First Shot: Lost, found and BUSTED!

That Elizabeth Mitchell sure is sitting in the catbird seat these days. First, she gets to lob the latest game-changing, season-ending curveball on Lost. Then she scores the lead in one of the most successful new TV series of the fall season, V. And now comes word that she’s been cast in an indie ensemble film produced by the same company that brought us The Squid and the Whale.

But did you know that, in addition to all of these prodigious accomplishments, Mitchell is also a proud supporter of the Orlando International Fringe Theatre Festival?

OK, that’s only true if you believe in J.J. Abrams-style paradoxes that allow folks to commune with their best buds at all points along the space-time continuum. But if you do, you’ll find it easy to swallow the idea that Mitchell, back when she was still just a sprout of an undergrad, was able to see into the future and know that the Orlando Fringe would one day be run by her BFF, Beth Marshall. And that she would approve.

You see, Marshall and Mitchell were once mutual drama queens at Stephens College in Columbia, MO, all the way back in the tender year of nineteen-coughs-and-changes-the-subject. And we’ve got the yellowing, furtively scanned pics to prove it!

Here we see a carefree, barely-legal Mitchell limbo-ing to her heart’s content at a summer-stock luau, subconsciously and eerily anticipating Lost’s Hawaii shoot a few decades in advance.

We also glimpse her backstage at a production of A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, waiting to take the stage alongside castmate Marshall (the one blowing the raspberry, to absolutely no one’s surprise).

And we’ve even thrown in a shot of Mitchell with two other friends (who are unimportant to our purposes and thus shall remain nameless), just because it’s a nice portrait that proves her identity beyond a shadow of a doubt --  in case some Cynical Sam thinks we’re faking this whole thing for some bizarre reason that only Benjamin Linus could comprehend.

And how does Marshall recall the young Mitchell?

“Giving, adorable, caring, talented, thoughtful. NOT at all a wild girl; not at all ego-driven. We must have acted in about seven shows together, ranging from ... Read Moremusicals to children's theatre and dramas, and I directed her in two. My best memory of her is when we would be out in public and do this thing we called ‘Freaky Friday’ and decide to act like each other in public. It was hilarious.”

Awww, isn’t that cute? Now, excuse me … where’s the dirt??!! Where’s the, “She was a bitch who stole the only boy I ever loved, and her continued success is clear-cut proof that fate is a cruel and arbitrary whoremistress?” HEY, DON’T YOU KNOW WHAT KIND OF A WEBSITE THIS IS?

Coming next week: Brian Feldman’s bitter childhood rivalry with Hugh Laurie, just to right the balance.

Theatre Review: The Color Purple

Think you’ve got it rough?  Consider Celie (Kenita R. Miller), the put-upon protagonist of The Color Purple: The Musical.  Born into poverty in turn-of-the-century rural Georgia, she’s impregnated twice by her father by age 14, separated from her babies and beloved sister, and sold into marriage with the abusive Mister (Rufus Bonds Jr) for the price of a cow.  Somehow she survives four decades of suffering with the strength she learns from unlikely sources: Sofia (Felicia P. Fields), wife of her stepson Harpo (Stu James), a proud mountain of a woman whose proto-feminist anthem “Hell No!” brings down the house; and her husband’s paramour Shug Avery (Angela Robinson), a famously fallen chanteuse with whom Celie falls in love.  Celie may be “black, poor, and ugly” but through sheer willpower she works to “wear the pants” in her world and declare “I’m here”.

I’m not a fan of Alice Walker’s novel “The Color Purple” (though I liked Beloved). I’m not a fan of Steven Spielberg’s film version of the story (though I liked E.T.).  I’m not a fan of the show’s producer Oprah Winfrey (though I liked… um… Brewster Place?).  So I had no expectation that I would become so swept up in the Broadway musical currently on tour at the Bob Carr (through Sun 11/8).  Director Gary Griffin, author Marsha Norman, and composers Brenda Russell, Allee Willis, Stephen Bray succeeded in turning the sprawling episodic story into an emotionally involving experience that feels more handcrafted than manufactured -- a real rarity with page-to-stage adaptations.  Designers John Lee Beatty’s and Brian MacDevitt’s simple scenery and luminous lighting vibrantly evoke folk art traditions without falling into visual clichés, and the score (performed with a gratifyingly good-sized pit orchestra) embraces gospel, blues, and jazz flavors with a minimum soul-sapping pop sheen.

