dirac

Thanks, Estelle. It's now playing in my area. So many movies, so little time.....

I thought ‘The Savages’ was much better than ‘Away From Her,’ much as I wanted to like the latter for the sake of Sarah Polley and Julie Christie. I found the latter to be, well, gooey, with the married couple’s relationship implausibly idealized. One of the things I liked about ‘The Savages’ was that lack of sentiment (which is not the same thing as a lack of feeling, of which there is plenty). The Savages aren’t a happy family whose felicity is disturbed by the fact of illness and impending death, and their tensions and differences aren’t resolved but exacerbated by the difficulty of the situation, unlike so many such dramas where families are ‘brought together’ and/or ‘achieve closure,’ and so on and so forth. I don’t want to imply that the movie is unremittingly grim or that there are no suggestions of a different future -can’t say any more without spoilers- but it’s devoid of Hallmark Channel mush. I appreciated that. (There is one add-on at the very end of the film that I thought struck a false note, but it's a minor issue.)

Per cubanmiamiboy’s suggestion on another thread, I’m posting on “The Savages.” The film has been out for awhile (it’s no longer running in any theatre in my area, but perhaps Laura Linney’s well deserved Oscar nomination will bring it back). The subject of the film is family and old age and the title refers to the family’s surname, Savage. Brother and sister Jon and Wendy, two middle-aged cases of arrested development, are reluctantly forced to deal with their elderly father, who is suffering from Alzheimer’s, and the writer-director, Tamara Jenkins, pulls no punches; all the confusion, hostility, and rage that anyone with a first hand acquaintance with an Alzheimer’s sufferer will recognize is there. Linney, Philip Seymour Hoffman, and Philip Bosco play the daughter, son, and father. Hoffman is an actor who blows hot and cold for me, but here he’s on form and terrific. As Helene noted on the “Juno” thread, Linney is a wonderful actress, and here as elsewhere she seems to have no vanity. She’s a beautiful woman unafraid to look plain (it’s my hope one day that Linney will get a role where she’s gorgeous, dolled up to the gills, and surrounded by adoring men) who doesn’t shirk the less appealing aspects of the characters she plays. In more mainstream movies she’s usually cast as an uptight lady lawyer or professional woman (“I don’t even have a cat” she says in “Breach.”). The roles she gets in independent films aren’t necessarily less humiliating but they are not as limited.

Please, open one...i saw it and loved its dinamic and language...Linney was excelent on it too... About "Juno", i found it easy to digest. Page was a total natural, fluent, clever with great control...(I really hope to see her in future films...) I'd be happy to open one, cubanmiamiboy, but in future you should also feel free to start one of your own - new discussions are always welcome!

I would also be curious to read reports. The reviews have been pretty good so far.

I've never seen a production that I really, really liked. Maybe it's one of those ballets that's better in the theatre of the mind, or perhaps I just like the score a little too much. I would, too.

No need to apologize, Ray. Without disagreement -- of the courteous kind -- we wouldn't have much discussion.

I'm sure they must have known each other, but the ballet world is a small one. Probably the best reference would be Alexandra Tomalonis' biography of Kronstam. (I can't recall offhand any lengthy discussion of Nureyev in the book but it's been awhile since I've taken it off the shelf. The book is well worth the time in any case.)

Great question. Morris seems to me to be one of the most thoughtful and articulate people in the dance world, especially about aesthetic issues. It would be interesting to read his take on this topic.Does anyone know whether Morris has spoken about it -- and, if so, what he said? I meant I wonder what he will do with nudity in his upcoming production of R+J using the Soviet "happy ending." I just hope for the sake of the audience that he goes easy on the butt cheeks.

Very good topic, Ray. I'm sure there are many other good suggestions out there. Any recent ballet by Helgi Tomasson. No, they're not atrocities and you can sit through them, but they've been uninspired to the point of pain. It must have been something. (And I have difficulty seeing Merle Park in the role.) How did he deal with the fatal accident, BTW?

I would love to see a truly artistic "minimalist" version, with elements of the court suggested rather than elaborated. It should be costumed richly but without too much detail, avoiding the baroque and fussy. Brilliant lighting design could replace expensive and cumbersome sets. The look would be elegant rather than baroque, fussy, and frou-frou. Think of what superb dancers could do without over-crowding or distraction. I agree. I'd be very interested in seeing such a production. Thanks to Hans, for shifting SanderO's comments and thanks to SanderO for bringing up the issue, which always seems to spark a good discussion!

