Results tagged “thesopranos”

You might expect good pizza from a place claiming to be "real Italian." But most restaurants that use a place in the name to make you think you're getting authentic quality usually aren't any good. Jake’s Real Italian Pizza & Grill is no exception to this rule.

(The Fabulous Theater Company) (No future performances).

Since its opening, Phillyist has now been to Amada six or seven times and feel the need to go back many more to eat our entire way through the extensive tapas menu.... Must haves include the patatas bravas (not exactly authentic as we have been to Barcelona and tasted many variations, but delicious nonetheless), the ham croquetas (trust us, you will be dreaming about them), the garlic shrimp (now THAT was authentic and made us feel we were actually on Las Ramblas) and the OH-MY-GOD mixto cheeseplate.... Last but not least, would be the ramao with truffled lavender honey (we plan on duplicating this cheeseplate for our guests at our next dinner party and will no doubt impress them).

“This is Shakespeare, not the Sopranos.” So says Diana (Glenn Close), at the beginning of Heights, critiquing a pair of Macbeth-modernizing acting students for replacing the traditional dagger with a revolver. The Scottish Play provides a leitmotif for the film, filled as it is with secret plots and pacts entered into by New Yorkers seeking power, opportunity, or pleasure. And while the story that follows features neither stabbing nor shooting, it is amply stocked with the emotional bloodlettings of three couples practicing or contemplating infidelity. Broadway diva Diana and her husband seethe under the restraints of their own “open relationship,” he seducing a new understudy while she appraises everyone who crosses her path with a predatory leer. Isabel (Elizabeth Banks) is approached by ex-boyfriends and new career opportunities while her jealous fiancée (James Marsden) worries that a new photography exhibition will dredge up his own past. The photographer (unseen, but looming spectrally over all the proceedings) has meanwhile sadistically deployed his current and choleric journalist boyfriend (John Light) to write a Vanity Fair profile about him by interviewing all his ex-boyfriends.

As each pursues one thread of the story, their paths jaggedly converge on the night of Diana’s birthday party. And while some of the secrets and lies are predictable, they are delivered with an excruciating malice that lends resonance to the film’s sour take on relationships. Others pass through their lives, mostly the collateral damage of the principals’ failed romances. While the primary mood is grim and elegiac, director Chris Terrio and writer Amy Fox have leavened the script with a sly wit, particularly from George Segal as the Rabbi counseling the interfaith couple of Isabel and Jonathan. Aside from a few trite observations about the passionate artistic temperament, embodied by a Welsh conceptual artist (Andrew Howard), Heights is a movie of many virtues. It is cleanly constructed, well acted and subtly evokes themes of voyeurism and violence of all kinds: emotional, physical and political. It also features the most elegant tribute to the post-9/11 New York skyline I have yet seen on film, during a quiet conversation on a lower Manhattan rooftop. Directed by Chris Terrio and produced by the late Ismail Merchant (of Merchant-Ivory fame), Heights is a thoughtful and occasionally wrenching essay on modern relationships. No, it isn’t The Sopranos and it isn’t Shakespeare either, but it’s well worth seeing for anyone who enjoys their summer movie violence delivered verbally, as well as by Batarang and Martian disintegrator ray. Heights is playing at the Ritz at the Bourse (400 Ranstead Street). This week's showtimes: 12:45 pm, 3:00 pm, 5:30 pm, 7:40 pm, 9:55 pm.