Gossip Central

The Americans at the Plaza

Season two of the award-winning, much acclaimed FX cold war series The Americans kicks off this week, proving that Americans were ready to embrace a television series about appealing KGB operatives: Matthew Rhys and Keri Russell. Without giving away too much of a sensational first episode, at one point the couple is caught in flagrante delicto by Paige, their teenaged daughter. What follows the next morning over breakfast is a by-the-book conversation about privacy and closed doors. When they are not shuttling family around to carnivals, where son Henry comes close to inadvertently joining the family business, the couple, wearing an assortment of guises, take out whom they must, and the scenes are often bloody.

Pig Iron Theatre’s Twelfth Night, Downtown

How is it possible: two incredibly good productions of Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night in the same season? One of the bard’s bawdiest, the comedy inspired the recent Broadway hit featuring Mark Rylance as Olivia, in a brilliant stab at staying true to Elizabethan strictures: men play the women’s roles. Rylance makes a damned good woman, but in the Pig Iron Theatre’s production, the women (real women) are saucier, the partying heartier, the drink flowing so freely, viewers in the front row of the Abrons Center may require raincoats.

William S. Burroughs’ Centennial Year in American Cities, and One Serendipitous Photo at the Morgan Library

When William S. Burroughs died in August 1997 at age 83, he was the last of the seminal beat writers to go. Jack Kerouac died in 1969, and Allen Ginsberg in 1997. Some argue that Gregory Corso who died in 2001, should have enjoyed that status too. Despite Burroughs’ known heroin use over many years, his hundredth birthday on February 5, the same week that Philip Seymour Hoffman appeared to have died of a drug related cocktail, made many ponder: how do some addicts maintain till old age? Yearlong celebrations, in Bloomington, Lawrence, Seattle and other American cities including New York will mark the occasion with parties and poetry in the expectation that the beat generation will endure in their efforts, and it does in spirit.

Oscar Documentaries and Others: The Act of Killing and The Last of the Unjust

147 docs were eligible for Oscars this year. 15 made a short list, and 5 are now contenders. One, The Act of Killing, a first feature length film for director Josh Oppenheimer, working with an anonymous partner, raises questions of morality, conscience, and accountability related to the 1965-6 genocide in Indonesia. As Oppenheimer explained at a special Academy of Art & Sciences screening series of the Oscar nominated documentaries, he had met some survivors of the killings, and in the process of deciding to make a film on this subject, he met with perpetrators, proud and still in powerful government positions.

k.d. lang in After Midnight

Canadian pop and country singer k.d. lang took over the role originated by Fantasia Barrino in the exuberant Broadway revue After Midnight this week. Channeling Tony Bennett, who came by the Brooks Atkinson Theater to hear her on opening night, lang performed “I Can’t Give You Anything But Love,” “Stormy Weather,” “On the Sunny Side of the Street,” and “Zaz Zuh Zaz” wearing different tuxes, in black and white, her hair slicked up. Yes, with the orchestra onstage under Wynton Marsalis’ direction —you are not going to hear a better big band sound anywhere in New York, and the dancing still wildly entertaining--, lang does not disappoint. She is the crooner whose debonair jazz style marks a new level in her career

Regina Weinreich

Graphic Design: Salpeter Ventura

 

At Daniel’s: A New Tradition for Oscar Night

Daniel Boulud makes a mean red carpet, a special cocktail of that name for Oscar night. This, the second year in a row chef Boulud is host to the east coast academy of arts & sciences members, everyone hopes his restaurant, Daniel, will become a tradition; the fare matches the grandeur of the occasion. Daniel Boulud wants to ensure that he is on the East Coast what Wolfgang Puck and Thomas Keller are to the West where those chefs are hosting the parties and dinners. Of course, some diners there will surely have their statues in hand.

George Clooney Celebrates Monuments Men at the Metropolitan Club

On Tuesday night with an ice storm looming, George Clooney worked the room, a very big room. The elegant Metropolitan Club featured its signature ice sculptures dripping over the raw bar; with its ceiling paintings, this was an opulent and fitting locale for Monuments Men, a movie about the recovered art of Europe during World War II. Honoring the rescuers, a dream cast includes Matt Damon, John Goodman, Bill Murray, Jean Dujardin, Hugh Bonneville and Bob Balaban in what must be called an extended buddy movie directed by George Clooney, and based on a true story from a book by Robert Edsel. Affable, fixing a fan or friend with a steady gaze and an arm firm on the shoulder, Clooney fielded questions about the film’s casting. He’d see Balaban at parties, and at one for the movie Argo, he and co-producer Grant Heslov had a Eureka! moment, deciding to cast the versatile bespectacled actor.

Focus on Women Leaders: Sister Rosemary Nyirumbe and Athena Film Festival

Forest Whitaker takes her calls. Sister Rosemary Nyirumbe so epitomizes the strength of simplicity, the Oscar winning star of Last King of Scotland-- he portrays the dictator Idi Amin-- form a likely alliance in helping young people in Africa recover from the horrors of vicious murderous rebels like Joseph Kony who, like Idi Amin, brutalized them. Whitaker founded a school for boys, to re-humanize them. Sister Rosemary founded a school to teach women to sew, specifically working pop tabs into fashionable bags. That trade allows them to survive with dignity for themselves and for the children many bore against their will. St. Monica’s also serves as a safe haven and hospital for the women. Last week, Sister Rosemary met a group of journalists. She was carrying one of the bags woven of the silver aluminum tabs. Everyone at the table at Milano wanted one, but we all settled for an autographed copy of the book about her life and work, Sewing Hope, and chatted with Derek Watson, the director of a documentary about this woman of faith. Her secret: exuding serenity, Sister Rosemary exacts tough love in situations many would find impossible.

Afternoon of a Faun: A Life of Dancer Tanaquil LeClercq

Tanaquil LeClercq was a lithe, angular beauty, a dancer who graced ballet until polio struck, paralyzing her and ending her career at age 27. Nursing her to a life beyond this disease, a crippler in the 1950’s and now nearly eradicated, were her husband George Balanchine, and friend Jerome Robbins. She had been muse to each of them. The luminous documentary about her, aptly named Afternoon of a Faun from a memorable performance when she is coupled with Jacques d’Amboise, limns her brief career. Archival footage shows this remarkable talent in key performances, including a prophetic dance choreographed by Balanchine for a March of Dimes benefit; in “Resurgence,” she is a girl afflicted with polio as Balanchine himself dances the role of Death.