#maestro review

[dialogue-queered]

“The American poet Wallace Stevens suggested there were 13 ways of looking at a blackbird but with Leonard Bernstein (1918-1990) that barely scrapes the surface. He was conductor, composer, pianist, writer of popular musicals, educator and celebrity. One might devote entire volumes to his identity as a Jew, a homosexual, or a political activist….Like so many creative giants he is clearly bipolar, subject to crushing depressions, bouts of self-hatred and sadness When the pendulum swings the other way, he becomes a social and artistic juggernaut overpowering everything in his path. While Bernstein was clearly homosexual, we can’t dismiss his marriage to Felicia as a cover story…[Nonetheless]….Cooper and his co-writer, Josh singer with help from cinematographer Matthew Libatique have chosen to view their subject through the lense of his sexual proclivities….Instead of seeing Bernstein as a great man or an artistic genius, we take these things for granted and look at the ferment beneath the carapace of fame….A great part of the bond between Felicia and Lenny is her belief in his talent….Apart from the concert sequences, the music is all by Bernstein, so we are subliminally absorbing his creative efforts while we watch the whirlwind of his life play itself out. Maestro’s patchwork narrative will polarise audiences, but…this restless montage…so perfectly echoes the personality of its subject”.

Source: John MacDonald (2023), ‘Maestro Is a Masterwork’, Australian Financial Review Weekend, 16-17 December, p39 (originally from the Washington Post).

[mariocki]

Una lucertola con la pelle di donna (A Lizard in a Woman's Skin, 1971)

"You dream of having an affair with this woman who lives next door. To you, that woman represents sin, moral degradation. The house next door is a symbol of vice. From what you've told me, Mrs. Durer is not exactly respectable."

"No... she certainly is not."

[an-american-whovian]

• An American Whovian Reviews: 'The Devil's Chord' — by Russell T Davies.

I'm sure a lot of us were hoping this would be a legit musical episode and we got a lil' bit of that at the end. However, what we still got was a lotta fun. Mostly due to the eponymous time wizard's latest terrifying villain: The Maestro.

Also, some people complained about The Beatles casting — but I've definitely seen worse .

⭐⭐⭐ outta four.

[watchilove]

Joy, Colours, Expertise - Review Gerald Charles Maestro 8.0 Squelette (Photo fest)

Gerald Charles introduced in 2022 the Maestro 8.0 Squelette, a testament to the art of watchmaking. This exclusive timepiece marries Mr. Genta’s iconic and unmistakable Maestro case shape with a unique open-worked movement, designed by acclaimed contemporary artist Octavio Garcia. We have a look at one of the latest iterations, the Maestro 8.0 Squelette Ref. GC8.0-A-07, now available for preorder…

[shredsandpatches]

This time last week I was getting ready to sing in Berlioz's Damnation de Faust with the symphony chorus and it was absolutely wonderful -- this was the season finale and the last performance in our home venue for two years while it's renovated, and it's also our musical director's favorite piece and the one that was cancelled on final dress night back in 2020. I wasn't even in the chorus yet in 2020 but it was cathartic all the same. And the principal cast was just absolutely perfect.

I feel like most of the time I'm not visible in the photos from concerts but you can see me in all of these.

[oscarupsets]

So very excited to present my rankings for the 10 Best Picture nominees ahead of the 96th Oscars this Sunday!

Regular Oscar research aside, I wanted to see Oppenheimer from the first trailer. I bought tickets specifically to see it in 70mm (the only one on this list I paid full price for), and I loved every minute of it. My top pick of the year without question.

I will also admit that I could easily rewatch Killers of the Flower Moon, didn't love Poor Things, and still don't get the hype for Past Lives. Maybe I'm a fake film snob, maybe I didn't appreciate them enough, I don't know 🤷‍♀️ Films can be super artsy and unconventional and still be just ok.

While I do not believe all 10 of these films deserved their nomination, I could not give you specific films to replace them with. I also didn't hate any of them! They all have good qualities, some just aren't my favorite of the year.

At the end I included 4 additional films that I saw this season that I enjoyed enough to write about.

Ratings are current as of 3/8/2024.

[filmgamer]

Dune 2, Kung Fu Panda 4, Glen Powell and PS5 Pro: Podcast: S3 E.13

You can also listen on Spotify: Listen on Apple Podcasts: (https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/2une-down-those-kung-fu-panda-4-reviews-and-ps5-pro-rumours/id1630483024?i=1000648361383)

[usergreenpixel]

The last (pinky promise, Neighbors!) rescheduling for “El Encargo del Maestro Goya”. It’s coming on Sunday.

Stay tuned!

