Blues x 3: Dave and Phil Alvin's Lost Time, Shemekia Copeland's Outskirts of Love and Ronnie Earl and The Broadcasters' Father’s Day

This year marks the 100th anniversary of the birth of Willie Dixon, Brownie McGhee and Hound Dog Taylor. In the spirit of these founders of a musical form that never seems to wane, here are three first-rate releases for 2015. Dave and Phil Alvin's Lost Time (Yep Roc) is their follow up to Common Ground, released last year, and it features even more of their up-tempo and invigorating music. The last record was a rather laid back affair featuring songs written by Big Bill Broonzy. This time the Alvin brothers break out the electric guitars and rock the joint. The album opens with the Oscar Brown Jr song “Mr Kicks” quickly followed by the gospel number “World's in a Bad Condition” in a rousing version worthy of a tent meeting in Mississippi. In an interview in the August 2015 issue of Living Blues magazine, Dave Alvin was asked why the songs on the album sound so “contemporary” in spite of their age. Alvin's response spoke volumes about the value of blues music today, “in any type of old folk music, there's always that kernel of truth that keeps it alive [and] keeps it relevant.”

Sinatra’s Sinatra

Sinatra: All or Nothing at All aired on HBO in April. (Photo by William Gottlieb, 1947)

For those of us who adore Frank Sinatra, Alex Gibney’s comprehensive two-part documentary Sinatra: All or Nothing at All, which aired on HBO earlier this year, is a gift. I watched it in a kind of rapture, held by the dense, varied narrative and the amazing footage (much of it rare) and the intelligence of both the analysts and the interviewees from different stages in Sinatra’s life and career. Most of all, though, I was held by Sinatra himself, not just the singer and the personality but the chronicler of his own story. A few seasons back, an otherwise misguided Broadway revue of Stephen Sondheim’s music called Sondheim on Sondheim intercut footage of interviews with the composer-lyricist from different decades, and the results were unexpectedly moving: while he aged, his lucid and insightful glimpses into his own thoughts about his work provided a continuum for it. Relying on a number of interviews given at different phases of Sinatra’s career, Gibney does something similar, and when he adds commentary by his children, Nancy and Tina and Frank Jr. (whose vocal patterns are oddly similar to those of the comedian Paul Reiser), and the words of his wives Nancy Sinatra and Ava Gardner, read by Christine Baranski and Gina Gershon respectively, the effect is not unlike that of a bank of mirrors with planes that reach inward for as far as the eye can see.

Doppelgangers in Stephen King’s Finders Keepers and Joyce Carol Oates’ Jack of Spades

Note: this post contains spoilers for Stephen King’s Finders Keepers and Joyce Carol Oates’ Jack of Spades

The power of writing and its obsessive hold over fan readers is a theme with which Stephen King is familiar. In Misery (1987) Annie Wilkes becomes increasingly psychotic after she reads a manuscript by the protagonist writer, Paul Sheldon, due to a sense of betrayal after she learns that the writer decides to dispense with his popular Victorian romantic heroine series and write a contemporary novel spiked with violence and profanity. In his most recent outing, Finders Keepers (Scribner 2015), King narrates the tale of two teenagers, set thirty-five years apart, a troubled Morris Bellamy and a generous Pete Saubers, who become enthralled with the Jimmy Gold novels by John Rothstein, a novelist who bears a strong similarity to J.D. Salinger. After Rothstein finished his trilogy that made him rich and famous, he retreated to a farm in New Hampshire where he refused to publish anything further prompting Time magazine in 1960 to acclaim him to be “America’s Reclusive Genius.” When Finders Keepers begins in 1978, rumours have circulated over the intervening years that Rothstein continued to write.

Old Hat: Observations On The Upcoming Fall Network TV Season

Amber Valletta and Don Johnson in Blood & Oil, premiering on ABC on September 27.

