PLEASE MISS POSTMAN

Beatles secretary and fan-wrangler celebrated in irresistible 'Good Ol' Freda'


Talk about a dream job. Freda Kelly was just 17 when she landed a job as personal secretary to The Beatles in 1962. No one had any idea how big the band would become, and Liverpool homegirl Freda rode that colossal wave with them for the next 11 years. But unlike so many others with even the most tenuous claim to having once known The Beatles, Freda never sought the limelight—no rounds of chat shows, no tell-all autobiography. Her unique story has remained untold—until now.

Ryan White's documentary, Good Ol' Freda, is as ebullient, down-to-earth, and irresistible as Freda Kelly herself. "I was just a secretary," she shrugs, with typical lack of pretension. "Who wants to hear the secretary's story?"

Now a middle-class matron (still working as a secretary)—with the best memorabilia ever in a box under the eaves in her attic—she decided to share her amazing story so that some day her grandson will know that, back in her youth, she'd done something fun and exciting. It is, as a friend says, "one of the last true stories of The Beatles you will ever hear."

Freda was a typist in a secretarial pool at a Liverpool office on the fateful day some mates took her out to lunch round the corner at the Cavern Club. The cellar location "had a very unique smell," she recalls as "disinfectant and sweat." But it was the band onstage, not the ambiance, that kept local kids coming back, and White employs what scant footage exists of John, Paul, George, and Pete Best in action at the Cavern, augmented by tons of still photos to get the idea across.

Wrap your head around this: going to see The Beatles live at the Cavern on your lunch break. Every day. The group played some 284 gigs at the Cavern, and Freda estimates she saw 190 of them. In between sets, they hung out in the band room, chatting with their loyal fans.

Brian Epstein (fondly recalled as "Eppie") managed the NEMS record store an kept an office in the building where his family sold furniture. When he came to the Cavern to see what all the fuss was about, the group was on its way. As their new manager, one of the first thing's Epstein did was hire Freda as their secretary. Her job was mainly to answer fan mail and to make sure "the boys" produced enough autographs and signed photos to go around.

"I was one of them, " Freda says of the fans, "I knew how they felt," and she did her best to accommodate their requests. She couldn't send Paul round to a birthday party, for instance, but when a girl sent in a pillow case, Freda took it to Ringo's mum to see that he slept on it for a couple of nights. Her duties soon expanded to running the official Beatles Fan Club, and writing a regular fan newsletter. On a 1963 recorded Christmas greeting sent out to Fan Club members, the boys included a special shout-out to "Good ol" Freda!"

Her insights into the group are fond, never catty. Paul was always "nice and friendly," John was "a man of many moods," and "quiet Beatle" George "was never quiet with me." While she picked a new favorite every day, depending on who was nicest to her, she does not divulge if she ever had a deeper relationship with any of them. "That's personal," she smiles.

Her friend says "The Beatles saw her as a sister and their families saw her as a daughter." When Ringo joined up, motherless Freda became especially close to his mum. George's parents, the Harrisons, she recalls, "enjoyed the fame more than the other parents." And as that fame grew, and Freda's workload increased from 200 fan letters a week to 2-3000 a day, she became even more tenacious in guarding their privacy, not putting up with anyone "telling lies about her boys."

Which doesn't mean she couldn't give back as well as she got from the boys themselves. Once when John—evidently in one of is moods—threatened to sack her for being late, she told him she'd continue to work for the other three and he could do his own mail. To which he immediately back-pedaled that he was only kidding!

Freda today at the Cavern—where it all began

White assembles a great collection of vintage still photos and newsreel footage to tell this story. The soundtrack is full of period music, mostly R&B originals (like "Twist and Shout" and "Please Mr. Postman") later covered by The Beatles. Viewers might wish for more actual Beatles recordings, but that White managed to secure the rights to the four Beatles originals he does use is pretty impressive for a Kickstarter-funded project.

From early days (when no one could imagine bigger success than Playing the Empire Theatre in Liverpool at the bottom of the bill with Little Richard), through worldwide celebrity, marriages, divorces, death, children, movies, the foundation of Apple Corps, and the final divergence of four individuals going their separate ways, Freda has seen it all. Her common sense, good humor, and irrepressible sense of fun make her a most personable tour guide through an extraordinary cultural era.

MARGERY MYSTICAL TOUR

Shannon Hemphill and Ali Eppy

Marriage, sex, bloody religious infighting, a pervasive rape culture, the role of women in society—all these thematic elements might lead you to expect a play called Cell Talk: 1410 to be an edgy contemporary drama involving iPhones. But, no.

In author Dana Bagshaw's pop-up theatre production, the "cell" in question is a Spartan monastic room, the kind to which a woman under holy orders might retreat to live out her days in contemplation. A woman like the historical Julian of Norwich, whose conversations with another real-life medieval mystic and pilgrim, Margery Kempe—ca. 1410—make up the bulk of Bagshaw's ambitious play of ideas.

