Woody Allen can retire now if he wants. That’s because Aziz Ansari and Alan Yang have done something unexpected: two Asian-Americans — who did not grow up in New York — have made a uniquely New York comedy/ drama that, at times, feels very Woody Allenesque. By that I mean, Ansari and Yang have, like Allen at his best, come close to creating a masterpiece of storytelling in the second season of “Master of None” on Netflix. As a long time Woody Allen fan, I do not say this lightly, but it’s clear that the duo have progressed beyond the cuteness of the first season to a new level of storytelling that’s both innovative and compelling.  

The series stars Ansari as Dev Shah. Dev is an actor whose jobs consist of commercials,  B-movie roles, and in this season, the host of a cupcake competition show called “Clash of the Cupcakes.”  Season two picks up where season one left off — with Dev and his girlfriend broken up.  He heads to Italy to learn how to make pasta (something he loves), and she moves to Tokyo. Setting the early episodes in Modena, Italy has many advantages. The first being that it takes Dev out of New York and gives him different experiences so he can nurse his wounds from the break up with his girlfriend Rachael in the first season. When we see him in Italy, it’s clear that he’s embraced the Italian culture by learning to make intricate pastas, speaking the language, and making friends with some of the locals. And while there are many amusing scenes that take place in Italy (including a visit by Dev’s friend Arnold, who tries to convince his ex-girlfriend not to marry her fiance, and an episode shot in black and white with more than a nod to Vittorio De Sica’s “The Bicycle Thief”), the stories really take off when the location is set back in New York City.  

The episodes that deal with religion and dating (appropriately titled “Religion” and “First Date”) focus on each activity that doesn’t run into stereotypes. For example, in “Religion” Dev pretends to be religious around his parents during Ramadan, but can’t help being in love with pork and drinking wine. While there’s some anxiety over his “coming out” as a pork eater, it’s handled with the right amount of sensitivity and avoids any neuroticism that Woody Allen would have infused a scene with. “First Date” comes close to being stereotypical in a couple of scenes, but redeem themselves by throwing curveballs that are both funny and unexpected.

One of the long arcs of the series is a smoldering crush that turns into a deep love between Dev and Francesca (Alessandra Mastronardi) — a woman Dev befriends in Italy. Though the romance between the two is isn’t apparent at the beginning, it later evolves to the point where there’s real heartbreak over poor timing and promises made to others. What’s refreshing for the series is that Ansari and Yang will devote an episode to different styles of filmmaking. So in addition to a certain post-World War II Italian film, they also dabble in short vignettes focusing on characters not seen in the series before, and even evoke a “Manhattan”-like feel in a sequence shot in a park with giant modern art sculptures. And while Allen’s films often zoom in on his anxiousness and insecurity of being jewish in a mostly white Protestant culture, Ansari and Yang’s characters rarely have issues with their ethnicity when it comes to the larger society  — save perhaps Dev’s friend from childhood, Denise.  Denise is a black lesbian who, in the first season, seemed like she was shoehorned into the Dev’s universe. Her presence didn’t seem authentic, but the episode “Thanksgiving” (co-written by Lena Waithe who plays Denise) gave both context and believability to Dev and Denise’s friendship.  

Episodic television is often trapped by a formula, and that’s why it rarely transcends its conventions.  “Master of None” is such a departure from the formula of episodic TV because it defies convention. Ansari and Yang are clearly more than comedic writers — just as Allen became more of an artist once he stopped trying to recreate his “older, funnier films.”  Making a conscious effort to explore more serious material that requires an actor like Ansari to shed his usual wisecracking persona can sometimes flop because of the material and the limitations of an actor’s abilities (remember when Bill Murray made “The Razor’s Edge?” Or when Steve Martin made “Pennies from Heaven?”). Ansari is no great actor, but he is savvy enough to know his limitations and not create situations where those limitations are accentuated.

