dirac

I quite agree.

Thanks for posting, bart. Alastair Macaulay made some of the same points about Jackson's steps and style in his Jackson article. My hunch is that Jackson probably knew what he could and couldn't do as well as anyone and presented his dancing accordingly. Astaire was primarily a dancer, who also sang and introduced many hits, but Jackson was a musician and singer, priorities at least as important for him. Alastair Macaulay made some of the same points about Jackson's steps and style in his Jackson article. I don' t think that Jackson 'didn't trust' his dancing enough. I'd say he probably knew what he could and couldn't do as well as anyone and presented his dancing accordingly. In addition, the context of music video and short films is quite different from creating dances to be presented in a feature film in a specific dramatic context. The alleged 'anger' remark from Astaire is interesting, if true. I haven't read anything like that from Astaire, his colleagues, or friends elsewhere, but there could be something out there. Not clear to me that Astaire would have much to be cross about. He went to work at an early age, yes, and his professional future looked problematic for a few years in the early thirties, but he had a loving mother, a devoted family, and a charmed career lived among the elite and rich in society and entertainment. Many people observed that he was fussy - his sister called him Moaning Minnie - and could be cranky, but those are not characteristics that necessarily indicate subterranean anger. (I can certainly see why Jackson would have been angry.) Jackson was not the only contemporary pop entertainer that Astaire praised highly. He was a great admirer of Sammy Davis, Jr., thought him a marvelous performer. He loved John Travolta in Saturday Night Fever and could do a spot-on impression of him, according to friends.

Many thanks for posting this, Mashinka. It's a perennial topic, for obvious reasons - bad manners are always with us.

Alas, Marga, it's standard operating procedure for most women's mags - celebrity ones, too. Periodically Vogue will publish an issue purportedly 'celebrating' aging women. (These articles will often be side by side with others informing readers about the latest in anti-wrinkle drugs and plastic surgery.) The latest one features Christy Turlington, 40, on the cover, airbrushed within an inch of her life. Turlington is ravishing even by model standards and probably needed little help, but nevertheless she got it. I suppose the mixed messages are inevitable. Kain has the kind of bone structure that looks great forever. A really striking woman.

This is great, Dale. Thank you. Woetzel didn't have to take his clothes off for Bruce Weber, good for him. (Great picture, too.)

I hope someone does and reports here. I'm sure there's a lot to look at.

I don't really think so, either, although they're not perhaps the most admirable people. I take your point, Mashinka, about the wreckage left behind by WWI, but if anything surely the lotus eating intensified (Waugh brings this out very well in Brideshead Revisited, where you can see that the self indulgence and craziness comes from a shattered society not yet recovered from the loss of so many of its best and brightest.)

There are bits of the German "Titanic" on YouTube.

I looked it up and it's Jean Desailly as Cheri in Quiggin's photo. I thought he looked familiar but I only saw him in middle age.

Oh yes, I remember those..... What a lovely post (and compliment to Ballet Talk). Thank you for that. It's cliched but true, nothing stays the same.

Thanks, Quiggin. That's not Philipe, I'm pretty sure. I'll do some digging when I have a chance and perhaps we can find out. It would take Signoret. Maybe Moreau if she had come to the role when she was younger. That was a good link, Mashinka, thanks.

I don't think so. Because of her partnership with Villella, and Robbins' return to the company later, she wasn't as affected by the ascendancy of Farrell as other ballerinas. I remember her quoted saying that Villella was her 'savior' during those years, although she also felt the ballets made for the two of them were more creations for Villella than for her.

Thanks, atm711. On a radio station the frequency of commercials often reflects the financial health of the station, alas. Generally, the more commercials the better the station is doing, unless it's getting public money. The listener demographic is often reflected in the type of commercials run, as well. End of life ads are not a good sign, I fear. Reminds me of all those ads for restoratives of lost manhood they run on the Golf Channel.

Stanwyck would eat him. And probably Webb's most convincing moment on film is the scene from "Sitting Pretty" where he dumps the oatmeal on the baby's head. I also like the inflection he gives to the lines, "She is made of iron, sir. I assure you she can. And she will (sink)."

