南鵲書廬

張藝謀導演，譚盾作曲的英文歌劇《秦始皇》，一開場安排一位京劇演員飾「陰陽大師」，用中文唱著「跟我來啊！進入兩千年前的悲喜世界」。這名唯一的「東方歌劇」演員由何人擔任？答案揭曉，是台灣著名京劇演員吳興國。吳興國8日抵紐約，此時正參與角色排練。譚盾藉《秦始皇》搭起了一座橋，從東方過渡到西方，吳興國的加入，正具體而微具現了這座文化橋梁。

「中國熱」全球蔓延，美國紐約大都會歌劇院邀請張藝謀、譚盾，及旅居美國的中國作家哈金寫劇本，聯手促成年底首演的這台大戲《秦始皇》，備受矚目。除了著名男高音多明哥擔任秦始皇角色、女高音蕾妮．弗萊明擔任女主角孟姜女，十名主要演員之中，唯一非歌劇演員，也是唯一京劇表演體系出身的就是吳興國。

【…】

吳興國說，他所飾演的陰陽大師，擔任開場重頭戲及第三幕結束前，似預言家、風水師，又似說書人，揭示了秦始皇一統天下的干雲氣勢，也諷喻了秦朝王國崩破的原由。他說，譚盾曾任湖南京劇院指揮，對京劇相當嫻熟，為他譜寫的唱段雖不是西皮二黃，但保有強烈的京腔味道。他一開始用中文演唱，最後則須用英文開口，還好只有幾句，瘋瘋顛顛，喻示王國崩敗其來有自，並不擔心。

詳見聯合報：英文歌劇秦始皇 吳興國加入排練

The film's most poignant, honest moments mingle fantasy and realism, family and Hollywood history. When Isabella plays her mother, whom she strikingly resembles, Ingrid Bergman is dressed in gleaming white, gazing down at her daughter from a tattered movie screen.

Isabella, dressed in black, looks up and tells her mother, "Some say that father destroyed your career."

Ingrid Bergman — at once Mama and icon — serenely replies: "No, he didn't destroy my career. I destroyed his."

This is, of course, a conversation that Isabella Rossellini is having with herself, and its unanswerable question could lead everyone in circles forever. It also represents the film's fanciful, eloquent acknowledgment that as a way to emotional truth, realism has nothing over dreams — even if Roberto Rossellini might have disagreed.

原始圖片出處：（1）、（2）

詳見紐約時報：Isabella Rossellini's Tribute to Her Father, Cinema's Great Neorealist Talking Belly（2006.5.8）

Three years ago the Royal Shakespeare Company was in trouble.

【…】

It was hardly an auspicious moment for Michael Boyd to take over.

Yet, in a surprisingly short time, Mr. Boyd has turned things around. And as a measure of the company's revived self-confidence, it is preparing to start its biggest project ever: a yearlong festival of Shakespeare's complete works, staged by its own directors and actors as well as by guest troupes from as far afield as India and Brazil.

The festival officially opens on April 23, traditionally celebrated as Shakespeare's birthday, but two lively productions have already opened, "Romeo and Juliet" at the Royal Shakespeare Theater and "Antony and Cleopatra" at the adjacent Swan Theater. The next two shows will add an international flavor: "Othello" in German with English surtitles and "Hamlet" from South Africa.

【…】

Still, with the company itself offering 23 plays, the year will also include some British star power, not only the former Royal Shakespeare artistic directors Sir Peter Hall and Sir Trevor Nunn, but also Sir Ian McKellen in "King Lear," Dame Judi Dench in a musical version of "The Merry Wives of Windsor," Janet Suzman in "Coriolanus" and Patrick Stewart, who is now appearing opposite Harriet Walter in "Antony and Cleopatra" and will later play Prospero in "The Tempest."

詳見紐約時報：Royal Shakespeare Company Has Much Ado in Stratford（2006.4.22）

One of the three stars of the Broadway revival of "Three Days of Rain," which opened last night at the Bernard B. Jacobs Theater, is Julia Roberts, who is making her big-time theatrical debut. And though Ms. Roberts gives a genuinely humble performance, there is no way that this show is not going to be all about Julia.

