dirac

Welcome to the forum, Barbara. Do tell us about the play if you see it.

Lish had a reputation as an overbearing editor, and with Carver he went well beyond that, but from what one gathers his author needed the extra help. After he outgrew Lish, he seems to have depended unusually heavily on his second wife when it came to his writing. I do not mean to suggest that Carver was being propped up like El Cid or that he was not an exceptional talent (neither Lish's other writers nor Lish's own fiction approach Carver's quality), but he never seems to have been able to manage entirely on his own. Yes, many writers get help, extensive help, from their editors and loved ones but Carver appears to have been a special case in this regard.

It is interesting to read such things and contrast the writer's circumstances and perceptions at the time with our retrospective view. I love 'The Red Pony.' I don't know that I'll go back to 'The Grapes of Wrath' again but I might have a go at 'Cannery Row' and 'East of Eden.'

True, bart, and thanks for posting, but I don't think Nabokov (the da) would have made that distinction, having himself no great regard for 'scholars and serious critics.' If he didn't want people who read him for love and pleasure to see what he'd written, I doubt he'd allow any special dispensation for professional experts. And all of those things will eventually be in the public domain, something presumably understood by Nabokov when he signed on the dotted line. In addition, he said quite specifically that he wanted this item destroyed, and apparently he didn't sound terribly ambivalent about it.

This piece by Ron Rosenbaum recently appeared in Slate. It concerns Vladimir Nabokov’s unpublished and unfinished final work, which he wanted destroyed. His son, Dmitri, has been dithering for years trying to decide what to do: Lots of interesting questions there. I think we would all like to believe that our last wishes will be honored by our nearest and dearest after we’ve bought the farm. On the other hand, the dead are dead. They’re past caring, and it would be a shame to lose anything by an artist like Nabokov, even undistinguished apprentice work, which this manuscript plainly isn’t. Any opinions?

Wow. That's rarefied company. Thank you very much for the review, atm711. I hope anyone else who has seen it will chime in.

Thank you, Szymanowski , that's very helpful, and welcome to the forum. I haven't seen Henry and June since its initial release, and now you and MakarovaFan make me want to.

I’m glad I could send you to a movie you liked. I’m fond of it, too. The premise isn’t terribly plausible – after all, if J. Bridges is such a great jazz pianist, I’m sure he could do as well playing that as he does making the rounds of the lounges, and it’s not clear why Pfeiffer didn’t give up hustling years ago if she had a voice – but you let it pass because the film has style and snappy dialogue and the principals are fun to watch. Yes, she (and the writer-director Steve Kloves) just pull out all the stops and it’s great. Which is another way of saying , I guess, that Verdon was a Star and Fosse wasn’t. He’s a very appealing performer but his dancing doesn’t have a lot of kinetic impact, not for me anyway. In the segment of ‘From This Moment On’ in Kiss Me Kate, it’s Carol Haney that catches my eye, not Fosse.

I expect he will be. He gave every indication of having the potential for a wide range of parts. So sad. Thanks for the link.

Thanks for posting, sandik. I saw the trailer and this looked really good. I've never read a graphic novel - nothing against them, I've just never gotten round to any - but obviously there's some great work being done. I will post on it if I see it, and I hope others do, too.

Thank you, sidwich, for posting. I still have yet to see it. You mentioned that you liked some of the edits, disliked others. If you have time, I'd like to hear more about those.

Exactly what Alastair Macaulay said!

A cut and paste from another thread: papeetepatrick writes: I may have been too hard on it. At the time I was so annoyed by the fake R&B and the nonstop assault of mediocre songs that I came away quite peeved. It's been showing up on cable so I'll take another look if convenient. Beyonce was playing a character based on Ross, so the echoes were deliberate. Knowles was stunning, by the way. In all the fuss over Hudson hardly anyone mentioned that she's a goddess. I look forward to seeing her on the big screen again.

It became a signature piece for Melissa Hayden. I can't recall any recent performances, but am I totally off base in thinking that Dance Theatre of Harlem did it back in the seventies?

The operas by Donizetti are Anna Bolena, Maria Stuarda, and Roberto Devereux. I haven't seen any of them onstage but I have heard them on disc and in my untutored opinion Bolena is the best by a long way.