Thank you for the post. It ran here for a week or two and then vanished. Pfeiffer is past forty and around that age roles become much fewer and farther between for female stars. Lea would be a good role for her, I'd think. She's probably a little too American (as she was in Dangerous Liaisons for the same director, Stephen Frears - but her performance was affecting and she was surrounded by Americans so it didn't matter too much). Technically she's the right age for Lea but probably the age difference won't seem quite as pronounced as it ought to do for the good of the story, given that Pfeiffer doesn't look anywhere near fifty.

Thanks for the heads up. It certainly sounds like a thought provoking night out.

I guess it depends on how much time you spend in front of your PC or laptop. I still buy CDs regularly, for convenience and to aid our local book and music store in these troubled times. These live feeds are great, though.

Imagine what he would have done to Michael Cimino. The Nazi picture is watchable, allowing for the Bizarro World plotting, and you’ll find out where Cameron probably got the idea for the “stolen” necklace and a couple of his visuals. It’s not much odder than Errol Flynn saving Burma singlehanded, when you think about it. Apparently something like that actually happened – he was last seen in that room, watching the clock. A Night to Remember has the same scene, sans the young lovers. Off topic – I think Dunst’s last major effort was in the Coppola Marie Antoinette, where she looked lost. I don’t think she has a Winslet-like future ahead of her, which is too bad. I guess I had a hard time getting my mind around Webb and Stanwyck as a married couple. (I remember seeing a movie where Glenn Close was married to James Woods and had the same problem.)

I'm inclined to agree, alas. It looks like the DiCaprio-Scorsese partnership is a settled business but I'm not sure they're really right for each other. miliosr, opinions do tend to differ sharply on DiCaprio, but I think his performance, along with Winslet’s, does much to lend credibility to the film. I suppose he is too contemporary, but period ambience is not Titanic ‘97’s strong point, so he didn’t stick out like a sore thumb for me.

You could say that Balanchine chose Farrell to set that standard and exemplify his approach. Which is not to take anything from McBride, but she didn’t hold that kind of symbolic role in the company or the Balanchine repertory, as important as she was to both. McBride was Edward Gorey's favorite ballerina.

Yes, she does, but I don't really care for this as an argument against her. There are very few dancers who are universally beloved by all ballet fans and critics. His tone is getting really irritating whenever he mentions Part. He does seem to enjoy working in those little jabs.

Croce was rather down on Farrell around then, of course, and I always thought in that particular article she was using McBride as a stick to beat the recently-departed Farrell with. One gets the impression at the time that she was quite optimistic about the ballerina prospects at the company in Farrell's wake – she’d be singing a different tune years later when Farrell came back......

Thank you for posting this sad news and the obits, Marga. He seems to have been a fine teacher.

Thanks, volcanohunter.

Thanks, miliosr. I suspect they didn't give much time to the sinking for financial reasons. But then all the Titanic feature films until Cameron's give relatively short shrift to the logistics, I expect because not many details were known about them until relatively recently and also the special effects available at the time were both costly and not terribly convincing. As Mashinka notes, A Night to Remember, with More featured as a crew member and written by Eric Ambler, follows the facts around the sinking more faithfully and contains some suspenseful circumstances omitted by Cameron, obsessed as he was by the travails of Jack and Rose. On the other hand, the ship looks as if it is going down in a bathtub. The 1953 movie is entertaining, although as miliosr says you're not going to find out much about the Titanic. There's also a Titanic curio from the Forties, a movie made in Nazi Germany in which a German crew member plays the hero's role and the sinking is mainly due to the greed and perfidy of the Brits. It looks as if Cameron borrowed some useful bits from it, too. I'll stick up for the 1997 Titanic, though. It's melodramatic, with some unintentional giggles, but it does have, especially in the last hour or so, an unusual emotional intensity. As for the acting, DiCaprio and Winslet are terrific, amazingly fresh and direct. Jack and Rose dominate so completely that there's barely room for supporting actors to register, but I liked Victor Garber and Billy Zane. There was a TV miniseries made about the same time as the Cameron movie, but I didn't see it and don't know what it's like.