dirac

How true. Every once in awhile while posting links I come across a company of which I haven't heard much with 'ballet' or 'ballets' in its title, and I have to peruse the article more carefully than usual to ensure the company is an actual ballet company.

That's interesting. Farrell took over that role when she was still very young, some felt too young, dancing it with Kent Stowell, I think. So the May-September feeling, if it was there, must have disappeared almost immediately. (Unless it came back with Karin von Aroldingen later in the sixties -- but she was young, too, of course.) I also recall from Arlene Croce's review of the revival in the early eighties that Farrell, returning to the part in her maturity, "compensated by playing young," or words to that effect. But she would have been just right at that stage as a Slightly Older Woman.

Balanchine is quoted as saying, "She's like a whale in her own ocean."

With Kaye, it's the Robin Williams problem, I think -- what do you do with him? We are wandering afield, as GWTW notes, but in this particular instance I think it's harmless.

With a star who had a long and varied career, like Day, name recognition often depends on what brand of nostalgia is current. The Day-Hudson comedies, for example, have been receiving attention recently because of the pastiche film “Down with Love” that came out a couple of years ago. I always liked her, too. And a great singing voice, as Farrell Fan notes. Hmmm. I wouldn’t say “threw together.” Star vehicles were put together with quite a bit of care and attention, and many of them have survived better than the prestige pictures the studios were making to collect awards. Roberts hasn’t made any movies immediately identifiable as deathless classics, but she’s had a career unique among contemporary women stars. The shelf life of a star actress tends to be much briefer than that of her male counterparts. She has shown a lot of staying power in an era none too hospitable to women, and in that respect her career is more impressive than Grable’s or Hayworth’s, IMO. She’s now approaching the dangerous age, which for a female film star is 40, so we’ll see.

Gilda is dated for me because of the harshness of the sexual double standard. It’s a good picture. I just don’t enjoy watching it, save for Hayworth and the interestingly twisted relationship between Glenn Ford and George Macready. Not such a great compliment in my book , but you’re right, the connection is clear. Jane Russell is indeed an icon.....of camp. I mean no disrespect by that. Tyrone Power is an interesting case. Like Grable, he was a 20th Century Fox star – indeed, he was the 20th Century Fox star. I think he was potentially a better actor than he turned out to be, with more natural assets than Taylor or Johnson (presence, a fine voice, and really extraordinary good looks). Later in his career he did try to get out of his cushy star rut, taking on stage work and pleading with the studio to do more risky pictures such as “Nightmare Alley.” But it seems to have been too late, and he seems to have known it. A sad story. Thanks for the interesting comments, everyone. Keep them coming!

I noticed the same phenomenon after the switch (I use Windows Explorer), but I'm constantly cleaning out my cookies anyway and so it's no problem for me -- saves me the trouble of signing off occasionally.

GoCoyote! writes: Far too much, at times. Thanks for your thoughts, GoCoyote!, and welcome. (Thanks also to Alexandra for starting a very interesting topic.

It's official: Ethan Stiefel has departed Ballet Pacifica, according to a report in The Los Angeles Times.

They’re both classics, definitely, although The Lady from Shanghai is far superior to Gilda, IMO. I’m not sure I would put Gilda up there with the Howard Hawks version of The Big Sleep, but that may be a matter of changing tastes and times. (I really dislike the way the character of Gilda is treated.)

I'm inclined to agree. I’ve seen only bits and pieces of MacMillan’s “Requiem” on video and can’t really make a judgment in this instance (I’d also want to read the text of the program note). However, I wouldn’t think that a ballet audience would need admonishments from the stage or program notes for guidance, and depending on the circumstances such measures could be seen as a tad presumptuous. If the performance conveys a sense of the sacred, no matter if the music or subject matter is formally designated “of religious significance” – a sensitive audience will react appropriately. One hopes.

richard53dog writes: I seem to remember reading something somewhere in a similar vein, but I wouldn't take that to the bank. I, too, would be interested in hearing other thoughts.

Thank you for that memory, bart.

I agree, canbelto. You just want to see them go off together.