I really don’t see either Portman or Johannson as good period casting, but we’ll see. I expect “The Other Boleyn Girl” will be something like a big screen version of “The Tudors” on Showtime, which I’m rather enjoying, with Jonathan Rhys Meyers tearing around his palace like Roger Daltrey trashing a penthouse suite and heaving bazooms to spare. (I’ll miss Sam Neill as Cardinal Wolsey, who died at the end of the season. I think they should have ignored the history books and kept Wolsey around for a bit as Neill is the best thing in the show, but I guess they felt they couldn’t.) I’m not laughing at all, by the way. I thought Bujold was great, especially when you consider that her English was only recently acquired at the time. Any actress cast as Anne faces a big problem. You have to convince the audience that a king would take his realm out of the Church and risk not only excommunication but eternal damnation for you. Bujold couldn’t quite do that, but it was not her fault. If Elizabeth Taylor, Mrs. Burton at the time, had been ten years younger, she would have been obvious casting for the role although the historical Anne was not a conventional beauty. But one look at Taylor and you’d understand why Henry flipped. (Charles Laughton’s Anne was the gorgeous young Merle Oberon.) Portman, like Bujold, is too small scale for Anne, literally and figuratively, and she’s not as good an actress as Bujold. The most suitable Anne I can recall, although she was only onscreen for about five minutes, was Vanessa Redgrave in A Man for All Seasons.

Thanks for confirming that, Mme. Hermine.

Thanks, Mel. I thought she was a little out of her depth. I can do no better than quote Gore Vidal on the performance: “’I am England!’” she thunders; and then looks around to see if anyone has come to take her away.” I did like that cute couple, I think their names were Olivier and Leigh? There is also Florence Eldridge as Elizabeth in the Hepburn picture, “Mary of Scotland,” playing the Queen as a double dyed villain complete with shifty eyes and a nasty laugh. Respectfully, bart, I disagree; the Mary Queen of Scots picture with Redgrave is lousy on pretty much every level. Not only unusually bad history, but I despise it in particular for its portrayal of Elizabeth as a frustrated hag versus the beautiful and feminine Mary, who we’re meant to see as a Real Woman. (That she’s an incompetent monarch is apparently supposed to add to her appeal.) That was okay in the nineteenth century, but a trifle backward for the Sixties. Then you add on the somnolent direction and clunky dialogue....I thought it was chloroform, and I have a weakness for the Hal Wallis brand of costumed fustian. The movie is like that in places, as Maslin notes, but I also thought the atmosphere of fear and paranoia was well evoked. “The Golden Age” actually fits her description better. I like “Elizabeth,” what can I say. And the sexiest scene in a 1998 movie involved a fully clothed Blanchett and Joseph Fiennes in circling each other during a volta front of Elizabeth's entire court. THANK YOU, FauxPas, for that long and excellent description of the Bernhardt film. I’ve never seen it. I’m not certain, but I believe she had lost her leg by the time of filming. His autobiography was called “Women Have Been Kind” and one critic suggested he should have appended “of Dumb” to the title. I think he killed himself with a scissors, poor fellow. Oh, personal prejudice, glebb. I just can’t stand her. Kidding.

Thank you, Giannina, for mentioning 'Breach.' Cooper and Linney were excellent and Ryan Phillippe wasn't too bad, either. It is true that movies considered likely to win awards are most often held for the autumn so the voters don't forget about them. But it is possible for films released earlier to win. A Mighty Heart bombed and some were put off by the publicity, so that may have hurt Jolie's chances as well.

I should let miliosr speak for him/herself, but I think he/she was referring to the 1st Blanchette movie "Elizabeth" (1998), not to the most recent one, when he/she said the previews were too campy. I understood that, Sandy, but thank you for clarifying. I meant that miliosr’s impression from the preview was perfectly accurate. It generally makes no difference to me personally who wins, but a couple of years ago I was rooting fervently for Brokeback Mountain over the ghastly Crash - never was movie more aptly titled.....

