Knoxville520.com

Casino Royale

This ain’t your daddy’s James Bond. This movie takes pride in bending all the James Bond rules. Q’s gone, Moneypenny’s history, Bond doesn’t given a damn how you make his martini, and the only person emerging hot and wet from the ocean is Bond himself (in a Speedo, no less). And you’ll emerge from the theater hot and wet, because this Bond emits more pheromones than a castle full of Monty Python nuns. (Daniel Craig could have had anybody in our Turkey Creek audience that he wanted. Really, Bond’s clothes were tighter than anything those Bond girls were wearing.) While this movie relishes in emasculating Bond (his pants are too tight, his car gets trashed -- even his man bits get tortured to the point of a literal emasculation), Bond always emerges bigger, sexier, and more bad-ass than ever. Best movie I've seen so far this year. -J.B.

For Your Consideration

Like I wrote last week, I’m thankful for the Christopher Guest Collection: Waiting for Guffman, Best in Show, A Mighty Wind. But I’m also thankful for the dentist. Both keep me smiling, but sometimes the visit can be painful. Guest’s latest, For Your Consideration, dumps the “mockumentary” style of its predecessors and tries to stand up as a more traditional comedy. Kudos to Guest for ditching the overused format that he helped to pioneer, but perhaps its time to also ditch the improvised, on-the-fly script so that the jokes aren’t so few and far between. Yes, improvisation tends to create rawer, funnier material (Fred Willard and Jane Lynch can’t get any better), but it also leads to bigger bombs (John Michael Higgen’s Native American schtick). There are just too many gifted bullshitters in the cast, and there’s simply not enough screen time to let them all blossom. Although it’s fun to see who can get in the best jokes -- it was like watching the Discovery Channel, the way you could see Sandra Oh getting eaten alive by Jennifer Coolidge – it’s also a tragedy to see a comic genius like Ricky Gervais flounder. See it, but wait until you can download it cheap onto your iPod. -J.B.

The Laramie Project at the Clarence Brown Theatre

Technically I’m a week late in writing about this show, but hey, turkey happens. So the UT Theatre Department is experimenting with throwing their undergrads into the spotlight by including a “Studio Series” of undergrad-only productions in their regular professional season. As the program reads, a Studio Series audience can “enjoy the experience of witnessing the next generation of theatre professionals emerge.” That’s a lofty statement, Mr. Brown.

The Laramie Project is a hard show to screw up. I saw an abridged, high school production of it three years ago and was still moved to tears despite some bad acting and dropped plot points. And UT did an admirable job with the unabridged version, despite some mediocre performances and uninspired staging. While there were no breakaway performances in the show, Pedro Tomas, Shane Chuvalas, Martha Reddick, Sandy Greek, and Doug Jennings all gave solid, nuanced portrayals of their many characters. What unfortunately lingers in my mind are the missed opportunities of the more inexperienced or untalented actors. The script relies on the role of Jebediah Schultz to provide some much needed comic relief, but freshman Seth Crowe was too green to give Jebediah life. And perhaps the most memorable role in the show, Marge Murray, was given a completely forgettable performance by senior Christen Gee. More upsetting was that the emotional climax of the play, the moment when the townspeople of Laramie unveiled their “big-ass” wings in a show of town solidarity against hate-mongering, was such a let-down. (If you’re gonna talk about drowning out Fred Phelps, you better show him drowning on stage. It’s too much of an audience pleasure to play in a minimal fashion.)

As far as the scenic elements went, everything was suitable and unobtrusive. The set was interesting, the lighting wasn’t noticeable, the costuming was fine. The only thing that called attention to itself was the sound design, and it was only now and then that you would notice how cheesy the soap-opera-like interludes were. The focus in this show was obviously on the actors. I just wish the actors had been brave enough to call attention to themselves from time to time, too. -T.W.

A Year with Frog and Toad at the Clarence Brown Theatre

I never read those famous Frog and Toad books as a kid. They always struck me as just too plain dull to bother with. Maybe it was the musty yellow pages of the hand-me down editions our library owned that turned me off. Maybe I just couldn’t get into reading a story about two amphibians drinking lots of hot tea. I have no idea what Frog and Toad actually did in those stories, but I always figured that it wasn’t a whole lot.

I think I might have been right. In A Year with Frog and Toad, playing now at the Clarence Brown Theatre, Frog and Toad don’t do much of anything. They drink tea, send mail, and eat cookies, and that’s about it. But I have to admit, I wasn’t bored for one second.

The team at the Clarence Brown has put together a wonderfully entertaining show that will captivate kids and adults alike. The whimsical set is a playground for the imagination, and the costumes are chock-full of sparkle and pizzazz. And while the kids will marvel over everything they see, the adults in the crowd will be just as pleased with the professional performances on the stage. While everyone in the ensemble is given a chance to shine, it is Ryan Dietz as cranky, flustered, manic Toad who easily and handily steals the show.

Frog and Toad is much fun, but it did have its when-do-we-get-to-sleep opening Saturday actor fatigue. The choreography was just shaky enough to be distracting (though even more distracting was Frog’s swimming trunks, which had no business being in a live-action family show). And I don’t know who thought stopping the show for an interminably long leaf-blower routine was a good idea, but I’m still cringing thinking about it.

Robert and Willie Reale’s music has the power to make you feel really, really good deep down inside, good enough to pardon the show for not being as polished as it should be. Frog and Toad would readily forgive a few botched dance cues, so I guess I can to. Go see it. -T.W.