'Another Earth' Happily Brings Marling and Good Story to the Screen

A resplendent Brit Marling appeared as the lights went up - along with director MIke Cahill - following the premier DC screening of her new film, Another Earth. The two are graduates of Georgetown University and told the packed neighborhood audience that it was a pleasure to be back home with such a great project. The film, which opens Friday in Washington, is about the discovery a parallel Earth with all the same people, and a tragic accident between Marling's character and the family of an architect. Cahill and Marling wrote the script and ask questions like, "Can you undo your mistakes?" Is true love contrived if the path to is disguised? "We started with the idea of what it would be like to meet yourself," Starling said. "And then tried to work backwards."
I've heard several writers talk about a similar process, foremost John Irving who told a mesmerized crowd a few years ago, also at Georgetown, about working backwards for his novels "A Son of the Circus" and "A Prayer for Owen Meany." Cahill complimented Marling for her work, saying how much of the film is just shots of her face. Cahill tells a good story in the film. The sci-fi aspects are low-budget but convey the ideas they are looking for. The ending feels right and not contrived - no doubt evidence that they had this ending first. I recommend the film and Marling, who got written up yesterday in the Washington Post and just may be the new It Girl. As a writer, she may stay around for a while.

Set Your Scope on Venus in Fur at Arena

I'd like to declare that there's a new hit play in Washington. David Ives is certainly one of the leading playwrights around today. We are lucky in Washington to have seen his adaptation of The Liar - now in New York - that featured an amazing rhyming scheme. His collection of short one acts, All in the Timing, has also played recently. I love the Groundhog Day-ish episode of the two people having a first dinner date and then the buzzer sounding any time someone says something that the other person doesn't like. It's incredibly funny. Venus in Fur played in New York a couple years ago but I don't remember any huge buzz. However, when I went back and looked at a couple reviews, they very good. Well, the play just fits Studio Theatre perfectly and the two actors are also perfect. In fact, I think Erica Sullivan will be competing against Jenny Jules (now in the amazing Ruined at Arena Stage) for the next Helen Hayes award. She's amazing as an actress trying out for a role in a racy play in front of the guy who adapted it. Christian Conn doesn't have to quite show the range that Sullivan does, but he does have some hurdles to conquer. He has to be a bit likeable although his play and his morals may not be. But the play succeeds because of wonderful writing, and that's Ives. Two people talking for 90 minutes is not easy, but the dialogue flows so easily as Sullivan keeps us guessing with her many guises, and we don't know quite know what to make of Conn. Please don't miss this play!  The audience stood up immediately after the play ended when I went, and you don't see that very often. Incredible work.

Fire and Ice in Reston Is Worth a Visit

I don't think that I have previously told you to head to the Greater Reston Arts Center - or GRACE as it is known - in this space, but I am now. The Reston Art Show is this coming weekend - May 21 and 22 - so that's a perfect time to see what might be the best thing there.  An art installation by Heidi Neff that is really spectacular in its scope, vision and beauty. She calls it Fire and Ice, inspired by the Robert Frost poem that goes like this:
Some say the world will end in fire,
Some say in ice.
From what I've tasted of desire
I hold with those who favor fire.
But if it had to perish twice,
I think I know enough of hate
To say that for destruction ice
Is also great
And would suffice.

The piece is about 8 feet high, 17 feet long and six feet wide. It contains 8 huge panels that divide into 98 separate drawings of conservatives (in ice) and liberals (in fire) and ceilings that remind one of the great ceilings of Italy. Why not 100 panels, someone asked Neff. Who's counting, she said. This seemed right and indeed it does. It will show until June 10.



 

Bang Bang Club Gives Good Take on War Photographers

In another lesson of, "don't listen to reviews," our Art House Meetup group went to see The Bang Bang Club on Saturday night at the West End Cinema where it continues this week. It's an extraordinary film, mostly because it's based on the true story of a group of photographers in South Africa in the last years before Mandela was elected president. These four guys do everything with style, flair, crazy courage and talent. Two of them win Pulitzer Prizes, and inevitably bad things happen from the risks they take. I think some of the criticism of the film has come from the parts where they go out drinking and show another side, but it seemed pretty reasonable considering the violence they preactically run into on a daily basis. Also I read that the timing was bad considering the death of photographer/director Tim Hetherington in Libya last week. I think that timing makes it a bit body-tingling; the stuff these photographers do in war scenes is real - and crazy.
It's beautifully filmed with some too-real-to-believe riot scenes. As some fact-based films have done lately, it shows us real photos at the end of the people and some events, and it sure looks like a lot did happen close to the way it's shown. Ryan Philippe does well in the lead role, able to portray enough vulnerability and humanity to go along with the craziness. Josh told us that the co-author of the book, Greg Marinovich, was in Washingtopn last week to visit the other co-author, Joao Silva, who was seriously injured in Afghanistan and is now at Walter Reed Hospital. Without notice, Marinovich visited the West End Cinema. It's a shame he couldn't have done a talk. Also a shame that the DC Film Festival could not have landed this film for opening night - with writer/director Steven Silver, Phillippe and Marinovich - instead of the awful Potiche - with nobody. That would have been amazing and I'm sure the Canadian Embassy would have gotten involved. (Many Canadian groups are thanked in the credits.)
Try to see this film if you can. 

