With Kyrle Lendhoffer & Kimmo Mustonenen
Golden Globe Awards – 2014 – Live
With Wit, Reviewed Live by Kimmo Mustonenen
UPDATE: Kimmo’s brother in Finland had a heart attack (he will be fine) but Kimmo will be unable to live blog the Golden Globes tonight.
Apologies.
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Hello.
The Golden Globes are tomorrow.
Follow my feed if you have the balls.
I’ll be drunk – will you?
Kimmo Mustonenen – (Kimmo On Kino) – Behind The Proscenium
The Green Lantern
With Wit, Reviewed By Kimmo Mustonenen
Ryan Reynolds is the man. But no longer today.
This Northman famous film star – once with Scarlett Johansson (followed drunkenly by leathery Sean Penn, yowza!) – is now expected to hold a straight face above with propping a spirit-sucking expensive superhero film.
The great collapse of Green Lantern will cause most to jump on Reynolds to be blamed… but the wrong-headed doing has its origin in a lamest of the television set-trained scriptwriters and mega stone cold producer honchos.
Yes, that is what I said.
A consequence is that the new Warner Brothers flick with the load of explaining (who the Green Lantern is, for instance) is out there for all to see at megaplexes until the next super hero comes to call and kicks Green Lantern to piracy bin.
What?
In one overcalculated effort to cover all surfaces into a whole film tonally – which doesn’t work and is all over the place. Confusion is not for summer cinema!
Greatly and with greatly bombast, he seizes points of Star Wars, Top Gun and from the Superman, in a kind of superhero stew (only less meat – we need meat!).
Four authors convert the film script (each working from separate story) which spreads nerd-speak like written for baby, followed from the cosmic heavenly drilling carriage credited (you know, not understandable).
Hal Jordan (Ryan Reynolds) is a ass-kicker pilot, who sets egos over brothers.
One day, after an expensive combat aircraft during a war game is inadvertently destroyed, this creates an improbable discovery for Hal: a dying magenta-red foreigner (Temeura Morrison) gives Hal a green lantern fulfilled with cosmic energies and his connected ring.
He puts on the ring and promising allegiance to the lantern, Hal transports to another world (not ours!), in which he experiences stuff that makes him now a member of the Green Lantern Corps: a volume of green intergalactic warriors, who use the energy of the power to fight against the forces of the evil and of fear.
Additionally, to receiving a fast course up to learning, and dress down receiving from Sinestro (Mark Strong), experiences the leader of the Green Lanterns, Hal is educated that an old enemy was freed – the Parallax – from his prison and by the galaxy and goes wild (naturally) to earth with all get out.
Carrying a unruffled new costume, Hal drives back to his main planet, around the Parallax’s minion to confront Dr. Hector Hammond (Peter Sarsgaard).
He must also examine his own worth to ex-girlfriend, Carol Ferris (Blake Lively – who isn’t Ginnifer Goodwin – summer movies are suckage) and defeat that ne’er-do-well.
Warner Brothers would like that we enjoy all the big tent pole things with our wallets – Green Lantern for sure.
Sadly, but this is more like which one expects from a independent superhero film (of which is nothing, right?). Non-geeks will not enjoy the production because of non-exciting production. It’s passable, but not much more than an two-hour digression.
Green Lantern is generic – it has an imitative approach that arranges this motion picture film to fall into whichever hell circle Dante envisioned for.
No fear to say it here!
As a man, I only can dream the upcoming Captain Stoppo movie from MC Comics is less a waste of my and yours time.
Kimmo Mustonenen (Kimmo On Kino) – Behind The Proscenium
Is Nazi lover Lars now feeling “Melancholia” (ha!)?
With wit, reviewed by guest critic Kimmo Mustonenen
Impacts Cannes: The apocalyptic drama “Melancholia” are pushed into the background – of a provocateur Lars von Trier and his statement that he was a Nazi.
The man is 55, but his reputation as the eternal enfant terrible of cinema, he apparently wants to do justice to all eternity. Not only in his radical films for which he is loved all over the world and feared, but also outside in a lot more confusing life (is his).
At the press conference in Cannes on Wednesday afternoon to his apocalyptic drama “Melancholia”, he was – unfortunately – in this respect too great shape.
