dirac

It could well be that her approach is also reflected in the biography, which I did find heavy going. (I also thought she might have had a bit too much material to chew - sometimes access to "the papers" isn't as big a plus as you'd think.)

Oh, it happens elsewhere too. I've done it myself and no doubt it was even more commonplace in the days when the movies were still a relative novelty and people were aping theater manners, just as the movies used to mimic stage performances. Audiences also do it as a way of recognizing a well-loved performer - when the jockey Gary Stevens appeared in his first scene playing George Woolf in "Seabiscuit," those of us who recognized him gave him a hand, no doubt to the puzzlement of everyone else. My point was that it's the exception, not the rule, to applaud at the movies - it's not customary as it is for live performance, even less than enthralling live performances. Not a big deal, either way..... Television sitcoms today routinely leave time after laugh lines, usually filled in with canned laughter.

Since the topic has been raised, I note that given the dreadful toll that of hospitalization, disability, and death commanded by diseases such as the measles in the past, we should be most grateful for vaccines and the benefits they provide for all - not least those who go unvaccinated as "free riders," relying on the fact that others will get vaccinations and so spare them from the chance of falling ill. In California we recently had a measles outbreak attributed in part to the declining vaccination rate. Fortunately most parents are still getting their children vaccinated.

Askegard will be performing with the Staten Island Ballet in its Nutcracker. Founding director Ellen Tharp has booked guest artists on occasion, but she hadn’t considered trying to hire Askegard for the 2011 “Nutcracker,” Staten Island Ballet’s 18th. “It just happened,” she said last week. The company’s regular cavalier, Vitaly Krauschenko, was unavailable. His Sugar Plum of the past few years, Miss Liceica (herself a former American Ballet Theatre soloist), knew Askegard and proposed him as a replacement.

I add my pleas to Alexandra's, sphillips. Those of us who can't see the performance depend on our posters' reports. Would love to read anything you have to say about it.

So very sorry to hear this. RIP.

You started a lively discussion, Bart, that's all, and thank you!

It's a free country.

That's a good point, Stage Right. A reviewer/critic also has to consider the bread-and-butter interests of the reader who wants to know how to spend his money, I suppose.

To me dressing up for the transmission is a confusion of the occasion similar to applauding as you would at a live performance. One is one, the other is the other. (I do think it would be appropriate to dress if it was a premiere or a special showing.)

I'm afraid we'll have to agree to disagree on that.

Thanks for the update, YouOverThere. I found the comments to the Denver Post editorial very interesting reading.

Golly, who would want to sit through any performance without being emotionally engaged? I applaud at HD broadcasts because in one way or another I'm moved, and because, as I wrote earlier in other words, applauding and hearing applause makes it more of a communal thing. Nothing pretentious about that. Golly, who would want to sit through any performance without being emotionally engaged? I applaud at HD broadcasts because in one way or another I'm moved, and because, as I wrote earlier in other words, applauding and hearing applause makes it more of a communal thing. Nothing pretentious about that. I think it's clear from my quote and the rest of my post how I was using the phrase "emotionally engaged."

Thank you, Paul and Natalia. I'm looking forward to seeing this.

I find those people with their glowing phone screens most annoying, but I would describe this new practice as an adjustment to changing times and habits. It's one way to accommodate a sector of the audience without annoying their fellow audience members. After all, they are buying tickets, and via Twitter they're sharing the experience with others. Certainly it's an experiment worth trying, especially if the Twitterers are younger people. I'm not sure that people availing themselves of Twitter would necessarily be disruptive if social media didn't exist. Chicken or the egg, I guess.

I tend to agree. Applause is part of a live performance; it's how the audience communicates with the performers in front of them. (I was going to say that you don't clap while watching television at home, but some do, apparently....) You certainly can applaud at a cinema simulcast, but by me it's pointless and a trifle pretentious. I have on very rare occasions witnessed people applauding after a movie when they have been particularly impressed or moved, but not often. Yelling at the television during sporting events, as your father and mine did/do, is slightly different in that competition and rooting interests are involved, so of course people who are emotionally engaged in the contest whoop it up a bit. But you'll note that the behavior still differs from that which you see from the people who are in the stadium watching the game live.

Charles Askegard and Candace Bushnell are phffft, reports The New York Post. Too bad. Eyebrows were raised when Bushnell, who hosted a going-away party for Askegard when he retired in September, was noticeably missing from his opening performance at The Joyce for his new venture on Nov. 23. This has been coming for a long time,” a friend told us. “They have been living increasingly separate lives. Candace has been spending more and more time in the country at her house in Connecticut, while Charles has been in the city working. He has been going through a huge career transition.”

Wow - I haven't seen the print edition yet today. On the front page? Good for Old Hollywood. Chalk one up for the King, as it were. Ah, a reminder of the good old days with old fashioned family values, when unmarried women had their babies in shameful secret and then brought them back and pretended they were adopted, nieces, little sisters, etc. Judy's resemblance to her father was indeed striking and it wasn't only the ears. Gable never acknowledged her. Poor Judy. Loretta was also famous, or notorious, for keeping a Swear Jar on the set. Anyone who said a naughty word had to drop a nickel or quarter in it. There are a number of stories involving Personality X telling Young variations on, "Here's X amount, Loretta. F--- you."

