UPDATE: NYT has posted its Q & A with Walken coming this Sunday in its magazine.
Earlier: Christopher Walken is getting raves for his performance in new film "7 Psychopaths," --but he plays a typical over-the-top Walken character. To me, a more interesting departure is this: As some may know, I am a late-blooming Beethoven freak, even co-wrote a new book about him (and his global impact), and maintain a blog, Roll Over, Beethoven. Now there's a new movie, A Late Quartet, opening tomorrow, which portrays a string quartet with one member needing to retire due to Parkinson's--this is, surprise, Christopher Walken in a wonderful, restrained, award-worthy performance. (He even gets to softly utter a trademark "wowwww.") Catherine Keener plays another member, and then there's Philip Seymour Hoffman.
From the trailer (below) it seems it climaxes with them playing the greatest string music ever: Beethoven's opus 131, written when he was fully deaf. Here's favorable NYT review coming tomorrow.
1 comment:
String quartets (performing ensembles, not musical compositions) may be picking up a little cachet. British novelist and BBC Series producer Damian Lanigan has written a theatrical play called "Dissonance", about the daily lives and intrigues of string players. It debuted at the Williamstown, MA Theater Festival 5 years ago, and I saw it then. I recall that some of the music played through the sound system was by Benjamin Britten (yes, there IS a composer named Britten who is FROM Great Britain. There is also a composer named Francaix who is from France. I don't believe he was a conehead). If this film shows up in Boston, I expect to go see it (I'm one of a small number of people-not-related-to-a-cast-member-of-the-film-"Copying Beethoven" who saw that opus. First a play, then a movie: can a reality TV show be far behind? Um, no.
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