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There is a type of comedy in which the hero (or heroine) allows a sketchy friend to help him/her make a sketchy choice. Poor judgement is funny, or at least leads to comic situations. Jason Bateman’s character in Extract, for instance, is lead down this path by Ben Affleck’s Dean, a dodgy fellow if ever […]
Jay Leno, Jerry Seinfeld and Nicolas Cage have something in common. Two of them are comedians, but all three of them are collectors of automobiles. Leno has a show called Jay Leno’s Garage and Seinfeld stars in Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee. The latter fits J.S.’s generally minimalist approach– aka the classic Seinfeld which was allegedly “a show about nothing.”
In this trilogy, it’s Cage who is the odd man out. He has acted in comedies, with his perhaps funniest role in the classic Moonstruck, where admittedly Cher gets the best word when she slaps him and orders him to “get over it.” He blended the genre of action– which is a mainstay for him–and comedy in Kick-Ass, a well-liked movie from 2010 that does not approach the icon status of the great Shanley script. Cage is a prolific actor, however, and some of his work is moving and funny, as in The Weather Man. My second most favorite Cage vehicle is It Could Happen To You, a drama-comedy-romance about life’s gifts.
Cage is almost as well-known for his profligate spending as for his bountiful movie career. Jay Leno and Jerry Seinfeld might spend a lot, but they have also kept much of it; Leno has a net worth among the top ten comedians, while Seinfeld is at the top of Forbes’ list of top-paid comedians for 2017. All 3 of these men, along with another comedian, Tim Allen, are on a top ten list of owners of great car collections.
There must be something funny about this.
Like “fortune,” bounty can seem to be about money. Pirates hunt for bounty, as do those who seek out criminals for reward, sometimes to deadly effect. It is a monetary gift, often doled out by a generous government; bounty is expresses as liberality.
A bounty is an abundance, and that can be any horn-of-plenty. There can be sunshine aplenty, and the gifts of nature can be bountiful. Blue skies, rainy days, flowers, clouds, the very air we breathe, are all presented to us by a magnaninous world. Music and art and performance are given us by our fellow sentient beings.
It’s a bounty spread before us.Cherish it
It’s a fake. Not real. Really, it’s simply the definition of artificial that it be unnatural. Or not natural. For instance, flowers that last and last, are made of silk, are called artificial flowers.
Artifice, from whence we get art, is sometimes fake and unreal.
Art, however, is very real. It reflects, through a mirror of imagination, who we are.
Among the myriad choices you can make for this weekend’s entertainment, we suggest taking a trip to BAM to see Daniel Beaty’s solo performance as Paul Robeson in his play The Tallest Tree in the Forest. Moisés Kaufman directs Beaty as he plays over 40 characters to portray the life of the controversial Robeson. The son of a freed slave, Paul Robeson rose to international acclaim and was a huge Broadway star, best known for his role as Joe in Show Boat, activism and for his Communist affiliations. The Tallest Tree in the Forest plays through March 29th, and you can get tickets by clicking through to the BAM box office at BAM.org.
Paul Taylor’s American Modern Dance is at Lincoln Center for the rest of this week, as well.
Catch the high flying Paul Taylor Dance Company in a repertory that includes Big Bertha, Troilus and Cressida (reduced), Company B, Diggity, Promethean Fire, Sea Lark and Taylor’s 142nd as yet untitled New Work, among others.On stage, over this final week you can also see Shen Wei Dance Arts in Shen Wei’s Rite of Spring, and Doris Humphrey’s Passacaglia
performed by the Limón Dance Company.
Paul Taylor’s NYC spring season runs through March 29th. Tickets are available at www.ptamd.org/tickets.
We’re huge fans, as you can witness from our reviews here. But we’ll say it again, a Taylor dance is like no other and each is a thought-provoking and fascinating experience.
Jamie Benson and the Shakedown Dance Collective take to the subways to tell real transit stories danced by real people in historic subway cars. On April 1st at 6:30pm, his program will premier at
NYC Transit Museum, Downtown Brooklyn. His goal is “to incite a new dance community and rediscover the humanity of everyday life in the NYC, as well as the world at large.”
