Author: Mary Beth

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Here and Now

The New York City Ballet on Thursday, June 13.

One of my all-time favorite albums—of any genre—is Five Tango Sensations, composed by Ástor Piazzolla and performed by the bandoneón master himself with the Kronos Quartet. It’s a dazzlingly rich, textured composition (one often hears the analogy that Piazzolla did for the tango what Chopin did for the polonaise), and it showcases just how expressive and evocative the bandoneón, a relative of the accordion, can be. To me, that was a wonderful surprise.

Bruno Moretti’s accordion-centric score for “Oltremare,” one of the works included in the City Ballet’s Here and Now program, doesn’t have quite the same passion as Piazzolla’s work, but it, too, makes vivid use of its distinctive solo instrument. Mauro Bigonzetti’s choreography isn’t particularly remarkable, but Moretti’s music makes “Oltremare” memorable nonetheless, and it made me think about how important music is to the success of dance.

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Hot Fuzz

On DVD.

I’d forgotten that parody could be this sharp, this smart. Too many movie parodies are like Scary Movie, Not Another Teen Movie, and their ilk: cheap, junky, kitchen-sink productions that throw countless dumb gags and are lucky to hit their target one out of ten times. Hot Fuzz is much more targeted and infinitely funnier. A witty, well-observed, affectionate rib on action movies, it expertly cracks wise on the characters, the situations, and even the camerawork of the genre, and the cumulative effect of all those perfect details makes Hot Fuzz a riot.

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Superheroes: Fashion and Fantasy

Special exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art through September 1.

Having sat through all four hours and seven minutes of Quentin Tarantino’s Kill Bill movies once, I don’t feel the need to do so again, but when they show up on TV, I like to drop in and catch my favorite scenes. The Bride’s battle with O-Ren Ishii. Her escape from the wooden coffin to the strains of Ennio Morricone. And, of course, the final sequence with Bill, particularly Bill’s monologue about Superman. I love that monologue. The gist is that Superman is the only superhero whose true identity is, in fact, that of a superhero. Unlike Bruce Wayne and Peter Parker and their compatriots—all of whom must wear superheroic costumes to disguise their true, vulnerable selves—Superman must wear a costume to disguise his true, superheroic self. Bill argues that the “Clark Kent” costume represents Superman’s critique of humanity: Clark is weak and uncertain and cowardly, and that is how Superman sees us.

Delivered by David Carradine, it’s a brilliant monologue. Extrapolating from the Superman/Clark Kent theory helps the movies back away from some queasily anti-feminist, essentialist thinking, which is cool, and on a broader level, the monologue gets at some interesting ideas about identity and costume: what costumes disguise, what they reveal, and who we become when we wear them. It’s a rich vein to mine, which is why the Met’s special exhibit on superhero-inspired fashion is surprisingly thought-provoking. It, too, is concerned with identity and costume and transformation. Bill would feel right at home.

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The Fall

In theaters.

To be blunt, The Fall is a failure. It doesn’t achieve the epic grandeur to which co-writer/director Tarsem clearly aspires. Its emotional arc is incoherent, its climax is muddled, and its conclusion is weirdly off-point. And yet few failures are so interesting, so visually hypnotic that one can dismiss the story entirely and treat the movie as a travelogue across a dreamscape. I can’t recommend The Fall, but I can’t regret seeing it either.

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Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull

In theaters.

Seeing Indy again was fun, but I was most excited about the return of Marion, whom I adored as a little girl. As played by Karen Allen, Marion was nobody’s blushing damsel or flighty ditz. She was proud and smart and resourceful, a fitting match for Indiana Jones—and she still is in Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. Allen and Harrison Ford both are showing their years (and I mean that in the best way possible), but they still have a great, crackling chemistry, and the reunion of their characters is so charming that I didn’t even roll my eyes at the movie’s sappy coda. (Well, that’s a lie. But I didn’t roll them that hard.)

I can’t say everything else about Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull was as much fun as the reappearance of Marion Ravenwood, but the movie has its moments, I guess, and nobody embarrassed him- or herself. And when you’re talking about a series entry arriving nearly two decades after the previous installment, maybe that’s not bad.

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Uglies, Pretties, Specials, and Extras

By Scott Westerfeld. Published in 2005, 2005, 2006, and 2007, respectively.

When I was about eleven years old, I decided I was far too grown up for children’s books. I refused to even set foot in the Young Adult section and instead wandered with proud determination through general fiction. I didn’t always truly get the books, but I unnerved a few middle-school teachers by declaring Larry McMurtry’s epic, violent, Pulitzer Prize–winning Lonesome Dove my favorite novel, and—let’s face it—that was part of the reason I was reading it. (To be fair, though, I never would have gotten through the eight-hundred-page tome if I didn’t genuinely enjoy it.)

Anyway, Scott Westerfeld’s Uglies series is exactly the sort of thing I would have dismissed out of hand as a teenager but also exactly the sort of thing I would have enjoyed if I hadn’t been so vain. The writing itself is serviceable, if not particularly inspiring, but the characters are interesting, the ideas are provocative, and nothing is black-and-white. I would have appreciated that then, and I appreciate it now.

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Jeff Koons on the Roof

Special exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art through October 26.

Inside, the enormous shiny metal balloon dog might look overwhelming or creepy, but outside, underneath the vast blue sky on the Met’s roof garden, it’s charming and whimsical, a giant-child’s plaything. Even after all the trouble to get to the roof, even when the sun creates a glare on the lacquer, the sculpture feels utterly blithe. It makes me smile just to look at it.

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Russian Roots

The New York City Ballet on Friday, May 9.

The choreography in the Russian Roots program ranges from the primly beautiful to the slightly jazzy to the quasi-tribal, which is why it’s such a trip that they’re all choreographed by the same man: Jerome Robbins, whose Russian heritage the title references. The pieces are quite different in mood and texture, but as my dad pointed out afterword, knowing they come from the same person gives one license to the similarities among them, the way modern touches turn up in the classic “Andantino” and traditional steps create a foundation for the brutal “Les Noces.”

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My muse is stressed out

Sean and I are fine, but we’ve been coping with assorted family issues that have made it difficult for me to get into a writing frame of mind, hence the lapse in posts.