10
GAY PEOPLE'S CHRONICLE August 20, 2004
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Oh, sister!
Colin Cook, Curtis Young, Kevin Joseph Kelly, G.A. Taggett and Ian Atwood give the term "bad habit" a new definition in Nunsense: A-Men!
Playing for three nights only, the quintet are performing parts of the popular musical Nunsense to benefit the AIDS Taskforce of Greater Cleveland and Akron's Community AIDS Network.
"Three of our nuns are over six feet tall, and they all spend more time at the gym than any nuns I've ever met," said openly gay director Curt Arnold, who has the daunting task of whipping the Little Sisters of Hoboken into shape.
"Getting to perform with these guys, and singing a big duet with Kevin-this is the high point of my summer," says Taggett.
Kevin Joseph Kelly is no stranger to gay audiences, having been in the film Edge of Seventeen and performing in countless plays in the Cleveland area, including the Beck Center's production of La Cage Aux Folles.
Nunsense: A-Men! will have two performances at the Weathervane Playhouse, 1301 Weathervane Lane, Akron, on August 23 and 24. For more information, call 330-836-2323, or log onto www.weathervaneplayhouse.com.
It will come to the Beck Center, 17801 Detroit Ave. in Lakewood, on Monday, August 30. Information is available at 216-521-2540 or www.beckcenter.org.
2 Rudin films
Continued from previous page
Demme's claim to critical and mass appeal came with his spooky yet intelligent Silence of the Lambs, starring Jodie Foster and the compelling Anthony Hopkins. Even though this film was criticized by some activists for perpetuating the stereotype of gay serial killers, Demme and Lambs could not be silenced.
Now Demme brings audiences a compelling feature in the remake of The Manchurian Candidate.
The 1962 original, starring Frank Sinatra and Angela Lansbury, was a stark film about the American culture that came about during the times of the Red scare.
Demme's remake is more vivid, more frenetic, but then so are the times against which he sets the background of the film. Demme updates the film from the Cold War to the War Against Terror.
The film is filled with political malfeasance and corporate corruption. Ben Marco (Denzel Washington, who was also in Philadelphia as the homophobic lawyer who has a change of heart) and Raymond Shaw (Liev Schreiber) served in the first Gulf War together and are harboring some dark secrets and even darker nightmares.
In this age of terrorism, Shaw, who returned from Iraq with a Congressional Medal of Honor, is picked to be the running mate in a presidential election. His mother, Senator Eleanor Shaw (the superlative Meryl Streep) is a powerful, creepy political operative who doesn't know the meaning of the word no.
She wheels and deals like a master puppeteer and she crushes opponents under her designer heels like the vermin and pests they are to her. Sen. Shaw is also in cahoots with Manchurian Global, a business conglomerate that profits from wars and the military-industrial complex on a worldwide scale.
Manchurian has planted chips in Raymond, Ben and other soldiers to control their minds and eventually have a plant in the White House.
The film follows Marco's discovery of the chips and his desire to find the truth. Meanwhile, Raymond is mostly oblivious and Eleanor whirls about the political landscape like a dervish, trying to maintain control of her political empire.
Jeffrey Wright is effective as Al Melvin, one of Marco and Shaw's fellow soldiers who is having the worst time with the implanted chips and the ensuing nightmares from Iraq. A consummate actor, Wright has a small but pivotal role. Melvin leaves behind a notebook
-Anthony Glassman
of drawings and ruminations about what might have truly happened in Iraq and Marco uses this to get at the truth. Wright won a Golden Globe for his work as the drag queen Belize in HBO's Angels in America. Here he is perfect as a lost soul, searching for someone who will believe.
Washington is better than he has been in a long time. He plays his role with restraint and dignity, as Marco falls deeper and deeper into this surreal, Alice-In-Wonderland hole.
Jon Voight as the good, ethical, Senator Jordan is also compelling in a small role as is Kimberly Elise.
But the film belongs to Meryl Streep as the evil, manipulative and Oedipal mother and senator. Her politician is an acid-tongued manipulator who knows exactly which buttons to push and when to push them. She dresses to kill and she kills to win. Streep takes this role and runs with it, creating a "Mommie Dearest" for contemporary audiences that will not soon be forgotten and one that will set the standards for other villains to come.
She steals every scene. In one she merely crushes ice with her teeth and tells a whole story with a simple gesture. In another, she works a room of politicians so expertly that they and the audience are left gasping for air.
Demme's directing is strong for the most part, although the film does get a bit tedious towards the end. Stronger editing would have made it even more compelling. Tak Fujimoto's cinematography is vivid and packs a punch. Fujimoto works in extreme close-ups for much of the film and it works well to transport us into the dueling egos and mind frames of the characters in conflict.
Demme's film is as scathing an indictment of the Bush regime as Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11, although Demme doesn't name the parties to which his characters belong. The movie excoriates extremist politicians willing to do anything to make a buck and profit from war. Manchurian Global may as well be Dick Cheney's Halliburton or George Bush, Sr.'s Carlyle Group-Manchurian also gets no-bid contracts from the government and tightly controls the president's office.
The biggest flaw with Demme's film is the ending, which is a cheap shot at trying to give evil its comeuppance.
The Manchurian Candidate is a cautionary tale, particularly in this election season, when the struggle of good and evil is clearly in the balance. The film warns its audience about the dangers of brainwashing, particularly by ruthless corporations and immoral politicians. Of course, some would say it is the audience that has been brainwashed into believing the politicos are evil.