Santa Cruz author Bagshaw lived in England for 18 years, where early versions of the play were staged at offbeat but atmospheric venues like medieval churches. Cell Talk: 1410 had its American premiere last Sunday at Calvary Episcopal Church in downtown Santa Cruz, and will be performed again next Sunday, September 29, at the First Congregational Church on High Street.

The play is largely based on Kempe's book, The Book of Margery Kempe,  (dictated to a priest, since she never learned to read or write), considered to be the first autobiography in the English language. Bagshaw distills the fascinating events of Kempe's life to a series of vignettes in which Margery (Shannon Hemphill), tells her story to Julian (Ali Eppy), or interacts with her long-suffering, yet loyal husband, John Kempe (Rick Kuhn).

A self-defined visionary and mystic, Margery had her first apocalyptic vision after the difficult birth of her first child. Chained up as a madwoman for a while, she only recovered after Jesus appeared to her to talk her down—beginning what she claimed was a lifelong series of conversations with her Savior.

After bearing 14 children, Margery made a bargain of celibacy with her husband, visited Julian, another famed mystic, for confirmation that her visions were of Divine and not demonic origin, and spent most of the rest of her life on holy pilgrimages to Jerusalem, Assisi, Rome, and Santiago de Compostela.

 At a time when the Holy Church was routinely burning "heretics," Margery was tried and briefly imprisoned for heresy. She outraged church fathers for daring to have a personal relationship with Jesus outside of the church, and even for wearing white, supposed to be the sole province of virgins or women in holy orders.

Bagshaw's play is thoughtfully directed by Matt Matthews (making smart use of the outdoor space, a walkway alongside the Calvary library). It begins with Margery's first terrifying visions, and her husband's bewildered response. (The affable and funny Kuhn's John Kempe is the audience touchstone throughout.) They have a couple of more scenes together, including the entertaining moment when Margery prevails upon the disappointed John to embrace celibacy. But the rest of Margery's story unfolds in conversations with Julian.

Rick Kuhn, Shannon Hemphill, Ali Eppy

These mostly concern the quality of spirituality and the goodness of the Lord, along with the revelation of Margery's "secret sin," stemming from a rape she endured as a young girl. (Some graphic descriptions in this scene may not be suitable for young children.) Some of these conversations could stand a little pruning to sharpen their focus. But all is redeemed in their final encounter, when Bagshaw's themes of the triumph of the God of Love over the punishing God of wrath, and intuitive feminine mysticism over rigid church doctrine, register with gusto.

As Margery, Hemphill is a tad girlish and modern at times, but she also has moments of humor and warmth. Eppy's elegant Julian is the voice of serenity throughout. And the use of a quartet of musicians on hand, playing authentic medieval music between scene breaks, is an especially nice touch.

Cell Talk: 1410 plays next Sunday,  Sept. 29, 4 to 5:30 p.m., at the First Congregational Church, 900 High Street,  Santa Cruz. Tickets available at the door for a $10/15 donation.

LIFE IMITATES ART

Art, life, past, present merge in meditative 'Museum Hours'

If you've ever been to the venerable Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna, you're in for a nostalgic treat with the film, Museum Hours. But you need not have ever been to Vienna to be drawn into the odd, languid spell cast by this Austrian-American co-production. Anyone who has ever haunted any Old World museum with a rich collection of Late Middle Ages and Renaissance paintings may find herself strangely beguiled by this meditation on art and life, past and present, and the many ways and places in which they intersect.

The film is written and directed by American Jem Cohen, who has an extensive list of credits in music videos and documentary shorts. Museum Hours has a bit of a documentary vibe to it; the main character, a museum guard, narrates his thoughts and observations as he goes about his daily life, and onscreen conversations have an unscripted feel. There's not much in the way of plot or action, yet the film is thematically rich in its ideas on the secret symbolism of pictures, and art as the social media of its day.

Bruegel, "Fight Between Carnival and Lent," 1559

Johann (Bobby Sommer) is a uniformed guard at the KHM. He spends his days on a chair in a niche before a heavy wooden door and behind a red velvet rope, although he often gets up and wanders around the colossal picture galleries.

His favorite is the Bruegel room, large canvases teeming with messy life in all its diversity—allegorical wedding or hunting scenes, religious or mythological scenes radically reimagined in terms of 16th Century peasant life.

Johann "always sees something new in the paintings" that continue to speak to the human condition.

One day, he strikes up a conversation with Canadian visitor, Anne (Mary Margaret O'Hara). A distant cousin is in a Viennese hospital, and in the absence of any other family, Anne has come to spend time with her. Johann offers his services as a translator, and soon they become allied art explorers, soaking up the pictures and viewing art through the lens of life (and vice versa). It's especially fun to see the way filmmaker Cohen composes every exterior shot like a Bruegel canvas. (Read more)

The lack of narrative drive will frustrate some viewers, but Museum Hours is more about reverie than story. It would make a great double-bill in your Netflix queue with Lech Majewski's splendidly nutty Bruegel-movie mash-up, The Mill and the Cross, but it will be so much more compelling on a big screen.

