Gossip Central

Robert DeNiro in The Alto Knights: Holding Court in a Room of Writers

Based on a true story, THE ALTO KNIGHTS stars Robert DeNiro in two roles: best frenemies Frank Costello and Vito Genovese. Childhood pals, they hung out in The Alto Knights social club. Dapper, refined for a mobster, Costello wants out of “the business.” Scruffy and rude, Genovese wants in—that is, to reclaim his head-of-the-family position he had prior to leaving the country to beat a jail term. Costello hopes to retire with his wife, Bobbie, --Debra Messing, superb as we have never before seen her, --as Genovese contends with his wife, Anna, --Kathrine Narducci, out-of-control-good--waging a legal battle with her husband over his daily theft of her nightclub take, even as she screams professing her love for him. Married to these women, playing by mafia rules with the men, DeNiro gives a tour de force performance, his “Costello” hinting at a saintly Corleone, and his crazed “Genovese” channeling Joe Pesce.

You cannot make this stuff up, but in Nicholas Pileggi’s hands, you can supply the words, flesh out a drama perfect for the fine direction of Barry Levinson and Irwin Winkler’s expert, detailed production, a script, a part of his book Wiseguys, for these classic mob movie-makers. This is the year’s first great old-school entertainment, a nostalgia trip and high bar for films to follow.

The Jonathan Larson Project: His Words, His Music Downtown

A new musical revue, The Jonathan Larson Project, at the Orpheum Theater on Second Avenue is proof of a simple fact: there’s never enough Jonathan Larson. Sure, opening night was a fan fest, with many having sampled the work the writer/ composer left behind after his truly untimely death on the eve of his Rent’s downtown debut. Now assembled for its own entertaining evening, conceived by Jennifer Ashley Tepper, his compositions remind us all of his awesome talent.

“Not a word has been changed,” says the program. His lyrics remain topical, whimsical, pure joy. A standout was Lauren Marcus’ hilarious romp around the stage, hose in hand for “Hosing the Furniture.” Larson had contributed the song for a 1989 revue about the 1939 World’s Fair, imagining the future. According to the notes, Larson knew Stephen Sondheim would be there at the premiere. Working hard, he won the Stephen Sondheim Award. The number comes close to a forgotten American musical genre, the art song. Silly and fun, it hearkens back to an era, to a lyric like Paul Bowles’ “the best part of a picnic are the napkins.”

Larson’s “Casual Sex, Pizza, and Beer” had been written on “a junky spinet piano with missing keys that he found on the street and rolled into his first apartment.” In performance, the ensemble featuring Adam Chanler-Berat, Taylor Iman Jones, Andy Mientus, Jason Tam, and Marcus makes the song a youthful, raucous anthem. Echoes of Rent abound. Bittersweet hints of the show’s various permutations, making it to Broadway and beyond were noted, all limned in the hit 2021 movie, "Tick Tick . . . Boom" with Andrew Garfield as Larson.

Adrien Brody at the Oscars: Don’t Let Hate Go Unchecked

Hollywood sent a message at this year’s Oscars. Winning Best Actor for his role in THE BRUTALIST, his second for this prize, Adrien Brody hoped for a healthier, happier, more inclusive world: “Don’t let hate go unchecked.” That’s not a small ask. From his first win for THE PIANIST in 2002, the actor whose mother, the superb Village Voice photographer Sylvia Plachy emigrated from Hungary in the mid-sixties, the actor with a war-torn look has played parts hewing close to this background. He has even said he could hear his grandfather, as he created the accent for this role, reminding everyone of America’s highest ideals even as his partner, Georgina Chapman had to remind him to thank his mother.

The Palestinian/ Israeli team that made Best Documentary winner NO OTHER LAND, showed how their collaboration as filmmakers cut through the senseless political practices in a town in the West Bank, policies that brought violence and horror to communities in Israel and Gaza. The filmmakers asserted that our government’s current response is not helping to bring peace.

Zoe Saldana was the first American-born Oscar winner whose history goes back to the Dominican Republic. Honored with many awards on her way up to the Best Supporting Actress Oscar for her role in EMILIA PEREZ, Saldana’s win could not have been easy for her co-star Karla Sofia Gascon, shunned for hate-speech, racist comments made online. For sure, that hurt the Netflix movie’s chances for Best Picture.