AJSabatini.com
AJ SABATINI - On-Line Writing
These are reviews and short pieces for the Philadelphia website Broad Street Review. These range from reviews of film, theater, opera, art and books to humor, social commentary and a few personal reflections. I think of these as thoughts on themes of interest to me prompted by current events and new work in the arts. You can access them at:
http://www.broadstreetreview.com/authors/aj-sabatini
FILM
Mr Turner and American Sniper (bio picts, visual imagery vs. action)
Fury - David Ayer (war movies, religion and my father in WW II)
Gravity- Alfonso Cuarón (on space films and visual imagery, human psychology)
Europa Report - Sebastian Cordero (on the limits of plot in outer space)
Never Sorry: Ai Weiwei documentary - Alison Klayman (graceful, heroic, real)
Footnote - Joseph Ceder (on piles of books and footnotes)
Inception - Chris Nolan (on films and dreams)
THEATER & OPERA
La Divina Caricatura - Lee Breuer's astonishing puppet autobiography
The Nose at the Met - Dimitri Shostakovich (with sets by William Kentridge)
Old-Fashioned Prostitutes - Richard Foreman ("linguistically fervent, kaleidoscopic, comic")
Orphée et Eurydice - Cristof Gluck (stupid gods, magical dance, Orpheus in the 21st century)
Leaving - Pavel Havel (the importance of Havel and his last drama)
BOOKS
Andrei Codrescu’s Bibliodeath (on digital libraries and the ends of writing)
Carlos Fuentes: A Rememberance (hanging out in Philadelphia)
Stephen Mithen’s The Singing Neanderthals (besides having sex with homo sapiens)
COMMENTARY
Heidegger and the Super Bowl
Kierkegaard and Stephen Colbert
Why Americans Love Guns
The George Zimmerman Jury
HUMOR
The Most Interesting Man on the Block ("He bakes blue velvet cake")
Down the Shore (the fate of your brains on vacation)
Another Titanic Story (crazed lovers and a Titanic Commemoration party)
ART AND PERFORMANCE
Dancing Around The Bride (on Marcel Duchamp -Who else? - at the PMA.)
Commotion Festival - City as Art (a festival in Philadelphia)
Hidden City Philadelphia Sounds (a great Philadelphia event)
Bruce Naumann at the Venice Biennale (also about Annson Kenney and neon)