dirac

I haven't read either book, but my hunch is that the picture relies primarily on "My Week with Marilyn" and less on the earlier book, which apparently took a more caustic view of its subject. The dramatization certainly seems like fantasy - Marilyn and Colin escape from the beady eye of Greene and do all kinds of generically fun things together and there's a nude swimming sequence, natch.

Because to a contemporary audience, that she's allowed to have any hips at all as an actress is almost remarkable. An actress with Monroe's actual body today would be considered a cow. I don't think gaining weight for the part would have helped Williams much. As I said, her figure is nice but unsensational and she doesn't quite have the charisma to explain why people are going nuts. (The costumer might have helped her with a different sort of bra - she's wearing a more contemporary softer style, not the industrial strength Fifties type that shove the breasts up and forward.)

I finally caught this. I didn't expect a masterpiece but it was rather worse and less entertaining that I had hoped - unnecessarily excitable editing, scenes with no follow up, that kind of thing. The sense of period is weak and the movie drags. It might have been all right as a movie made for the BBC or U.S. cable. Branagh is dogged as he has been throughout his film career by his lack of physical glamour and so we get a doughy-faced sad sack Olivier with small eyes and no lips who is barely taller than his wife. That said, he's fun to watch for the first half, parodying Olivier's vocal and facial mannerisms and throwing tantrums, and he gives the movie a bit of a jolt. Eddie Redmayne has nothing to play and works the puppyishness sufficiently hard that I was ready to strike him smartly on the snout with a rolled up newspaper. But I don't blame the actor in such a case. Dougray Scott looks very like the Arthur Miller of the newsreels, standing to one side awkwardly while his wife is mobbed. (He goes off on a trip to New York and then is never seen again, typical for this script. While it's true that the Millers' marriage had problems while they were abroad, I think it unlikely that Miller would have confided publicly to a man he barely knows that his new wife is "devouring" him.) Poor Emma Watson fares worst in a subplot that is perfunctory above the call of duty. I wouldn't take anything about this movie with great seriousness. Any value it possesses is as a setting for a star performance. Williams didn't quite do it for this viewer. One kept waiting for some other aspect of Monroe to be shown beyond from the little-girl-lost-on-too-many-pills-surrounded-by-wolves but the movie went on and on and it became clear that was all we were going to get. She has no particular resemblance to Monroe; her facial features are thicker and more common and her figure is nice but unspectacular and it's not clear why her hip wiggles set men aflame. She's a good actor and compensates somewhat by close attention to posture and other details, but the impersonation isn't particularly persuasive - again, the script is no help - except for a bit where she recreates the charming little dance that Marilyn does in the movie. But she seems to be receiving raves in many quarters, so what do I know. The line from "The Entertainer" about being dead behind the eyes is boosted shamelessly to express Olivier's middle-aged anomie and much as I enjoy Judi Dench, it seems to me there are several other excellent British actresses of a certain age who could have been cast as well and perhaps Dame Judi is a bit overexposed (so was her bosom, frankly, but let that pass).

Not to toot my own horn, but the item could have been found yesterday on our Links, as well.

Wishing everyone a very happy holiday season and best wishes for the new year, and a Merry Christmas to those on BA who celebrate it.

Another article published today, which doesn't clear too much up. It still sounds as if Nahat is toast, but not immediately, evidently. Well, I'd not go that far. Very difficult to tell what's really going on although I expect that money is the issue at bottom. It usually is.

I've just seen the 21st December performance in Broward and although I don't want to sound snide, subjectively I found it an effective antidote for the NYCB Live from Lincoln Center one last week, which put me quite off. Thanks for the report - good reading. I was very pleased to have the television broadcast, though.

I'm not going to respond to the latest remarks on corporal punishment of children, not because there is no response to be made to such.....views but because the subject was already closed and in any case I believe said comments speak eloquently for themselves. Any further comments from anyone on the topic will be deleted.

Entirely not your fault, Bart. Probably I ought to have let the original post pass without comment, but we're all human. I wonder about that. I see many, many tieless men in social contexts where you might expect ties. Any comment, gents?

You're wrong about that. But as you say, back to ballet. I regret that the subject of corporal punishment was ever raised and would be delighted to drop it here. I'm sure we can all agree on that! Still, whatever behavior from your fellow audience members is fair game in this thread, it's what we're here for.

I think you're correct, Stage Right, no doubt the school was essential in making the "Balanchine type" more prevalent, as the talent pool from which Balanchine could draw became larger and he could pick and choose with greater freedom. But he seems to have been working toward this type for years in his training and choreography, selecting dancers like Tallchief who was not a product of his school but had possibilities he could develop. I haven't seen enough Ratmansky to say. I have seen more Wheeldon and I wonder from his style if perhaps Wendy Whelan (known to me only by what I have heard and read by others) is the "Wheeldon ballerina" -- so far? Can others comment? Nice topic, Amy, thank you for starting it.

Reports suggest that the Pope is contemplating the canonization of Hildegarde of Bingen. Props to him, if true! Related, with musical excerpts.

I'm sure Mr. T. would appreciate your having made a special effort to hear his concerto.

I believe corporal punishment for children is falling out of fashion to some extent, although not fast enough and not widely enough and plenty of parents still feel free to hit their kids, if you find that reassuring...... I could never disregard shorts entirely, even at a matinee where clothing expectations are most relaxed, but I agree that they wouldn't spoil a good performance for me. Fortunately they turn out the lights.

Right. And Colbert always stays relentlessly in character for his interviews and part of the fun of the show is watching his guests cope with that, although I do remember him forgetting himself when Jane Fonda sat in his lap. Hallberg did well and given how little time these "half hour" shows really have these days I thought the segment was a good one. Although with his otherworldly looks and dancer's frame he did look a bit like an alien from Planet Perfection. Most notably he didn't let his audience off the hook. I'm sure the assembled presspersons never thought that he would take aim at them and it was interesting watching them squirm. Unlikely that he will be asked back.....

