Fresh Loaf

LOVE IS DA BOMB: Silk Spectre (Malin Akerman, left) and Nite Owl (Patrick Wilson)

Upon its publication in the mid-1980s, the 12-issue graphic novel Watchmen earned a reputation for being “the Citizen Kane of comic books.” That’s not just hyperbole: Both works feature multiple narrators trying to piece together an enigmatic death, although in Watchmen, the ensemble happens to be former masked heroes, sleuthing against a backdrop of impending nuclear war.

Like Orson Welles, Watchmen writer Alan Moore and illustrator Dave Gibbons drew on seemingly every stylistic innovation in their respective media and shot them with lightning, raising the bar for a popular but increasingly sophisticated art form.

Zack Snyder’s long-awaited film adaptation of Watchmen is not a classic worthy of Citizen Kane. Thankfully, it’s not a bomb on a par with Howard the Duck, either. It comes close to being something like A Clockwork Orange for superhero movies — a dystopian satire marked by meticulous craftsmanship and sluggish pacing, of incongruous music and horrific violence, of heavy-handed sermonizing and astonishing imagery.

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Outkast’s André Benjamin remains the headmaster of “Class of 3000,” even though Cartoon Network ceased production of the animated school daze comedy after 26 episodes. “Class of 3000” is transferring to a new medium, however, as the Alliance Children’s Theatre presents the world premiere stage adaptation beginning Fri., March 6. Benjamin, the show’s creator, executive producer and vocal star as the inspirational Willy Wonka-esque music teacher Sunny Bridges, discusses the TV series’ origins and its transition to the stage.

Did you ever have an inspirational teacher like Sunny?
I’ve had a few in my lifetime. What inspired the character (played by Atlanta’s Sinatra Onyewuchi at the Alliance) was the fact that I wouldn’t want to be Andre 3000 forever. I’d eventually want to leave the stage. I never thought about being a music teacher, though. I wanted to be an art teacher, because I also draw and paint, and I remember art teachers who were like Sunny. My guitar teacher right now, Zaza, he’s a teacher like that, too. He’s a fun time, and I can enjoy that, even though I’m 33 years old.

How did you originate “Class of 3000?“
I was approached by Cartoon Network first. Once they gave me an offer, they wanted to see what show I wanted to create. Originally it was going to be an Adult Swim show, but the more I got into it, I started shaping it into a mainstream, prime-time kind of thing.

You provided a new song for every episode, five of which appear in the stage play. Was it different writing songs for a young audience, compared to your usual audience?
I wasn’t trying to water down the music aspect of the show just because it was for kids. You watch old “Peanuts” or “Fat Albert” shows, they weren’t necessarily kids’ songs. On “Peanuts,” you’re listening to jazz by Vince Guaraldi. I want to make sure that kids had something to listen to that wasn’t teeny bopper songs — although we would do those, too, if they fit into the story. I wanted to give them a little jazz, ragtime, blues, funk music, with the hope that if kids heard those kinds of music later, they’d say, “Hey, I remember this kind of song!” I thought that was fitting, since I play a music teacher. I also wanted to show how different kinds of songs, like classical music, could be reinterpreted in new ways, which is what I like to do with my other kinds of music.

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Elizabeth Hartley Winthrop’s debut novel Fireworks began as a series of short stories about an obsession with “nonstories.” Aside from protagonist Hollis Clayton’s ponderings on the “sadness” of a grown man dropping an ice cream cone on the ground, and the “mystery” of animals finding shelter in the rain, not much happens. There are observations of true poetic beauty, over which looms a shadow of genuine pathos (Hollis’ wife leaves him after the accidental death of their 8-year-old son). But ultimately, Fireworks feels over-padded with insignificance.

The premise of Winthrop’s second novel, December, suggests she’s finally found a story worthy of a novel. By the time we meet Isabelle Carter, the 11-year-old hasn’t said a word in nine months. She innocently began a streak of speechlessness that spilled over into the next day and then the next. Eventually, Isabelle becomes paralyzed by the fear of losing something if she speaks.

