dirac

That's an easy pick for me... Polanski's trilogy: Repulsion (1965)-(I'm a big fan of Deneuve )-, Rosemary's Baby (1968), and The Tenant (1976). Talk about the horrors of apartment-dwelling ! Boo!! Wait...! What about Michael Crichton's 1978 "Coma" ? Does it applies as a horror movie...? I remember that when i first saw it as a kid, it scared the hell out of me...The intense paranoia that pervades the film is similar to that of Rosemary's Baby. Never suspected that yars later i would end up in the field... 'Coma' is more of a thriller IMO. It certainly does have its creepy moments, although I think it's really Bujold who holds things together and makes it credible. There is something about the idea of going into the hospital for something routine and never emerging again alive that gets to everyone, I suspect.

The look of the Dakota does add to the general weirdness - it's almost a character in the movie. Technically Fatal Attraction isn't a genre piece, it has pretensions to more, but it’s a horror/slasher movie in spirit. I had forgotten The Exorcist – you’re right, jllaney, it does pack a punch, bad as it is in some respects. (Although by me the scariest bits where at the beginning, where Linda Blair undergoes a horrific series of hospital tests to find out what’s wrong.)

Voltaire’s not the only one who misses that. Thanks for posting, chiapuris. What are some of the things Stewart observes about Spinoza v. Leibniz (I’m unfamiliar with the book and going on the assumption that the two are presented adversarially)?

That's an easy pick for me... Polanski's trilogy: Repulsion (1965)-(I'm a big fan of Deneuve - Rosemary's Baby (1968), and The Tenant (1976). Talk about the horrors of apartment-dwelling ! Boo!! I agree. Rosemary's Baby scared the bejesus out of me when I first saw it as a kid and it still gives me the creeps. (As for Repulsion -- that rotting meal in the kitchen. Ugh!) miliosr, I like the first 'Halloween' but the sequels that I saw- didn't catch many of them -- were not so great, frankly. The original Texas Chainsaw Massacre is very good. The series of pictures Val Lewton produced at RKO back when -- I Walked with a Zombie, Cat People, The Leopard Man (all directed by Jacques Tourneur, with others that followed by young no-names like Robert Wise and Mark Robson) -- don't really frighten me especially but they are fine examples of ingenuity on a small budget. I also like the Roger Corman produces series starring Vincent Price - 'House of Usher' 'The Tomb of Ligeia,' et al. The horror genre is not a favorite of mine generally, though. I really don't care for 'Boo!' movies that operate on dread -- you sit and sit and sit waiting for something awful to happen and then it does, rinse, repeat. I think the best 'Boo!' director going right now is Wes Craven.

I think that sums it up pretty well, cubanmiamiboy. Quite so. I don’t care for tattoos and don’t understand why people get them, unless you're one of those Russki gangsters on view in ‘Eastern Promises.’ (They looked great on Viggo, though.) On stage they’re less noticeable, but I still don't care to see them. I suppose in some modern works they wouldn’t look strange or out of place.

No dearth of flowers (or ruffles- Adrian really went to town). It’s all right if you didn’t like it, really. I’d understand perfectly. I do think it’s good on its own terms, though. I admire your intestinal fortitude. I rarely listen to anything new or even newish myself. I’m not proud of it but there it is. I'll catch it if it's televised or go to the theatre on occasion, but I can't sit down with most of it at home. I’m sure sidwich and others can respond (and I hope they do, maybe I'll learn something).

I wish my 'random thoughts' were that thorough and coherent, sidwich. Thanks.

Thanks for giving us that background, Estelle. As you say, a complicated topic.

Very good points.

I recall seeing Healy spot her spins as a skater. She did not get very far in skating – turned pro as a pre-teen protegee of John Curry's, a very assured child performer. (Healy was also the subject of one of those ‘A Very Young [blank]” books for children – ‘A Very Young Skater’ by Jill Krementz.) Years later she returned to skating– I remember one ABC Sports interview where she gave the audience quite an earful about how awful the ballet world was. Her skating was not in the same league with the other professionals she was performing with (under normal circumstances I don’t think she would even have been on the show, but I expect strings were pulled, or perhaps I ought to say a Button was pushed?) -- rather rigid positions and weak jumps with major leg wrap, only to be expected of course, although her outstanding extension was notable. I'm not sure how much a ballet dancer would get out of cross training as a skater, really. Robin Cousins studied ballet as a youngster and had an opportunity to attend the Royal Ballet school on scholarship, but he plumped for skating. He continued with his ballet lessons for some time, but eventually stopped them although he always worked with a dance teacher, remarking that his skating coach was always telling him to relax and his ballet instructor was always telling him to pull up, and after a certain point his skating would begin to suffer.

Thank you, Natalia. Did any boo-boos stand out for you in particular? I'm enjoying the reports of those who've posted so far. Please keep reading and posting.

Thank you for such a detailed review, Sandy. I hope when it comes to NY others will report, too. Helene, did you see it by any chance?

