Gossip Central

Be Italian: Nanni Moretti’s We Have a Pope

Introducing a private screening of his new movie, We Have a Pope, this week, director Nanni Moretti stopped mid-sentence and walked up the aisle to kiss kiss his pal John Turturro. Of course he was speaking in Italian and the gesture seemed so European, the audience including Tony LoBianco, Gay Talese, John Ventimiglia, Michael Musto, and a few non-Italians, Paul Schrader, Tovah Feldshuh, Alex Gibney, Lois Smith, Josh Mostel, Terry George, and Neil Simon, seemed to take the friendly gesture as a matter of course. Through his translator, Moretti, who is now celebrated at the IFC Center with a retrospective of his work, went on to tell a story about the making of this film about the inner doubts of a newly elected pope starring Michel Piccoli.

Casting A Moon for the Misbegotten at Pearl Theatre and Miscasting to Benefit the MCC Theater

In Eugene O’Neill’s 1943 play, A Moon for the Misbegotten, faithfully revived at The Pearl Theatre, the mores of the time seem antiquated but the performances by Kim Martin-Cotten as farm woman Josie Hogan, and Andrew May as her well educated yet drunken landlord Jim Tyrone, Jr. are pitch perfect. She, ungainly and with a rough tongue, he finely groomed, his language elegant if slurred from drink, make for as unlikely a pair as befits drama or life. In a ruse concocted by her father Phil Hogan (the Pearl’s ribald Dan Daily) to catch them in bed so that he will be forced to marry her—a plot point that seems refreshingly silly in today’s world, it is soon revealed just which of these characters is the most to be admired, and what slim pickin’s rural life has for her. The men, especially the tortured Tyrone, have the mobility to leave the farm, as Josie’s brother, Mike (the Pearl’s fine Sean McNall) does early on. Under J. R. Sullivan’s expert direction, the play offers a beautifully wrought glimpse of O’Neill’s characters’ inner worlds.

Harvey Weinstein Will Release Bully Unrated

Teenhood is not for sissies. Lee Hirsch and Cynthia Lowen’s documentary Bully opens with the dead-eyed gaze of a man, a father, talking about the suicide of his son, a victim of bullying. As if ripped from the proverbial front pages, the movie resonates with public awareness of this mean-spirited practice akin to the Rutgers webcam privacy violation that resulted in one young man’s suicide and another’s conviction for a crime. Bully comes with its own baggage: the M.P.A.A. “R” rating for six instances of the “f” word that will result in a censoring of the film from the population that most needs to see it, school-agers.  No matter that the offense as heard in some footage aboard a school bus is the voice of a nasty, potty-mouthed boy deploying a threat to a girl that he will “f” her in the most vicious, unconscionable way. Did the board actually watch the movie? This rating is a lame, knee jerk response. And it is not just for kids. Grownups, parents and school officials need extra doses of this movie which features one of the most obtuse vice principals ever witnessed, claiming the school bus riders are “angels.” Harvey Weinstein pointed out an irony: the country’s top movie, the fantasy world survival story, Hunger Games, has a PG-13 rating while showing teens killing teens. In any case, as of this writing, Harvey Weinstein has decided to release the film with no rating.

Flashing Back with Sara Driver on the Bowery

My favorite Sara Driver story involves her 1981 film of Paul Bowles’s short story, “You Are Not I.” Long thought lost, a print of the 48-minute film was discovered in 2008 among Bowles’ possessions in Tangier, Morocco in his driver’s insecticide-laden basement. Now restored, the film was featured at several conferences and festivals celebrating the author’s centennial last year. In its own right, Sara Driver’s work has been feted in Buenos Aires, Reykjavik, and Thessalonika, among other places.

This weekend You Are Not I screens in a retrospective at Anthology Film Archives, “Sleepwalking: The Films of Sara Driver,” along with her films Sleepwalk (1986), When Pigs Fly (1994), and Bowery—Spring, an 11-minute documentary from 1994. Also marking the occasion of a newly minted boxed DVD set of Driver’s work, the series will feature films Driver found inspiring, among them Jacques Tourneur’s Cat People and Charlotte Zwerin and Bruce Ricker’s Thelonius Monk: Straight No Chaser.