Ruth and Wilson, her bourgeois bohemian parents living in Manhattan’s Upper East Side, aren’t used to such obstacles. Research hasn’t provided an answer. Several therapists say Isabelle is a lost cause. The headmaster of her private all-girls school, who’s allowed Isabelle to work from home, says if she doesn’t start talking by the end of the Christmas break, she can’t come back.

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HEART OF GOLD: A still from Julie Puttgen's 'Voidvideo: Voidthrobber, 2007'

Honey, I shrunk the art.

When it came to art in the 20th century, bigger was better. All Small Redux at Agnes Scott College’s Dalton Gallery, however, reconsiders the conundrum of scale by looking through the other end of the telescope. Nothing in All Small exceeds 6 inches in any dimension, or about a minute in length for video works. The hundreds of works by 47 artists range from itty bitty paintings to teeny tiny sculptures, from quickie videos to mini installations. All in all, the collected works demonstrate that big ideas can be packed into small spaces.

In Tom Zarrilli’s “Spectacles for Tourists,” the artist covers the lenses of four pairs of glasses with idealized images of exotic locations. The critique may be simple — that tourists see mostly what their brochures tell them to see, not what’s actually there — but the small scale and elegant execution fit the bill precisely.

Small works require a different way of looking. They invite close approaches, leaning in, squinting — exactly how such works are often made. The transfer of intimacy from the art maker to the art viewer is direct and powerful.

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Unlike reality shows that revolve around big hair and elimination ceremonies, TLC’s “LA Ink” follows the life and art of tattooist Kat Von D. A stint in South Beach on the network’s “Miami Ink” garnered Von D enough of a following to return home for her own spin-off in 2007. From her shop’s bubble-gum pink walls to her facial tattoos and rock star boyfriend (Mötley Crüe’s Nikki Sixx — OK maybe there is some big hair happening here), she’s made a name for herself as a tough-as-nails girly girl. Von D recently published High Voltage Tattoo, which details the former runaway’s tumultuous rise to fame and shares her unique view of the tattoo world. Von D appears at the Buckhead Barnes and Noble Mon., Feb. 23.

Now that your book is on the shelves, what other artistic projects do you have in the works?
Taking up oil painting. So I’ve been doing a lot of that, a lot of photography. I just invested a bunch of money into these fancy ass sewing machines, so I’ve wanted to start making some clothes and whatnot. And then been talking about coming out with a high-end shoe line, like a platform heel type stuff. There’s definitely another book in the projects. And, obviously, I tattoo almost every day, so it’s pretty busy.

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BURIED TREASURE: "This Way Up" stands out among Oscar-nominated short films.

The nominees for Best Animated and Live Action Short Film tend to be the most obscure entries on Oscar night, not counting the documentary categories, of course. The relative obscurity of short subjects makes the Oscar Nominated Short Films 2009 program, divided into animated and live-action segments, so handy.

I guarantee, however, that most of you have already seen one of the animated shorts. Pixar’s “Presto,” about a pompous stage magician and his hungry bunny. It was attached to last summer’s WALL-E and received a bigger showcase than its competitors could have dreamed of. Although it’s one of Pixar’s best shorts, and a delightful tribute to the slapstick cartoons of past generations, “Presto” has garnered more than enough approbation, so it’d be nice if one of the other nominees won the statuette.

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ON FIRE: Jamison during her days as a dancer with the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater

Alvin Ailey’s pioneering dance troupe, Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, celebrates its 50th anniversary this year. Artistic director Judith Jamison has worked off and on (mostly on) with the company since 1965, when she joined as a dancer. She was hand-picked by Ailey and appointed as the company’s artistic director shortly after Ailey’s death in 1989. Jamison gushed about the troupe’s upcoming performance at the Fox Feb. 19-22 during a phone interview last week, barley letting us get a word in. Her excitement about the anniversary tour is understandable. Heck, even the Obamas found time to make it out to a Feb. 6 performance at the Kennedy Center in D.C.

Jamison on company founder Alvin Ailey’s vision:
“Fifty years ago [Ailey] just decided that there was no place for black dancers to be seen. … The first work that he actually did was Blues Suite. And because there was this vacant spot for not celebrating our own culture — that of African and American — of course celebrating the modern tradition of our country, he decided to combine that in many ways. Abstractly, directly, story telling, placing us in situations that we reflect on our culture as Americans and as African Americans.