Ever since I was a little kid, I have looked forward to the network Fall TV Season, including getting my hands on a copy of TV Guide’s special issue celebrating the same, and, almost every time out, have amassed a full slate of new and returning shows that I deemed worthy of my time. Tastes change, of course but I have fond memories of past TV seasons, such as CBS’s Saturday night schedule, for a couple of years, of All in the Family, M*A*S*H, The Mary Tyler Moore Show, The Bob Newhart Show and The Carol Burnett Show, a lineup that still stands out as, perhaps, the strongest night ever in Network television history. (I am dating myself here as it’s been a long time since prime time Saturday night was considered anything but a graveyard for reruns and cancelled shows running off their last few episodes.) This is why I have never dismissed network television, and feel that despite the glut of cable shows, good and bad, commercial TV still has much to offer.

Last year saw some new appealing network shows, joining the likes of my favourites such as CBS’s The Good Wife and Elementary, which are still strong entries on TV and supplanting in some ways two now disappointing comedies, The Big Bang Theory (CBS), which finally turned bad in its eighth season and the regrettably fast fading Modern Family (ABC). (The Mindy Project, though maddeningly uneven, was still worth watching and, after its cancellation by FOX, was fortunately rescued by Hulu and will continue to run on commercial TV in Canada.) Black-ish (ABC) was a funny, clever sitcom about an upper-middle class black family that addressed issues of racism and racial perceptions in a refreshingly non-politically correct manner and with more courage than The Cosby Show displayed. (The cartoonish The Jeffersons isn’t even worth considering in that light.) Gotham (FOX) managed to wring new gothic blood out of the superhero genre, depicting D.C.’s Batman when he is the young Bruce Wayne and has just seen his parents murdered in front of his eyes. He begins to grow into the caped crusader, under the tutelage of a cockney Alfred, more of a bodyguard than a butler and a former SAS officer to boot, and meets up with a young Selena Kyle (later to become Catwoman and portrayed by a young actress who is a dead ringer for Michelle Pfeiffer, who played Catwoman as an adult in Tim Burton’s Batman Returns), as well as other key figures in his future, such as Commissioner Gordon, who is still just a cop. The new season, subheaded "Rise of the Villains," promises to do even more with The Penguin, The Riddler and, possibly The Joker, who has yet to make his appearance in Gotham.

ABC’s 1940s and Manhattan-set Marvel’s Agent Carter also brought a fresh eye to the Marvel superhero universe with Hayley Atwell, stellar as the prim and proper but also sensual British agent, fighting sexism from her male fellows who think she is just good for getting them coffee. (It had a light appealing tone, in the vein of Raiders of the Last Ark, which made it far more watchable than its sister show, the leaden and heavy handed Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., which I’m bailing on after two seasons.) And ABC’s How to Get Away with Murder was a tough minded murder mystery, set on a college campus, which, to my mind, broke some taboos in its sexual frankness, straight and gay, as well as proffering a cinematic look which made it move swiftly and surely. Yet the upcoming 2015-16 TV season, which begins next week, doesn’t seem to bode as well for new worthwhile fare. I usually sample about a third of the 30 or so new series premiering each fall on the networks. Out of this year’s 19 debut shows, I am hard pressed to find one or two, at most, that entice me enough to consider giving them a shot.

Brick By Brick: Super Mario Maker

Design and share your own Super Mario levels: it sounds simple, doesn’t it? Perfunctory, almost. It was frankly a surprise to me that Nintendo hadn’t capitalized on this idea already. It seems like a no-brainer, given the simple and satisfying design of the 2-dimensional Mario games. Let the player place some blocks, add some coins and some enemies, and you’re already off to the races. But Super Mario Maker, released last week for Nintendo’s Wii U, aims far higher than that. In its brilliant design and remarkable polish, it succeeds not just at creating an experience that’s totally unique in gaming, but at framing and contextualizing thirty years of that little mustachioed plumber, and highlighting what has always made his adventures so special.

