry's handwritten confessional filling seven or eight notebooks, the subject of the first film, is really encoded revelations he wrote for the CIA. Threatening to unhinge the balance of power in the world, the notebooks become the subject of an international hunt ranging from New York to Paris to Istanbul and thrust Fay into the midst of terrorist activity.
Hartley obviously loves the Grim family and uses them as a prism to look at some of the mayhem in the world today. When CIA agent Fulbright (Jeff Goldblum) tricks Fay into going to Paris to retrieve Henry's papers, she learns quickly how to handle herself in dangerous situations. She is smart but unsophisticated -- a representative American -- and becomes the target for all sorts of feelings about the U.S. But much of the time, the characters seem more comical than threatening.
Among the people Fay encounters are a Russian flight attendant (Elina Lowensohn), who was Henry's lover, a beautiful British spy with a bum leg (Saffron Burrows) and a bumbling French operative (Harold Schrott). All roads lead to a real live Afghani terrorist (Anatole Taubman), Henry's best friend, who is keeping him in captivity, perhaps for his own good.
It doesn't all quite add up, and even Hartley admits there are some holes in the plot. He seems more interested in testing Fay in situations, watching her grow and teaching some life lessons along the way. Fortunately, Posey, who has worked with Hartley three times before, is an actress who can pull off this kind of material that borders on the absurd but has a deep reservoir of human emotion. In fact, the whole cast, headed by Goldblum, Urbaniak and Lowensohn, seems to be in on the joke.
Working in HD for the first time, Hartley brings some interesting off-kilter camera angles and stylistic touches to the film, like flashing words on the screen to spell out how Fay is putting ideas together in her head. On a small budget, cinematographer Sarah Cawley Cabiya makes international locations like the Bosphorous and Turkish streets look big.
"Fay Grim" is the kind of film you might not get at first (or ever), but the next morning you might find that something about it has embedded itself in your consciousness. That's Hartley's subversive sense of humor at work.
FAY GRIM
Magnolia Pictures
HDNet Films presents a Possible Films production in association with This Is That and Zero Fiction, with the support of Mediaboard Berlin Brandenburg
Credits:
Screenwriter-director-editor: Hal Hartley
Producers: Hal Hartley, Michael S. Ryan, Martin Hagemann, Jason Kliot, Joana Vicente
Executive producers: Ted Hope, Todd Wagner, Mark Cuban
Director of photography: Sarah Cawley Cabiya
Production designer: Richard Sylvarnes
Costume designers: Anette Guther, Daniela Selig
Cast:
Fay Grim: Parker Posey
Fulbright: Jeff Goldblum
Simon Grim: James Urbaniak
Juliet: Saffron Burrows
Ned Grim: Liam Aiken
Bebe: Elina Lowensohn
Carl Fogg: Leo Fitzpatrick
Angus James: Chuck Montgomery
Henry Fool: Thomas Jay Ryan
Running time -- 118 minutes
No MPAA rating...
- 1/25/2007
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
PARK CITY -- A story of literature, international intrigue and family loyalty, Hal Hartley's "Fay Grim" exists somewhere between the Marx Brothers and an espionage thriller. A sequel -- something rare in the indie world -- to his 1998 hit "Henry Fool", the film stars Parker Posey in the kind of strong and quirky role that has made her the darling of Sundance. This is definitely not a mainstream item, but it could attract an audience ready for something completely different.
A Hartley film is like an inside joke -- if you get it, it's funny; if not, you will probably come away scratching your head. His films are more about atmosphere, characters (usually eccentrics), snappy dialogue and outlandish plots. "Fay Grim" is no exception.
Since the first film eight years ago, Fay's idiot savant husband Henry Fool (Thomas Jay Ryan) has been on the lam from the law; her brother, Simon (James Urbaniak), a Nobel Prize-winning garbage man/poet from Woodside, Queens, N.Y., is incarcerated for helping Henry escape; and her 14-year-old son Ned (Liam Aiken) has been expelled from school for bringing in pornography.
