BLAZE THE SHOW - PREVIEW BY JOE CALLERI

WHAT - BLAZE THE SHOW

WHERE – THE ARTS CENTRE, MELBOURNE, HAMER HALL

WHEN – WEDNESDAY 23 JANUARY 2013 TO SUNDAY 27 JANUARY 2013

REVIEWER + PHOTOGRAPHER - JOE CALLERI

Blaze The Show performers - by Joe Calleri.

Lovers of contemporary, high concept, big budget, dance spectaculars are in for a special treat when they attend internationally renowned, Blaze The Show, which forms part of the Arts Centre’s summer season of specially curated shows.

With its lightning paced, eye-popping, jaw-dropping dance routines performed by beautifully muscled dancers, Blaze The Show, which has already played to audiences in more than 7 countries, and 100 cities around the world, is likely to appeal to a wide range of audiences.

The show is directed by Anthony Van Laast, best known for choreographing the stage and movie versions of the smash hit musical, Mamma Mia. It also boasts a stunning, industrial set design by Es Devlin, designer of stages for superstar performers, including Kanye West and Lady Gaga, and which consists of floor to ceiling drawers, filing cabinets, television sets and even a bath tub.

Blaze The Show performers - by Joe Calleri.

The dance routines are set to an eclectic musical mix by performers including Kanye West, and Michael Jackson.

At the media call, we enjoyed two dance routines. The first sequence, Hip Hop by the Blaze B-Boys, comprises a rapid fire series of neck-snapping head spins, and back flips performed by four muscular performer in their brightly coloured track suits.

The second dance sequence, Wii, choreographed by Mike Song, is described as a Pop and Lock routine involving 10 contemporary street dancers, some dressed in glowing sunglasses, gloves and t-shirts, performing a high energy routine, some of it under ultra violet lighting.

Blaze The Show performers - by Joe Calleri.

I later interviewed Blaze The Show’s charming, Luxembourg-born and London-trained dance captain and choreographer, Kendra Horsburgh, who shared with me some insights into the performers and her teaching style.

The dancers, aged between 21 and 34, represent a veritable foreign legion, coming from Holland, France, Luxembourg, Australia, the United Kingdom, United States, Portugal, and Denmark.

Horsburgh, who has previously performed as a dancer with Blaze The Show, explained how she keeps the performers fresh especially when they are touring for months at a time. She stressed the importance of the performers receiving good quality sleep, and nutrition and the benefits of warm ups and cool downs.

Horsburgh also revealed how she keeps the show looking fresh, by breaking down complex dance routines into micro steps, and by constantly asking her dancers whether they are comfortable with the demanding routines they are performing. Consequently, the dancers enjoy their routines more. The enjoyment felt by the dancers on stage is palpable.

But, it was Horsburgh’s comment regarding egos that I found most interesting and refreshing. There are no egos with her performers, Horsburgh said. She explained to me she is very careful when auditioning dancers to select only those who do not bring their egos onto the stage.

So, bust your own moves, Melbourne, and enjoy the audacious dance skills on display at Blaze The Show.

Zero Dark Thirty – Movie Review by Joe Calleri.

What: Zero Dark Thirty – Movie Review

Reviewer: Joe Calleri
Stars: 2 and a half.

Running at well over two and a half hours, and covering a ten-year timeline commencing from the September 11, 2001 attacks upon the United States, director Kathryn Bigelow’s latest movie, Zero Dark Thirty (the title derives, apparently, from a military term meaning half past midnight), traces the United States government’s near impossible, needle in a haystack search for Al-Qaeda bogeyman, Osama Bin Laden.

Maya (Jessica Chastain) is the movie’s heroine and central character, and one of the CIA operatives completely obsessed with and immersed in the task of finding Bin Laden – it would appear, at all costs. Her life, it appears, revolves entirely around this one monumental task. The search, unsurprisingly, exposes Maya, and the other CIA operatives engaged on the task, to enormous personal risks. Some CIA operatives and US military personnel, pay the ultimate price for the search with their lives.

Movie-goers should be warned that, the movie features several lengthy, unnecessarily graphic and realistically gruesome scenes of torture upon Al-Qaeda suspected terrorists by CIA operatives, conducted at various CIA Black Sites scattered around the northern hemisphere. I understand that, Bigelow and writer, Mark Boal, have – quite rightly in my view - attracted stinging criticism for the highly detailed torture scenes in the movie.