Overall, “Master of None” is thoroughly enjoyable, adult storytelling.  The fact that most of the characters are in their early 30s — and are relatively normal — dispels the myth that Millennials are a bunch of narcissistic, self-deluded, and ultimately horrible people that Lena Dunham’s “Girls” has got the market cornered on. You can binge watch “Master of None,” and feel like you’re watching a novel unfold in the space of ten compact and wonderfully written episodes —  with characters who are sympathetic, funny, and don’t always make dumb choices.

Radio City with Jon Grayson and Rob Ross hit the double sevens…

Settle in for another engaging back-and-forth between Jon and Rob as they touch on everything – for this edition, they speak about the passing of Chris Cornell; new music from Ellie Perry, Wade Jackson and Allison Johnelle Boron’s introduction to Big Thief and their new video; Rob’s showcase of Paul Weller’s two recent albums, the psycho circus known as the Trump Administration and the popular “In Our Heads”.  Get ready to sit back and let your thoughts be provoked while being entertained.

Radio City with Jon Grayson and Rob Ross:  Episode 14

 

The podcast will be on the site as well as for subscription via iTunes and other podcast aggregators. Subscribe and let people know about Radio City, as well as Popdose’s other great podcasts David Medsker’s Dizzy Heights and In:Sound with Michael Parr and Zack Stiegler.

 

Jonathan Demme’s passing was marked by tributes to Silence of the Lambs, an American horror classic. Demme would still be considered one of the great American directors even if that was the only film he ever made.

But it overshadows the rest of Demme’s filmography to the point that most casual film goers can’t even name another Demme film. Some will probably mention the brilliant Talking Heads concert film Stop Making Sense or the late masterpiece Rachel Getting Married. Others will remember Lambs’ follow up Philadelphia, still the most effective film about AIDS. Cult fans will remember Demme’s odd ball ’80s comedies like Something Wild and Married to the Mob.

But nobody has examined where Demme came from and what inspired him, even though Demme himself has been very open about it. Like Martin Scorsese, Francis Ford Coppola, and Ron Howard, Demme started under Roger Corman’s wing. Demme never forgot his mentor, casting Corman in his films (including Lambs), even as other people did. Demme used the opportunity with genre films (like Angels as Hard as They Come) to comment on fresh, emerging trends in cinema.

Demme’s first directorial work was the Corman produced Caged Heat, a “women-in-prison” film. This genre has fallen out of favor as people realize just how exploitative and degrading to the actresses the films are. The films are barely examined or acknowledged any more except by the most jaded critic.

So it’s almost understandable that people would ignore Demme’s debut. But is that fair? What does Demme’s first film say about the rest of his work?

At first glance, Caged Heat is nothing more than an amateur exercise.  The characters are flimsy and the plot barely exists. When you hear the words “women in prison film made in the 70s,” whatever you just pictured is exactly what Caged Heat is. There are robbery scenes, breakout scenes, a sadistic warden (played by Eurohorror legend Barbara Steele) who doles out random punishments after the inmates perform a risqué sketch at a talent show, and numerous sex scenes. All of it is shot on cheap film stock and features dated ‘70s fashion cliches and a problematic mise en scene. I never once believed that the characters in this movie were serving prison sentences in a real jail.

But Caged Heat also showcases a lot of Demme’s interests that would be explored better in later films, particularly Silence of the Lambs. Demme’s best films are about female empowerment and transcending gender roles. Caged Heat would be taken seriously as a female empowerment movie today, but it was the best Demme could do at the time working with the constraints Corman placed on him.  He clearly cares about the characters and wants the audience to relate to them. There’s a great scene in which Pandora (the Pam Grier knock off in the movie) is thrown naked into a solitary confinement box. Her tough exterior cracks as she stares at the walls around her and seems to hear the same fast heartbeat that the audience hears on the soundtrack.

