Puttin' on the Kritz

Are we living in a golden age of funny women? Oh yes we do. While the Apatow gang and the frat pack make what feels like a gazillion movies a year, the truly incisive fun comes from women. So why Tina Fey, Wanda Sykes, Kristen Wiig, Sarah Silverman and Amy Poehler don't overtake the movie screens the way Vince Vaughn, Will Ferrell or the inexplicably ubiquitous Seth Rogen do is beyond me. (And let's not even broach the issue of Seth Rogen getting the cool chicks. AAARGGGHHHH!) As much as I love The 40 Year Old Virgin, everything else Judd Apatow has produced is dreck. The Sheila and tried to watch Step Brothers last night and gave up after less than half an hour: The sight of Ferrell and John C. Reilly as 40-year-old children involved in a deep bromance with each other was just too pathetic. I do have a teeny tiny bit of a thing for Ferrell—ah, Blades of Glory—but Step Brothers was just too much infantilization.

Okay, deep breath. And now back to the awesome chicks.

On Thursday, we saw the Encores! production of On the Town, which was a treat from beginning to end. I just can't get tired of hearing those classic scores performed by the large and in charge Encores! orchestra—which was even bigger than usual for this run, and really did justice to Bernstein's work. And I was once again reminded of how Betty Comden and Adolph Green really are among my very favorite Broadway artisans.

Playing horny cab driver Hildy Esterhazy was longtime Dilettante fave Leslie Kritzer. She did a great job with the swinging "I Can Cook Too" and narrowly avoided a total disaster when her dress got caught in the head of costar Justin Bohon during "Come Up to My Place" and she almost fell off the chair she was standing on. You kinda had to be there.

The only reason Kritzer wasn't the biggest scenery chewer that night is that Andrea Martin was also in the cast and laid waste to everything in sight. Martin managed to repeatedly crack up Jessica Lee Goldyn (who played Miss Turnstiles Ivy Smith), particularly when, explaining vocal techniques, she lunged at Goldyn's breasts, bellowing "The resonators!" Comedy gold!

Anyway, Kritzer seems to be branching out into straight-up laffs as opposed to pure musical theater, and she's set up a dedicated channel on YouTube that includes her audition video for Saturday Night Live (I'm not sure if she actually submitted it to the show or not). Now that Pushing Daisies seems to be cancelled, can we get Kritzer and Chenoweth in a show? I'm not sure Broadway could take the both of them together, though.

Getting Blasted at Soho Rep

After a month's delay, I finally saw Soho Rep's acclaimed production of Sarah Kane's Blasted tonight. I have no idea how the NY Times reviewer could state that "the play’s concluding moment makes clear that Ms. Kane can still see potential for goodness in people, that she hasn’t given up on life" because there is absolutely none, zero, zilch hope in Blasted.

The ending in question, coming on the heels of scenes of rape, enucleation and cannibalism (not just any cannibalism: someone chews into a dead baby) does not provide a sliver of relief. On the contrary, Kane takes Beckett's absurdism to its absolute nihilistic, inhuman limit—I found the vision of Reed Birney's character, Ian, swallowed up to his neck under his hotel room's floor strikingly reminiscent of Happy Days for instance. But accepting that this is a pitch-black vision also means accepting an absolute lack of the aforementioned goodness, and that is a prospect too unbearable for some. If you need solace, or the possibility of solace, to go on, you need to believe Kane hasn't "given up on life." (We know she had.)

She once said that the characters of Blasted are hopeful because they "continue to scrape a life out of the ruins." But that is precisely why the show is so bleak: The gun Ian tries to use to kill himself is empty. You can't escape from that hell, so you have to live in it. Kane did not try to scrape a life out of the ruins for herself: She committed suicide.

Kane also said that "to create something beautiful about despair, or out of a feeling of despair, is…the most hopeful, life-affirming thing a person can do." But this, to me, applies to what one can get out of a despairing play such as Blasted after seeing it. I did not find it depressing, for instance, unlike some of the spectacles on Broadway, with all their bloated, vulgar vanity, or the fact that the current President of the U.S. is a war criminal and most likely will get away with it.

No, Kane creates something not about despair but from despair. We answer after seeing the show, because Blasted pushes your face down into vomit and blood and pain and tears, and the only response possible is to then push your head back up and gasp for air. But this can work only if the play itself is an airless pit of bleakness. There is no exit.

Carla sings a new tune on American TV

There's many sentences I thought I'd never hear. Yet one of them rolled out—not so smoothly since it involved French words—of Matt Lauer's mouth today: "And here she is, the First Lady of France, with her new song…"

Lo and behold, Carla Bruni-Sarkozy was on the Today Show this morning, playing two tracks from her latest album. And yes, the link includes video evidence! We are reaching new levels of surrealism here, people. (I typed "my friends" at first but then I remembered that 1. not all of you are my friends and 2. just yesterday the Sheila finished a sentence with "my friends" and I asked her if she was turning into John McCain.)

French readers should correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm pretty sure Carla didn't perform in France to plug the album. Something or other about it not being dignified. Yeah, whatevs. Clearly the dignity rules are suspended on this side of the Atlantic. It's like eating sweets: It doesn't count when you do it on vacation.

For those about to rawk

Boss Hog has just announced it's playing Bowery Ballroom on December 17. I dashed out a little something on the Time Out New York blog about it, so I'll just add here that Cristina Martinez has got to be one of my absolute favorite rock singers ever. And I won't undermine her achievement by saying "one of my absolute favorite female rock singers ever."

The band hasn't played here in eight years, which kinda neatly coincides with the Bush administration. Yeah, I would have taken a leave of absence, too.

Shakespearean Borat

Now I certainly don't want to echo Stockhausen's remark about 9/11 being "the greatest work of art there has ever been," but a line in Ayman al- Zawahiri's latest communiqué did strike me as uncommonly poetic: "Be aware that the dogs of Afghanistan have found the flesh of your soldiers to be delicious, so send thousands after thousands to them." Keep in mind I'm merely talking about style, not content.

Note, for instance, that the dogs have not found the flesh delicious: They have found it "to be delicious." There's a certain flow to it, like Borat writing a Shakespearean sonnet. The tone throughout is also oddly sexual in a subliminal manner—the mix of desire and violence is startling. Al Qaeda may have a future writing for HBO if, you know, they weren't such blood-thirsty fundies.

Going high-tech at the Met

What's the best chaser for the awesome experience that was the 24 Hour Plays on Broadway? A three-hour opera. No, really.

I can't say I was really looking forward to go out last night: I had had two hours of sleep in the previous 26 hours, a long day in the TONY trenches (thank you, accelerated Thanksgiving schedule!), and the prospect of parking my butt in a Met seat for an extended period of time was not all that alluring. I mean, normally it would be but what I really wanted was to go home, watch a couple of 30 Rock episodes on DVD and crash. But it was not to be, and I don't regret it for a second.

Robert Lepage's production of La Damnation de Faust was the first time Berlioz's piece had been fully staged at the Met since 1906. It was touted as a multimedia wonderland blah blah blah…but I was really afraid this was another case of the Met patting itself on the back for bravely going where theater has been for the past 30 years. But you know what? Lepage knocked my socks off.

This video preview gives a faint idea of the basic concept so I'll spare you the details. What I liked best is that this wasn't technical wizardry for its own sake: There was a real director with a real eye at the helm. The second half alone is one of the most striking things I've ever witnessed on stage. Of particular note: When the grid-like scaffold the action was taking place on morphed from something out of Tron into cast-iron into trees; when, a bit later, those trees shriveled up and died as Mephistophéles walked past them. And in Marguerite's big aria, Susan Graham was dwarfed by a gigantic video projection of herself (shot live), her head engulfed in flames and smoke. This all made Peter Sellars and Bill Viola's highly-touted Tristan Project —the last time a creative team really went full-on, large-scale multimedia on opera's ass here—look like an NYU student project.

Another highlight: Lepage's vision of Hell seamlessly blended the human (the Met's chorus, which had been superlative all evening, switched into an even higher gear then) and the oppressively mechanical. It may have been Hell, but I was in Heaven. (Oh, we saw that too, actually.)

As a funny sidenote, when the chorus of damned souls switched to Berlioz's "infernal language" to invoke the names of demons ("O mérikariu! O midara caraibo lakinda, merondor dinkorlitz, merondor! Satan! Belphégor! Astaroth! Méphisto!"), the man in front of me toggled through the various options offered by the Met titles, as if he thought his console had suddenly jumped from English to Ancient Sumerian.