It turns out that Henry's handwritten confessional filling seven or eight notebooks, the subject of the first film, is really encoded revelations he wrote for the CIA. Threatening to unhinge the balance of power in the world, the notebooks become the subject of an international hunt ranging from New York to Paris to Istanbul and thrust Fay into the midst of terrorist activity.
Hartley obviously loves the Grim family and uses them as a prism to look at some of the mayhem in the world today. When CIA agent Fulbright (Jeff Goldblum) tricks Fay into going to Paris to retrieve Henry's papers, she learns quickly how to handle herself in dangerous situations. She is smart but unsophisticated -- a representative American -- and becomes the target for all sorts of feelings about the U.S. But much of the time, the characters seem more comical than threatening.
Among the people Fay encounters are a Russian flight attendant (Elina Lowensohn), who was Henry's lover, a beautiful British spy with a bum leg (Saffron Burrows) and a bumbling French operative (Harold Schrott). All roads lead to a real live Afghani terrorist (Anatole Taubman), Henry's best friend, who is keeping him in captivity, perhaps for his own good.
It doesn't all quite add up, and even Hartley admits there are some holes in the plot. He seems more interested in testing Fay in situations, watching her grow and teaching some life lessons along the way. Fortunately, Posey, who has worked with Hartley three times before, is an actress who can pull off this kind of material that borders on the absurd but has a deep reservoir of human emotion. In fact, the whole cast, headed by Goldblum, Urbaniak and Lowensohn, seems to be in on the joke.
Working in HD for the first time, Hartley brings some interesting off-kilter camera angles and stylistic touches to the film, like flashing words on the screen to spell out how Fay is putting ideas together in her head. On a small budget, cinematographer Sarah Cawley Cabiya makes international locations like the Bosphorous and Turkish streets look big.
"Fay Grim" is the kind of film you might not get at first (or ever), but the next morning you might find that something about it has embedded itself in your consciousness. That's Hartley's subversive sense of humor at work.
FAY GRIM
Magnolia Pictures
HDNet Films presents a Possible Films production in association with This Is That and Zero Fiction, with the support of Mediaboard Berlin Brandenburg
Credits:
Screenwriter-director-editor: Hal Hartley
Producers: Hal Hartley, Michael S. Ryan, Martin Hagemann, Jason Kliot, Joana Vicente
Executive producers: Ted Hope, Todd Wagner, Mark Cuban
Director of photography: Sarah Cawley Cabiya
Production designer: Richard Sylvarnes
Costume designers: Anette Guther, Daniela Selig
Cast:
Fay Grim: Parker Posey
Fulbright: Jeff Goldblum
Simon Grim: James Urbaniak
Juliet: Saffron Burrows
Ned Grim: Liam Aiken
Bebe: Elina Lowensohn
Carl Fogg: Leo Fitzpatrick
Angus James: Chuck Montgomery
Henry Fool: Thomas Jay Ryan
Running time -- 118 minutes
No MPAA rating...
A Hartley film is like an inside joke -- if you get it, it's funny; if not, you will probably come away scratching your head. His films are more about atmosphere, characters (usually eccentrics), snappy dialogue and outlandish plots. "Fay Grim" is no exception.
Since the first film eight years ago, Fay's idiot savant husband Henry Fool (Thomas Jay Ryan) has been on the lam from the law; her brother, Simon (James Urbaniak), a Nobel Prize-winning garbage man/poet from Woodside, Queens, N.Y., is incarcerated for helping Henry escape; and her 14-year-old son Ned (Liam Aiken) has been expelled from school for bringing in pornography.
It turns out that Henry's handwritten confessional filling seven or eight notebooks, the subject of the first film, is really encoded revelations he wrote for the CIA. Threatening to unhinge the balance of power in the world, the notebooks become the subject of an international hunt ranging from New York to Paris to Istanbul and thrust Fay into the midst of terrorist activity.
Hartley obviously loves the Grim family and uses them as a prism to look at some of the mayhem in the world today. When CIA agent Fulbright (Jeff Goldblum) tricks Fay into going to Paris to retrieve Henry's papers, she learns quickly how to handle herself in dangerous situations. She is smart but unsophisticated -- a representative American -- and becomes the target for all sorts of feelings about the U.S. But much of the time, the characters seem more comical than threatening.
