dirac

Mashinka writes: Her concentration on bodies and physicality is notable. Even the tiny lines developing around poor Cheri's eyes at 25 don't escape her notice. But it's worse for the women. The 25 year age difference between Lea and Cheri is enough to destroy any chance of permanence for the affair. If the ages were reversed it would be no matter, but because the woman is older it's an insurmountable obstacle.

Geoffrey Burgon, composer for dance companies and television, is dead at 69. I can hear the "Brideshead" theme music in my head right now. RIP.

Thanks for posting, tchaikovskyfan. End of an era, or something.

I really miss J.T. Walsh. Farnsworth was great, too. He did terrific work in Comes a Horseman, not a particularly good movie but he is excellent.

It's a nice idea, reviving an old form. I hope anyone who sees it will tell us about it here.

Absolutely. A few have "crossed over" successfully - Gene Hackman in particular. Some would add Robert Duvall but I never thought he could really carry a lead even though he has won Oscars doing so - obviously mine is a minority opinion. I always thought of Kevin McCarthy more as an unsuccessful lead than a character actor, or a character actor by default, so to speak.

I did finally see this and sorry to say, it wasn't very good. Pfeiffer isn't bad but she's not right for Lea, starting with her figure, which is twenty first century gaunt rather than belle epoque lush, and she doesn't convey much of Lea's sophistication and dignity. I like Rupert Friend but he's not my idea of the gorgeous Cheri (or "Sherry" as Pfeiffer called him occasionally) and more crucially, there is no sexual heat between him and Pfeiffer. Hampton's script tries a little too hard for deviltry at times. The British voiceover is jarring and there's a particularly bad patch at the end where they decided to wrap up the events of "The Last of Cheri" in a paragraph. I'm not suggesting they needed to make the film four hours long but Colette provided a perfectly solid ending to the first novel for them to end with. Pretty costumes, though. It's hard not to sympathize with a teenaged wife in Edmee's situation.

Stephen Tobolowsky writes on the career of a character actor, and honors several recently deceased, on the op-ed page of The New York Times.

The problem for the organizations and their artists is that you have to observe the line no matter how fine if you want to protect yourself. If you let a blogger or two slide, you may find yourself one day without recourse in more serious cases. Ridiculous.

For this viewer Gould has always been there (kind of like the Queen), so it's very sad that new generations will watch TV without seeing him.

A wonderful character actor, Harold Gould, is dead at 86. Barney Gerber. (Whole episode; scroll to about 18 minutes in) The duel in "Love and Death." (It's in Italian, though.)

Thanks for posting that, Quiggin. A shout out to George Shultz, who is married to San Francisco Ballet board of trustees member Charlotte Mailliard Shultz:

The Met prepares a "pasticcio." Thoughts? Comments?

Nice to hear from you sidwich. It's very true, you just never know at the beginning of a season.

Thanks for pointing that passage out, bart. De Havilland was gutsy but she was not alone. Any Warner star with an independent streak wound up walking out on and/or suing the Brothers at one time or another. James Cagney brought suit against them for breach of contract in the mid Thirties and won. Bette Davis brought suit on grounds similar to de Havilland's in the mid Thirties and lost. Times had changed and I think de Havilland had Screen Actors Guild support and and Davis didn't, but I don't know if that made the difference. Davis received a brutal publicity battering and lost most of her money. If she were around she'd set Sarkozy straight.

Yep, she does look great. Long may she wave.

'La Ceremonie' was good, too. Chabrol's output varied widely in quality - not unusual even among the very best filmmakers.

Thank you for posting this news, leonid - I had not heard. I admired "La Femme Infidele." ( I also think more highly of Huppert than papeetepatrick does.)

Thanks for posting, leonid. Very nice of them to honor de Havilland. I assume Bisset got it for appearing in Day for Night and looking great soaking wet in The Deep.

But in the past Odiles have substituted turns for the fouettes and still presented Odile. Balanchine cut not only his own choreography but Stravinsky's music, and his truncated Apollo was not the best Apollo but it was still recognizably Apollo. Giselle has been altered over the years. I'm not disagreeing with you, exactly - the choreography is the text - but the text can and has been changed. It's a question of what you can change without violating the ballet's essence. Not to mention the opera singers who changed and interpolated freely. Excellent topic, SanderO. Thank you for starting it!

I don't think it is either, Bonnette, which is just as well. It's possible to be fat and be a good dancer and mover, but in serious ballet? Doubtful. Thanks for reviving this thread, johnno.

I don't think it is either, Bonnette, which is just as well. It's possible to be fat and be a good dancer and mover, but in serious ballet? Doubtful. Thanks for reviving this thread, johnno.

Yes, the costumes are gone but they are to some degree written into the bodies and into the movements of the bodies – as are the stylish deco ones for Concerto Barocco that PeggyR posted. Remember the Claudia Roth Pierpont comment that at some point Balanchine "becomes his own Kochno, his own Bérard" and "suffuses all the props and the tricks into the surface of the ballet itself." The problem with Modernism is that as it abstracts and "snip snips", it tosses out its sources, and erases its bibliography as well. It says it's about nothing and from nowhere in particular - but it isn't. Mondrian's pure modernist grids are water surfaces and forests in his earlier sketches. I like the old Concerto Barocco costumes by Berman, although those headdresses look like a major potential distraction in that choreography. But I don't see the Seligmann outfits as being part of the ballet in the sense you describe, although I follow you in priniciple. The costumes are striking in a sense, but they look awful for ballet, especially in a ballet, and contemporary reports do indicate that they hid the steps - you really couldn't see Mary Ellen or Todd for the bunchy clots of material and strips of whatnot.

Thanks for posting, 4mrdncr. I feel a little more warmly toward "Interiors" than I used to. Not that it's necessarily any better a movie, but I respect Allen's using his what was then recently acquired clout to make a genuinely risky film. The relationship between Geraldine Page and her three daughters is nicely done. Which Ingmar duly passed on, evidently. Of his (nine, I think) surviving children, fathered on numerous women whose marriages Bergman had often as not destroyed, three of them showed up for the funeral. (I was considering that while watching "Faithless" directed by Ullmann from a screenplay by Bergman. He was hard on himself, but not nearly enough.)

The latest: And Not odd at all, really.