Those with squeamish dispositions, or who hold strong views and an aversion to the systematic, and state-approved torture of political prisoners and detainees, should certainly avoid this movie. 

This movie will alienate many moviegoers, especially those expecting a conventional, shoot ‘em up, action/adventure, in the style of the far more exciting, but altogether fictional “Navy Seals”, or “Delta Force”.

Audiences will find they have to wait patiently for almost two hours for the actual SEAL assault upon Osama Bin Laden’s Pakistan compound. Australians Joel Edgerton and Callan Mulvey, portray two of the anonymous US NAVY SEAL’s (incidentally, since the Disney Corporation owns the copyright to the terms “SEAL’s” and the now defunct “SEAL Team Six”, there is, frustratingly, no specific mention in this movie to those special warfare units) involved in the assault upon Bin Laden’s lair.

Strangely, one of the most compelling aspects of the assault upon the compound – the actual detailed planning of the assault - is strangely, all but glossed over by the film-makers.

And, when the assault finally occurs, many movie-goers will be decidedly underwhelmed by the slow, deliberate, unemotional, quasi-documentary style that Bigelow has decided to direct and shoot this lengthy sequence. Some viewers may also be shocked by the graphic, realistic depictions of the SEAL’s assassinating several men and women who were occupying the Bin Laden compound at the time of the assault. The SEAL’s shoot corpses repeatedly to ensure they are in fact, deceased.

The eventual assassination of Bin Laden – controversially, this movie makes it clear that, the US government’s specific instructions to the SEAL’s were to “kill”, rather than “kill or capture”, Bin Laden - is, consequently, hugely anti-climactic.

So, what to make of this ponderous, slow-moving, humourless film? Well, in my view, since it lacks sufficient hard, military, boys-own, kick-ass action, it fails as a pure action/adventure movie. And, since it appears to sits on the fence regarding the touchy, complex issue of state-sanctioned torture and the assassination of enemies of the state, it also fails as a political thriller. Zero Dark Thirty, then, is one of those confounding, frustrating movies that is doomed to exist in its own bubble of mediocrity.

 

Cirque Du Soleil’s OVO - Review by Joe Calleri

What: Cirque Du Soleil’s OVO

Venue and Dates: January 17 to March 24, 2013, Grand Chapiteau at Docklands .
Reviewer: Joe Calleri
Stars: 4

Watching Cirque Du Soleil’s latest uber production, OVO, with a full-house audience under the Grand Chapiteau at Melbourne’s Docklands, I was reminded of why many enjoy eating a MacDonald’s meal overseas: regardless of which country you may be in, you know exactly what you will get, and how your meal will taste. Therein lays one of the essential dilemmas for OVO: you are left with a gnawing, slightly uncomfortable, déjà vu-type feeling that you have seen and heard this production before – only performed with different costumes and on a different set.

We embark on a fantastic voyage into a world occupied on this occasion by a variety of brightly coloured insects. Audiences will be highly impressed with Gringo Cardia’s colourful, versatile, set design (especially three giant flowers with their opening petals, that I thought were grossly under-utilised during the production), and by the beautiful intricacies of Liz Vandal’s insect-inspired costume design.

As is usual with Cirque’s shows, the story line – for this production, something to do with a giant egg (hence the title of the show) - goes nowhere, and provides the barest of connecting tissue for the stunning, refined, jaw-dropping skills displayed by Cirque’s performers.

Two acts that I thought deserved special mention were the remarkable Diablo routine performed by Tony Frebourg, and Julaiti Ailati’s slackwire act.

On the down-side, at well over two hours, this production is overly long, and could easily do without the usual Cirque comedy routines performed by the MC who utters gibberish and the cutesy audience involvement.

Ultimately, OVO represents high-end, high- concept, big-budget entertainment that 21^st century audiences demand for their hard-earned entertainment dollar. However, OVO also suffers from the malady of most modern day blockbusters, in that while it possesses off-the chart light, sound and visual spectacle values, it lacks any soul and meaningful connection with its audience.

Jersey Boys - Review and photos by Joe Calleri.