Among the people Fay encounters are a Russian flight attendant (Elina Lowensohn), who was Henry's lover, a beautiful British spy with a bum leg (Saffron Burrows) and a bumbling French operative (Harold Schrott). All roads lead to a real live Afghani terrorist (Anatole Taubman), Henry's best friend, who is keeping him in captivity, perhaps for his own good.
It doesn't all quite add up, and even Hartley admits there are some holes in the plot. He seems more interested in testing Fay in situations, watching her grow and teaching some life lessons along the way. Fortunately, Posey, who has worked with Hartley three times before, is an actress who can pull off this kind of material that borders on the absurd but has a deep reservoir of human emotion. In fact, the whole cast, headed by Goldblum, Urbaniak and Lowensohn, seems to be in on the joke.
Working in HD for the first time, Hartley brings some interesting off-kilter camera angles and stylistic touches to the film, like flashing words on the screen to spell out how Fay is putting ideas together in her head. On a small budget, cinematographer Sarah Cawley Cabiya makes international locations like the Bosphorous and Turkish streets look big.
"Fay Grim" is the kind of film you might not get at first (or ever), but the next morning you might find that something about it has embedded itself in your consciousness. That's Hartley's subversive sense of humor at work.
FAY GRIM
Magnolia Pictures
HDNet Films presents a Possible Films production in association with This Is That and Zero Fiction, with the support of Mediaboard Berlin Brandenburg
Credits:
Screenwriter-director-editor: Hal Hartley
Producers: Hal Hartley, Michael S. Ryan, Martin Hagemann, Jason Kliot, Joana Vicente
Executive producers: Ted Hope, Todd Wagner, Mark Cuban
Director of photography: Sarah Cawley Cabiya
Production designer: Richard Sylvarnes
Costume designers: Anette Guther, Daniela Selig
Cast:
Fay Grim: Parker Posey
Fulbright: Jeff Goldblum
Simon Grim: James Urbaniak
Juliet: Saffron Burrows
Ned Grim: Liam Aiken
Bebe: Elina Lowensohn
Carl Fogg: Leo Fitzpatrick
Angus James: Chuck Montgomery
Henry Fool: Thomas Jay Ryan
Running time -- 118 minutes
No MPAA rating...
- 1/25/2007
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
Sundance Film Festival
PARK CITY -- You don't have to be paranoid for "Strange Culture" to scare the hell out of you. The film revolves around the ongoing legal case of the U.S. government v. Steve Kurtz, quite possibly the grossest judicial overreaching in the post-Sept. 11 world. If this isn't the grossest instance, then heaven protect anyone who wants to think and speak freely in this country.
Despite coverage in major newspapers and TV shows, the Kurtz case still has not received the media spotlight it deserves. Perhaps Lynn Hershman-Leeson's electrifying and alarming film will change this. Like last year's festival entry, "An Inconvenient Truth", the film needs a distributor that understands the solid business and political reasons for releasing the film.
Even before the tragedy of May 11, 2004, Kurtz's own work operated below the radar. A long-haired associate professor of art at SUNY Buffalo and founding member of the theater troupe Critical Art Ensemble, Kurtz was then working on an exhibition for the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art that confronted the hot-button topic of genetically modified food. When his wife, Hope, died early that morning in her sleep of heart failure, Kurtz's called 911.
The paramedics grew suspicious of the professor's art supplies, which often consisted of petri dishes containing bacteria ordered over the Internet. The FBI was called in, and soon agents in hazmat suits were rifling through his house. They impounded books, computers and even his wife's body. He immediately was branded a "bioterrorist" and arrested.
Two and a half years later, the case still is pending in federal court. Because his lawyer advised him not to talk about certain aspects of the case, Hershman-Leeson has chosen to explore the situation in an experimental approach. Actors -- notably Thomas Jay Ryan as Steve and Tilda Swinton as Hope -- dramatize certain scenes. News footage, comic book drawings and talking-head interviews with colleagues and fellow artists fill in other gaps.