P. S. If there are any deaf or hard of hearing people in my audience, you will be welcomed to add your views on the disability representation in the book. Personally I love it, but it would be interesting to discuss.

[terrainofheartfelt]

If you’re still adding to your 2023 watchlist may I suggest the following: Are You There God It’s Me Margaret, Asteroid City, Maestro, Polite Society, All of Us Strangers, and Passages 🫡

Oh for sure! thank you love!!!!!

[mylifeincinema]

My Week(s) in Reviews: December 31, 2023

My last post of 2023! Gonna make this quick-ish, but stay tuned, because sometime in the coming week I'm going to start posting My Best of 2023... Starting with My Most Anticipated Films of 2024. So yeah, be on the lookout for that. Anyway, here's what I've been watching...

Poor Things (Yorgos Lanthimos, 2023)

So damn good, but also significantly overlong. I hate that Emma Stone’s odds are going down, as she delivers what will likely remain a favorite ‘til the end of the decade. Mark Ruffalo is also a blast, and also deserves the win. I honestly didn’t think he still had a performance like this in him. Dafoe is magnificently weird, and every time he graced the screen was a treat. Yorgos went off, here. This is probably his best work yet, despite being in need of some serious trimming. It’s also one of the most visually interesting films of the year. I just loved how this movie was shot. And it’s very easily better than the book. So, y’know, there’ that too. - 8.5/10

Saltburn (Emerald Fennell, 2023)

Awkwardly overwritten but exquisitely shot and weirdly intoxicating. There's no character, here, that's less than detestable, and I kinda loved it. - 7/10

The Iron Claw (Sean Durkin, 2023)

This would’ve been better if they’d had all of the actual wrestling happen off-screen. It would’ve cut the bloated running-time without affecting its emotional heft. Sean Dunkin did great work, though, and captured these brothers’ relationships in such an emotionally raw manner. Maura Tierney quietly delivered the film’s most gutting performance. Well, kinda, but not really, because Zac Efron seriously impressed. I didn’t know he had this level of emotional fragility in him as an actor. Damn. - 8/10

Maestro (Bradley Cooper, 2023)

Structurally flawed and occasionally over-directed, but both Bradley Cooper and Carey Mulligan knock it out of the park, and that major conducting scene was absolutely breathtaking. - 7.5/10

Saw X (Kevin Greutert, 2023)

So, what, Jigsaw's like a Dexter-type anti-hero, now? I don't know, maybe that's not new, it's been a while since I've seen one of these. The violence is creative and painful enough to make it worth watching, especially with how awful the people are. Nothing special. It's torture-porn at its most reliable, maybe? I don't know. - 6/10

Past Lives (Celine Song, 2023)

I can see why people are taking to this one, but aside from the general yearning for the nostalgic hitting home, this didn't do too much for me. Greta Lee is really good, though. - 6.5/10

Enjoy!

-Timothy Patrick Boyer.

[kevrocksicehouse]

Maestro.

D: Bradley Cooper. 2023.

 There’s a reason Carey Mulligan, playing Felicia Montealegre, a renowned actress who married legendary composer and conductor Leonard Bernstein (director Bradley Cooper) in 1951, has top billing over the film’s ostensible subject. Maestro is less a biopic (and can be surprisingly perfunctory about Bernstein’s accomplishments as when he walks into a room declaiming “Well I finally finished ‘Mass’!”) than a love story that deserves to be called “Scenes from a Marriage.” Mulligan fully captures a smart charismatic woman who with eyes wide open falls for a brilliant, charming genius whose bisexuality is only semi-closeted and forms a life and family with his and her contradictions, and Cooper matches her, playing Bernstein as an artist with an intuitive understanding that his art and life demands he be everything he is.  As director Cooper peerlessly delineates the heady rush of finding the perfect person. The couple’s courtship is a heady black and white rush that is like a sped-up version of Before Sunrise and also captures the dynamic vivacity that Bernstein bought to his composition. And when many years later as, amid a happy busy life (and the film’s switch to color), Felicia starts to realize how many of the marriage’s compromises are hers, Cooper doesn’t let the film even suggest their union was a “sham” or “cover” marriage or that they were never the most important person in each other’s lives. For two exhilarating, painful hours they become the most important people in ours.

May December.

D: Todd Haynes (2023).

