dirac

Crosby still has his moments - not too long ago he had a total meltdown with a radio interviewer after taking exception to some unoffending if overfamiliar questions. I forgot about Crosby's father having been a cinematographer. Won an Oscar, if I remember correctly. He has successfully alienated virtually everyone he ever worked with. He does seem to bring new meaning to the concept of self-absorption. Sings sweet harmonies, though.

Oh, absolutely. Unfortunately they couldn't find storylines to match. Hall is probably the most active actress I’ve ever seen. She has muscles in her face I didn’t know were there and boy does she ever use them. She’s awesome.

I was hoping TCM would show Berserk, but not this time. Happy Halloween, y'all:

The show was innovative in terms of both content and style. Miliosr might have more to say about that. It also attracted a different and younger audience from other soaps – kids could watch it when they came home from school, as you did. Eventually the plotlines got too far out for the show’s own good and also daytime advertisers realized that DS wasn’t helping them sell much laundry detergent. It was syndicated after its initial run ended, which likely saved the tapes from destruction by the network – many recordings of the soaps from that era have not survived.

Barnabas and Dr. Hoffman gave the show some much-needed zip (sorry, Joan Bennett), and it helped that Jonathan Frid and Grayson Hall were so good. I imagine they were quite the contrast to the customary daytime drama fare at the time. Hall’s Dr. Hoffman is really amazing – so much for medical ethics. Anyone curious can see the show on the Decades channel or Amazon Prime. Watched Poltergeist again for the first time in a long time. It holds up pretty well, although someone will probably have to explain to younger viewers that back in the day broadcast TV used to play the national anthem and go to dead air in the wee hours of the morning, which is why little Carol Anne hears the mysterious voices via static instead of a Cindy Crawford infomercial. The shotgun marriage between the sensibilities of Steven Spielberg and Tobe Hooper works out as well as can be expected. Spielberg dominates – nobody in the movie gets killed or even hurt very badly (you’d never guess, from most of his later work, that Spielberg once cheerfully and graphically depicted people getting chomped by a shark) while Hooper makes his participation known with some whopper scare effects. That’s my guess as to the division of labor, anyway. Poltergeist also benefits from better casting than pictures in this genre often get, with Jobeth Williams and Craig T. Nelson as the parents and Beatrice Straight as the parapsychologist. Hooper veteran James Karen plays the real estate honcho. I love Williams’ initial reactions when her furniture starts moving around of its own accord (she actually jumps up and down in glee).

Thank you, ksk04. Did anyone see her?

I took the liberty of pulling up that blog entry, atm711 - I believe this is it.

Figure skating and gymnastics are back! Tell us what/who are you watching/noticing this season (following our site rules, of course ?

The Times has shifted away from reviews, as other publications have done, mainly because not enough people are clicking on them, something that's come up in other discussions, directly or tangentially, here, here, and here. This is particularly apparent when you read the fairly vestigial print newspaper - the emphasis has shifted dramatically to Qs & As and features, and not only in the arts pages. As others have pointed out in earlier threads, there are some pluses, like the NYT's online only dance features. I'm guessing that if music is being treated somewhat differently, it's because those reviews are still attracting an online readership that the editors regard as meaningful. Probably this will not change, but if you do care enough, it would not hurt to write the paper, and also thank the NYT for replacing Macaulay with another full-time chief dance critic, adding that you hope that the Times will keep Ms. Kourlas and her confreres busy reviewing stuff.

An article by Mark Franco for The Massachusetts Review, "Favorite Things: Robbins at 100" from 2018.

Welcome to the board, Polar! It is true that nuances can be lost when typing instead of speaking, but don't let that keep you from contributing your thoughts. I hope as a ballet parent you can also benefit from the Ballet Talk for Dancers board.

It seems likely that is exactly how he saw it, eduardo, certainly as far as Ashley was concerned. Possibly he put Ashley into “Emeralds” in order to encourage her to focus on her upper body work and other areas where her chief strengths did not lie. The ballet may not look its absolute best for awhile, but you get an improved dancer who benefits from the experience and expands her range. Von Aroldingen was a favorite of Balanchine’s who looked best in the roles he custom built for her. (Of course there were other occasions, as Croce wrote, where you couldn’t figure out what the hell he was thinking.) Not necessarily true, unfortunately. First class people also have their insecurities, which can express themselves in preferring underlings who will stay under. (I doubt that Bill Belichick is one of those people and he's a great coach, maybe the best ever, but his coaching tree is not particularly distinguished.) I believe she was receiving a good deal of favorable critical notice in those earlier years; Croce wrote highly of her, praising her debut over that of Nichols in T&V. She also had good things to say about Watts in the early ballets Martins composed for her. I understand most of the “horrible things” came later and were not entirely undeserved. It is certainly true that Sir Mick has never been big on the “exclusive dyad,” at least as far as his own share in it is concerned. From what I have read, he dictates the terms.