“So the pieces that we’re doing for you, especially for the students, (I love the standing student performances that are coming up), those are sometimes my favorite ’cause the kids, they are active! They make noise! … Because Alvin always believed that we’re born to spread out. He happened to say that if the dance came from people it needed to be delivered back to the people, so there should not be a line between what’s going on on the stage and what you’re feeling when you’re watching.

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MAKIN' BANK: Clive Owen as Louis Salinger

Apart from America’s repo men, probably the only people popping champagne corks over last fall’s financial meltdown were the producers of The International. Doubtless the filmmakers wondered whether Clive Owen and Naomi Watts were big enough names to open their fair-to-middlin’ espionage-type thriller about a nefarious global bank.

Then the markets crashed and megabanks hit up the U.S. tax payers for bailout money, without curtailing their corporate fat-cat ways. With financial institutions emerging as the zeitgeist’s villains of the moment, The International’s follow-the-money suspense plot seems almost psychic. It’s like the way the Three Mile Island nuclear accident happened 12 days after the release of The China Syndrome: You can’t buy that kind of publicity.

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In The War Comes Home: Washington’s Battle Against America’s Veterans, Aaron Glantz reports on the crisis of neglect soldiers returning from Iraq and Afghanistan face. His first book, How America Lost Iraq, chronicled a devastating firsthand account of the Bush administration’s misguided policies in Iraq. Currently a Rosalynn Carter Fellow for Mental Health Journalism at the Carter Center, Gantz leads a panel discussion around  The War Comes Home at the Carter Presidential Library Tues., Feb. 17 at 7 p.m.

What changed during the few years you spent reporting from Iraq?
When I was there in April 2003, I had gone with a real bias against the war but I confronted people who were incredibly relieved that Saddam Hussein was finally gone. Then, over a period of years, I watched that good feeling dissipate. I watched the American soldiers go from being seen as the liberators to the occupiers. I saw the Iraqi people’s opinion of the Americans really diminish to the point where most people were actually supporting the insurgency.

When did you start reporting on veterans?
These American soldiers began coming to my speaking engagements. They were interested in what I had to say because they had not been able to get the side of the story that I had. Through that kind of exchange, I began to see that I had more in common with the veterans, whose opinions were all over the political map, than I necessarily did with people who had my same kind of liberal bent. I could talk to them about the war and we would be talking about the same war. We wouldn’t be coming at it from the perspective of “politics first,” we were first coming at it from the perspective of our experience.

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WONDER WOMAN: Coraline (right)

The fantastical opening credits sequence of Coraline superbly sets the stage for the eerie wonders to come. An unseen, scissor-handed figure sews and dresses a rag doll in an otherworldly environment. At one point a needle pops through the coarse fabric and JUTS RIGHT OUT AT THE AUDIENCE, in one of those amusing show-offy moments we expect from 3-D movies, but still takes us by surprise.

Coraline employs most of its 3-D effects more subtly but with seamless effectiveness. Henry Selick, who also directed Tim Burton’s The Nightmare Before Christmas, presents an ingenious fusion of delicate stop-motion animation and splashy 3-D gimmickry. Each style enhances the other. Coraline’s toys-in-the-attic designs seem even more tactile and solid rendered in three dimensions. The combination insistently beckons the audience into the film’s creepy yet magical places and things better than the 2-D version would. (more…)

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SKETCHY TERRITORY: Ari remembers the war.

Waltz With Bashir, Ari Folman’s surreal remembrance of Israel’s 1982 war with Lebanon, ends on the most wrenching note imaginable, yet leaving the theater offers no relief to the audience. The real world only amplifies the movie’s disheartening themes.