If Bradley Cooper looks at an unusual marriage with rose-colored compassion, Todd Haynes employs a forensic pathologists scalpel to dissect the family started by Gracie Atherton-Yoo (Julianne Moore balancing affection and delusion) when at 36 she had sex with  13-year old Joe (Charles Melton, heart-rendering in a breakthrough performance) was imprisoned for child rape, and had their first child behind bars, after which she left her previous family and married him when he turned 21. They became tabloid-famous (the script is loosely based on the Mary Kay Latourneau story) and after things died down have achieved something like normality (aside from the occasional turd-sent-in-the-mail type of harassment) when Elizabeth Berry, a television actor hired to play Gracie in an independent film, (Natalie Portman) embeds herself with the family as “research” sparks a crisis in which love is inseparable from exploitation. And since Portman (who functions as a stand-in for the filmmaker) unsparingly depicts Berry’s own turns from empathy to perverse manipulation of the family, Haynes suggests the film itself isn’t to be trusted. He keeps the movie on shifting sand as we watch a family story without any adults in the room.

[the-celluloid-correspondent]

Maestro Movie Review

A portrait of Leonard Bernstein's singular charisma and passion for music as he rose to fame as America's first native-born, world-renowned conductor, following his ambitions to compose symphonic and popular Broadway musicals. 

On November 14th, 1943, a young conductor and composer, Leonard Bernstein, substituted at the last minute to conduct the New York Philharmonic at Carnegie Hall. Since that fateful day, Leonard Bernstein has become a legend in the music industry as he is regarded as the first great American Maestro. Whose music will span for generations to come. Since his passing in 1990, many filmmakers have tried adapting his complicated life to the big screen. Even filmmakers such as Steven Spielberg and Martin Scorsese have passed on the project to hand it off to Bradley Cooper. Cooper has proven himself over the past decade that he is one of the best actors in the business, but a rising writer and director. So it came as a shock to me to see how simple Maestro was. 

If you have seen any music-related biopic, then Maestro is going to feel very familiar as it follows the standard plotline of this genre. From the rise to the fall and the eventual redemption of said person, Maestro falls into all of the traps that plague the biopic genre. Thus causing the story, the characters, and their relationships to feel very surface-level and superficial. Leonard Berstein was a musical genius whose personal life was very complicated, yet the story portrays his life as a very simple matter. By the end of the film, we don’t understand what Leonard Bernstein and Felicia Montealegre were really like. Maestro never dives into Bernstein’s creative passion and what made him tick. Nor does it dive into his battle with his sexuality and how it affected his relationship with others, especially his wife. These essential biopic questions and many others are either entirely glossed over or vaguely touched on. And what further adds to my frustration is that the film acts a lot smarter than it is. 

Now the reason why it feels smarter than it is is due to Cooper’s brilliant direction. Despite writing an average biopic script with writer Josh Singer, Cooper’s direction elevates this script to the next level. Cooper’s direction is brilliant as he further refines his directorial touch. He transports his audiences through the decades of Bernstein's life with his beautiful visual storytelling. The film starts as a black-and-white musical fantasy that is straight from the 1940s and 50s to highlight the youth and joy of Bernstein's early life. Then the film transforms into the lush but gritty technicolor allure seen in the 1960s and 70s to highlight the marital struggles between Leonard and Felicia. As the decades progress, so does the filmmaking style that Cooper utilizes. Furthermore, his utilization of long, uninterrupted takes just further immerses the audience into this story. Cooper has clearly shown great care in his craft while crafting this film, especially in the film's musical scenes. The recreation of Bernstein conducting the London Symphony Orchestra in Mahler’s “Ressurection” is an out-of-body experience. Then for the rest of the film, utilizing Bernstein’s musical composition to tell his life story is beautifully touching and personal. 

Bradley Cooper and Carey Mulligan both gave some of the best performances of their careers in Maestro. The pair have impeccable chemistry on screen as they completely transform into their respective characters. Nailing all aspects of their characters from their mannerisms to their voices. We watch the pair go through all the trials of this very complicated relationship. From star-crossed-lovers to fiery fights, and heartbreaking diagnoses, they perfectly portray this couple's complicated life. Even though the material lacked the depth required to portray these characters properly, both were able to give their characters and their relationships some depth with their performances. However, despite being first billed, Carey Mulligan is sidelined in the film. I wished the film explored more of her perspective and her reaction to Leonard's constant cheating as he was a closeted bisexual/gay man. Mulligan elevates it as much as she can, but she is sadly left out to dry. The same can be stated for Cooper as there is no material for him to work with to show the internal conflicts of his closeted character. Both of them will easily earn an Oscar nomination but might miss the award because of how shallow their characters were written. 

With Netflix providing the majority of the film's financial backing, you know that it will look good. The cinematography is breathtaking as it transforms in style as the decades progress in Bernstein’s life. From the classic black-and-white Hollywood looks of the 1940s to the technicolor of the 1960s, you will be immersed in this story. What further adds to the immersion is the impeccable production and costume design that is period-accurate. However, I am sad that they gloss over that Felicia was an influential fashionista during the mid-century. 