This story is stronger stuff than the trifles most musicals are made from, stuffed with violence, tragedy, and even a little lightly-referenced lesbianism (which still provoked startled gasps from some in the audience).  Amazingly, the darkness isn’t overly downplayed; the horror of Celie’s travails is stylized, but never trivialized, while still leaving room for some leavening laughter.  My inner theatre cynic saw plenty of nits to pick at: the awfully orchestrated overture; Mister’s credibility-straining conversion from monster to mench in the span of a single song; more than a couple unmemorable songs; a dismaying dramatic disconnect in the time-skipping second act. 

But I’d rather simply admit that I shed a tear or three for Celie and her “peoples”, thanks largely to the talent of this exceptional all-African-American cast.  Many of them came directly from the New York production, including leads Miller, Robinson, and Fields (who received a well-deserved Tony nomination for originating on stage Oprah’s Oscar-nominated film role).  Miller in particular, with her unconventional beauty and heartbreakingly powerful voice, commands absolute attention as few performers can.  While it may prove unsatifying for diehard fans of the dense source material, this show is a far cry from the usual tired touring warhorses (Cats, cough cough) and -- along with next year’s In the Heights and Spring Awakening -- represents the vanguard of fresh new productions coming to town.  If the Fairwinds “Broadway Across America Series” keeps this up, they may succeed in doing the inconceivable: demonstrating that theatre isn’t just for old white folks anymore.

First Shot: We are of peace, also

This week’s big out-of-the-blue controversy: Is ABC’s marginally watchable remake of the 1980s alien-invasion miniseries V really a withering anti-Obama allegory?

The Chicago Tribune certainly seems to think so. And it’s not hard to see why, given the show’s basic framework: Mankind gets suckered into accepting a message of hope, peace and personal security proffered by an alien ruler whose attractive exterior obscures a scheming reptilian heart. She and her young, attractive minions ingratiate themselves into our democratic society by promising a multitude of instant advancements, including sweeping improvements in the treatment of injury and disease. “Universal healthcare,” another character summarizes, lest we miss the point.

This wolf-in-savior’s-clothing business is hardly a new concept in sci-fi: Not only is the program, as already noted, a remake, but both it and its predecessor owe a debt to “To Serve Man,” The Twilight Zone’s classic paean to xenophobia. Yet the only counterargument The Huffington Post’s usually excellent Jason Linkins can mount to the Tribune’s interpretation is that V is just a space opera, and nobody on its creative team has a political agenda that’s discernible via a quick scan of his or her resume on imdb.com. So move along; there’s nothing to see here.

It’s a shame, because that sort of lazy pooh-poohing cedes the ground of analysis to the chortling teabaggers. As I mentioned, a low-functioning idiot could spot the similarities between V’s prostrate human populace and the experiencers of Obamamania. (Which is why I’m fully expecting Rush Limbaugh to eat up a couple of on-air hours doing the exact same thing tomorrow.) But what somebody needs to point out is just how effectively the program’s literal dragon lady, Anna, also stands in for a certain other real-world political figure.

You know, the one who has a book coming out. Oh, you betcha.

Here’s just a cursory list of reasons the program’s visitors are equally interpretable as metaphoric Palinistas:

1. Near the beginning of the first episode, a TV broadcast makes reference to a nationwide housing crisis and an economic stimulus plan that’s already underway. The show’s milieu is thus clearly established as our current one, in which the government is attempting to manage a crisis that, on our plane of reality, Palin and her running mate could barely acknowledge. In other words, don’t look to the skies for Barack; he’s already here. The enemy is the other side.

2. The arrival of the aliens in their massive spacecraft provokes all manner of physical aftershocks, including sending a crucifix hurtling toward the floor of a church. The easy interpretation is that the visitors are being submitted as godless threats to our traditional values. Yet the dominant image is of a huge wooden Jesus narrowly avoiding crushing a fleeing priest and a parishioner in a wheelchair. The message: Something is coming that’s akin to blind fundamentalism in its ability to squash us all.