Folman, a filmmaker and Lebanon War veteran, uses splashy animation for his fascinating nonfiction account of the damage war inflicts on innocent civilians and victorious soldiers alike. Viewers steep in the horrors of the Lebanon War and the psychological trauma of its aftermath. But after the closing credits, current events come rushing in and we recall the fresh wounds of Israel’s recent conflict with Gaza. Waltz With Bashir offers depressing confirmation of the adage that history repeats itself, and suggests that a similar film — Waltz With Gaza, maybe — will be made a generation from now. (more…)

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If you’ve ever found yourself driving a Prius home from Whole Foods while calling a friend in Brooklyn on your iPhone to tell an ironic joke, blogger and author Christian Lander owes you a “Thank You.” Stuff White People Like, his cheeky website and book of the same name, has become über popular for its riffs on clichéd white people favorites like expensive sandwiches, unpaid internships and David Sedaris. Lander will be signing books and drinking micro-brewed beers at the appropriately ironic Euclid Avenue Yacht Club on Thurs., Jan. 29.

IRONIC BARS: “White people adore bars where the regulars are likely to hate them. The more likely they are to be hated, the more the bar appeals to them. Then, of course, there is the dream of being the first white person to the bar and becoming accepted as the regular who buys everyone drinks. Then you can scoff at the white people who arrive two weeks after you.”

HI-TECH JACKETS: “White people like to have the option to go camping at the drop of a hat. These jackets help ensure that, in the rare opportunity that someone calls you for a camping expedition, no one will have to wait for you to change.”

BOOK READINGS: “As far as an activity goes, there are few that can beat a book reading. Classical Music or Opera? Too snooty. Concert? Not interactive enough. Sporting Event? Are you kidding me? Book readings are intimate, personal and more obscure.” (more…)

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GENRE: Fantasy adventure for Harry Potter fans

THE PITCH: Single dad/bibliophile Mo Folchart (Brendan Fraser) is a “silvertongue,” with the power to draw characters out of books and send real people into them. He and his daughter (Eliza Bennett) track down an obscure fantasy novel named Inkheart to find his long-lost wife, despite the interference of such “fictional” personalities as the villainous Capricorn (Andy Serkis) and the conflicted antihero Dustfinger (Paul Bettany).

MONEY SHOTS: Dustfinger’s pet ferret chases Mo. Capricorn keeps a stable with creatures such as Peter Pan’s ticking crocodile and the Wizard of Oz’s flying monkeys. Mo reads the cyclone out of Oz to cover their escape from Capricorn’s castle. A big smoke monster called the Shadow looks pretty cool (if suspiciously like Lord of the Rings’ balrog). Oscar winner Dame Helen Mirren rides a mythological beast into an action scene, which is almost worth the price of admission.

BEST LINE: “You barbaric piece of pulp fiction!” Mirren snaps at Serkis, who each give such plummy, charismatic performances, it’s as though they’ve been read from a better movie.
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This is no joy in Gotham City this morning following the Academy Award nominations. Heath Ledger earned the expected, posthumous Best Supporting Actor nod for The Dark Knight, but that’s the only major award garnered by the downbeat Batman film, which happens to be the second-highest grossing film ever made. The Producers, Directors and Writers Guilds all nominated The Dark Knight, but the Academy, never one to eagerly embrace genre films, shut it out of the Best Picture, Best Director and Best Adapted Screenplay categories while giving it eight nominations overall.

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, Frost/Nixon, Milk and Slumdog Millionaire all earned major nominations, including Best Picture, as expected. Button got the most total nods, at 13, with Slumdog the runner-up, with 10.

So what took the Dark Knight’s “slot?” Apparently The Reader, the post-Holocaust drama starring Kate Winslet (pictured). Not only did Oscar give it nominations for Best Picture, Best Director for Stephen Daldry and Best Adapted Screenplay, Kate Winslet triumphed over herself in Revolutionary Road. The studios had campaigned for Winslet as Supporting Actress in The Reader and lead in Revolutionary Road, but Academy instead gave her lead nomination and snubbed Revolutionary Road in the rest of the major categories, except Michael Shannon as supporting actor.

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OVER MY DEAD BODY: Don Finney as Major Powell (left) and Daniel May as Evelyn Farrant

During the most suspenseful moments of Aurora Theatre’s comedy/thriller Corpse!, the audience wonders whether Daniel May will catch himself red-handed.

In Gerald Moon’s play, May plays feuding twins living in London in 1936. Flamboyant Evelyn, an unemployed actor, gets by as a con artist more than a stage artist, while his icy brother Rupert enjoys a huge fortune. Evelyn enlists Major Powell (Don Finney), a petty criminal, in a complex scheme against his brother to coincide with King Edward’s VII’s radio broadcast of his abdication. Tension arises when things go wrong and Evelyn and Rupert appear to be on the verge of confronting each other onstage at least once.