Hamrick is a journeyman dancer who has made some news, mainly in the tabloids, because of her liaison with the elderly frontman of a classic rock band (admittedly, it’s the Rolling Stones, not the Doobie Brothers). This is distinction of a sort, but not really of a kind to break the box office.

Quite a sendoff!

There’s also a fuss over the Sea Grass and its doomed crew being covered in sludge, as if it and they had been underwater for weeks, and then we never hear about this again. Well, having a woman alone in an isolated location is a classic threat situation for a horror film and given the central role Barbeau and her radio station play in the story, I’m guessing Carpenter felt the need to have something more happen at the lighthouse. Or maybe the sailors just lost count.

SPOILERS: TCM showed this a week ago and I taped it. Very nice ghost story, as you say, with an effective cameo by John Houseman (took me a minute or two to figure out that it was really him). Some bad decisions were made, as is customary in this genre - personally, if a scary fog surrounded my house and a mysterious figure started pounding ominously on the door, I would not open it and wander out onto the porch. Just saying. I did wonder if Carpenter saw DeMille's The Ten Commandments and the deadly mist that trails through the streets. There are a lot of plot points, insofar that there is a plot, and happenings with no follow up or explanation. This may bug you or it may not (it didn't bother me, but I would find it understandable it it bothered others). The actors are engaging and the Point Reyes locations are gorgeous. I will say that the ending is not as scary or boffo as it might be, and the timing is a bit off - the buildup seems to go on for too long, and then the movie ends too abruptly. Still very enjoyable.

The funeral was today.

In the Astaire clip she looks like she's dancing with her dad. (No, not Mr. Cansino.)

Signing on to this, except to say she'd probably rather be dancing than resting, and I hope she can see forever, as the song goes.

There's also a brief shot of young Kevin Bacon's butt, for anyone interested. SPOILER: Why oh why did you let Mrs. Voorhees in, Alice? You’re supposed to be the SMART one !!!

John Giorno of "Dial-A-Poem" has died at age 82.

Thanks. I saw the first of the Rob Zombie pictures - awful. Yup. I'd say The Haunting is slightly overrated and Hell House considerably underrated - although I have something of the same issue with book v. movie - I thought Matheson's original ending less simplified. Come on, there must be someone else out there watching??

Handke has said a good deal worse than that - he once compared the Serbs to Jews during the Holocaust, although he did apologize for that one. Interesting choices. Something for the old guard, something for the new. I'm sure nobody's more surprised than Handke himself, he probably wrote off his chances years ago. When the child was a child, Berries filled its hand as only berries do, and do even now, Fresh walnuts made its tongue raw, and do even now, it had, on every mountaintop, the longing for a higher mountain yet, and in every city, the longing for an even greater city, and that is still so, It reached for cherries in topmost branches of trees with an elation it still has today, has a shyness in front of strangers, and has that even now. It awaited the first snow, And waits that way even now.

Thank you as always, Pamela, for providing us with the news hot off the press. I sort of lost track of the scandal after the immediate flurry of news reports. Maybe two women after all?

I haven’t seen that and you make me curious to do so, thanks. Movies I like to watch around this time of year: “The Haunting,” even if I prefer the book’s ending. (Out of curiosity I saw the remake with Liam Neeson, et al. – I didn’t think it could be worse than I expected, but there you go.) “The Legend of Hell House” “At Midnight I’ll Take Your Soul” “The Shining,” natch. "The Omen" - original w/ Peck & Remick. I was hoping “The Omen: The Final Conflict” would be good bad fun, which it wasn’t, and even watching Sam Neill was insufficient compensation. “Carnival of Souls” “The Abominable Dr. Phibes” TV: If you have the Decades channel or Amazon Prime, there’s the original “Dark Shadows.” I’ve never gotten around to seeing the 2000 reissue of “The Exorcist.” I may try that if it's available. miliosr, how do you rate the follow up “Halloween” pictures?