2. The alien leader, Anna, is a dark-haired woman whose first televised appearance earns the ultimate plaudit from some horny kids on the street: “She’s hot.” ’Nuff said.

3. The press is depicted as initially being too suspicious of Anna and the other visitors – too hard on them, too cynical. To turn the tide in her favor, she intimidates a potentially pliable reporter, telling him point-blank that she won’t respond to any queries that’ll place her people in a bad light -- a demand as brazen as (and baldly reminiscent of) Palin’s avowed intention to answer questions her way or not at all.

4. Far from fostering a renaissance of secular humanism (or reptile-ism, as the case may be), the aliens’ landing is depicted as providing a boon to traditional worship, sending people flocking to church for guidance and communion. The Vatican even embraces the newcomers as “God’s children.” 

5. Late in Episode 1, it’s revealed that advance scouts for the aliens have been on our planet for some time, infiltrating our institutions and setting the stage for their takeover by fomenting “unnecessary wars” and guiding religion toward fanaticism. As transformative agendas go, it’s a far cry from volunteering for ACORN.

And even the soon-to-be-notorious “universal healthcare” gag is worthy of exploring in a deeper context. The only reason the aliens can insinuate themselves with such a promise is, obviously, that we’ve failed to bring it about ourselves. Arguably, it isn’t the ideal of healthcare that’s being challenged, but the cost of dithering about it and then accepting it uncritically from the wrong source. (The first episode of V just happened to air on the same day the Republican counterproposal for health “reform” was announced.)

Still, I dearly wish the show’s producers had left the metaphor implied, and not literalized it in a manner that seems destined to appeal to the surface prejudices of a certain type of viewer – or radio host. (One wonders if the “universal healthcare” line was part of the weeks of tweaking that were recently undertaken to make the series suitable for airing.) The atmosphere these days is so noxious – so polluted by the conflation of anti-big-government sentiment with racism, jingoism and barely coded calls for political assassination – that we can’t risk misrepresenting an otherwise bipartisan satire for the sake of a cheap joke. (Likewise troubling: scenes from upcoming episodes that seem to show the alien invaders benefiting from loosened “immigration” regulations.) I’m all for sci-fi that keeps its jabs fair and balanced, but any network exec worth his salt has long since figured out that nuance just doesn’t play in promos.

Images from O-Town: Pretty in Pink (vagina)

Liz Langley always gets her friends in on the fun, which this Halloween was a pink and fuzzy set of soft lips from Fairvilla.

Pictured at left is Doug Rhodehamel pushing a little Dracula into his vagina.

See the rest of the crew in action:
http://liz-langley.blogspot.com/

First Shot: Correction: This not it

Looks like the murmurmings of rival studio heads were not mere wishful thinking. The international opening-day take of Michael Jackson’s This Is It was indeed “solid but not spectacular” – or even “weaker than expected,” depending on how gingerly you like to phrase your eulogies. 

That’s quite a comeuppance indeed, given all the pre-release flummery we had to endure about Germans queuing up overnight outside theaters (in neat and orderly lines, one presumes), and the Chinese government momentarily suspending tank maneuvers so young people could get to screenings. Remember, the international arena has long been the ace in the hole of American acts like Jackson – an entertainment-starved, eternally forgiving marketplace that’ll still embrace them long after they’ve fucked up their lives by doing something outrageously stupid, like fondling youngsters or persisting in being Jerry Lewis.

So if Belgium isn’t declaring a national viewing holiday, what does that leave for the hometown crowd? Not much. The picture’s domestic take is now on track to come in at only slightly more than half of what was predicted. The only hope is that one of Nikki Finke’s innumerable sources is wrong about Halloween “killing Saturday,” and that hipsters will instead pass up Paranormal Activity, Saw VI and at-home games of Ouija Beer Pong to take in what is clearly the year’s best-reviewed zombie movie.

At least Sony gets to take the high road: In two weeks, it can pull this “limited release” from theaters as announced, with all the moral rectitude of Pee-Wee Herman declaring, “I meant to do that.” After that, I think we all know what the score is: This guy’s career is dead.