The singers copped well with the demands placed on them by working on a multilevel scaffold. John Relyea's Mephistophélès pranced around in a red leather suit, preceded by his codpiece (which elicited titters from the audience upon its grand entrance) and Marcello Giordani's Faust was fine, though he didn't quite rouse me—unlike Susan Graham, a big reason the second half rocketed into the stratosphere. When she literally went up in smoke during "D'Amour, l'ardente flamme," the image was perhaps obvious since that's what she was singing about, but from a purely aesthetic standpoint, it was a theatrical vision for the ages and it'll remain seared in my retina.

The 24 Hour Plays

Since yesterday evening, I've been liveblogging the 24 Hour Plays on Broadway on the TONY blog. It's been a lot of fun so far, and surprisingly I don't seem to have been affected by sleeping only two hours last night. Or maybe I have been affected and I can't tell the difference. Judge for yourself. The whole she-bang ends tonight around 10pm and I'm glad to be able to bring my friend Tristan (the Sheila has another engagement), who I'm sure will have thoughts of his own.

Opera drama

New York City Opera may have a non-season kind of season, but that doesn't mean it's not providing backstage drama. Go visit the Sunday Arts blog for my take on that little hothouse of nuttiness.

I'm preparing to go and cover the 24 Hour Plays on Broadway event for the Time Out New York blog. Do drop by and visit that site tomorrow—really early: the first post of what I hope will be several posts should be up around midnight or 1am.

Pins and needles

Gosh Dilettante, what an exciting life you lead: at the opera one night, some kooky avant-garde performance the next, a big Broadway hit after that…truly, do you ever rest?

The short answer is no. There is, however, more variety in my entertainment diet than I may let on. Do read Judy M's report on our latest exciting sporting endeavor. It's a fine read, though she does not mention that I led the entire second game, only to collapse ignominously in the last frame and lose by two measly points. Noooooooo!

Gaahl is out

Okay, we've just lost a lesbian character on TV, but we've also gained a badass, antisocial gay man! Gorgoroth's frontman Gaahl has come out in a German mag. Gorgoroth is one of my favorite classic-sounding Norwegian black-metal bands, so I find this news particularly exciting.

Gorgoroth—which has already been dubbed Gayrgoroth by hatas—is one of the most extreme bands in the BM scene. These guys don't go for fancy or proggy or folky: Just the old-school hate, m'am! Alas we'll probably never see them in the US because Gaahl has a police record and is unlikely to ever get a visa. Unless Obama's administration relaxes immigration restrictions for artists who have spent quality time in the clink.

Based on the interview, Gaahl's now happy—he had his first relationship last year at age 32, which may explain why he had been so crabby for the past, oh, 20 years—and has started designing clothes in addition to his musical career. I'm really curious to see what the next album is going to be like ’cause I'm just not sure Gaahl can sustain his previous levels of near-psychopathic intensity now that he's getting laid.

Where dinosaurs roam

I write about the upcoming Margaret Mead Film & Video Festival on the Sunday Arts blog. This fest, hosted by the American Museum of Natural History, has got to be one of the coolest in town. Plus it's a great place to pick up…er, meet internationally minded people. Which you are if you read this blog. I'm just sayin'…

Stormy weather in Shondaland

I know we're supposed to be all sunny and positive until at least the end of the week but life goes on—even if some TV characters clearly don't. So here I am, venting about the recent dismissal of my favorite Grey's Anatomy actor/character over on the Time Out New York blog. Oh well, at least I will gain an extra hour a week since that show is now officially retired from my viewing schedule.

American at last

I had been eligible for American citizenship for quite a while, but I only made up my mind when Bush was reelected in 2004: I wanted to vote the next time around. After a longish but uneventful naturalization process, I became an American citizen two years ago. Quite frankly, it felt mostly like a bureaucratic procedure and I still thought of myself as French. I started to feel some stirrings when I cast my vote in the Democratic primary in February. Readers of this blog know I was a Clinton supporter but I had zero qualms supporting Obama once he was the nominee, and yesterday I voted for him 110%. (Factoid: voting with one hand—especially when you're not experienced with the New York system—while trying to film with the other is hard!)

This morning, I can say that for the first time, I am an American. I feel American. There is no shame anymore in holding this passport. And in fact, it's the country holding my other passport, the French one, that suddenly looks archaic with its antiquated power structure and elite-grooming system.

In the meantime, the tears have got to stop! Cars honk in triumph: I well up. Strangers scream in joy: waterworks. I look at the newspapers' covers and it's sob time.

But the thing that really, really gets me is when I think of the point in Obama's acceptance speech when he said America is "young and old, rich and poor, Democrat and Republican, black, white, Latino, Asian, Native American, gay, straight, disabled and not disabled." I know this is par-for-the-course verbiage, but at the same time it means a lot that he included gay people. I didn't think it would matter so much to me, but it does. Especially since as I write, it looks like the loathsome Proposition 8 making same-sex marriage illegal has passed in California. Part of me hopes it's just the death throes of a certain kind of mean-spirited, exclusionary thinking, but at the same time I'm not blinded enough by last night's triumph to actually believe it. We may be energized, but so is the dark side.

So yeah, I'm euphoric right now. It won't last long because the country's in a right old mess, but we can savor victory for a bit. Our side had forgotten what it tastes like.

Miller time…again

More thoughts on Arthur Miller's All My Sons and stage directing in general over at the SundayArts blog.

This damn election is making me so antsy that even the Sheila is starting to lose her patience with me. Clearly this cannot be over soon enough. I will vote at P.S. 321 first thing tomorrow morning and get my infinitesimal share over with. This will be my second vote as a newly minted American citizen after the Democratic primary: yay!

Oh, and if you are in a country/city in the world that gets the francophone channel TV5 Monde, do tune in for its election-night coverage, as I helped put the New York portion together. I believe we'll be on from 5:30pm to 11:30pm EST.

Fassbinder is still dead

Because the Sheila is learning German, we've been watching a lot of German films over the past few months. Last night we polished off Fassbinder's BRD Trilogy with Veronika Voss. It's actually the second one, sandwiched between The Marriage of Maria Braun and Lola, but we watched it last.

The story of a morphine-addicted, washed-out movie star in 1955, Veronika Voss may well be the Fassbinder film in which his debt to Hollywood melodramas is the most obvious because it goes well beyond themes and structures: The aesthetic of those b&w Warner Brothers women's films of the 1940s is emulated to a degree that borders on the religious. Emulated and amplified, actually: Some scenes look so overexposed that they're literally blinding.

To achieve that effect, Fassbinder used Orwo, an East German film stock that provided extremely deep contrasts between black and white. (Kieslowski also purposefully used Orwo in the 1977 doc From a Night Porter's Point of View and apparently it was also used in the 1999 noir Night Train.) Indeed, VV has got to be one of the best deliberate uses of b&w I've ever seen. In the scenes in the apartment of the doctor who "takes care" of Veronika, the characters, dressed in black, glide across eye-searing white. The effect is both hypnotic and shocking, a visual device that calls attention to itself and yet doesn't come across as being ironic.

The Veronika Voss DVD includes a chat between lead actress Rosel Zech and Juliane Lorenz, who now more or less runs the Fassbinder Foundation—much to the dismay of many of the director's old friends and associates, such as actress Ingrid Caven and cinematographer Michael Ballhaus, who think Lorenz is self-servingly distorting Fassbinder's life and legacy. (Check out this fascinating interview with Caven, in which she lashes out at Lorenz.)

Next stop: Berlin Alexanderplatz.

Heartless Brooklyn

Where else would crowds boo a marathon runner but in Brooklyn? Those Park Slope homies are tough, man!

I just came back from watching about 40,000 people run the New York Marathon a few blocks from my apartment, and yes, amidst all the cheers, someone got heckled.

Okay, perhaps I should specify that not only was the guy wearing a McCain-Palin t-shirt, but he was also carrying a sign for them. The Park Slopers reacted right away, like bulls in front of a red flag. [Update: It was this guy. And once again, he's the only McCain supporter.]

That was the only McCain supporter I saw, however. He was vastly outnumbered by people running in Obama gear. The best part was the runners who had come from foreign countries showing their support as well: I saw several variations on "Italy for Obama," "Germany for Obama," etc.

As we near the election, I refuse to let myself think about November 5th. Every time I slide into daydreaming about an Obama victory, I need to superstitiously knock on wood immediately thereafter. Time cannot fly fast enough.