Shaw’s Shaw: Pygmalion and You Never Can Tell

Jeff Meadows (left),  Harveen Sandu, and Patrick McManus in Pygmalion at the Shaw Festival. (Photo: Emily Cooper)

Peter Hinton’s production of Shaw’s Pygmalion at the Shaw Festival is set in contemporary London, and for nearly two acts (the play is in five brisk acts) the conceit is great fun. Henry Higgins (played energetically and with considerable wit by Patrick McManus) hovers around Covent Garden in jeans and a t-shirt with a tape recorder or leans on his bike. Clara Eynsford Hill (Kristi Frank), disaffected and entitled, texts blankly while she and her mother (Julain Molnar) wait for their hapless, puppy-eyed brother Freddy (Wade Bogert-O’Brien) to find them a cab in a rainstorm; around them is a collection of raucous street folk including a busker with a guitar, a hooker in cut-offs and a young, wheelchair-bound homeless man. Higgins’ study (act two) is full of TV monitors; Eliza (Harveen Sandhu) catches her reflection in one of them and shrieks in surprise. The study is set up to allow Higgins – and Colonel Pickering (Jeff Meadows), the fellow linguist who moves in with him – opportunities for both research and leisure: a dart board upstage right offers a touch of local-pub atmosphere. When Eliza’s father Alfred Doolittle (Peter Krantz) appears in the middle of the second act, he wears a neon orange sanitation uniform and an earring, and he has to struggle to pull himself up out of Higgins’ beanbag chair.

Mailman, Bring Me No More Blues: Five New CDs

Doug Seegers

My mailman is fascinated by the packages which come regularly to my house. “You get a lot of CDs dontcha!” Sometimes, if I happen to be home when he delivers, I’ll open the package with him there, and show him what’s there. Usually a selection of little known artists, whose label is trying to promote them. Once in a while there are gems. Doug Seegers was a “frequently homeless” singer-songwriter who released this (his first album) at the age of 62. He’s been a drunk, and a John Lennon wannabe, but now delivers a positive Christian-based message in a pure country style. Influenced by Gram Parsons, The Byrds, Emmylou Harris and others, Going Down to the River was produced by Will Kimbrough and championed by Buddy Miller. Recorded in three days at Cowboy Jack Clement’s legendary Sound Emporium the album sounds great. Pedal steel from Al Perkins, a duet with Emmylou Harris, and a clutch of gospel songs and Seegers own lived-in voice produced an album that is almost a classic. I’ve had this title for sometime when it got lost at the bottom of a pile, but listening to it now I am wishing I’d listened to it a lot more when it first arrived.

Still Crazy After All These Years: Revisiting Network (1976)

Peter Finch's Howard Beale is "mad as hell" in Network.

The last few months I've been noticing, especially in the news feed of Facebook, this continued reverence for Sidney Lumet's 1976 film Network, his loud and abrasive adaptation of Paddy Chayefsky's broad satire about the shift in television journalism from hard news to glib entertainment. The picture seems to be getting acclaimed all over again for its sheer prescience in revealing how the corporate control of television news has turned the sacred screeds of Edward R. Murrow into the boorish rantings of Bill O'Reilly. Whether talking about Donald Trump's candidacy for President, the shout-fests that litter the prime time broadcasts on Fox News, or more recently, the tragic shooting deaths of TV reporter Alison Parker and photographer Adam Ward live on morning television in Virginia (simply because the news anchor in Network is murdered on air due to poor ratings) folks online are revisiting the picture for clues to see how it all went wrong. You'd think that Lumet and Chayefsky were sages who saw it all coming. I've often made the case that Robert Altman's Nashville (1975), or Arthur Penn's Alice's Restaurant (1969), had their ear to the ground in anticipating the political and cultural changes taking place in the culture. But those films were pensive and elliptical works that called upon the audience to contemplate what some of those shifting dramatic themes were all about. Network doesn't allow you to think; it tells you emphatically (and with a tin ear) what to think. Network is a noisy collection of broadside rants that – seen today – are no more perceptive than one of Bill O'Reilly's nightly belches. Instead of being an outrageous and equal opportunity satire that spares nobody, Network is full of homilies that reveals more of Paddy Chayefsky's fortune cookie idea of humanism than it does leveling with the dumbing down of the glass teat.

