Powerful, thoughtful, open-ended conclusion to Season 2 of Transparent - bring on Season 3!

Season 2 of the Amazon series Transparent has a suitably moving, beautiful, and open-ended conclusion that leaves us waiting eagerly for Season 3 - kudos to Jill Soloway for taking on this challenging subject matter and managing to build a thoughtful drama with plenty of comedy and plenty of pathos, plenty of sex and nudity as well but amazingly the program is never for a second lurid or sensational, all the sexuality is integrated seamlessly into the plot and character development. Also, rather amazingly, despite their many flaws and errors of judgement, we like all of the main characters and recognize them for their accuracy and universality - and yet the situation for each is unique and, for most viewers, quite unconventional. The season ended w/ 3 powerful episode: Yom Kippur, with Josh telling his family it's over between him and the rabbi, Raquel, and his mother bursts into hysterical sobbing; Maura and daughters go to a woman's festival and Maura feels left out and physically threatened as no transgender women are allowed - and she speaks out. And then the last episode guilds to some beautiful moments: Ali learning more about her family history, immigrants from Germany just before the Nazi attacks on Jews, and wrestling with decisions about her education and her sex life: should she become the lover (or net toy, I would say) of the predatory gender-studies prof?; Sarah after trying various kinky experiments and lots of recreational drugs turns to her Jewish roots for some kind of comfort; Josh, led on by mother's new boyfriend a very likable Buzz, mourns for the first time the "death" of his father; and Maura herself begins for the first time to come to terms w/ her own sexual feelings and has her first trans relationship. Where will these go? Season ends with them on a Pacific beach - "on the shore of the wide world ... where love and fame to nothingness to sink."

Great production of Marriage of Figaro, and props to DaPonte

Scalped 3 tix and got to see final performance of terrific production of marriage of Figaro at the met - final performance of this production as it happens. Set in early 20th century ( some of the staging involves old-fashioned flash photography) & as usual the met has high production values w an elegant and somewhat expressionist (like a giant interlaced-gold wedding ring perhaps?) revolving set that both shows us the various setting in the duke's estate and keeps all the settings spatially related as the characters at various times pursue one another thru openings and disappearing hallways - and we clearly see how the duke can keep tabs on everyone and also get everything wrong. During the overture the stage is active and alive w characters - the servants - who are constantly busy and at work making things really right for the boss, so we sense more than in most productions the class distinctions - and this is emphasized again during the one intermission as servants stay on the stage, sweeping the floor, making the beds, etc. Some nice dramatic touches throughout the performance, such as Susanna singing her one and only solo aria almost directly to Figaro - she's sending him a message, while pretending to speak to others. Act 2 ended w/ the one "modern" touch in the whole opera as each of the main characters was alone in her or his spotlight, and we sense how each is caught in his or her own confusion and dilemma. My only quibble, dramatically, was with the conclusion, which I wish had brought out the chorus, i.e., all of the servants, to sing the beautiful final choral aria - seems that some of the most important characters were left behind (and didn't even come out for a bow at the end, odd). Vocally the production was good though not great - the female leads universally stronger than the male, to my uneducated ear, though none of the female leads seemed particularly strong at Italian enunciation. Such a great opera though, all told, a real study of psychology and culture with one beautiful and haunting moment after another, and like all great comedies ending with some edge. DaPonte may not deserve equal credit w/ Mozart (he's like the proverbial guy who did the floor of the Sistine chapel), but he deserves a lot of credit - the story and text behind 3 of the greatest operas ever composed, or should I say written?