An article about the nominees in the foreign language film category, and why some made the cut and others didn’t: http://www.screenindia.com/fullstory.php?content_id=18776

Thank you so much for that report, cubanmiamiboy. I love "The Firebird" too.

Indeed. Thanks for that story, zerbinetta.

Thanks. Emphasis on under no legal obligation.....

Naturally. In prime time, of course, you can see The Bridge on the River Kwai and Now, Voyager over and over and over, and eventually you start getting annoyed at movies you like.

Thank you, Helene, I hope those who are fortunate enough to attend will report back in the appropriate forum.

I think that originally 'Center Stage' was intended to be a more serious project then it turned out to be. Too bad.

Thanks for posting, Cliff. Russell Crowe was stupendous but I thought the movie itself was blah -- it seemed to be driven by the notion that serious mental illness could be cured or ameliorated by the Love of a Good Woman. In addition, mental illness was the subject of the film, whereas in The Aviator it was just something awkward that the filmmakers had to deal with. You can argue about what was wrong with Fischer but he wasn't as ill as Nash IMO. And yes, I do think it helped that Nash was an attractive man wih a pretty wife.

Movies by David Cronenberg tend not to get too many nominations because as a rule they’re too weird or violent or both for Oscar tastes. I was most pleased to see Viggo Mortensen noticed this year for ‘Eastern Promises’ and wouldn’t be surprised if the nomination was in part to make up for his having been overlooked for ‘A History of Violence.’

It's sort of off topic, but I always think of that story Sondheim and Styne used to tell on Jerome Robbins. The first time Robbins heard the song title, he drew a total blank: "Everything's coming up Rose's what?" He received assurances that nobody else was going to construct it that way. Lovely girl.

I don't think it matters how 'humane' 'Meltdown' is. The timing of it can only make this an attention-getting stunt. Very embarrassing and how unfortunate that the company doing it bears the name of Marie Rambert.

But isn't that possibly an indication that she felt the material should be preserved? I think so. Agreed - but Max Brod ignored his friend Kafka's wishes, fortunately for everyone. No, I don't really think that Nabokov was pulling a fast one on us this time. But yes, I think he was quite capable of such a prank and I can imagine him chortling out there in the ozone somewhere over the fuss.

In the Hollywood equivalent of ambulance chasing, a Bobby Fischer movie is in the works. At least they waited till after the funeral. Fischer would have been entirely unsurprised. It will be interesting to see how they try to tell this story. I assume it has attractions as a Cold War drama. Fischer was cute and a smart dresser in 1972 and the role will presumably attract a hot young actor looking for a nomination. Had he been one of those short pudgy guys with the glasses and the math major corduroys I don’t think this project would be considered very seriously. It seems to me, however, it has to run aground on the same shoals that defeated “The Aviator”: the protagonist is just too weird to be a viable movie hero and they’ll have to do a lot of softening and faking to make him so. By ’72 Fischer had been going on about the Jews for years, although not on the radio, obviously. (And, like Hughes, Fischer wasn’t always terribly sympathetic even when he was more or less normal.) The NYT obit. In this obituary and others I’ve read Fischer is getting a bit of a raw deal in relation to the championship match. Yes, he was a diva and a chronic complainer, and sometimes rude – in short, he was Fischer at a big competition -- but some of the match conditions were bad, the cameras were not unobtrusive as promised but were great hulking things whirring away right by the players, there were Icelanders bringing the kiddies in to see the show, and so forth.

True. Yet if Nabokov had really, really wanted the cards destroyed, it would have not been difficult for him to do so, leading me to wonder if he wasn't perhaps having a bit of fun with us (and maybe Dmitri, unless the latter was in on the joke). Thanks for your post, Mel, that was helpful. Dmitri seems to have been playing footsie on this matter for some time now and my hunch is if he was going to destroy the material he'd already have done it. Edmund Wilson published "The Last Tycoon" as 'an unfinished novel,' when he must have known perfectly well that his old friend Fitzgerald had left a rough draft. But he thought it should be seen. (I'm not sure how Fitzgerald would have felt.) There's also the example of Valerie Eliot publishing her late husband's original draft of what became "The Waste Land" showing exactly what Ezra Pound had cut, with comments. Eliot didn't actually forbid such publication but there's little question that he'd not have done it himself, not because he would have minded people knowing more of Pound's contribution but because he was a perfectionist like Nabokov who wouldn't have wanted his discards in public view. Mrs. Eliot has been most protective of Eliot's memory and would never do anything exploitative, yet she put it out there.