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The Tube: About a year ago, I wrote about .V
Mildred Pierce, the five-part mmiseries starring
Kate Winslet and directed by Todd Haynes for
HBO, which had just finished airing at that
time. It was another in a series of benchmarks
that had established the cable network as a
major outlet for high-level creative work by
serious filmmaking talent, hoisting original
television programming up to a level at which
its 'cinematic* merits could be legitimately
evaluated. That run of artistic success has
continued with new series like 'Enlightened*
and 'Girls,* and the network hopes to have
another popular and critical hit on its hands
when Aaron Sorkin and Scott Rudin's *The
Newsroom* premieres later this month.
HBO has also invested quite a lot in its
parallel run of original feature films, which
has been given renewed attention of late with
the May 28 airing of its most recent install
ment, the Nicole Kidman and Clive Owen
blockbuster epic Hemingway £ Gellhom,
directed by Philip Kaufman. It's terrific, for
the record, with sensational performances by
both stars (especially Kidman, a great actress
in a role she clearly relishes) and highly atten
tive direction from Kaufman, whose signature
touch is a near-constant variation of the
image's color and grain. The frequent transi
tions—from widescreen 1 full color to a scratchy
'newsreel* look and back again, then to sol
emn sepia or blown-out Super 8—could have
been gimmicky and annoyingly obvious. But
Kaufman uses the technique to provide a sort
of personal commentary on the story—-and,
importantly, the history—-he's telling, giving
adjacent moments distinct tints, as it were,
often within continuous scenes and shots, and
Rob Reiner's We Princess Bride, featuring the esteemed Wallace Shawn, screens
June 15-17 at Cind as part of the Summer Family Classics Movie Series.
pointing toward questions about memory and
myth, not to mention media, whose process
of becoming their ubiquitous vehicle coincided
with the period being depicted. It's surpris
ingly affecting, and makes the film more than
it would otherwise have been.
The willingness of HBO management to
support eccentric stylistic choices like that
one by Kaufman, and, reportedly, to offer
directors an unusual level of creative freedom
across the board is nothing to sneeze at. But
it may be overstating the case to credit the
network with being a wide-open haven where
adventurous filmmakers can get personal proj
ects made with a minimum of interference.
For all their quality, HBO's feature films and
film-like miniseries tend overwhelmingly to
follow basic templates that have long been
established for TV movies: remakes and
adaptations (Angels in America; Grey Gardens;
Mildred Pierce; Cinema Verite), biopics (Temple
Grandin; You Don't Know Jade, Hemingway &
Gellhom) and topical docudramas (Recount;
Too Big to Fail; Game Change). Oddly but with
out a doubt, the area in which the network is^
most sincerely committed to mold-breaking
is its TV shows, not its feature films. Lena V
Dunham seems to be getting free rein with
'Girts**; iitfs hard to imagine HBO evert^bringing
Tiny Furniture to the gate.
V Summer Series Starting: As promised, Cin§
is going to keep the repertory programming
coming, the idea being that an art house
audience should expect a regular stream of
classic film offerings. This year's first two
repertory series, the Film Noir and For the
Love of Cinema, which commemorated Cinq's
fifth anniversary, were both terrific, and the
summer holds more riches. Starting in July
is the six-part Comedy Classics Series, which
will bring 35mm prints of City Lights, The
Philadelphia Story and Caddyshack, among oth
ers. And this weekend marks the beginning
of the Family Classics Series, which opens
Friday with The Princess Bride and contin
ues June 22 with The Muppet Movie. Family
Classics will be shown in 2 p.m. matinees
Friday through Sunday for each of the next
seven weeks. See www.athenscine.com for
more on both summer series.
More Cin& Bits: Bad Movie Night picks up
where it left off with a very special double
feature Tuesday, June 19: the angel dust
hysteria shocker Death Drug (starring
Philip Michael Thomas!) and the sensational
Christian cautionary tale Second Glance... The
Athfest FilmFest runs June 20-24, including
a program from V.H.S.:
Videographer's Hella-
Big Show and a new
lineup of Rock Docs.
The tatter hasn't been
finalized yet, but it
will include the locally
produced Georgia ;
Theatre documentary
Athens Burning. (Of
course, the other major
AthFest film event is
the Sprockets Music
Video Competition-
see p, 20 for details
on that.)... Mark your
calendars for June 26,
when filmmakers (and
UGA alums) Mark and
Mitchell Jarrett will
present a sneak preview screening of their
brand new feature The Taiwan Oyster, which
was a hit at South by Southwest this year.
One More Series: The Georgia Museum of Art
is in the midst of a summer film series in
conjunction with its exhibition of the work
of painter and photographer John Baeder;
each film in the series 'investigates an
aspect of Southern culture or the American
roadside diner experience.* June 14 is
Wdltress, Adrienne Shelly's charming 2007
comedy-drama starring Keri Russell. Next on
June 21 is Phil Morrison's excellent family
drama Junebug, which featured a breakout
performance by Amy Adams. The screenings,
Thursdays at 7 p.m in the M. Smith Griffin
Auditorium, are free. Go to www.georgiamu-
seum.org for more details.