Cattle Call: It wouldn't be fun if we told you

What's Halloween without a little mystery? From the "Boy, Do We Wonder How This Is Gonna Turn Out" desk comes this intriguing release:

Greater Orlando Actors Theatre Announces Auditions For A Tony Award & Pulitzer Prize-Winning Rock Musical By Jonathan Larson

Winter Park, Florida, October 19, 2009 - Greater Orlando Actors Theatre announces auditions for it's next full-length musical production, a recent Tony Award-winning rock musical by Jonathan Larson.
Due to contractual obligations, we cannot yet publicly announce the name of the production. Those auditioning will be told the name of the project at the audition. The show will run January 1 - February 27, 2010 on Friday, Saturday and Sunday nights. Due to the length of the project there may be a small stipend involved.
The production will be directed by Leesa Halstead with musical direction by Don Hopkinson.
Audition dates are as follows by appointment only:
Saturday, October 31st, 10:00AM - 4:00PM
Sunday, November 1st, 12:30PM - 5:30 PM
Monday, November 2nd, 6:00PM - 10:00PM
Please prepare two musical selections, 16 bars each, and bring the appropriate sheet music, in your key. CDs are permitted, but we prefer live accompaniment. Please also prepare a 1-minute, dramatic monologue.
Please call 407-872-8451 to schedule an appointment. Due to the anticipated response expected for this project, we will not be able to accommodate walk-ins.

I can't imagine what show they're doing, but it sounds very Bohème-ian. Okay, that was bad.

First Shot: Primetime bitchslap

Don’t look now, but there’s a terrible trend to America’s TV programming, and it’s rapidly debasing our cherished way of life. It’s cheapening our sense of community, poisoning our discourse and making a mockery of everything we qualify as “entertainment.”

But you know what? Jay Leno gets enough press already. So instead, I want to talk about smackin’ the ’ho.

According to a new study, violence against women has experienced an alarming uptick on American TV. We’re talking a rise of 120 percent in the last half-decade – and when the focus is restricted to teenage victims, the increase amounts to a full 400 percent.

What’s to blame? Not surprisingly, the mushroomed popularity of forensics dramas (or, as a dear friend calls them, “dead-people shows”) plays a major part: David Caruso needs a steady supply of cadavers if he wants to keep whipping off those shades and handing the mic to Roger Daltrey -- and it’s all the better if the corpse is young and pretty.

But what’s more surprising is the supposed complicity of comedy programming, which according to the research findings is now exhibiting a highly uncomfortable reliance on gags about women-bashing. Fox gets an especial demerit for furthering the career of Seth McFarlane – particularly a May Family Guy episode that incorporated a joke about divorce by shotgun. (How sad to see such a cheap appeal to underlying hostilities diluting the show’s otherwise deep and abiding respect for all living creatures.)

At this point, it would be very easy to put on my theorist’s hat and proclaim a broad social upheaval. After all, we live in a moment at which widespread economic devastation has intersected with the ever-changing demographics of American society to produce a situation in which women now outnumber men in the workforce. So it could simply be construed that American males are experiencing deep feelings of emasculation, moving them to “hit back” in ways that are both more covert and socially acceptable than literal violence (just as the gains of the feminist movement were sometimes identified as the trigger for the slasher-film boom of the late 1970s and early 1980s).

There’s only one problem with this theory: The study that inspired it was conducted by the Parents Television Council.

Not ringing a bell? This is the same conservative watchdog group that’s mounted complaints against everything from Bono saying “fook” on TV to NYPD Blue to Janet Jackson’s infamous wardrobe malfunction. It’s a right-wing pressure group founded by longtime political agitator Brent Bozell III (although more recently headed by supposed liberal Democrat Tim Winter, which just shows to go ya). And its “advisory board” has included such career busybodies as Steve Allen, Michael Medved and anti-rap crusader C. Delores Tucker, as well as cracker crooners Billy Ray Cyrus and Pat Boone.

(Just so we’re clear: That’s the same Pat Boone who recently authored a WorldNetDaily column comparing liberalism to the “filthy black cells” of cancer.)

