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Metro staff reviews the latest CDs, DVDs and books for your reading pleasure.
 
Music
Run this town
No living man but Jay-Z could get a sold out Boston arena so excited about New York City. But for two hours last night, the sold out crowd at the Garden was in an Empire State of Mind, as “The Blueprint 3” tour rolled into town.
 
My Television
Back in the trenches
Steven Spielberg makes strikingly vivid, breathtakingly poetic movies about some of the most terrifying conflicts in the history of man. The filmmaking aesthetic he pioneered with “Saving Private Ryan” — and continues to perfect in HBO’s new WWII miniseries, “The Pacific” — was born out of a desire to translate as honestly as possible his conversations with veterans on their combat experience.
 
The Word
Is nothing in her life real anymore?
When we first read that Heidi Pratt was firing husband Spencer Pratt as her manager, we thought, “Yay! Heidi’s new face is finally doing something right!” But then we found out that although she did fire Spencer, it seems like she’s replacing him with psychic Aiden Chase to take the reigns on her “career” — and then we got scared.
 
Movies
Pattinson: A vampire in Brooklyn
Robert Pattinson has been playing Americans so often that he has forgotten how to talk like a Brit. In his latest, “Remember Me,” the “Twilight” heartthrob stars as a soulful young New Yorker attending NYU, but he insists he didn’t need any help sounding like a native. “I’ve never had a dialect coach or anything,” Pattinson says. “Ironically, I’ve only had a dialect coach for this film I’m doing now, which I’m doing in an English accent. I guess I’ve forgotten how to do an English accent.”
 
Published 23:12, November the 20th, 2008
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It’s only ‘Rock and Roll’

Stoppard play looks and sounds great, but story is lacking

 REVIEW. Tom Stoppard’s “Rock and Roll” is about a lot of things, but rock music really isn’t one of them.
Sure, rock ’n’ roll as an agent of change is an underlying theme, but this story is so jam-packed with issues, you could easily get lost in the excessively wordy piece. (It clocks in at nearly three hours, intermission included.)

There’s Marxism, cancer, political upheaval, journalistic integrity, political oppression and lots of Czechoslovakian history. And a multitude of scene changes that are, fortunately, accompanied by snippets of rock music from the 20-plus years that pass as the story unfolds.

Jan (Manoel Felciano) is a grad student who forfeits the safety of academic life in England to fight for freedom in his homeland, a post-“Prague Spring,” Soviet-dominated Czechoslovakia.      

Meanwhile, his mentor Max, an uber-Marxist professor, bides his time opining on communism and caring for his cancer-stricken wife Eleanor and their hippie daughter Esme while fending off romantic advances from Eleanor’s student, Sappho-scholar Lenka.

As time passes, one character dies, another becomes a mom, there’s a regime change and the multitude of plots culminate in a dinner party.

The good news is that, like all Huntington productions, “Rock and Roll” looks and sounds great. Douglas Schmidt’s set is a perfect blend of colorful academia and the bland, tattered gray one might experience living under an oppressive regime.

The production also boasts stellar, almost scene-stealing work by Summer Serafin and Rene Augesen, despite the harried pace at which the production moves. Augesen is especially outstanding as Eleanor, grappling with her own fate while hurling one of the most vile, offensive, stay-away-from-my-man lines in history with the panache and aplomb of a true aristocrat.

Unfortunately, brilliant delivery of the show’s best line isn’t enough to earn this show rock star status.
Sending your audience out to the street after an exuberant Rolling Stones-style curtain call does help, but in the end, “Rock and Roll” does little to “Start Me Up.”

‘Rock and Roll’
Through Dec. 11
Huntington Theatre, 264 Huntington Ave, Boston
Green line to Symphony
$20-$83, 617-266-0800
www.huntingtontheatre.org

 
 
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Music
MMMpod
The March MMMpod features conversation and music from Surfer Blood and The Allman Brothers Band (There's a double-bill you're not too likely to see. However, Gregg Allman does mention Hannah Montana!). We also speak with Vampire Weekend and the Dropkick Murphys.
 
 
 
Metro Life Panel
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