Caged Heat still has moments that made me remember this is about a director learning his craft. Demme does several things here that foreshadow tricks he’d use later. There are several dumb jokes that would only be tried in a B-movie, but they still work in this context. Yet Demme still uses the opportunity to showcase his budding talent. One gag shows a woman vigorously shaking with her hand just out of frame as she moans, “come on, baby, come on.” Only when the camera pans down do we realize she’s rolling dice. It’s a silly gag, yes, but it shows how Demme was already eager to play with the camera. Immediately after that, he uses the same tracking shot that would be repeated in Lambs to introduce Hannibal Lecter for the first time as he moves us down the cell block and tries to give us an introduction to some of the other inmates. And the bizarre pageantry of the cabaret show the inmates put on (in which two wear men’s clothes) seems to show Demme experimenting with the sort of stage craft he’d perfect in Stop Making Sense. Nearly everything in Demme’s filmography can be glimpsed in Caged Heat.

The film doesn’t let Demme explore the material in the way he would be allowed later in his career. Corman didn’t want a subversion of the genre; he wanted something that could be done quickly and would get people’s attention. Yet despite this, Demme was still able to be subversive. The electroshock scene is shocking, one that would be borrowed the next year in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. And the women are still the ones who triumph over the sadistic warden. And the slow motion shootouts and bank robbery scenes are great attempts at trying to create a Sam Peckinpah style shootout with a low budget. All the shootouts would, at the time, have immediately reminded audience of the infamous security photos of Patty Hearst. There’s a lot of skill and ambition on display in Caged Heat, something that hints at what Demme would achieve later in his career.

Still, these interesting moments are destroyed by the weak material. Even though I want to care about the characters, I never feel like I get to know them. It doesn’t help that none of the actresses seem like they have any sort of experience in front of the camera before. Even Barbara Steele acts as though the act of being filmed is torture. This isn’t something that can be blamed on Demme, however. Corman’s cost cutting made it unlikely that someone like Faye Dunaway would be in the cast. But, as grateful as Demme was to Corman, I still feel like the material is hurt by the limitations Corman undoubtedly called for.

Today, Caged Heat is virtually forgotten and would remain that way if Jonathan Demme’s name were not attached to it. But without Caged Heat, we wouldn’t have some of the greatest American thrillers in history. Even if it’s uncomfortable, it’s an important thing we need to examine if we want to understand a director who gave his audience a lot in his filmography.

At first listen, London’s Cowbell doesn’t sound the slightest bit English; they sound like they come from the deep South, with their stripped down but watertight guitar-and drums combination – they don’t sound sparse or empty at all, which is no easy feat.  On this new album, their third, Haunted Heart, they explore several different styles of American music. Jack Sandham and Wednesday Lyle, two British students of American roots music are, indeed, very eager to share their 21st Century synthesis of the music that earlier influenced Alexis Korner, The Rolling Stones and Led Zeppelin.

Understand, this is a definite major leap forward for a band that keeps it down to a minimum which is why this album is so impressive.  “Nothing But Trouble” is a classic ’60’s garage rocker with great backing harmonies and vocals, handclaps, reedy organ and as catchy as can be; “Neon Blue” has a swampy, blues-y groove and Mr. Sandham’s vocals are smooth as the backing harmonies are dynamic and “What Am I Supposed To Do?” is a tight, very low-fi rocker with on-point harmonies (the vocal chemistry is so good between Mr. Sandham and Ms. Lyle) – and listen for that keyboard solo…  “Doom Train” gallops along like all good modern blues riff-driven pieces; “No Wrong” is a slow, piano-based, gospel-tinged moment of sweet melancholia and “None Of Your Business” is one of my favorites of this collection, with its tight, spy-like vibe and ’60’s feel.

There have been only a handful of guitar/drums combos that have made their mark on me – the last one would be Flat Duo Jets, but Cowbell has that something special that makes me want to hear more.  As it’s been said, Haunted Heart has more fuzz, more fizz, more greasy foot-beating, party-greeting, soul treating music and I would agree.

