PASSING STRANGE Trailer! (Vid) Edit: More news! 8/1/09

[thetinymagic2]

Posted: 7/31/09 at 2:21am

Scaryotypes Unite! Party! (Send PM if interested)


http://www.traileraddict.com/trailer/passing-strange/trailer
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204619004574318473901277710.html
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Passing Strange: I’ve been intrigued by Passing Strange ever since reading an ecstatic review of it in the New Yorker. Sweet blessed Lord does Spike Lee’s film of the show’s last performance not disappoint. Like Jonathan Demme’s Stop Making Sense it captures with visceral power the sweaty intensity and raw intimacy of a live performance before a packed, euphoric crowd while taking full advantage of the tools and tricks of film.

A film that threatens to give the phrase “rock musical” a good name, Strange follows the evolution of narrator/writer/singer Stew as he pursues a tragi-comic search for an elusive ideal he calls “The Real”. The son of a doting, solidly middle-class mother, Stew’s search for The Real takes him first to a church choir where he bonds over illegal smoke with an ebullient choir director who is a free, unfettered bohemian in his unfettered imagination but a closeted, frustrated queen in real life and then to a punk-rock baptism before Stew’s young doppelganger decides to follow his wandering muse to Amsterdam, where he experiences hippified bliss with free-loving, pot-smoking countercultural types and then to Germany, where he falls in with a gang of Sprockets wannabes committed to deeply terrible art. Like Dorothy in Wizard Of Oz, Stew learns that there is no place like home. His journey ends where it begins, with a mother he could only learn to love and understand in retrospect. In Passing Strange Stew—who comments upon, interacts with and sometimes just observes the actor playing his younger self while leading a dynamite band—accomplishes in art what he could never achieve in real life.

Stew’s search for authenticity is inextricably intertwined with his thorny, complicated relationship with his racial identity. For Stew, blackness is a tool to exploit or ignore whenever it suits him. Early in the play the choir director kids wisely observes that while Stew’s grandmother passed for white to get by in the world they’re both black men passing for black. Stew is forever trapped between worlds, caught between his love of black culture and his passionate embrace of everything European, arty and pretentious.

In Passing Strange irony, post-modern meta-commentary, pop-culture geekery and parody comfortably co-exist with raw emotion and aching sadness. It’s a film and a play with a huge emotional palette and a mastery of tone. At 135 minutes it isn’t exactly tight but only the Berlin sequence outstays its welcome. Stew’s spoof of humorless Teutonic art-freaks feels a little warmed over and the film’s parody of bad, pretentious avant-garde art feels a little too close to the real thing but at its best Passing Strange isn’t just good; it’s goddamned transcendent, a near-religious experience.


Strange is rooted in Stew’s unique spiritual and creative journey but it hits upon stirringly universal themes of authenticity, family and the eternal search for identity and meaning in a crazy and confusing world. That’s what great art does: it makes the personal universal and the universal personal.

Grade: A-




Updated On: 8/1/09 at 02:21 AM

[blaxx]

Posted: 7/31/09 at 3:02am

NICE! I wish I could make it to a Scaryotypes party one day *sigh*

[thetinymagic2]

Posted: 7/31/09 at 3:21am

take a plane!

[Pgenre]

Posted: 7/31/09 at 3:51am

The show really didn't interest me that much, I found it sort of meandering... though I found the score enjoyable for what it was.

But this looks sort of incredible... doesn't it?

Am I just high off SISTER ACT still?

P

[TulitaPepsi]

Posted: 7/31/09 at 5:59am

PGenre, a friend of mine went to the screening a month or so ago, accompanied by two other friends who liked, but were not wowed, by PASSING STRANGE in the theater. After the show, one turned to my friend and said "NOW I get it!" And his OKness turned to adoration.

[jakebloke]

Posted: 7/31/09 at 6:15am

I think I might like the show more if Stew wasn;'t in it. There's something about him that rubs me the wrong way, I know it's his show, and this concert/theater is what makes it unique and in some eyes brilliant, but it never appealed to me. I do have to say that the trailer makes it more appealing than any other bits of advertising or performances I've seen.

[frogs_fan85]

Posted: 7/31/09 at 9:45am

My brain melted last night when I saw this. Only three more weeks! And earlier in that week Stew and Heidi will be in a panel discussion at the Walter Reade Theater and performing at the Lincoln Center Out of Doors Concert Series in Damrosch Park!

It's going to be a hardcore Scaryotype week!

[Soliantu]

Posted: 7/31/09 at 11:15am

Is this going to be playing at many theatres? Or just a few specific ones. I can't find anything about it online, and will i tbe on DVD?

[frogs_fan85]

Posted: 7/31/09 at 11:22am

As of now I think it's only playing at the IFC.

[Soliantu]

Posted: 7/31/09 at 11:31am

ahh. okay thanks :)

[Nick Plasia]

Posted: 7/31/09 at 11:40am

Wow, that looks embarrassing.

[Yankeefan007]

Posted: 7/31/09 at 11:58am

I actually found it to be more meandering on screen than it was on stage. Didn't diminish my enjoyment of the piece, though.

I will say that I could have done without watching them all sweat in HD.

[AwesomeDanny]

Posted: 7/31/09 at 1:39pm

I wasn't too interested in seeing this show after the Tony performance. I only remember thinking that it looked like a terrible show that needed to close ASAP. It has been called pretty much just a rock concert, which makes me even less interested, but I'll probably watch the filming.

[Soliantu]

Posted: 7/31/09 at 1:40pm

yea, I agree. The tonys left me VERY uninterested, I've heard other things about it that sound good tho. So I think I'll go to the film. Is it just one day? Or will it run for a few performances at IFC?

[barcelona20]

Posted: 7/31/09 at 1:44pm

It will be at IFC for a week.

[aliciag]

Posted: 7/31/09 at 5:57pm

I am so excited to finally see the movie!!! That trailer looked amazing and plus I'm only working a few blocks from IFC... Perfect!

[Yankeefan007]

Posted: 7/31/09 at 9:53pm

You naysayers need to expand your horizons. Not all theater is GYPSY.

[taylorPHENOMENON2]

Posted: 7/31/09 at 9:55pm

I'm obsessed with the score and can't wait to see the film.

[homosezwhat]

Posted: 7/31/09 at 11:16pm

count me in as another vote for "can't wait!!!!"

Wow, this looks good.

[PastorErnst]

Posted: 7/31/09 at 11:29pm

For something Spike Lee had a hand in, the trailer looks absolutely terrible. At this point, I'm not upset that I still have not seen Passing Strange or heard the cast recording yet.

[BroadwayBound062]

Posted: 8/1/09 at 12:34am

I'm a little on edge whether I would want to see it or not...

[FindingNamo]

Posted: 8/1/09 at 1:30am

"It has been called pretty much just a rock concert, which makes me even less interested, but I'll probably watch the filming."

Oh, it has, has it? Dweeb alert at 1:39. When all of these nerds see the movie they'll all be saying how they wished they saw it on Broadway and it needs to be revived. Yeah, well, you shoulda been there.

[Nick Plasia]

Posted: 8/1/09 at 1:39am

Stew's story is a big fat bore. Period.

[FindingNamo]

Posted: 8/1/09 at 1:41am

Perhaps it's not to your taste.

[Scarywarhol]

Posted: 8/1/09 at 2:21am

I'm sure there are a lot of legitimate criticisms to be made of the show (though I can't think of any big ones), but I really don't think "boring" can be one of them.