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I've been guiltily pleasured by watching Ramsay's Kitchen Nightmares on BBC America, a show in which hot-shot chef Gordon Ramsay visits troubled UK restaurants. Many of the episodes involve him correcting amazing incompetence and entrenched inefficient ways of running things in order to put the restaurants back on track. Hmmmmmmmmm... perhaps there needs to be a ballet Ramsay, going from company to company to expose the shoddy practices of egoistic EDs, ADs, boards, presenters, and choreographers (set designers, costumers, PR people, etc., etc.) in ballet companies!

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I don't watch much science fiction, but I do love Doctor Who. (aurora: Nine or Ten?) I think it's good TV, though I guess it is technically a children's show, even though a lot of adults watch it anyway.

As for other guilty pleasures, my main one is bad movies. But they have to be really, really bad in an entertaining way, and preferably a little old. I especially like bad Charlton Heston movies. It's best to watch them with a crowd of people and make fun of them a la Mystery Science Theater 3000 (which I also love). There's a bar in New York that one summer showed really awful movies once a week and served popcorn and $3 beers. Their screening of Zardoz was great fun.

I also have a decent-sized collection of really ridiculous 80s music. I have access to a free music downloading web site through my school and I've just sort of picked them up as a result.

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I'll play . . .

Television Show:

Charlie's Angels - Seasons Two and Three w/ Kate Jackson, Jaclyn Smith and Cheryl Ladd. (Sorry Farrah fans but I never got her appeal.)

For me, Version 2.0 of the Townsend Detective Agency was the best version of the team. Although I do have a weakness for the Season 4 adventure set on The Love Boat!

Movie

Valley Of the Dolls w/ Barbara Parkins, Patty Duke, Sharon Tate and Susan Hayward.

Sooooo many memorable lines ("They drummed you right out of Hollywood. So you come crawling back to Broadway. Well, Broadway doesn't go for booze and dope!!!") and situations (pretty much any scene with Patty Duke in it).

Everyone says this movie is ridiculous and over-the-top but open up any current issue of US Weekly and Star and then tell me that Valley Of the Dolls didn't predict the four horsewomen -- Paris, Lindsay, Nicole and Britney -- of the show biz apocalypse by four decades . . .

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I've been guiltily pleasured by watching Ramsay's Kitchen Nightmares on BBC America, a show in which hot-shot chef Gordon Ramsay visits troubled UK restaurants.

Thanks for mentioning that show, Ray. I’ll have to check it out.

I especially like bad Charlton Heston movies.

Victor Mature is my go-to guy in this area. I have special fondness for Demetrius and the Gladiators and Samson and Delilah. In a similar vein, there is also Lana (“Because I’m a priestess of Baal!”) Turner in The Prodigal -- a dull movie for the most part, however, be warned.

Valley Of the Dolls w/ Barbara Parkins, Patty Duke, Sharon Tate and Susan Hayward.

That’s another treasure trove.

Charlie's Angels - Seasons Two and Three w/ Kate Jackson, Jaclyn Smith and Cheryl Ladd. (Sorry Farrah fans but I never got her appeal.)

I forgot about Charlie’s Angels. I liked Ladd, too. An agreeable personality and very lovely. I was a huge fan of Wonder Woman with Lynda Carter.

You know, it’s amazing I have any brain cells left.....

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What a fun topic to make me smile (guiltily or not). Ok here are my few admittable ones...

Star Trek (the original series) because it was the last show I saw before moving to Japan, and then the first one I recognized (though by then in syndication) when I returned. Always fun watching the 3M's comraderie and last line funniness of the cast, Shatner's weight going up & down, the girls hemlines going up,down,around--love the joke about the bellybuttons, and of course tribbles.

Speed Racer--because it reminded me of Japan so much when I returned to the States (this was before the USA discovered anime--which is VERY 'old hat' to me.) Of course the dubbing speed was even funnier.

The movie "Camelot" because of the beauty of its sets & costumes, and use of all those castles in Spain (Alcazar of Segovia and Coca especially), and the fact it had only 6-7 songs--I HATE musicals with too many songs--that FORWARDED THE PLOT ACTION within them, rather than bringing it all to a standstill while everyone sings interminably. (I do like that other Lerner & Lowe classic: My Fair Lady, even tho' it has too many songs, because they are mostly funny lyrics; and no one has pulled off that princess transformation like Audrey Hepburn in her gown & tiara.)