Ms. Roberts is the sole reason this limited-run revival, which ends on June 18, has become the most coveted ticket in town. Mr. Greenberg's slender, elegant play from 1997 about familial disconnectedness and the loneliness of intimacy has certainly never known — and probably will never know again — such fame and fortune. On the other hand, it's almost impossible to discern its artistic virtues from this wooden and splintered interpretation, directed by Joe Mantello and also starring (poor, luckless lunkheads) Paul Rudd and Bradley Cooper.

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Lord knows, she isn't a versatile film actress in the style of her rivals from abroad, Nicole and Kate and Cate. Her range onscreen runs from feisty but vulnerable ("Pretty Woman," "Erin Brockovich") to vulnerable but feisty ("Sleeping With the Enemy," "Closer"). Her strength, as far as her public is concerned, is in her sameness, which magnifies everyday human traits to a level of radioactive intensity, and a feral beauty that is too unusual to be called pretty.

【…】

All the characters in "Three Days of Rain" are analytical, acutely literary types, given to academic name-dropping and the sort of lyrical, brittle and purely theatrical speech that is Mr. Greenberg's signature. For the play to cast its spell (and having seen it in 1997 at the Manhattan Theater Club, I know that it can cast a spell), the language must flow like music: sometimes like nervous jazz, sometimes like Puccini-esque rhapsody. Sad to say, this production never lifts its voice in song.

【…】

And yet, and yet. I found myself fascinated by the way her facial structure (ah, those cheekbones!) seems to change according to how the light hits her. In repose, her face seems impossibly, hauntingly eloquent. She has a scene — all right, a few seconds — of flirtation with Mr. Rudd in the second act that is absolutely charming. And on the few occasions when she smiles, it's with a sunniness that could dispel even 40 days and 40 nights of rain. None of this, for the record, in any way illuminates her characters or Mr. Greenberg's play.

【…】

In his opening soliloquy Mr. Rudd's Walker speaks of a famous house designed by his father, immortalized by a photograph in Life magazine. "People have sometimes declined my invitation to see the real place for fear of ruining the experience of the photograph," he says. Some movie fans may have the same fear about seeing Ms. Roberts in the flesh. They shouldn't. She looks every inch the magnetic (if theatrically challenged) movie star. Fans of Mr. Greenberg, on the other hand, should definitely stay home.

原始圖片出處：（1）

詳見紐約時報：Enough Said About 'Three Days of Rain.' Let's Talk Julia Roberts!

The first painting donated in 1856 to the new National Portrait Gallery here was of William Shakespeare, already well enshrined as the nation's literary idol. For the gallery, the oil recorded as NPG 1 seemed like a singularly apt founding work for its collection. And now, as the museum celebrates its 150th anniversary, it is again in the limelight. 

But does this so-called Chandos portrait actually depict Shakespeare? Indeed, do any of dozens of other "Shakespeare" paintings and engravings offer a true likeness of the man who was born in Stratford-on-Avon in 1564 and died there in 1616? 

These are the central questions addressed in "Searching for Shakespeare," a fascinating exhibition on view here through May 29. For this inquiry, the National Portrait Gallery has for the first time united the six oils most frequently said to portray Shakespeare. For further comparison, it is also presenting the 1623 engraving of him in the First Folio of his collected plays, as well as a plaster cast of the bust that was placed above his grave in Holy Trinity Church in Stratford sometime between 1620 and 1623. 

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As part of its search, the gallery has assembled documentary evidence of Shakespeare's life, including the church's written approval of his marriage to Anne Hathaway in 1582; the parish register of the baptism of their first child, Susanna, in 1583; the baptism of their twins, Hamnet and Judith, in 1585; Hamnet's burial 11 years later; and Shakespeare's will, in which he left his "second-best bed" to his widow. 

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Finally, then, there is the Chandos portrait, which has been dated between 1600 and 1610. It depicts a man who could well be the same man in the 1623 engraving and the church monument, with a receding hairline, a high forehead, long hair and a beard. In the portrait, he also wears an earring, which was fashionable among actors in Shakespeare's day. 

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In the 19th century, some Englishmen did not like the idea. One critic, J. Hain Friswell, wrote: "One cannot readily imagine our essentially English Shakespeare to have been a dark, heavy man, with a foreign expression, of decidedly Jewish physiognomy, thin curly hair, a somewhat lubricious mouth, red-edged eyes, wanton lips, with a coarse expression and his ears tricked out with earrings." 

