"Hamilton" is Coming Back, "Hamilton" is Here, "Hamilton" is Forever

Actually, it never really went away -- but obviously performances of the much lauded musical have been shutdown ever since NYC went into COVID-19 related lockdown.

But something is going to happen soon that wasn't supposed to happen until October, 2021 -- a four-year old recording of the Hamilton stage show with original cast will premiere on Disney Plus this coming July 3rd. In a time when stage and movie theaters are closed, and the only things we can see are shows and movies streamed or beamed into our homes, this makes for a major blockbuster event.

It's important to remember that this is a version of the stage show, it's not an actual movie-version of it. This article gives the backstory of how this recorded version of Hamilton came to be, and why it's going to be shown to the world nearly a year-and-a-half earlier than scheduled. The show's brilliant creator, Lin-Manuel Miranda, indicates that a movie version might come along one day but there's no plans for it yet.

For my money, I actually hope that there never is a real movie version -- look at what happened with Cats! And A Chorus Line. And The Phantom of the Opera. And The Producers. And Into the Woods. Mega-hit shows that turned into a big flops. I also thought the movie version of Les Miz sucked despite the box office/Oscar-love it got. In my 'umble opinion, some shows just work better -- much better! -- as stage shows, as a collection of people coming together and demonstrating the great power of live theater. This can't be replicated in a movie, the power gets lost, gets minimized by the intimacy of film. As the saying goes, "The medium is the message." Shows like Hamilton and these others are "big" -- big casts, big sets, big songs, big messages -- and theater is the best medium for them. So I hope this recording of the stage show remains the definitive version of this musical.

Wild Daze

These are certainly tumultuous times.

Last night was primary night, the first big election held in NYC in the middle of COVID-19. While most of the incumbents won, there were a few interesting outliers of upsets in the making -- and they are "in the making" because of the unprecedented number of absentee ballots cast (including my own) that won't be counted until next week. That means many of these races won't be "called" until then (or possibly later) but it's looking like, up in the Bronx, Congressman Eliot Engel will in fact lose to newcomer Jamaal Bowman and, over the East Side of Manhattan/Astoria, in a shocker, Carolyn Maloney is in a dead-heat with her young challenger. There are also a few state legislative races where incumbents are either down or tied with challengers -- so the progressive wave is very real here.

And, yes, let's record for the sake of posterity that AOC absolutely crushed it in her re-election. Some dopey former anchorwoman who is really a Republican challenged AOC in the Democratic primary, raised and spent $2 million, and now has nothing to show for it. Haha!

You can get the full (as of now) results for all these primaries here and here. 

And COVID-19 still is wrecking havoc on NYC, despite the "reopening." The mayor has indicated that mass lay-offs may be coming to city government, and the governor has announced quarantine restrictions for people coming to New York from states that have seen a spike in COVID-19 cases. Just a few short months ago NYC was the epicenter for the pandemic but smart rules "flattened the curve" and now the number of cases is very low. But other parts of the country that are run by morons are seeing their case loads shoot-up -- and we don't want them here! 

And then! ... There's the fireworks. Yes, for reasons no one can entirely understand, people have been setting off fireworks all over town. They started quietly in early June and now, right near the end of the month, they have become our secondary pandemic. They are going off in each of the five boroughs -- as this interactive map shows -- and it's driving people nuts. Now the mayor has said something will be done about it.

Oh yes, these are wild days putting us all in a daze -- and, for my money, life can't get boring enough soon enough!

"Live From Here" No More

The public radio show "Live From Here" has been cancelled.

For those of you who aren't public radio buffs, "Live From Here" was the successor to "A Prairie Home Companion", a similar variety show hosted by Garrison Keillor for nearly 40 years. Lots of music, lots of comedy, it was a fun and wacky hipster version of the Grand Old Opry. "Live" was hosted by the singer Chris Thile, and the show had recently re-located from St. Paul, MN (where "Prairie" and then "Live" originated from) to NYC.