What emerges is a conspiracy, all right -- a conspiracy in the Justice Department with two clear agendas. In an effort to manufacture a crime where there is no obvious one, prosecutors have charged Kurtz and his longtime collaborator, Robert Ferrell, with federal mail and wire fraud. By using civil law to bring criminal charges, the Justice Department is attempting to expand its powers over U.S. citizens. The other agenda is to silence the scientific and artistic community in the debate over genetically modified foods. The government and agribusiness have a huge investment in GMF, so they do not appreciate people like Kurtz raising questions about Frankenfoods.
The most telling staged scene has one of Kurtz's colleagues (Josh Kornbluth) present a petition on his behalf to his students. This provokes a heart-wrenching debate by the young people about the wisdom of signing such a document. How might linking their names with Kurtz's restrict future job opportunities and their freedom of movement in and out of a country where a president asserts the right to label anyone he chooses as a terrorist?
With disarming directness and intriguing indirectness, Hershman-Leeson has made a document -- though not quite a documentary -- that speaks volumes about where free expression stands today in the U.S. in its ceaseless combat with the forces of repression.
STRANGE CULTURE
L5 Prods.
Credits:
Screenwriter-director-editor: Lynn Hershman-Leeson
Producers: Lynn Hershman-Leeson, Lise Swenson, Steven Beer
Executive producers: Melina Jampolis, Jessie Fuller
Director of photography: Hiro Narita
Music: The Residents
Co-producers: Loren Smith, Barbara Tomber
Cast:
Tilda Swinton, Thomas Jay Ryan, Peter Coyote, Josh Kornbluth, Steve Kurtz
Running time -- 75 minutes
No MPAA rating...
PARK CITY -- You don't have to be paranoid for "Strange Culture" to scare the hell out of you. The film revolves around the ongoing legal case of the U.S. government v. Steve Kurtz, quite possibly the grossest judicial overreaching in the post-Sept. 11 world. If this isn't the grossest instance, then heaven protect anyone who wants to think and speak freely in this country.
Despite coverage in major newspapers and TV shows, the Kurtz case still has not received the media spotlight it deserves. Perhaps Lynn Hershman-Leeson's electrifying and alarming film will change this. Like last year's festival entry, "An Inconvenient Truth", the film needs a distributor that understands the solid business and political reasons for releasing the film.
Even before the tragedy of May 11, 2004, Kurtz's own work operated below the radar. A long-haired associate professor of art at SUNY Buffalo and founding member of the theater troupe Critical Art Ensemble, Kurtz was then working on an exhibition for the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art that confronted the hot-button topic of genetically modified food. When his wife, Hope, died early that morning in her sleep of heart failure, Kurtz's called 911.
The paramedics grew suspicious of the professor's art supplies, which often consisted of petri dishes containing bacteria ordered over the Internet. The FBI was called in, and soon agents in hazmat suits were rifling through his house. They impounded books, computers and even his wife's body. He immediately was branded a "bioterrorist" and arrested.
Two and a half years later, the case still is pending in federal court. Because his lawyer advised him not to talk about certain aspects of the case, Hershman-Leeson has chosen to explore the situation in an experimental approach. Actors -- notably Thomas Jay Ryan as Steve and Tilda Swinton as Hope -- dramatize certain scenes. News footage, comic book drawings and talking-head interviews with colleagues and fellow artists fill in other gaps.
What emerges is a conspiracy, all right -- a conspiracy in the Justice Department with two clear agendas. In an effort to manufacture a crime where there is no obvious one, prosecutors have charged Kurtz and his longtime collaborator, Robert Ferrell, with federal mail and wire fraud. By using civil law to bring criminal charges, the Justice Department is attempting to expand its powers over U.S. citizens. The other agenda is to silence the scientific and artistic community in the debate over genetically modified foods. The government and agribusiness have a huge investment in GMF, so they do not appreciate people like Kurtz raising questions about Frankenfoods.
The most telling staged scene has one of Kurtz's colleagues (Josh Kornbluth) present a petition on his behalf to his students. This provokes a heart-wrenching debate by the young people about the wisdom of signing such a document. How might linking their names with Kurtz's restrict future job opportunities and their freedom of movement in and out of a country where a president asserts the right to label anyone he chooses as a terrorist?
