Culture Surfing

THE HORSE BOY: Rupert Isaacson (from left), Rowan and Ghoste in Mongolia

Medical narratives often depict ordinary people who turn to alternative healing methods when traditional Western health care fails. Seldom can you find families that go to the lengths of Rupert Isaacson and Kristen Neff, who traveled from Austin, Texas, to the steppes of Mongolia with the hopes of improving their son Rowan’s autistic condition.

Narrating the documentary The Horse Boy, Isaacson justifies the trip early in the film. At his worst, 5-year-old Rowan’s cognitive problems make him the equivalent of “a giant 18-month-old” with poor social skills, incomplete toilet training, and seemingly endless, inexplicable tantrums. Isaacson’s research into shamanism and Rowan’s affinity for animals, especially horses, inspire the father to see if the two in combination could have therapeutic value. He discovers that Mongolia combines shamanic traditions with horsemanship, so he, Neff and Rowan embark on a journey a world away.

Continue reading “Family goes to extremes to alleviate autism in The Horse Boy” »

Bookmark It

PEACH DROP: Steven Westdahl (from left), Amber Nash, Anthony Irons, Niki Lindgren, Amy Roeder and Randall Harr

The Alliance Theatre’s comedy revue The Second City: Peach Drop, Stop and Roll features three Atlanta actors and three out-of-towners. That’s up from two locals in last year’s Second City show at the Alliance’s Hertz Stage, The City Too Busy to Hate, Too Hard to Commute. At this rate, the Atlanta-themed show may have an all-Atlanta cast by 2012.

Like its predecessor, written by Ed Furman and T.J. Shanoff, Peach Drop combines Atlanta-centric sketches peppered with time-tested material from the famed Chicago-based improv comedy playhouse. Two Chicagoans, Seth Weitberg and director Matt Hovde, wrote Peach Drop and, impressively, avoid the temptation to recycle any of the better gags from last year. Occasionally, Peach Drop gets gridlocked in lame jokes about Atlanta media figures and predictable stereotypes, but the laughs pick up speed in the second act.

As the title suggests, Peach Drop begins on New Year’s Eve in Underground Atlanta, and generally features more holiday-themed sketches than last year. At worst, Peach Drop resorts to Capitol-steps-style namedropping based on current events and local celebrities, such as thinly conceived parodies of Jane Fonda (Amber Nash) or Dagmar Midcap (Amy Roeder). When Peach Drop tries too hard to be timely, like its reverence to the alien lady from the “V” TV series, the spectators shrug. Other times, however, the show hits the sweet spot of fresh, silly public obsessions, as with its musical number about “The Real Housewives of Atlanta.”

Continue Reading “Second City comedy show picks more peaches than pit”

(Photo by Greg Mooney)

Bookmark It

SPORTS AUTHORITY: Leigh Anne Touhy (Sandra Bullock, right) coaches Michael Oher (Quinton Aaron)

The prologue to the warm-n-fuzzy sports story The Blind Side plays so well, it’s like seeing a team return an opening kickoff to score a touchdown. A Southern-accented Sandra Bullock narrates an insider’s perspective on the five fateful seconds that cost the Washington Redskins’ Joe Theismann his career. Michael Lewis’ book The Blind Side: Evolution of a Game provides the film with tasty tidbits about football machinations on and off the field, but director John Lee Hancock fumbles the rags-to-riches story of Michael Oher (Quinton Aaron).

The film’s early scenes find mountainous Michael adrift in the impoverished corners of Memphis with a crack-addicted mother and no real home. When a Christian school bends the rules to enroll him, Michael attracts the notice of Leigh Anne Touhy (Sandra Bullock), the take-charge socialite wife of a fast-food mogul (Tim McGraw). Leigh Anne whisks Michael to the family McMansion and offers him clothes, a Thanksgiving invitation, and even a strategy for success on the gridiron.