Playing chess and beating a rather stuck up classmate in 4 moves (sorry don't even remember what it was now, but it's a pretty classic trick.) I was petrified she'd discover the trick halfway through, but no I won, and seeing her shock sure made my day. If only later life was as smooth.

Reading high school (and some college-level?) physics texts when I was 11 or 12 because no one would play with me and it was cold just standing around alone. I still read physics for fun--more quantum than classical lately--but not as much since you need time to really comprehend it these days.

Listening to classical music at home, travelling, and doing ballet, ballet, ballet 3-4hrs/day 6 days a week when no one else in my ENTIRE TOWN knew anything about it. Then later having a male teacher discover I was a professional ballet dancer and being SO impressed, shocking my limited friends at the time, who were still kind of clueless.

And lately, flying out to see a performance without telling anyone where I was going or why. Heaven.

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I still read physics for fun--more quantum than classical lately--but not as much since you need time to really comprehend it these days.
:off topic: Now that's impressive -- and so far beyond my comprehension that it might as well be the moon.

Question: did you ever make connections between what you knew about physics and what you were engaged in as you danced? It seems to me, based on my impossibly dim memories of levers, fulcrums, and force tables, that even such simple movements as plie, develope, and saute (not to mention more complex issues of partnering) might be interesting to a mechanical physicist.

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Star Trek (the original series) because it was the last show I saw before moving to Japan, and then the first one I recognized (though by then in syndication) when I returned. Always fun watching the 3M's comraderie and last line funniness of the cast, Shatner's weight going up & down, the girls hemlines going up,down,around--love the joke about the bellybuttons, and of course tribbles.

Speed Racer--because it reminded me of Japan so much when I returned to the States (this was before the USA discovered anime--which is VERY 'old hat' to me.) Of course the dubbing speed was even funnier.

The movie "Camelot" because of the beauty of its sets & costumes, and use of all those castles in Spain (Alcazar of Segovia and Coca especially), and the fact it had only 6-7 songs--I HATE musicals with too many songs--that FORWARDED THE PLOT ACTION within them, rather than bringing it all to a standstill while everyone sings interminably. (I do like that other Lerner & Lowe classic: My Fair Lady, even tho' it has too many songs, because they are mostly funny lyrics; and no one has pulled off that princess transformation like Audrey Hepburn in her gown & tiara.)

It took me a long time to get around to appreciating Star Trek, although I always got a kick out of DeForest Kelley (who plays a supporting role in the aforementioned Where Love Has Gone, as one of Susan Hayward’s many inamoratas).

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Earlier on this thread there was some discussion of the concept of "guilty pleasures." I just came across the following in the latest (Autumn) edition of Dance Now. (Donald Hutera, "That's Entertainment").

In a famous 1969 esasy called "Trash, Art, and the Movies," the American film critic Pauline Kael took issue with the stamp of approval commonly awarded to what she refers to as "official culture." Defining art as "the expressive use of techniqus," she calimed, "we generally became interested in movies because we enjoy them, and what we enjoy them for has little to do with what we think of as art." Kael's text is a paean to the idea of the guildty pleasure. But she actually went one better than that, championing an audience's right to take its pleasures when and where it can, guilt-free.
I had forgotten the powerful influence of Kael. She opened the door to thinking and writing about a vast range of popular culture in terms -- and with a degree of awe and veneration -- previously reserved for the "higher arts."
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I had forgotten the powerful influence of Kael. She opened the door to thinking and writing about a vast range of popular culture in terms -- and with a degree of awe and veneration -- previously reserved for the "higher arts."

She is herself a guilty pleasure, because when I look back at what I used to venerate in her, it's mostly about her vulgar and pushy writing style, not what her insights were on most films. She said totally over-the-top things--I think 'Intolerance' is one of the greatest films ever made too, but I don't think I'd pick out one, as Ms. Kael did this one, as 'THE greatest.' The thing I most enjoyed that I ever read of hers was after I had the (mis)fortune to attend a press showing of 'Song of Norway', and the following week in the New Yorker, she was so beyond normal words, she simply wrote 'the movie is of an unbelievable badness.' I totally agree, and think only 'Carrie' and 'Eyes of Laura Mars' and one other one I can't remember right now are that bad. Enjoyably bad, I think she meant, and did write, referred to things like 'Rebel without a Cause' and 'Casablanca', although I don't think the latter is bad in any important sense. When they're deeply horrible, we actually detest them, as both she and I did 'Song of Norway.'

