dirac

He could restrain it. He tended to behave well around Borg, for example. The tantrums did get worse after 1985, along with his game, and it was then that the four letter words began flowing freely - the really ugly episodes date from that time - inexcusable stuff. Serena can thank him (and Connors and Nastase) for the more stringent rules on conduct in place today.

Yes, Nureyev is closer, certainly in temperament, although a few people have tried to excuse Mac’s behavior by claiming he’s nuts. I thought of Nijinsky because they both have a special mystique – the young genius who has a few great years and then flames out. Barbara, there is a little resemblance, now that you mention it. Del Potro is six foot six, I believe. Although he moves well for a big fella I have trouble envisioning him leaping through the air with the greatest of ease. He took a spill during the final and it was like the felling of a redwood.

Yes, pre-Code.

I'm sure that's right, but I seem to remember that they did do some of their own dancing. Raft had worked as a dancer before going to Hollywood, and that was definitely him in the dance scenes I remember. Lombard's another story. I'm sure she took dance lessons at some point, as the studios in those days sent their starlets to classes of all kinds, but I don't think she was ever so much as a chorus girl - she got her start in Mack Sennett comedies.

Thanks for the link, Mme. Hermine. Lombard and Raft did two ‘dance’ movies together, ‘Bolero' and 'Rumba.' I haven't seen the latter. I did see 'Bolero' years ago and it was low camp of an amusing kind. Paramount was promoting Lombard as their sexy, slinky Orchid Lady, as I remember. (Her breakthrough comedy role in Twentieth Century was in the same year, 1934.) I also recall a story that could be apocryphal. Lombard was famous for her free speech at press conferences, most of which never made it into print, and somebody asked her who Hollywood's most famous lover was. She responded, "George Raft," and when the reporters looked puzzled, she said, "Oh, you meant on the screen." He had quite a rep with the ladies.

OT -Vanessa Redgrave was superb in 'The Bostonians' but otherwise I agree with you about the casting. I remember 'The Europeans' with Lee Remick as being okay, although I haven't seen it for years. 'The Heiress' with de Havilland, Clift, and Richardson is a very good movie, not quite what James had in mind but I like it for itself. (Although personally I would have let Monty in -- after all, it's only money and what else was Olivia planning to do with it? But never mind.) I admit that when I first heard about 'Bright Star' it sounded like Love Story meets Masterpiece Theater ("What can you say about a wonderful young poet who died?" ) I'm hoping for better, though. Campion did show a good eye for period detail in The Piano. I remember in particular the way Holly Hunter's hair is greased down and severely parted, exactly the way you see the women's hair in those old daguerrotypes of the period and the way you usually don't see it in movies. What in particular did you dislike about the original score, Patrick? And does anyone else have some observations on Campion that might be helpful to Ray?

That sounds exciting, Ray. I have mixed feelings about Campion's work - it's usually ithought provoking but not always completely successful, for me. My sympathies in The Piano were with the beleaguered Sam Neill rather than Holly Hunter, and I have an active dislike for Campion's adaptation of The Portrait of a Lady. This new one sounds interesting, though, and like abatt I'm looking forward to seeing it. The last time I saw Ben Whishaw he played Sebastian in Brideshead Revisited and he was not good, but I'm willing to give him another try. I remember Abbie Cornish as the blond ingenue in Elizabeth: the Golden Age and it was hard to get her measure in that role, although she was lovely to look at.

Good choices, perky, although not everyone would consider Jimbo in his heyday to be especially charming. He had good feet, though, which any dancer could appreciate - very tough to catch Connors out of position. That's a toughie, I agree. Maybe Nijinsky.

I wouldn’t want to have anything in common with S. Williams except her bank balance. I suppose a woman stepping forward to claim the Tennis Championship Boor Award is progress, of a kind. Luckily, there are rules to deal with that sort of thing, and they were enforced. abatt, I like tennis and I like ballet, but I don’t think the two have all that much to do with each other. Every once in awhile, however, a tennis player comes along whose personal style invites such comparisons. It’s impossible to watch Roger Federer when he’s in the zone and not think of ballet – his combination of grace, speed, lightness, and coordination are almost eerie – like something out of The Matrix, as the late David Foster Wallace once observed. There was a moment during this year’s US Open when Federer lost his footing and wound up on his hands and knees, and although such moments are always awkward (and distressing, if there is injury to the player) this one seemed unnerving – Federer normally has an Astaire-like inability to do anything clumsy and you feel not only that he won’t fall or trip over himself, but that he can’t. But generally I’d say a fine mover in tennis terms is just that. Some players are more elegant than others, true – although I’d say individual styles are more homogeneous today than in the past. Little guys who move very fast sometimes remind me of Michael Chang, though.

He does worthy work, GWTW. I don’t think it excuses “Righteous Kill” or some of the laziness of his other work, although we all have bills to pay.

That’s really only to be expected, when you think about it. Whenever a big award like this is inaugurated, there’s likely to be a backlog of Very Big Names to be honored, and those are exhausted after awhile. New names will come up as time goes on, but it is unlikely that the lists will ever be quite so dazzling again. The current list seems unobjectionable, although I always whine whenever there is no representative of the dance world. I’m not sure if De Niro actually qualifies for a “lifetime” achievement award at this point, given that he’s done so little of value with his talent in recent decades, but his early work does make up for it, I guess. It will be good to see Bumbry again. Thanks for posting, bart.