Continue Reading “Sandra Bullock Blind Sides Atlanta”

(Photo Courtesy Ralph Nelson/Warner Bros. Picture)

Bookmark It

Coolness: Decatur’s delightful children’s book shop, The Little Shop of Stories, won a challenge issued by rock-star genre writer Neil Gaiman to throw the best Halloween party in the United States. Thanks to the success of Little Shop’s Graveyard Book Halloween Party on Oct. 30, Gaiman will visit the store on Mon., Dec. 14, at 6 p.m. (Little Shop shares the honor with McNally Robinson Booksellers of Winnipeg, Manitoba.) Given the popularity of the English author’s graphic novels (Stardust, Coraline), film scripts (Beowulf), prose fiction (American Gods), laundry lists, etc., you might want to start lining up now.

Bookmark It

THE MESSENGERS: Captain Tony Stone (Woody Harrelson, from left) and Staff Sergeant Will Montgomery (Ben Foster) deliver the news.

Staff Sergeant Will Montgomery (Ben Foster) receives new orders in the first scenes of The Messenger. Will endured injuries to his eye and leg in an Iraqi firefight, and has the wounds and decorations to prove it, but his latest assignment will leave its own kind of scars.

Will finds that becoming part of the U.S. Army’s casualty notification team is the toughest job he’ll ever loathe. Will joins the soldiers tasked to regretfully inform the closest relatives of their loved ones’ deaths during military service. Many movies feature iconic scenes of formally dressed officials bearing ill tidings on the front stoops of heartland homes. Director/co-writer Oren Moverman finds a rich, original premise by presenting the perspective of these “angels of death,” and critiques war in general without taking sides over current military conflicts. At times, however, The Messenger proves derelict in its duties as a screen narrative.

Continue Reading “The Messenger delivers stark lesson about casualties of war”

(Photo Courtesy Courtesy Oscilloscope Laboratories)

Bookmark It

SOUND PURCHASE: A Woodruff Arts Center gift cardgets the recipient into events at the Atlanta Symphony (pictured), the Alliance Theatre and the High Museum of Art.

Our society covets few things so passionately as the gift basket — the richer, fancier cousin to the gift bag. People will gush over gift baskets full of crap nobody could possibly want, that’s how much cachet they have. To make the people on your shopping list feel special, consider loading up a basket with these themed suggestions. Some can be a little pricey, so consider the baskets a collective stimulus package for the still-anemic economy.

THE LOCAL ARTS BASKET
For boosters of local arts, or those who need a crash course in Atlanta culture

Centerpiece: The Help by Kathryn Stockett (Amy Einhorn Books/Putnam, $24.95, 464 pp). Usually this kind of thoughtful, female-oriented novel only becomes a New York Times best-seller with intervention from Oprah. Stockett, an Atlanta resident who hails from Mississippi, struck a chord nationwide with her tale of the symbiotic relationship of African-American domestics and more privileged whites in the 1960s. Inspired by the author’s own childhood, The Help explores with humor and sensitivity a legacy of knee-jerk racism and emotional ties.

Also: Pick out a stocking-stuffer-sized piece of original artwork from the SCAD Gallery Boutique. A Woodruff Arts Center gift card gets the recipient into events at the Atlanta Symphony, the Alliance Theatre and the High Museum of Art. If you want to multiply your generosity, give memberships or season subscriptions to smaller arts organizations like Eyedrum (a $40 membership gets you in for free all year) or Horizon Theatre (whose season coincides with the calendar year). Your loved one and the local arts scene will both thank you.

Continue Reading “A&E gift guide”

(Photo by Jeff Roffman)

Bookmark It

MONKEY BUSINESS: Adam Fristoe as a dapper alpha male

Primatologist Dr. Frans de Waal, the director of the Living Links Center at the Yerkes National Primate Research Center, dreaded the thought of actors in chimp costumes in a stage version of his book Chimpanzee Politics. In fact, the cast of Out of Hand Theater and Theater Emory’s Hominid wear dapper suits and short dresses while speaking English. Audiences who don’t know the new play’s source material, however, will quickly recognize them as primates in a zoo community.

Hominid’s family of chimps display bare feet and occasional animalistic body language, but mostly resemble a peaceable, sun-drenched commune. Written by Out of Hand and Ken Weitzman, Hominid takes some liberties in dramatizing primate behavior: I doubt that de Waal’s original research subjects gathered to sing hymns in celebration of springtime. Homind’s symbolic representations of chimpanzee dynamics offer touching instances of the chimps’ capacity for tenderness, ambition and reconciliation — which, in turn, holds up a mirror to humanity at its best and worst.

