Author Archives: Michael Lomax

What if the greatest sinner in human history was put on trial? Director Adrienne Campbell-Holt’s capable adaptation of “The Last Days of Judas Iscariot,” the Yale Dramatic Association’s spring mainstage production, studies the supreme betrayer through the lens of the law. But rather than finding a biblical monster, the audience uncovers a human being dealing »

You’d think these guys would’ve learned their lesson the first time. I’m talking about Warner Bros., not the cast of “The Hangover: Part II.” The first film was successful, and for good reason. It follows three men who wake up in a destroyed Las Vegas hotel room, minus one friend and a nightful of memories. »

Don’t get me wrong. I’m all for the Marcel Duchamp (remember the urinal?) style of making art out of everyday objects. And the growing capacity of the digital medium to create stunning images mystifies me more and more everyday. But there’s something about scanning (and re-scanning) your eyes over an 18th century work of art »

Move over Major League Baseball—steroid self-empowerment is hitting the big screen. Introducing: Captain America. The comic book superhero film genre has exploded in recent years, and with this revival comes a plethora of adaptations that leave most purists shaking there heads (and fists). Transplanting what are often fifty- to sixty-year-old stories to the modern day »

It’s not that I’m anti-environment, just anti-environmental film. Or at least that’s what ran through my head on the way to the Whitney Humanities Center for the first night of the 2011 Environmental Film Festival at Yale. This was supposed to be straightforward. A couple of graduate students at the Yale School of Forestry and »

“Deirdre” is as sharp as the swords its characters wield. But it is a blade with two edges, both helped and at times hampered by the style and performances that director Sam Lasman ’12 attempts to bring to the stage. The play, based on the unfinished John Millington Synge work “Deirdre of the Sorrows,” is »

Remember when Johnny Depp earned an Oscar nomination for his work in the first “Pirates of the Caribbean” movie? Three films and four Disneyland rides later, it seems as though the marketers are lobbying for another one. To think that “Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides” looks like a bore would be remiss — »

Every other year, a movie comes along that threatens to out-epic “Independence Day.” “Battle: Los Angeles,” which opens today, is that movie. Like its predecessor, “Battle” is extremely straightforward. Somewhere in space, a group of aliens have exhausted their habitat’s natural resources, and our Earth presents the next viable candidate for extraction. There’s just one »

The opening scene of “pleasureD” includes a dildo and a potted plant. It is no surprise that at first glance, Yale Cabaret’s production of the week — a play about women exploring what delights them — may send the wrong signal, one of standard and gaudy vaudeville. Fortunately, by the end of its roughly hour-long »

In a recent lecture, professor Harold Bloom lamented the waning influence of Shakespeare, particularly the growing inability of thespians today to successfully bring the Bard’s plays to life on the stage. And with director Gabriel Bloomfield’s ’11 adaptation of “Hamlet” — opening this week in the Calhoun Cabaret — Professor Bloom is surely crying himself »