Meanwhile, take a mini virtual tour of the museums of Vienna in this blog I posted after my visit there last summer!

PINING AWAY

Tatou shines as pre-feminist desperate housewife in 'Thèrése'

Audrey Tatou continues to grow in complexity onscreen. In the handsome and elegantly mounted period drama, Thèrése, the former Amelie gamine stars as a young woman entangled in bourgeois dynastic obligations in the southwest French countryside in the 1920s.

It's a part that calls for brisk intelligence (but not warmth) quiet desperation and a soupcon of cold fury, and Tatou plays every note with striking precision.

The final offering from the late French filmmaker Claude Miller, the film is adapted from the 1927 novel, Thèrése Desqueyroux, by Francois Mauriac. (Miller co-wrote the screenplay with Natalie Carter.) Although the novel was written long before modern notions of feminism had gained much currency, its portrait of a woman trapped in an ill-fitting social role continues to have resonance today.

As young girls, Thèrése and her best friend, Anne, grow up as best friends in adjoining estates nestled in a vast pine forest outside of Bordeaux. Anne is active, uncomplicated, "simple;" Thèrése always has her nose in a book. Everyone assumes that Thèrése will marry Anne's older brother, Bernard Desqueyroux, uniting the families' properties, and so it comes to pass—although his mother (the great Catherine Arditi) worries that Thèrése "thinks too much."

Thèrése (now played by Tatou) jokes to Bernard (Gilles Lellouche) that she's marrying him for his pines; theirs is not a love match, but she tells Anne (played as an adult by Anais Demoustier) she hopes marriage will "save" her and put the chaotic ideas in her head into some kind of order.

But marriage to pompous Bernard is hardly salvation. Uninterested in him physically, yet rushed into motherhood, she finds herself confined, not liberated, by her wifely duties.Oppressed by every aspect of her life, Thèrése begins to take a perverse interest in the arsenic-laced medicinal drops Bernard takes for his health.

If the novel had been written, say, half a century earlier, this would be a very different scenario. Viewers expecting a conventional morality play a la Anna Karenina, say, complete with passionate awakening and forbidden love affair, may be surprised at the way these events play out. It all adds up to an engrossing portrait of psychological turmoil in an era of simmering cultural upheaval. (Read more)

MAJOR TOM

Stoppard's ambitious 'Arcadia' launches new JTC season

Tom Stoppard's plays are not for the intellectually faint of heart.

In his dazzling and accomplished Arcadia, the playwright's roving mind and lively wit concoct a densely-packed thematic narrative touching on mathematics and physics, English history and culture, landscape gardening, the Romantic movement, academic infighting, Lord Byron, and—of course—sex and literature.

It's a long, smart, frequently funny play, and Jewel Theatre Company enhances its reputation for ambitious productions by staging Arcadia to kick off its ninth season.

Hannah Mary J. Keller and Robert Anthony Peters

The play is written as a kind of literary mystery, which plays out alongside its resolution in two separate time periods, 200 years apart, on the play's single set, a drawing room at an English country estate. Returning JTC stalwart Susan Myer Silton directs with efficiency and aplomb, keeping characters moving crisply in and out of Ron Gasparinetti's handsome, stationary set.

She also manages the tricky dance of keeping each character true to his or her historical and cultural era, even when they (occasionally) occupy the same set at the same time.

In 1809, at the country estate of Sidley Park, a proper young lady of the Regency era, Thomasina Coverly (a spirited Hannah Mary J. Keller), is attempting to study Fermat's Theorem with her self-possessed young tutor, Septimus Hodge (the very effective Robert Anthony Peters).

 Meanwhile, her mother, Lady Croom (a terrific Shannon Warrick), is suffering the renovation of her formal, Classicist garden with an overlay of faux-wild, gothic elements, in keeping with the fashion for Romanticism that's becoming all the rage.

In alternating scenes in the present day, a pair of literary scholars (Jeff Garrett and Julie James, left) attempt to piece together a mystery from the past, and adroit comedy is made from the juxtaposition of the modern academics' theorizing and the way events actually play out.

Garret's hilarious Bernard Nightingale is the raucous centerpiece of this production, a volatile academic hell-bent on pummeling a few scant crumbs of historical possibility into the proof he needs to support his pet theory. (Read more)

(Photos by Steve DiBartolomeo)

GIRL POWER

What? You haven't seen 20 Feet From Stardom yet? Not even once?

Why are you still sitting there?

Morgan Neville's documentary tribute to the often unheralded, and yet so necessary heroines of rock—the background singers onstage and in the studio—is as incendiary as the voices of these incredible vocalists.

