Blu-rays of the Week Birdsong (PBS) Sebastian Faulks’ panoramic novel about the doomed relationship between a British soldier and married French woman during World War I becomes another sophisticated “Masterpiece” entry from PBS, but without the book’s framing device, taking place 70 years after …
Posts by Kevin Filipski
385 days ago
Digital Week April 29
392 days ago
Digital Week April 22
Blu-rays of the Week America Revealed (PBS) Host Yul Kwon takes what initially seems a mash-up of themes that could pass for what America looks like in the 21st century–food, transportation, electricity, manufacturing–and, with the help of stunning aerial and HD photography, makes it …
399 days ago
Digital Week April 15
Blu-rays of the Week Conversation Piece (Raro) Luchino Visconti–the Italian director whose best films (Bellissima, La Terra Trema) were smaller-scaled than his more celebrated, but less good, operatic ones (Rocco and His Brothers, Death in Venice, The Damned)–made this 1974 chamber drama, his penultimate …
399 days ago
NYC Theater Roundup: ‘Newsies’ from Screen to Stage; Simon’s ‘Lost’ Found
Disney’s latest Broadway endeavor is Newsies, based on Kenny Ortega’s 1992 movie musical about an 1899 newsboys’ strike in New York City that pitted poor, young newspaper sellers against publishing titans like Joseph Pulitzer, who raised prices under the assumption that the kids would …
406 days ago
Digital Week April 8
Blu-rays of the Week Angels Crest (Magnolia) Strong performances distinguish Gaby Dellal’s relentlessly downbeat drama, based on Catherine Treischmann’s novel about the accidental death of a toddler thanks to his young father’s carelessness. But despite its cast (Lynn Collins as the boy’s distraught, alcoholic …
408 days ago
NYC Theater Roundup: Resurrecting ‘Superstar’ and ‘Evita’
Now we have the return to Broadway of Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice’s biggest hits together: 1970’s Jesus Christ Superstar and 1978’s Evita. If the new stagings aren’t genuine cause for celebration, they provide interesting comparisons between the works. In its new incarnation–directly …
414 days ago
Digital Week April 1
Blu-rays of the Week Corman’s World (Anchor Bay) Alex Stapleton’s engaging documentary about the “King of the B Movies,” producer-director extraordinaire Roger Corman, is as straightforward and unpretentious as its subject, who made trashy fun like The Little Shop of Horrors, The Trip and …
419 days ago
Digital Week March 25
Blu-rays of the Week B-52s with the Wild Crowd (Eagle Rock) The biggest band from Athens, Georgia, pre-REM, reunited last year for this raucous 90-minute 34th anniversary hometown concert. With performances of its biggest hits and most durable songs–like “Roam,” “Love Shack” and of …
427 days ago
Digital Week March 18
Blu-rays of the Week The Descendants (Fox) Alexander Payne (Election, Citizen Ruth, Sideways) makes movies that aren’t as substantial as he thinks. The Descendants is no different: a superbly befuddled George Clooney plays a Honolulu lawyer who discovers–once she’s in a coma–that his wife …
434 days ago
Digital Week – March 11
Blu-rays of the Week Disclosure and Striptease (Warners) Back in the mid 90s, Demi Moore tried to resuscitate a moribund career by starring in Andrew Bergman’s Showgirls-like disaster, Striptease (1996), in which a sullen Moore sleepwalks through a risible melodrama about a single mom …