Great opening to a strong Season 2 of Transparent

For the opening scene in episode 1 alone - the staging of a wedding photo - Season 2 of Transparent is as good as expected, maybe even better - funny, sexy, touching, sad, and provocative. Without giving too much away, this second season is more about the various characters coming to terms with their sexuality and sexual identity and with the difficult decisions they wrestled w/ in Season 1: Maura trying to come to terms w/ living in friendly but awkward partnership with her now widowed and lonely ex-wife, Josh building a relationship w/ his teenage biological son, who in his understated way is an incredibly appealing and important part of the program, and trying to make it work w/ the very likable rabbi (somehow I don't see a good forecast for that relationship - we are now on episode 5); Ali at last coming out as gay, no surprise to anyone but her I guess, and learning some strange facts about her family history; and Sarah a complete lost soul on the break-up of her marriage(s). This family lives on the extreme but Jill Soloway's great program never exploits or condescends and helps us understand sexual differences, variants, and the difficulties good people face as they just try to live their lives and be happy.

Can there be any as yet untold Holocaust narratives?: Yes - Phoenix

You might think - I would have thought - by this time there are no possible new narratives about the Holocaust, but a German film crew - none familiar to me - surprised me with a wholly different and original Holocaust story in the 2015 film Phoenix, based on a novel that I believe is from the 60s. This period piece, set immediately after the end of World War II, follows a young woman survivor who is escorted to a hospital - location not clear, Switzerland maybe? - where a doctor does reconstructive surgery on her severely battered face. She comes out of the surgery looking pretty good (not realistic) but apparently quite different from the way she looked going in. A woman who works for some kind of Jewish resettlement gets her set up temporarily in Berlin, in the American quarter apparently, w/ the goal of moving on to Palestine. The woman, Nelly, goes out on the town, however, looking for her estranged husband, and finds him working in a nightclub. He doesn't recognize her but thinks she looks similar to his ex and approaches her about a scheme or scam: he knows his ex, who had been presumed dead, was due to collect a large inheritance from her deceased family members. He asks her to pose as his ex (that is, as herself), and then they will collect and split the inheritance. She goes along with this scheme - "learns" to imitate his wife's signature, her mannerisms, etc. I won't go into the conclusion, but just will say it's a pretty interesting premise that requires a tremendous amount of willing suspension of disbelief - he really wouldn't recognize his ex, even when they share a tiny apartment over weeks or months? If you can buy in, however, the film raises questions about identity and, more important, about the strange and profound guilt Germans felt post-war: the scenes of Nelly re-encountering those she knew before the war, shocked to find her still alive, are haunting in their placidity and lack of affect.

A classic film about the education of a young man

Satyajit Ray's Aparajito (1957), the 2nd section of his Apu trilogy and unavailable on DVD for a long time, is a great film that stands up well over 60 years - in part perhaps because it was a period piece in its day, set in the 1920s in rural India w/ side journey to Calcutta. The trilogy follows the young Apu, born in a remote village, on his journey to adulthood, and on the family migration from the country to the city. Aparajito begins in the city of Benares on the banks of Ganges, the family having just arrived from their village. The father struggles to make a living as a priest - he dies young, and Apu and mother move to a village on the train line not too far from Calcutta. Apu enters school - in those times high school cost a fee; he's a top student and gets a scholarship to college in Calcutta, where he is clearly is one of the few impoverished students. He's torn by his love for and loyalty to his doting mother - who wants him to come home on every holiday, etc. - and his new life as a student and a young man in the city: a theme that just about anyone who's ever left home for work of school will understand. The series as a whole is a classic "bildungsroman," the education over time of a young man (or woman), another great literary design. What's truly outstanding about the Apu series is Ray's terrific use of open-air settings (the banks of the Ganges in particular) and of realistic interiors (the cramped apartment where Apu and family live, the print shop where his lives and works while in school, the crowded classrooms - all men, Apu arriving in Calcutta looking lost at a deserted street corner). Though most of these scenes are by no means beautiful in the conventional sense, they show us an entire culture and way of life - and they're often beautiful in an unconventional sense: flocks of birds swarming in a gray sky, the steps down to the Ganges so crowded during the day and so peaceful at dawn, the vast open field with a train - the lifeblood of India - crossing in the distance ... in fact, railroads are a major theme and design element throughout the film - they are Apu's way out, and his way back home - and we see many powerful shots of crowded railway cars and long shots of a seeming chaos of tracks at a station of junction.