Haunted Heart will be released on Friday, June 2nd, 2017

COWBELL

 

 

Let’s talk around the star of Hello, Dolly! for a moment. I don’t have much to compare her with: other than clips of Carol Channing performing her signature role (something she did in four Broadway productions, starting with her Tony-winning turn in 1964 and all the way up to 1995, when the 97-year-old trouper was a relative chorus gal of 75), I only know the 1969 movie. “The whole archaic big-musical circus here surrounds a Happening–Barbra Streisand–and it’s all worth seeing in order to see her,” wrote Pauline Kael. (It is, though you’ll have trouble seeing her through the elephantine production, from a time when Broadway musicals and not Marvel comics got the luxe treatment at the movies.)

To paraphrase one of the famous lyrics penned by Jerry Herman, Hello, Dolly! is back where it belongs, playing to packed houses at the Shubert. If an old-fashioned production, free of teen suicide (Dear Evan Hansen), Hamilton, and Sondheim, is what you’re looking to spend your entertainment dollars on, prepare to spend lavishly, and know in advance that the money’s well spent. The show is time-warped: Jerry Zaks’ direction, and Warren Carlyle’s choreography, follow the template set by Gower Champion. Santo Loquasto’s sets and costumes, hearkening back to the turn of the 20th century, have a music hall feel to them, and are enormously appealing, as are all the technical trimmings. (No fancy projections here; retro classy is the style.) Happily, Herman is still with us, to marvel at the rebirth of his biggest hit. (His two other smashes, Mame and La Cage aux Folles, would follow.)

The casting is likewise revivifying. The show is about mismatched lovers brought together haphazardly by New York City matchmaker Dolly Levi, who, having endured widowhood, has a secret yen to marry “half-a-millionaire” Horace Vandergelder, a curmudgeonly Yonkers shopkeeper she’s shopping around. The parts of Cornelius Hackl, Vandergelder’s clerk, and Irene Molloy, the hat shop owner Dolly has promised to introduce to Horace, can be stock, and stiff, in the playing, if the actors don’t have sufficient personality to hold their own against the leads. But handsome Gavin Creel (Hair), who has a Dick Van Dyke-type facility at musical comedy, and the gorgeous red-haired Kate Baldwin (Finian’s Rainbow), are a perfect match, and their scenes hum. Second bananas Taylor Trensch (Matilda), as Horace’s other clerk, the bumbling Barnaby, and Jennifer Simard (a Tony nominee for last season’s Disaster!), playing an unlikely “date” for Horace, score in the funny business between standards. With these reserves of good cheer to draw on, the elaborate mega-number “Before The Parade Passes By” has the audience on its feet well before it closes Act I.

Act II gives David Hyde Pierce a chance to really dazzle, with a delightful, never-before-performed “charm song,” “Penny in My Pocket,” serving as a curtain raiser, one that gives Vandergelder a chance to explain himself. But we need no apologies, as the actor waggles his mustache and does one inspired double take after another. I wasn’t sure he was right for the part (his Frasier colleague, Kelsey Grammer, would be an ideal replacement) yet I was wrong. He’s a stitch, as they might have said in olden 20th century times.

I was sure Bette Midler was right for Dolly; who wasn’t? But, having seen her, I’m not altogether certain. Part of it may be the role, which seems to be a vessel into which the performer pours her particular gifts. Dolly is one part heart, several parts schtick–and never really a coherent character. (You get more of  a sense of what the part might be from the 1958 film The Matchmaker, the adaptation of Thornton Wilder’s original comedy, which starred Shirley Booth.) Midler, of course, has a whole lot to give, and she and Hyde Pierce are sensationally funny in the second act dining scene, playing off one another perfectly and further embroidering an awkward situation caused by Dolly’s meddling. Whereas Channing grew (and grew, and grew) into Dolly, however, the 71-year-old Midler may be past it, vocally. She was noticeably hoarse when I saw her (not that her energy flagged) and the Broadway chat boards are doing everything but posting EKGs and MRIs after each performance. That said, the signature tune is what we’ve come to hear, and she delivered where it most counted.

Donna Murphy, no slouch herself, is soon to begin performing on Tuesdays, a win-win, for audiences, and for Midler, who can conserve her strength for two-show Wednesdays. I think the Divine Miss M will soon refine her take on the Divine Miss L.