Make Time for Some Other Space

The cast of Other Space, currently streaming on Yahoo! Screen.

"In 2054, to celebrate the end of the war between the United States and Switzerland, a multi-national corporate coalition created the Universal Mapping Project to explore the known universe for the purposes of scientific inquiry. The following is an account of the UMP Cruiser, an exploratory vessel that went missing in 2105."

– from the opening of Other Space

Other Space tells the story of a crew of inexperienced officers who set off on a routine exploratory space mission, only to find themselves sucked through a rift in space that thrusts them into another universe. Lost in space, with no way of getting home, they struggle for survival with no-one to depend upon but themselves. In others' hands, this would be the beginning of a traditional science-fiction story – and it has been. Variations on this story have been seen on television for over fifty years: from Lost in Space, to Buck Rogers, to Star Trek: Voyager, to Battlestar Galactica. (Not to mention Andromeda, Farscape, or SyFy's recent Dark Matter.) Other Space is not like any of those shows.

Back in March, Yahoo's online streaming channel, Yahoo! Screen, garnered a lot of attention by bringing back the NBC cult comedy Community for a sixth season. A month later, with far less fanfare, it added another comedy to its small line-up of original programming: Other Space, a science-fiction comedy in the vein of the BBC's long-running classic Red Dwarf. The animated (and often brilliant) Futurama notwithstanding, there have only ever been a handful of science fiction comedy shows on American television, perhaps the most popular being 3rd Rock from the Sun and, I suppose… Alf. (Red Dwarf had a famously failed attempt at an American adaptation for NBC back in 1992, when only a poorly-received pilot was filmed.) But, unless you count NBC's Quark – a one-season wonder from 1978 starring Richard Benjamin, which was Buck Henry's follow-up series to Get Smart – the output has been entirely earthbound. This year, with all the original television being produced, it is very possible this small comedy has escaped your notice. Fortunately we have a few weeks still before the new fall season begins, and you have more than enough time to flip your browser over to Yahoo and watch a new comedy that is at once unassuming and suprising.

Crime Stopper's Textbook: Narcos

This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.

When You Speak Love: Christian Petzold's Phoenix

Ronald Zehrfeld and Nina Hoss

The German director Christian Petzold garnered some deserved attention for his 2012 movie Barbara, which told the story of an East German doctor (Nina Hoss) in the 1980s, banished to a country hospital as punishment for applying for an exit visa, who plots to defect but is sidelined by her emotional involvement in the case of a female patient. As a chronicle of life in East Germany in the years before the Berlin Wall came down, Barbara is smaller-scale than The Lives of Others – one of a small handful of movies since the millennium that truly deserve to be called masterpieces – but it demonstrates a piecing intelligence, a gift for working with actors (Hoss gives a superlative performance), and an easy mastery of film vocabulary. It’s an elegant and fiercely compelling piece of moviemaking, and I think that Phoenix, his new picture, is even better.

