Sometimes I think we should do Mayor Michael Bloomberg a favor and vote against him.
Third terms tend to be a disaster. I’m old enough to remember the third Ed Koch term. It didn’t go well, maybe less, in retrospect, because of things Koch did than the way New Yorkers began to feel about him. They got tired. After eight years, the romance begins to wear off, politically speaking, and the third and final Koch term—like an awful lot of third terms around the country—began to be more about keeping track of the corruption cases than actual achievements.
With Bloomberg, corruption is not a particularly pressing worry. He hires, by and large, fantastic people. But I worry that he’s going to get grouchier and meaner and that it will matter more. He started out as a relatively amiable chap, even with his passion for private getaways and his disdain for what he saw as dumb questions from the press. Fair enough. But in the last year, his attitude itself became the story on several occasions. Remember the mayor yelling at the handicapped reporter?
This is not, after all, a man who is used to being publicly questioned, much less chastised. You could see that much last week, during the NY 1 mayoral debate. Most of the fun was in seeing Bloomberg’s Democratic challenger, Bill Thompson, say to the mayor’s face the things that so many New Yorkers would like to say. I know there are issues that loom larger than extending term limits, but the mayor's mishandling of that issue embodies the rules-don’t-apply-to-me attitude of the incumbent. Watching Thompson take it to Bloomberg made for great TV.
It does not necessarily follow that Thompson would be a better mayor than Bloomberg. But last week’s debate did remind me that elections can be fun—and are sure as hell necessary.
Monday, October 19, 2009
Thursday, October 15, 2009
Carrie Fisher and the Donut Shop, Both in a Matter of Days
My neighbor/pal Jessica got me discounted tickets to two different shows in the past week: “Wishful Drinking” on Sunday and “Superior Donuts” last night. Nothing like a little Broadway to get me feeling autumnal.
Going in, I was pretty sure that the donuts, as conjured up by playwright Tracy Letts, would be my favorite. But having seen the two shows, now I’m not so sure. Because I had forgot to factor in something significant: Carrie Fisher rocks.
I read “Wishful Thinking” as a book, and I learned something interesting: “Wishful Thinking” is not much of a book. It reads like a show script, which did not keeping it from selling well. Still, as I made my way through what sometimes seemed like a forced series of sarcastic asides, I found myself thinking the book would probably be better as a performance piece. It is. It’s an excellent performance piece, with more than a few pertinent points about the danger of keeping secrets and taking the long road to finding mental health. Fisher is such a likable presence, mixing warmth and wit with the aforementioned sarcasm. She becomes a perfect tour guide for her story of the hazards of fame, her bipolar disorder and the time she woke up next to her friend’s dead body. The child of Eddie Fisher and Debbie Reynolds (and armed with hilarious stories about both of them), Carrie Fisher even begins and ends with a musical interlude. And she’s good enough to leave me with dreams of her doing a nightclub act with her mom.
My favorite moment in the second act was snappy and fantastic. The show’s winding down and then we hear a siren. “Shit, that’s my ride,” Fisher says. My only complaint is that “Wishful Drinking” could be done in 90 minutes without an intermission, but I feel the same way about everything.
“Superior Donuts” tries to do something more ambitious than Fisher does, more communal and less personal. These “Donuts” take the temperature of a culture, while also telling a specific story about a shop uptown in the Windy City. Michael McKeon takes center stage, but almost unwillingly. I’ve never seen anyone underplay as much as he does as the shop owner in the first act of “Superior Donuts.” This turns out to be an unlikely and calm play, at least in that it comes from the author of the electric “August: Osage County.”
There are weaknesses, and they are not pretty. The characters are types more than three-dimensional and believable representations, and there’s a poorly choreographed fight scene that looks exactly like a poorly choreographed fight scene in a play. The acting is so good, though, that sometimes the caricatures come alive. A few powerful moments happen, making this a worthy destination.
It’s funny, too. Indeed “Superior Donuts” has been derided as a sitcom, which is usually a sign that I will love a show. This time around, I loved the sense of community and the set and the play’s predictable but well-played final moments. But this particular sitcom left me a tiny bit hungry for something more substantial, like maybe Carrie Fisher alone on a stage, just chatting about how wacky life can be.
Going in, I was pretty sure that the donuts, as conjured up by playwright Tracy Letts, would be my favorite. But having seen the two shows, now I’m not so sure. Because I had forgot to factor in something significant: Carrie Fisher rocks.