No good guys but a great series: House of Cards Season 4

Season 4 of House of Cards turns out to be a story about the evolution of the Underwood marriage. Season starts w/ Claire essentially ready to leave Frank - she's jealous and angry about her diminished role in their relationship and when she proposes she become his vp candidate he (rightly) scoffs, as she's seemingly unqualified and in way over her head; relationship diminishes to the point where she writers to him telling him she wants a divorce - and we're thinking he's better off without out - when, about half-way thru the season he's shot in the stomach. Of course we know he will make a Reaganesque recovery - and Clair poses by his side as the faithful partner. And then, the they come to realize that she is his strongest political resource and that they are both perversely cruel and ambitious and eager for ever more power - and that they have no interest in each other physically or sexually. While Claire starts a strange and dangerous relationship w/ the novelist who was writing a campaign bio and now is her speechwriter - the series backs off on Frank's homosexuality; he seems to be an asexual power fiend and he weirdly tolerates his wife's relationship (I found that hard to believe and would think he might want vengeance just because his ego's damaged - and maybe he will in Season 5). Toward the end - last 2 episodes - to important developments: the Washington "herald" investigation of Frank U makes it into print; seems like a pretty flimsy story to me but it hints at political corruption and, w/ the story in print, it's only a matter of time before Frank is tied to 3 murders. But he's saved by a crisis - an ISIS like hostage crisis, that is very well played in last 2 episodes. Claire comes into her own as a strong and astute character in her own right, as she helps w/ the hostage release, but we see, subtly, how the Underwoods are playing a cynical game: their survival as first couple, as pres and veep, depends on having them face a crisis - so they more or less manufacture a fake war on terror, and end of episode. Still a great edge-of-seat series start to finish - a world in which there are no good guys. As Truman said:  If you want a friend in Washington, get a dog.

An extroardinary film by a courgeous film-maker: Jafar Panahi's Taxi

Jafar Panahi's Taxi (2015) is a fine, entertaining, extremely courageous movie - made in the face of and under the direct threat of state censorship or much worse, an unmasking of the repression of art and ideas in contemporary Iran, all done with great subtlety and wit. Panahi, playing himself (as he did in his previous film made while he was banned from the practice of moviemaking - This Is Not a Movie), drives a cab for a day on the streets of Tehran and has a series of odd encounters. The film toys with the idea that Panahi is filming a documentary, just seeing what he'll observe among the riders he transports, until one of the passengers "recognizes" Pahani - by that point we realize that it's all scripted - and very well scripted, for that matter. His passengers include a professional mugger who argues with a school teacher (like all the women, in the cab and on the streets, she wears the traditional head-covering) about whether the state should publicly execute a few criminals to put fear into the hearts of others; a guy who sells smuggled Western DVDS (without me, no more Woody Allen, he says), two women who need to get to a public part to release some goldfish into the spring or fountain; and most interestingly his young niece who's trying to make a film for a school project but has to comply with the code of film-making (show nothing discouraging, no poverty or crime, make everything uplifting, etc.). Despite the heaviness and importance of his theme, Panahi is spirited throughout and the film is thoroughly entertaining. Everything Panahi has done in this film is a stick in the eye to the Iranian rulers and mullahs - but his art, and his pursuit of the truth, is that important to him. Imagine Western film-makers being so courageous. Some of our greatest art arises from conditions or oppression (and censorship) - but what hell and torment for the artist.