Petzold is again working with his co-writer on Barbara, Harun Farocki, and again features Hoss opposite the fine actor Ronald Zehrfeld, who played the head of the clinic Barbara is exiled to. In Phoenix Hoss, in a performance of profound tremulous feeling, plays Nelly Lenz, a Jewish cabaret singer who returns from the camps at the end of the Second World War so badly disfigured that she hides her face under a bandage. Her experience has left her so fragile that she barely seems able to function. She arrives back in Berlin under the care of another woman, Lene Winter (Nina Kunzendorf), who seems to have an administrative job that gives her access to government documents. (I think we’re meant to assume that Lene and Nelly met in the camps, but the movie is rather mysterious on the source of their association.) Lene guides her through reconstructive surgery that leaves her looking somewhat but not exactly like the woman she was before she was taken by the Nazis, and Lene makes plans for the two of them to emigrate to Israel. But Nelly didn’t think of herself as a Jew in the days before the Holocaust, and she still doesn’t. And what she wants is to find her Gentile husband Johnny, a pianist who hid her from the Gestapo in a boat until they finally caught up with her. Lene is convinced that it was Johnny who turned Nelly in at the end, but Nelly is still crazy about him and doesn’t believe her friend’s version of events. Haunting the seedier clubs, she locates Johnny (Zehrfeld), working not as a musician but as a waiter, and of course he doesn’t recognize her. But he notes her resemblance to his wife, who, he is certain, died during the war.

Slacker Central : American Ultra

Jesse Eisenberg and Kristen Stewart in American Ultra. (Photo: Alan Markfield/AP/Lionsgate)

In American Ultra, Jesse Eisenberg and Kristen Stewart star as Mike and Phoebe: two West Virginian stoners with dead-end jobs and a happy, if troubled, relationship. Mike’s panic attacks prevent them from going on vacation, and his absent-mindedness ensures he almost burns down their house every time he tries to cook. Phoebe has a lot on her plate in taking care of him, but she soon has much more when a CIA operative named Lasseter (Connie Britton) reveals that Mike is a sleeper agent whose deadly skills at hand-to-hand combat have been locked inside his mind, lying dormant. His (mostly) blissful life is a sham, and CIA honcho Yates (Topher Grace) has targeted him for elimination. Stoner laughs and blockbuster action (supposedly) ensue, in the tradition of films like Pineapple Express (2008).

Heigh-Ho, the Glamourous Life: Light Up the Sky at the Shaw

Charlie Gallant, Claire Jullien and Thom Marriott in Light Up the Sky at the Shaw Festival. (Photo: David Cooper)

Light Up the Sky is one of Moss Hart’s solo comic efforts; he wrote it in 1948, long after his collaboration with George S. Kaufman had petered out. It’s about the Boston tryout of a debut play by a young greenhorn named Peter Sloan, the only person involved in the project who isn’t a seasoned veteran. The narcissistic star, Irene Livingston, the lachrymose director, Carleton Fitzgerald, and the cutthroat producer, Sidney Black, have all worked together before, but they’ve been at their best for some reason during rehearsals for Sloan’s show, a post-apocalyptic allegory that opens in the ruins of Radio City Music Hall. Consequently Peter has been deluded into thinking that they’re pure-hearted professionals who think with their hearts and sacrifice themselves for their art. However, when the opening-night audience laughs at the seriousness of their combined efforts, they revert to form, and Sloan, the most vulnerable of them, becomes their pet punching bag.

Critic's Notes and Frames Vol. XV

In the recent issue of Pitchfork, Dhani Harrison describes a conversation he had with his late father about his guitar playing. “My father once said to me, ‘I play the notes you never hear,’” he remembers. “He focused on touch and control partly because he never thought he was any good, really. He knew he was good at smaller things: not hitting any off notes, not making strings buzz, not playing anything that would jar you. ‘Everyone else has played all the other bullshit,’ he would say. ‘I just play what's left.’”

I started to think about what song might illustrate best for me the notion of playing 'what's left.' On Beatles for Sale (or Beatles VI – if you grew up like me in North America), "What You're Doing" has a solo that's quite economical in that George Harrison style. The notes he plays (over-top George Martin's rumbling piano) are picked at with a brightness that gives the song some of its shimmering texture. Yet it still harmonizes with the song's melodic line even when it briefly breaks free from it. Heard here best in mono, rather than stereo, the pieces are always designed to fit the whole.