原始圖片出處：（1） 

詳見紐約時報：Will the Real William Shakespeare Please Stand Up? （2006.3.4）

原始圖片出處：（1）

觀看預告片：
Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest

南飛烏鵲曰：
Johnny Depp 戲路之廣，教人訝異。他演過的角色，或中規中矩，或浪漫不羈，還有像「神鬼奇航」海盜船長這種難以定位的怪ㄎㄚ。IMDB的演員小傳寫道：Johnny Depp is perhaps one of the most versatile actors of his day and age in Hollywood。所謂 “versatile actor”，也就是演啥像啥，好萊塢的老將新秀有他這種功力的，並不多見。

原始圖片出處：（1）、（2）

觀看預告片：
X-men 3
Superman Returns

南飛烏鵲曰：
新版超人的卡司，只有凱文‧史貝西吸引我的注意，莫非這是心智老化的徵兆？（這次看了劇照，發現他其實很適合演X教授。由他對戰萬磁王，似乎也不錯。）

By Stephen Holden （影評）

"Sophie Scholl: The Final Days" conveys what it must have been like to be a young, smart, idealistic dissenter in Nazi Germany, where no dissent was tolerated. This gripping true story, directed in a cool, semi-documentary style by the German filmmaker Marc Rothemund from a screenplay by Fred Breinersdorfer, challenges you to gauge your own courage and strength of character should you find yourself in similar circumstances. Would you risk your life the way Sophie Scholl (Julia Jentsch) and a tiny group of fellow students at Munich University did to spread antigovernment leaflets? How would you behave during the kind of relentless interrogations that Sophie endures? If sentenced to death for your activities, would you still consider your resistance to have been worth it?

【…】

The Scholl siblings belong to the White Rose, a tiny resistance movement at Munich University. The pamphlet they distribute in the university's empty halls, while classes are in session, declares that the war cannot be won and urges Germany to sue for peace. They naïvely hope to ignite a spontaneous student rebellion.

But the Nazi attitude toward the reversal of Germany's fortunes on the battlefield is one of enraged denial. The shrill accusations leveled against Sophie and two of the other accused in the interrogation room and in court by the fulminating judge, Dr. Roland Freisler (André Hennicke), have a tone of desperate, hysterical fury.

【…】

Ms. Jentsch's portrayal of Sophie is the more impressive for its complete lack of histrionics. Yes, Sophie is a heroine, but not one given to Joan of Arc-style theatrics. An optimistic, life-loving student with a boyfriend and a rich future ahead of her, she is the kind of decent, principled person we would all like to be.

詳見紐約時報：The Quiet Resolve of a German Anti-Nazi Martyr（2006.2.17）

John Spencer, the Emmy Award-winning actor who played the shrewd, craggy White House chief of staff on the NBC drama "The West Wing," died yesterday morning in Los Angeles, four days before his 59th birthday.

【…】

In an eerie parallel to life, his character on "The West Wing," Leo McGarry, suffered a heart attack last season that forced him to give up his job as chief of staff to President Josiah Bartlet, played by Martin Sheen. McGarry recovered and, in the season finale, became the running mate of Matt Santos, the Democratic presidential nominee, played by Jimmy Smits. The campaign is a critical plotline for the show, which is in the middle of production for its seventh season. Mr. Spencer had received Emmy nominations for his role every year from 1999 to 2004, winning as a best supporting actor in 2002.

He made his breakthrough in the 1990 film "Presumed Innocent," playing the role of Detective Dan Lipranzer alongside Harrison Ford. "His name, all of a sudden, became at the tip of everyone's tongue," Mr. Hofmann said. Mr. Spencer then solidified his reputation as a character actor, playing a stream of lawyers and government officials, including the fiery New York transplant Tommy Mullaney on "L.A. Law."

By the late 1990's, Mr. Spencer had so deeply ensconced himself as a sharp-witted public servant that he was cited as a model for the chief of staff on "The West Wing." Aaron Sorkin, creator of the series, recalled last night: "I said to the casting director, 'We need someone like John Spencer.' And the casting director said, 'What about John Spencer?' And I said, 'We will never get John Spencer.' " But Mr. Spencer said yes.