The stories of these primarily black women—how they were used, abused, and/or empowered by the industry, whether or not they dared to take that 20-foot walk into the spotlight, and how they fared—are a remarkable cultural document of four or five rich decades in the pop music scene.

But OMG, the singing! When these ladies open their chops, either on record, or in vintage concert clips, or for Neville's camera in the present day, I promise you will find true religion. You'll rock, you'll roll, and I defy you not to tap or hum or sway along.

Ready to rock: Darlene Love, Tata Vega, Merry Clayton, Judith Hill, Lisa Fischer

I came because I love Merry Clayton, whose powerhouse contribution on the Stones' "Gimme Shelter" is arguably (by me) the most iconic back-up performance of all time. ("Rape! Murder! It's just a shot away, it's just a shot away-e-yay...")

Clayton tells a funny story of being rousted out of bed in the middle of the night and escorted to the studio in hair curlers and silk pajamas because the Stones thought the song needed "another voice"—yeah, one that can sing like wildfire!

But every singer in this movie is a treasure. Take Darlene Love, longtime indentured servant to Phil Spector, whose era-defining lead vocals on hits like "He's A Rebel" and "Da Doo Run Run" went uncredited for years in songs attributed to The Crystals, and other artists. Still full of sass and vinegar, and still in full possession of a great set of pipes, Love's induction, at long last, into the Rock 'n' Roll Hall of Fame ("...and about time, too!" beams presenter Bette Midler) concludes the movie on a high note.

In some classic '70s footage, Claudia Lennear (allegedly the inspiration for the Stones' "Brown Sugar"), a former Ikette, works out onstage with Joe Cocker and Leon Russell on the "Mad Dogs and Englishmen" tour, and leads the back-up choir at George Harrison's Concert for Bangladesh. From the next generation comes the phenomenal Judith Hill, who is shown rehearsing with Michael Jackson (she was chosen as his duet partner) on the ill-fated "This Is It" tour. Hill also sings a soulful composition of her own, "Desperation," accompanying herself on piano, that has "Spotlight" written all over it.

But my favorite in the film (and someone I'd never heard of before) is the divine Lisa Fischer. For years an accomplice of Luther Vandross, a confederate of Sting, and a fixture in every Rolling Stones tour since 1989, Fischer's voice is an incredible instrument of melody, color, and soaring emotion. Private and personal, or big and powerful, trading saucy licks with Mick Jagger onstage, she is a hypnotic performer, not to be missed.

For a little indie doc, this one is breaking records all over the country. Here's the trailer, to get you in the mood. Don't let me find out you missed it!

HAPPY DANCE TIME PART DEUX

Hey, kids!

It's Happy Dance time again!

Just back from two week's vacation when I got the email I've been waiting for for months—the good news that the long-missing contracts between my UK publisher, Snowbooks, and my soon-to-be US publisher have finally been signed, sealed and delivered.

Which means that, yes, a US edition of Alias Hook will be coming out from Thomas Dunne Books/St. Martin's Press in Spring/Summer 2014! I'd be jumping up and down, but I don't want to spill the champagne!

Many large and sincere thanks are due to TDB senior editor Pete Wolverton, and his most excellent assistant editor, Anne Brewer, for shepherding me through the process so far. (Thanks for all the pep talks and virtual hand-holding!)

I am SO looking forward to working with these two on the US edition. They even asked me for suggestions re: the new cover design—how cool is that?

For those of you who came in late, feel free to bop over to my Alias Hook Facebook page and read all about it.

And of course, if you just can't wait till next year, the Snowbooks edition of Alias Hook (with a dynamic cover designed by Anna Torborg) is available as we speak online from The Book Depository —with free shipping worldwide. Such a deal!

O (EQUALITY) PIONEERS

In honor of marriage equality, and spurred on by the current Cabrillo Stage production of La Cage aux Folles,  I thought it would be fun to celebrate the (brief) history of same-sex domestic partnerships in the movies.

Not  passionate gay relationships; there are plenty worthy examples of those, the best being Brokeback Mountain. Longtime commitment is definitely a major factor in that relationship, but it's never domestic. In fact, the characters have to create faux domestic relationships with other people—wives—to conceal their clandestine romance with each other. And I was trying to avoid the self-loathing gay stereotypes of a movie like Staircase, in 1969, where Rex Harrison and Richard Burton struggle to act fruity and waspish, as a long-together couple who basically hate each other.

My criteria is positive images of gay partnerships and here, in ascending order, are my faves:

At # 4, a nod to the original French film, La Cage Aux Folles, which was adapted by screenwriter Jean Poiret from his own stage play. The lead couple are still very much in the gay comic stereotype mode (it was 1978, after all), as dapper and fastidious club owner, Renato (Ugo Tognazzi) labors valiantly to keep his flighty, flamboyant drag queen partner, Albin (Michel Serrault), more or less tethered to terra firma.

