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Steppenwolf Redeems Broadway

I don't think it'd be an exaggeration to proclaim AUGUST: OSAGE COUNTY the most hard-hitting play since Tennessee Williams' A STREET CAR NAMED DESIRE. This three-hour drama will keep your necks craned over the rows in front of you as this family responds to its patriarch's suicide and matriarch's prescription-drug addiction by whipping out all the psychological knives of emotional murder. Broadway languished in mediocrity for years on end before Letts came along in 2007 to spring it back into action. I can't wait to see his new one, SUPERIOR DONUTS, when I visit the Steppenwolf Theatre in Chicago next month.

Slow Moving to Fevered Pitch

Just got back from seeing the New York premiere of Guillaume Canet’s Tell No One (Ne Le Dis a Personne) at BAM (Brooklyn Academy of Music). I’m not a mystery buff, but wow! If you can get through the tortoise-like, Paris-cafe pace of the first half of the movie, you’ve got yourself the biggest nail-biter since BLOOD SIMPLE. The blood and guts might be hard for some to take, but Alexandre Beck's character is both as hapless and heroic as any protagonist in Hitchcock's body of work. Perhaps this is what inspired actor Michael Caine to call TELL NO ONE the best film he'd ever seen aired on the BBC.

Exquisite Tie-Up of Plot Lines

I will admit that I went to see SEX & THE CITY, THE MOVIE with the same morbid curiosity with which one gapes at a 12-car pile-up on the highway. I was a huge fan of the series, but I did not know how well it would translate to screen. Would they just be dragging the corpses of the old cast out for a final song and dance?

I am happy to say that my pessimism was proven ridiculously wrong. Carrie's agony and attempts to rebuild her life after Big rejects her at the altar were rendered with such exquisite pathos that it made her comeback all the more triumphant. It also takes a lot of talent and skill for writers, directors and actors to be able to make an audience's heart go out to an adulterer like Steve - and this made Steve's contrition and Miranda's long-awaited forgiveness all the more poignant. I loved how Charlotte had found happiness in adopting Lily, only to find that she and Harry had conceived another child after being told they couldn't - and this made all of her pratfalls (series one to six) on her way to the picture book life all the more meaningful. Finally, Samantha actually gives her relationship with Smith the best of all possible shots - and this shows a marked transformation of the nympho who went through men like magazines.

Jennifer Hudson's character brings a breath of fresh air into Carrie's storm-tossed world. The only thing is, they never explained how Stanford and Anthony, who were arch enemies, became lovers.

Still and all, I would go so far as to give the movie, which could stand on its own apart from the series, an "A" (even if I'm just giving it extra credit for not disappointing me).