With disarming directness and intriguing indirectness, Hershman-Leeson has made a document -- though not quite a documentary -- that speaks volumes about where free expression stands today in the U.S. in its ceaseless combat with the forces of repression.
STRANGE CULTURE
L5 Prods.
Credits:
Screenwriter-director-editor: Lynn Hershman-Leeson
Producers: Lynn Hershman-Leeson, Lise Swenson, Steven Beer
Executive producers: Melina Jampolis, Jessie Fuller
Director of photography: Hiro Narita
Music: The Residents
Co-producers: Loren Smith, Barbara Tomber
Cast:
Tilda Swinton, Thomas Jay Ryan, Peter Coyote, Josh Kornbluth, Steve Kurtz
Running time -- 75 minutes
No MPAA rating...
- 1/22/2007
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
Opens Friday, Feb. 28
The cliches gather faster than the Cape Cod mists in "Dischord" (sic), an atmospheric but insufferably soapy drama that asks the question: Can a pair of creatively stifled married musicians find harmony in an isolated cabin, especially with the unexpected arrival of the husband's estranged, psychotic brother?
Directed, written, edited and produced by award-winning short-film maker Mark Wilkinson, the no-budget picture scrapes together some effectively moody production value for the money, but it can never get past the musty story line and secondhand dialogue.
Meet Gypsy (Annunziata Gianzero), a lovely looking alt-rock violinist who hangs up her bow and goes AWOL on the eve of a world tour. Jaded by the nasty commercialism that has tainted the purity of her best musical intentions, she flees with her New Age composer husband Lucian (Andrew Borba) to his remote, off-season Cape Cod cabin, where she hopes to get back in touch with her inner gypsy.
As if the egotistical Lucian isn't having enough trouble trying to write a follow-up to a hit CD that prominently featured his wife's input, he also has to contend with a strained visit from his long-lost, tormented brother, Jimmy Thomas Jay Ryan), who shows up at the cabin fresh from having just beaten his girlfriend to death and dumping her in the river.
By showing this sordid bit of business at the beginning of the film, Wilkinson has robbed it of a valuable is-he-or-isn't-he (a psycho murderer) tension. Instead, he tosses in a less effective ticking-bomb element in the form of a retired detective (Dick Bakalyan) who picks up Jimmy's trail and will hopefully get to him before he kills again.
Even without that element of mystery, "Dischord" puts a strain on viewer involvement with the kind of bland, two-dimensional lead characters who are known to spill their guts out to dippy, all-seeing beachcombers while expressing the desire to be able to fly and dream again.
It's a shame they didn't have more interesting things to say and do, because cinematographer Ernst Kubitza managed to convincingly evoke that restless New England winter gloom despite the considerable time and budget constrictions, while John McCarthy's nicely subdued score compensates for some of the script's shriller passages.
DISCHORD
Artistic License Films
Ivy Media Group
Credits:
Director-screenwriter-producer-editor: Mark Wilkinson
Director of photography: Ernst Kubitza
Production designers: Natacha Alpert, Erica Switzer
Costume designers
Dane Peterson, Hana Rausalova, Maria Sparagna
Music: John McCarthy
Cast:
Jimmy: Thomas Jay Ryan
Gypsy: Annunziata Gianzero
Detective Dunbarton: Dick Bakalyan
Lucian: Andrew Borba
The Beachcomber: Rick Wessler
Billy Dunbarton: Michael DeLuise
Running time -- 102 minutes
No MPAA rating...
The cliches gather faster than the Cape Cod mists in "Dischord" (sic), an atmospheric but insufferably soapy drama that asks the question: Can a pair of creatively stifled married musicians find harmony in an isolated cabin, especially with the unexpected arrival of the husband's estranged, psychotic brother?
Directed, written, edited and produced by award-winning short-film maker Mark Wilkinson, the no-budget picture scrapes together some effectively moody production value for the money, but it can never get past the musty story line and secondhand dialogue.
Meet Gypsy (Annunziata Gianzero), a lovely looking alt-rock violinist who hangs up her bow and goes AWOL on the eve of a world tour. Jaded by the nasty commercialism that has tainted the purity of her best musical intentions, she flees with her New Age composer husband Lucian (Andrew Borba) to his remote, off-season Cape Cod cabin, where she hopes to get back in touch with her inner gypsy.