Hello, Lara, and welcome. As carbro says, "The Red Shoes" is a must for any ballet fan. Apart from anything else, it's the only ballet film of classic status to date. It also features in important roles great ballet figures of the past such as Robert Helpmann, Leonide Massine, and Moira Shearer. I also think you will like it for its own sake, although it's not to everyone's taste. I'd also suggest you try using our search engine for further commentary here on BA - we have existing threads with some lively discussions about a number of individual ballet films, including The Red Shoes, The Company, Center Stage, Nijinsky, Black Swan, and The Turning Point. I also think you would get decent results by plugging in "ballet movie" or "ballet film" as well.

I didn't know he'd converted to Catholicism. Good choice. He had a lot to be forgiven for. I haven't seen the BBC music films, Mashinka, but I understand they're as good as you and leonid say. Martin Scorsese praised them today, tactfully omitting the rest of Russell's oeuvre. I'm grateful to Russell for keeping Christopher Gable gainfully employed. It's remarkable when you consider that Russell's work received major studio backing. Those were the days. I agree, Barbara, I saw The Boy Friend recently and it was much better than I expected. I've never liked Women in Love, though. I remember Altered States as good fun and William Hurt was great in it. Gothic I particularly disliked - Russell took a promising idea and cast and screwed it all up. A collection of clips from The Guardian. An appreciation from BBC News. .

But don't the memoir and the movie seem in some way an inversion of the "Prince & the Showgirl" itself, with Colin as Marilyn? And how many "[famous person] and me" books and movies will there finally be? The genre will last as long as movie stardom does, I expect. Some of the books aren't so unreliable, others are horrible. One of the most worthless books I ever picked up was a "biography" of Montgomery Clift by one Maurice Leonard whose primary claim to expertise in the subject was allegedly having tricked with Clift a few times when Clift was in London filming Suddenly, Last Summer. Monroe was a good judge of properties. I guess it's possible she might have bought the rights to "The Sleeping Prince" without having read it or becoming familiar with it, but I'd think it unlikely. The play, intended as a Coronation year jeu d'esprit, is weak but it's not that bad, just not as frothy and witty as it needs to be. The Method and its allied techniques taught by the Strasbergs, Stella Adler, and Sandy Meisner, derived from Stanislavski (with whom Chekhov did have some arguments regarding the staging of his plays) were taught freely in Hollywood and New York in the forties and fifties. You remind me that Monroe took acting classes with Michael Chekhov in her early years. Thanks for the OP, Helene. Interesting discussion.

Given the descriptions by Tamara Tchinarova Finch of how Leigh's friends pretended nothing was wrong as they witnessed Leigh in the full throes of her illness just a few years before "Prince and the Showgirl" was made, it's very hard to know whether her illness was forefront at any other time in her life. No, it's not difficult. The Oliviers' marriage was certainly in difficulties. There is no evidence that Olivier was drawn to women with emotional problems. Certainly Olivier saw a parallel with his marriage and the Millers', but not in that way. Serious students of all kinds have used the wrong technique for given roles, and the conflict between this particular technique and her preternatural presence on camera was part of this movie. That wasn't what I was addressing I made that comment. It was more in reference to miliosr's comment about Monroe as an instinctual performer and whether her studies were or were not good for her. No doubt bringing the Method to bear on this fluffy role was like using a bazooka on a dollhouse, as miliosr notes. It didn't affect her performance, which is charming. My point was that, although the magic Monroe made in front of a camera was beyond what any training could give, she studied it continuously although she never became a fully trained actor. The difference between Monroe and the British actors was summed up well by Sybil Sibyl Thorndike, who plays with Monroe in a couple of scenes. She remarked that when the scene was in progress she didn't think Marilyn was making any kind of effect - she didn't appear to be doing anything. When Thorndike saw the rushes, she was astonished.

I'm planning to see it. Like cubanmiamiboy I'm a Dunst skeptic but it sounds as if working for von Trier might be good for her.

Branagh played Olivier as impotent during this period? That's rather funny. Leigh was never considered for the movie version. Monroe had bought the rights for herself and was producing, so Olivier "deeming" his wife to old for the role wouldn't come into it - everyone involved knew Leigh wouldn't play the movie version even without Monroe.No doubt she was worried about Monroe and Olivier- Olivier was worried himself, so charmed was he by Marilyn at their initial meetings. A few weeks of actually working with her put paid to that. The "conflict of style" is mainly a red herring, although Olivier had no use for the Method. Olivier was a great movie actor - to some extent the distinction is specious and Olivier could give performances geared to the camera as well as anyone. His performance in Carrie is as a great as any committed to celluloid and he was very fine in Term of Trial, for example. He's very good in The Prince and the Showgirl and I think under more harmonious circumstances he and Monroe could have been better together. The mistake, most likely, was making him director. He was certainly no villain, although he probably didn't understand the depths of Marilyn's insecurity and as the most intense of professionals he could only have disdain for her working habits. He didn't look at the film for years but when at length he did he thought it much better than anticipated and Monroe was delightful (which she is, and she certainly never looked more beautiful on film.). Monroe was a serious student of acting well before she met the Strasbergs. That was nothing new for her. Very few aspiring starlets work as hard as she did. Certainly there had been no one like her as a camera subject since Garbo and it makes sense to compare the two. Milton Greene, Marilyn's business partner and co-producer, was indeed accused of keeping her stoked with pills, that's not a new insinuation. Since Marilyn generally needed no help in this regard, my hunch is whatever was done was done to get the film in the can and a nighmarish shoot over with. It was Marilyn's money, too. Leigh was not ill during the Prince and the Showgirl shoot. A hint would be plenty and any more would throw the movie off balance and be exploitative as well. I'm afraId from the description the whole movie sounds like Oscar bait with the hook sticking out, but I'l catch it if convenient......

I'm not familiar with the book, so I'd be interested in any responses from those who have, as well.