The whole point of bringing the show here was so that it could attract lots of big name guests (it did!) but the financial impact COVID-19 was apparently too much for it to bare. It depended, in part, on ticket sales, and it's unlikely that live shows like this will return anytime soon. So now "Live From Here" is gone.

This is really, really sad. I loved the show. It ran on Saturday nights from 6-8 PM on WNYC, and was a staple of its Saturday night schedule. I'd listen to it either in the kitchen while making dinner or with my wife and kids in the car if we were going to or coming from someplace. It was a relief to turn it on and listen to some fun people having fun, being creative, singing and joking to their hearts content, giving us all a temporary reprieve from the horror-show of the world. "Live", like "Prairie" before it, was sort of an inverse to "Saturday Night Live" -- it was on radio early in the evening and had more music than comedy. It was a real treat.

A treat that has now been snatched away from us. It's another part of the cultural fabric of NYC that's unravelled and I hope that, maybe some day when this is all over, it can be resurrected. 

P.S. This is the show where I discovered Brandi Carlille! 

Dinner and a Show

One of the staples of the NYC economy is "dinner and a show."

In a town with the best theater and restaurants, this is a grand tradition for natives and visitors alike -- and, obviously, it's one of the things that has been rendered impossible by COVID-19.

This piece gives you some fond nostalgia -- and advice -- about enjoying dinner and a show. And the author gives good advice, namely that you should have dinner after the show, not before.

Totally agree. It's wonderful seeing the show, then going to a nearby restaurant and eating and drinking into the night, feeling like you are in the center of culture, the center of the world, the center of what makes everything great about NYC.

A Nutcracker-Less NYC in 2020

New York City Ballet has cancelled performances for "The Nutcracker" for December of this year.  There are very tentative plans perhaps to stage it in early 2021 but that's not certain.

"The Nutcracker" was first staged by City Ballet in 1954, nearly 70 years ago, and has been performed every year without fail since then. Not even terrorist attacks or economic crises has stopped it -- but a pandemic did. This is the original and definitive American version of this ballet classic, the American Mother of All Nutcrackers. 

This is a huge financial hit for City Ballet -- "The Nutcracker" is their Avengers, their Star Wars, their sure-fire hit franchise that just mints money without fail. It's the ballet that people who otherwise don't go to the ballet go to see. I was stunned to see that it grosses over $15 million a year for City Ballet, more than some movies.

It's also a big cultural loss for NYC -- along with the lighting of the Rockefeller Christmas tree and New Year's Eve in Times Square, it's one of the biggest holiday events in the city. So this is a big loss -- for now.

No doubt the Sugarplum Fairy will dance once more.

P.S. I was in "The Nutcracker" as a kid as I've blogged about before. 

(Political) Rumble in the Bronx

Next Tuesday is primary day. There are a number of progressive challengers running against longtime incumbents in Democratic primaries for State Assembly, State Senate, and US House races. Obviously these primaries are more important than the general election since the winners are 99% certain to prevail in November.

The most high-profile and brutal of them is in the Bronx.

Congressman Eliot Engel has held this seat for 32 years, winning cycle after cycle without any problem. Engel's district encompasses the north Bronx, including wealthy white Riverdale, as well some poorer, mostly black areas. Until recently he seemed a shoe-in for another term. But in this time of Black Lives Matter and social justice protests, as well as a strong challenge from middle school principal Jamaal Bowman, plus a huge dumb public gaffe by Engel, the race "is on."

The result of this primary will be fascinating. It's a classic example of experience vs. time for a change, a well-entrenched and well-financed incumbent who worked his way up in and works well with the party establishment vs. an un-bought and super-motivated outsider who brings consensus-busting policies (like Medicare for All, etc.) into the debate. It's quite reminiscient of AOC vs. Crowley two years ago (Bowman has gotten AOC's endorsement) so this primary could be another big progessive upset or yet another example of "the house always wins." Bowman is a compelling, interseting candidate but Engel has a strong and admirable record of service -- in a sense, they both deserve to win.

