Author: Mary Beth

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Ocean’s Thirteen

In theaters.

I feel kind of guilty. Several appealing smaller movies are playing in theaters—Once and The Valet and Paprika, to name a few. I’ve been meaning to check them out, but what do I go to see this week? Ocean’s Thirteen. I’m so embarrassed.

But Ocean’s Thirteen is exactly the sort of summer movie I adore. Unabashedly frivolous and unfailing cheerful, breezy and witty and jaunty, it just puts me a good mood. The fluffy confection of a plot doesn’t withstand much scrutiny, and each character isn’t so much a three-dimensional being as a single adjective in human form. But none of that matters. With Steven Soderbergh directing and George Clooney, Brad Pitt, Andy Garcia, and company charming their way around the screen like old-fashioned Golden Age movie stars, Ocean’s Thirteen represents a triumph of style over substance—and I mean that in the best way possible. Sometimes substance is a drag.

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The Sopranos series finale

Aired Sunday, June 10.

Did Sopranos creator David Chase panic when he went to write the final episode of his critically revered mafia series? If the show ended with Tony caving, flipping on the New York crew, and wasting miserably away in the witness protection program, everyone would point out the resemblance to GoodFellas. If the show ended with the violent death of Meadow or A.J.—the sins of the father visited upon the children—everyone would point out the resemblance to The Godfather III. If the show ended quietly with 
Tony isolated and damned—Godfather II. If the show ended loudly with Tony in a hail of bullets—Scarface. Did Chase simply throw up his hands at the impossible expectations and decide to class up a non-ending instead? Because, if so: sorry, David, but that’s been done, too—and better—by John Sayles in Limbo.

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Brahms’ Variations on a Theme by Haydn and “Ein deutsches Requiem”

The New York Philharmonic on Tuesday, June 5.

The traditional Latin text for a requiem mass is a prayer for the dead, repeatedly asking God to grant the departed eternal rest. Brahms’ requiem is different. Instead of using the Latin liturgy, he patched together texts from the Bible, both Old Testament and New. The result is a prayer not so much for the dead but for the living: those who grieve and will someday die themselves.

Ein deutsches Requiem is nothing less than the most powerful, eloquent contemplation of mortality I’ve ever encountered. Grand yet intimate, it first assures you that you will find peace someday (Brahms opens with one of the Beatitudes: “Blessed are they who mourn, for they shall be comforted”), and then it plunges into a harrowing study of the transience of human life. (“For all flesh is as grass…”) After that grim truth, the reassurances of the final movements, with promises of life after death from the Epistles and Revelation, are truly heavenly. The requiem is an emotionally exhausting work but an extraordinary one.

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Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End

In theaters.

We all have our weaknesses. I, for example, am fond of storylines that don’t follow formulae and am a complete sucker for actors who seem to be having fun on screen. If you give you me that, I’ll forgive all manner of sins like, oh, a completely nonsensical plot, wildly uneven tone, and slack, overlong pacing.

Take the third Pirates of the Caribbean movie. I’d be the first to admit that it’s not good—what with that completely nonsensical plot, wildly uneven tone, and slack, overlong pacing—but I’d be lying if I didn’t admit to having enjoyed it anyway.

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Othello

The American Ballet Theatre at Lincoln Center on Tuesday, May 22.

Watching Lar Lubovitch’s adaptation of the story of Othello, you can tell that he has choreographed for ice skaters as well as dancers. On several occasions, a male dancer spins in place, the centripetal force of his motion levitating the body of his partner. (Is that centripetal force? I never took physics in high school, and I just wasted several minutes trying in vain to decipher the explanations on the internet. I feel quite ignorant.) You see that effect all the time on a skating rink, but on stage, without the momentum of cutting across the ice, it looks oddly out of place.

More effective, in my eyes, are Lubovitch’s intricate lifts. I love the graceful, seamless way they blend into the pair’s steps, but here, they also amplified the emotions of the story. At the ballet’s outset, Othello and Desdemona moved together as a loving unit, Othello guiding gently and Desdemona arcing her body in innocent bliss. In their final dance, by contrast, those lifts that once looked gentle became domineering, with Desdemona at the mercy of her angry husband.

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La Bayadère

The American Ballet Theatre at Lincoln Center on Tuesday, May 15.

La Bayadère is as evocative of India as Gilbert and Sullivan’s The Mikado is of Japan, which is to say: hardly at all. The Mikado is a thoroughly British operetta, and La Bayadère is a thoroughly Russian ballet—complete with a chorus of ballerinas in white tutus—but in both cases, the occasional goofy exotic flourishes are kind of endearing, even if they are anachronistic.

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The Daily Show with Jon Stewart

Mondays through Thursdays at 11 p.m. on Comedy Central.

Were it not for Jon Stewart, I think I might simply have disengaged from the news years ago. The Daily Show is hardly my only news source, but it is my only news source that also keeps my spirits up. Even when reports are dismal, when tragedy strikes, when politicians prove once again that I’m not yet cynical enough to anticipate all the outrages they’ve committed, The Daily Show makes me laugh. It might be just a bitter chuckle, but it’s enough to keep me from permanently withdrawing from the public square into the corners of my private life.

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Spider-Man 3

In theaters.

No one should ever cast Tobey Maguire in a supposedly sympathetic role that tilts toward whiny. He can’t pull it off. His doughy face oozes petulance, and his protestations sound like the mewlings of a four-year-old deprived dessert. Spider-Man 3 has lots of problems—a slack, rambling plot; an overabundance of villains; special effects that (with one major exception) aren’t that special—but the worst is that Maguire’s Peter Parker is a pathetic figure—pompous, self-absorbed, and extremely whiny—and that Spider-Man 3 matches him all too well.

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Orfeo ed Euridice

The Metropolitan Opera on Wednesday, May 9.

Gluck’s Orfeo ed Euridice is an odd little opera. For one thing, Euridice ends up alive, even after Orfeo disobeys the gods and turns to look at her as he leads her out of the underworld. As one reared on Greek myths, I find that happy ending kind of appalling, but according to the Met’s program notes, Gluck did, too (“I was forced to alter the climax,” he lamented), so I feel a bit more forgiving on that score—especially considering how gorgeous the music is.

And damn, is it ever gorgeous. Gluck avoids vocal pyrotechnics in favor of a refreshingly unshowy aesthetic: simple and poignant. Even the narrative structure is pared down. With only three solo parts (Orfeo, Euridice, and Amor), the opera’s straightforward, subplot-free storytelling makes the already archetypal tale feel positively elemental. Nothing distracts from the beauty of the music.