Davis played Elizabeth twice: in 1939 and again in the fifties in a picture called “The Virgin Queen” with Richard Todd, I think it was, and Joan Collins as Walter Raleigh and Elizabeth Throckmorton. She’s great in both but the second performance is better. I admire her combination of imperiousness and humanity and I think she is still the definitive big-screen Elizabeth; she influenced many Elizabeths that followed, Beverly Sills being only the most obvious example, even if they were reacting against her rather than imitating her. Jackson was great in the BBC series and my favorite Elizabeth after Davis, although as SandyMcKean notes, she had six hours, giving her more time and detail to flesh out her characterization. (She was far less impressive in ‘Mary Queen of Scots’ with Vanessa Redgrave as Mary but the movie itself is awful and the conception of Elizabeth absurd, so it’s no reflection on her.) We’re also accustomed to higher production values and more imaginative filmmaking in our miniseries these days, although the BBC series is wonderfully well written in a refreshingly unsensational way and the cast as bart notes is splendid, although Robert Hardy as Leicester should have gone easier on the rouge. I liked Duff, although I imagine Elizabeth was rather prettier, but I found the series to be mostly unwatchable. The writer(s) seemed to be unable to cope with the likelihood that Elizabeth never had sex, and their efforts to get their minds around this gruesome fact made for some ludicrous moments. That’s right. It seems silly for everyone to be discussing the marriage prospects and potential fertility of this obviously menopausal woman. Blanchett was wonderful in the 1998 film. Allowing for the concept – the newly crowned Elizabeth as Michael Corleone – I thought her evocation of a young and uncertain Elizabeth touching and believable, and a true star-making performance. It’s genuinely moving when this vital girl has to shed a part of her humanity to assume the mask of Gloriana, and although the movie’s connection with the chronological facts is close to accidental, the portrait of Elizabeth is convincing.

This topic takes off from some remarks made by SandyMcKean and others in the Oscar nominations thread. There have been in recent years a plethora of Elizabeths on television and in film. I thought I'd ask BTers which Glorianas they've seen, who they preferred in the role, and why?

papeetepatrick, we appear to have been posting almost simultaneously and I didn't read your post before adding my profound insights. Didn't mean to ignore you!

Welcome to the thread, Sandy. Good to hear from you. I had the misfortune of seeing “The Golden Age,” and taken in that context miliosr is quite correct – it was campy. (The whole movie is hopelessly camp. Normally I rush to the theatre at the prospect, but "The Golden Age" is not fun and I don't recommend it.) To say that Kapur takes liberties with the historical record is putting it mildly. I didn’t mind it in “Elizabeth” because the result was enjoyable and the narrative was coherent, but “The Golden Age” did not work at all. It mostly involves Blanchett mooning over hunky Sir Walter Raleigh in the person of Clive Owen, who doesn’t bring much more to the role than Errol Flynn would have, and there’s a particularly wince-inducing scene in with Gloriana is forced to cadge a kiss from her unenthusiastic swain. Arrgggh. Of course, “Elizabeth” had its campy bits, too. I have a friend who at the mention of the movie once stamped his foot and declared with Blanchettian hauteur, “I am NO MAN’S ELIZABETH!” I myself would enjoy having the opportunity to fling up my arm and say things like “Leave us!” I thought Blanchett was superb in “Elizabeth” and she would have been a most deserving Best Actress that year had she won, which she didn’t. I doubt she will win for “The Golden Age,” but if she does it will be something of a joke. Hi, perky and barbara. The Best Actor category is traditionally the most competitive due to the larger number of hefty roles for men, and there are always one or two deserving performances that get left out. I’m sorry Josh Brolin was left out too, but let’s hope we’ll see more from him. (Apparently he’s being discussed as the lead for Oliver Stone’s proposed Bush movie!?!) I like Oldman, too. I saw Sid and Nancy on cable again not too long ago and he was amazing in it. I’m a huge fan of Day-Lewis, and every appearance of his is an event these days, like Garbo’s (he’s even got her cheekbones), but I regret to say that I was disappointed by There Will Be Blood and his performance in it. Note that I’m swimming against a very strong tide – I haven’t searched out every review, but all the ones I’ve seen so far have been dazzling. The movie is worth seeing and it has some wonderful passages, but I did not care for it as a whole. Day-Lewis’ body language is eloquent and powerful, but for this role he adopted a hideously fake voice, with echoes of Walter and John Huston, Henry Fonda, and I don’t know who all else, and it only served as an unhappy reminder for me of how much better Walter Huston would have been for this role. (You have not been replaced, sir.) He has also developed a disturbing penchant for ham, which was always latent in his special intensity but is now often right up front. Although I don’t know what any actor could do with the last scene of There Will Be Blood except gird up his loins and charge through it. I’m sorry if I was a bit sharp with you, SanderO, but I hope you see why. :blush: I do take your point. The movies have always been an art and a business, for better and for worse. Very good point, GWTW.

I don’t want to go too far off topic and this will be my last note on the subject, but I think even in the time of George V the elderly, at least those who were comfortably off and not indigent, bought the occasional dinner for friends, or at least offered to do so???? There is evidence from elsewhere that Ashton appreciated freebies. Perfectly human and understandable trait, but I don't see how mentioning it constitutes a particular animus against him.