dirac

Thanks for that, Helene. I shouldn't have given the impression that they were head to head rivals when of course Cousins was almost a decade younger. I still think Cousins was the more talented skater. (The late Carlo Fassi got into a spot of trouble when he inadvertently let slip that he thought so, too. ) Regarding the school figures, I was commenting from the perspective of aesthetics and technique, as opposed to the judging issues, which were a different ball of wax. My impression is that some think the sport lost a great deal technically with the decline of figures and others hold the opposite view. Curry had a couple of bad falls but his scores in the figures held him up.

I thought it was okay, PeggyR. Not as good as the original but not a waste of money, either. But it lacked most of the things that made the Frankenheimer version so unexpected and unusual - at once oddball and chilling. I thought the second version made better use and sense of the Janet Leigh character and Jeffrey Wright’s veteran was a real standout – his torments so overpowering that he seems like a revenant, and yet still completely human and poignant.

I caught Zombie's remake of the first Halloween on cable not long ago and I agree with you in full, miliosr. No atmosphere, no shivers, just brutality and the tedious spelling out of things that don't really need to be spelled out. I think Zombie is one of those horror film directors, like Eli Roth, who ramp up on the killings because they don't have the ability or ingenuity of a Carpenter or Craven to create a genuine chill or find a new way to make the audience jump in their seats. It certainly helps when you've got MacDonald and Chevalier to work with instead of Turner and Lamas.

Episode Two was a definite step forward, and last night's Episode Three was a definite step back. High point: Pete's Charleston. Low point: Roger's blackface number. I realize the writers wish to convey that this was a less enlightened era, but I had a very hard time believing this would go over.

The uses of school figures are debatable – there were some distinguished coaches who did not assign any great value to them and weren’t especially sorry to see them go – but at one time they were the heart of the sport. Curry wasn’t very fast even by the standards of the day and he was not as innately talented a skater as his British rival and successor, Robin Cousins, but he had great refinement and control – the jumps weren’t big, but once he had mastered the proper technique, unusually late in his career, they were perfectly executed, with beautiful edges. (He remarked that he had been forced by his coach to jump in a very small space so that he did not rely on momentum to get into the air.) He had good taste and it was his own.

I haven't, vipa, but perhaps someone else has. What is The Bad Necessity about, BTW?

I didn't much care for thirtysomething but I wouldn't call it bad or kitsch TV. It was highly influential for better or worse and it did tell serious stories of a kind that didn't get much airing on networks at the time - or since, for that matter. The makers of the show have gone on to do some good work - Edward Zwick isn't my favorite director but he's turned into a decent one.

The Curry skating company in its various incarnations was an interesting experiment. Curry was a frustrated dancer and he tried to bring the structure and ethos of a ballet company to the ice. It all ended badly but it was worth attempting. Martins’ “Tango-Tango” was an old Curry standby from his first American show, “IceDancing,” and it’s a witty piece, using Starbuck very well. “After All” is good, too, although it’s not really to my taste. (I didn’t much care for Curry’ s use of David Santee in the piece Dunning mentioned – Santee could be seen to better advantage in the pop music exhibitions he did on his own.) Cathy Foulkes was a soft, pretty skater – not a lot of power but pleasing to watch and she was in all of Curry’s troupes.

TV has always been a mixed bag – highbrow, lowbrow, and everything in between. Personally I’d rather watch an hour of the Angels than some of the tedious middlebrow stuff that was and is served up on Masterpiece (formerly Theatre), but to each his own. That is a puzzling decision - introduce a new leading character with great fanfare, and then she disappears for a goodly part of the season.....

Thank your for these, rg. Interesting that both she and Vivien Leigh played Titania opposite Helpmann, and she looks very like the photographs of Leigh in the role. I remember her saying in an interview that she always enjoyed dancing Giselle although she wasn’t considered really appropriate for the role – red hair, you know.

I think it was Karajan, as fandeballet said, who pushed him into taking roles too big for his voice. Radamès, forsooth! I agree, though, Carreras was never quite in that league, although I thought he had a lovely tone. There's some wonderful singing today, but I, too, think the rage for skinny is an unhappy trend.

Thanks, richard53dog. I have to get 'The Unknown Callas.'

No worries, Patrick. Seems to me there was an unsteadiness in the high notes as early as my Mexico City Trovatore in 1950, I think it was. Some of the B's and C's on her recordings from '54 and '55 aren't delightful to the ear, either. Later on it wasn't only the high notes but a ghastly wobble that marched through her vocal range like Sherman's troopers. I'm no musician or vocal expert but I don't think that rapid weight loss and/or personal problems account(s) for what happened to her.