Which is impossible, of course, since May can’t play both roles silmultaneously before our very eyes, and we know it. May creates such distinctly entertaining characterizations, and we grow so engrossed in the first-act plotting, that we half-expect the Aurora production to subvert the laws of physics.

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RAM JOB: Mickey Rourke as Randy “The Ram” Robinson

Randy “The Ram” Robinson brings a razor blade to a wrestling match in one of The Wrestler’s first scenes.

Initially, director Darren Aronofsky watches Randy (Mickey Rourke) from a distance, his camera taking in the athlete’s weathered but expansive musculature. Right before the bout, Aronofsky comes in for a closeup of Randy hiding a piece of razor on his person. During the bruising, blustery, low-rent match, Randy secretly uses the blade not against his opponent, but on himself, so his bloody forehead can increase the drama and showmanship of his preordained victory.

Randy’s thin gash to his own brow marks just the first wound he inflicts on himself in The Wrestler. Randy ruled the ring as a pro wrestler in the 1980s, but 20 years later, his beefy, abused physique serves as a monument to his punishing profession and poor choices in his personal life. At one point Randy describes himself as “an old, broken-down piece of meat,” and the scrutiny The Wrestler brings to Randy’s flesh elevates a potentially sentimental drama about a washed-up palooka into a showcase for an enormously compelling piece of acting. You can’t tear your eyes away. (more…)

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SPACING OUT: "Boundary Issues," 2008 by Brian Bell and David Yocum

Painters of a certain stripe know that their best work is sometimes their fastest work; pictures that emerge in a sudden rush with no time for second guesses or backward glances.

Mergers & Acquisitions, a wide-ranging group exhibition currently on view at Atlanta Contemporary Art Center, benefits from a similar sense of urgency and shortness of time. Due to a last-minute cancellation, curator Stuart Horodner was forced to fill the Contemporary with an entirely new show in a matter of weeks. A show of this scope would normally take several months or even years to plan. Fortunately, Mergers & Acquisitions takes risky leaps of curatorial intuition that pay off in surprising and dramatic ways.

Mr. Horodner, speed becomes you.

Mergers & Acquisitions is built around a number of artistic calls and responses. (more…)

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WING NUT: Heath Ledger (front) as the Joker and Christian Bale as Batman in 'The Dark Knight'

Genre entertainments invariably rake in more money than heavyweight film dramas — that’s what they’re made for. The striking thing about 2008 wasn’t just that the popcorn movies had more explosions and sight gags, but that they had more to say than the theoretically more substantial films. Movies about monsters, robots and caped crusaders seemed more engaged with present-day issues than the work of such celebrated filmmakers as Ron Howard, Sam Mendes, Clint Eastwood and the Coen Brothers.

Iron Man and The Dark Knight both depicted costumed zillionaires fighting injustice, but also contained pertinent metaphors for the duties of the individual in the face of urban and global problems. In the bright, frequently funny Iron Man, Robert Downey Jr. offered a playful but revelatory turn as a weapons-building industrialist reassessing his company’s — and, implicitly, his country’s — influence in the world. The Dark Knight’s knotty, expansive crime story became an increasingly fraught exploration of the risks of imposing civic order, unleashing chaos and taking responsibility for collateral damage. The film’s tragic dimensions were only heightened by the late Heath Ledger’s compelling portrayal of the Joker as an anarchic psycho. (more…)

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GRAY AREA: Brad Pitt as Benjamin Button (Photo by Merrick Morton/Copyright © 2008 Paramount Pictures Corporation)

Two of the holiday season’s most prestigious, Oscar-baiting movies seem informed by the resentment of aging and mortality summed up in Dylan Thomas’ poem “Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night.”

In Gran Torino, Clint Eastwood plays a Korean War vet who rages against the dying of the light with bigotry and the occasional firearm. The Curious Case of Benjamin Button turns our expectations for youth and senescence upside down through Brad Pitt’s age-regressing hero. But will he go gentle into that good, uh, morning?