In the Wake of Joni (Part Two): Wendy McNeill’s One Colour More, Rickie Lee Jones’s The Other Side of Desire and Eleni Mandell’s Dark Lights Up

Last week I started a review of new releases by women who I think have been influenced by Joni Mitchell. This week three more titles from women who, like Joni, pursue their muse with creative enthusiasm and fearlessness. All three albums were released this year.

Wendy McNeill is from Calgary, Alberta, currently living in Sweden. She’s one of the freshest songwriters and performers in Canadian music today. And, like most “over-night success stories, she’s been working at her craft since 1997. Her latest release One Colour More (Hidden Pop) is an eclectic delight to the ears that was first released in Europe. The move to Sweden has paid off because the album is a blend of dream pop, cabaret and folk tunes wonderfully fused together. The adventuresome record reminds me of Joni Mitchell’s music because McNeill isn't interested in just one sound: Each song has its own pallet. This record floats with Italian flare on “In Bocca al Lupa” (into the wolf's mouth) then quickly settles down with a Parisian ballad, “Owl and Boy,” a funny tale about matchmakers. McNeill’s songs are imaginative stories that have a certain mystic charm, as heard on “Papusza and the Crows.”

Spies, Hackers, & Reality Stars: Summer TV Roundup

Shiri Appleby and Josh Kelly on Lifetime's UnREAL.

The growth of television over the last decade-and-a-half has been remarkable. A medium once derided for its vacuity has expanded to dominate much of high culture as well as low, with serious publications featuring detailed exegeses on the nuances of dramas such as Breaking Bad and comedies such as Parks and Recreation. At the same time, TV’s rise has resulted in an explosion of new programming, especially scripted content, leading major critics such as Linda Holmes and Alan Sepinwall to wonder whether, in the latter’s words, there is “too much good scripted television.”

One corollary of scripted TV’s rise has been its expansion to new platforms at the same time that the broadcast networks, once the only game in town, have become increasingly boring and formulaic. “Prestige” television is generally understood to have migrated to outlets such as premium cable, online venues such as Netflix and Amazon, and some basic cable channels such as FX and AMC. However, the proliferation of scripted TV hasn’t stopped there. One of the most notable developments of this past summer has been the appearance of a number of very good shows on unlikely or little-known basic cable channels. The appearance of these shows suggests that even networks that seemed to have found comfortable, if unambitious, niches for themselves are looking to add some of the luster conferred by a quality original series to their reputations. None of these shows represents a radical reinvention of the form, but all of them offer a fresh approach to the now-familiar tropes of television drama.

Neglected Gem #82: Hollywood Homicide (2003)

Harrison Ford and Josh Hartnett in Hollywood Homicide (2003).

Ron Shelton’s Hollywood Homicide is breezy, low-key and smoothly crafted. It’s Shelton’s Hollywood movie (he co-wrote it with Robert Souza), so though it presents a no-big-deal police-procedural plot involving an ex-con (the excellent Isaiah Washington), now managing rappers, who hires an ex-cop (Dwight Yoakam) as a hit man to kill off a band no longer interested in his services, it has a hip, free-wheeling spirit and an almost put-on, not-quite-of-this-world feel. (A car in a chase smashes through what looks like a brick wall but turns out to be a movie-set drop – a good variation on a joke from the king of Hollywood-on-Hollywood pictures, Singin’ in the Rain.) The heroes are two LAPD cops who execute their job with alacrity even though each has more pressing matters on his mind. The older, Joe (Harrison Ford), has a real-estate business on the side that he’s hoping will heft him out of his current financial hole (he pays alimony to three ex-wives). He’s constantly taking calls on his cell, and he even brokers a deal to hook up one of the suspects – the owner of the club where the rappers were murdered – with a past-his-prime producer (Martin Landau) who wants to get rid of his Beverly Hills crib. K.C. (Josh Hartnett), the young stud with whom he’s lately been partnered, gives yoga classes to a room full of nubile females, and tells Joe he’s thinking of quitting the force and becoming an actor. (He throws together a showcase of A Streetcar Named Desire with himself as Stanley Kowalski.) K.C. became a cop because his dad was one and died mysteriously on the job. But though he tracks down his dad’s killer in the course of the movie, Shelton is smart enough not to let that subplot take over or alter the tone. The pieces of the plot fit together, but Hollywood Homicide is directed so that you don’t give them much thought. (You might, of course, if they didn’t fit together.)