I didn’t know they were cousins, miliosr. I think the reputations of many stars associated primarily with silent films, which are not revived with the regularity of sound pictures, have faded with the years. There are exceptions – the great comedians (Chaplin, Lloyd, Keaton, sometimes Langdon), Lon Chaney, Lillian Gish – but that does seem to be the general rule. Del Rio was remarkably beautiful. I’ve seen Novarro in Ben-Hur, Mata Hari, and The Student Prince with Norma Shearer – probably others but those are the ones that come to mind offhand. He was a very appealing personality. He came to a dreadful end at the hands of a couple of hustlers, the brothers Ferguson, as you may know.

Thank you for keeping us posted, miliosr. More reviews from anyone?

I’d also nominate in this category Gardner in Pandora and the Flying Dutchman, shot by Jack Cardiff in color, where she is gaspingly beautiful. Gardner seems to have been in some ways shy and insecure, hence the need for alcohol as a social lubricant. (Artie Shaw bullied her relentlessly during their brief union, made her feel dumb which she clearly wasn’t, she was very smart and funny as you say, and then dumped her rather brutally although technically she left first.) She did begin behaving badly in later years after drink and time began doing their work but by all accounts she was essentially a very lovely and decent person. Shaw was married briefly to Jerome Kern's daughter, as it happens.

Robert Gottlieb offers his two cents in the October 29 issue of The New York Observer: Maybe Wheeldon wasn’t so diplomatic, but I don’t think it’s such a bad thing to say: the past wasn’t perfect and I’d like to do things and work with people differently in my company. I’m not sure how he’s ‘rejecting the Balanchine aesthetic’ except in having people roll around on the floor a lot, I agree Balanchine wouldn’t do that.... He's got a point.

If they had, they would have plugged it as hard as they did ‘Love Walked In,’ which is reprised in ‘The Goldwyn Follies’ with a Lloyd Webber-ish aggressiveness. Sometimes it takes years to ‘discover’ a song; the Gershwins were always pulling ‘The Man I Love’ hopefully out of their trunk, and it would get cut. ‘Begin the Beguine’ wasn’t a hit until Artie Shaw produced his version several years after its introduction in ‘Jubilee.’ Allegro never would have arrived on schedule for my timetable, but then I’m not the world’s biggest R&H fan. It may also be, however, that they realized that ‘contemporary’ and ‘edgy’ just wasn’t going to be their thing; Rodgers’ musical style had changed a lot since the days of ‘Pal Joey.’ I believe it was the last time they worked with Agnes de Mille, too. I agree. Astaire is just congenitally not dark. There was something ineffably jeune premier-ish about him even as he aged, and he can’t invest it with the melancholy you’re used to if you’re accustomed to Sinatra, who really hits a peak with that song. Maybe Fred should have moved in with Ava Gardner for awhile. Thank you for that bit of information about the sugar, sidwich. I didn't know that.

Inappropriate and embarrassing all around, I'd say.

Oliver Sacks has written a book called ‘Musicophilia’ about music and the brain. NPR interview and excerpt about a surgeon struck by lightning, literally and metaphorically.

Welcome to the forum, PeggyR. A four hour commute! You'll definitely have time for Tolstoy.... Best of luck to you, ngitanjali. Even today, pregnancy and childbirth or more hazardous than people realize, but it is amazing how far we've come. Is this fiction or non-fiction?

I think we’ve all had that experience at one time or another, YouOverThere – it’s one of the perennial hazards of theatregoing (and moviegoing, and balletgoing). If you know a critic’s work well – if you’ve read that person regularly over a reasonably lengthy period of time – then after awhile it’s possible to figure out how your respective tastes differ and judge accordingly. In addition, most of us live in areas where there is only one daily paper or two if you’re lucky, whereas if you are reading reviews of the Royal Ballet in the British papers, for example, you have three or more to choose from at a minimum and are thus more likely to get differing perspectives. It may also be that some of your local critics just aren’t up to snuff, of course. Many papers are cutting back on their arts coverage, which means that people who may not have the proper background are reviewing plays and dance performances. Online reviews are often catch-as-catch can, too.....

A beautiful observation, Anthony_NYC. Better late than never, Old Fashioned. Always good to hear from you.

Well, people, what are we reading? I'm reading Mary Renault's 'The Nature of Alexander.' I had already read and loved her fictionalized accounts of Alexander's life ('Fire from Heaven' and 'The Persian Boy') but didn't know of this book until I came across it accidentally in a used bookstore. It's an elegant little biography.

I didn’t mean to imply that, although I see that I did. She may not have been equally great in all of them, but she made a good fist at it. Even second tier Davis – in Of Human Bondage and the others you mention (although I think she is great in Dark Victory) is still awfully good. I forgot to mention how good Kerr is in The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp, a Powell-Pressburger curiosity from the war years. She plays three parts and she's lovely.

Amen to that. Also, I agree emphatically with all those who say the beach scene is NOT kitsch (but it would have been not only kitsch but camp with the 50s Crawford in it). FauxPas, a couple of the obituaries noted that she made the switch because she had doubts about her talent and was considered too tall (at five foot six, which tells you something about how standards in that department have changed over the years).