Movies Into Theater: "Dog Day Afternoon" Sweats It Out; "Spider-Man" Aims to Rock Out

Phil Nugent — Thu, 31 Jul 2008 17:00:00 GMT

Anyone with half a slice of ham in his DNA who's watched Al Pacino tearing it up in the 1975 Dog Day Afternoon has to have thought to himself, Man, that looks exciting. I'd love to have done that! That probably accounts for the current reincarnation of Dog Day Afternoon as a stage play performed by New York's Barefoot Theater Company. The production was written and directed by its star, Francisco Solorzano, who takes on the role of Sonny, the desperate but not dishonorable man who, with his dull-witted sidekick Sal (John Cazale in the movie, Jeremy Brena here), walks into a bank in Brooklyn on a sweltering August day in 1972, looking to stage a robbery to raise the money for his male lover's sex change operation and winds up at the center of a hostage drama that involves platoons of cops and cheering, jeering crowds getting off on the chaos and energy. (At times, as when--in a scene not duplicated in the play--Pacino's Sonny marches in front of the bank, pumping his arm and screaming "Attica! Attica!" while the crowd, looking for any reason to knock the police, roars its approval, he was practically the event's emcee.) In a half-hearted attempt to turn this into a real play instead of a chance to live the dream of starring in a beloved classic, Solorzano tinkers with the time frame and assigning the characters monologues to fill in some of the back story. The result is both more heartfelt and a lot less ingenious than the last big restaging of a movie on a New York stage, the four-member-cast high-camp version of Alfred Hitchcock's The 39 Steps. Dog Day Afternoon, which runs through August 15, is basically an actor's fantasy and a curiosity, but it may not be a bad way to kill a hot summer evening, especially for people who already have the movie well-memorized. But memories of Pacino, Cazle, Charles Durning, and Christopher Sarandon in the original continue to loom large.

In a glitzier section of the theater news department, auditions began this week for the Spider-Man musical that's planned for a fall 2009 opening. Nell Gluckman reports that the biggest news about the show so far is that it seems to be "attempting to bridge the gap between flashy musical theater and the firmly rooted New York rock scene. With music by Bono and The Edge of U2, the production's interest in a rock edge isn't a secret. But the producers and directors also seem to be cultivating a downtown vibe. Today's casting call is at the Knitting Factory, a venue with a history of performances of alternative music, booking bands such as Sonic Youth and Yo La Tengo in their early years." It sounds as if Spider-Man is looking to be the bridge between two emerging trends, the musical-based-on-a-movie (Legally Blonde) and the stage-musical-drawing-on-indie-rock--or at least, music that's closer to "real" rock than what you got with something like Hair--as typified by Spring Awakening and the Obie-Award-winning Passing Strange by the great, weird singer-songwriter Stew. One of the show's casting directors told Gluckman that, by making its presence felt at the Knitting Factory, the show hopes to attract some "people who haven't thought they should go out for a Broadway show." It remains to be seen whether their efforts will result in something that will attract people--as in, ticket buyers--who hadn't thought they'd be caught dead going out to a Broadway musical. But if there has to be a Spider-Man musical, it's sort of nice to know that the people mounting it have actually put some thought into anything besides getting the web-swinging effects to work.

Mike D'Angelo at Sundance: Part 9

Peter Smith — Fri, 25 Jan 2008 19:05:00 GMT

Mike D'Angelo reports from the Sundance Film Festival:

As the festival winds down, some quick notes on movies I didn't have time to address earlier. (I'm gonna include the walk-outs here, despite the wrath of one reader who believes that saying anything at all about a movie you didn't see from start to finish constitutes dereliction of duty. Obviously, you should take such judgments with a grain or two of salt — and maybe an entire shakerful in the case of Ballast, which I'll very likely see again, and in full, at some point. But at the same time, you can get a mighty strong sense of a film in thirty-five to forty minutes.)

Traces of the Trade: A Story From the Deep North (Documentary Competition): Painfully earnest young woman with unbearably whiny voice — she narrates, alas — discovers that her esteemed ancestors were slave traders, corrals nine relatives for self-indulgent journey to sore spots from the family's past. For hardcore aficionados of liberal white guilt only. (W/O)

Time Crimes (Park City at Midnight): I'm a sucker for time-travel stories, but even I had trouble warming to this Spanish gloss on 2004 Sundance prizewinner Primer, in which a middle-aged schlub travels ninety minutes into the past and finds himself engaged in unwitting battle with other versions of himself who've developed wildly divergent agendas. Ineptly directed, for the most part, and the concluding twist is singularly unsatisfying. Come back, Shane (Carruth).

The Wave (World Cinema Dramatic Competition): German filmmaker Dennis Gansel turns the true story of a high-school history experiment gone awry into a glossy, pulse-pounding thriller, employing methods almost as fascistic as those of The Wave itself. Intentional irony? One can't help but be riveted by the spectacle of ordinary teenagers willingly submitting to autocratic rule — their überhip teacher is attempting to demonstrate that the Nazis weren't anomalous monsters — but earmarking one kid as emotionally unstable from the get-go means that we're just twiddling our thumbs as we await the inevitable moment when he finally snaps.

What Just Happened? (Premieres): Hollywood made yet another mildly lacerating self-portrait, that's what. Loosely based on the memoirs of producer Art Linson (Fight Club, Into the Wild, several Mamet films), it boasts the most relaxed De Niro performance in ages and a smattering of truly hilarious jokes, most of them involving out-of-control entitlement. Too bad Bruce Willis, sporting a Grizzly Adams beard that he refuses to shave prior to the start of filming on a new picture, isn't nearly as funny as Alec Baldwin must have been in real life. (Read Linson's equally diverting book for the lowdown; it happened on 1997's The Edge.)

The Mysteries of Pittsburgh (Dramatic Competition): Michael Chabon's complicated first novel has been reduced (by Dodgeball's Rawson Marshall Thurber) to a simple bisexual love triangle, with two major characters — Arthur and Cleveland — melded into one, and another, the improbably named Phlox, distorted almost beyond recognition. And yet the movie still almost kinda works, mostly because Peter Sarsgaard commits himself so fully to his ludicrous bad-boy manipulator that we, like the dazed young protagonist, are completely taken in.

Downloading Nancy (Dramatic Competition): I'd had about enough of this repugnant exercise in nihilism at the point when Maria Bello, playing a masochistic housewife who's hired a stranger she found on the Internet (Jason Patric) to torture and kill her, walks barefoot into a mouse trap, over and over and over, shrieking with laughter each time it snaps on her toes. By all accounts from those who stuck it out, it gets much, much worse thereafter. At least the "revelation" that she was sexually abused as a child isn't saved for the final reel. (W/O)

The Screengrab : the edge

Movies Into Theater: "Dog Day Afternoon" Sweats It Out; "Spider-Man" Aims to Rock Out

Mike D'Angelo at Sundance: Part 9