The discrepancy between Benjamin Button’s outward age and his real maturity offers an intriguing if limited metaphor for the way people’s failing bodies don’t match their ageless spirits. Benjamin Button director David Fincher also proves that state-of-the-art special effects can apparently do anything. Button offers astonishing images of Pitt as a child-sized senior citizen who gets taller and healthier every year. Gran Torino, on the other hand, proves thoroughly old fashioned in ways both good and ill, and only succeeds thanks to Eastwood’s undimmed star power. The film, like Eastwood’s character, resembles the kind of crotchety old timer with so much piss and vinegar, you make excuses for his bad manners.

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NEW WORLD ORDER: "Judge Knot" by KRK Ryden

Rabbit Hole Gallery’s 2006 opening for Tyson McAdoo featured go-go dancers, a live DJ and half of the nation’s PBR reserves. The festivities were a fitting launch for the underground space, which has featured a consistent set of pop surrealist, low brow and comics-influenced work by artists from Atlanta and elsewhere. Proprietor Bethany Marchman and business manager Joe Cruz will be closing  the space at the end of the year. Marchman took the opportunity to look back at both the agony and the ecstasy.

Tell us about the current work that you have at the gallery right now.
Right now at the gallery, we have the KRK Ryden solo show. It’s called Globoid Fun, and that’s original paintings by KRK Ryden. Got a few prints available, too. They’re pretty colorful, kind of pop. He’s from California.

Why did you originally open the gallery?
I just wanted a venue for some of this underground art. At the time there weren’t too many options; there seem to be a lot more now, though, which is a great thing. (more…)

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PARTY POTTERS: Allison (Zooey Deschanel, left) and Carl (Jim Carrey) at a Harry Potter-themed costume party

TITLE: Yes Man

GENRE: Comedy about living, laughing, loving, et al

THE PITCH: Depressed, noncommittal loan officer Carl (Jim Carrey) vows to answer “yes” to every question and opportunity life offers, leading to preposterous situations as well as romance with free-spirited musician/photographer Allison (Zooey Deschanel).

MONEY SHOTS: The self-empowerment seminar led by Terrence Stamp’s intense guru. Carl’s errant punch in a boozy, back-alley brawl. Carl’s inability to say “no” to the indecent proposal of an elderly neighbor (Fionnula Flanagan). Carl’s nerdy boss Norm (“Flight of the Conchords’” Rhys Darby) dressed as Ron Weasley, tearfully reciting the last words of the first Harry Potter movie. (more…)

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ICE CAPADES: Sam the snowman and his friend Alice the dog (Photo ©2008 Center for Puppetry Arts)

At the end of Disney’s The Little Mermaid, Ariel becomes a walking, talking human and weds the prince under a rainbow. That’s not how Hans Christian Andersen would remember it.

The Danish author’s original version concludes with the prince marrying someone else and the mermaid throwing herself into the sea, where she dissolves into foam and becomes a spirit. Many of Andersen’s classics follow the example of the Brothers Grimm and offer harsh cautionary tales in sharp contrast to today’s uplifting messages for young ears. Shaping themes to fit contemporary concerns is part of the process of handing stories down through generations.

The Center for Puppetry Arts’ Sam, The Lovesick Snowman and Synchronicity Performance Group’s The Snow Queen each offer charming versions of Hans Christian Andersen tales, yet espouse opposite philosophies of adaptation. (more…)

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MANO A MANO: David Frost (Michael Sheen, left) and Richard Nixon (Frank Langella) shake on it.

Ron Howard’s Frost/Nixon resembles a reunion film of The Queen, or at least, it should. Frost/Nixon shares screenwriter Peter Morgan, who penned the 2006 Oscar-winning film about Princess Diana’s death as a political tipping point in England. Michael Sheen, who played Tony Blair in The Queen (and in Morgan’s predecessor film The Deal) here plays David Frost, a television personality best known today for his interviews with Richard Nixon in the wake of Watergate.

Based on his stage play, Morgan’s script for Frost/Nixon offers a similar perspective on power and the public sphere as The Queen. Morgan argues that incidents that seem like minor footnotes in fact prove to be historical turning points. Howard’s steadiness as a director makes a clever and compelling film of Frost/Nixon that’s everything a “West Wing” fan would want in a contemporary political drama. Unlike The Queen, however, the film feels more like a tempest in a teapot than one of the hinges of history.