As if the egotistical Lucian isn't having enough trouble trying to write a follow-up to a hit CD that prominently featured his wife's input, he also has to contend with a strained visit from his long-lost, tormented brother, Jimmy Thomas Jay Ryan), who shows up at the cabin fresh from having just beaten his girlfriend to death and dumping her in the river.
By showing this sordid bit of business at the beginning of the film, Wilkinson has robbed it of a valuable is-he-or-isn't-he (a psycho murderer) tension. Instead, he tosses in a less effective ticking-bomb element in the form of a retired detective (Dick Bakalyan) who picks up Jimmy's trail and will hopefully get to him before he kills again.
Even without that element of mystery, "Dischord" puts a strain on viewer involvement with the kind of bland, two-dimensional lead characters who are known to spill their guts out to dippy, all-seeing beachcombers while expressing the desire to be able to fly and dream again.
It's a shame they didn't have more interesting things to say and do, because cinematographer Ernst Kubitza managed to convincingly evoke that restless New England winter gloom despite the considerable time and budget constrictions, while John McCarthy's nicely subdued score compensates for some of the script's shriller passages.
DISCHORD
Artistic License Films
Ivy Media Group
Credits:
Director-screenwriter-producer-editor: Mark Wilkinson
Director of photography: Ernst Kubitza
Production designers: Natacha Alpert, Erica Switzer
Costume designers
Dane Peterson, Hana Rausalova, Maria Sparagna
Music: John McCarthy
Cast:
Jimmy: Thomas Jay Ryan
Gypsy: Annunziata Gianzero
Detective Dunbarton: Dick Bakalyan
Lucian: Andrew Borba
The Beachcomber: Rick Wessler
Billy Dunbarton: Michael DeLuise
Running time -- 102 minutes
No MPAA rating...
- 2/28/2003
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
Tale of 'Paycock' Doesn't Always Shine / But Crowley version of classic boasts some fine-feathered performances
By Frank Scheck
Sean O'Casey's 1924 classic about a poor Irish family caught up in the "troubles" is a notoriously difficult theatrical work to pull off, and the Roundabout's estimable but flawed revival exemplifies the hurdles. It is running indefinitely at the Gramercy Theatre in New York.
Some productions of "Juno and the Paycock" emphasize the comic aspects in the story of a family experiencing a financial windfall that is suddenly taken away from them, while others focus on the drama's political and tragic elements. Director John Crowley's rendition concentrates more on the latter, with mixed results.
Although powerfully moving at times, the production has a dissociated, removed quality that prevents it from coming fully to life. Still, the quality of the piece shines through, and several excellent performances more than make up for any deficiencies.
Set in 1922, the play deals with the travails of the Boyle family, headed by the dissolute Capt. Jack Boyle (Jim Norton), who is more interested in pursuing opportunities for drunkenness than employment. He is accompanied in these pursuits by his best friend, the equally shiftless Joxer (Thomas Jay Ryan).
The real head of the family is the matriarch, Juno (Dearbhla Molloy), who tries to keep the household running despite the lack of income. She must contend with her son, Johnny (Jason Butler Harner), who lost an arm during the civil war and who recently was shot in the hip during a riot, and her unmarried union-organizing daughter, Mary (Gretchen Cleevely), who, it turns out, is pregnant.
The Boyles' lot promises to improve with the news of a large financial inheritance, but, as with the general political situation in Ireland, their good fortune is short-lived. By the play's end, tragedy has revisited their lives. The turmoil is summed up by a famous line delivered by the captain: "The whole world's in a terrible state o' chassis."
Crowley's production begins by projecting archival film footage illustrating the turmoil of 20th-century Irish history, and it emphasizes the bleakness of the work, which is indeed considerable. But the director is less successful in capturing the comic richness that is also a large part of it. This is particularly evident in the scenes between Jack and Joxer, which never really come to life.