He said not only to gentle horror of his leading lady Kirsten Dunst, she was suffering from depression, but claimed this week to shoot on the request of his actors a porno. Yes!
What?
And when this was not enough, he outed himself as a Nazi even – after his family had German roots. Hitler was indeed made “a few bad things”, but “I can imagine him in his bunker, in the end, sad.” Lordy.
The manager of the Film Festival will take place this kind sardonic submissions not funny. In the early evening, they said in such a short communiqué as sharp, they would never allow such submissions become the stage of Cannes.
Lars von Trier had to ask an explanation for his behavior, now apologized, saying he had “carried away by a provocation” to.
The most peculiar tendency to self-promotion was already in the press release for “Melancholia” are visible. There, Lars von Trier makes ado self insult to the principle.
“Cream of the Cream,” his film has become, and only the poster, the film stills, the trailer: The see everything “sort of shit” from. Likely to say the enfant terrible with the fact that his new film is a great place. In any case, somehow.
See? I am not afraid to say it.
At least it is pleasing – or so it seemed up to the press conference – that Lars von Trier has made a deep depression, he set two years ago with “Antichrist” is a frightening monument, found apparently.
“Melancholia” but told by an identically-giant planet speed towards the earth and swallows them, of nothing less than the end of the world – by swallowing (what?).
But instead of torturing his film characters, as then, his audience physically and mentally, Lars von Trier celebrates its fatalism and nihilism in a disaster film, as we have seen him in such peace before. And for his concise history, he needs only one scene with highly transparent personnel.
What?
Justine (Kirsten Dunst in fine forming, but no Ginnifer Goodwin) and Michael (Alexander Skarsgard) celebrate their wedding in a castle, one with an adjacent golf course on the lake, Justine’s sister, Claire (Charlotte Gainsbourg) and her husband John (Kiefer Sutherland).
With the hand-held camera filmed nervously close to the people (like “Cloverfield” – awesome!), the party, not least through active support of the embodied by Charlotte Rampling bride’s mother, similarly gruesome next, as was the family party in Thomas Vinterberg’s Dogma classic “Festen” (1998).
The couple separated on the wedding night, and the mentally unstable Justine remains with Claire’s family on the property alone. Meanwhile, the planet is approaching inexorably Melancholia: In five days he should, say the optimists among scientists, just pass by the earth.
Only Justine (turning whiter)- or rather, feel – better. And she suspects the reason the reverse story of creation. The earth is as evil as the earthlings, and a life out in space after the big bang, there is not anyway. But this is too much.
If I say again, why see it, no?
A new masterpiece by Lars von Trier? In “Dancer in the Dark”, which he won the Golden Palm in 2000, reaches “Melancholia” not approach (“Melancholia” to “Dancer in the Dark” – I’m not clear). But even if the movie almost seems to shrink in proportion as the light blue shimmering star grows into full-length canvas size, it remains a suggestive impressive experience.
Just like the astronomers, because if the human race should flourish once a similar fate, please call the killer planet differently. Like Conan. Or Jack Bauer.
“Melancholy” does not kill, but is a worthy temperament that helps understand life.
Kimmo Mustonenen – Behind The Proscenium
Follow @KimmoMustonenen
P.S. Ginnifer Goodwin to make fun in new television serial this fall on television! More news when known!
This week I had the pleasure to sit down with Heinrich Mantle, the director of the upcoming Manka Black Box theatrical treat Platonov by Anton Chekhov. Mantle has challenged audiences for three decades with his deconstruction and recomposition of many of our most beloved classics. He has repeatedly shown that he has no fear, artistically.
Kyrle Lendhoffer: Heinrich, welcome to Behind The Proscenium.
Heinrich Mantle: My pleasure.
KL: Let me cut to the chase. Why Platonov? Why now?
HM: As for Platonov, why not? It’s never performed. It had an original running time of six hours. Chekhov didn’t even like it compared to his other work. As for why now? Broadway needs Chekhov. But Broadway needs the Chekhov that Chekhov didn’t appreciate. Because even though Broadway needs Chekhov, it doesn’t need regurgitated Chekhov. And speaking of that, if I see Uncle Vanya or The Cherry Orchard one more time with period costumes in a pretty little country villa, I will be physically sick.
KL: But isn’t that what Chekhov intended?