Full Benny action

Benny Andersson has always been my favorite member of Abba. There's many things I love about him so I'll pick just one: the way he beams in many of the group's videos and in live footage. There he is, banging on his piano, bobbing his head, looking happy as a Swedish clam. But it's not self-satisfaction you can read on his face: He looks as if he can't believe his luck of having the other three to help him create such brilliant pop.

Conversely, I recently learned that his "Tröstevisa" is the piece of music that's played the most at Swedish funerals.

About a month ago Benny was given a honorary doctorate by Stockholm University, and he recently participated in a one-on-one chat there. Of course the Dilettante's Special Stockholm Correspondent was in attendance, camera in hand, and he emailed the following.

"Today, I attended Benny Andersson's lecture at Stockholm University. Or, rather, his conversation with the head of musicology, professor Holger Larsen. Visibly nervous, but quickly warming up to the encouragement—in the form of smiles, laughter and gentle applause—of the audience (there were about 200-250 of us), he talked about his career and played a few songs on the grand piano, including one from Chess and two or three from BAO [a.k.a. Benny Anderssons Orkester]. One he played that I hadn't heard before was "Cirkus Finemang" (an almost untranslatable title; 'Finemang' is something my grandparents might have said, meaning 'top stuff', 'smashing'). Actually, an orchestral studio version was played in the big speakers, and then Benny played the solo bit in the middle live. I was quite touched by the haunting melody.

And he had brought a CD with a medley of favourites, seven or eight tracks, though sadly I don't know what all of them were. Well, one was a traditional Swedish folk song (performed on fiddles) and one was Maria Callas, and another one I'm pretty sure was Le mystère des voix bulgares, and then there was 'Good Vibrations' by the Beach Boys.

No great surprises perhaps, but he really comes across as a very nice person. He said making music is making choices. You choose what you want to do and where you want to go (if you have that particular gift). He told us he drew on a slightly different set favourites from British and American composers of popular music: Caterina Valente, Hugo Montenegro, Mantovani, 50's and 60's Schlager—as well as the expected Beach Boys.

They were going to broadcast the conversation live, but opted against it at the last minute. They were supposed to talk for an hour and then have some questions from the floor, but Benny didn't seem to want to stop, so the whole thing went on for an hour and a half. And he signed autographs afterwards! My impression is Benny's a music man, through and through. He loves music, making it and, I think, listening to it.

When asked what he thought about the present (conservative) government's plans to drastically cut funding for music, drama and dance in Swedish schools, he said he didn't know that this was more than a proposal, but if it were, we would need a new government. And he added, I think we need a new government anyway! Considering the amount of times he's been accused of being a greedy capitalist, this, I thought, was quite a strong statement. Curiously enough, there was no great round of applause. (This is a government that has abolished free museum entry and has talked about introducing charges in libraries…)

Burning up the French screens

Burning up the French television screens, that is—and it's philosophy we're talking about. If you live in France, this fall you can watch a new show that explores all kinds of topics in a philosophical light. This isn't new for the country: In my last year of high school there, I had eight hours of philosophy a week (I was in the so-called literary section, but still), and the popular monthly Philosophie Magazine has features like Manu Chao chatting with his old philosophy teacher.

Anyway, the format of the new TV show is really intriguing: In each installment, host Raphaël Enthoven discusses a single topic with a guest. The hook: It's all shot in a 26-minute-long single take! It doesn't hurt that Enthoven is a hottie who not only writes books about Kant and Montaigne, and contributes to the aforementioned mag, among other publications, but used to be married to Bernard-Henry Levy's daughter Justine, whom he left for…Carla Bruni. This collision of celeb-watching and matters of the mind makes me incredibly giddy for some reason.

All about Godard

The September issue of Harper's (yes, I'm way behind) is a particularly good vintage. The centerpiece is Paul Reyes's matter-of-factly depressing "Bleak Houses," about cleaning up foreclosed homes in Florida.

J. Hoberman also has "Godard the Obscure," the kind of essay that makes the death spiral of the Village Voice, where he is a film critic, even more painful; where are people like him going to write as more and more publications go down the drain? Hoberman knows his stuff: You have to in order to write something like "Rimbaud abandoned poetry to run guns. So, too, Godard, although in his case it was as though he had abandoned poetry for the idea of running the idea of guns." In a short sentence, Hoberman encapsulates Godard's immediate post-Weekend work.

That said, it bothers me a bit that the essay is announced as discussing Richard Brody's Everything Is Cinema: The Working Life of Jean-Luc Godard, because Hoberman doesn't actually engage with the book. He mentions it a few times but that's it. This approach bugs me about the New Yorker's book reviews too: The vast majority of them just use a recent publication as a convenient peg from which to hang a coat one had been wanting to trot out for a while. Hoberman's piece is a smart take on Godard's evolution as a filmmaker, but after finishing it, I have no idea what Hoberman thought of Brody's own take.

Róisín and the amazing technicolor overcoats

There's concerts, and then there's events. Róisín Murphy at Mansion tonight was definitely in the latter category. I've seen lots of pop extravaganzas over the years, but this one made me feel as if my brain had imploded. In a good way, of course.

Róisín is the Tilda Swinton of pop: Beyond their blonde palor, the two women share a sense of eccentric style and quirky tastes, as well as a gift to incorporate the experimental into the mainstream and an earthy sense of humor that sets them well aside from the safe discourse of most performers. Even when they venture into the commercial realm—Tilda Swinton in The Chronicles of Narnia, say, or Róisín recording a disco anthem—there's something completely sui generis about the way they go about it. The video for "Movie Star," for instance, pays tribute to both Leigh Bowery and John Waters's Multiple Maniacs, with Róisín getting molested by a lobster.

But back to last night.

The sense that something special was brewing was clear as soon as the Sheila and I rounded the corner of W 28th St: the entire block was taken up by the biggest line I've seen for a show in years, if not ever; inside Mansion, a sprawling deluxe establishment with plenty of nooks and crannies, chandeliers and disco balls, the bilevel main floor was already packed to the gills (the crowd was 80% male, perhaps because the show was presented by the Saint at Large).

Things started off with a pounding 4/4 beat, which turned out into "Cry Baby," the most Moroderish track on the singer's last album, Overpowered. She showed up wearing a shiny gold jacket over black leggings, a long-sleeved, skintight white top, vertiginous heels, black leather gloves and shades (which, of course, she took off on the line "Tired of wiping the tears from your eyes"). On the next song Róisín traded the jacket for a fringed leather one.

The jacket and accessories switches went on until about halfway through, when she stepped it up: She attached a fake hump to her back, then covered it with an enormous fluffy Big Bird–like cape, topped off with a large dinner-plate hat. There was also a large white angel-wing-shaped fur overcoat matched with a black fetish cap. And a deep pink/red hat with a face on it. And ballooning gold overalls with corset lacing at the back. And a dress that looked like it had been built by Frank Gehry. And more hats and gloves and shoes. There was a change for every song, and the best part is the music never stopped—it was like the concert version of a mix-CD.

The craziest outfit may well have been for "Overpowered": a tartan deer cape (with an actual deer-like animal precariously perched on top of the shoulders like some kind of Surrealistic stole) topped with an antler hat, like an even more demented version of Björk's swan dress. At the end of the song, Róisín collapsed to the floor, taking out the garment as she did and cradling the animal. It was completely bizarre and completely riveting.

And yet she came back and topped it! On the finale, an explosive version of "Rama Lama (Bang Bang)," she wore a foofy coat made of real chicken feathers, then at the end started a brawl with her backup singers, the three women tumbling to the floor (again!) and exchanging fisticuffs.

Through 90 minutes, Róisín never let up: This woman knows how to work a stage. Yet far from the over-rehearsed aerobicized vulgarity all too common among American pop and R&B stars, she danced like a club girl: There were just enough poses and coordinated moves with her backup singers to indicate that careful thought had gone into it all, but her goofy energy was that of someone who's logged miles on a real dance-floor. Plus she indulged in energetic headbanging a few times, blonde hair flying all over.

Someone's already posted some videos from last night, which should give you a vague idea of the fever-pitch excitment of it all: "Cry Baby", "Dear Miami," "Overpowered" (with the deer!), "Forever More" and "Movie Star." I'm sure more will be posted once the revelers wake up.