On the other hand, Molloy, as the aggrieved but strong-willed Juno -- she played the role in an acclaimed Donmar Warehouse production last year, also directed by Crowley -- is wonderfully moving, conveying with fierce intensity her character's indomitable spirit and love for her family.
Norton, an Irish actor seen on Broadway last season in "The Weir", is nearly as fine. But in general, the American cast members, including Ryan, are less effective.
JUNO AND THE PAYCOCK
Presented by the Roundabout Theatre Co.
Credits: Playwright: Sean O'Casey; Director: John Crowley; Set and costume designer: Rae Smith; Lighting designer: Brian MacDevitt; Original music and sound designer: Donald DiNicola. Cast: Juno Boyle: Dearbhla Molloy; Capt. Jack Boyle: Jim Norton; Joxer Daly: Thomas Jay Ryan; Jerry Devine: Norbert Leo Butz; Mary Boyle: Gretchen Cleevely; Charles Bentham: Liam Craig.
By Frank Scheck
Sean O'Casey's 1924 classic about a poor Irish family caught up in the "troubles" is a notoriously difficult theatrical work to pull off, and the Roundabout's estimable but flawed revival exemplifies the hurdles. It is running indefinitely at the Gramercy Theatre in New York.
Some productions of "Juno and the Paycock" emphasize the comic aspects in the story of a family experiencing a financial windfall that is suddenly taken away from them, while others focus on the drama's political and tragic elements. Director John Crowley's rendition concentrates more on the latter, with mixed results.
Although powerfully moving at times, the production has a dissociated, removed quality that prevents it from coming fully to life. Still, the quality of the piece shines through, and several excellent performances more than make up for any deficiencies.
Set in 1922, the play deals with the travails of the Boyle family, headed by the dissolute Capt. Jack Boyle (Jim Norton), who is more interested in pursuing opportunities for drunkenness than employment. He is accompanied in these pursuits by his best friend, the equally shiftless Joxer (Thomas Jay Ryan).
The real head of the family is the matriarch, Juno (Dearbhla Molloy), who tries to keep the household running despite the lack of income. She must contend with her son, Johnny (Jason Butler Harner), who lost an arm during the civil war and who recently was shot in the hip during a riot, and her unmarried union-organizing daughter, Mary (Gretchen Cleevely), who, it turns out, is pregnant.
The Boyles' lot promises to improve with the news of a large financial inheritance, but, as with the general political situation in Ireland, their good fortune is short-lived. By the play's end, tragedy has revisited their lives. The turmoil is summed up by a famous line delivered by the captain: "The whole world's in a terrible state o' chassis."
Crowley's production begins by projecting archival film footage illustrating the turmoil of 20th-century Irish history, and it emphasizes the bleakness of the work, which is indeed considerable. But the director is less successful in capturing the comic richness that is also a large part of it. This is particularly evident in the scenes between Jack and Joxer, which never really come to life.
On the other hand, Molloy, as the aggrieved but strong-willed Juno -- she played the role in an acclaimed Donmar Warehouse production last year, also directed by Crowley -- is wonderfully moving, conveying with fierce intensity her character's indomitable spirit and love for her family.
Norton, an Irish actor seen on Broadway last season in "The Weir", is nearly as fine. But in general, the American cast members, including Ryan, are less effective.
JUNO AND THE PAYCOCK
Presented by the Roundabout Theatre Co.
Credits: Playwright: Sean O'Casey; Director: John Crowley; Set and costume designer: Rae Smith; Lighting designer: Brian MacDevitt; Original music and sound designer: Donald DiNicola. Cast: Juno Boyle: Dearbhla Molloy; Capt. Jack Boyle: Jim Norton; Joxer Daly: Thomas Jay Ryan; Jerry Devine: Norbert Leo Butz; Mary Boyle: Gretchen Cleevely; Charles Bentham: Liam Craig.
- 10/24/2000
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
IMDb.com, Inc. takes no responsibility for the content or accuracy of the above news articles, Tweets, or blog posts. This content is published for the entertainment of our users only. The news articles, Tweets, and blog posts do not represent IMDb's opinions nor can we guarantee that the reporting therein is completely factual. Please visit the source responsible for the item in question to report any concerns you may have regarding content or accuracy.