Gossip Central

Ben Affleck and Matt Damon in Air: Courting a Legend

Who knew basketball great Michael Jordan had a secret weapon? I don’t mean the Nike Air sneaker, the subject of a compelling, smart new movie, Air, but his mom Doloris Jordan who brokered the Nike endorsement deal and championed her son, when he was a rookie, to the top. Under the superb direction of Ben Affleck, Air tells the story of the making of that famous deal starring Matt Damon as Sonny Vaccaro, the persistent Nike exec who made it happen, giving the first heart-felt Oscar speech of the new season. Equal and opposite to that is a second speech, performed by Viola Davis. Believing in her son’s potential, she takes a risk in insisting the athlete get a percentage of the sales of the shoes with his name on it. She knows his worth. Phil Knight, with Affleck playing the Nike CEO, goes for it, making history.

Ben Affleck has his own not-so-secret weapon, his decades-long friendship with Matt Damon. They won Best Screenplay Oscars for Good Will Hunting. The shorthand between them as they fielded questions during a post-premiere Q&A this week, made the filmmaking look like a breeze to the crowd attending. Viola Davis and her husband Julius Tennon were also onstage, talking about how their marriage informed the onscreen marriage. When Sonny makes the trip to visit Michael Jordan’s parents, to say why Jordan should go with Nike over Adidas and New Balance, the other hot sneakers of the 1980’s, Doloris takes him ‘round the back of the house to talk. With a mere gesture, James Jordan, Sr. lets her know, he’s got her back.

Afterthoughts: Kudos to An Oscars with Class

Even the pre-Oscar buzz augured a return to old-school. The academy had its wits about them awarding Everything Everywhere All at Once, which, for the most part, swept the earlier awards. When that phenomenon began, the world seemed divided: some could not understand its metaverse. Others said, it spoke to them. Because the latter group included some younger film enthusiasts I respected, I understood, attention must be paid. I finally saw the film. I tried to keep an open mind as I guffawed at visual effects, spinning, lurching, the hotdog fingers, and just the look of Jamie Lee Curtis, and the verbal jokes too, losing it at the everything bagel. Within the chaos, the tender moments floored me: the struggle of a mother/daughter relationship, the love. A most unusual film, EEAAO hit many bases resolving them in simplicity: Nothing Matters.

If you think Best Supporting Actor Ke Huy Quan was exuberant for the Oscars, let’s just say, his manic enthusiasm—reminiscent of Roberto Benigni from another time—was consistent throughout the long season. At the NYFCC awards, he made sure to greet everyone, hugging, telling his American Dream story. Unstoppable. He launched his own campaign, but guileless, sincere. You had to adore him.

Kudos for Jamie Lee Curtis. I instantly remembered her in the first Knives Out movie, thinking then that she had transformed, returning to her True Lies serious comedic chops, that it was all a late life career shift from the horror flicks. And the look of Sarah Polley in a tux, eschewing the froufrou of some of the bouffant fare. Another great win: Adapted screenplay for Women Talking. We can talk about the representation due women.

Jessica Chastain in A Doll’s House: Ibsen for our Time

Revolving on the barren Hudson Theater stage in an expansive orbit for 20 minutes before the first words of Henrik Ibsen's A Doll’s House are spoken, Jessica Chastain as Nora Helmer sits stationary as she in her chair marks the periphery. The edgy blacks and whites are not the way you imagine this classic Ibsen drama from 1879 would be set—more likely in the well-appointed, tastefully muted parlor of a proper home. In Jamie Lloyd’s revival, you have to see the living space in your mind’s eye, and ask yourself, why are the virtues of women in marriage so compelling a subject for men? Think Honore Balzac, Anton Chekhov, Leo Tolstoy—and Ibsen: why do him now?

Amy Herzog’s fine adaptation distills Ibsen’s play to its essence: ditsy and chirpy, --a “femme enfante,” as the French would say--Nora keeps up her marital façade. Wife to Torvald Helmer (Arian Moayed), she’s his precious bird. But she’s more complicated than she looks; she’s mired in deception, and a naïve trust that her marriage is solid enough, that Torvald loves her enough, that he, though perhaps tarred, under the generous blanket that love weaves could bear any fault that she might present. Well, you know there’s trouble when only he has the key to the mailbox. Especially this mailbox!

Among a pared down roster of minor characters, a nanny for the children (Tasha Lawrence), a schoolmate (Jesmille Darbouze), a wealthy, devoted best friend who might be called upon (a wonderful Michael Patrick Thornton), Nora seems well-situated in her world. And then there’s Nils Krogstad (Okieriete Onaodowan) with whom she’s bonded by a loan. Visually, when he comes to her, they are seated back-to-back, as though, pale as Nora is, and shadowy as Krogstad is lit, they form a single unit.