Finally, I've talked a lot about the visuals, but Róisín has got to be one of the most underrated singers around, with a sexy, smokey tone that's all her own. Check out this live rendition of Moloko's "The Time Is Now" on a British TV show: just gorgeous. "Let Me Know" (which was disco heaven last night) ain't too shabby either.

All the young skanks

You gotta have a gimmick, especially on Broadway, so the musical 13 has one: there isn't a single adult in the cast. (The title refers to the lead character's turning that age, and the plot hinges on his bar mitzvah.) But this isn't my main problem with the show, and as much as he set himself up as a target for ridicule in his recent New York Times profile, Jason Robert Brown's score isn't either. My colleague Adam Feldman shot down 13 with his usual deadly accuracy in his Time Out New York review, but he didn't really explore the one aspect that bugged me most: 13's bizarrely musty mysogyny.

The show opens with a scene in which the kids dance up a storm in what's supposed to be a New York street. One of the girls is leaning against a lamppost, striking a come-hither pose. "Is she supposed to be a hooker?" I whispered to my friend, only half-joking. She wasn't, but she sure looked like one. And it was all downhill from there: The love interest is a bland hippy chick, the best friend is a sexually aggressive manipulator, the popular girl has zero personality. None of them registers at all, and all of them are stuck in thankless parts with thankless songs. There's just something seriously wrong about a show that depicts a young girl in such a light that the Times critic feels at liberty to describe her as "skanky." (To be clear: there's something icky about both the show and the critic so casually calling a 13-year-old girl skanky.)

Finally, and unrelated to the girl issue, these guys have the gumption to poke fun at Disney. Sure, Disney's done its share of dreck, but it's also brought to Broadway the likes of Julie Taymor, Matthew Bourne and Francesca Zambello. Guys doing conventional pap like 13 don't have a leg to stand on.

Blasted out of the theater

Yesterday I mentioned that I was about to go see Sarah Kane's Blasted at Soho Rep. Thanks to a box-office snafu, however, I couldn't get actually get in. That's the bad news.

The good news is that I was able to reschedule, and the other good news is that Blasted is the cult hit of the fall. It was thrilling to see a half-block-long line of people waiting for cancellations for this completely harrowing show. Especially compared to the hyped-but-tired CMJ music festival happening at the same time. We may despair of its state at times, but theater remains vital in this city.

Divas galore

My short review of the new Pink album and my interview with pop diva Róisín Murphy are up on the Time Out New York site. The latter is paired with Jimmy Draper's chat with Lady Gaga, making for a conceptual twofer piece, so do read both if you can, plus there's quite a few web goodies tucked at the end.

Murphy is playing her first NYC solo live show tomorrow and I'm psyched beyond belief. I have to get through Sarah Kane's reputedly harsh play Blasted beforehand (tonight I mean, not both the same evening), but the contrast should be invigorating, to say the least.

Broaden your mind

This post on popular lesbian site After Ellen really riled me. The author wonders if dudes can write lesbian comic-book characters as complex as those created by lesbians. Jeezus, why are we still having this debate?!?

First of all, Love & Rockets' Hopey, created by Jaime Hernandez, is a character with as much depth and shades as any I can think of in contemporary fiction. Setting Hernandez up against Alison Bechdel or Paige Braddock is creating a strawman.

Second, following this line of inquiry, should we infer that gay and lesbian authors can't create good straight characters? The arts would be in a sorry state if people only wrote about what they personally know. I find this prospect utterly depressing.

And third, let's expand this reasoning to acting. Should gay characters be played by gay actors? (Think of the hoopla as to which of the L Word actresses actually are gay.) Does it ring false when Cherry Jones play a straight woman? Give me a break!

The shackles of mimesis

Already a follow-up on this morning's post, which included a bit about Simon McBurney's staging of All My Sons on Broadway. I should have mentioned that McBurney is a Brit whose company, Complicite, has created such shows as The Street of Crocodiles, The Three Lives of Lucie Cabrol and Mnemonic. (Complicite's site mentions that it's currently developing a play with Jonathan Safran Foer.)

Which then led me to belatedly remember this Guardian blog post about stage directing, with which I completely agree. Especially this bit:

"Mainstream Anglo-American theatre tradition remains so absolutely married to the idea of literal-minded mimesis that there is virtually no hint that anything but the text can invent meaning on stage beyond dumb representation."

And this one (if the author thinks realism is overused in England, he should check the US, which is even worse):

"Here's hoping that in a couple of years time, alongside the brilliant realism that the British do so well, we're seeing mould-breaking texts from new writers being staged radically by directors who have cast off the shackles of mimesis and are putting on stage performers who create meaning rather than simply actors who 'look right for the part'."

Casting off the shackles of mimesis! Brilliant!

Go Wiest

Dianne Wiest is the kind of actress I can't live without. I'd trade all the Angelinas and Charlizes of this world for her. It's so easy to take Wiest for granted, and yet I can't remember her giving a bad performance. And she's had plenty of great ones. She can be seen in two mighty fine roles right now: as the mother in the revival of Arthur Miller's All My Sons and in Charlie Kaufman's new movie, Synecdoche, New York (out on Friday).

The film part is typical screen Wiest: It's small but she makes an indelible impression, particularly when she begins playing Philip Seymour Hoffman. The film is uneven and gets stuck in its own loop deloop two thirds of the way in, but it also offers the unique combination of morbidity and romance that characterizes Kaufman for me. Plus it boasts a gallery of fantastic thespianesses (gimme a break, I know the word doesn't exist): Catherine Keener, Hope Davis, Samantha Morton, Emily Watson, and even Elizabeth Marvel in a cameo. Plus plus, Kaufman actually makes one of my fantasies come true: at one point Jennifer Jason Leigh pops up with a German accent and Philip Seymour Hoffman, enraged, jumps at her throat—something I myself have often wanted to do to JJL's characters.

As for All My Sons, directed by Simon McBurney, I know it's early in the season but it might be the best surprise of the Broadway year, and Wiest is heartbreaking as a woman who has to come to terms with her delusions.

Of the production as a whole, I wholeheartedly agree with my colleague Adam Feldman's enthusiastic review, and particularly his assessment that "The explicit theatricality of McBurney’s staging minimizes the play’s flaws while deepening its impact." McBurney has done an amazing job and every second reminds us of what we're not getting from the hacks who crowd our local institutions, both for profit and non-. Just one example among many: From my vantage point in the first row of the mezzanine, I could see that the director had built every scene around clear diagonals, aligning the characters and the few elements of the barebone set along invisible—but still powerfully delineating—lines. It gave the production a neat coherence that also suggested the ties binding the characters not only to each other but to their surroundings and even their past. The show is well worth hunting tickets for.

Da bomb

The best element about Doctor Atomic may well be its title, which instantly suggests an action-packed, DC Comics–style caper. But John Adams and Peter Sellars's opera about J. Robert Oppenheimer and the creation of the atomic bomb, which I saw at the Met last night, has got to be one of the most…tepid things I've seen in a long time. I didn't think it was possible to suck all the tension and action from the atomic fricking bomb, but they did it.

Sellars's heavy-handed libretto bears a lot of the blame: "adapted from original sources," it is way too verbose, way too literal, and made me long for baroque's elliptical repetitiveness. The singers have to deliver thankless clunky lines and the music, which mostly sticks to a kind of banal beige hum, doesn't help. (Also, okay, I'm far from an expert, but at times it reminded me of Bernard Herrmann, of all people, particularly his score for North by Northwest toward the end of the first act. Weird.)

Despite a few good visual ideas, like the opening hive of scientists working in isolated cells like so many worker bees—for which we have to thank set designer Julian Crouch, already responsible for Satyagraha—Penny Woolcock's staging remains hopelessly static. When a literally electric scene comes along (a storm threatens a bomb test), there isn't enough juice onstage to short-circuit a toaster.

No one in our party of four liked the opera or the production. Here's what my buddy Tristan had to say this morning:

Instead of gaining momentum, the second act went slower and slower. There were no new musical ideas. A hundred people came on stage to watch the bomb go off…and then stood there motionless for 15 minutes, staring at the audience. That was the climactic final stage business. Made Robert Wilson look like Busby Berkeley. There was also some half-hearted fog. The meteorologist sang an entire weather report—I am not kidding. "The wind/Is out of the southwest/At three to six miles per hour/Up to 500 feet." There was a ticking noise and a rumbling noise. The sheets rose up into the air, slowly, revealing…just some more debris.