What was groundbreaking was the depiction of this couple in a long-term domestic relationship not only based unabashedly on love, but in which they had also raised a child together. Quelle horreur! And yet, (amazingly, perhaps, to the general public of the day), the young man has not only suffered no ill effects from this arrangement with the unorthodox parental units he loves, he's planning to marry a woman.

Waltzing in at #3 is My Best friend's Wedding. It's 20 years after La Cage; still, Rupert Everett's partner does not have a speaking part in the movie. He's never even seen, except in the background at dinner parties with friends from which Everett is constantly being called away to the phone to deal with best pal Julia Roberts' neurotic crises. But a clever arrangement of photographs shows the partners and their loved ones in a variety of perfectly ordinary domestic scenes and family events.

And why, exactly, is Roberts heaping all of her problems at his feet? Not simply because he's the best-looking man in the movie (fat lot of good it does her), or clearly the best dancer, but because Everett's character is stable, sensible, and way more experienced in domesticity. He, unlike Roberts, knows what's involved in a committed, long-term relationship, and is the voice of reason throughout, even as she tries to wreck other lives to get her own romantic way.

Antonio Banderas has more screen time as the lover/partner of Tom Hanks' terminal AIDS patient hero in my #2 pick, Philadelphia. True, their physical relationship is mostly kept offscreen, except for a romantic slow dance together at a costume party. But his character is a presence throughout this 1993 film, not only as lover and loyal caregiver, but also a source on incipient, highly relatable domestic friction when the stress occasionally becomes too much.

In the accepting world of Philadelphia, both Hanks and Banderas are beloved by Hanks' large extended family of cousins, nieces, nephews, and siblings, beginning with his indomitable mother, played by the great Joanne Woodward. This love-feast of tolerance may seem a trifle idealized, but it's all in keeping with director Jonathan Demme's subversive agenda of presenting gay couples and their families as, you know, just like everybody else.

 And finally, my vote for the best domestic partnerships in the movies (to date) goes to The Kids Are Alright. The sublime Annette Bening and Julianne Moore star as a devoted, long-married couple raising their two kids in the suburbs of Los Angeles. Their family has its quirks, but the kids respect their parents, each other, and themselves.

That this movie is NOT about the fact that they are a lesbian couple is just one of the things that make Lisa Cholodenko's comedy so fresh, fun, and appealing; you could substitute a straight, hetero couple into the plot and the story would play out exactly the same way. It's not a "lesbian comedy," it's a family comedy that resonates with everyone.

I was trying to go for a Top Five list, but these are the only qualifying examples I could think of. I'm sure I'm forgetting something obvious, or maybe there are other contenders out there in movies I haven't seen. If you have any suggestions, let me know, and I'll post an update.

RIPPING

Hugh Jackman pops out the adamantium claws once again in The Wolverine, a punchy action adventure that successfully revitalizes our favorite X-mutant as franchise material (after the debacle of X-Men Origins: Wolverine).

It works because director James Mangold and scriptwriters Mark Bomback and Scott Frank stick close to the tormented psyche of Jackman's brooding Logan as he copes with everlasting life and unsettling dream appearances by deceased lover Jean Grey (Famke Janssen), while coming to terms with his responsibility to the world. Stunts and CGI effects, while often impressive, are secondary to the human story.

The setting is modern-day Japan, where Logan has been summoned to the deathbed of a powerful tycoon whose life he once saved. (This follows a prologue set in a Nagasaki POW camp at the end of WWII, a pretty nifty sequence except for an unusually benign atomic bomb which takes its time wafting over the hills toward the camp instead of incinerating everything in sight on contact.)

Anyway. Before long, Logan is in the middle of a war between Yakuza mobsters, Ninja assassins, and the evil schemes of a sexy mutant called Viper (Svetlana Khodchenkova).

His slowly simmering romance with the tycoon's granddaughter, Mariko (Tao Okamoto), falls a bit flat, if only because we keep rooting for him to hook up with plucky, pink-haired warrior girl Yukio (Rila Fukushima) instead.

But the fact that time is spared for Logan to develop a romance with anybody is a plus in a summer action blockbuster. On the other hand, Jackman is such a personable and charismatic guy, onscreen and off (yes, even as Wolverine), it's too bad they don't give him better dialogue throughout—especially when delivering a coup-de-grace to some villain. ("Go f**k yourself, pretty boy," lacks a little something in flair; it's not exactly in the same league as, say, "Make my day.")

Still the action is fairly inventive, from a fight atop a speeding bullet train to self-inflicted open heart surgery. The central premise of whether Logan would give up his immortality as Wolverine for a "normal" life and the promise of eventual death—and if so, on what terms—is compelling, and Jackman still has presence enough to make us care.