Howard approaches the material almost like he’s helming a sequel to the famed newspaper drama All the President’s Men. The film opens with a montage about the Watergate Hotel break-in, the subsequent scandals, cover-ups and resignations, building to Nixon’s withdrawal from office. Frank Langella reprises his stage role as Nixon, and while his harrumphing delivery echoes many Nixon impressions, he gives the disgraced president the gravitas and dignity of a lion in winter.

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MAD MONEY: Claire Christie (right) as Maura Brown in screwmachine/eyecandy

PushPush Theater’s memorably titled screwmachine/eyecandy depicts an ordinary middle class couple, Dan and Maura Brown (Randy Havens and Claire Christie), that finds its marital trust, its personal dignity and its faith in the American way of life tested under enormous pressure. The venue? A TV program called “The Big Bob Show” in Burbank, Calif.

Subtitled “How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Big Bob,” CJ Hopkins’ darkly comedic play takes what would seem like an out-of-date, obvious target — “wacky” 1970s-style game shows — and pushes it into surprising territory that’s at first hilarious, then horrifying. It’s as if Nobel Prize-winner Harold Pinter had eschewed the theater of menace to work with Chuck Woolery or Monty Hall.

Matt Stanton plays host Big Bob as a glib jokester whose questions and patter turn increasingly hostile. While beaming at the folks at home and extolling the show’s “consumer items,” he taunts Dan for his dreary-sounding job, hits on Maura, loses his temper, claims he was kidding and peppers the couple with unanswerable questions like “It is or it isn’t?” Stanton sustains a remarkable level of intensity for the 80-minute play, steering the tone from merely frivolous to sinister.

The announcer describes the game as having “No rules!” and Havens and Christie both project the confusion and dawning resentment of ordinary, hardworking Americans who discover that the system is rigged. Havens effectively nurses Dan’s wounded pride, but Christie offers an energetic, ultimately devastating performance as Maura tries to process their predicament. An eager competitor — “It’s the winning itself that’s so exciting, even more than what you win” — Maura initially makes excuses for Big Bob’s behavior, until she finds the situation utterly nightmarish. Her role wouldn’t be half so affecting if Christie didn’t make Maura so credible.

PushPush Theater frequently bills itself as a workshop theater and in the program notes director Tim Habeger describes screwmachine/eyecandy as the equivalent of a work in progress that may get an “actual run” in 2009. Frankly, the distinction is lost on me. screwmachine/eyecandy may be a little unpolished and has room for more elaborate props and audio/visual effects, but it packs more punch than many “real” plays I’ve seen in 2008. The playwright may pass an unnecessarily harsh anti-materialist judgment on his characters, but PushPush turns screwmachine/eyecandy into a compelling spectacle. Too late, the Browns discover that the price is wrong.

screwmachine/eyecandy. Through Dec. 20, with performances Dec. 29 and 31. $15-$35 (pay what you can). Fri.-Sat., 8 p.m., Sun., 5 p.m. PushPush Theater, 121 New St., Decatur. 404-377-6332. www.pushpushtheater.com.

(Photo courtesy PushPush Theater)

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FINAL ANSWER? Dev Patel as Jamal Malik (left) and Anil Kapoor

Few movie franchises can match the global success or irresistible watchability of “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?” which, according to the BBC News, has been broadcast as various versions of itself in more than 100 countries. No matter how little you care about quiz shows, if a few minutes of “Millionaire” catch your eye, you’ll quickly find yourself completely sucked in, screaming answers or instructions like “Phone a friend!” at the television.

The shameless melodrama Slumdog Millionaire uses the worldwide familiarity with the game show’s rituals to seize the audience’s attention. Slumdog, directed by English filmmaker Danny Boyle, takes place in India, so hapless young contestant Jamal Malik (Dev Patel) plays for rupees, not dollars, but the conventions prove completely the same. On the space age set, amid the dramatic sound effects and goaded by the bullying host (Anil Kapoor), Jamal looks like a deer in the stage lights. (more…)

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