dirac

So she is.

Thanks for bringing back this old thread, keguri. I think you and diane make a good point about arts funding in Europe and the difference it makes (along with the underlying attitude to culture that makes such funding possible). Ib Andersen said something similar recently at a Ballet Across America discussion. Well put, diane.

I agree with you, Patrick, but I think that quality of innocence was what Pabst was looking for, even if in real life Brooks was already a swinger with a bottle problem. He saw something he could use. She's a delicious stray and Lulu in Pabst's version isn't an operator like Lola-Lola. Thank you for that link, Quiggin. I must read that.

Brooks made a magical impression in one undisputed classic, Pandora's Box. For her, it was enough - Brooks was never a big star at any time during her active career, strange to say when today she's a legend. Shearer was a superstar in her day without great beauty or talent whose vehicles haven't aged well. She made the most of what she had, though. Whereas a good time gal like Brooks gained immortality more or less by accident. Fortune, indeed. Thanks for reviving this thread.

This topic has been discussed pretty exhaustively on BT, as you'll find if you do a search, but it is also an ongoing issue. African-Americans hold a special and especially difficult place because they were brought as slaves to this land and endured hundreds of years of the most vicious and debilitating kind of discrimination even after slavery ended, receiving full civil rights only a few decades ago. (Which is not to discount the experience of discrimination by other ethnic groups, please note.) I'd rather not hash this out here, but if you look for wide-ranging discussions of racial issues you will be able to find writings that will explain to you why this is a specious form of reasoning. I think that's fair enough. Progress has been made and there's more to be done.

The article is an op-ed and it leaves out a lot of inconvenient information, in the manner of many editorials.

I had a feeling.

Yeah, I agree. But especially after she DID go ahead and, clearly out of desire for an opportunity for herself, do the piece, it's tacky to keep talking about how she didn't like the music. That should have been left behind. The way she handled it afterward is even worse than that it apparently failed. Once she worked with the music, she should have shown it respect. Frankly a bit revolting, you know. I would never hold it against a choreographer that she tried to meet a challenge and fulfill a high profile commission even if the end result was poor. I do agree with this: Definitely. I'm sure she doesn't intend to shift responsibility to her composer but every effort should be made to avoid even the appearance of doing so. Someone else might have taken the same score and made something of it. Devising stageworthy dialogue is not as easy as it looks, as abatt notes.

Saw this for the first time on PBS. Disappointing. The Wiseman gimmick of providing no context and no identification of what and who we're watching makes for intermittently tedious viewing in this instance, particularly over the three hour stretch. At least a half hour could have been cut with no loss. I probably could have survived watching it in a theater but I'm now not unhappy that I waited. Must see viewing for any ballet fan for the reasons already presented by many of the posters in this long thread, but it could have been better. I fear I nodded off over the last hour and will have to try to catch that on DVD or a repeat. It's very nice that the film has been as widely distributed and favorably reviewed as it has been, Wiseman certainly deserves it at this point in his career. I think your mother is a good critic. Wiseman's movies didn't always go on for hours and his approach doesn't always work. The rehearsal sequences would have gained in effect if we knew a little backstory - is this X's first time in the role? Is Z a last minute replacement? What exactly did Lacotte mean when he mentioned Suzanne Farrell's flaws? We can hazard a guess, but with no follow up it's just a passing remark. A lot of the dance excerpts didn't do much to compensate, especially the Buckets O' Blood Medea.

Interesting points, mimsyb. Visiting stars do add a little zip to a ballet company's season (and indeed such travelers were one of the hallmarks of the dance boom of the seventies). Perhaps the difference for Broadway is that by and large it's no longer producing its own stars, despite the actors of great distinction to be seen on the boards. http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/15/theater/...ones&st=cse

You're welcome, leonid. At least Osipova seems to be all right, which is something to be grateful for. I too was wondering what the muggers propose to do with her pointe shoes.....

Another sign of decline and fall, one fears. It seems much harder these days for a straight play or even a musical to succeed without a movie star or two - or even a teevee actor like Hayes if that's the best you can do.

She's never dull, that's for sure.

Happened to come across this.

I can't imagine sitting through A View From the Bridge again even if I were on the East Coast, so I'll willing to take your word for it. I've seen Johansson give okay performances and casting her as Catherine isn't like putting her in Hedda Gabler, so she's probably all right.