In other words, the whole thing, in so many ways, failed to detonate. It was, in fact, metaphorically, the fizzle which the scientists had feared when they tested the bomb. But perhaps that's the point. If the bomb had been as badly designed and built as the opera about it was, perhaps we would have a more peaceful world today. If only Oppenheimer & Co. hadn't been so brilliant! If only they had been more like John Adams and his colleagues!

Yow! Tell it like it is! (Tristan also tipped me off to composer Mark Adamo's insightful take on Doctor Atomic.)

On the plus side: There were clips of Robert Lepage's forthcoming La Damnation de Faust playing in the Met's lobby and that production looks ka-razy! Really, really looking forward to it. Which could be famous last words since I was also really, really looking forward to Doctor Atomic. And I once wrote that 30 Rock sucks. And I thought John Kerry could be elected in 2004.

Girls girls girls

It has been a faboo week for awesome babes.

First, Karita Mattila as the titular sex-crazed vamp and would-be exotic dancer in Richard Strauss's Salome at the Met. Hottt! I was lucky to be close enough to see the work that goes into a performance like this one (the opera starts at a fever pitch and unrelentingly stays there for all of its 100 minutes, and Salome is in every single scene, even when not actually singing). When she took her curtain call, Mattila was visibly drained, heavily breathing as she was trying to come back down to 2008 New York.

The next day I saw Paula West and the George Mesterhazy Quartet at the Oak Room. West is my favorite interpreter of jazz, pop and Great American Songbook standards right now: Nobody gets even close. It's that simple. The set cannily mixed obscure selections and well-known chestnuts, but she breathed new life even in songs I've heard a gazillion times and thought I could do without at this point (Mersterhazy's slinky arrangement of Rodgers & Hart's "I Wish I Were in Love Again" was particularly inspired). West finished her set with a glorious version of Dylan's "Like a Rolling Stone." It was lump-in-throat time.

Then I belatedly caught up with the latest episode of Grey's Anatomy, which throws some of my fave actresses (all seen on the New York stage too, thank you very much) into a hot mess of medically flavored soap-opera shenanigans: What other show on TV has Sandra Oh, Chandra Wilson, Sara Ramirez and Brooke Smith? I can even deal with Katherine Heigl and Ellen "meh" Pompeo doesn't overly bug me. Plus Ramirez and Smith's characters are becoming entangled in a lesbionic relationship, so it's all gravy. That is, until Shonda Rhimes messes with them, ’cause that's just the way things roll on Grey. All in due time ladies, all in due time.

Even more belatedly I discovered Little Jackie's debut album, The Stoop, which is my default music for pretty much everything right now: at the gym, on the way to the office in the morning, back from the office at night, walking hideous Tenth Avenue to get coffee. Imani Coppola completely gets living in New York—particularly Brooklyn—in 2008 in a way that reminds me of how Lily Allen gets living in London.

Little Jackie "LOL" (from The Stoop, 2008)

The drought is about to end

This is completely lame of me but here's another reference for work on another site. This time I'm going on about image in pop and rock (one of my obsessions, as you may have noticed) over at SundayArts.

Some family members have been visiting from France for the past ten days, hence the lack of updates. It's not that things have stopped in their tracks—I did find the time to revisit Salome at the Met and I'm about to go see the wonderful Paula West at the Oak Room—but it's hard to find the time to live and hold a job and go out and blog. Oh dammit to hell, why can't a day have 36 hours?!?

I hope to resume normal programming on Monday.

Azur & Asmar

I have to admit I wasn't expecting much from Michel Ocelot's new film, Azur & Asmar, but I was completely enchanted. This is the closest you can get to Hayao Miyazaki without it being from Hayao Miyazaki, particularly with the character of the spunky princess. My review is in the new Time Out New York.

Summer Heights High is coming

I spent the past weekend indulging in the very Yankee tradition known as leaf-peeping, and will blog about my upstate discoveries when my schedule eases up a bit. Spoiler warning: Nature is beautiful and soothing, and there's a lot of people growing squash in the Finger Lakes region.

In the meantime, here's a link to my New York Times piece about the Australian TV series Summer Heights High, which is going to premiere on HBO in November.

Vote for the MFA President

This week in Time Out New York, we concocted, if I may say so myself, a nifty little survey of the financial clusterfuck's impact on the local arts scene. I did the dance and classical entries myself, and in the process got to talk to quite a few of the cool people who make this town move. Well, perhaps it would be more accurate to say the people who make those who move move. Ayee, I seem to have entangled myself into an Escher kind of a sentence here.

One of the things that really struck me—and it should strike you as well if, as I hope, you follow those links—is that arts organizations and artists themselves are phenomenally resilient and resourceful. They stretch dollars to the limit, do a lot with little, and make the most of actual resources without making nutty plans based on thin air.

Just look at the sheer number of arts institutions, from Carnegie Hall to La MaMa, from BAM to Danspace—that manages to endure in New York—and we're talking decades here. And where is that longevity on Wall Street or in the so-called business community? They're supposed to be all about the bottom line, and they've proven completely clueless.

George W. Bush notoriously was our first "MBA President." Considering the mess he put us in, we should send an MFA President to the White House.

Beatrice Dalle forever

Upon the release of her latest movie, New Wave (made for the ARTE channel), the French weekly arts mag Les Inrockuptibles recently ran a great Q&A with Béatrice Dalle, one of my favorite actresses. When Dalle burst onto the French film scene with Betty Blue in 1986, she felt like an untameable force of nature. And she hasn't calmed down since, remaining an idiosyncratic presence both on and off screen. She brings a nuclear intensity to everything she does, making an impression in the shortest scenes, even doing next to nothing—few have her ability to be magnetic just being there. Check out this scene from Christophe Honoré's first feature, 17 fois Cécile Cassard, where she dances with Romain Duris then just smokes by herself. (By the way, it's pretty insulting that YouTube feels the need to post a disclaimer that the video may be insuitable for minors considering that it's completely chaste, so the only red flag has got to be the fact that two men slow-dance together.) And then there are berserk starring roles in berserk movies, like Claire Denis's Trouble Every Day and the recent horror flick A l'intérieur, in which she plays a psychopath trying to steal a baby—while it's still in the womb. (Can I just say how good these trailers are, especially compared to American ones? None of that Moviefone-guy voiceover crap, and they don't give away the entire plot either.)

Plus whereas most French actors are happy to lead completely boring lives, Dalle lives. She was with rapper Joey Starr, from NTM, for ten years or something, has been arrested for shoplifting and cocaine possession, is now married to an inmate she met while volunteering in prisons. This carefree attitude leads to her giving fantastic interviews. Here she is on a French talk show, for instance, ostensibly to plug A l'intérieur.

Some choice quotes from the aforementioned interview in Les Inrockuptibles:

Q: You play an incestuous mother in New Wave. Was it difficult?
A: She wasn't very far from me. Well, you understand her when you look at the kid—he's too cute (laughs). The scene I enjoyed shooting most actually was the most dramatic of the movie. But it was much easier for me to play than the scene where I make crepes. I've never done that in my life, or ever put anything on a plate! I think I'd be more comfortable doing a gang-bang scene!

Q: Do you think you're typecast in dramatic parts?
A: Yeah, but that's all I'd like to do. Besides, ever since making A l'interieur, I really want gore and special effects. I'd love to play an elf but they don't think of me for those parts. I'm tired of going to family-planning offices, to play realistic or social roles!

Q: Were you new wave in the 80s?
A: New wave, me? Don't insult me! I hung out with punks.

Q: Do you follow the American presidential campaign?
A: It's not my country but I still have to put up with them. It's really going to suck if this McCain is elected. Especially since he pulled out his joker with Sarah Palin. She's a devil this one: She's got overly tailored suits, a son in the army, the works! She even put Obama on the defensive by saying he's not proud of his country. Asked about her, Obama said, "Yeah, I'm not sure." He wasn't asked if he screwed her but what he thinks about her. He was like a kid who just got spanked.

Meaning well is boring

I have a new post over on the SundayArts blog, hosted by Channel Thirteen. This time it's about political art and why the vast majority of it is so goddamn lame. In short, good intentions hardly ever make good art. Discuss.

Welcome to the lazy comet

I'm totally psyched that my pal Mike Wolf has finally started a blog, Lazy Comet. I've always been envious of Mike's writing skills, and when he casually whips out sentences like "you can tell Ms. Low Bar is sustaining just enough hull-integrity that the conservative blowhardati and other Kool-Aid salesmen will try and declare a draw" (about last night's VP debate), well, I just hope this comet won't be too lazy and cross our skies frequently.