LOVE MATCH

Fred Arsenault and Gretchen Hall

Laughter and love reign in gorgeous SSC 'Taming of the Shrew'

Shakespeare Santa Cruz launches its 2013 season with a crowd-pleasing, often uproarious production of The Taming of the Shrew. The company has a newly rebuilt and reconfigured performance space to show off in the Sinsheimer/Stanley Festival Glen (although to the lay viewer, nothing appears to be radically altered), and they inaugurate it in style with this visually gorgeous production.

Lively incidental music and B. Modern's lavish costumes evoke the Renaissance, while the action flows gracefully across Michael Ganio's formidable, multi-tiered set, and all around the Glen. It's a splendid setting for one of Shakespeare's brightest, yet most misunderstood romantic comedies.

Director Edward Morgan wisely keeps the emphasis on laughter (literally; every character has his own distinctive chuckle), so that the lusty romantic coupling at the play's core sneaks up on the audience by stealth, then explodes in all its heartfelt complexity.

Hortensio (William Ellsman) woos Bianca (Victoria Nassif)

Things get going with the arrival of fussbudgety Hortensio (the hilarious William Elsman) and elderly Gremio (an irascibly funny Kit Wilder), two wealthy suitors to pretty young Bianca (Victoria Nassif). But her doting father, Baptista (the wonderful V Craig Heidenreich, who always manages to coax four or five insinuating syllables out of his daughter's name), has decreed that Bianca cannot wed until her elder sister, Katherine (Gretchen Hall) finds a husband.

Katherine, underappreciated by a father who clearly prefers her sister, and too smart to suffer fools gladly or curb her sarcasm, is ill-tempered most of the time, and the dynamic Hall shows us every atom of her frustration.

But Bianca's suitors collude with Petruchio (Fred Arsenault, suitably robust and witty), a rough-hewn, outspoken knight from Verona, to woo Katharine.

The play is often considered problematic, chiefly by those who interpret the words "taming" and "shrew" too literally. Kate is profoundly unhappy in her home life and unable to escape it by any other means than marriage. Petruchio is an eccentric drawn to an unconventional spirit equal to his own. He's not trying to break her spirit, nor demanding Kate's blind obedience to a capricious master; rather, he is asking her to trust him in maneuvering around social conventions to create an extraordinary life together.

In an effective production like this one, Kate's final speech resonates because we understand the complicity between the two of them—to rise up together above the mundane conventions of their society and live on their own terms. Their partnership is not a "taming," it's a liberation—for both of them. We get that here when Arsenault's jaunty Petruchio reacts to Kate's speech not with a victor's smugness, but with astonished awe. His Kate has outwitted them all, and we see in their final embrace the birth of a genuine love match that warms the audience all the way home. (Read more)

ON TARGET

Fear trumps reason in complex Danish drama 'The Hunt'

A child's remark brings lives to the brink of ruin in Danish filmmaker Thomas Vinterberg's complex drama The Hunt. The story takes shape in the treacherous and fascinating twilight zone between acute moral responsibility and witch-hunting. Not a lot happens in the narrative except ordinary people going about their daily routines—talking, laughing, drinking, making love, going to work—but because the focus is on the ever-unpredictable vagaries of human nature, the film plays like a compelling, edge-of-your-seat thriller.

Although Vinterberg (Celebration) is a founding member of the ill-advised Dogma school of Danish filmmaking, The Hunt is mercifully unburdened by shaky hand-held camera work or attempted real-time narrative constraints. It flows over time and place at its own pace, like a normal movie, and is so much stronger because of it.

 It takes place in a small, contemporary Danish suburb on the edge of a forest, where the men of the town initiate their sons into manhood during the annual deer hunt, as their families have done for generations.

The great Danish actor Mads Mikkelsen gives a performance of astonishing force and subtlety as protagonist Lucas. Completely integrated into the life of the town, yet somewhat apart, Lucas is divorced and lives alone; his adored teenage son lives elsewhere, with Lucas' prickly ex-wife. (In a wry running gag, Lucas' loyal dog barks like crazy if anyone mentions the name of his ex.)

One day, a child says something vague to the principal of the kindergarten where Lucas works, that makes her think something inappropriate has happened. Vinterberg shows with scalpel-like precision how fear and misinformation spread like a contagion throughout the town, infecting everyone. (Read more)

UNCAGED

Dance, diversity shine in Cabrillo Stage's fizzy, if uneven 'La Cage aux Folles'

In celebration of the end of DOMA, and the repeal of Prop 8, Cabrillo Stage launches its 2013 summer musical season with a lavish, light-hearted production of La Cage aux Folles. Based on the groundbreaking 1978 French film comedy, one of the earliest depictions in modern pop culture of a sympathetic gay couple in a long-term domestic relationship, the show was first produced in 1983 with a book by Harvey Fierstein and music and lyrics by the legendary Jerry Herman.

