Maude
Match
Patrick Stewart gives a compelling performance as Tobi, a lion of the dance world during the ’60s and ’70s, now teaching ballet as he slips deeper into old age. Claiming to be working on a dance history dissertation, a young couple (Carla Gugino, Matthew Lillard) interrupts his solitary reveries, but the interview turns interrogatory as secrets and evasions are revealed. Stephen Belber directs Match from his witty, moving stage play about the choices posed by life.
La Sapienza
Director Eugene Green transcends the bounds of realism with La Sapienza. The protagonist is an architect who kept his head but lost his heart and soul; the film is visually architectural with geometric shapes, symmetries and a trio of hostile clients arranged in a triptych. During a tour of Baroque Italy where the architect rediscovers his purpose, La Sapienza becomes a meditation on philosophy, reality, destiny, the power of past over present and, yes, architecture.
“Maude: The Complete Second Season”
Back when a married couple in the same bed was still unusual on network television, “Maude” was groundbreaking. “Maude” was conceived as the upper middle-class liberal counterpart to “All in the Family’s” lower middle-class conservatives. Bea Arthur was superb in the title role as the matron with attitude. Their was plenty of liberal guilt over employing a black servant, but Florida (Esther Rolle) left in season two for her own show, “The Jeffersons.”