Check out his review of the new Dead C album in this week's Village Voice as well: It boasts the best first sentence I've seen in a long time.

We can't spend our way out of this one

Having stained my T-shirt on the way to work (don't ask), I had to make an emergency pit stop at the Gap. Sales galore! The things I consume the most are cultural products so I don't find myself in stores very often, and when there I tend to buy several things not because I like purchasing stuff but so I won't have to shop again for a while.

Anyway, I seemed to be the only New Yorker at the Herald Square Gap this morning—thank god for tourists, busy propping up our local economy. The last time the stock exchange took a major dive in New York was after 9/11. Back then, we were told that the best way to fight terrorism was to act as if nothing had happened and shop shop shop. Healing through consumption, that's the American way.

But this time around, who's going to buy anything? This is a crisis that we can't credit-card our way out of.

I go to Fashion Week

Actually, I didn't go to Fashion Week—but my name did. In the last episode of Gossip Girl Blair comes up with a seating chart for a fashion show, and eagle eyes spotted me in the third row. This, my friends, is madness! Anybody who knows me (or has just seen me) knows that Fashion Week is pretty much the last place I'd check out in New York. It does make the sighting even more delicious, I have to admit. In fact it's even better than when some anonymous tipster suggested to a gossip site that I was leading a double life as an escort (and a 28-year-old escort at that). Have I become a meme?

As far as the seating chart goes, I was intrigued by the fact that I was right behind Vogue editrix Anna Wintour but in front of New York magazine's Adam Moss. It feels as if the show's writers had pulled names out of a hat—well, my name.

It's actually ironic that I'd make a guest appearance on Gossip Girl as I've only watched a couple of half episodes; the machinations of spoiled Upper East Side children aren't that interesting. Not to mention that like Dirty Sexy Money and 90210, the series' slavish fascination with the lifestyles of the rich feels a little…out of touch these days. I love escapist television as much as anybody (more later about my infatuation with Grey's Anatomy) but there's something too calculating, too cynical about Gossip Girl and its ilk. I'd rather watch the show's clear inspiration, Cruel Intentions, again. Sarah Michelle Gellar, Reese Witherspoon and Selma Blair, plus lesbionic action? Clearly there's no contest.

How to not go crazy

Not to take away from the abyss that real madness is, but living in a city like New York one encounters plenty of spoiled neurotics making light of actual dysfunction. Here's a quote from Clara Malraux (wife of André Malraux) I'll have to remember next time I'm confronted to one of them.

She recalls reading a biography of Zelda Fitzgerald that said, "Because of those who surrounded her, because of a feeling of being crushed and of non-existence, Zelda simply went mad." Malraux's daughter, Florence, who had given her mother the book, told her, "Read it, there will certainly be things of particular interest to you." After finishing it, Clara replied: "Today I understand that if I didn't go mad, it's really because I didn't have the time. With all the catastrophes, all the difficulties I had to face: Indochina, poverty, the Spanish Civil War, World War II, being Jewish, Resistance, the hardship of making a living and raising a child—I really didn't have time to go mad."

Kate Atkinson in the house

My review of Kate Atkinson's When Will There Be Good News? is in the new Time Out New York, as well as a preview of a metal extravangaza featuring Keep of Kalessin and Eluveitie, among others.

Eluveitie was the highlight of PaganFest a few months ago and a must-see live. It's pretty exciting that after over two decades and hundreds of gigs, a band can still come out of nowhere and make my jaw drop. I distinctly remember watching Eluveitie at BB King's and thinking "And I thought I'd seen it all…" Clearly not.

Atkinson's latest is one of my favorite books of the past few years. Too often I finish genre novels because something about the plot compels me to see how they end. It's a purely mechanical reflex and not much pleasure is derided from it. But Atkinson writes well, which has become so rare that it's almost miraculous.

Thank god for metal and books, which are distracting me from the American presidential campaign. Every time I think it can't get any crazier, it just does. Crazier, and more offensive, too: Just how fricking stupid does McCain think Americans are? The answer, my friends, is that he's absolutely right to bank on this country's stupidity. That there's still a large number of undecided people at this stage is just one more sad joke among others.

Which reminds me… A few days ago I got embroiled in a particularly insane conversation with a rep from my health insurance. We got stuck in a circular argument and there was no getting out of it because her logic made no sense. At a loss, I said, "But this is completely Kafkaesque!" She didn't know what it meant. Yet if there's one word American health-insurance reps need to know, it's Kafkaesque.

Butcher's Crossing

Reading John Williams's 1960 Western Butcher's Crossing while Rome—well, Wall Street—burnt was perfect timing.

The book tells the story of young Will Andrews who drops out of Harvard College in the 1870s and goes west to find himself. Under the guidance of man named Miller, he ends up funding a hunting trip to a quasi-mythical Colorado valley, high in the Rockies, where, Miller says, thousands of buffalo roam. The plan is to spend a couple of weeks, kill as many beasts as possible during that time, bring the hides back on a wagon and sells them in the small town of Butcher's Crossing, from where they departed.

They find the valley all right, but Miller gets obsessed with the slaughter and refuses to leave until he's killed every animal—and there's thousands of them. Alas, when he awakes from his bloody reverie, the weather has turned and the four men in the party are snowed in; they spend several months under a makeshift shelter made of hides. After they emerge in the spring, filthy, weak from hunger and the cold, and with one of them pretty much insane, things actually get worse! The trip back turns into a nightmare and Butcher's Crossing itself has changed in ways our Rip van Winkles were not expecting. The ironic twist Williams springs at the end is to deliciously grim to reveal.

Williams doesn't pull punches (I learned more than I ever wanted to know about how to kill, skin and dress a buffalo) but his grim poetry is absolutely mesmerizing. And it's hard to find a better description of a man driven by greed—not so much financial, though Miller certainly wants dollars for his hides, but the elemental need to satisfy a constant craving for more, more and more, even after you have more than enough. Add to this man's destruction of of nature in his quest to control it, and you get a dizzying allegory of a society gone mad.

Indeed, how not to be chilled by the parallel with our barons of finance, who kept wanting more and more and more, and would do anything to get it? As with Miller, who kills buffalo for the same reason too many idiots climb the Everest—because it's there—we now have to deal with the insanity created by morons who got drunk on their own financial wizardry and couldn't stop themselves.

The only good news in this: Williams has only written three novels, making it easy to read his entire oeuvre.

Feeling authentically bluesy

Mixed returns on my last two outings.

Catherine Baÿ's The Snow White Project, part of the Crossing the Line fest on Tuesday, was a total wash as far as I'm concerned. Essentially we milled in front of the Diane von Furstenberg store in the meatpacking district, watching women dressed as Snow White hold placards bearing inscriptions such as "On strike" and "I am an everyday consumer product" inside the store. Suddenly it really felt like the 80s again: a financial meltdown against a background of overpriced doodads, while an artist trots out tired slogans and blindingly obvious concepts. It was a rather smug example of vacant cooptation—and I loathed half the people I was standing next to. I admit that I left after half an hour so I missed the one seemingly dynamic element that came at the end, according to the Times' review. Life is too short.

Then last night I was in the mood for some rawk so off to Bowery Ballroom I went, where Swedish retro masters Graveyard and Witchcraft were sandwiching local act TK Webb and the Visions. The Swedes don't have an ounce of originality between them, faithfully playing a late 60s/early 70s psych- and blues-flavored rock, with a hefty dose of Black Sabbathism in the case of Witchcraft. But they do have that Scandi sense of craft and they threw themselves wholeheartedly into their music. Plus the Graveyard drummer was amazing in an octopus/Keith Moon/Animal kinda way, and Witchcraft has enough great riffs to easily fill a set.

But TK Webb and the Visions…It's almost a bummer to see these guys come across like such a bunch of wankers because Webb at least has been a downtown fixture for a while now, so his commitment seems beyond question. But what's with the second guitarist, the guy in white showing off his tats and striking poses? He looked as if he'd rehearsed every single move in front of the mirror for hours; there was not an ounce of honesty in what he did.

Speaking of which, let's go back to the Celine Dion show for a minute. The Times reviewer wrote of a particular song's interpretation that "instead of connoting feeling — there is not a whit of blues in Ms. Dion’s voice — it felt like a technical exercise."

Whaaaat?

