dirac

The Golden Globes ceremony kicks things off on a dignified note. New York Film Critics Circle Awards for 2008.

Thank you for that link, Sandy. I understand copyright issues, of course, but this particular item is out of print and hard to find. They could at least reprint the book....

Thanks, Ray. This is quite a find! Another story of Gorey's in this vein is "The Curious Sofa," in which some Victorian ladies and gentlemen, along with one intrepid sheepdog, engage in some decidedly unwholesome activities. But it's not nearly as difficult to come by as this book.

Just a quick thank you to Kathleen O'Connell for starting this great topic. I'm really enjoying these posts!

A query from agnes:

A post from bart: Here's the Link to the National Theater's web page devoted to the production: http://nationaltheatre.org/mainstage%5Cwest_side_story.htm Laurents is quoted as saying: Laurents' point sounds persuasive. Has anyone seen this in Washington? Here's something from the Washington Post, with photos: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/conte...9010803931.html I didn't know the following, also taken from the web page:

AmandaNYC posted an update for us in the Other Arts forum, which I copy and paste here:

I recall, belatedly, that we had an active thread on this topic over on Modern and Other Dance, so I'm closing this thread. I'll cut and paste bart's and Amanda's comments over to the older thread, here. There was a good discussion going on.

Good question, Amanda - I hope someone who's seen it will tell us about it.

I will be sorry not to be posting (and reading) any more reviews with her byline in the Links. R.I.P.

Thanks, FauxPas. I'll have to check out the DVD. Certainly no novelist is responsible for what the movies do to her book. I'll have to read it one of these days. 'Valley of the Dolls,' - how could we forget?

Forgot to add a thank-you to atm711 for those details and recollections.

rg, I haven't taken my VHS copy off the shelf in some time but I believe it has the full 138 minutes (the version often seen runs about 125 minutes). I remember reading that for some reason the longer version was not available and so Criterion went with the theatrical release. As you note, Criterion is most meticulous in these matters and whatever the reason I'm sure it was a good one and they had no other choice at the time.

Shearer’s ‘Balletmaster’ is a nice little book, with some shrewd observations. As rg notes, Shearer thought that ToH gave a better account of her dancing than Red Shoes, which is correct. The ballet excerpts in RS are well chosen but brief, and the centerpiece ballet has Shearer mostly striking poses, albeit lovely ones. bart's description sums up her dancing here well. I love her footwork in ToH. Nice extension, too. Hands and feet are beautiful, as is the rest of her, of course. I think TCM showed the longer version of ToH – the DVD version has about ten minutes missing, mostly of dancing. From what I’ve seen on film, I’d rather watch Helpmann acting than dancing, and his Dracula-like performance(s) here is very effective. (I think that the director George Romero, who loves this movie, is on to something when he suggests that ToH is essentially a horror film.)

The 'the three girls in the city' story (I'd include Sex and the City, too, with its four leads) was an evergreen for much of the twentieth century and I expect it to pop up in one form or another well into this one, too. Haven't seen 'The City,' yet.

Bargains are indeed always welcome! Thanks for the heads up.

For the last few weeks HBO has been showing 'Jacques d'Amboise in China: The Other Side of the World.' D'Amboise is shown taking dancers from the National Dance Institute to Shanghai and putting on a show as part of a cross cultural project. The dancer Dou Dou Huang is featured prominently. The movie gets off to a snappy start with a very brief clip of d'Amboise in "Apollo," shedding his swaddling clothes, and the modern day d'Amboise is as energetic and appealing as ever. He shares anecdotes and talks about getting older (although he seems to have enough zip for five other fellows) and is seen in rehearsal and on opening night. Nice little movie, about thirty five minutes long.

Thank you for posting, Figurante. In what way was Balanchine misrepresented, BTW?

Thanks for the poem, Mel. (Although Lee guarded his speech carefully, speaking with spare candor only to a very few, and wrote the most discreet correspondence of any public figure I can think of offhand -- and he wasn't really famous until quite late in his life and career.) Off topic, of course.

I'm not sure I'd call Mrs. Fitzgerald a 'dansomaniac.' She wasn't well, to be sure, but her dance studies were quite serious and had she persisted there were genuine professional opportunities available to her, according to her teacher. Her doctors may have been mistaken in stomping on her artistic aspirations, which is pretty much what they did. Very sad story. The original story isn't exactly a deathless masterpiece, so to use it as a taking off point and adding this or that isn't necessarily a bad thing, if the end product is a good one. (I haven't seen it yet and so can't say.) I can see why they didn't want to call their female lead 'Hildegarde' in any case.

For what it's worth, Quiggin, I didn't put that construction on your post at all.

Doctor Atomic was broadcast in the Bay Area this week. I missed it, natch. Thank goodness PBS repeats everything sooner or later.

I re-post the original post from Quiggin just to keep it in view. I think you can argue that there are places in the score that are not at all childlike – the melancholy strain that Tchaikovsky introduces midway into the Waltz of the Flowers comes to mind. (Reasonable people can disagree about the grand pas – I think it’s as grand as anything Tchaikovsky ever wrote for a pas de deux. But everyone’s mileage will vary.)

Thanks, Neryssa, I hadn't read this article and it's most interesting. I would say that both Blanchett and Swinton are a little too big and a little too tall to be truly convincing ballet dancers, but that may not mean much to a general audience, especially as Blanchett seems to do very little dancing. (I'm not sure how West could have figured out Le Clercq's 'internal conflicts' by looking at pictures, but let it pass.) Blanchett doesn't remind me of Le Clercq at all, but I can see how she could derive inspiration and ideas for her role from her. I did not know that Le Clercq was partial to the designs of Claire McCardell, but that makes perfect sense. McCardell's clothes had a natural and very American elegance, without pretensions, and were designed for comfort and ease of movement. Le Clercq would have looked beautiful in them.

Yes, indeed, back to Clara. It's quite true, Nanarina, you can get away with things in the theatre that the camera won't allow, although as I mentioned on the other thread I was willing to suspend disbelief for Gelsey Kirkland. Robert Gottlieb observed in the Tony Palmer film about Fonteyn that the age difference between Fonteyn and Nureyev was really not especially noticeable in the theatre, where Fonteyn was as youthful and lissom as she cared to be, whereas some (not all) of the film record of the two of them is quite unforgiving.