FILM REVIEW: MELANCHOLIA For those who can look past Lars von Trier’s moronic comments at this year’s Cannes Film Festival, the melancholy Dane’s latest unappetizing outing has made it to cinemas in Berlin (a limited American release is planned in November). Described by the very un-PC director as a “beautiful...

This, my wrap-up from the Mostra appeared in last week’s Forward. I’m only getting around to posting it now, after the onslaught of Jewish high holy-days. Enjoy! Venice — For the 11 days of the 68th Venice International Film Festival, which ran in September, the stars walked the red carpet...

Here fresh in from The Forward is my interview with Todd Solondz from the Venice Film Festival. “I have a weak character,” Todd Solondz said, bending forward in his chair. “When people like my movies, it makes me happy, and when they don’t, it makes me sad, and I wish...

ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED AT GRAMOPHONE.CO.UK A.J. GOLDMANN BERLIN Over the past two weeks, Berlin kicked off an ambitious classical music season with its annual musikfest berlin. The theoretical framework for this year’s musikfest, which ran from September 2-20, was the dualism between the human voice and instruments that has preoccupied – in theoretical and practical terms – composers from Wagner and Berlioz to Mahler and Nono. This duality was mirrored by the ambitious concerts presented at the end of the festival, Mahler’s entirely choral Eighth Symphony and Luigi Nono’s Prometeo  – Tragedia dell’ ascolto, (“Prometheus – The Tragedy of Listening”), an expansive work that delves into liminal spaces between tone and silence. Wildly different in design and execution, the two works provided contrasting explorations of the human voice as the most fundamental of musical instruments. Written in 1985, in the final years of the composer’s life, Prometeo has become a key...