Recently released on Blu-ray and DVD: Who is America?, Midaq Alley, The Sound of Music Live!
Who is America
It’s not fair to say, as the hype proclaims, that Sacha Baron Cohen “hoodwinked” Bernie Sanders. The senator from Vermont held his own and conceded nothing while interviewed by Cohen’s made-up “citizen journalist” (read: boob) and Confederate flag-waving conspiracy theorist Billy Wayne Ruddick Jr. Ted Koppel also refuted Ruddick’s pointedly absurd blather about “liberal media” machinations and “fake news.” However, most targets of Cohen’s latest sting operation looked duped.
The menagerie of characters Cohen created for his Showtime series are so preposterous that it’s hard to believe anyone was gulled. But then, most of his targets are absurd. Cohen’s Israeli counter-terrorism expert, Erran Morad, had no trouble convincing NRA hacks of the merits for arming school children from age 3 or prompting a Georgia legislator to repeatedly shout the “N” word. Cohen successfully skewers idiocy from many walks of life, including his self-righteously PC activist Nira Cain-N’Degeocello and British ex-con Rick Sherman, who had no trouble peddling his feces to a pretentious gallerist who exclaimed: “Wow, that’s art!”
Midaq Alley
Salma Hayek plays Alma, the alluring yet innocent young woman combing her hair in a window overlooking her close-packed Mexico City neighborhood. Transposed from a novel by Egypt’s Naguib Mahfouz, Midaq Alley is a set of overlapping tragedies and personal stories. The 1995 prize-winner by director Jorge Fons explores anger between father and son, an abusive husband, criminality, immigration to the U.S. and many dreams deferred. The performances are vivid and touching, when they aren’t heartbreaking.
The Sound of Music Live!
It probably won’t eclipse the Julie Andrews version, but fans of the sentimental favorite will find much to like in The Sound of Music Live! Drawn from the Broadway version, it was a theater performance broadcast live with a bright cast capable of tackling the song and dance as well as the love story and the escape from the Nazis. A making-of documentary captures the cast’s high adrenaline as they prepare to “Climb Every Mountain.”