The Cabrillo production is directed and choreographed by CS veteran Janie Scott for maximum crowd-pleasing. The story is set in and around a popular drag nightclub in St. Tropez in the south of France, so there's plenty of opportunity for big, elaborate dance numbers, which is where this production shines. Some other aspects of the production can be a bit uneven, but as long as the eight-man (plus one anatomically correct female) troupe of chorus "girls," called Les Cagelles, are onstage, the show is great fizzy fun.

On the French Riviera sits the famed nightclub, La Cage aux Folles. It's owner/proprietor and emcee is Georges (dapper Curt Denham, who has a great singing voice and an easy, affable onstage presence), whose longtime companion is the club's star attraction, Albin, performing under the stage name, Zaza (Tony Panighetti, in a game, heartfelt performance). Suave Georges and the more flamboyant Albin have been together for 20-plus years, and are well known and loved in their community.

The plot involves the impending marriage of Georges' 24-year-old son (by a youthful, one-night indiscretion) who desperately wants the couple who raised him to act "normal" for one day to meet his fiancee's right-wing, bigoted parents. Fortunately. this plot doesn't interfere much with the entertaining production numbers onstage at the club, especially in the show's more dynamic first half.

Sammy Lopez makes a fun, campy feast out of the role of houseboy and wannabe showgirl Jacob. But the play's trump card is its portrait of tender affection between an aging couple who have been together for a long time. The touching relationship between Georges and Albin is the foundation from which this lively production takes flight. (Read more)

FRIENDLY SKIES

Almodóvar turns airborne disaster into frothy comedy in 'I'm So Excited'

Who else but Pedro Almodóvar could take a standard disaster movie premise and turn it into a frothy, candy-colored comedy? But the merry Mexican maestro carries it off with delicious, subversive aplomb in his new film, I'm So Excited, which dares to ask the question: how would you choose to live your last hour of life?

In the Almodóvar universe, the answer involves cocktails, plenty of sex, and a disco beat.

There has always been a fine line between farce and melodrama, in Almodóvar's films, where reckless human passions intersect in unexpected, often ironic ways. But while Excited has one of his more dire set-ups—a commercial airliner bound from Spain to Mexico City experiences equipment failure as the flight crew searches for a place to make an emergency landing—this is a return to pure comedy for the filmmaker.

Cecilia Roth

Sure, sex, drugs, murder, and betrayal figure in the entwining stories that make up the plot, but the mood is light, even boisterous throughout.

Chief Steward Jossera (Javier Cámara), and his First Class cabin crew (Raúl Arévalo  and Carlos Areces) serve as both a bawdy Greek chorus of observers and the eye of the storm, a zany trio mixing vats of mescaline-laced mimosas and kibitzing as the other passengers' stories unfold.

Almodóvar selected his cast mostly from his stock company of recurring players, in what must have been a party for all involved. The fabulous Cecilia Roth makes her seventh appearance with the filmmaker (she was in his very first feature, back in 1980).

Cámara starred as the compassionate orderly in Almodóvar's brilliant Talk To Her.

The dialogue is fast and funny even as the situation deteriorates. In the comic centerpiece, the three stewards perform a perfectly choreographed lip-synch routine to the Pointer Sisters tune that gives the film its title—complete with aerial shots a la Busby Berkeley. (Read more)

Raúl Arévalo,  Carlos Areces and Javier Cámara are SO excited!

BLOOD SISTERS

'Byzantium' a lush, eerie, feminist vampire tale

In his varied career, Irish filmmaker Neil Jordan has shown a particular gift for weaving eerie folklore and fairy tale sensibilities in and out of so-called "real" life.

So to call his new film, Byzantium, a mere "vampire movie" doesn't begin to suggest the lush and disturbing depths and subtle textures of this provocative and atmospheric tale.

Told from a refreshingly female perspective, with a time-traveling narrative and a rich subtext about storytelling and its consequences, it revitalizes the notion of what a vampire movie can be.

Byzantium was scripted by Moira Buffini (Tamara Drewe), based on her stage play A Vampire Story. (She claims it was inspired—very loosely—by the Victorian Gothic story, "Camille," by Sheridan Le Fanu.)

 Fleeing a murder scene in a nearby town, two young women come to roost in a bleak English seaside town in the off season. Clara (Gemma Arterton) is a brash, savvy, beautiful prostitute and lap dancer. Eleanor (Saoirse Ronan) an introspective 16-year-old who was raised in a convent, calls Clara "My savior, my burden, my muse."

We see right off that the women have an unholy taste for blood (but no fangs are involved; a protruding thumbnail does the trick). Nor do these blood-drinkers fly, possess superhuman strength, turn to dust in the daylight, or morph into bats. All that sets them apart is their immortality.

In flashbacks to the Napoleonic era, we see how each woman was initiated into the Brotherhood of the Immortal (operative word: brotherhood), and how they have since turned the tables on the Old Boy's Club of the undead, "to punish those who prey on the weak (and) to curb the power of men."