Swedish / American Charm: The Readers of Broken Wheel Recommend

Author Katarina Bivald. (Photo by Cecilia Bivald)

I don’t usually read books that are designated ‘chick lit’, but I will admit the distinction is an arbitrary one on my part. (I don’t avoid movies labeled 'chick flicks' and don’t, in fact, recognize that distinction. A good movie is a good movie, so why segregate films or books by the supposed gender they are aimed for?) However, I’ve had such a bad run on my reading this year, including the disappointments of Dan Simmons’ sloppily and badly written Sherlock Holmes pastiche The Fifth Heart and Richard Price’s new novel The Whites, written under the pseudonym Harry Brandt and much more conventional than his understated, original masterpieces Clockers, Samaritan and Lush Life. Thus, when my bookstore co-worker, Claire, whose opinion I respect, mentioned in passing that Katarina Bivald’s debut novel The Readers of Broken Wheel Recommend (Vintage Publishing) was worth my time, I decided to give it a try. The result was, as the publicists would phrase it, a decidedly good read.

Off The Shelf: There’s Something About Mary (1998)

Ben Stiller and Cameron Diaz in There’s Something About Mary (1998).

The R-rated comedy that also qualifies as a great film is a rare breed. Comedies, according to popular wisdom, are as hard to pull off as dramas, if not more so – and so raunchy, adult-themed comedies face the uniquely difficult task of being funny, smart, and provocative all at once. Peter and Bobby Farrelly, directors of slapstick comedies like Dumb & Dumber, Kingpins, and The Three Stooges, might not outwardly appear to have mastered this tricky balance, but their 1998 gross-out masterpiece, There’s Something About Mary, tips their hand. It’s a film that everyone remembers for a single, horrifically uncomfortable sight gag, but it stands up amazingly well under critical scrutiny. Successors to the Farrelly throne, like the ultra-popular Judd Apatow and his league of friends and collaborators, have gotten it half-right: they make memorable R-rated comedies with funny performances and clever gags, but these films often fall apart in narrative structure, or simply in terms of using film as a medium to its fullest potential. In short, there’s really something about There’s Something About Mary, which sets it apart not just as a fantastic comedy but an excellent film.

Ibsen and Barrie Rarities at the Shaw Festival

Moya O'Connell and Ric Reid in The Lady from the Sea, at Niagara-on-the-Lake's Shaw Festival. (Photo: David Cooper)

The Lady from the Sea is an infrequently performed late Ibsen, one of those realist plays of his that teeters on the edge of symbolism, like The Wild Duck. (He wrote it in 1888, between Rosmersholm and Hedda Gabler.) The character who has earned the title moniker among locals in a Norwegian seacoast town is Ellida Wangel. She is married to a devoted doctor but has grown increasingly distant from him and hasn’t quite taken on the burden of stepmother to his two daughters, Bolette and Hilde. He assumes that the problem is her inability to get over the death of their own child (she hasn’t slept with him since), but it’s more complicated. Ellida is haunted by a lost love, an American sailor to whom she was engaged but who ran away to escape imprisonment for the murder of a ship’s captain. The connection she feels to the unnamed American is powerful, primal and also terrifying, because she senses that he is drawing her into the sea itself, where they threw their wedding rings when they plighted their troth. In the course of the play the stranger returns and calls on Ellida to fulfill her promise to him, refusing to recognize her as a woman married to another man.