Evita - "A New Argentina"

The first act finale of the Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice musical EVITA is immoral and artistically untenable.  The number, called “A New Argentina” and sung by a rousing chorus, concludes on stage with the election of Juan Perón as the act ends.  The end of an act calls for applause from the audience, especially after a vocally exciting number like “A New Argentina,” but that moment depicted on stage - the election of Juan Perón – is not an event the audience should be compelled to applaud.

Ultimately, I applauded begrudgingly, wanting to acknowledge the talent of the performers, but I remained grumpy for the rest of the evening.  No responsible artist would ever put his audience in that type of bind.

Telenovela Watch - winter novelas

Julieth Restrepo in La promesa

A catch up article on some of the telenovelas to premiere this year in the US.  The Colombian-made tele-series LA PROMESA is the best of the bunch, but it is also a depressing hour and a half to take day after day.  It features Julieth Restrepo in a large role, a young actress with enough peculiarity to be fascinating on screen.  Even when given desk duty in a dull cop series like COMANDO ELITE, she draws the eye.

QUÉ POBRES TAN RICOS from Televisa, airing on Univision, and LA IMPOSTORA on Telemundo are dutiful, watchable, even enjoyable middle-of-the-road telenovelas.  POR SIEMPRE MI AMOR from Televisa, airing on Univision, reaches higher highs than POBRES or IMPOSTORA, but also lower lows.  It is also suffering from heavy Univision editing.

I found the Argos/Cadenatres telenovela INFAMES to be infuriating.  I found Telemundo's EN OTRA PIEL dire, the worst telenovela I've seen so far this year.  It is also badly overlit in many scenes, which I don't remember seeing on a Telemundo novela since the mid-2000s.

The article also has some words on DE QUE TE QUIERO, TE QUIERO.  I have been taking more and more time before writing about a telenovela.  Most critical appraisals seem to be made after a single episode, which is ludicrous.  I used to take a couple weeks into the novela's run before writing my thoughts; I'm now usually taking three or four weeks.  I didn't do that with DE QUE TE QUIERO, TE QUIERO, and almost immediately regretted it as I was too harsh.  While I don't think the first seven episodes were very good, it improves a great deal in this, its third week.  But like LA IMPOSTORA, it is a telenovela where the subplots and supporting characters are of more interest than the central plot line.  Unlike LA IMPOSTORA, it is the writing rather than the actors playing the protagonists that is the problem.  Still, Cynthia Klitbo, Marcelo Córdoba, Marisol Del Olmo and the temper-tantruming antagonist played by Esmeralda Pimentel are what I'm enjoying on that novela so far.

THE HYPNOTIC EYE

Alternately nasty and tedious 1960 b-flick that sells itself as a some kind of cautionary tale of the dangers of hypnosis. Women are disfiguring themselves and the police can’t figure out why, but the audience can by the third scene. With Allison Hayes slinking about, it is easy to guess what she has to do with the diabolical goings on. Directed by TV director George Blair; also with Jacques Bergerac, Marcia Henderson, Merry Anders and Joe Patridge.

Reign - pilot episode

The pits. American teen network CW does Mary, Queen of Scots. Everybody is conventionally TV attractive, bland and interchangeable with the casts of every other show on the network. The heroine is limp, sullen, and pale as is the current vogue, which I find preferable, even if that favor is infinitesimal, to the plucky spitfire cliché – the only TV alternative for shows of this type. The bastard brother of the dauphin in named “Bash.” Does more really need to be said?

The Goldbergs - series premiere - "Circle of Driving"

THE GOLDBERGS is a family nostalgia sitcom about growing up in the eighties. The comedy is alternately shouty and coy, and I’m not fond of either. Humor based on bygone fads is terribly easy and cheap – variations of look at the crazy stuff people used to (fill in the blank - wear, eat, watch on TV); the other major comic strand, the dysfunctional wacky family, is as cliché as they come.

The Mindy Project - season 2 premiere - "All My Problems Solved Forever..."

THE MINDY PROJECT is amiable and pleasant, if not terribly funny. The sitcom speak is a bit less obtrusive than in worse shows, but the dialogue still occasionally betrays the situations and characters for unnatural comic lines. Not as distrustful of the audience as a laugh-track sitcom, it utilizes the single-camera alternative: cutting to close up, mugging comic reactions from the actors, an elbow in the viewer’s side, nudgingly pleading for acknowledgement of the jokes, “Get it, get it.” You know in an early scene with Mindy and her beau seated precariously on a tree branch they will fall off it, and they do. Outside of the appealing lead, the cast is bland and forgettable.

2 Broke Girls - season 3 premiere - "And the Soft Opening"

2 BROKE GIRLS is an odd couple comedy: Beth Behrs is the chipper, vivacious, chic, optimistic blonde Caroline and Kat Dennings is her opposite, the dour, slothful, slovenly, pessimistic raven-haired Max. The pair are waitresses in a diner who in this episode open up a cupcake shop in a back room. Roughly half of the humor is derived from dick jokes, another twenty percent from vagina jokes, the remaining thirty percent divvied up among ethnic and racist stereotypes, drug jokes, jokes about Matthew Moy’s diminutive stature and jokes about Kat Dennings’s ample chest. The show’s racism is delivered with carefree aplomb, unlike the aggressive, attention-seeking, desperate racism of Fox’s DADS; and the crude humor comes with a snappy and cheerful zing – the nastiness never feels nasty because the characters take the insults with shrugs and indifference. The story becomes moralistic as it wraps up – the characters’ learn a corny lesson and hug it out. Not having seen this show before, which is now in its third year, I’m puzzled by Dennings’s muddied delivery – one would hope after two years she’d be better at getting lines out, but nearly each of her quips gets snagged and garbled in her throat.