The Wild Project presents Max Baker’s new play, Live From the Surface of the Moon. Don and Carol are hosting a party to watch Neil Armstrong’s moonlanding; Holly Phelps is invited, and so are you. See the Stable Cable Lab Co. production from April 2nd to 11th. You’ll find more information at http://thewildproject.com/performances/2015-Surface-of-the-Moon.shtml; go to Ovation Tix to get tickets.
From April 8th through 11th, Dance Theatre of Harlem returns to New York’s City Center for four performances, including a premiere of Darrell Grand Moultrie’s Vessels. Be there for Dance Theatre of Harlem’s 2015 NY Season.
For more information, visit http://www.dancetheatreofharlem.org/.
Desert Dancer tells a true story of an Iran in which dancing is a revolutionary action against the state. In an environment in which cultural freedoms are restricted, Afshin Ghaffarian watches banned videos of Michael Jackson, Rudolph Nureyev, and Gene Kelly as inspiration. The film stars Freida Pinto, as Elaheh, who along with several friends led by Afshin, starts an underground dance company in the volatile climate of the 2009 presidential election. In New York, the film opens on April 10th at the Sunshine Cinema on Houston Street and AMC Loews Lincoln Square.
On April 13th, a star-powered cast presents a one night only introduction to Our Class by Tadeusz Słobodzianek. The readers include: Nina Arianda, Ellen Burstyn, Kim Cattrall, Alvin Epstein, Brian Murray, John Pankow, Hunter Parrish, and Austin Pendleton, under the direction of Cosmin Chivu. Find out more about this play reading at http://emanuelskirballnyc.org/events/our-class/.
This should keep you busy. Check in soon for more suggestions and news from the railto!
Enjoy.
As a genre, sitcoms encourage actors to develop mannerisms that become shorthand for their characters, and their characters’ quirks.
This spelled gold for “Dyno-mite” star Jimmy Walker or for the Fonz (Henry Winkler.) The sheen wore off a bit, however, when it came to other roles in their careers. People come to associate sitcom stars with the tics they display on the small screen. Some shticks are so engrained in the character sketch, that the actor is all but lost.
Laura Metcalf, for instance, is twice the actress her role on “Roseanne” brought out of her.
Melissa McCarthy has turned her fat-chick antics as Molly into box-office, even though her TV persona is annoying and not that interesting.
Not every comedy star has so much more to give, of course. For some, the persona they create is the persona they have (or an exaggeration of it.)
Of course, it’s not fair to expect Julia Louis-Dreyfus to always play Elaine, even when the bits are indelible. “Get out,” push co-star so he falls back. She has had good luck moving on, winning Emmys and a SAG for Veep, another and different comedy role. She also played “herself” on Larry David’s “Curb Your Enthusiasm” for several seasons.
Her colleague and the star of “Seinfeld,” Jerry is not so much an actor as a stand-up guy, but his takes got better as the show rolled on. There are those who are best off sticking with their sitcom ids. Jaleel White worked hard at being that nerdy guy with the high-water pants, Steve Urkel. Like Jimmy Walker, he did not have much of an after-life in acting, which in no way means he has not had great successes as a producer, and writer.
Jim Parsons is an example of an actor whose range is not demonstrated by his on-air role on “The Big Bang Theory.”. He has proven that he is much more than the wise-ass smart guy he plays.The Normal Heart on Broadway and then again when the play aired on TV gave him one of many chances to prove that. Still, he is widely associated with Sheldon Cooper.
Being closely associated with a role might be great if you are known for your Hamlet or your Macbeth, but it has to be a bit of a downer when the line of your life is
Charlie Chaplin made many a poignant statement as “The Little Tramp,” of course. His was a comic character that built on smart situations, the ur sit-com, as it were.
Low expectations are what keep TV comedy moving. Everyone knows the reacton to expect from just hearing a voice. Parsons uses the same tone as his sit com character while playing a nerdy know-it-all pitchman on a commercial. That’s what the client hired him to do, and what the public expects.
Even when a show starts off with a new perspective and a premise that is relateable, it quickly descends into patterns. Lines are delivered with a wait-for-it that relies on the laugh track way ahead of the gag. “Two Broke Girls” started with promise but have turned everyone from Garrett Morris and Jennifer Coolidge to Kat Dennings and Beth Behrs into their own one-liners. It’s a genuine shame that such a talented cast had nowhere to go but down.
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