Two fine programs - one about evil people who succeed, the other about peple wh make terrible mistakes

A note on two TV series, one concluded (for this season) and the other on-going (for me): American Crime (ABC) as noted previously is one of the finest and most under-the-radar of the genre. The 2nd season (a completely different narrative from the first season, with many of the same actors and the same creative team) ends, like most tragedies, with many characters, maybe all characters, punished and chastened. This series is a story of a crime, as the title says, in fact of multiple crimes: an alleged homosexual rape at an unsanctioned by "winked-at" captains' party for the basketball team at an Indianapolis prep school; drug sales; Internet hacking and posting of private information; assault and hate crimes against blacks, gay men, Hispanics; bullying; and finally a fatal shooting - and all of these strands woven neatly together into the tight web of a plot. Though a few of the characters are sympathetic and likable victims, many others - including particularly the two leads, played very well by Timothy Hutton an Felicity Huffman - are manipulative and self-centered - and virtually every character, including the high-school kids and the adults, is deeply flawed and makes terrible judgements. The series forces us every step of the way to ask: what would we do? who's right and who's wrong? The ending is sensibly and suitable open for interpretation - feels like a real conclusion, dark but credible.

House of Cards - we're up to episode 10 of season 4, the conclusion of the "open convention" and the nomination of the Underwoods as a president-vp team - continues to fascinate the way one can be fascinated by looking at a cage of snakes in a terrarium or zoo. Unlike American Crime, each of the characters is despicable, but each is smart and conniving - it's a constant collision of radical forces, leading to some very strange outcomes and powerful scenes: Frank Underwood/Kevin Spacey giving hell to his rival/protegee the secretary of state, homicidal Chief of Staff Doug Stamper trying to push around his staff underlings and taking out his destructive, pent-up rage in a hotel men's room, the ice-cold Clare Underwood/Robin Wright seducing novelist-speechwriter Tom Yates - like a spider seducing a fly. These are some of the great scenes just from episode 10. However: Do others find it hard to believe that Clare would be so beloved among the party leaders, conventioneers, and the public at large? Were others surprised at the weakness of her convention speech - supposed to be the greatest short speech since Gettysburg? As the Underwoods embark on the campaign, taking on Joel Kinnamen as a Schwartzeneger-like Republican, the background noise builds - as intrepid reporter is putting together the pieces to show that Underwood actually killed or sanctioned the killing of 3 people.

Not The Godfather, but an OK mob movie with some memorable scenes: Legend

It's not The Godfather, it's not The Sopranos, it's not Goodfellas, but for those like me who have something of a jones for mob movies Brian Helgeland's 2015  film Legend offers a pretty good fix - unique or at least unusual in a couple of ways: set in the East End of London so it's cool to see the thugs w their emulation of American mobsters (the car of choice is Lincoln Contintental, which looks especially enormous on the streets of the East End); the leads are the twin Kray brothers, so we see two different personalities at work, Reggie the smart and obviously tough mob leader and twin Ron a man with serious mental illness - in one of the first scenes they spring him from a mental hospital through dubious means - which makes him all the more frightening and scary, as he does not recognize normal boundaries of conventions of human behavior; it's based on a true London gang of the 1960s; the period details, including the music, are, as the English would have it, "spot on"; and the same actor, Tom Hardy, plays both leads, in a true tour-de-force. On the downside, the movie touches base on almost all of the conventions, or should I say cliches?: the money manager who's not quite a member of the clan and is variously attacked and defended by the insiders; the girl who marries in, deluding herself into thinking that her husband is a businessman, not a gangster; the voice-over narration (in this case, an unreliable narration, as we learn late in the film); the oblivious parents of the mobsters; the hapless cops in hopeless pursuit. So the movie's a mix, not great but worth your attention for the 2+ hours, esp for a few memorable scenes: the deal-making scene with the American mobster (Chazz Palminteri),  Reggie Kray entering prison, Ron Kray going playing solo trumpet in his nightclub, the brothers fighting each other, the xmas party.