Ruined Continues Arena's Banner Season

I was talking to a friend the other day about the woeful DC Film Festival which has quietly come and gone once again - Potiche on opening night? Please! - and he commented: they didn't even have any films from Africa; there are so many great stories there. Luckily, theater in town has picked up where film (or one festival) has dropped off. Ruined, which just began a couple-month run at Arena Stage, takes you into places - geographically and of the heart - that you don't go very often. Playwright Lynn Nottage won the 2009 Pulitzer Prize for this emotionally intense, lyrical and entertaining play about a brothel in the Congo during Civil War strife. She conducted numerous interviews with women there to see the toll war took on them. That she's able to dramatize this in such a realistic yet pleasing way is incredible.
The audience stood and cheered follow Sunday night's performance. Particularly brilliant in the cast are lead Jenny Jules, Rachael Holmes (who was also superb this season at Studio in "Marcus"), Jamairais Malone (from Rutgers, my alma mater!) and all the incredible musicians who add vibrancy to this amazing mix. Yes, there are scenes of pure music and joy that fit well into the evening That this play works so beautifully should be no surprise given the talent of director Charles Randolph-Wright. His Sophisticated Ladies soared at the Lincoln for Arena last year, as did his Guys and Dolls a few years before that.
(Side note: We are also very fortunate to have the 2010 Pulitzer Prize winner, Clybourne Park, returning to the area this summer (Woolly Mammoth). Washington theater has certainly taken an upturn of late.)
Make your way to see Ruined.

AU Katzen Reception and a Couple Interesting Films to Catch Before They Disappear

American University's Katzen Center may be the perfect place for a partly rainy day tomorrow evening as they hold their MFA Thesis Reception for Graduate Art Students. Join the American University Museum, Department of Art, and MFA Thesis Students in celebrating the opening of their Spring Thesis Exhibitions.  This sounds like a good vibe to me.  And with free underground parking, what's not to love?

As for films this weekend, the Cinema West End has brought back Certified Copy, a very interesting film from the great Iranian director Abbas Kiarastomi. Juliette Binoche gives one of her finest performances. Three excellent movies are playing at E Street: Win Win, Bill Cunningham New York (more on that one tomorrow) and Nostalgia for the Light. My meetup group saw Nostalgia a few weeks ago at the National Gallery and was blown away by the scenery in the Atacama Desert in Chile and the powerful stories of the Chilean people. The director is able to combine the astronomy taking place there with the horrific memories of the Pinochet era.

Easing the Old Quarter Life Crisis

I don't usually go out at 9:30 pm on a school night. I may stay out past that time but usually once I'm home past 8 or so I'm home for good. Last Thursday night was an exception. I headed to the 10 pm showing of the film Happythankyoumoreplease at E Street because it was apparently the last time that this area will get to see this well-done film with a great soundtrack in a theater setting. Because now it seems to be gone - one can only hope that the Avalon's small upstairs theatre or Josh at West End might resurrect it. As I went to buy a ticket, the marquee said HTYMP or something like that, so that's what I asked the 20-something attendant for a ticket for. She looked at me funny and said it sounded like a porn thing or something. She laughed.
"Is it good?" I asked.
"Oh yes, very good. It portrays the quarter-life crisis in excellent detail."
"The what?" I asked.
"The quarter life crisis."
"There is such a thing?"
"I've been looking for a [full-time] job for six months now. Yes, there is one."
So the biggest problem with this movie might be the title. Who came up with that? I would guess the writer/director/star Josh Radnor, but someone should have got him to change it. Anyway, it's an intelligent movie about a group of quarter-life friends with one contrivance that it takes a little getting past. (He does a good deed by stepping in to help a 10-year-old boy who is lost and abandoned on the subway. But then he kind of keeps him as a Little Brother.)
Otherwise, the relationships that this movie draws up are very believable and sometimes even poignant as is the case with his friend Annie. His love interest is named Kate Mara, and she is everything that Gwyneth Paltrow used to be before she became what she is now. Mara sings the last song of a  really cool soundtrack - it's a departure from the indie folk stuff that we've heard up until then. It's Sing Happy by Kander and Ebb of Cabaret fame and it knocked my cotton socks off.
I will let you know when this film is available to see either in a theater or on rental. And when the nice quarter-life woman at the boxc office gets a real job. As much as I like the film, I hope she comes first.