A Rendez-vous with Virginie Efira: The French Film Festival Returns

While many quibble with this year’s Oscar list for its lack of female directors, this year’s Rendez-vous with French Cinema; a yearly event hosted by Film at Lincoln Center and Unifrance, features two women with superb films. For Opening Night, Alice Winocour’s Revoir Paris, translating to Paris Memories, stars this year’s Cesar winner for Best Actress, Virginie Efira. As Mia, she is the survivor of a terrorist attack in a Parisian café where nearly everyone was murdered. Mia, understandably, cannot return to life as usual, to her apartment, her boyfriend, her job in media, a Russian translator. Rather, haunted, she revisits the scene finding healing as she bonds with other survivors. While these emotions are tenderly evoked, Winocour does not skimp on the violence, the shooters seen from Mia’s eye view as she somehow fails to be hit. These scenes are nail-bitingly intense, explosive.

Introducing her movie, Alice Winocour explained, she was not just exploring a random moment in the Zeitgeist. Who has not imagined oneself in such a terrifying circumstance? Her little brother was present at the Bataclan on November 13, 2015, when hundreds were gunned down. Interviewing many survivors, Winocour knew Mia’s trauma all too well.

Charlie Mackesy’s Journey: The Boy, the Mole, the Fox, and the Horse

Jet-lagged as you might expect for a British writer/illustrator just arriving from L.A., having promoted his film, and looking as you might imagine a mad scientist crossed with Gene Wilder, Charlie Mackesy held forth at a luncheon at the Whitby Hotel, signing cupcake boxes, posters, copies of his book, and telling a story about how his teaching drawing to a Holocaust survivor helped the man, now 100, unleash painful memories. His energy seemed remarkable, but the occasion, a celebration of the film adapted from his beloved book, The Boy, the Mole, the Fox and the Horse, was nominated for a Best Animated Short Film Oscar. Then you realize he’s fueled by the film, a fable with a fresh message. Starting with an encounter between a boy and a mole who is looking for cake in a snowy landscape—(well, isn’t everyone?)—the film addresses a fundamental question: the mole asks, “What do you want to be when you grow up?” The boy answers: “Kind.”

Okay. Simple enough. The mole voiced by Tom Hollander thinks he sees a cake, and even when he discovers it is a tree, there’s no disappointment, well, not really, because the tree is the most perfect tree, just as the boy, the mole, the fox, and the horse they encounter on their journey are drawn with a romantic perfection, becoming kind together, and yes, a family. The fox—gently voiced by Idris Elba—bares his teeth. He could just as easily have eaten the mole who saved him from a trap—but he doesn’t and saves him right back from drowning in fast-moving icy waters.

Oscar Nominations: The Andrea Riseborough Upset

Oscar watchers did not see Andrea Riseborough coming, even though she was on the tip of Cate Blanchett’s lips as she accepted a Critics Choice award for Best Actress for her tour de force performance in Tar. In almost a whisper, the formidable Blanchett, a frontrunner who has already won a slew of awards, noted Riseborough, not even mentioning a movie she leads, To Leslie. A hugely solid actress, Riseborough is in the back story of many films, a minor character or supporting role. A British actress, she was a factory worker in Made in Dagenham. She’s played Wallis Simpson. Reaching back to the biopic about Billie Jean King, she played a sly, deceitful love interest to the tennis star with Emma Stone in the lead. She’s in David O. Russell’s most recent film Amsterdam, and when the premiere took over Alice Tully Hall, she graced the long cast line onstage. Present for a long time, in To Leslie, an indie film celebrated by a Hollywood elite, Andrea Riseborough finally leads.

Unseated is a list of fine actresses including Danielle Deadwyler, Viola Davis, as many have noted. Many ponder how this nomination will affect the Best Actress win, but for now, whatever conversation the Oscars inspire, this nod has mixed up a predictable roster that includes Michelle Yeoh, Michelle Williams, and Ana de Armas for her heartbreaking turn as Marilyn Monroe in Blonde.

Steven Spielberg at the Golden Globes: The Awards Season Heats Up

Everyone gets a kick out of Jennifer Coolidge’s loopy discourse. As demonstrated at the Golden Globes ceremony this week, nobody does it better, but the antic Ke Huy Quan, whose award for Best Supporting Actor-Motion Picture for his work in Everything Everywhere All at Once started the evening off, comes close. In a flash of serious reflection and gratitude, he shouted out to Steven Spielberg for casting him in his debut movie, Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. Seated closeby, with his new movie’s cast and crew, Spielberg looked genuinely pleased. While Quan went on to a few more roles—in Goonies, for example—the young actor could not get work for decades until the Daniels put him in their new movie, such a mash up of martial arts and narrative high jinks, there’s never a dull pause in the multiverse. Quan’s heartfelt speech became a bookend to the historic Globe’s night that, in the end, honored Steven Spielberg for Best Director-Motion Picture and Best Picture-Drama for his quasi-autobiographical The Fabelmans.