He was one of mine, too, even if I didn't agree with him on some issues latterly. It's an exceedingly trivial point given the arc of his life and work, but he was also the coolest, not something you can say of every statesman. (Obama is cool lite, but Havel was the genuine article.) Pulling out all the stops for the funeral. More on the plays. Not going to heaven, though:

Hello, Ed. Nice to hear from you again. Le Carre is one of those writers I've never gotten around to except for a glance at The Little Drummer Girl many moons ago, but I would think that novels in his particular genre wouldn't necessarily bear too much re-reading no matter how good they are. Would like to hear from others more familiar with his body of work than I. I have fond memories of Alec Guinness as Smiley back when but I can imagine Oldman in the part.

Yes, indeed, we do!!!!! People are conditioned to pay little or nothing for what they get on the internet. Many of the publications whose articles we link to face the same difficulty. It's not surprising that time isn't standing still and other forms of social communication are becoming popular. I do think that sites like ours and Ballet.co offer something special and it would be nice if others felt the same way. That's right. And people's personal circumstances change and it gets harder to put in so much work.

Václav Havel is dead at seventy-five. Appreciation in The New York Times. In letters to his wife from prison, Mr. Havel, who died on Sunday, expressed his artistic vision. While confessing that he was not a “divadelnik,” a professional “for whom theater is the only imaginable vocation,” he also wrote of theater as “a kind of immediate and vivid enactment of the very mystery of human existence.” As a playwright, he had a relatively small body of work, and in light of his political career it would be easy to think of his theatrical work as minor. But Mr. Havel occupied a special place in the world of theater. Although playwrights from Bertolt Brecht to Athol Fugard have instilled their work with a fervid political commitment, only Mr. Havel went from being a prisoner of a state to the leader of that state. Related. Václav Havel’s career and oeuvre can be divided into three periods: the playwright of the 1960s, influenced by the absurdist theater of Beckett and Ionesco; the dissident of the 1970s and 1980s; and then the president (1989–2003). To anyone who might be tempted to emphasize only one of these three facets or to set them in stark contrast to one another, he has just responded by writing a new play, The Departure, which could just as well have been called The Comedy of Power. For, with Havel, theater and politics are never far apart. After all, in November 1989 in Prague, the Civic Forum—the crucible of the new democracy—was created in a theater with the prophetic name of the Magic Lantern. The Velvet Revolution itself is his best play, a theatrical revolution in which the people were invited to play the roles themselves. Milan Kundera wrote at the time: “The way in which he led the struggle was fascinating not just from a political point of view, but from an aesthetic one as well. It was the last prestissimo movement of a sonata written by a very great master.”

I'm really schizophrenic on this issue. I almost always wear a tie to the ballet/opera/symphony and I get annoyed about the casual dress of some of the members of the hiking club that I go to the Colorado Symphony with. On the other hand, I think that the stuffiness of classical music and dance presentations discourages people from attending who might actually enjoy the art but are turned off by the perceived conservative and elitist attitude. I agree. This is less true than it used to be because the dress code has relaxed considerably but certainly the perception is out there. At the same time the way that "casual" keeps getting defined down by certain parties is annoying.

In general I tend to prefer evening length ballets filmed live rather than in a studio. I can allow for the fact that the performers are projecting for theater distances. There was an airless quality about the Nutcracker feature film. But then this particular ballet is truly an experience for live performance, as grateful as I am for these broadcasts.

Thanks, California, that's good to know. I was wondering. I also noted that a cast list was shown before the start of the show with photographs of the dancers, so it was clear for audience members not familiar with the company who they were watching. This was especially nice because end credits are run at an unreadably fast pace these days and are often minimized to make room for commercial breaks or advertising other shows.

I enjoyed it. Nice show, the editing was better than one often gets in these broadcasts although I agree with some of what Dale had to say on that, and overall it compared favorably with the NYCB Nutcracker feature film, which was pretty bad despite the talent involved. Fairchild looked a little nervous and she doesn't have a Fonteyn-like camera ready smile that would have really aided her in a broadcast context. Not the Sugar Plum of my dreams but I liked her fine, also Brittany Pollock. De Luz was charming and Bouder is teh awesome. The conducting was.....brisk, as others have noted. The kids were divine.

Drew, I also saw it via cable, which is too bad as I think it’s a movie that really should be seen on the big screen. In some ways it’s more accessible than, say, Dogville or Antichrist – it’s beautiful to look at, relatively short by von Trier standards, and his female leads are unhappy but not as abused as usual. The opening digital montage is stunning, almost worth the price of admission, and the entire film is full of gorgeous images (as can be seen from the clips Cristian posted). Von Trier often offers up the sublime with the loopy, intentionally or not, and that’s true of Melancholia. From a scientific aspect the whole thing is nuts, but if you can accept that there’s a lot to see here. Dunst is excellent, especially when you consider she’s not really given a character to play so much as a state of mind. Gainsbourg is back for a rematch with von Trier, a tribute to her stamina if nothing else, but she’s much less effective here than in Antichrist and even in von Trier’s world there’s no way that she and Dunst match up as sisters – I never believed these two were from the same family. Bergman, whose Persona kept popping into my head as I watched, would have handled that aspect better. (I also wondered why a woman with that much money couldn’t figure out something better to do with her hair.) I’m not a Kiefer Sutherland fan but I agree, he was very good here.

Croce says somewhere that the real genius of Balanchine's production is in the first act. It is true that some Nutcrackers try to amuse the kids while going over their heads to the adults (you also see this in contemporary movies for children) and it doesn't necessarily work.