HM: How do we know what Chekhov intended? He is dead! Maybe he would have preferred The Cherry Orchard on the moon. We’ll never know for sure – but we can try!
KL: Tell me about your ideas of conceptual theater.
HM: I believe in bringing fresh, new perspectives to shows that have been – shall we say – heavily produced in the past. And these concepts bring modern audiences directly into the viewing experience, where they’re forced to confront their previously conceived notions, prejudice and feelings of the piece and, most importantly, their own lives.
KL: Like your production of Strange Interlude. It caused quite a controversy.
HM: Strange Interlude was a strange duck indeed! I kept everything in line with Eugene O’Neill’s vision – with one very major change. Instead of the characters turning to the audience to say their internal monologues, another actor – representing a player from the Miami Dolphins 1972 NFL Championship team – would come out say the lines.
KL: Why the 1972 Miami Dolphins?
HM: Who wouldn’t want their deepest thoughts expressed by the only undefeated team in modern NFL history? And, yes, I am including last year’s Super Bowl choking New England Patriots.
KL: I would prefer the 1927 Yankees—
HM: Base-baller!
(Laughter)
KL: So, the character of Marsden was represented by Bob Griese…
HM: And Evans, Larry Csonka. Nina’s inner self was represented by Garo Yepremian.
KL: Nina… by Garo Yepremian?
HM: Who better to represent a woman than a place-kicker?
KL: Wicked!
HM: Indeed…
KL: And then you placed Shakespeare’s The Comedy Of Errors in a Gothic mausoleum. Very bold!
HM: I don’t think audiences were quite ready for that one.
KL: Why a mausoleum?
HM: Think of it like this… you have two sets of twins running around Ephesus, there is confusion, laughter. How do you remind the audience of their own mortality? You surround the play with death!
KL: Doesn’t that damage the comedy?
HM: Exactly! And in the confusion, the audience can then see nothing but the truth!
KL: Amazing.
HM: Thank you.
KL: Back to Platonov. How have you approached this one?
HM: It was difficult. I was tearing apart my brain. You see, normally I find a concept. I work on that concept until it is perfect. Then I find a play that I can force that concept on. In this case, I worked in reverse. I found Platonov, and then I worked on the concept.
KL: And that concept was…?
HM: Thinking about it. Platonov’s life is hanging by a thread. But aren’t all of our lives hanging by threads?!? Then it hit me. The actors would hang from the ceiling with wires – or by a thread! And then as the actor’s relationships changed, they would rise above or below each other as their class status increased or decreased.
KL: Amazing again.
HM: Yes. For example, in a key scene between Platonov and Anna Petrovna, each character moves past each other spatially, or up and down to the layman, seven times. You can actually see where they stand.
KL: Or hang…
HM: Or hang, yes.
KL: Wow. One question – you said the play originally ran six hours. How long are you running now?
HM: After fierce cuts, the show now runs three hours – without an intermission.
KL: And the actors are hanging from wires the entire time?
HM: Yes, they are very dedicated.
KL: How do they use the bathroom?
HM: We’re working on that.
As you can see, Heinrich Mantle isn’t afraid to attack our comfortable views of what theater is. And even more important, what theater SHOULD be. It was a pleasure to interview him (again) for Behind The Proscenium.
Kyrle Lendhoffer – Behind The Proscenium
This week I had the pleasure of talking to Simon Ambrose. Intense. Forceful. Unique. Not just words, but an apt description of someone who is bound to become a theatre great.
His most recent work, Monkey Spanking Time won several national awards. His newest work, Graveyards vs. Mars, opens in two weeks at the Manka Bros. Drama Garage.
Mr. Ambrose talked to me for over two hours, but was in such a state of creativity that only portions of the interview were intelligible. And here they are. Let’s go… BEHIND THE PROSCENIUM.
Kyrle Lendhoffer: Simon, it’s good to see you.
Simon Ambrose: (giggling) I see you, too!
KL: Yes, you do. Congratulations on Monkey Spanking Time. An amazing show, yet very controversial.
SA: Yeah…
KL: It must have taken a lot of courage to write an entire show about the pleasures and variations of masturbating. Why masturbating?
SA: (giggling) Whack!
KL: Whack? What do you mean by “whack”?