Public Academic: Henry Louis Gates, Jr. Follows Alex Haley’s Roots

Admiring the television series Roots as a boy, Yale educated and Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates, Jr. explores a passion for genetics and genealogies in a new PBS series, Finding Your Roots, to start this Sunday. Featuring Mayor Cory Booker and Congressman John Lewis in the season premiere, a private screening wowed audiences at Lincoln Center’s Rose Hall on Monday. The episode intertwines the history of these two prominent Americans to reveal a poignant story of slavery, the struggle for civil rights, and a proud new generation of leaders. The backstories, developed through copious research of public records, an oral tradition of family lore, and DNA testing, are remarkable--so amazing, in fact, you wonder, what if these findings are wrong? No matter, the discovery makes for great television.

Chill with Frozen Planet on Discovery

Our winter may be mild but the cold breeze off Lincoln Center last week for the premiere of Frozen Planet was distinct, in the teeth-chattering presence of cool sculptures of an ice waterfall and ice penguins. And inside Alice Tully Hall, the temperature was brisk too. The Discovery Channel’s documentary series Frozen Planet, “The Ends of the Earth” to air on March 18, proves that good storytelling features sex and violence, even if it is family entertainment. As Alec Baldwin narrates, giant polar bears can sniff the scent of a female seven miles away, and stepping through the snow in her footsteps, they stalk her, often mounting her bloodied, having successfully fought off a contender.

Audrey Tautou, Etcetera at the French Rendez-vous

Petite and utterly adorable, the French movie star Audrey Tautou will always be known as the “Amelie” girl for her delightful performance in the 2001 film. On closing night of this year’s Rendez-vous with French Cinema, she was the guest of honor at a soiree at the upper East side Cultural Services of the French Embassy, attending with a posse that included her hairdresser. Her new movie Delicacy, opening in New York this week, has an office romance at its core. In a far corner of the elegant Fifth Avenue townhouse, Tautou, dark curls bobbing, spoke about why her character would enter into an inexplicable love affair with a dull witted co-worker. “You don’t know where love comes from. He touched her in a deep place,” said Tautou her hands gesticulating wildly. Next up for her is a movie with Cedric Klapisch, Casse Tete Chinoise, an expression that translates loosely to “head crushing anxiety,” to be shot soon in Chinatown. When asked if there is an American director with whom she’d like to work, she did not hesitate: “Alexander Payne. I adored his About Schmidt.” The French do love what they love.

Tribes: Triumphs on Barrow Street

Meet the family at the core of Nina Raine’s smartly wise, well acted and subtle drama Tribes at the Barrow Street Theater: three grown kids and parents all living under the same roof. Opening on what might be a typical dinner for these upper class, articulate intellectuals, cacophony reigns as speakers clamor for attention; for clarity, Christopher (Jeff Perry), the dad of this unruly clan, whips out the Lacan. Or maybe the act is to belittle as this retired academic’s specialty is language, and the uses and abuses thereof. As barbs fly, soon you see that one son sits in eye bulging silence craning to look fully at his siblings’ faces attempting to read their lips. Deaf, Billy was not brought up signing. In denial about his “disability,” it turns out, the family has, so to speak, turned a deaf ear.

Salmon Fishing in the Yemen, and Fish on Your Plate

Lasse Hallstrom’s new movie, Salmon Fishing in the Yemen, is a romance with an improbable premise. A liberal minded sheik wants to bring salmon to his native Yemen, not the kind you eat, but those that need a waterway for jumping and swimming upstream to spawn. This feat involves more than irrigating the Negev. Being rather wealthy, the sheik (Amr Waked) has the means to bulldoze, build a dam, whatever is necessary. But Harriet (Emily Blunt), his energetic and perky facilitator, needs to enlist an expert fly fisher Fred (Ewan MacGregor) to make the improbable happen. Kristen Scott Thomas plays the heavy, press secretary for the British prime minister who milks every photo op. And then, there’s a plot to kill the sheik, far too progressive to get away with his vision.

Game Change on HBO: Sarah Palin, See this Movie!

For the same reasons that Sarah Palin is a riveting figure in American politics, the HBO movie Game Change is an astonishingly smart look at her and the world that put her in the position of John McCain’s running mate in the 2008 presidential election. Even when played by Julianne Moore, you cannot take your eyes off Sarah Palin.