Jersey Boys - Book by Rick Elice and Marshall Brickman, lyrics by Bob Crewe, music by Bob Gaudio

Melbourne Premiere – Saturday, 12 January, 2013

Stars:             5

Review by: Joe Calleri

Great stage musicals possess wonderful, magical and transformative powers. For two hours we forget all that is wrong with the world and become hypnotised by a carefully crafted creation replete with bright lights, toe-tapping show tunes and militarily precise choreography. Jersey Boys, which makes a most welcome return to the Princess Theatre after a three-year absence, ticks the boxes for a great musical. It remains one of the very few show that deserves its 5-star rating, and that, I unreservedly recommend to the public that they support with their hard-earned money.

A quartet of charming, charismatic, enormously talented performers led by Canadian-born Jeff Madden (Frankie Valli), Anthony Harkin (Tommy DeVito), Declan Egan (Bob Gaudio) and Glaston Toft (who plays Nick Massi, and is the only returning performer from the 2009 season) portray the improbable, rags to riches Jersey Boys who, in 1960, formed the singing group The Four Lovers. They later evolved into The Four Seasons, whose timeless melodies including Sherry, Can’t Take My Eyes Off You, Rag Doll, Walk Like A Man, sell millions of records, transforming our Jersey Boys into multi-millionaires. That’s the American Dream, right?

Besides a charming, all-singing, all-dancing cast, this finely tuned production owes its success thanks to the stirring book written by Rick Elice and Marshall Brickman, catchy lyrics by the largely underestimated Bob Crewe, toe-tapping music by wizard Bob Gaudio, frisky direction by Des McAnuff and vivid, Roy Lichtenstein-inspired set design by Klara Zieglerova. I’ve added some of the images I took during the media call for the show, so you get a sense of its style and color.

This musical follows a clever narrative arc and linear time-line, as we follow our four protagonists through their own personal four seasons as they endure, and survive the gamut of friendship and betrayal, doomed love affairs, band creations and break ups, petty crime, prison time, problem gambling, and various run-ins with the gangsters, with the law, and with record producers. But, it’s the superb music of The Four Seasons that punctuates this narrative, and this production crams a staggering thirty-four musical numbers into its running time. Trust me when I say you get your money’s worth!

By the time the Jersey Boys perform Who Loves You, the audience already knows the resounding answer – Melbourne loves you, baby! 

 

Declan Egan as the forward-thinking, musical wizz-kid, Bob Gaudio - by Joe Calleri

Jeff Madden as Frankie Valli

(L) Michael Griffiths as Bob Crewe, (R) Brent Trotter (Sound Engineer and other roles).

(L) to (R) - Declan Egan (Bob Gaudio), Jeff Madden (Frankie Valli), Anthony Harkin (Tommy DeVito), Glaston Toft (Nick Massi).

(L) to (R) - Declan Egan (Bob Gaudio), Jeff Madden (Frankie Valli), Anthony Harkin (Tommy DeVito), Glaston Toft (Nick Massi).

This is 40 - Movie review by Joe Calleri.

What:                             This is 40.

Distributor:                   Universal Pictures
Reviewer:                      Joe Calleri
Stars:                              Half a star.

Running at a mind-numbing 134 minutes – yes, you read that right – Judd Apatow’s latest cinematic offering, “This is 40”, should be re-titled “This is Freaking Interminable”.

In an era where the majority of Hollywood films run for 90 minutes or less – film producers know their audiences have notoriously short attention spans - there is just not enough substance to the flimsy, silly plot to justify Apatow stretching this film out to such epic proportions. By comparison, the latest James Bond film “Skyfall” runs a mere 9 minutes longer.

Seriously, this film smells worse than Paul Rudd’s on-screen farts, and is desperately in need of so many repairs including savage editing, drastic re-writing and peppier direction. As writer, director, and producer, Apatow should stand in the dunce’s corner as punishment for failing to elicit even the tiniest of smirks, let alone a laugh of any description from this movie.

The plot for this film could easily have come from one of my all-time favourite television shows, “Thirtysomething”.

Pete (Paul Rudd) and Debbie (Leslie Mann) are a rather uninteresting, highly dislikeable, self-absorbed, upper middle class, married couple, who live a seemingly comfortable life in an undisclosed town in America (more on this conundrum below), with two equally smug, self-absorbed daughters, Charlotte, 8 and Sadie, 13, portrayed respectively by Iris and Maude Apatow. The girls are cute, and competent enough actresses, I guess. For Judd Apatow, there’s nothing like keeping things in the family.