But only one will. If Engel does, it'll certainly be a huge blow to the DSA crowd but, if Bowman wins, it'll super-charge the progessive challengers in cycles to come -- and change the face and policies of the NYC congressional delegation for years and perhaps decades to come.

Whitestone, Queens - June 13th, 2020, 12:11 PM

Review: "Vanilla Sky" (2001)

Today I saw a big article on NYC movies. Obviously there are tons of NYC movies and, when I review one here, I try not to review the big famous ones -- instead, I look for the forgotten or overlooked NYC movies, trying to make my meagre audience aware of those they might have missed. Like this article indicates, I also try to review movies that give you a sense of the city, a feeling of living and experiencing it -- not just where the city is used as a convenient, familiar backdrop.

One such example is Vanilla Sky.

A few weeks ago I blogged something that included a clip from the 2001 Tom Cruise movie where he is driving around a deserted Manhattan, stops in an empty Times Square, gets out of his car, starts running, then stops and yells into the (not exactly vanilla) sky. We learn later on that this moment was probably some kind of technical glitch in an artificial dream that he is living through --  and that is apparently the plot of the movie.

I say "apparently the plot of the movie" because, to be honest, the plot makes no friggin' sense. Tom Cruise plays a guy very much like ... Tom Cruise: handsome, rich, famous, lots of broads (one too many as it turns out) who gets into a car crash, messes up his face, gets accussed of murder ... and then, from there on, it becomes a weird heady trip.

This movie was on the back-end of a trend that really started in 1999 with movies like The Sixth Sense, Fight Club, and Being John Malkovich where the entire reality of the story, the world the movie is set in, gets totally undermind and flipped around. But instead of using this plot-twist once, Vanilla Sky tries to outdo them but have numerous "reality redefining" moments and you get nice and confused until you don't care anymore and you don't really understand what the "vanilla sky" is or why we should care and then Kurt Russell shows up as some kind of psychiatrist/interrogator and Cameron Diaz gets to look hot and act crazy and Penelope Cruz gets to look hot and get naked and a bunch of other really good actors spend their time telling Tom Cruise that he's an asshole and, yeah, that's about it.

But it's still a great NYC movie -- the city is not only lovingly rendered, it becomes a real character in the movie, the filmmakers give you a great sense of life in the city. I also have a personal love for this movie -- in the scene where Tom Cruise and Cameron Diaz are driving around (she's busting his balls because she believe that once a guy sleeps with a woman, he owes the lady his entire soul -- and presumably money), and then she drives off the 96th street overpass on Riverside Drive. During this scene they drive past the building I grew up in -- so that was cool.

Anyway, see Vanilla Sky, preferably in an inebriated state, because then you might understand it better. 

Oh, btw, Tom Cruise couldn't drive into Times Square and yell anymore -- in 2007, the city turned most of it into a pedestrian plaza so now he'd have to go yell elsewhere.

Black Lives Matter Solidarity Bicycle Protest

Review: "Sea of Love" & "Crimes and Misdemeanors" (1989)

The fall of 1989 was an eventful time -- not unlike now. Communism in Eastern Europe and the Berlin Wall were collapsing. Apartheid was drawing to a close in South Africa. Here in NYC there was a legendary election raging between three men who had and would be Mayor -- Ed Koch, David Dinkins, and Rudy Giuliani. And our movie theaters saw the debut of two classic NYC crime thrillers: Sea of Love and Crimes and Misdemeanors. Watching them again after 30 years, they more than hold up -- they are examples of great storytelling, brilliant acting, peaks in the arcs of historic careers, and wonderful NYC movies. Despite being thrillers, and being very different movies, they have one big thing in common: they are studies in the trials and tribulations of becoming middle-aged.