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I love reading Pauline Kael, because, as a rule, it doesn't matter whether or not I agree with her, I know what to expect when I go to see the movie.

The only exception to this was her review of the new cut of L'Atalante. I read her enthusiastic review, found it was playing at the Lincoln Center cinemas, and invited my friend and his girlfriend to go.

Not only did he actually have to pay for parking, because in his rush, his legendary parking karma was absent that day, and not only did I mix up the start time with another film's, and make them show up 45 minutes early, it was one of the most boring films any of us had ever seen.

After it was over, I gave him ten lifetime "Get out of jail free" cards: I would go to any non-porn movie he wanted, no questions asked, regardless of the number of aliens, blow-ups, fires, gratuitous killings, or appearances by Mel Gibson it contained.

That's how bad the movie was.

When I went back and re-read the review, I realized that she didn't describe it at all; she just spoke about how important it and its director were. :dunno:

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Kael didn’t really write about ‘a vast range of popular culture.’ She wrote about movies and also produced the occasional review of a film-related book, but her range was not in fact wide. However, she influenced, sometimes for the better and sometimes for the worse, many writers outside her field.

I miss Kael often, especially on her missions of destruction – too bad she didn’t live to get her hands on “Crash.” She could be crude on occasion (I’d add lazy and prone to overstatement also, nobody’s perfect), and she was unaccountably fond of words like “whorey,” but she was capable of remarkable insights, which sometimes came when she was writing about movies of little consequence.

Hutera writes: But she actually went one better than that, championing an audience's right to take its pleasures when and where it can, guilt-free.

A total misreading, I think. (I haven’t opened the link, however, and am going only by that sentence.) She was not issuing blank checks to enjoy rubbish and she had a tendency to scold the mass audience when it wasn’t on her side.

she simply wrote 'the movie is of an unbelievable badness.

She also said of "Song of Norway," “You can’t get angry at something this bad; it seems to have been made by trolls.”

although I don't think the latter is bad in any important sense.

Must disagree with you there, alas. My opinion, ‘Casablanca’ is pretty bad and does qualify as a guilty pleasure under the definitions of our topic. It gets by on star power, a great supporting cast, and snappy direction from Michael Curtiz, but the dialogue is awfully hard on the ears. I admit that it has never possessed the appeal for me that evidently it has for many, many people. And there are movies quite as bad that I do enjoy and would defend.

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I still read physics for fun--more quantum than classical lately--but not as much since you need time to really comprehend it these days.
:dunno: Now that's impressive -- and so far beyond my comprehension that it might as well be the moon.

Question: did you ever make connections between what you knew about physics and what you were engaged in as you danced? It seems to me, based on my impossibly dim memories of levers, fulcrums, and force tables, that even such simple movements as plie, develope, and saute (not to mention more complex issues of partnering) might be interesting to a mechanical physicist.

Yes, I did, though not always consciously. Classical physics applies very much to subtleties of technique especially jumps and turns. Action & reaction every time I plied or sauted; torque and centrifugal, and a whole lot of other forces, in pirouettes, fouettes, chaines; and then re-thinking all of it, once on pointe. Now, I tend to use my rudimentary knowledge of physics more to analyse how my aging bones and ligaments are reacting to stress--unfortunately not very well, but at least I know why.

(Isn't there a book out already about this subject? And I thought some of the major companies actually had classes in it as well.)

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Kael didn’t really write about ‘a vast range of popular culture.’
Agreed. I do, however, stick to my original point, which was that Kael's writing "opened the door to thinking and writing about a vast range of popular culture in terms -- and with a degree of awe and veneration -- previously reserved for the "higher arts." Kael's success derived from many factors. One of them was the prestige of her podium at The New Yorker. The other was the extreme self-confidence, not to mention the pepper-shot brio, with which she expressed her opinions.

The Dance Now article is not available on line. The section on Kael is really an introduction to an article about the dance content of a number of new West End musicals.