I read “Wishful Thinking” as a book, and I learned something interesting: “Wishful Thinking” is not much of a book. It reads like a show script, which did not keeping it from selling well. Still, as I made my way through what sometimes seemed like a forced series of sarcastic asides, I found myself thinking the book would probably be better as a performance piece. It is. It’s an excellent performance piece, with more than a few pertinent points about the danger of keeping secrets and taking the long road to finding mental health. Fisher is such a likable presence, mixing warmth and wit with the aforementioned sarcasm. She becomes a perfect tour guide for her story of the hazards of fame, her bipolar disorder and the time she woke up next to her friend’s dead body. The child of Eddie Fisher and Debbie Reynolds (and armed with hilarious stories about both of them), Carrie Fisher even begins and ends with a musical interlude. And she’s good enough to leave me with dreams of her doing a nightclub act with her mom.
My favorite moment in the second act was snappy and fantastic. The show’s winding down and then we hear a siren. “Shit, that’s my ride,” Fisher says. My only complaint is that “Wishful Drinking” could be done in 90 minutes without an intermission, but I feel the same way about everything.
“Superior Donuts” tries to do something more ambitious than Fisher does, more communal and less personal. These “Donuts” take the temperature of a culture, while also telling a specific story about a shop uptown in the Windy City. Michael McKeon takes center stage, but almost unwillingly. I’ve never seen anyone underplay as much as he does as the shop owner in the first act of “Superior Donuts.” This turns out to be an unlikely and calm play, at least in that it comes from the author of the electric “August: Osage County.”
There are weaknesses, and they are not pretty. The characters are types more than three-dimensional and believable representations, and there’s a poorly choreographed fight scene that looks exactly like a poorly choreographed fight scene in a play. The acting is so good, though, that sometimes the caricatures come alive. A few powerful moments happen, making this a worthy destination.
It’s funny, too. Indeed “Superior Donuts” has been derided as a sitcom, which is usually a sign that I will love a show. This time around, I loved the sense of community and the set and the play’s predictable but well-played final moments. But this particular sitcom left me a tiny bit hungry for something more substantial, like maybe Carrie Fisher alone on a stage, just chatting about how wacky life can be.
Monday, October 5, 2009
Movies: A Worthwhile Trip to ‘Paris’
In this economy, the closest I’m going to get to Paris is going to “Paris.”So I went to see the new movie starring Juliette Binoche. I used to hate her cause she stole the Academy Award away from Lauren Bacall in 1996. But all is forgiven. I just keep noticing that every time I see Binoche I fall in love with her all over again. That was true even last month, when she appeared on “The View” and kept having to be bleeped for her language. She was the first authentic person ever to appear on “The View”—or at least it felt that way.
In “Paris,” the latest from director Cédric Klapisch, Binoche plays the sister of a young man who needs a heart transplant. She winds up getting a heart transplant of another, more metaphorical variety. I like brother-sister movies, partly because there are so few of them when stacked up against the romantic variety, and partly cause I like my sister. The sibling situation here is dire and beautiful and probably made more compelling because the pretty darn cute Romain Duris plays Binoche’s brother.
This is one of those sprawling Robert Altman-like things, where many story lines run parallel until they bump against one another. I liked most of the plots, but especially the scenes with Binoche and Duris. They felt real. I believed everything they said and did, whether they were sparring or sustaining one another, telling the truth of about the passage of time or lying to kids about Santa Claus. An ambitious movie, but a worthwhile one.
And Binoche is that rare 21st-century film actress, one who can use the muscles in her face to express emotion.
In “Paris,” the latest from director Cédric Klapisch, Binoche plays the sister of a young man who needs a heart transplant. She winds up getting a heart transplant of another, more metaphorical variety. I like brother-sister movies, partly because there are so few of them when stacked up against the romantic variety, and partly cause I like my sister. The sibling situation here is dire and beautiful and probably made more compelling because the pretty darn cute Romain Duris plays Binoche’s brother.
This is one of those sprawling Robert Altman-like things, where many story lines run parallel until they bump against one another. I liked most of the plots, but especially the scenes with Binoche and Duris. They felt real. I believed everything they said and did, whether they were sparring or sustaining one another, telling the truth of about the passage of time or lying to kids about Santa Claus. An ambitious movie, but a worthwhile one.
And Binoche is that rare 21st-century film actress, one who can use the muscles in her face to express emotion.
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