Still hilarious

Aaron's invitation

Take note, Indie Theater Companies looking for an honest, thoughtful, public appraisal.

Dear Artist,

Are you involved in a new, full production--as a writer, director, actor, stagehand, &c.--that you think is good? Is it running for at least a week (four performances)? If so, feel free to send me information and an invite to your show. If I am not already booked, I will come and write about it here. (Be forewarned: I will not pull punches that are squarely deserved.)

Sincerely,
Aaron

New York Innovative Theatre Awards

After a chat last night with Shay and Nick, I can announce that I'll be writing the presenters text for the New York Innovative Theatre Awards this year. Absolutely an honor to be invited to do this. I've never done anything quite like it before.

Because I care about each one of you personally

I give you this, found here.

NY Innovative Theater Awards

I've got a very interesting meeting with the New York Innovative Theater Awards crew tomorrow. I'll keep you posted about the details. Suffice to say, I'm excited.

Summer Movies

I am an unabashed fan of summer movie season. Screw the Oscars. I want giant robots, guys hanging off of cliffs, and cartoons.

Here, for my own edification and your amusement, is my rundown of this year's summer flicks. I do not count Public Enemies (it's not a summer movie, it's a Michael Mann movie in the 4th of July slot while Will Smith is on vacation) and Harry Potter. Harry Potter has too many spoilers in libraries and bookstores. Also don't count Away We Go, because come on. Come. On.

I have not seen: The Hangover, Night at the Museum, or Angels & Demons.

1. UP

If you haven't seen UP, you're a fucking imbecile. Are you busy being a good citizen? Fuck you. Go see this incredibly sad and beautiful movie. Or I'll cry all over your so-so important friggin' shoes. This is the best Pixar film to date, better than Wall-E (which I loved).

...are you still reading this? Go cry and watch UP. GO! Now. The rest is hogwash!

2. STAR TREK

I know a lot of people would put Drag Me to Hell above Star Trek. I thought it over a fair amount. For me, they're both pieces of genre hackery done by directors and writers who know the form backwards. Star Trek edges out Drag Me To Hell, for me, because it simply does more tricks that are hard. It allowed for a completely new cast of actors and deviations for the original Star Trek, without tossing out the existing mythology. Here's a reinvention that doesn't have to pretend George Clooney never wore the batsuit. It was funny without being lunkheaded, exciting without being confusing, and the cast is appealing and fresh. It truly made something that felt new from something we all know well.

3. DRAG ME TO HELL

Did the opposite. It did exactly what we wanted it to do, with gusto. It's a playful and raucous, if modest, return to horror for Sam Raimi. What more is there to say? It made me wince and holler. Did it surprise me? Not a lick. I knew it would be solid, and it was.

4. TRANSFORMERS: REVENGE OF THE FALLEN

Yes, I put this above the two below. And yes, it's a racist, endless, headache inducing, over-indulgent mess. About half-way through the movie, a giant robot that was apparently stolen from Douglas Adams tossed out notes gives our main characters an exposition scene that changes the plot entirely for no reason. The only character anyone wants to see, Optimus Prime, spends 3/4th of the movie under a tarp.

Why is this better than the two below?

Because it is, in its ultimate unending crass monstrous idiocy, a sort of high-water mark for summer movies. It was apparently made by the US Army, a toy company, some computers, and a set of explosive devices. Not that you can even tell. Whenever there is more than one robot on screen, Michael Bay pulls in really close so you can't tell what the fuck is going on. Half the movie is a blur with the sound of a jet behind it.

It has moments of such beautiful awfulness. When "The Fallen" looks up and pronounces "NOW I WILL TAKE YOUR SUN!" to no one. When our heroes look up to see the arrival of the cavalry and say "It's the Jordanians!" It is, by all reasonable standards, dreadful in so many ways that it transforms into a metal monster, roars, crushes you beneath its truck-feet, and leaves you for dead.

I mean, seriously. Seriously. This is the kind of movie you can talk about with your friends for hours. "Why can the Decepticons turn into college girls?" "Why couldn't Starscream talk in the last one?" "Why are the Trees from Lord of the Rings in Shia's heaven?"

I still want to see a movie just with Kevin Dunn and Julie White. They are great in both of these movies, as, um characters. Clearly actors who were just told "Have fun." And they did.

5. TERMINATOR: SALVATION

Man, I wanted this to be good. It does try, here and there, to walk and talk like a Terminator movie. It even has a crowd pleasing moment or two. It is, though, the shell of a better movie, with a few rather bad ideas and editing that seems to say "100 minutes long or die!"

Sure, it's not as actively offensive as Transformers, but it seems so inoffensive as to be forgettable. Transformers rises to heights of absurdity yet unheard of. Terminator: Salvation doesn't bother. The ending is sticky sweet (a strange choice) and John Connor's struggles become the generic struggles of Apocolypse Hero #45. No one makes an impression. Sure, there are a few good robot scenes, and one rockin' cameo. But it's the shadow, the echo, of far better movies.

And Helena Botham Carter? Yeowch.

6. X-MEN ORIGINS: WOLVERINE

This movie sucked my hog. Think about this: in X2 (a really good movie) they show us Wolverine's past in a series of cool flashbacks, and then we wind up in the very room where he was turned into a metal boned freak. Then, he battles another victim of the same program.

In this endless movie, that appears to have been shot with the budget of a TV movie, we see the exact same ground covered far worse. We also meet Sabertooth again, even though we're never told why he is now a Shakespearean actor, and not a hulking pro wrestler. Ryan Reynolds? Will.i.am? Some dude with long hair playing Gambit? All of this made me want to bleed in my popcorn.