"Nothing in West Side Story," Kael continued, "gave me the pleasure of an honest routine like Donald O'Connor's Make 'Em Laugh number in Singin' in the Rain, or almost any old Astaire and Rogers movie.
I find myself in agreement with Hutera's response:
I'm not quoting her because I necessarily agree with evereything she wrote (although her words do make me want to watch West Side Story again). Rather, she reminds me what I love about movie musicals, show dance and just about any form of popular enterntainment that doesn't take itself too seriously. There's a lot to be said for -- and about -- the clever, well-crafted or even frankly vulgar diversions littering our screens and (commercial) stages, regardless of their country of origin. This is the kind of dance that, apart from its energy or wit, might contain an unexpected physical truth, a movement that moves us or an idea executed with real inspiration as well as flair. I don't think it matters much whether they're labelled high art, low art (more likely) or something in between, or if it's considered art at all. What matters is, does the dance serve its purpose? Does it liberate or excite or (less likely) challenge us, or does it simply make us feel good?

I've put "doesn't take itself too seriously" in italics because that seems to be one of the points dividing Hutera from Kael, who -- whatever she thought about the work she was reviewing -- took her own experience of it very seriously indeed. :):dunno:

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I’d add lazy and prone to overstatement also, nobody’s perfect), and she was unaccountably fond of words like “whorey,”

I agree about the lazy, and John Gregory Dunne and Joan Didion take her to task like nobody's business in various essays--the matter being that she doesn't know what decisions were made in this collaborative medium, essentially they are insiders and she's not. This is condescending, but accurate: She does not know what happened in the big messes of making Hollywood movies the way they do, the points that certain stars have in a picture, the percentage the director commands, etc. She might even know about all these phenomena fairly well, but she wouldn't know how they applied to particular films--so Didion even writes that she doesn't know 'why anybody would want to do it except for a little careerism' in 'The White Album', a most amusing thing to say... not that I don't think there aren't a few places where she made compromises herself. Didion, while accurate, is also being purposely unfair, because such a lack of knowledge would not thereby make other kinds of reviewing so innacurate, as reviews of the works of auteurs, and reviews are necessary for disseminating information even if they aren't perfect. The 'careerism' is funny, because that is the kind of thing, like finances, that is often not supposed to be mentioned, and cronyism, while everybody knows it, is the same. It's funny because so 'bottom line', we all know that people get jobs due to figuring out ways to get into them that are not always purely due to shining brilliance. I don't see why Kael, Kaufman, and Simon shouldn't be 'careerists', but the essay was good because it does give you an understanding of why movie reviewing cannot be nearly as accurate (usually) even when knowledgeable, as can reviewing of live performance, books, etc. You can't know exactly what was the director, and you especially can't know what writing was done, because that was often determined by the director, producer and often the stars. They are saying that the Deep Film Studies types refuse to see that moviemaking is essentially a business, and Dunne talks about this in his piece on their involvement with 'A Star is Born' and how they finally got out of it. This is still not quite fair--if it is only seen as a business, it won't get any audience buying the sense of fantasy that sells the business. I think they were talking about movie critics needing to be something more 'lofty' than they actually can be--or refusing to allow them the loftiness they claimed to achieve. John Simon seemed to like to think of himself as something of an artist, but I think the Dunnes are right: Movie critics are not artists. However, the New York Review of Books is itself hardly free of clubbishness.

Did she really say 'whorey'? Most of the time it's 'whorish'. Oh well, that's a general sort of thing. Princess Michael of Kent, when doing her art history lectures on old royalty, always loves to talk about 'whoe-azz' endlessly, it's somewhat amusing.

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Begging the guilty part, I've been slurping up the Food Channel recently (pun mostly intended) and think Alton Brown is a fun, fun guy.

yes and informative too!

on the other hand, rachel ray makes me want to stab myself, or my tv! ;)

Couldn't agree more. AB's Good Eats is the best show on that network, and Ina Garten's is a good traditional cooking show. I find myself turning more to the PBS shows now for food (Lidia, Jacques, and Ming are my cooking triumvirate) because I try to avoid Rachael Ray, Sandra Lee, or Giada de Laurentiis and whatever new chick they have in that mold for Hispanic cuisine. What happened to the chefs that actually taught me what good food should be and didn't condescend my intelligence? Bring back Mario and Sara Moulton!

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Didion, while accurate, is also being purposely unfair, because such a lack of knowledge would not thereby make other kinds of reviewing so innacurate, as reviews of the works of auteurs, and reviews are necessary for disseminating information even if they aren't perfect.

Yes, any film critic is going to make that kind of mistake in attribution from time to time, though. Unless you’re dealing with someone like Ingmar Bergman, who works with a chosen team and writes and directs his own material with more or less total freedom (as Woody Allen used to do and still does to a lesser extent), there will always be the question of who is responsible for what, and sometimes the critic will know and sometimes he won’t.