 The film can be slow going for awhile, but I find this forgivable as long as the film finally does get somewhere. And the payoff in Byzantium is its own reward. (Read more)

This one opens this Friday (July 12 ) at the Del Mar, only two shows daily, so don't miss it!

SPIRIT MISGUIDED

The reviews are pretty awful, and the box office is tanking. But, seriously, can The Lone Ranger really be that bad? Well, there's nothing wrong with this movie that couldn't be fixed by cutting out about 45 minutes and hiring new scriptwriters who know how to set and maintain a consistent tone, tell a coherent story, and develop characters we care about.

That leaves out Ted Elliot and Terry Rossio, the main culprits here, along with director and fellow PotC alumnus Gore Verbinski; together with third credited screenwriter Justin Haythe, they prove they ought to be making amusement park rides, not movies.

Armie Hammer (he played both Winklevoss twins in The Social Network) stars as the deputy Texas Ranger turned masked avenger for justice, but he's stuck playing a dull-witted, square-jawed, prig. There is no there there. Resurrected from the brink of death after an ambush, he's still a stiff; his only heroic attribute is an (undeserved) reputation for not staying dead.

It's Johnny Depp who gets the plum role of wily "sidekick," Tonto; he's the most consistent thing in the movie, and there's pleasure to be had if you tune out all the sturm and bluster in the overcooked plot about ruthless railroad men vs. vicious outlaws vs. noble Indians and view his performance as an extended homage to the deadpan physical slapstick of silent comedians Buster Keaton and Harold Lloyd.

But these two "heroes" have no chemistry or camaraderie; the characters dislike and mistrust each other, falling into pathetic bickering at the most inappropriate moments. The non-stop jokiness is also a big problem, especially when the movie tries to shift gears and address the spirituality and suffering of Native American peoples at the hands of the white man. A couple of times we are asked to ponder the sobering aftermath of a massacre, then up pops Depp to crack another joke so the audience can start laughing again.

Comedy and tragedy coexist in life, of course, but can only be combined onscreen by writers who know what they're doing. Here the juxtaposition is not well integrated, so the movie doesn't feel more resonant, it's just schizoid. The big action finale featuring three runaway trains on split-level, intersecting tracks is a marvel of stunt choreography, but like everything else, it goes on forever. This isn't a thrill ride, it's an endurance test.

Btw, much virtual ink has been spilled over Tonto's dead crow headdress, including on this blog. Depp claims he was inspired by this painting, I Am Crow, by contemporary southwest artist Kirby Sattler, from which Depp also evidently borrowed make-up tips.

I don't know how authentic this painting is supposed to be, or whether the crow is metaphor, or if the image is meant to represent a man of the Crow nation. (In the movie, Tonto is supposed to be Comanche.) But Depp has said in interviews that he got into the idea that a native warrior might wear his totem animal spirit guide on his person, and that actually is fine with me. (In fact, the crow becomes a character in the story, in flashbacks.) It's just too bad the rest of the movie lacks the wit, purpose, and spiritual depth of that dead crow.

PS: And don't even get me started on the rabid bunnies....

FRIGHT CLASSES

Take a fun summer refresher course at 'Monsters University'


Looking for something fun to do with the kids this holiday weekend? Why not sign up for a refresher course at Monsters University? This lighthearted prequel to the Pixar/Disney 2001 animated blockbuster, Monsters Inc., reunites audiences with some of their favorite characters and introduces some cool new ones in a family-friendly tale of friendship, destiny, diversity, and higher education, told with maximum humor and heart.

Monsters Inc. is a hard act to follow, with its entertaining and audacious premise that the monsters that lurk under the bed and pop out of the closet to frighten children at night are not only real, they are proud members of an elite labor force who punch a time clock and take the work very seriously. The screams they harvest at night from the human kids they scare silly are captured in canisters to supply fuel for the city and the economy in the alternative reality where the monsters live.

There's no way to top this premise, so incoming director Dan Scanlon and returning scriptwriters Daniel Gerson and Robert L. Baird backpedal instead. Monsters University is an origin story on how two of the top "Scarers" found their path in life. The first film showed big, blue, fur-ball James P. "Sulley" Sullivan (voice of John Goodman), and his partner, diminutive, green, cyclops Mike Wazowski (Billy Crystal) at the top of their game. In Monsters U, we see their rocky road to friendship, and the personal obstacles each faces along the way.

 My favorite addition to the Monsters universe is the imperious Dean Hardscrabble (above). An upright reptile whose dozens of centipede feet scrabble ominously across the floor, with an impressive set of giant dragon-like red wings, she's part Maleficent, part "Night on Bald Mountain's" devil, with a fine, chilly voice provided by Helen Mirren.

Part frat house comedy, part Hunger Games, with a soupcon of Hogwarts, Monsters U delivers some engaging messages with a very light touch. (Read more)