Picking up his statue for directing, Spielberg spoke about his movie, what it meant to finally address his own story. His words struck a chord. Having thought about it for years, he hit 74. What was he waiting for? True, not everyone has a mother who danced provocatively at family camping trips, or brought home a pet monkey, or who, so utterly free, went off with her husband’s best friend. That’s one part of his origin story. Another, the anti-Semitism Spielberg endured as a teen struck another chord. He did what he had to do, discovering that story-telling—for him with his camera—could make him popular. Or at least respected. Or at least keep him alive. The parameters are emblematic of what it took in his era for Jewish kids to survive, and speaks to the larger story of how the young come into their own next moment.

Ragtime at Bay Street Theater: Listen to Mother

The heart of the dazzling revival of Ragtime at Bay Street Theater is Mother, a character of enormous compassion. As played by Lora Lee Gayer, she’s a lovely presence who saves an abandoned black baby and his mother Sarah (Kyrie Courter), and navigates her well-to-do New Rochelle family through the vagaries and scandals of early 20^th century American life. Mother is part of an ensemble with talented actors performing the roles of Harry Houdini, Emma Goldman (Victoria Huston-Elem), Evelyn Nesbit (Cathryn Wake) and Booker T. Washington (Davon Williams), to name just a few of the famous personages populating E. L. Doctorow’s historic novel Ragtime, the musical’s epic source. Limning the current cultural territory of “Black Lives Matter,” the plight of the working class, and of newly arrived immigrants, Bay Street’s production seems especially fresh from beginning to teary-eyed end. Mother singing, “We Can Never Go Back to Before,” becomes an anthem for change-- in her marriage, and to the hopes and dreams of Americans—such as the play’s Coalhouse (Derrick Davis) seeking equality, justice, and democratic values. 

At Ragtime’s ebullient opening night, the audience leapt to their feet as the ensemble took their bows. Of course, it seemed to all that Ragtime’s intertwining stories were timeless, with love and compassion the only curing force. With music by Stephen Flaherty, lyrics by Lynn Ahrens, book by Terrence McNally, and under Will Pomerantz’ expert direction, Ragtime underscores—no pun intended: the power of a great night of theater holds its own curing magic.

Lost Illusions: A Classy Take on a French Classic

The French can be vicious, bringing backstabbing to a fine art. Just look at les Liaisons Dangereuses. This year’s winner of seven Cesars, including Best Film, went to Xavier Giannoli’s adaptation of Honore Balzac’s Lost Illusions, a splendidly captivating romp through 19^th century Paris via the extravagant “illusions” of a young, determined, and talented poet, as his ideals are bought and sold by alluringly fancy vipers of the first order. 

Fresh from the rural fields, the ambitious newbie makes his way to the big city’s swank salons, taking journalism as a day job. Needless to say, the work consumes him. He falls for a beautiful kept woman/would be actress, a lover of exceptional skill, who is ill (a little “la Boheme”). Lucien appears to have it all—acclaim, love, all except title, --until he does not. The Devil exacts his price. At Lucien’s inevitable fall, editors, rivals, --everyone exclaims, “Well, who do you think you are?” His shifting identity is just one of his conceits. In the French court of commerce and public opinion, betrayal –and its sister, humiliation--rule.

Weaving such tales of the ups and downs of Fortune’s Wheel with finesse and finery—with cunning contrasts in temptation and scandal, the French are masters. This is great work for an ensemble of actors starting with Gerard Depardieu, Cecil de France, Jeanne Balibar, Xavier Dolan, Salome Dewaels, and more. As Lucien, Benjamin Voisin plays the poet as pouty, seductive, and naïve.

A classic story, classically made! Yes, the French are great at tales of vicious misfortune, and that’s why we love them. 

Oscars So Real in 2022: No Offense Intended

Despite a contretemps at the Oscars—a slap seen round the world—the ceremony and awards proceeded as expected, apace, with favorites winning all around. When Will Smith accepted his Best Actor award, he tearfully mentioned defending family, as his character Richard Williams did coaching his daughters Venus and Serena to top tennis honors. Of course, Smith had just hit Chris Rock for a dumb, inconsiderate joke about his wife Jada Pinkett Smith, mumbled while Smith’s expletives were bleeped out. The morning after, many are thinking his tearful Oscar acceptance speech is not sufficient to brush aside his behavior. 

Last year’s Best Actor, Anthony Hopkins, present this year after missing the 2021 Academy Awards; so sure he would not win, he stayed home in Wales. Smith was the favorite for his prize as were the best supporting actors, Ariana DeBose and Troy Kotsur. Jessica Chastain, awarded for Best Actress for her role as televangelist Tammy Faye spoke about being seen. The Oscars –spreading the love-- made sure many were both seen and heard. CODA –the smaller film that could—about a young hearing woman coming into her own in a deaf family--took top honors.