Thanks, rg. I'm looking forward to seeing this.

Waltz is that good, although I don't know what the good people at NPR had to say about him. It takes some doing to play an inventive variation on a role like that of the sadistic German officer, a standby that's been with us in one form or another since 1914, and he is excellent. The performance does eventually become repetitive, like almost everything else in Inglourious Basterds, but that's the fault of Tarantino, not his actor. Waltz also stands out in high relief because there isn't much interest going on around him - the effect is like that of Alan Rickman's Sheriff of Nottingham on Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves, where the film got a desperately needed jolt every time Rickman showed up. How you react to the movie will depend mostly on how you feel about World War II getting the Tarantino treatment. I found that it veered between very good and tedious, and if you leave the theater after the excellent opening sequence and come back for the boffo finish you won't miss much. The performing standard is generally high, as is often the case with Tarantino pictures, with the notable exception of Eli Roth. (Well, it could have been worse - Tarantino might have cast himself.) Michael Fassbender was a standout. I enjoyed Diane Kruger, even if Dietrich or Riefenstahl could probably eat her for lunch. Melanie Laurent is a pretty girl but it's hard to say much else on the basis of this role. She's good at what she's given to do although like everyone else in the movie she has trouble holding the screen with Waltz. I didn't react strongly to Pitt one way or the other - he was all right, and I was amused by a few of his inflections. Raine doesn't dominate the film, but again I don't think it's the actor's fault. Most of the other Basterds fade into the background. Thanks for starting the topic, Patrick.

Well, that’s a decision all prospective readers will have to make for themselves, of course. I’m definitely curious enough to read it, myself. New ballet bios are so thin on the ground. Looking forward to this one!

After you reach a certain age it's possible to make sterner choices about what you do and don't do with your time. I know a gentleman in his sixties who says he walks out on things with greater regularity than he used to, his rationale being that at his age he has less time to waste. I think along with bart that Greer's remark was a bit of hyperbole, but if after long experience you've seen a performance you think truly definitive and don't want to muck up the memory, I can see making that choice, although I doubt if I would do so myself.

Yes, leonid, I am aware that “Mountbatten” was the official biography, which is what I meant when I characterized it as an example of the authorized biographies about which I was writing. It’s very difficult to know well even those closest to us, much less dead strangers, but it does no harm, within limits, for a biographer to offer informed opinions on the personality of her subject as long as she’s not straying from the known facts. The Daneman and Kavanagh books aren’t perfect by any means but certainly anyone interested in Fonteyn or Nureyev should read them.

An authorized biography of this kind isn't necessarily a whitewash or an exercise in glorification, although of course it can be. It depends on what kind of a deal the writer has cut with the person doing the authorizing, and what that person has in mind. It is true that there is usually a tradeoff – in exchange for special access to papers and friends, a writer may agree, or there may be an informal understanding, that certain subjects won't be emphasized and certain views not taken. It's even more likely that the authorizer will seek out a writer who is already in tune with his views. I'm sure it's not an accident that Julie Kavanagh had nothing to say about the aftermath of Nureyev's death, for example, or that Meredith Daneman is kinder to the Arias family than would seem to be called for, given what we know about the tribe. Journalistic politesse - be good to your sources. The (relatively) recent biography of Laurence Olivier by Terry Coleman is a case in point. The work was undertaken with the approval of Olivier's widow, Joan Plowright, and in a number of respects the book is very much The Plowright Version. But this has its value, as does the access Coleman had to Olivier's papers and the family. Philip Ziegler's Mountbatten is a fine example of the type – Ziegler held to the view that his subject was a great man but he was also diligent, thorough, and honest, and the material was there for the reader to reach her own conclusions. The family wasn't too happy.

What a wonderful passage, innopac, thanks so much for posting it. Ah, those flighty French.

Ahem. This is a decorous board. Boy, it really is August. Or the tag end of summer, I should say.

Nora said it, we didn’t. I never thought Lifar’s legs were so great, actually, but Kaye and I may not share the same tastes. Lew Christensen’s were much better, IMO. No, let’s not start a topic....

Thank you, Simon. Maybe not the a career Kaye or Ashton would have liked for him. But ... he worked. There’s a difference between working decently hard and the focused dedication required for reaching the top in ballet, and it sounds as if the latter is what Beard was lacking. ‘Lazy’ is perhaps a little harsh but the very young and gorgeous can get accustomed to having good things materialize for them. Could also be that Beard was happy as he was and didn’t want to get consumed by his career.

Thanks, miliosr. The Wikipedia entry sounds as if it was written by a fan or fans, certainly, not unusual on Wikipedia, and the information sounds quite believable. Sounds a tad self-defeating, but it's her call. Has anyone else read or heard something?

I, too, would be interested to hear from anyone who's seen this. Thanks for posting, bart.

I really only said in passing that Cousins was the more naturally gifted skater, which remark I didn't think would be especially controversial and don't think reflects on Curry as an artist (or competitor, or person) in any way. I am sorry for having unintentionally derailed the thread by mentioning the subject and will let it drop here. I don't know if it's on YouTube or not, but Curry and Foulkes looked especially good together in the Norman Maen version of Afternoon of a Faun, although I thought the piece itself was somewhat too literal in its translation to ice. Curry was a Faun of genuine distinction.