I tuned in and out, switching back and forth between that and "The Tudors," in which Anne Askew was put to the rack. Maybe Bishop Gardiner should just have had Catherine Zeta-Jones visit Anne's cell and sing "Send in the Clowns." Having Barbara Cook introduce her made it worse, somehow. But Z-J is also a movie star and someone the national audience will recognize. It was worth it, though, when Z-J made her acceptance speech and announced proudly that she gets to sleep with Michael Douglas every night. Z-J, you're a beautiful woman and a good actress with an Oscar even if it is only a Best Supporting and I would like to be a beautiful movie star like you, but I would not like to be a beautiful movie star if it meant having to get into bed with your jowly old foreshortened husband every night. Yucksville. Scarlett Johansson won, too. She also got good notices but in my experience Johansson gets decent notices even when she is demonstrably awful and I no longer trust critics on the subject of the blonde bombshell. Denzel won, natch. Not a good night for Chenoweth, who sounded no better than Zeta-Jones. Actually, a dead guy named Sinatra sounded better than almost everyone on stage I saw. The dancing excerpts from "Fela" looked like fun. I didn't realize "Best Score of a Musical" is such an unimportant award that you can dispose of it in a montage (along with other unimportant types like Alan Ayckbourn, Marian Seldes, and David Hyde Pierce). Viola Davis is awesome but I was underwhelmed by her "God Gave Me My Tony" acceptance speech. Nathan Lane and Bebe Neuwirth perked things up.

One of my neighbors' cats was stalking me for quite a while, culminating in him planting himself on the garage door overhang which looked directly into my bathroom. It was quite unnerving to wake up and find Crazy Stalker Cat watching me brush my teeth in the morning. Thankfully, he gave up his most stalkery behavior after a few months. Elvis has lost a step in the last year, so he's had to give up entertaining himself by beating up the other neighborhood animals. I did catch him taking a swipe at Crazy Stalker Cat last week, though, so no doubt that Elvis still wants him to know who's the boss in this corner of the neighborhood. My faucet-drinking ex-street cat is also very territorial. He claimed squatter's rights himself but doesn't want anyone else taking advantage, apparently.

Very sad story, indeed.

Performers have their jobs, critics have theirs. I don't think it matters to an artist's career if he reads his reviews or not. Some do, some don't, and some may be reading their notices and not admitting it, but they don't necessarily have anything to learn or gain by doing so. Sums it up nicely.

He was quoting another blogger, bart, and it's not at all clear from the context that it was intended as a compliment by either party, although of course one tries to think good thoughts. Going by what Wolcott wrote this time around, Kaufman might be one of those wielding the nun's ruler at choreographers who are too derivative, but then again he might enlist her in his crusade. I agree with Quiggin about his, uh, tone.

The latest fusillade from Wolcott. Watch out, dance board commenters, Wolcott's got his eye on you:

I think you are right about that, Drew. Offhand I recall no instances of Rickles making jokes at his own expense. I would guess that too relates to Rivers' gender. Maybe on some level it could only be acceptable for Rivers to take it out on others if she was also taking it out on herself.

Well, Rivers' style of humor is aggressive, similar to that of Rickles, and it stands out more because she's a woman. When she started out there were not only few female comics who made jokes like a man but few female comics of any kind. I'm sure that gave her some very hard edges. (Jokes about Taylor were rife when she was Mrs. Senator Warner and expanded like the Hindenburg. I remember Bill Murray interviewing "Taylor" on SNL, offering up adoring softball questions while Belushi as Liz chewed bovinely on a piece of chicken and started choking on a bone.) I don't always agree with Dargis but she's a very interesting writer.

Thank you for posting this - I hadn't heard about this film. I have mixed feelings about Rivers, as I do about a comic whose shtick resembles hers, Don Rickles. However, Rickles was the subject of a wonderful documentary a few years ago that I enjoyed hugely and this one sounds good, too. John Landis, who directed the Rickles movie, had a genuine affection for his subject, however. I don't understand why it's "to their credit" that the filmmakers don't make Rivers look good - what would be so awful about that? But I'll decide when I see the movie.

Thanks, TOOTOO. The Tonys tend to be the most entertaining of the awards shows even if you haven't seen the productions.