Word: mamet
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...play games. Women live them. Buy that? Then catch this, from David Mamet. When the Great Scorer comes to mark against your name, he cares less about how you conducted yourself than whether you won or lost. The Guy's into irony. And cruel surprise endings. What's the point of running the only game in town if you can't have your little jokes...
...gang there looks as if they might have drifted over after work from the Glengarry Glen Ross real estate office -- especially since Mike, their leader, is played by Joe Mantegna, who was the star salesman in Mamet's sharp, funny play about the hustling of dubious Florida property. This group, however, lives even further out on society's margin. They are peddling greedy dreams unbacked even by swampland. And obviously there is a thing or two they can teach Margaret about practical psychology...
Nicest of all is a demonstration of another kind of confidence: Mamet's. Though he has written several scripts (The Postman Always Rings Twice, The Verdict, The Untouchables), this is his debut as a film director. He has reached out for an arresting style that is suited to both his story and his superbly compressed way with dialogue. Shooting on location in Seattle, he and Cinematographer Juan Ruiz Anchia have used the city to wonderfully dislocating effect. Indeed, they have transformed Seattle, lighting it like a giant stage set, a succession of false fronts for false behavior...
While one can talk openly about the picture's manner, one dare not get into its intricate plotting, which tweaks, turns and doubles back on itself. House of Games is not a vehicle carrying a Mamet moral; it is the moral, telling us much about the irresistible pull of our own cleverness and how that must inevitably bring us to disaster. It is Margaret, the tyro games player, who turns out to be a bad sport. She demonstrates in a startling way that some funny, phony games can turn out to have deadly consequences. Finally, she must stop pretending...
This is the summer of sexual perversity for Harvard-Radcliffe Summer Theatre. First, they gave us some from David Mamet, Chicago-style. Now, Eric Oleson and the rest of the HRST troupe are presenting Euripides' tale of madness, divine vengeance and sexual abandon. Titillation, at least, seems guaranteed...