Is the blues the only way to show feeling? Isn't it just one of many performative devices one can use to evoke feeling? TK Webb's gravelly pipes sure made him sound like he felt things, man, for real, but does that make him a better singer? Or even just an interesting one? Furthermore, can't one have technique and emotion? I'm sure those highly trained classical singers would say yes.

In addition, you can think and say many things of Celine Dion, but one thing she does have is feeling—it's just that her version does not fit some people's definition of how it's meant to be expressed, and of realness, authenticity or taste (all dubious words anyway). The last element is the most important here, I think, getting into what the Times' readership think it's okay to mock.

Jeezus, I can't believe I've become a Celine Dion defender…

Celine will go on

Time for some live music! After Carcass and Goldfrapp, I went to see Celine Dion at Madison Square Garden yesterday evening. Ka-razy! It's hard to describe the over-the-topness of that show, which of course was all about Celine emoting and monologuing and doing dance moves (or is that "dance"?) and belting to the rafters. Expected, sure, but if you want to see a born entertainer at work, no matter what you think of her art, the Garden was the place to be last night. Even the Sheila entered reluctantly and left a convert. She even scared me a little when she exclaimed "She's the biggest star I've ever seen!" I pointed out that she had seen Madonna at the same venue a few years ago. "Celine is bigger," she replied. Well then.

This actually was the second time I'd seen the Quebecois songbird live: Back in March 1994, I reviewed her first local show, held at Town Hall. I was then a cub freelancer for the late, much-missed New York Newsday, and I was so eager to get a byline that I'd say yes to anything the daily paper's music editor, the irreplaceable Ira Robbins, would throw my way. Let's just say it wasn't the hippest acts. In addition to Celine, I wrote about concerts by John Denver, Julio Iglesias and Diana Ross; I even trekked to Queens College for Jerry Lewis.

Celine was already doing well in the francophone market but her first U.S. hit, her duet with Peabo Bryson on "Beauty and the Beast," had come out only a couple of years earlier, and "My Heart Will Go On" had yet to land. Clearly she was still holding back somewhat, as this excerpt from my 14-year-old review shows:

"Celine Dion provides a classy, upscale alternative for people who think of Mariah Carey as a shopping mall superstar. Like Carey, Dion has a big voice, and, also like Carey, she loves ballads. But while the Long Islander squarely opts for big hair, big shows and big vocals, Dion takes a more low-key approach, which proved far less grating over the course of an evening. Her simple outfit (long white shirt, black leggings, black jacket) and stage behavior (no costume changes, no dancers, no props and only a few PG-rated pelvic gyrations) provided a visual complement to her relatively pared-down vocals. Dion made good use of her clean, clear, resonant voice without indulging in gratuitous vocal acrobatics—except on a cover of 'Can't Help Falling in Love,' during which she stretched some notes well past their expiration date."

These days Celine does have costume changes and dancers and pelvic gyrations and props (projections and two treadmills). And her vocals are anything but pared down. But what hasn't changed is her core personality (you can take the girl out of Quebec…) and the way she connects with both the stage and the audience. My favorite part was her banter, which clearly is somewhat scripted but still holds pockets of what feels like gushing sincerity (her strong point, as evidenced by some of her most memorable TV appearances). The least you can say about her is that she's completely unique.

One heartbeat away

Finally watched Marjane Satrapi and Vincent Paronnaud's film Persepolis tonight. I think it was up against Ratatouille for the Best Animated Film Oscar and of course Disney prevailed. A shame, because Persepolis is much more complex than the vastly overrated rodent movie.

Watching it tonight, a scene struck a particular chord because of the current context. The movie is set mostly in Iran after the Islamic Revolution, and it shows, among other things, what happens when ideologues and opportunists band together to rule a country, especially when they use religion as an excuse/tool to enforce their rule. At one point, a woman panicks because her husband had a heart attack and she needs the authorization to get him out of the country so he can get an operation. To her horror, she realizes the hospital administrator in charge of delivering the authorization used to wash her windows. He has zero qualifications and yet there he is, lording it over others.

Sounds familiar? The US has turned into a country where zealots and opportunists band together to pillage natural resources and rob people blind (there's no other word to describe what health-insurance and oil companies do). Incompetent people rise to positions of power, carried on by the passivity and ignorance of the population. Sarah Palin is only the latest in a long line of such people: She doesn't have the qualifications to be vice-president and yet she acts with a sense of utmost certainty. She's very very close to being in charge. We should be terrified.

Through the looking glass

Over at SundayArts, I wrote about what happened when I went to see Reid Farrington's The Passion Project at PS 122. Basically, a college student was taking notes on a PDA, inches away from the performer. Seriously: What the hell?!?

Then on Friday night, the woman sitting right in front of me at Goldfrapp watched the entire show not directly but through her phone's viewfinder, while recording. We were not far from the action and yet never did she look straight at the stage—it was always through the phone. I don't know why she didn't just stay at home and watch Goldfrapp footage on YouTube. But okay, fine, she can have the once-removed experience if she chooses to; what bugged me is that she'd hold the phone in front of me so the gadget was smack in the middle of my line of vision. I don't mind the taking of some photos, I guess, just so I can link to this visual evidence, but recording the entire show on your fricking phone is ridiculous. What the hell is wrong with people that they seem unable to enjoy a live performance for what it is? To me the ephemeral aspect of it is the best part but clearly others don't feel that.

Okay, deep breath.

The show itself was pretty grand, even if live I prefer the more rocking material to Seventh Tree's hippy-pagan fantasias. (The last time I saw Goldfrapp was at Nokia, when they were touring the super-glammy Supernature.) At Radio City the best connection between sound, visuals and venue was during "Strict Machine": the heavy stage curtain was lit in such a way that it made for a fantastically theatrical framing device. Radio City has a huuuuge orchestra so the balconies are set way in the back, making it difficult for a band to take control of the room instead of being overwhelmed by it. Goldfrapp was on top the whole way through.

RIP David Foster Wallace

David Foster Wallace killed himself on Friday. The Times' obit focuses on his importance as a fiction writer and glosses over his nonfiction, which I much preferred—and where he used many of the same postmodern tricks. I can't emphasize enough that how great his two collections, A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again and Consider the Lobster, are; all would-be journalists should read them. (Kakutani does mention his nonfiction in her tribute.)

I first discovered Foster Wallace in 1994, when I read his article about the Illinois State Fair in Harper's; in 1996, he wrote about going on a cruise for the same magazine. Both articles were illuminating and incredibly funny—I clearly remember laughing out loud over and over at his descriptions of the fair's food and rides (his approach to this kind of deep Americana has become the norm, though DFW's imitators are just that).

But what made DFW stand out wasn't so much his love for footnotes but the way he wrestled with his role as a writer and with thorny moral issues, something current popular essayists like David Sedaris or Chuck Klosterman never do. The title essay of Consider the Lobster may well be his finest in that regard.

Girls on stage

A couple of show previews in the new Time Out New York: Goldfrapp at Radio City Music Hall and Céline Dion at Madison Square Garden.

The fun part is that I actually reviewed Dion's local live debut, back in 1994, for the now-defunct New York Newsday. I'm looking forward to posting excerpts from that article next to my impressions of Monday's show next week.

The theater's gilded ceiling

Playwright Theresa Rebeck has been contributing to the Guardian's theater blog, and her latest post is a doozie. Basically she addresses a New York Times article that trumpets a renewed focus on men on Broadway—as opposed to the estrogen-flooded past 100 years, no doubt. Rebeck takes that idea to task and I cannot emphasize how great it is to see her anger boil over, especially since she remains funny to the end.

You have to laugh—and Rebeck does, darkly—when reading such lines from Charles Isherwood's piece as "Broadway is also shining a bright spotlight on the male psyche this autumn." The thing is, looking at the male psyche is interesting, but there's a myriad issues swirling around the manner in which it's done on Broadway. For instance, why does the looking have to be done by men? They are controlling the discourse from beginning to end, putting on a great party honoring themselves, and women—who, Rebeck reminds us, make up 60 percent of Broadway audiences—should feel honored to foot the bill.

"Is it a reaction against last season, when the New York stage seemed to be overtaken by domineering women?" Isherwood wonders. He's referring to the main characters in August: Osage County and Gypsy, by the way, not to headstrong playwrights or directors. And since when did two women amount to an overtaking anyway?