詳見紐約時報：John Spencer, 58, TV Actor Starring on 'The West Wing,' Dies

短評：想起上個禮拜楊照的文章。文章開頭閑閑而來，明寫此而意在彼，結尾筆鋒陡轉，聲東擊西，藉戲劇角色挖苦政治人物。裡頭有一段很能說明John Spencer 這類演員的重要：“我所知道的好萊塢電影工業，分工再細膩不過。好萊塢的術語裡，有所謂的「個性角色」（character roles），指的是每部電影要能成立，除了主要「明星角色」之外，一定要有堅強的演技型配角們。編劇知道要寫「個性角色」，經紀人知道要介紹適合演「個性角色」的演員，演員知道一套演「個性角色」的方法，導演也清楚意識該如何讓「個性角色」適當發揮。「個性角色」的戲不會很多，觀眾走出戲院甚至不會記得他們，然而電影好不好看，觀眾能不能被感動，卻往往取決於有沒有對的、好的「個性角色」。【...】台灣電視劇怎麼難看？一個問題就出在我們沒有「個性角色」的概念吧！編劇不會寫「個性角色」，最需要有個性的角色，卻最刻板；演員更是沒有「個性角色」所需的扎實訓練，不管什麼角色什麼場合，他們只會一種演法，演明星演偶像，自覺地誇張地在自己身上堆砌光環。” John Spencer 不是偶像明星，但是少了他扮演的里歐，白宮風雲這齣戲就走樣了。

The story, which spans four decades (from 1909 to 1949) in Georgia, Tennessee and Africa, could be reduced to a catalog of abuses. The narrator, Celie (fearlessly incarnated by Broadway veteran La Chanze), has been serially raped by her father; at 14 she has borne two children, immediately taken from her; the scars have left her unable to give birth again. Her horrible father, whose only lesson to Celie is that she's ugly, barters her to the sullen, brutal Mister (Kingsley Leggs), who is saddled with three wild kids of his own and requires a slave to cook, sew, act as lion tamer to his children and accede to his sexual demands. Mister scares off Celie's beloved sibling Nettie (Renee Elise Goldsberry), leaving the girl hapless and hopeless. "If I really dead," she moans, "it be better."  

That's a powerful lot of death force. But there's life force too; the piece has many living examples of how to wrestle life, and your man, to a draw, and maybe take two out of three. The zaftig Sofia (Felicia P. Fields) is such a dynamo. Her personal Golden Rule is two words long: "Hell, no!" In her marriage to Mister's son Harpo (Brandon Victor Dixon), she's the boss; when Celie, who speaks only of what she knows, advises Harpo to beat her, Sofia snorts, "I love Harpo... But I'll kill him before I let him beat me." Another role model is the one person who has a claim on Mister's dour heart: the vampy vocalist Shug Avery (Elisabeth Withers-Mendes). Shug's wanton lust has all the men drooling like Tex Avery wolves, while her wanderlust propels her out of town just long enough to make 'em miss her when she's gone.  

The Walker book raised eyebrows and hackles by focusing on the oppression, not of blacks by the white hierarchy, but of black women by the black patriarchy. To simplify the message just a tad: men bad; women good. And since women get no respect, only ravaged, by their men, they turn to each other for solace, and sometimes sex. If the Spielberg film was stayed skittishly on the periphery of the lesbian-empowerment theme, the musical strolls right on in. Yes, it explains Celie's turning to women as a result both of her rapacious treatment by men and her longing for her beautiful lost sister; but most of the commendable ardor is girl-girl. Shug's big come-on song, "Too Beautiful for Words," is directed at Cellie, and the two women sing the first-act-closing love duet, "What About Love?"  

【…】 

The show begins with a prayer, so let's end with the Purple theology. That vigorous opening hymn, "Mysterious Ways," is also a notice to the audience: stay tuned while things get worse, because eventually they'll get better. For the first half of the musical, the worse predominates; Celia gets drowned in personal plagues, like a teenage lady Job. Act One is the work of the Old Testament God, a disinterested fellow with a stormy temper. Act Two, when most of the wrongs are righted, attends to the New Testament's doctrine of love and forgiveness.  

詳見時代雜誌：The Color Oprah （2005.12.02）