dirac

Kael didn’t really write about ‘a vast range of popular culture.’ She wrote about movies and also produced the occasional review of a film-related book, but her range was not in fact wide. However, she influenced, sometimes for the better and sometimes for the worse, many writers outside her field. I miss Kael often, especially on her missions of destruction – too bad she didn’t live to get her hands on “Crash.” She could be crude on occasion (I’d add lazy and prone to overstatement also, nobody’s perfect), and she was unaccountably fond of words like “whorey,” but she was capable of remarkable insights, which sometimes came when she was writing about movies of little consequence. Hutera writes: But she actually went one better than that, championing an audience's right to take its pleasures when and where it can, guilt-free. A total misreading, I think. (I haven’t opened the link, however, and am going only by that sentence.) She was not issuing blank checks to enjoy rubbish and she had a tendency to scold the mass audience when it wasn’t on her side. she simply wrote 'the movie is of an unbelievable badness. She also said of "Song of Norway," “You can’t get angry at something this bad; it seems to have been made by trolls.” Must disagree with you there, alas. My opinion, ‘Casablanca’ is pretty bad and does qualify as a guilty pleasure under the definitions of our topic. It gets by on star power, a great supporting cast, and snappy direction from Michael Curtiz, but the dialogue is awfully hard on the ears. I admit that it has never possessed the appeal for me that evidently it has for many, many people. And there are movies quite as bad that I do enjoy and would defend.

I would also be interested in hearing any comments. Am I correct in thinking that "Jewels" has been out of the repertory for awhile?

Thanks for reviving this thread, drb. Sounds a bit depressing.....

I'm not sure why this thread is acting up, but I'll keep an eye on it. It's a topic worth reviving, anyway, and thanks to Paul for doing that. I think also of the great success of The Turning Point, in which the fictional company was based on ABT and the movie was in essence an ABT project although dancers from other companies appeared in it. I don't think it's possible for the U.S. to have a national ballet company in the sense that European countries can (we can't really have a national theatre company either, the place is just too big and too diverse).

http://ballettalk.invisionzone.com/index.p...hl=fred+astaire Here's the one I remember, from the Everything Else Forum, but first I looked on the Other Arts Forum, and there are several there. Interested parties should look through these, despite the fact that it begins with this very thread: http://ballettalk.invisionzone.com/index.p...%2Bfred+astaire Thank you for doing my job for me.

Joan Acocella’s review appears in the October 8 issue of The New Yorker. She’s rather hard on Nureyev. I don’t mean to suggest he’s beyond criticism and we all have our preferences, but it’s quite a contrast to those Shiatsu massages she gives Baryshnikov in print. http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/book...?printable=true

RKO pulled out all of its available stops for the Astaire-Rogers series, with new scores from top of the line composers (Croce has a good discussion of this in her book, including the high pressure on the songwriters to produce multiple hits from fewer songs than they would write for a stage show), partial exceptions being The Gay Divorcee, although only “Night and Day” was retained from Porter’s score, as papeetepatrick notes, and The Story of Vernon and Irene Castle, which had one or maybe two? undistinguished new songs from Kalmar and Ruby. (There is one MGM Astaire-Rogers film, as it happens - Rogers was brought in as a last minute replacement for Judy Garland -- The Barkleys of Broadway, which had a score by Harry Warren and Ira Gershwin and “They Can’t Take That Away From Me,” originally written for Shall We Dance.) He was not a great favorite of the Gershwins. But you are right, his musicality and taste were greatly appreciated; he sang the songs as written. (Jerome Kern, for example, used to have fits over what jazz musicians and singers did to his songs.) I don’t think we’ve ever had an Astaire movies thread, but we have indeed had some pretty detailed discussions in the past on various forums – if you do a search using “Astaire,” they’ll come up, and should you have anything to add to revive one of them, please do.

Thanks for the link - haven't had time to go over it in detail, but it looks like it was done by someone who cared. Even with all the travails, what a career.

A charming ballet, and available on the “American Ballet Theatre Now” DVD/video, although I can’t recall offhand if it is presented complete or not. Yes, thank you, Drew. We should probably make a mental ‘stickie’ of that.