Let's bring a teeny tiny bit of perspective and look at that exact same 2007-08 season. What do we find? Men with image issue (Cyrano de Bergerac), men dealing with revolution (Rock ’n’ Roll), drunk men talking to other drunk men (The Seafarer), men inventing cool stuff then fighting over it (The Farnsworth Invention), men finding art (Sunday in the Park with George), men finding themselves (Passing Strange), men running the country (November), men counselled by bad, bad women (Macbeth). Good thing there will be more about them this year, right? Cause it was getting a little tight for them on Broadway for a while.

Let the games begin

Over at the SundayArts blog, I talk about the upcoming fall season, noting a certain timidity on the New York arts scene. How it will all pan out in our age of high ticket prices and shrinking economy remains to be seen…

Live death

On Saturday night I saw enough death metal (at the Carcass-headlined show) to keep me sated for quite a while. Death is one of my least favorite metal subgenres because the songs get too samey for my taste (that's where you can tell I'm an amateur), and the so-called "technical" subsubgenre is beyond boring. That said, I actually spent a pretty good evening at Nokia, especially since I was able to snag a chair at the balcony and calmly read between sets (Richard Hughes' In Hazard, a wonderful 1939 novel about a steamship stuck in a mammoth hurricane).

First of all, I was wrong when I wrote that it would be a five-band bill: There were actually six—Rotten Sound, Aborted, 1349, Necrophagist, Suffocation and Carcass. But true to metal form everything was running super-smoothly and the show was on schedule from beginning to end: I left after an hour of Carcass and it was only 12:30am.

Of Rotten Sound and Aborted there is little to say: by-the-numbers death, and the most interesting thing was that Rotten Sound's singer had a weird quasi-Scottish burr even though he's Finnish.

I had loved 1349 when I saw them at BB's two years ago but last night's set was completely lackluster—it was like a different band altogether. The lone black-metal band on the bill, 1349 stuck out when they showed up in spikes and corpsepaint, which made for a refreshing change from the others' nondescript outfits. Alas, the guitar was weirdly low in the mix and the energy level was decidedly flagging. Not a kvlt night for the Norwegians.

Necrophagist is a very techy death band that looks and sounds like a side project from members of a science club. They all wore cargo pants (the 2008 geek's version of the pocket protector) and played guitars that had, like, 25 strings. Lots of crazy fretboard action—even the bassist did a little tapping interlude. Ugh. The highlight of Necrophagist's set: a ten-second quote from Prokofiev's "Dance of the Knights" at the end of a song. It was completely random and pretty great.

Suffocation, on the other hand, showed you can be death and alive: These guys put on a hell of an old-school spectacle. It helps considerably that they have a real showman in singer Frank Mullen, who's often credited as one of the pioneers of the death growl but does a lot more onstage, whipping up the crowd between songs with earthy Long Island humor. (Suffocation also has two African-American members, drummer Mike Smith and guitarist Terrance Hobbs, which means the band has something like half of all the black musicians in death metal.)

My favorite thing about Carcass (other than they looked like they had stepped out of a vintage Sabbath video, with their flared jeans) was Bill Steer's guitar. He was playing a white Les Paul, an instrument you almost never see in extreme metal, which is all about axes that could poke your eye out if you just look at them the wrong way. In addition to a tone warmer than the brittle one more common in death, Steer and Mike Amott offered a unique combo of technical speed and catchy riffing. The latter is crucial because a lot of the death bands that followed in Carcass' wake just focused on the extreme technicity and forgot about the riff side, producing uncommonly sterile music. (An exception to my mind would be Nile, a super-techy band that's still entertaining because of its nutty obsession with Egyptian lore.)

Hanna hits Camp Rock

It looks like Brooklyn is going to get drenched tomorrow as tropical storm Hanna hits the Eastern seaboard. Much to my relief, however, it looks like it'll have moved out of town by the following day and so it won't get in the way of you, you and you attending my reading at Barbès in Park Slope on Sunday night at 7pm. I'll read from Abba Gold and show some vintage Abba footage.

I'm actually looking forward to the rain on Saturday so I'll have an excuse not to go out and the Sheila and I can hold our own seance on a wet afternoon, ie watch more of the fantastic Australian DVDs she brought back from her recent trip to Oz. More details later, as I'm keen to cover one of them in print, though I can reveal they are vastly superior to Camp Rock, which we watched yesterday.

Let's just say that I've seen High School Musical and Camp Rock, you're no High School Musical. Omigod it's so bad! First, it's quite difficult to get past Demi Lovato, who plays the lead and is absolutely unbearable; 90 percent of her acting consists of her opening her mouth extra wide and baring her huge, blindingly white teeth. And once you've learned to live with Demi, you realize the direction is dead flat (you can tell when Kenny Ortega is not involved) and the music completely pedestrian.

The two bright spots are the unspeakably hunky Joe Jonas, who makes Zac Efron look like Marty Feldman, and Meaghan Jette Martin as nasty popular girl Tess. Or rather the songs she gets to sing, which are the best by far: "Too Cool" and "2 Stars," both very ’80s-revival Kylie.

None blacker

My profile of Ian Christe's new imprint, Bazillion Points, is in this week's TONY. You may know Christe as the author of the excellent history of metal Sound of the Beast, and it's great that he's now started publishing quality books about that still-derided genre.

Speaking of metal, the show not to miss this week (month? year?) is that of Carcass, whose reunion tour stops at Nokia tomorrow evening. My colleague Steve Smith previewed the gig in TONY, and I have little to add other than the headbanging catharsis will be greatly welcome. Also on the lengthy bill is black-metal outfit 1349, which I had quite enjoyed two years ago when it opened for Celtic Frost.

If it was any other kind of music I'd dread a five-band bill, but in my experience metal shows tend to be very well run: Bands stick to their alloted time and the changeovers don't take forever, as they do at indie gigs. There's a lesson there about something or other.

English as a second language

A review of Joseph Horowitz's new book, Artists in Exile, quotes this great line: "Otto Preminger, hearing a group of his fellow émigrés speaking Hungarian, said, 'Don’t you people know you’re in Hollywood? Speak German.'"

This reminded me of the recent decision by the LPGA (Ladies Professional Golf Association) to require its members to speak English. Considering that a third of the membership is Korean, it would make more sense to give Korean and English equal status, no?

Being an immigrant from a non-English-speaking country myself, I'm torn when it comes to the issue of language. On the one hand, I love hearing diverse languages when I walk the streets of New York, and speaking in the tongue you grew up in is an irreplaceable treasure, both affective and cultural. On the other hand, it's undeniable that not being able to speak English well hampers immigrants. When I was doing my immigration papers, I was repeatedly shocked by the insulting way employees would treat applicants who didn't speak English well. The system is hard enough to figure out if you speak the language; if you don't, it's practically impossible—or it costs a lot of money.

What I truly cannot stand is American boors who espouse the "speak English or leave" motto, especially when very often their own grasp on English is tenuous. In my job, I correct native speakers' English every day, and it brings me a lot of satisfaction. I'm especially harsh on those with a lazy approach, those who don't bother with correct grammar, spelling and capitalization. I've worked hard to master a second language, and I have little patience for those who take their first one for granted.

Single moms in the news

While America is debating the fate of Bristol Palin, five-months preggers at 17 and promising, we hear, to marry the similarly teenaged father, France has just learned that its divorced, 42-year-old Minister of Justice, Rachida Dati, is pregnant and unattached. And not only is Dati single, but she's refused to reveal who the father is: "I have a complicated private life and that's the boundaries I've set for myself when it comes to the media. I won't say anything on this subject."

I cannot even imagine a female American politician in a similar position 1) describing her private life as "complicated" (it would be translated for her as "slutty"); 2) choosing single motherhood; and 3) being allowed to choose single motherhood without being tarred and feathered.

Meanwhile, the ravages of religious stupidity, poor education and the politics of sexual abstinence continue in the U.S., now vividly illustrated by the Palin family. The sophistry and rhetorical contortions the conservative right has to display in order to not criticize the Palin situation are a marvel to behold.

A resource for Scandi noir

Thanks to reader Avi, who told me about a good new blog about Scandinavian crime fiction translated into English. Recent posts include coverage of Stieg Larsson's Millennium trilogy, as the first volume is about to hit America, and the site includes a very helpful list of blogs dedicated to international noir. There's even a companion site with additional resources (including a breakdown of authors by country) hosted by Gustavus Adolphus College's Folke Bernadotte Library. It is located, of course, in Minnesota, the epicenter of all things Scandinavian in the U.S.