Budapest Festival Orchestra at Avery Fisher Hall

Reviewed by Dwight Casimere

Ivan Fisher and his Budapest Festival Orchestra are back in their home base at the Bela Bartok National Concert Hall in programs of Mozart and Mendelsohn with soloists Pinchas Zukerman on Violin and sopranos Anna Lucia Richter and Barbara Kozelj, but it is their recent concert at New York's Avery Fisher Hall, with Zukerman performing Mozart's  hauntingly ornate "Turkish" Violin Concerto and the orchestra performing Brahm's commanding First Symphony that has serious music lovers savoring the reverberrating tones of this stellar ensemble. To add an enticing whipped topping to this giant, delicious musical sundae, the evening concluded with an encore, Brahm's "Abendstandchen" (the evening hours or 'twilight') sung angelically by a vocal orchestra.

Zukerman is a towering presence. With his mane of white hair and chiseled features, he looks every bit like a matinee idol from the golden screen age, portraying a famous virtuoso. The big difference is that he's the real deal with both charisma and technique to spare. He has the kind of intonation that brings new life to a time-worn classic. He mined Mozart's lovely passages for all of its intricacy and elegance, marking the inventive genius the composer was and still is revered for.

While Zukerman's performance left audiences wanting more, it was the Fischer's helming of the titanic Brahm's Symphony No. 1 that was the centerpiece of the evening. Fischer's interpretation was illuminating and kaleidoscopic in its execution. An intimation as to what was to come was  apparent when the orchestra first mounted the stage. Several members of the audience commented in hushed tones, when they saw the unusual placement of the double bass section on the top riser at the rear of the orchestra. That placement would prove to be judicious later in the concert, when the bass players unleashed their ringing tones above Brahm's lush orchestrations and poignant melodies. Woodwinds sang plaintively above the fray, making for a spectacular listening experience.

Fischer brought a restless energy to it all, navigating Brahm's shifting tempos and lattice-work of themes and rhythms like a slalom racer, clipping flags to the finish line. It was a spine-tingling performance.

Below: Pinchas Zukerman-Paul Labelle photographs Inc.

Met Live HD The Merry Widow

Met Live HD audiences are in for a real treat Wednesday, January 21 at 6:30pm local time. That's when they'll have an opportunity to see the Encore Presentation of Franz Lehar's The Merry Widow starring Metropolitan Opera's premiere soprano Renee Fleming as the flamboyant Hana Glawari. 

The lavish production is a perfect melding of grand opera and the Broadway stage with new staging by Broadway veteran Susan Stroman (The Producers, Oklahoma) and a brilliant performance by five-time Tony nominee Kelli O'Hara as Valencienne in her Met debut. The cast is rounded out by Met favorite Nathan Gunn in the co-starring role as her suitor Count Danilo and the classy Sir Thomas Allen as the comedic diplomat Baron Mirko Zeta.

 Conductor Sir Andrew Davis seems to relish Franz Lehar's lush score and with Stroman's choreography and a considerable amount of ensemble dancing by both the company's marvelous ballet troupe and the cast of singers, the entire production floats along like a sky of billowy clouds. 

Photo: Ken Howard/Metropolitan Opera

The final act at Chez Maxim is a glimpse at Paris's Belle Epoque, with Fleming at her best as the beguiling widow, who attempts to take Paris by storm. The mood throughout the performance is light. For those who are looking for a ray of sunshine in the gloom of winter, the Met's production of The Merry Widow is the perfect tonic. The U.S. Encore is Wednesday, January 21 at 6:30pm local time with the Canadian Encore Saturday, February 28 at 12 pm local time and Monday, March 2 at 6:30pm local time. The Merry Widow continues live on the stage of the Metropolitan Opera House in Lincoln Center, New York City through May 7. For tickets and information, visit metopera.org or fathomevents.com.

Jean Luc Godard's 3D Masterpiece, "Goodbye to Language Opens Jan 16 at Gene Siskel Film Center Chicago

Reviewed by Dwight Casimere at the New York Film Festival Sept. 16

NEW YORK--At 84 years old, Jean Luc Godard may have come late to the 3D cinema party, but he has certainly made the medium's most significant artistic statement with the theatrical release of "Goodbye to Language" (Adieu au Langage), which will open at the Gene Siskel Cinema Center in downtown Chicago, across from the Chicago Theatre, January 16.

As one can expect, the film is an amalgram of complex, yet beautiful images that capture bits of an illicit romance-in- progress between a young man and a married woman, shots of Godard's own dog, Roixy Mieville, wandering between the country and the city, the political storm of the Holocaust, even the English Romantic poet Lord Byron weighs in with a cameo.

The 70-minute visual experiment takes us from the ocean front, where the romantic couple apparently meet in a series of flashbacks, to their rendezvous, where they engage in various stages of intimacy, punctuated by escalating conflict that ends in physical abuse.

The film, divided into chapters entitled "Nature" and "Metaphor" grapples with images of Imperialism and the Holocaust, then shifts to idyllic, brightly colored montages of flowers, boats and children at play.

 Without any concrete narrative, the film raises some troubling issues concerning the contradiction between the things we perceive visually, and their underlying meanings.

