Theater Review: Bay Area Musicals presents Crazy for You – A Delightfully Charming Gershwin Classic

Danielle Altizio (Polly) and Conor Devoe (Bobby) dance to save the town. Photo Courtesy of Jonathan White, 2018.

New York City banker Bobby Child (Conor Devoe) has a dream — dancing dreams — but his parents just aren’t having it. Neither is his fiancée, Irene (Morgan Peters), who’s wondering why they’ve been engaged for five years without wedding bells… and she’s understandably at her wit’s end. His parents’ plan is to send him to Deadrock, Nevada to foreclose a rundown theater. His plan is to dance for the acclaimed artistic director Bela Zangler (Tony Michaels), but one quick mishap during an impromptu audition and he’s on the first train to Deadrock. Continue reading “Theater Review: Bay Area Musicals presents Crazy for You — A Delightfully Charming Gershwin Classic”

Album review: John Grant’s Love is Magic

 

John Grant, the individual, is remarkable; he began his musical training at age four, and, prior to becoming a working indie rock star, with his band The Czars, had worked as Russian-English medical translator. He speaks four languages, and spent his childhood in Colorado, where he grew up in a religious family, and came out as gay in his twenties. He has struggled with addiction, and continues to struggle with severe anxiety. He is intense, wry, smart, and neurotic, and these traits inform his music. Continue reading “Album review: John Grant’s Love is Magic“

Film Review: Widows

Men … and their messes

From left: Elizabeth Debicki, Viola Davis, Michele Rodriguez, and Cynthia Erivo in Widows

Steve McQueen’s new film Widows opens high above a modern Chicago, in a lofty lovers paradise of pearly white sheets, bodies in contact, and a feeling of time standing still. It’s a cunning and perplexing opening. It leads us to place of hope and optimism, and sets us up for the dark brutality to follow.

Passion gives way to the realities of the day, and Veronica (Viola Davis) and her husband Harry (Liam Neeson) part ways, she to her job as a school district administrator, and he to his gang’s heist of two million dollars.

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Film Review: The Front Runner

Reitman’s take on Hart/Rice scandal worth a look

Presidential candidate Gary Hart (Hugh Jackman) faces intense media scrutiny after rumors of an extramarital affair surface.

To watch The Front Runner is to be amazed at how much the political climate has changed in 30 years. Back then, the well-regarded, young, smart, Kennedy-esque Colorado senator Gary Hart, widely considered the front runner for the Democratic nomination, had his campaign derailed by just the whiff of an extramarital affair. Fast forward to today, and a candidate with multiple accusations of affairs harassment, and vulgar language has no problem staying in the race, and, ultimately, winning. How far we’ve come. But director Jason Reitman’s (Young Adult; Juno; Up in the Air) new film is less a treatise on changing public perception, and more a study of how journalism has changed, opening the door to what is now considered acceptable and expected scrutiny of candidates’ private lives. And for that, the film is worth seeing.
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Spinning Platters Interview: Annakalmia Traver of Rubblebucket

Rubblebucket are a soul flavored indie pop band from Brooklyn, NY. They recently released a brilliant record called Sun Machine, and are currently on the road supporting this album. Spinning Platters had the opportunity to chat with lead singer / trumpeter Kal Traver ahead of this tour, and here’s what we talked about!

Rubblebucket are playing August Hall on November 7th with the brilliant Diet Cig opening! Tickets are still available here! Continue reading “Spinning Platters Interview: Annakalmia Traver of Rubblebucket”

Film Review: Bohemian Rhapsody

Queen’s front man gets the Hollywood treatment

Queen, and their subjects, during Live Aid, July, 1985.

Bohemian Rhapsody, the new film about the English ’70’s and ’80’s supergroup Queen, is a lot like band’s output: overwrought, overproduced, painfully bombastic, and musically too self-conscious. But, like those songs we all know, the film has an undeniable energy and vibrancy, and is so technically consistent that one can’t help but feel satisfied, if a bit played. Continue reading “Film Review: Bohemian Rhapsody“

Theater Review: Danville Village Theatre Presents Jon Robin Baitz’s Other Desert Cities

From l. to r.: Silda (Sally Hogarty), Trip (Micah Watterson), Brooke (Emily Keyishian), Lyman (Christian Phillips), and Polly (Christine Macomber). Photo by Marian Bliss, 2018.

Writer Brooke Wyeth (Emily Keyishian) has come home after a long hiatus to reveal her new novel to her family. Settled in Palm Springs, with conservative values, the Wyeths harbor a plethora of family secrets. It’s all water under the bridge as they go through the motions of their daily lives, secluded in an affluent neighborhood where they appear indestructible. Brooke’s novel threatens to shatter this peaceful image. And so the drama unfolds, as each member fights to keep their secrets under wraps. Continue reading “Theater Review: Danville Village Theatre Presents Jon Robin Baitz’s Other Desert Cities“

Treasure Island Music Festival 2018 Journal

The Treasure Island Music Festival has, historically, been the last hurrah of summer. Taking place in the middle of October (or late September), it’s usually sunny and a great way to let go of the carefree warm months, before we all have to buckle to the stress of the holiday season.

Sadly, they had to take 2017 off. Even sadder was that, due to maintenance on the island, Treasure Island, for the first time, had to move from its namesake venue. We ended up drifting east a few knots to the shores of Oakland, to a beach in the middle of West Oakland’s warehouse district called Middle Harbor Park. Continue reading “Treasure Island Music Festival 2018 Journal”

Theater Review: Ubuntu Theater Presents Michael Moran’s Passion Project: Hamlet

R. to L. : Hamlet (Michael Moran), Horatio (Ogie Zulueta), and Claudius (Rolf Saxon) duke it out. Photo courtesy of Simone Finney, 2018.

At the Flight Deck in Oakland, on a raised plank in the middle of an oblong stage, sits Michael Moran’s Hamlet. Eerie vocalizations surround him as provided by a cast of thirty actors. The entire action takes place in this space in a modern retelling of William Shakespeare’s popular tragedy about Denmark’s grieving prince. Continue reading “Theater Review: Ubuntu Theater Presents Michael Moran’s Passion Project: Hamlet“

Festival Review: Adult Swim Festival 2018 (DTLA)

Adult Swim Takes Over The Row

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Coming off of a whirlwind Wasteland Weekend experience mere days before, I grabbed my camera and jumped right in to Adult Swim’s inaugural Adult Swim Festival. Taking place in DTLA’s The Row next to the now vacant American Apparel factory, the festival showcased Adult Swim’s animation and television series while musicians and comedians who have worked in some capacity with the company, performed back to back on two cat-themed stages across the long stretch of pavement from each other. The next two days were jam packed with non-stop entertainment featuring a plethora of artists that I was experiencing for the first time both sonically and visually.

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