Pete and Debbie are facing their respective 40^th birthdays during the same week. Judging by their reactions to what should be an enjoyable occasion with much to celebrate, you would think they have been told they have each a week to live. Turning 40 is, according to Pete and Debbie, so terrible that, the couple turn on each other and everyone around them.

As each minute of this movie ground on, I cared less and less about the couple, their children, their friends and families, and dwelled more and more on the many elements in this movie that confounded and frustrated me:

With the exception of Debbie’s gynaecologist, Dr Pellegrino (Tim Bagley), why don’t any of the characters possess surnames?

I touched on this earlier in this review, but, where the heck precisely is this movie set? Last time I checked, Christmas in the United States means cold, snowy weather. Not in Judd world, it’s not. How else could he have conjured up an excuse for Desi (Megan Fox) to swim around in a pool in her bikini? Yes, guys and gals, if you like ogling Megan Fox in various states of undress, then this movie is for you.

How could Debbie entrust the running of her fashion store to Desi and Jodi (Charlyne Yi)? The two girls appear to possess single-figure IQ’s and the morals of alley cats. Desi, we discover is an escort, who can’t count how many men she sees a year, while Jodi is addicted to Oxycontin, and has stolen $10,000.00 from Debbie as a “cry for help”. And, just why does Jodi speak like Gollum when confronted by Debbie over the theft? Does Debbie hand Jodi to the police? Nope. And, why is the plain-looking, bespectacled Asian girl the thief?

How the heck have Albert Brooks (as Peter’s father, Larry) and John Lithgow (as Debbie’s father, Oliver) pulled younger brides and sired young families? In Larry’s case, he has fathered identical blonde triplets. Larry and Oliver are hardly scintillating, athletic sorts. I guess that, older men and younger women must be an Apatow fantasy.

Why is everyone so nasty to each other, and so potty mouthed in this movie? Pete and Debbie even describe their daughters as “bitches”. Let’s pause a moment and remember that, Apatow wrote the script for this movie, so does he regard his own daughters in the same denigrating way?

Memo to Judd Apatow: Who remembers Graham Parker? And, as Graham Parker can’t act to save himself, why give him so much on-screen time?

The scene when Debbie brutally bullies and threatens Joseph, one of Sadie’s teenage classmates is vile. Equally vile is a later scene, when Catherine properly confronts Pete regarding Debbie’s bullying behaviour towards Joseph, and Pete goes to town on Catherine, poking her in the chest to express his displeasure over Catherine’s accusations.

Who thought it a good idea to include an outtake of the uber potty mouthed Melissa McCarthy (as Catherine) spewing her filth at the end of the movie? Had we not suffered enough already?

If you want to watch a heart-warming, genuinely funny, and entertaining cinematic depiction of dysfunctional family life, do yourself a favour and rent or download a copy of Ron Howard’s “Parenthood”.

 

Jack Reacher - Movie Review

What:                                            Jack Reacher

Reviewer:                                     Joe Calleri
Stars:                                             2.5

I confess from the outset that my wife and I recently saw Jack Reacher to kill (and I use the term advisedly) a couple of hours and to escape the coastal summer heat.

This is a rather well made, paint by numbers, “safe” crime / thriller movie that breaks no new cinematic ground. You will get the nagging feeling you have seen all of this before, but only with different actors and, possibly, done better.

So, let’s get to the story-line:

Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. 5 innocent people are slain by a lone gunman. The killings bear all the hallmarks of a professional hit. An ex-military sniper (Joseph Sikora as James Barr) is captured by David Oyelowo’s Detective Emerson. Barr implores the police and District Attorney, Alex Rodin (played by Richard Jenkins) to “Get Jack Reacher”. Enter – almost magically - Tom Cruise as Jack Reacher, a former US Army Military Police major, who joins forces with Helen Rodin (UK actress Rosamund Pike), daughter of DA Rodin, who is tasked with defending Barr. Reacher and Helen Rodin soon uncover a murky, bloody, violent conspiracy led by a character called The Zec (scarily played by Werner Herzog) to take over a construction company.

Those who are squeamish when it comes to graphic and gratuitous depictions of on-screen violence should avoid this film and save their hard-earned dollars. I was, frankly, uncomfortable with the many scenes of violence – characters are disposed of by being shot or, in the case of a young girl, Sandy, suffocated. Sandy’s murder and dumping by one of the rather anonymous villains in this film, is unnecessarily gruesome and gratuitous.