Wolverine was awesome in the Bryan Singer movies. He's not even offensively treadful in X-Men: The Last Stand. In Origins he is empty of all that was once cool. He chats with old people. He gets gushy with girls in cabins. He is a little boy in a frilly outfit.

To top it all off, the movie ends with him losing his memory because he is shot in his unbreakable head. I was waiting for someone to say "Have the protocol droid's mind wiped."

___

Here endeth my self-indulgence.

New Wilco Album Tomorrow

Lookin' forward to it.

Thanks

To everyone who came to see GLEE CLUB!

Update: A few extra seats!

The Brick has kindly added a row to our seating for the Sunday performance, opening up a handful of seats.

Here's the link to purchase tickets for Sunday 6/28 at 3pm.

Glee Club final performance is sold out

Well...Sunday is the final performance of Glee Club and it is, as of now, our second sold out show. Thanks to everyone who has seen it, and those who are coming on Sunday. The cast and staging and music are all exceptional, I'm proud of the work being done, and to have my name attached to it.

We may try (not sure) to add a few extra seats if we can, so watch this space if you're planning on walking up and trying to get a seat.

We are looking into a possible extension, but with a large cast to schedule, it's hard to say if we'll be able to add dates. There are some talks about maybe just bringing the show back for a full run next year, on its own. We'll see. That's a long way off.

The important thing right now is for us to live up to expectations and deliver a great show on Sunday. Thanks to all the great reviews and comments about the production!

The Antidepressant Festival continues on until July 4th. Lots of great shows to go and see! So go and see them!

Michael Jackson

If there wasn't a bigger example of how our society will publicly mutilate someone, it must be Michael Jackson. Here is a person who was made a star at the age of eleven, and never properly assimilated into normal life and society. His life was tragic: he paid too high a price for being talented.

What always struck me about his defense against charges of pedophilia was that instead of simply saying nothing ever happened, he attacked the idea that what he had done was pedophilia at all. The man simply did not see (it appeared to me) how his actions could have been seen as sexual. Here is the loneliest person on Earth, trapped in Neverland (literally) trying to be loving to children. I don't think it takes much expertise to understand how his wires were crossed.

The press, of course, ate it up. We all did. He was a freakshow, a good joke. No matter that he'd given his entire adult life, and most of his adolesence, the the happiness of other people.

What about his plastic surgery. In this, I'm afraid, he was just ahead of his time. Today it's strikingly common to see plastic surgery among some of the most famous and beautiful people in the world. Hell, Megan Fox (the Transformers pin-up model) is...what? 22? And she has already had plastic surgery. Nora Ephron, that bastion of good taste, goes on public radio to rail against aging and defend cosmetic surgery. Looking at the carved and bleached face of Michael Jackson is looking in an unforgiving mirror.

I don't really know what to say, really. His life was just incredibly sad.

We ask too much of each other.

Is it possible

That Farrah Fawcett and Michael Jackson just died on the same day?

Is it also even POSSIBLE that Michael Jackson is actually, literally dead? I can't even imagine that. Even if it's currently reality.

nytheatre mike closing up shop

It seems as if he has to prioritize having a career, as opposed to blogging. Perish the thought!

See you soon, Mike! I'm sure I'll be seeing tons of your creative output elsewhere.

For fun

When's the last time you read Fenimore Cooper's Literary Offenses by Mark Twain?

You should again.

"I may be mistaken, but it does seem to me that Deerslayer is not a work of art in any sense; it does seem to me that it is destitute of every detail that goes to the making of a work of art; in truth, it seems to me that Deerslayer is just simply a literary delirium tremens.

A work of art? It has no invention; it has no order, system, sequence, or result; it has no lifelikeness, no thrill, no stir, no seeming of reality; its characters are confusedly drawn, and by their acts and words they prove that they are not the sort of people the author claims that they are; its humor is pathetic; its pathos is funny; its conversations are—oh! indescribable; its love-scenes odious; its English a crime against the language."

On another note

Once I've absorbed Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, I will write up my summer movie round up. Because I love friggin' summer movies.

$64,000 question - Which is the better piece of pure genre love? Star Trek or Drag Me To Hell?

The NY Times covers the gender bias a bit more

"Artistic directors of theater companies have maintained that no discrimination exists, rather that good scripts by women are in short supply. That claim elicited snorts and laughter from the audience when it was repeated Monday night, but Ms. Sands declared, 'They’re right.'"

Provocative, no? Read on!

The Times piece notes reasonable trepidation about the use of doollee.com as a main source of data. Nothing against doollee.com, but it's a catch-as-catch-can database and I'm not even entirely sure how it's updated.

For example, here's my own doollee.com page.

I've never personally updated this. I assume because of the blog, whomever is updating my page does so by pulling information from here. (Thanks if you're reading this!) Since it's no one's full time job, and since I don't get involved, there are discrepancies.

- They don't include the small production that I had in NH in 2000 of a play called The Message. (Long forgotten!)

- They don't include the currently running Glee Club.

- They don't include What To Do To A Girl but instead include The Standards of Decency Project, the festival in which it ran.

- They don't note the short play I ran at the Metropolitan about five years ago called 465.

- Trayf, which ran at the Brick, is missing.

- They don't have an accurate theater or producer for the original production of Reasons for Moving. (It was the Local Productions, at HERE Arts Center.)

Is it wildly inaccurate? Not at all. In fact, it's rather good. All of the above are minor omissions. As a place to obtain good, clean data, though, it's not perfect or authoritative, by any means.