So no, I don’t trust the “findings” of the PTC as far as I can skee-ball them. I’m just not convinced that this is a bunch who genuinely have the best interests of women at heart. (Just in case you think I’m being capricious, here’s one more PTC “advisor”: Sam Brownback.) Back in 2005, CommonDreams.org posted an illuminating comparison between the public pronouncements of the PTC and the less-than-wholesome career and personal choices made by its board members. Since then, of course, Cyrus has proven that he’s never altogether certain just when his daughter has her clothes on, and how close the nearest photographer is. He’s a real Promise Keeper.

Obviously, I’m not condoning violence against women as an entertainment option (unless, as has been established time and again in this column, the recipient is Renee Zellweger). But you pick your battles. Even if the PTC’s programming analysis is correct, I’d be a lot more enthusiastic about seeing them and their ilk advocating for real female empowerment – in the form of, say, equal pay for equal work -- than getting their panties in a wad over whatever happens to Lois Griffin.

(Yes, this bunch all wear panties – haven’t you heard?)

Florida Reel Film Festival reely happening

For weeks months now, I've been getting these flyers and promo material for something called the Florida Reel Film Festival, to be held at Natura Coffee and maybe a tattoo parlor. You can imagine my skepticism.

Well, it looks like it's happening and good news! It looks pretty decent.

Below is the schedule and I'll point to a couple of standouts, both of which we've written about before.

Poultrygeist is a Lloyd Kaufman film. That's all you should need to know, but just in case here's more info.

Average Community is from a local filmmaker, Fred Zara, features lots of '80s hardcore memories and it's surprisingly moving.



Thursday Nov 5 at Underground Bluz (112261 University Blvd.): Opening reception at Underground Bluz 5pm

Friday Nov 6 at Natura Coffee and Tea $1 (12078 Collegiate Way):
2-3:30 pm Robot Monster
4-5:30pm Barstool Cowboy (Mark Thimijan)
6-7:15pm Sideshow Still Alive (Juan C. Lopez)
8-9:30pm Average Community (the Zara BRothers)

Saturday Nov 7 at Orlando Tattoo Company/New Concept Art Gallery $1 (11229 East Colonial Dr. Ste 105)
2-3pm Dear Mr. Gore (Lisa Mills)
3:30-5:30 Short Films (various)
6-7:45 Poultrygeist (Lloyd Kaufman)
8:30-10 Average Community (the Zara Brothers)
10:15 Award Ceremony

First Shot: The jigsaw is up

I’m not normally one to celebrate the death of anything that includes the word “porn,” but years from now, this outwardly innocuous non-holiday weekend will be remembered as the moment when torture porn bit the dust. Thanks to the wide margin by which slow-building upstart Paranormal Activity trounced Saw VI at the box office, it’s all but assured that, from now on, dark fantasies of random victims tormented to within an inch of their lives will exist only on Dick Cheney’s Christmas wish list.

On second thought, maybe that’s too sweeping a generalization. There may yet be a commercial feature or two in which unwary kids get flayed and filleted. Old habits die hard, and it takes more than the collapse of a once-profitable subgenre to wipe an entire development slate clean. But in terms of any genuine, continued viability, the bloodletting stops here.

In the movie business, see, appearances are all, and everybody loves a master narrative. Which is why the events of this weekend are going to taken as an irresistible sea change, no matter how much dosh the Saw flick does or doesn’t end up raking in. (After all, everybody remembers the simultaneous release of Nevermind and the Use Your Illusion albums as heralding the arrival of grunge and the death of hair metal – conveniently ignoring the fact that the G’n R discs nonetheless went on to sell some 24 million copies.)

And though I normally abhor the sanctimony of mainstream middlebrow critics, I have my own reasons for joining the inevitable chorus of “Good riddance.” Torture porn has been a black eye on horror for too many years now, contributing to the tragic misconception that the genre has nothing to offer beyond scattershot sadism designed to titillate America’s supposedly value-free youth audience. I’m so happy to see it go, in fact, that I’m only mildly resentful at having to give the win to Paranormal Activity – which, as I’ve already established, struck me as a hugely disappointing hype job that’s about as scary as the deleted scenes from The Bucket List.

But I have to give credit where it’s due: Two years from now, the October release slate will not be burdened by the sight of rusty bear traps clasped to youthful faces. Instead, we’ll be up to our ears in el cheapo directorial debuts in which painfully overacting Facebook junkies confront the supernatural, their mundane domestic flailings rendered with the same caught-on-tape “verisimilitude” that was already moribund by the time George A. Romero latched onto it.