I expected more out of Maestro than a standard musical biopic. Leonard Bernstein’s legacy will last generations, and to see his biopic play it safe is a little insulting. Especially when Lenny took massive risks in his musical career. This film has all of the elements of a masterpiece, but its safe and shallow script prevents it from achieving that status.

My Rating: B

[adamwatchesmovies]

Poseidon (2006)

There are just enough moments in Poseidon that work to make you see the movie it could’ve been. Even then, there’d be no reason to watch it when the original The Poseidon Adventure is readily available. This movie has great special effects and a lame script full of dull characters you’ve seen a million times before.

On New Year’s Eve, the SS Poseidon capsizes after being hit by a huge, rogue wave. In the ballroom, a few of the survivors attempt to make their way to the bottom (now the top) of the ship, where they hope to be rescued.

This movie starts off on the wrong foot with the character who is essentially our protagonist: firefighter-turned-New York City Mayor Robert Ramsey (Kurt Russell). Ramsey is all upset when he walks into his room and sees his daughter Jennifer (Mike Vogel) and her boyfriend Christian (Mike Vogel) in an embrace. His ability to be a cliché is only eclipsed by douchebag gambler “Lucky” Larry (Kevin Dillon), who might as well walk onto the screen with a big “dead meat” sign hanging around his neck. We already have an “antagonist” in the form of the ship that’s upside down and slowly sinking. Why did writer Mark Protosevich feel the need to add all of these petty dramatic subplots and one-dimensional characters? I will be fair to Poseidon and say that some people’s deaths I didn’t see coming but for the most part, the passengers are such obvious types you know exactly what will happen to them the second they walk on-screen.

This is a remake of the 1972 film/an adaptation of the novel it was based on, but only loosely. Everyone we meet is new (which explains why none of them are interesting) and it’s only the concept of the ship being turned over that’s been retained. It feels like the opportunity to have some big, explosive visuals was the only reason this movie was made. To be fair, the special effects are some of the best 2006 had to offer. You get your money’s worth during the scenes where the ship gets flipped and everyone on the inside is sent flying through the air. There are also some good scenes of tension as the survivors desperately make their way through one obstacle after another. That said, some of those obstacles are ridiculous and would be insurmountable anywhere other than in a movie. There’s a particular scene where screws holding the cover to a large ventilation shaft have to be undone in record time to prevent everyone from drowning, and none of it is believable at all - not even for these artificial characters. Or maybe it would be believable in another movie, but here, it isn’t for the same reason that the original “The Poseidon Adventure” worked: The movie is too short. You never spend enough time with anyone to get to know them properly. When someone dies, it often feels rushed, or like the movie wishes you were more emotionally invested in them than you actually are.

Poseidon is not all bad but it’s forgettable. Even with the Academy Award-nominated special effects, you won’t be impressed because nowadays, it feels like we get movies like this one every other year: disaster flicks with plenty of vehicles/monuments/buildings destroyed that make you go “Ooh! Aah!” and then stop caring because the people in the middle of the action are afterthoughts. (February 3, 2023)

[married-2-the-music]

Seventeen Deep Dive #3/3: Who Are The First K-pop Group At Glastonbury?

Seventeen is one of the biggest groups in k-pop (both in terms of fame and how many members they have and how popular they are) and they debuted in 2015. They actually have thirteen members, not seventeen: Woozi, Hoshi, Jeonghan, DK, Dino, Wonwoo, Seungkwan, S.Coups, The8, Jun, Joshua, Vernon, and Mingyu.

Here are my credentials: I would consider myself a fan of Seventeen. I’ve heard many of their songs and like them, including some b-sides. And I know a little about the members from watching interviews. But, I decided to do this deep dive because I wanted to know more, and I felt like now was the perfect time to do it.

[watchilove]

Gerald Charles Maestro GC Sport Grass

Earlier this year, Gerald Charles launched two colourful and light sports watches. The Maestro GC Sport Clay and the Maestro GC Sport Grass celebrate the noble sport of tennis and celebrate some of the tennis players who are part of the Maison’s Friends of the Brand. It was a pleasure to have the prototype of the Gerald Charles Maestro GC Sport Grass in trials, this is our report. Continue…

[seoulbeatscom]

Seventeen Cleverly and Confidently Assert Their Artistry in "Maestro"

The presence of the samples, while mostly subtle, conveys that no matter how much Seventeen experiments, they are still Seventeen. Apt for the 17 is Right Here album, “Maestro” is both retrospective and futuristic.