SA: Dude, I love it.
KL: What do you love?
SA: To whack.
KL: Oh, my. I see.
Simon giggled for a minute or so. When he calmed down, the interview proceeded.
KL: So tell me about Graveyards vs. Mars. What is it about?
SA: Dude, Earth is invaded by Mars. And the Martians enslave us Earthlings. And they’re tall and green!
KL: The Martians?
SA: Huh?
KL: The Martians. They’re tall and green?
SA: Oh, the Martians…
KL: Are tall and green…
SA: Totally!
KL: And?
SA: Huh?
KL: And then what?
SA: Oh yeah… Then the earth people wrack their brains for a way to get rid of the Martians. Dude, nothing works. Then this guy figures out that bringing back the dead in the form of brain eating zombies would be cool.
KL: Really?
SA: Huh?
KL: So that’s what the Graveyard part of the title refers to?
SA: Yeah. Graveyards vs. Mars. How cool is that?
KL: Cool, indeed.
SA: Yeah…
KL: The brain eating zombies… How do they know to only eat the brains of the Martians?
SA: Dude! They don’t! It gets totally intense!
KL: Well, we wouldn’t want to give away any more of the plot. Let’s talk about your process. How did you come up with such an original and fascinating idea?
SA: I worked on it a lot around 4:20 in the afternoon.
KL: Intriguing. So this time has some significance to you…
SA: Well, yeah. 4:20. Time to enter an altered state. You know?
KL: I love that movie.
SA: Huh?
KL: Altered States with William Hurt. Powerful actor. So, you mean you were getting in touch with your primal side?
SA: Sure, that’s it.
A giggling fit started here that lasted several minutes. I have been told that many theatrical genius’ get ideas while in a giggling fit. I cannot image what was going through Simon’s mind.
KL: Are you all right?
SA: Whoo! Yeah… What were we talking about?
KL: Altered States.
Simon had another giggling fit that lasted for approximately two minutes. I was overwhelmed to be in his presence.
KL: Tell me what you’re thinking about right now.
SA: Dude, I could go for a cheeseburger.
KL: A cheeseburger?
SA: Right on! Feed the head – feed the face!
Such gems would continue to drip from the mouth of Simon Ambrose. He was in such a creative frenzy that he laughed non-stop until we got him to White Castle where he ate several cheeseburgers. “Fuel for the muse” I like to call it. And what a muse does Ambrose have.
Graveyards vs. Mars opens very soon at the Manka Bros. Drama Garage. Be there and sense the greatness. I know I will.
Kyrle Lendhoffer – Behind The Proscenium
This is an apology. An online mea culpa. I take the proverbial cat o’nine tails and self flagellate. This is an open apology to the great Zenobia Lassiter.
Last week, I posted an interview and diatribe against her brilliant new work, Pussy. Yes, I said brilliant. I’ve not had time to process what I saw on stage.
I saw her put a fish in her “V” word and felt its power.
I saw her put on a Hitler mustache and read excerpts from Mao’s Little Red Book and now understand what it is to be forced to work retail in a strip mall.
I now know that as I listened to her describe her last colonoscopy that she was in fact talking about our need to vote on a regular basis if we ever hope to sustain democracy.
I had to nerve to say that performance art is neither! I was a Philistine. An ignorant man, who although he lives in a metropolis, has the mind of a plastic suburbanite. If I could find a way to spit on myself, I would.
So, dear Zenobia, here is what I have to say: I couldn’t possibly be more sorry. You are a genius. You are a colossus, and we peep about your feet like insects (I paraphrase my Shakespeare, but you know what I mean).
Zenobia, can you ever forgive me? Will you ever allow me to speak to you again, to sit in your angelic presence and absorb your unabashed brilliance? To be a mortal in the aura of a goddess? Please? Pretty please?
Ha!
The day that I apologize to the likes of you is the day that I buy season tickets to the barbaric New Jersey Devils and their hyper-man-beast NHL. YOU MAKE ME SICK!
Faithful readers, I hope you had a little chortle at my innocent prank.
In a week or so, I will be interviewing some of the artistic minds involved with the Manka Center Stage World Premiere of Tennessee Williams’ lost classic Haunted Alligators. You can see the 1960 film version all this month on Manka Classic Movies.