Thank you for the heads up, leonid. It seems to me it's been awhile since the last proper biography, although I could be mistaken about that.

Thank you for bringing back this old thread, carbro. I tend to agree with sidwich and richard53dog that it would be surprising if Voigt’s vocal production hadn’t been affected by such drastic weight loss, and it’s also no big shock if she has lost vocal heft along with that weight. One of the points White made in his rather wishy-washy article was that more producers and directors want their singers slim and pretty, and although he seems to be unhappy about this he also seems to be throwing up his hands, what-can-you-do style. Good to hear from you, Ed.

Hello, Tiffany. Thanks for posting. 'The Duchess' is a bit heavy going in places, and I thought at times that Foreman was working too hard to persuade us of Georgiana's political importance, but it was a good book to browse through. Good luck with your studies.

Thanks for responding, Rosa. Sounds like a lively group of books. Not too long ago I read a biographical novel about Mrs. Robert E. Lee, "Lady of Arlington" - an older book that's dated in many ways but I still enjoyed it.

Actually, GWTW, from the sound of the story as outlined in cinnamonswirl's link, it sounds as if she won't be doing much dancing, although she will be exerting herself in, ahem, other ways. I guess they must be looking to bring in the straight guys.

Grizzly Man is fascinating, although at the end I wasn't quite sure what to make of it, or poor Treadwell (who seems to have wanted to wind up as hot lunch). It certainly is worth seeing and I'm annoyed that I didn't mention it first. The Isherwood/Bachardy film is wonderful, too. I admit Bachardy's voice grated on me a bit, but I got used to it and he's a most interesting man and a great interview.

Just wondering if anyone made a contribution.

I forgot to ask this, Rosa - are you reading Mrs. Gaskell for school or for pleasure?

I never said that usage does not change - it happens all the time, as the history of the word under discussion indicates. My point was that pejorative meanings of the word remain the 'correct' ones, and if a student submitting a term paper, for example, uses fulsome in the positive sense, he runs the risk of getting a rap on the knuckles from his teacher or at the very least making a poor impression. The dictionary should help guide such a student so he can make an informed decision, at least in my view. There has been a trend since the middle of the last century for dictionaries to be less 'judgmental', since technically there is no such thing as 'proper' and 'improper' usage, only what is standard, and that is what I had in mind when I posted. I hope this is clear. It may well be that eventually the word will come full circle, but as far as I know that has not happened yet and in my experience when I see 'fulsome' employed in educated formal writing, it is used in the negative sense. I apologize again to all for having inadvertently pulled the thread so far off the track in my irritation with Merriam-Webster.

Happy to assist, sejacko. I think ‘revival’ is a neutral way of saying, in the manner of many contemporary dictionaries, that people began misusing the term and the large dictionaries of the first half of the century continued to uphold the by then settled upon and accepted pejorative sense(s) of the word. The difficulty is that if you use ‘fulsome’ to mean abundant or generous in a positive sense, as Kirkland did, you run the risk of looking foolish or ignorant. It would be helpful for naive readers of Merriam-Webster if the dictionary warned of this risk, but it sounds as if it doesn’t. My American Heritage dictionary is more helpful. It notes accurately that the pejorative meanings are the primary ones, placing the positive meaning at #3, and adds a usage note that makes the whole business clear for its readers, suggesting that they not use fulsome in a positive sense to avoid any potential confusion. (Sorry for going off toic, but it really annoys me when dictionaries hew to their descriptive goals without considering that people also come to them for prescriptive guidance.) I add to this that all people tend to be distracted by nudity or anatomical irregularities such as very large breasts or a very flat chest, and one’s personal sexuality doesn’t enter into it much, I think.

At a cost, alas. This is very sad. She had a wonderful voice at her peak. Thank you for posting the news, Hans. NYT obituary

In Ephron’s defense, it sounds as if she had been more faithful to Julie’s book/blog, the film might have been a combination of foodie biopic and Roman Polanski’s Repulsion, not what people expect from a Nora Ephron picture. (I heard her say in a recent interview that she wanted the movie to inspire people to go out and have/make a good meal, so maybe she thought maggot shots wouldn’t get stomachs growling.) Sounds like juicy reading, Rosa. What distinguishes the Really Bad Girls of the Bible from just the Bad Girls? And is Washington’s Lady a biographical novel or a biography? I've always been partial to biographical novels, even the less than great ones.