Continue Reading “Hominid considers human nature from animal perspective”

(Photo by Matthew Spaugh)

Bookmark It

The Plaza Theatre joins with ASIFA-Atlanta to present Mary and Max,the Claymation comedy of mismatched pen pals. Director Adam Elliott, who won the Oscar for Best Animated Short for “Harvie Krumpet” (narrated by Geoffrey Rush) explores the 18-year friendship between a lonely Australian girl (Toni Collette) and an obese New Yorker with Asperger’s Syndrome (Phillip Seymour Hoffman). The opening film of the 2009 Sundance Film Festival, Mary and Max screens at 8 p.m. Monday, Nov. 16.

Bookmark It

BURN BABY BURN: Lily Morgan (left) and John Cusack

GENRE: Disaster movie on a planetary scale

THE PITCH: Technobabble about solar flares plus mumbo-jumbo about Mayan predictions equals catastrophes that could destroy all life on Earth, even movie stars. A White House science advisor (Chiwetel Ejiofor), a novelist/limo driver (John Cusack), his ex-wife (Amanda Peet), and a shaggy conspiracy theorist (Woody Harrelson) all try to keep ahead of the fireballs and falling skyscrapers.

MONEY SHOTS: Director Roland Emmerich remains the John Holmes of disaster porn. Highlights include the heroes out-driving a Los Angeles earthquake; a volcanic eruption at Yellowstone; a tidal wave crashing over a Tibetan mountain range; and the Sistine Chapel ceiling cracking between God and Adam’s fingers. (Oh, burn!) A tsunami flattens the White House with the John F. Kennedy aircraft carrier, proving what you’ve always suspected: Bad weather has a sense of irony.

Continue Reading “Hollywood Product: 2012“

(Photo Courtesy 2009 Columbia TriStar Marketing Group, Inc.)

Bookmark It

THAT’S WHAT SHE SAID: John Benzinger and Rachel Garner in Fair Use

We should totally call dibs on Dad’s Garage Theatre’s Large Animal Games and Actor’s Express’s Fair Use as home-grown plays. Neither takes place in Atlanta and neither playwright currently lives here, but the local theater community can claim bragging rights to the world premieres of both witty comedies.

Large Animal Games takes its bow as part of a full season of new plays developed “in-house” at Dad’s Garage, although the company shares the co-world premiere of Large Animal Games with Impact Theatre of Berkeley, Calif. Writer Steve Yockey, currently playwright-in-residence at Marin Theatre Company, has long been a member of the “artistic family” of Dad’s, Out of Hand Theatre and Actor’s Express (as well as, briefly, a Creative Loafing employee). Fair Use by Chicago’s Sarah Gubbins was a finalist in the Alliance Theatre’s Kendeda Graduate Playwriting Competition, a national award that’s been cultivating a new generation of theatrical talents for more than half a decade.

Continue Reading “Upwardly Mobile”

(Photo Courtesy Chris Ozment Photography)

Bookmark It

BLAZE OF GLORY: Murder becomes reality-TV fodder in Five Minutes of Heaven.

Even if you’ve never heard the name Oliver Hirschbiegel, there’s a strong chance you’ve seen his work. The German filmmaker directed Downfall, the superb 2004 drama about the Third Reich’s final days. Last year, a clip of Bruno Ganz’s Hitler chewing out his underlings became a YouTube hit when an online prankster rewrote the subtitles so the scene depicted then-presidential candidate Hillary Clinton raging against her campaign staff. Now you can find dozens of remixes that show Adolf hating on, say, the Avatar trailer.

Hirschbiegel can’t claim credit or blame for the pop appropriation of Downfall, but the original scene’s dramatic power no doubt supports its viral following. Downfall’s depiction of the besieged Nazis combined epic battle scenes with more soft-spoken moments that illuminated Hitler’s historical legacy, such as Frau Goebbels quietly killing her own children rather than have them see an Allied victory. Hirschbiegel’s latest film, Five Minutes of Heaven, treats a confrontation between two men as another kind of microcosm for a historic event: the violence in Northern Ireland.