Can we watch a series in which everyone is unlikable? Yes!: House of Cards

Racing through Season 4 of House of Cards/Netflix, and how can you stop? It remains an incredibly lurid and smart and entertaining series. In recent years there has been much discussion in the literary world about whether we can "like" a novel w/ "unlikable" characters - a lot of this kicked off by Clare Messud's novel The Woman Upstairs, in which the narrator was a self-pitying complainer - but there's really no such discussion in re TV drama. We can love Friday Night Lights, in which even the heavies are generally likable, even lovable in their failings, and we can love House of Cards, in which every one of the lead characters is out for himself or herself, all others be damned. Season 4 (some spoilers coming here) goes one step beyond the British original series that stopped at 3 seasons but picks up one key element: the British season ended w/ the assassination of the PM; in American HofC we get an assassination attempt on President Underwood (Kevin Spacey, terrific as always), but, at least through episode 5, is Reagan-like: the Prez is now in the hospital fight for his life, but one suspects he will survive. The heart of this season is the conflict btw Prez Underwood and 1st Lady Clare (Robin Wright, icy and austere as always). We saw Clare make a fool of herself trying to serve as UN Secretary in season 3; now she toys w/ running for Congress - the Prez squashes that plan like a bug - and now she's pressuring him into making her his VP on the ticket (which would be unconstitutional btw, but never mind that). He balks, she writes to him stating she will seek a divorce, but everything changes once he's shot. She then begins to work with the completely feckless VP and acting pres Blythe - he of course is seduced and thinks she's helping him, which she's not of course. She has turned against everyone. The only person loyal to Underwood is Doug Stamper, who is acting increasingly irrational and even violent, It's a very complex series, and there are many plot elements I've forgotten and others I can't figure out of explain: Why is press secretary (Seth) working against the president? Why is super-lobbyist and former Chief of Staff Remy so concerned about his relationship w. Jacky Sharp coming to light - is she running for office? One thing that's happening for sure: the accusation that Underwood killed reporter Zoe Barnes and the congressman from Pennsylvania (and maybe that Doug killed the prostitute who knew about these crimes) is coming to light - oddly 1st last, anticipating their release (Goodwin, the news editor investigating these crimes shot the pres, and will killed in the attack) releases these dox to the media to show the delusional state of mind of the shooter. Not too likely, but a further element in this ever-tangled and complex political-psychodrama.

Why Alicia Vikander did and did not deserve an Academy Award

Tom Hooper's The Danish Girl is a good story told with sensitivity and pathos without ever descending to melodrama and bathos - we truly feel the angst, guilt, shame, and self-doubt that the Danish artist feels - a woman born into the body of a man - and her gradual, difficult, ultimately fatal efforts to emerge into her own life as Lily. Eddie Redmayne does a terrific job with this challenging role - he might have won a best actor had he not cleaned up on that award last year - and alongside him Alicia Vikander does a great job as well playing Gerde, his or her ever-loyal spouse - though they make her a seem a very conventional person when I would guess that she was quite bohemian or avant garde or at least unconventional in some way (as I seem to remember from reading the novel that was the source for the screenplay) - she won an Oscar, but I think that was kind of a rip-off as her role was definitely not a "supporting" actress role but a lead. The movie of course makes us realize how difficult it is for transsexuals today - see that great TV series Transparent for more on that - and how much more difficult it must have been a century ago, with so little medical or public understanding of gender and personality. Lily thrived much better than one would have expected, all things considered - probably helped by being an artist and among artists, rather than among a more conventional set. Hooper does something unusual with the sound editing in this film, though I can't quite figure it out - it seems that other than the (too many) scenes with Alexander Desplat's annoying score driving the emotion all of the scenes w/out score behind are recorded with "live sound," that is, it seems as if we are hearing the actors and sound effects (walking across the room, opening/shutting a door) as if from a stage set - no after-dubbing, not sound effects added in editing or postproduction. I liked that documentary mood a lot and wish there had been even more throughout. This otherwise good film is unfortunately at least 30 minutes too long - dragging to the end at a soporific pace. Better to make your point and move on than drive it home, repeatedly.