Jean-Luc Godard burst on the cinematic scene more than 50 years ago, and quickly became a cult figure and icon of the 1960s.

His latest film, has affirmed his continuing stature as one of  cinema's most enduring and relevant voices.

Heloise Godet stars in Jean-Luc Godard’s ‘Goodbye to Language 3D’

Editor's Note:The National Society of Film Critics has chosen the 3-D movie "Goodbye to Language" as the best picture of 2014 in their 49th annual awards meeting in New York City.

Goodbye to Language (Adieu au Langage)

Opens Friday, January-February 5 visit www.genesiskelfilmcenter.org for times and tickets

 From January 3 through March 4, the Gene Siskel Film Center presents “Godard: The First Wave,” a series of seventeen features and three shorts concentrating on the still vigorous auteur’s early career.

Scenes from Jean- Luc Godard's Goodbye to Language

 Zoe' Brueau as Ivitch in Jean Luc Godard's Goodbye to Language

 Roxy Mieville, Godard's mixed-breed, gets a featured role

 A scene from Goodbye to Language...Photos 1-3 by Kino Lorber

The director (right) with his cinematographer Jean Paul Battagia

Inherent Vice with Joaquin Phoenix in theatres Friday, January 9

Reviewed by Dwight Casimere October 4, 2014 at the New York Film Festival

Photo courtesy: Warner Bros.

Inherent Vice

Director: Paul Thomas Anderson

Starring: Joaquin Phoenix, Katherine Waterston, Josh Brolin, Owen Wilson, Jena Malone, Eric Roberts, Michael K. Williams, Serena Scott Thomas and Christopher Allen Nelson

A Warner Bros. Film,  Paul Thomas Anderson's "Inherent Vice" hits movie theatres Friday, January 9. An Academy Award nominated director, Anderson (Boogie Nights, There Will Be Blood), is the first to bring a Thomas Pynchon novel to the big screen   and in this return to black comedy, is loyal to Pynchon's wryly anarchic source material.  Using 35 mm film, His cinematographer and frequent collaborator Robert Elswit, uses the camera to maximum effect to evoke the emotional and comedic layering of each scene.

 Set in the post-Charles Manson, Helter-Skelter world of  of 1970s Southern California, the film follows the stupified meanderings of a down-on-his luck private investigator, Doc Sportello, played brilliantly by Joaquin Phoenix and a diverse collection of well-known stars playing quircky characters who appear and disappear like pop-up weasels in a carney game, driving the plot along in whacky, herky-jerky fashion. The ploit becomes more complicated as the film lurches to conclusion and is, at times, hard to follow. Viewers have to listen carefully for clues. At times, hushed conversations that are barely audible reveal the most salient information. This a film that requires your undivided attention and a lot of leaning forward to make sure you hear everything. No doubt when the DVD comes out, there'll be a lot of rewinding of scenes just to make sense out of everything. The added attention is  warranted. Those who stick it out the entire two and a half will be richly rewarded with an engrossing film experience with some unexpectedly rich performances by some big name actors playing against type. 

Folks will either love "Inherent Vice" or hate it. It could be a complete flop at the boix office or become a cult classic. Its Paul Thomas Anderson walking to the edge of a cinematic cliff with no indication that he's wearing a parachute of one of those body-winged suits.  The film and its music score, successfully evokes the time period with early reference to Charles Manson and the Tate-LasBianca slayings and the free-love and drug culture of the time.

The title, "Inherent Vice" is based on a concept of maritime law in which a good or property has within itself a hidden defect that will be the cause of its deterioration, damage or wastage. In the case of a ship carrying dangerous cargo such as explosives or corrosive or hazardous materials, if the carrier or the insurer have not been warned of the derfect, neither is liable for any klegal claim against them. With that information firmly in mind, now, on to our story.

The film follows the misadventures of Doc Sportello (Joaquin Phoenix), a mostly out of work private detective who spends most of his time getting stoned in his tiny, junky house. He makes a vague stab at solving the few cases he's hired to investigate by writing inscrutible notes in a tiny notepad. He's sort of a stoner's version of Columbo. His ex-Shasta (the up-and-coming British-born American actrss who is the daughter of Oscar-nominated actor Sam Waterston and former model Lynn Woodruff, ina role that could prepel her into prominence), tracks him down. She tells him she's involved in an affair with an older, married real estate mogul, Mickey Wolfmann (Eric Roberts). She wants him to stoiop a plot by Wolfmann's wife Sloane (Serena Scott Thomas),  and her lover to have Wolfmann committed to a mental institution. 

Along the way, Doc gets implicated in a murder, gets caught up in a manhunt involving the Aryan Nation, crosses paths with a take-no-prisoner law and order Detective named Christian "Big Foot" Bjornsen (Josh Brolin), and is side-tracked by dealings with an in-love-with-the-sound-of-his-voice dentist (Martin Short), who loves to get high in his office. There are some terrific cameos by some terrific actors playing against type throughout. 

The plot twists are too exhaustive to run through in a single review. Suffice it to say that Joaquin Phoenix, in his engaging, loopy style, does a masterful job of holding it all together, while director Anderson shows off his skill at weaving an otherwise incomprehensible tangle of a story into a near masterpiece.