Continue Reading “Five Minutes of Heaven goes mano a mano with Northern Ireland conflict”

(Photo Courtesy Reconciliation Limited 2009/An IFC Films release)

Bookmark It

The “Dexter” Season 4 episode reviews have been shrink-wrapped to an autopsy table in an unknown location, and will have to be postponed indefinitely. Let’s kill time before the rescue with the new hardback Dexter By Design (Doubleday, $25) and consider how Michael C. Hall’s secret serial killer resembles the original creation of writer Jeff Lindsay.

The author introduced the perfectly-assimilated predatory sociopath in Darkly Dreaming Dexter. Published in 2004, the award-winning mystery served, rather loosely, as the basis for the 12 episodes of the Showtime series’ first season. Since then, the show’s continuity has diverged dramatically from the books. Sgt. Doakes, Dexter’s Javert-like police nemesis, was killed in the show’s second season but still lives on the page, if in a horribly maimed fashion. From Dexter’s perspective as the first-person narrator, his homicidal impulses, nicknamed “The Dark Passenger” manifests more like a secondary personality who keeps watch on Dexter’s consciousness.

The fourth book, like the show’s fourth season, begins with Dexter married to Rita, only Dexter by Design first finds the couple as newlyweds in Paris, not as sleep-deprived parents of a new infant. Dexter by Design sees our antihero thoroughly pwned by a pranksterish nutjob with a grisly artistic bent. Miami’s latest human butcher puts dead bodies on display in ghastly parody of South Florida tourist behavior. (Lindsay makes a passing nod to Carl Hiassen’s Tourist Season, which features a home-grown terrorist cell with similar anti-tourist motivations.) Staying one step ahead, the killer discovers Dexter’s true identity and targets his loved ones.

Continue reading “‘Dexter’ vs. Dexter” »

Bookmark It

LOOSE ROPE: Rope 'em, cowboy.

Following on the hooves of The Men Who Stare at Goats, the Iranian culture-clash dramedy Loose Rope depicts young fellows transfixed by other kinds of livestock.

Part of the High Museum’s 12th annual Iranian Film Today series, Loose Rope gets a lot of mileage from the easy interplay of Mikhail and Asgar (Babak Hamidian, Keramat Roudsaz), two pals who deliver animals in the rural outskirts of Tehran. With Mikhail as a mature, ambitious man of few words and Asgar as an impulsive motormouth, they maintain the dynamic of a classic comedy team. Despite Mikhail’s wish to start a new business, the pair falls behind on payments for their truck, which their creditor threatens to repossess unless they bring him a 450-pound cow.

Before the bovine adventure takes hold, Loose Rope follows another subplot involving sheep. Mikhail and Asgar discover a sneak who digs up recently deceased sheep that he sells to an unscrupulous restaurateur in violation of halal practices (and basic sanitation), which prohibit even sick animals from being served as food. Mikhail establishes himself as a decent fellow by putting an end to the sheep “grave-robbing,” while director Mehrshad Karkhani entices the viewer with quiet action scenes and occasional animal-based sight gags.

Continue Reading “Seriocomic Loose Rope seeks bovine intervention”

(Photo Courtesy High Museum)

Bookmark It

If you were to hear opera singer David Daniels’ voice before you saw him perform, you might make a mistaken guess as to his gender. Countertenors such as Daniels sing in a vocal range usually associated with sopranos and other classical female singing styles. Daniels’ renowned approach has redefined the countertenor style for a new generation of opera audiences. The first countertenor to give a solo recital in the main auditorium of Carnegie Hall, Daniels sings the role of Orpheus in Christoph Willibald Gluck’s Orfeo & Euridice at the Atlanta Opera, Nov. 14, 17, 20 and 22.

How young were you when you began singing as a boy soprano?
I think I remember singing when I was 3 or 4 years old. It was probably more like screaming and driving my older brother crazy. He plays the cello, so he’s the only one in my family who doesn’t sing. My mother was a soprano, my father a baritone, and they both taught voice at Converse College. My mother taught me to sing in my “head voice.” I sang professionally as a boy soprano probably from age 9 to 16. Even though my voice changed, I kept the ability to sing this way as a teenager. Now I’m 43, and I still sing this way.

Continue Reading “Speakeasy with David Daniels”

(Photo Courtesy the Atlanta Opera)

Bookmark It