Yours In Art,
Kyrle Lendhoffer – Behind The Proscenium
I remember living in the “80s”.
It was the time of Wham! and Careless Whisper.
It was the time of Broadway’s Les Miserables and Big River.
Sadly, it was also the time of Ronald Reagan and Jerry Fallwell and his “Moral Majority”. The reason I bring any of this up is the reminder of the ghastly “Moral Majority”. Why? Because in my circle of theater aficionados we had a saying – “The Moral Majority is neither”. Neither “moral” nor “majority.” What is the relevance? It is this; today I’m going to talk to a performance artist.
I must admit that I have no idea what performance art is supposed to be. But I do know this; performance art is neither. Neither “performance” nor “art.”
Earlier in the week I had the misfortune to be invited by a (no longer) friend to a “show” by noted “artist” Zenobia Lassiter. The “show” was called Pussy. I thought it might be about cats (I love my kitties, they are adorable), but I was horribly wrong. I talked to Lassiter after the “show.”
Kyrle Lendhoffer: I don’t know what to say…
Zenobia Lassiter: There is no correct response. When everything is deconstructed to its most base level, there is really nothing left to say.
KL: No, that’s not it. At times I thought I was going to be sick. You call that “theater”?
ZL: Of course I do. It’s the only kind of theater that matters. Think about what made you sick.
KL: All right, I’m thinking about it. Oh, god…
ZL: And it makes you sick again! My work has power! You will remember this forever! You can’t say the same about Rent.
KL: I thought Rent was very powerful. And I’ll remember it forever because it was INCREDIBLE. Because it had artistic integrity. Because it had a beginning, middle and end.
ZL: Those things are over rated. You long for the theater of your grandfather. I’m giving you the theater of your unborn great grandson.
We bickered for a moment about whether or not I’d have a great grandson and how that really mattered in the grand scheme of things.
KL: Zenobia, what the hell was your piece about?
ZL: You tell me, Mr. Lendhoffer. What did you think it was about?
KL: (thinking for a few moments) I think you were trying to explore your own sexuality and the tenuous relationship between man and woman. I think.
ZL: Wrong! Try again.
KL: Really? I mean, it must have had something to do with your sexuality in some way. There is no way that it wasn’t.
ZL: You’re not setting your mind free. Why would you say something like that?
KL: Well, that thing with the fish.
ZL: What about the fish?
KL: Madam, you put a fish into your vagina. How the hell does that not relate to your sexuality in some way?
ZL: Your mind is trapped. Ossified by the world. Let me help you out.
KL: Oh, please do.
ZL: My piece was a scathing indictment of our consumer culture. It’s about everything that is wrong with the media turning us into “sheeple”, making us follow every fad, making us buy every product, making us into automatons that will buy everything – from Coke Zero to the war in Iraq.
KL: Putting a fish in your vagina is an indictment of the war in Iraq? You have got to be kidding me!
ZL: Fool! The fish represented Big Media’s message! We were my vagina. You, me, everyone! The message was being crammed down our throat. Our collective throat was my vagina! It’s so obvious!
KL: Ms. Lassiter, I am NOT your vagina! I will never BE your vagina!
ZL: It’s too late, Mr. Lendhoffer. You are already my vagina.
KL: Can we stop using the “V” word? I’m getting sick again.
ZL: Your sickness is your subconscious mind actually getting my show. Deep down inside you know what I’m saying and you agree with it. Admit it.
KL: I will admit nothing of the sort. You have problems.
ZL: Oh, really…
KL: Yes! And I find it insulting that I had to watch you go through your own psychotherapy on stage. See a psychiatrist! Get some help! But in private! Theater goers do not want to see you solve your psychosis – especially when they have to pay for it!
ZL: Let’s hear you say that when I win another “Obie.”
KL: Good God…
With that I got up and ran from the room.
What is theater becoming? It’s bad enough when I have to sit through “monologists” like Spalding Gray (may he rest in peace) and Eric Bogosian. But now I have to watch a woman put a fish into her “V” and be impressed? It’s only impressive when it’s part of a show for sailors in Tijuana. Someday – someday in a more beautiful future I’ll be able to put this “show” out of my mind.
Performance art? Get real! Performance art is neither.
Kyrle Lendhoffer – Behind The Proscenium