She said totally over-the-top things--I think 'Intolerance' is one of the greatest films ever made too, but I don't think I'd pick out one, as Ms. Kael did this one, as 'THE greatest.'

I didn’t mind that so much – it’s okay to rave about ‘Intolerance’ even if you overdo it – but she would burble on for pages about things like ‘Tequila Sunrise,’ which was directed and written by one of her pets, Robert Towne. Now, I happen to enjoy ‘Tequila Sunrise’ – it’s a true guilty pleasure, one I’ve indulged in more than once -- but it wasn’t all that. And as time went on this tendency got worse, she had too much space to play with (although I wish today’s New Yorker would give its critics a little more at times).

For the uninitiated, ‘Tequila Sunrise’ is an eighties movie starring Mel Gibson, Michelle Pfeiffer, and Kurt Russell. Mel is a retired drug dealer, a nice one who loves his kid, Kurt is a cop and his best friend, and Michelle runs an Italian restaurant with great lighting, not that she needs it, and she never gets marinara sauce on her blouse. Everyone looks fabulous, and there are beaches and gorgeous sunsets and a plot nobody gets too worried about. There’s also the late lamented J.T. Walsh and the late lamented Raul Julia. Miss you, guys. I recommend it highly.

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Re changes on the Food Network channel

What happened to the chefs that actually taught me what good food should be and didn't condescend my intelligence? Bring back Mario and Sara Moulton!

I'm not positive, but I think that Moulton shows up on a PBS show that's got Christopher Kimball (??), editor of Cook's Illustrated (or, as a friend puts it, "the magazine for anal-retentive cooks")

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I'm not positive, but I think that Moulton shows up on a PBS show that's got Christopher Kimball (??), editor of Cook's Illustrated (or, as a friend puts it, "the magazine for anal-retentive cooks")

Don't know about Cook's Illustrated, or anal-retentive cooks, but I still wish FN kept Moulton (is she still executive chef for Gourmet?). Her show was a bit on the dull side, but she had great recipes and I learned a lot from Sara's Secrets. I could do without FN's current deluge of travel shows. Isn't that what the Travel Channel is for? Apparently they didn't think RR's $40s a Day and Tasty Travels was enough so they gave Giada Weekend Getaways, Flay Throwdown, and Guy Fieri Diners, Drives, and Inns. Their basic cooking shows have become distastefully lowbrow. Even the wonderful addition of Nigella Lawson to their lineup didn't help. I really have not been keeping up with FN lately, but when I used to watch it on a daily basis I could only watch her show at some obscure noon-ish hour on Sunday, when I'm usually out. It's all about making everything easier, quicker, and understandable to the "common" folk now. I didn't watch the last season of The Next Food Network Star, but I heard that in one episode the producers judging a contestant criticized her for using French words. Maybe some of us don't know what chicken en cocotte is, but the point of having a cooking show is to enlighten an otherwise unknowing audience. God knows what they would do to Julia Child if she walked into that studio today.

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I didn't watch the last season of The Next Food Network Star, but I heard that in one episode the producers judging a contestant criticized her for using French words.

She won anyway. :shake: Her name is Amy Finley and her show, The Gourmet Next Door, is slated to start this month.

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I didn't watch the last season of The Next Food Network Star, but I heard that in one episode the producers judging a contestant criticized her for using French words.

She won anyway. :) Her name is Amy Finley and her show, The Gourmet Next Door, is slated to start this month.

Yeah, even used that highfallutin' French in her show's title. :bow: Did the judg es skewer her for saying "en brochette"? Get hoppin' mad at "saute"? :shake:

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Re changes on the Food Network channel
What happened to the chefs that actually taught me what good food should be and didn't condescend my intelligence? Bring back Mario and Sara Moulton!

I'm not positive, but I think that Moulton shows up on a PBS show that's got Christopher Kimball (??), editor of Cook's Illustrated (or, as a friend puts it, "the magazine for anal-retentive cooks")

That would be AMERICA'S TEST KITCHEN, basically Cooks Ill's tv show. I guess I'm anal-retentive b/c i LOVE both Cooks Illustrated and the tv show. Havent' watched it in a while, so haven't noticed if Sara Moulton was on, but it really doesn't seem a fit for her, imho.

-goro-

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