Cadriel

Chess has a long and storied history, from the megahit concept album before the work ever appeared on stage, to would-be director Michael Bennett's withdrawal from the creative process five months before the London show was set to debut and Trevor Nunn's dramatic rescue of the show, to Nunn's Broadway flop and the dozen or so subsequent attempts to "fix" the show. This is, in a way, the latest of those.

The first act of the Stockholm Chess is a marvel to behold. It sets up its players in clever fashion, first bringing in dignified but discontent Anatoly (Körberg), trapped in a marriage and a state he wants little of, as we see in his relations with wife Svetlana (Nilsson) and keeper Molokov (Myrberg). Then the headstrong, brash American Freddie (Ekborg) and his long-suffering second (coach and assistant) Florence (Sjöholm) are shown as Florence has reached her breaking point with Freddie. Last, the weird comic arbiter of the match (Skoglund) is brought into the fray. After the first match, Freddie storms out; this leads to a debate and later Florence, at her wits' end, meeting with Anatoly - who defects and starts hints of a romance with Florence. The first act flows with beautiful logic, more so than any other version of Chess.

Sadly, the second act doesn't hold up half as well. It has wonderful moments, but a lot of it is just overkill (an argument between Anatoly and Svetlana uses the music that was in the original the climactic chess match) or songs for the sake of songs (Sjöholm's wonderful "Om han var här" - "Heaven Help My Heart" - is rendered almost random by lack of context). There is no single line of tension in the second act, and it goes through the songs until coming to the epilogue without any satisfactory climax. The plot, which had been so tightly wound, now disappears into the ether.

The physical production, though, is magnificent, allowing the show to capture both massive moments (a memory-recreation of the 1956 uprising in Budapest, when Florence's father was taken from her) and tender (the mixing of a lovely duet between Florence and Anatoly in the second act with an astounding, romantic trapeze act) with equal skill. Robin Wagner's genius has not dimmed a bit over the years, and there is no scene that does not have a set to fit.

The acting and singing are a mixed bag. Tommy Körberg has been playing Anatoly since before he was called Anatoly, and is still just as good at it - as good in 2003 as he was in 1986. The music suits his unique voice, and he is a strong center of the show. He is more than matched by Helen Sjöholm, who inhabits Florence as completely as I've seen any actress do it.

Her performance ranges from angry to sensual to passionate to ironic to tender, and captures every emotion (and all in between) with skill and style.

Anders Ekborg would never be mistaken for an American on the street, but he plays the ugly American (as Freddie is written here) with panache, and uses his solo to make him sympathetic. Josefin Nilsson is less fortunate as Svetlana, playing her over the top and dislike able in a very diva-esque way.

Per Myrberg is a consummate actor who takes a part that is all too often handled as a comic stage Russian and turns it into a fierce, formidable villain. Rolf Skoglund as the arbiter - usually a role handled fiercely as the straight man - tries to play it up as a comic actor, but between his unfortunate French stereotype and his awful singing voice is completely wrong for the part.

Much of the appeal of Chess is the music, and some of the best of it is here - I don't know that anybody can beat Helen Sjöholm's "Lämna inga dörrar på glänt" ("Nobody's Side"). All of it is a joy to hear (except for Skoglund's singing), and the orchestrations haven't been this good since the original London production.

If the second act were as good as the first, this would be the best production of Chess to date. As it stands, it's certainly a very good one, but not the ultimate Chess some hoped it would be.

[Note: The show is in Swedish and the DVD that is available lacks subtitles.]

I've been a Kevin Smith fan for years, but my disappointment with Jersey Girl doesn't come from the lack of Jay and Silent Bob, or the fact that it isn't a typical View Askew film. I knew it wouldn't be that, and I went into the theatre just hoping to see a good film.

Jersey Girl has some nice moments, and some moments of genuine, skillful humor (especially for a musical theatre fan). However, the film as a whole is an enormous letdown for one reason: it's typical. Rather than making another typically Kevin Smith movie, Smith managed to make a typical Hollywood flick. Instead of insight, we get cloying sentimentality; instead of maturity, we get a series of cliche moments with a good-looking cast that just doesn't dazzle for whatever emotional whallop Smith thought the film would pack.

The situation and choices facing Ben Affleck's character are nothing new, and Affleck goes dutifully through the exercises, emoting when he needs to, but never really getting much out. You wind up rooting for him more or less out of the same sense of duty. George Carlin's father is depressingly tame compared to his brilliant standup routine; Jennifer Lopez is sweet but her perfunctory character never really makes any impact on the audience. Raquel Castro plays the absolute cliche end of a film child that she's written with the appropriate sweetness. Liv Tyler's character goes wildly from a toned-down character from one of Smith's earlier films in her first scenes (building up a bit of false hope that there will be something new to this blah exercise) to another cliche character in the later portions of the film. Not much of it can be blamed on anyone except the writer/director, though.

On principle, I have nothing against Smith branching out into other genres of film than those he touched on in his first five; that's an artist's choice, and should be his and no one else's. But Jersey Girl is simply settling for the typical and unambitious in film. If this is an indication of where Kevin Smith's career is heading, then I think he has lost it as a director who bears watching.

Peter Jackson's film The Two Towers encapsulates a heavily edited and modified version of parts of Book III and Book IV of J.R.R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings, which are normally published as The Two Towers (following the original printings). Indeed, there are many places in the second entry where it only bears a superficial resemblance to the source material. But that, in and of itself, does not automatically condemn a film.

The problems with Peter Jackson's The Two Towers are many. Aside from the lackluster direction that action fans are depressingly willing to look away from, and the eminently forgettable score, most of them lie in the telling of the story.

Jackson cross-cuts between three different stories in his course; at most, Tolkien only ever did with two. Unfortunately, these stories are not at all similar in tone, and there are points in the major battle sequence where we cut away to rather tranquil scenes. He already had enough difficulty creating anything of a pace or a mood in his subpar Fellowship of the Ring; with The Two Towers he simply falls flat on his face. It is understandable that Tolkien's generally more leisurely step was not well suited for transition to the screen; unfortunately, I don't think the problem was solved even quasi-adequately. Jackson's storytelling skills are highly overrated by fans who have read the books, and I think that on their own the films don't tell the story well enough for any subtleties to be grasped.

Worse than this are Jackson's rewrites to the story. I'm not approaching this from a "How dare he rewrite a classic!" aspect, mind you. What upsets me are the way that he alters plot elements and turns them into banal cliches. Theoden's possession, Aragorn's near-death experience, Faramir's temptation, the Elves at Helm's Deep (it was clear that, until the battles in Book V, it was all Men making their stand and not the other peoples of Middle-Earth), the insultingly insipid "Gandalf arrives with cavalry" (why not just have him descend from the Heavens and wipe out the Orcs with a mighty blast of magic?)...not just alterations, but blatant and frankly boring elements that have been done a hundred times before. I could have accepted plot changes if they had made the story better, or even if they had been adequate replacements that worked for a superior filmic pacing, but these are just plain awful and make the resulting film worse. And there were large swaths of material lost in favor of this waffle, which only adds insult to injury.

Characters are changed without needing to be; again, the result is always worse. The Faramir depicted in the film, for instance, doesn't serve any real purpose as he did in the book. Most actually seem less three-dimensional here than either in the novel or in the first film, which is quite an accomplishment. To put in something of a positive word, Gollum was a technical achievement (though when I saw it in the theatres twice, audiences laughed - not an effect that seems intended by the source material).

Nothing in this mess improved on the source material or even came close to matching it. As a film, it's a passable entertainment if you can overlook the severe pacing issues; as an adaptation it's a miserable failure.