Or maybe not. Maybe there’s a third path for mainstream horror to take that can avoid the pitfalls of both amoral gore and humdrum pseudo-naturalism. Maybe some impressionable film student caught last Tuesday’s William Castle marathon on TCM and was struck by the idea that horror can be sardonic, morbid fun. Perhaps the genre will be revivified by the idea that gimmickry is its own reward. And just possibly, the Full Sail graduates of tomorrow will follow Castle’s example and waltz onto the screen at the outset of their own features, asking us if we know what the word “ghoul” means and then helpfully producing a pocket dictionary to clue us in if we don’t. (Looking all the while, of course, like a grinning cross between Benito Mussolini and Rondo Hatton swathed in London fog.)

No, I’m not holding my breath. But the good news is that I’m no longer holding my nose, either.

First Shot: Never Balki down

So Bronson Pinchot is stepping back slightly from his comments to The Onion this week, in which he all but came out (so to speak) and called Tom Cruise a self-loathing homo whose unmotivated on-set hate speech was just about as illuminating as Rush Limbaugh’s anal fixation. (And seriously, can any doubt remain as to the true motivation for that colonically obsessed swine’s misanthropy?)

In case you missed it, Pinchot claimed that Cruise’s behavior while filming Risky Business consisted of hurling regular anti-gay slurs that were bizarrely disconnected from anything that was actually happening at a given moment:

He was tense and made constant, constant unrelated homophobic comments, like, “You want some ice cream, in case there are no gay people there?” I mean his lingo was larded with the most … There was no basis for it. It was like, “It’s a nice day. I’m glad there are no gay people standing here.” Very, very strange.”

What fun! And obviously the impetus for a potential MST3K-style home-viewing game, in which you and your guests rush to blurt out whatever was really on Tom’s mind during the filming of his classic scenes:

The Firm: “It would be an honor and a privilege to join your establishment. But first, I’d like you to assure me that no turd burglars work here.”

Born on the Fourth of July: "The madness of war has left me an emotional and physical eunuch. Then again, nobody can ask me to engage in the buttsecks.”

Valkyrie: “We have to kill Hitler. Because, seriously, have you seen those boots?”

Cruise’s people fired off a quick response, countering that Pinchot’s characterization was “so far removed from who Tom Cruise is as a person” that he must have been speaking “in jest.” Which, of course, is publicist-speak for, “It’s all true. Every last syllable and intonation.”

The donnybrook swiftly lit up the Interwebs, with “Tom Cruise + homophobia” becoming a red-hot search term, right along with “Bronson Pinchot + who?” It all prompted The Wall Street Journal to ask Pinchot if he had, indeed, been joshing. His answer: Nope -- although he qualified that he had since learned running commentaries like Cruise’s are actually quite “unremarkable” for “a 20-year-old with no background in theater.”

Right. So a bitterly closeted Tom Cruise isn’t the culprit here: It’s everybody who never got to play George M. Cohan in summer stock.

Oh, well: Chalk it all up as a case of mission accomplished. Because nobody is talking about anything Pinchot had to say about himself in the Onion interview, despite his having painted himself with the he-man brush with all of the persuasiveness of Rod in Avenue Q. See, he just happened to land all of those gay roles back in the ’80s, at the same time that he was nailing one woman, having an “affair” with another and just generally banging chicks until the skin was practically shredded off his overworked member. Just ask him – he’ll tell you!

Oh, and according to the WSJ, his current “passion” is for “purchasing and restoring historic houses.”

Hey, Balki – wanna go for some ice cream?

Images from O-Town: Kissimmee Rain Cube

Who knew that Kissimmee had $725,000 to spend on public art? Well, environmental sculpture artist Jefrë Manuel of Studio Jefrë – a.k.a. Jefrë – won the bid for his wet 'n'  wild "Rain" – a 30-foot cube-shaped fountain that's the centerpiece for the Kissimmee City Commission's $25 million Lakefront Park redevelopment project.

On Wednesday, Jefrë opened Blank Space Art Lounge near Lake Eola.