Dave Marr film@fiagpoie.com
The 1988 film Dirty Rotten Scoundrels was
originally intended as a vehicle for David
Bowie and Mick Jagger, and though I've
tried to envision what that film might have
been like, I just can't see it Both Bowie and
Jagger can act being certainly more the
case with Bowie than Jagger, but neither is
exactly known for his comedic chops, and
throwing them into a frothy farce like this
one would have just been disastrous. The
film was released with bravura performances
from Michael Caine and Steve Martin in the
lead roles and was a triumph for good ideas
everywhere.
Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, the musical,
seemed to me to be an idea as bad as the pro
posed Bowie-Jagger film. I've always looked
askance at the recent trend of recycling mov
ies as Broadway musicals. Sure, Mel Brooks
is cleaning up from the adaptations of The
Producers and Young Frankenstein, and John
Waters is seeing more coin from the musical
version of Hairspray than he ever did from the
original film, but just as with remakes that
crowd the cineplex, musicals based on movies
come at the expense
of original plays that
might otherwise
have gotten inves
tors and advanced
live theater.
That said, I've
seen Town & Gown's
production of Dirty
Rotten Scoundrels
and, despite my
objections to its
origins, I found it
pretty good. Director
Ashley Laramore”
and musical direc
tor Justin Sanders
have cast their
production well and
put together a fun
evening on Grady
Avenue.
For those who •*.
may not be familiar
with the film or the
play, Dirty Rotten
Scoundrels is about
hardcore players in the confidence game.
Lawrence Jameson (Don Smith) is an aging
lion in the French Riviera town of Beaumont-
sur-Mer who poses as a charming prince in
exile in order to fleece wealthy and gull
ible ladies out of their money to finance
his fictitious revolution. Assisted by a bored
and conrupt local policeman (Adam Shirley),
Jameson has a good thing going until he
catches wind of a traveling con artist known
as "The Jackal* who has been striking all
along the Mediterranean coast
As Andre the cop searches for clues of The
Jackal's arrival in town, Jameson encounters
a penny-ante hustler named Freddy Benson
(Joseph Hitchcock) scamming free meals and
small bills. Although the notion that someone
as dimwitted as Benson could possibly be The
Jackal is absurd, Benson nevertheless threat
ens to frighten off Jameson's potential marks.
Benson, discovering that Jameson is not only
a fellow grifter but spectacularly successful
at it, threatens to expose Jameson unless the
older man schools him. The partnership is
rendered short-lived by the arrival of Christine
Colgate (Margot Hitchcock, Joseph's real-life
spouse), a naive heiress dubbed "America's
The Town and Gown Players present Dirty Rotten
ScoundreisXhmgh June 17.
Soap Queen.* The two con men wager that the
first of them to part Christine from $50,000
of her money can run the other out of town.
The game is afoot, and hijinks ensue as the
rivals sabotage each other in pursuit of their
quarry.
Laramore's cast is well-chosen. As Jameson,
Smith pulls off suavity mixed with disaffected
ennui very nicely. As Jameson's past marks,
Amy Miller and Meghan Brown lend their
chops and wonderful voices to complicat
ing the story. Margot Hitchcock gives us a
Christine with bright-eyed enthusiasm and
charisma. Joseph Hitchcock is an interesting
case. Funny and physical though he is'during
most of the play, he really comes alive during
his musical numbers, his personal wattage
increasing exponentially when he's singing,
which makes one wish he would maintain that
level of energy when he's not.
Top honors in this cast, however, go to
the veteran Adam Shirley, playing the corrupt
French policeman Andre. "Corrupt French
policeman* has been a choice part ever since
Claude Rains in Casablanca, and Shirley steals
• scenes every time
his character appears
onstage, whether
it's to berate Benson
(in the show's best
number, "Chimp in
a Suit*) or romance
Miller's character to
get her off Jameson's
back.
Laramore has
made some interest
ing choices with her
set, not the least of
which is an onstage
pit for the tight
six-piece band that
provides the musi
cal score. Most T&G
musicals relegate
the bend to an area
behind the flats or
up in the loft so as
to reserve as much
real estate on the
small stage as pos
sible, but here the
band plays in plain sight in front of a chang
ing projection screen which, along with some
furniture, helps to establish scene changes
over a mostly static set in hues of peach
and white. The French Riviera is hinted at
more than suggested, but this is not terribly
distracting.
The most striking element of Dirty Rotten
Scoundrels is the visible fun its cast and cho
rus appear to be having, a sense of playful
ness and farce that 1s infectious. While most
community-theater productions have no end
of heart it's actually rare that they convey the
sense that the players are enjoying themselves
as much as they expect the audience to, but
this production does it handily. Whatever
Laramore has done to inspire this attitude in
her cast, it is obviously a very good idea.
John G. Nettles theatre@flagpole.com
Dirty Rotten Scoundrels runs Thursday-Sunday, June
14-17, at the Athens Community Theatre on Grady
Avenue. Showtimes are 8 p.m. Thursday-Saturday
and 2 p.m. on Sunday. Tickets are $18, $10 for stu
dents with ID on Thursday, June 14. For reservations,
call (706)208-8696.
12 FLAGPOLE.COM • JUNE 13,2012