Sea of Love: Al Pacino stars as a Manhattan cop named Frank Keller. He's a classic movie detective: getting older, divorced, drinking problem, wondering if he should "put in his papers" to retire at "his 20" (years on the force that is), and generally depressed about his life. Meanwhile he's investigating a series of murders -- men who had answered personal ads turning up dead, shot in the head. The latest victim had a 45 record playing when he was found -- "Sea of Love." Frank and his new partner Sherman (investigating a similar murder in Queens) start an undercover operation where they will place a personal ad in the paper, meet up with women at a restaurant, and then take the glasses from the dates to swab them for prints. They hope that this will link them with the killer. But then Frank meets a woman named Helen on one of these dates -- and they fall for each other, hard. Suddenly Frank finds a new unexpected love, a new joie de vivre, but there continue to be more murders and Helen starts to look more and more guilty -- until he finds out the truth and solves the case. (I remember the tagline for this movie: "He's found somone who's either the love of his life ... or the end of it!").

This movie was a big deal for Al Pacino -- his career had been in decline for most of the 1980s, after his triumphs of the 1970s and early '80s (think The Godfather to Scarface period). Sea of Love was his comeback, a big hit that started the next act of his career. Meanwhile John Goodman was breaking out from Roseanne and his performance as Sherman made him a big movie actor too. Ellen Barkin was a star then too, and few performances are as sexy and frightening as her's in this movie. What's fascinating about this movie is that, while it's certainly a sexy thriller, it's also a working class NYC movie, set largely on a still-then middle-class Upper West Side. It's both extremely familiar and also exotic -- it's about becoming middle age, trying to find a new happiness, figuring out life, working hard for a living while also trying to find excitement and thrills. 

Crimes and Misdeameanors: Woody Allen has made nearly 50 movies, many of them great. This may very well be his masterpiece. Woody has directed numerous comedies and a few dramas but this was his first movie to combine both comedy and drama. In fact, the movie contains two stories -- one comic, one tragic -- and the endings of each make them come together in a way you wouldn't expect. The drama centers around a man named Judah (played by Martin Landeau who got an Oscar nomination for it), an extremely successful eye doctor who has recently overseen the opening of a new opthalmology wing at a hospital. But Judah has a dark secret: he has been conducting an affair for a few years with a former airline stewardess (a scary Angelica Huston) who is making increasingly desperate demands that Judah leave his wife or else she'll confront his entire family about his adultery and also reveal his financial chicaneries. Judah calls up his brother Jack -- a dissolute character with underworld connections -- who sets up a hit to kill the mistress. Will Judah get caught and the scheme unravel? You need to see the movie to find out! Meanwhile, the comic story concerns a man named Cliff (played by Woody), a struggling documentary filmmaker who also has a failing marriage (although no mistress) who is making a TV special on his very successful brother-in-law, a pompous Harvey Weinstein-like producer named Lester. One of the producers on the TV special is a woman named Hailey who both Cliff and Lester fall for -- will she choose either man or reject both of them? Again, you need to see the movie to find out! And how do the stories relate, one makes them link-up? Again, only Woody Allen would make the connecting character a rabbi who's going blind ...

Woody Allen is not only one of our greatest directors -- he's also probably the most brilliant screenwriters of all time (he's been nominated for more screenplay Oscars than anyone in history). The Crimes and Misdemeanors script is perfect -- specifically the way that these seemingly unrelated stories are interrcut and made to relate to each other, the tightness and swiftness of the plots, the enormous amount of character development and emotional complexity in a few lines of dialogue, it is simply the best kind of storytelling you can ever encounter. The major overarching theme of this movie is seeing -- looking at what's in front of you and also trying to see something that may or may not be there. This is a movie, in some ways, about people who are looking not only for love but also for mercy and justice and order in the world -- a kind of God -- and not finding it. I remember reading that this is the movie where Woody looked for God and "found Him not there." This movie won't make you find God (in fact, his absence will only be confirmed) but you will certainly see a truly great movie by one of NYC's best filmmakers.