But, it is the opening sequence of carefully calculated mass murder by a sniper that, coming so soon after the Newtown shootings, I found most confronting and objectionable. I understand the producers delayed the release of this film by one day out of respect to the memories of the victims of the Newtown killer. Galling tokenism.

There are many other violent scenes of this film that I will not discuss, save to say that, it is in my view, lazy film-making to substitute plot and character development with another fight, or killing, or car chase. Sure, the car chase is lengthy and impressive enough, and most movie-goers are probably already aware of Cruise’s car handling prowess. But, so what?

Besides a plot that is hard to follow and fathom (just why are the villains so desperate to take control of the construction company?), one of the other problems with this movie is the casting of Cruise as Jack Reacher. For anyone who has read Lee Child’s novels (this movie is based on Child’s novel “One Shot”), they will know that Jack Reacher is 6’5” tall. One thing Tom Cruise is not is 6’5” tall! So, the producers have assumed that, most viewers will not give a damn that, so much artistic licence has been taken with the casting of Cruise.

Rosamund Pike is serviceable eye candy and the second of the two token females in this film. The first, of course, is Sandy. There is the barest hint of any romantic entanglement between her character and Reacher. God forbid the producers introduce anything resembling a human relationship into the movie.

So, there you have it. Another ultra-violent, unimaginative, Hollywood crime / thriller. I for one, hope that this movie does not launch its own movie franchise.

 

WAR HORSE - Review and photos by Joe Calleri

What:                                        WAR HORSE                  

Venue and Dates:                   The Arts Centre, Melbourne Season: Dec 23, 2012 to March 3, 2013
Reviewer:                                 Joe Calleri
Stars:                                         4

Move over Phar Lap, Makybe Diva, and Black Caviar! A new equine hero has arrived in Melbourne to tear at your heart (and purse) strings. Finally, the all-conquering, multi-award winning, box office busting, War Horse, snorts, gallops and rears onto the Melbourne Arts Centre stage.

Based on the 1982 children’s book by the same name by British author, Michael Morpurgo, the relatively straightforward love / obsession story is easily condensed – In Devon, 1912, a boy (Albert) meets and falls in love with a part thoroughbred, part draught horse (Joey), the horse is sold by Albert’s father to the British army and goes to World War One, boy follows horse to war, horse is injured, boy is injured, both survive and meet again, happy, tender ending ensues.

Countless movies and television programs including National Velvet, My Friend Flicka, Lassie, The Littlest Hobo, Flipper, The Lone Ranger, even Skippy, to name a few, are examples of the seemingly perennially popular buddy / animal / creature genre. Let’s face it: most of us own, love and communicate with, our pets.

So, where does War Horse fit in to this latter genre? Well, given that, the on-stage horses are wonderfully devised, constructed and realised creatures, manipulated by several highly skilful puppeteers, we can file this production under a new buddy / creature genre – just like E.T, and, I predict, 2013’s King Kong.  

The true stars of this production are the unseen technical wizards who through their skill, hard work and wonderfully slavish attention to detail have created these wonderful, life-size, life-like horses (when the horses are on-stage, you quickly forget the human presence), and the remarkably versatile back drop that resembles a roughly torn page from a sketch book, that screens beautifully drawn animations, including thunderous, dramatic battle scenes.

But, for all of its marvellous technical virtues, and, sadly, like most modern blockbusters, War Horse suffers in two key areas.

When visual spectacle becomes the producer’s god, expect story and characterisations to be put in the back seat and told to sit down and be quiet. The resulting story is, therefore, conventional and delivered in an easy to follow and linear, entree comes before main meal manner. Some audience members may leave the theatre with that slightly uneasy feeling that, they have seen and heard this story before, only told in a different context.  

Then there are the human characters, broad stereotypes that do not alter throughout the production. The outcome of this stereotyping is, in my view, often embarrassing: the British soldiers are good, heroic, stiff upper lips types, fighting nobly while on horseback with their swords drawn, while the German soldiers are cruel and barbaric fighting as they do with their nasty machine guns, barbed wire, planes, and tear gas.

So, while the horse puppets will prove a huge hit with audiences and provide the gee whiz factor that 21st century audiences so desperately crave, for all its visual impact and splendour, it’s unlikely this show will survive in your memory like, say, a Mary Poppins.