In this case Polyphonia was performed first. I suspect that had it been placed at the end of the program, the audience wouldn't have stayed. (I probably wouldn't have; Ligeti is not my favourite composer. Perhaps if I'd had ear plugs...) I'm with you on that. San Francisco Ballet does both and if they paired Polyphonia with Giselle most times I'd probably just show up at the first intermission. I've never seen Giselle with another ballet, but I'd have no objections to it, as long as the hors d'oeuvre came first on the program - the objections other posters have raised to a ballet following Giselle make perfect sense. Stravinsky Violin Concerto or Allegro Brillante sound quite nice. As Leigh points out, such a ballet can give the guys something to do for the week, (and if it cuts into the time given to some versions of Act One I wouldn't cry about it).

A nice article in The Economist.

Dear old Falcon Crest. Remarkable how well she paired with Rock Hudson in The Magnificent Obsession and All That Heaven Allows. You wouldn't necessarily think so without seeing them first, but they were great together. She brings out his sweetness - maternal, but not in a creepy way.

Me, too - for me he's always been there, like the Queen. He seemed almost ageless, though. Thank you, Mme. Hermine, for posting the links.

I, too, would like to hear from anyone who tuned in. miliosr? sidwich?

Belated thanks, kfw.

Thank you sidwich, I had forgotten about 'Into the Woods.' That would be a good choice for innopac's student, too. glebb, have you heard any of the alternate recordings out there?

What a great topic, printscess. Thanks for starting it. Now that I think about it, I love all the variations in Emeralds. Suzanne Farrell’s variation in Act III of Don Quixote is amazing.

I can’t disagree, really, but I kinda like her. (Never saw ‘Dr. Quinn,' although I'm certain papeetepatrick is on the mark.) Very pretty, and I remember thinking she was okay in a TV version of ‘East of Eden.’ I also have a strange liking for ‘Somewhere in Time,’ although it really is not good at all, and the cameraman must have been shooting her through a Coke bottle.

Hello, innopac. Sondheim is well represented on recordings and so you have a lot to choose from. I own many of the original cast albums and they are all worth having. There are a number of other versions out there, but I'm not such a great fan that I felt the need to seek them out for comparison, so perhaps there's someone else who can weigh in on those. (For "Follies" I would recommend the 1985 'Follies in Concert' with Lee Remick, Carol Burnett, Barbara Cook, et al. before the original cast album, although the latter has some fine stuff.) My own two choices for your student would be the Follies in Concert and the original cast album of "A Little Night Music." Those are my own two favorites although some would dismiss regard them as too obvious choices. I don't care. The Follies recording has several characteristic Sondheim originals and also demonstrates his skill in pastiche -- almost every type of show tune is here for your pupil to sample. And I love Could I Leave You? and Too Many Mornings. Wonderful songs. "A Little Night Music" - it's a lovely score, very clever, and it's not like eating your spinach. And there's Glynis Johns.

Thanks, and please report in this space when you do. It would be an interesting film to discuss. I will look up Kauffmann's review in the library, having ceased subscribing to TNR some time ago - I'm sure it's good to read.

True, but in many threads the topic has come up in passing and so the discussion did not go too far in that direction. You may be underrating your eye. Thanks to all for the comments. Keep them coming!

Hello, and let me take this opportunity to welcome you to the board. I see your point, but am I wrong in recalling that there were some at the time of the advent of Farrell who regarded some of her idiosyncrasies – the high, high legs, the unorthodox arms – as unclassical? And now she’s regarded as not only classical but a pivotal ballerina – arguably the ballerina – of the neoclassical era. A belated thanks to Mel for reviving this thread.

Astaire's self consciousness about his hands was widely noted. I remember Leslie Caron remarking on it in an interview, too.

It never occurred to me before that re-reading is part of a parent's job description, in a sense. I haven't read Steinbeck since I was in high school and it would be interesting to go back and take another look; I've been thinking about it ever since visiting the Steinbeck museum in Salinas last year.

Very true – but I wonder. I could be wrong about this but I think it wasn’t until her book came out that she began talking about her ‘amorous feelings’ for Balanchine, and in light of her quite normal interest in young men of her own age (the ‘Roger’ in her autobiography) – I wonder if she really felt a genuine physical attraction or if she’s mostly being tactful and protective of Balanchine. (The age difference and her religious affiliation wouldn’t necessarily have mattered, I think, if Farrell’s own character and psychology had been of a different stamp.) Moving away a bit from what Mary Astor refers to in “ The Palm Beach Story” as Topic A, I was interested in this quote from the Times link: