Gossip Central

Fill the Void: Broadening the Feminist Gaze

Rama Burshtein’s glimpse into Tel Aviv’s Hasidic community, Fill the Void is a stunning film taking the viewer into the marriage practices of a hermetic society, offering an intimate, if fictional view, of how matches are made. Ultimately a love story, Fill the Void is most surprising in revealing unexpected emotional connection and subdued passion in places where love is most often a last consideration. Shira (Hadas Yaron), an 18 year old woman drinks tea with suitors at dates arranged by matchmaker; they interview one another as to how they want to live their lives; suddenly after a family tragedy Shira has to consider marrying Yochay (Yiftach Klein) her older sister’s husband, twice her age.

Alexander Skarsgard’s Eyes: The East’s New York Premiere

The East, a thriller co-written by Brit Marling, who stars, and Zal Batmanglu, who directs, features a Svengali type character played to mesmerizing perfection by Alexander Skarsgard. At the film's New York premiere party at Hotel Chantelle’s Rooftop on Monday, the actor who has no doubt honed his skills at fixing you in his gaze in the HBO series True Blood, seemed far from the low key cool he exuded so well in the recent What Maisie Knew, and had more of his Disconnect intensity. As Benji, leader of an anarchist group called The East, determined to make corporations pay for the damage they do to the environment, and to anyone in their path to profits, Skarsgard knows how to charm. To get back at an oil company known to have polluted waters endangering and killing wildlife, the group that also includes Ellen Page as “Isabella Duncan,” pumps oil into its CEO’s country mansion, coating it with slime. An eye for an eye. You may have had these revenge fantasies yourself.

The Forest for the Trees: Seeing Cinderella on Broadway with Kids

For those of us of a certain age, Rodgers & Hammerstein’s Cinderella is a nostalgia trip. The memory of this musical, a television landmark in the ‘50’s lingers as a singular pleasure. My fear in bringing young people, Noah (8) and Hannah (6), to a recent matinee was my losing composure and singing loudly along to “Impossible,” “In My Own Little Corner,” “Do I Love You Because You’re Beautiful?” Another concern: would it be as good for them as it was for me? To date, critics and awarders seem in thrall. Even though this is a Broadway debut, the musical has 9 Tony nominations as well as nods for other major awards, as a musical revival.

Mel Brooks: Make a Noise: American Master at the 92 Street Y

If this were Dutch Masters instead of American Masters, I’d have a box of cigars, gripes Mel Brooks about the enterprise of including a documentary about him in the prestigious PBS series. On Wednesday night, an audience at the 92 Street Y got a sneak preview of the show, Mel Brooks: Make a Noise, that will air Monday night. The evening also included a conversation with director Robert Trachtenberg, The View co-host and comedian Joy Behar, and director Susan Stroman. The image of Mel Brooks hovered above them, a huge presence on Skype, echoing a moment in the film when Gene Wilder is asked whether it registered as important when he met Mel Brooks: Does Moses think it’s important when God speaks to him?

SNL’s Hal Willner Produces Music for A Great Night in Harlem at the Apollo

It’s always Howdy Doody time in music producer Hal Willner’s workspace at the Film Center building in Manhattan. Best known for producing music for Saturday Night Live, Willner shares his lair with many antique puppets, Jackie Gleason memorabilia including a Ralph Cramden bus driver’s suit, as well as DVD’s of Shoah and other Holocaust films. He jokes, “My work sounds like a Warner Brothers cartoon or the soundtrack to a movie about Dachau.”

The Awards Will Not Be Televised: Lucille Lortel Awards for Off-Broadway and On: Trip to Bountiful

The sight of two men in giant clown shoes and oversized pants shuffling on a commuter platform lingers in the mind. From the Signature Theater’s production of Old Hats, winner of this year’s “Outstanding Alternative Theatrical Experience” Award at last week’s Lucille Lortel Awards, the skit, featuring Bill Irwin and David Shiner evokes Chaplin’s little tramp and a history of slapstick. Unlike the Tony Awards, which are presented interspersed with acts from Broadway shows too, the Lucille Lortel Awards, a night of honors and entertainment from over 100 plays off-Broadway, takes much of its fun from the fact that the show would not be televised.

Old is New Again: Frances Ha and He’s Way More Famous Than You

Noah Baumbach’s new film Frances Ha is cut from the same cloth as Lena Dunham’s Girls. Written with Greta Gerwig, who stars as Frances, shot in black and white, Frances Ha evokes Woody Allen’s Manhattan and Francois Truffaut’s Paris, key locations for the twenty-something Frances to live her dreams. A moveable feast of guys, apartments, and jobs, Frances Ha freshens up the old tropes: cell phones and the internet play comfortably with the actors’ slapstick physicality and sight gags, a throwback to, and nostalgia for early filmmaking. A dancer, Frances runs awkwardly on the street to find a cash machine, falling on her face. Frances Ha’s world is almost entirely populated by a humorous and poignant variation of Generation Me characters, including Frances’ best friend Sophie (Mickey Sumner) and young men played by Adam Driver and Michael Zegen.

Rachel Lloyd, Tina Brown and Leymah Gbowee Honored at The New York Women’s Foundation Breakfast

A lot has happened since 2008 when a Sunday night premiere screening and dinner co-hosted by Gloria Steinem honored Leymah Gbowee, a charismatic social worker turned activist who, in the documentary Pray the Devil Back to Hell, tells her compelling story about how women banded together to protest violence in Liberia, set their hideous dictator Charles Taylor on a journey of exile, to be put on trial for war crimes, and enabled a democratically elected woman to govern their country. Self-assured and instinctively political, Gbowee came off as a modern day Lysistrata, as in the ancient Greek satirist Aristophanes’ play, a character who organized women in a sex strike to protest the Peloponnesian War. Now a Nobel Peace Prize recipient, Leymah Gbowee was honored on Thursday morning at the New York Women’s Foundation breakfast, along with Tina Brown, founder of Women of the World Foundation among her many media accomplishments, and Rachel Lloyd, founder of GEMS, Girls Educational & Mentoring Services, to help victims of domestic violence and human trafficking.

Carey Mulligan at The Standard: The Great Gatsby’s Many Premieres

A few years ago, the excesses of the new movie version of The Great Gatsby might have inspired cathartic revulsion. The scene outside Avery Fisher Hall for this week’s Gatsby premiere befit the mega wattage of the movie’s stars, particularly Leonardo DiCaprio as he made his way through a screaming crowd. Carey Mulligan, resplendent in red Lanvin, her blond hair swept up, walked the red carpet. In the grand chaos of this opening of a state-of-the-art Baz Luhrmann movie—think Moulin Rouge set in 3D fairy tale America—Baz Luhrmann failed to introduce his stars, but did manage to say in his introduction, as the story takes place in New York, there was no other place for its world premiere, even though this American epic will open the Festival de Cannes next week.

The Testament of Mary: Nailed to the Cross

The news that The Testament of Mary would close on Sunday hung in the air for Friday evening’s performance, more prominently than any of the play’s props, including a dead tree. At the prologue, the audience comes to the stage circling Mary as blessed icon, robed in blue. How she became that exalted figure is what this play’s about. To be sure, sharing the stage with a vulture may be genius, but not a good sign for a long life.