Movie
Evita
(Hollywood Pictures). After months of tie-ins, fashion
reviews, books, and all-out
hype, the reviews are in, and critics still can't tell if Evita 's a
movie. The
New Yorker 's Anthony Lane calls it "more of a film
version of a stage show"; the New York Times ' Janet Maslin calls it
Madonna's "most colossal music video." Evita has three main problems,
according to critics: 1) It lacks humanity--"This is a weird, inert, terribly
distant piece of moviemaking," says New York 's David Denby. 2) It lacks
a point. 3) It has awful politics--it's "a kind of fascist pseudo-opera"
(Denby). "It's The Triumph of Her [i.e., Madonna's] Will " (the
Wall Street Journal 's Joe Morgenstern). Madonna fares slightly
better--but only slightly. "At a certain point you realize that Madonna hasn't
a single musical moment that goes beyond artful amplified competence"
(Morgenstern). (The official Evita site has the works: clips, stills, audio, Madonna on "The
Role of a Lifetime," etc. Also check out Louis Menand's review of the film in
Slate.)
Movie
Portrait of a Lady
(Gramercy). Male critics cringe at Jane
Campion's Portrait of a Lady ; female critics call it her masterwork.
"Jane Campion has done something of which I never thought her capable," writes
The New
Yorker 's Lane. "[S]he has made a boring film." The
New Republic's Stanley Kauffmann deems the film a feminist
morality play. But the New York Times ' Maslin calls the movie "daring,
abstract," and filled with "imagination and surprise"; the Village
Voice 's Amy Taubin declares, "As Raging Bull is to Martin Scorsese,
Portrait of a Lady is to Jane Campion." (See the film's official Web site.)
Book
A
Life of Picasso, Volume 2: 1907-1917
, by John Richardson, with the
collaboration of Marilyn McCully (Random House). Almost every critic has heaped
praise on the second volume of John Richardson's biography of Pablo Picasso,
which covers the painter's cubist period. "Magisterial," declares Frances
Spalding in the Times of London. It's among the "grand English-language
biographies of our time," says poet Richard Howard in the New York Times
Book Review . And art historian Dore Ashton describes it as definitive.
The
New Yorker 's Adam Gopnik is the notable exception. He accuses
Richardson both of crudeness (he sees sex as the meaning of every painting) and
of whitewashing his subject (he downplays Picasso's misogyny): "Without the
Continuing Saga of Pablo's Greatness, there's not much there, except some
wonderful drawings and a lot of irritability." Random House plugs Richardson's book at its site.
Musical
Once
Upon a Mattress
(The Broadhurst Theatre on Broadway). The revival of
the 1959 musical is being hailed as one of the most monumental Broadway flops
in years. "Misbegotten," says Ben Brantley of the New York Times ; "Dead
on delivery," agrees Clive Barnes of the New York Post . Based on Hans
Christian Andersen's story "The Princess and the Pea," the production features
Sarah Jessica Parker in the role that made Carol Burnett a star. Donald Lyons
of the Wall Street Journal says that "Parker lacks the whimsy and stupid
Lucille Ball-like humor" to pull it off. The critics add that the musical
itself, which had a plot that was forgettable--and incoherent--was pretty lame
to start with.
Movie
Hamlet
(Columbia). Kenneth Branagh: masterful Shakespearean or
insufferable egomaniac? Reviews of his four-hour Hamlet , with its
unlikely cast (Billy Crystal, Robin Williams, Charlton Heston), don't resolve
the question. In the pro-Branagh camp lie the New York Times ' Maslin and
the Los Angeles Times ' Kevin Thomas--who actually likes Branagh's
Hollywood touches, such as the "to be or not to be" soliloquy performed before
a two-way mirror. In the other camp is John Anderson of Newsday , who
derides Branagh's "antic energy," and New York 's Denby, who calls the
film "overscaled, huge, and hideously exposed." He says that "[e]ven the
soliloquies come off as an extrovert's meditations--as bouts of self-loathing,
such as Leonard Bernstein might have had after a bad concert." (Check out the
Hamlet Web site,
which has everything you ever cared to know about Branagh and about interactive
Hamlet games.)
Book
The
Odyssey
, by Homer, translated by Robert Fagles (Viking). The new
translation of Homer's The Odyssey has whipped up so much fervor that
Paul Gray in Time has proclaimed the existence of the "Fagles
phenomenon." Robert Fagles, a Princeton classicist, translated The Iliad
in 1990 and sold an astonishing 140,000 paperback copies of his version.
Anticipating similar sales, Viking shipped 27,000 copies of The Odyssey
to bookstores and 10,000 copies of a tape of the actor Ian McKellen reading it.
Gray attributes Fagles' popularity to his simple, straightforward language.
Other reviewers place Fagles' work in the same league as Fitzgerald's and
Lattimore's classic translations. In the New York Times Book Review ,
Richard Jenkyns declares Fagles' language "timeless."
Updates :
The
backlash against The
People vs. Larry Flynt has begun. Early reviews offered high praise for
Milos Forman's loving portrait of the pornography magnate, but recent articles
in the New York Times and the New Republic point out that the film's hero, the publisher of
Hustler , actually was a racist, misogynistic scum bag. ... Louis
Menand, writing in the New York Review of Books , calls Michael
Crichton's techno-thriller Airframe "commercial culture's revenge on itself."... More
plaudits for Margaret Atwood's Victorian thriller Alias
Grace: In the New York Times Book Review , Francine Prose compares
the book to a 19 th -century novel, because of its "spooky plot
twists" and "engrossing narrative." The Washington Post 's Marie
Arana-Ward goes one better, claiming that Atwood at times rivals Flaubert.
Recent
"Summary Judgment" columns:
Dec.
18: The People vs. Larry Flynt (Columbia Pictures); Marvin's
Room (Miramax); The New Fowler's Modern English Usage , edited by
R.W. Burchfield, (Oxford University Press); A Reporter's Life , by Walter
Cronkite (Knopf); Alias Grace , by Margaret Atwood (Nan A.
Talese/Doubleday); Whistle Down the Wind (National Theatre, Washington,
D.C.).
Dec.
11: Jerry Maguire (TriStar); Evita (Hollywood Pictures);
Santa Evita , by Tomas Eloy Martinez (Knopf); Eva Perón , by Alicia
Dujovne Ortíz (St. Martin's); Eva Perón's autobiography, In My Own Words
(New Press); Airframe , by Michael Crichton (Knopf); The Battle for
Christmas , by Stephen Nissenbaum (Knopf); Bastard Out of Carolina
(Showtime); Benjamin Britten operas in New York.
Dec.
4: 101 Dalmatians (Disney); Everyone Says I Love You
(Miramax); Bertrand Russell: The Spirit of Solitude
1872-1921 , by
Ray Monk (Free Press); Drown , by Junot Díaz (Riverhead);
Emancipation , by the Artist Formerly Known As Prince (NPG).
Nov.
26: The Crucible (20th Century Fox); Duchamp: A Biography , by
Calvin Tomkins (Henry Holt); Indian Killer , by Sherman Alexie (Atlantic
Monthly Press); The Car that Could: The Inside Story of GM's Revolutionary
Electric
Vehicle , by Michael Shnayerson (Random House); The Larry
Sanders Show (HBO); The High Life (HBO); "Max Beckmann in Exile"
(Guggenheim Museum SoHo, New York City).
--Compiled by Franklin Foer and the editors of Slate .