Call it Feud: Helena and Elizabeth. In real life, rival cosmetics queens Helena Rubinstein and Elizabeth Arden never met. The new musical War Paint contrives  a late-in-their-long-lives meeting for them, where they wonder, briefly, if their makeup innovations were just another form of enslavement for women. It’s a silly notion–there’s no way Rubinstein and Arden, who stuffed their formulas with all kinds of junk that eventually attracted government ire, ever questioned their mission. But: It gives two great stars of musical theatre, Patti LuPone (Helena) and Christine Ebersole (Elizabeth), a chance to interact onstage. The fiction is easily forgiven.

They share the stage at the Nederlander often enough. From much the same creative team that took us into the shadow world of Ebersole’s Tony winner, Grey Gardens (Scott Frankel, music; Michael Korie, lyrics; Doug Wright, book; and Michael Greif, director), War Paint contrasts their teeter-totter rises, falls, and rises again in vignettes. The gruff and utilitarian Rubinstein steals Arden’s husband (John Dossett)–not for her libido, but for his marketing prowess. In turn, the more patrician and “ladylike” Arden steals Rubinstein’s right-hand man (Douglas Sills) to learn her secrets. Wright weaves a good deal of fascinating social history into this one-upswomanship (Arden’s first ardent customers were suffragettes, who were eager to stand out in newspaper photos) and though the back and forth is repetitive, I learned a few things about two pioneers known more for their brands than their accomplishments. (They both disdained the vulgar upstart Charles Revson, played by Erik Liberman, who ate their lunch when his firm, Revlon, took to TV to hawk his inferior, but cheaper, products.)

Lacking the emotional underpinnings of the mother-daughter psychodrama behind Grey Gardens, which made its songs funnier and more poignant in equal measure, War Paint isn’t an outstanding musical. But the two performers give it everything they’ve got, in numbers whose lyrics they trade (“If I’d Been a Man”) and in powerful solos (toward the end, Arden has an ode to the color she made her own, “Pink,” and Helena considers the passing of time in “Forever Beautiful.”). LuPone and Ebersole are so good, so rich, and so seasoned, they’d easily sell War Paint as a straight drama. As a musical, they make it sing.

In good times, Lillian Hellman’s The Little Foxes (1939) is a classic melodrama. That’s how it played when at age 15 I saw its most famous revival,  in 1981, which starred Elizabeth Taylor as the rapacious schemer Regina Giddens, and Maureen Stapleton as her sister-in-law Birdie Hubbard, who, through the fog of alcoholism, is still hanging on to what’s left of Southern gentility. To consolidate her fortune in the early 20th century, when only sons were considered legal heirs (hello, dollars!) Regina goes to war against her duplicitous brothers and her ailing, courtly husband, Horace, who can’t be too far from his pills…

In uncertain, Trumpian times, the play is more than that, as if Hellman just published her (somewhat autobiographical) broadside against greed, questionable family values, and the stain of corruption. Knowing that he’s got the goods, and trusting us to sort out the parallels, director Daniel Sullivan has staged this Manhattan Theatre Club production at the Friedman very simply, even downplaying its moment of supreme horror (no one who’s seen its 1941 film version, directed by William Wyler and starring Bette Davis, ever forgets it). One look at Regina in Jane Greenwood’s money-colored gown indicates her basic character, and the production never underlines Hellman’s urgent, heated prose.

The show’s one indulgence is stunt casting, with Laura Linney and Cynthia Nixon trading roles each performance. I’m sure it’s good value either way–but the steely Linney proved a natural to play the biggest of the foxes, briging the axe down with an assassin’s precision, and Nixon achingly good as Birdie shatters. (She has a lovely rapport with the excellent Richard Thomas, as Horace; Michael McKean and Darren Goldstein shine as the blackhearted, if not quite competent, brothers, and Francesca Carpanini lets in a ray of light as Regina’s sensible daughter.) I wish we could all just enjoy The Little Foxes as a good yarn, safely tucked away in the past, but two terrific stars and a handsome, unfussy production get it right up in our faces.