Stanislaw Lem, the author of “Solaris” has died, age 84. I can’t say I’m a big science fiction fan, but I liked that book very much. http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/28/books/28lem.html

As I know all of you have been waiting breathlessly for my report, here it is. The film is two hours long and treats everything in O’Neill’s life and work as a warmup for “The Iceman Cometh” and “Long Day’s Journey Into Night.” This view of matters can be defended, but I do object to the implication – actually it’s more than implication -- that if O’Neill hadn’t managed to come up with his late plays, you wouldn’t be watching this program. That may be true but it wouldn’t be right. One of the valuable things about such documentaries for me is the opportunity to see rare photographs and footage, and there was virtually none of the latter. Whether by choice or necessity, instead we see actors reading from a script or reciting into the camera in segments specially staged for this production. (Many of the actors have recently appeared in O’Neill revivals.) It’s possible that there’s isn't much out there or that permissions could not be obtained, but I’d have loved to see some old film of the stage productions, even without any sound, and an O’Neill special without a big helping of Jason Robards is not much of an O’Neill special. Burns did talk to him, though (and to Robert Whitehead, who is also no longer with us). Perhaps Robards wasn’t feeling up to it, but I’d have rather heard him read over Al Pacino, wearing glasses and looking like your crackpot uncle who wandered out into the electrical storm. There’s film footage of Robards available – we see a brief bit from an early television version of Iceman, with Robert Redford -- and of Robert Ryan as Larry Slade and Fredric March as Harry Hope in the seventies film version of the same play. I prefer them to all these Brits and Robert Sean Leonard. Sidney Lumet is interviewed, but there’s nothing from his wonderful film of Long Day’s Journey. And how about Robeson in The Emperor Jones? Much emphasis is laid on O’Neill’s unhappy childhood, but we her little or nothing about the unhappy childhoods and sad endings of his own kids. It seems clear that alcoholism and depression ran in the family, but O’Neill’s often unpleasant dealings with his children did not help matters. O’Neill at least managed to live out his life to its natural span; Eugene Jr. killed himself, Shane killed himself, and Oona fell apart after the death of her husband Charles Chaplin. I would think that Burns could find time in two hours for a passing mention. For obvious reasons, contemporaries of O’Neill were unavailable for comment. It’s too bad a project like this wasn’t undertaken in the seventies, when the fabulous old folks who can be seen in Warren Beatty’s “Reds” and people like Lynn Fontanne, who was the original Nina in “Strange Interlude,” were alive and talking. Arthur and Barbara Gelb, authors of a mammoth O’Neill bio, John Guare, Tony Kushner, and Robert Brustein are heard from. There isn’t much of the way of backstage talk or anecdotes, so we get little sense of what O’Neill was like in his capacity as man of the theatre. I didn’t catch any mention of his time in Provincetown, either. Also, the voiceover narration is more than a little overripe.

As a general rule a movie star’s reputation depends upon the staying power of that star’s films. The more classic movies you make, the better. Grable’s pictures weren’t very good, as most of the musicals produced by 20th Century Fox weren’t very good. And she wasn’t a famous beauty or a strong personality, although I find her very likable. This was part of her Everygirl appeal at the time of her fame, but it hasn’t worn well. Alice Faye, predecessor to Grable and Monroe as the official 20th Century Fox Blonde, is also a name now familiar mostly to buffs. (Marilyn broke the mold.) Williams will always have a niche in the annals of camp.

I finally got around to “Syriana” this weekend. I thought it was a good movie that could have been better. Too many characters, too many plot strands – it makes for an unwieldy two hours. I’m not going to bother seeing it twice, though – it can wait for cable. Not that I want to return to the days of one heroic star singlehandedly battling the international conspiracy, and yes, it’s a complex story, but I still think it could have been more clearly told. In my area it’s playing on a double bill with “Munich” -- it was a good year for internationally minded moviegoers – and anyone who had the stamina to sit through both pictures at a sitting would have observed, among other things, the difference between a director who can use film technique to tell a story and one who has to rely heavily on talking heads dispensing mass quantities of exposition. That said, it was worth my time and money, although I can’t say that it succeeded in transcending the geopolitical spy thriller cliches it’s working with (the timely interruption of Clooney’s torture session, the Spy Left in the Cold, the villain seen gardening, etc., and the climax of the film is a very close approximation of ‘we must head the locomotive off at the pass.’) Interesting connections to Lawrence of Arabia – the scene with Plummer and Clooney reminded me of Claude Rains patting Peter O’Toole on the head. Many many good actors here, especially Jeffrey Wright, in an unshowy role where he has no fireworks to shoot off and yet makes every scene count.

PBS’ “American Experience” series presents a documentary on Eugene O'Neill tonight.

If I’m remembering correctly, Fonteyn had already danced Giselle and Odette/Odile by age twenty. I also seem to recall Clive Barnes in the mid-Sixties criticizing Balanchine for promoting “the young and the heartless” at the expense of older dancers. Young Fonteyns and Farrells don’t come with the mail, of course. There was once a saying in the theatre that Shakespeare’s Juliet couldn’t be convincingly played before age forty. It turned out to be wrong. Sorry for veering off topic....

atm711 wrote: Hoffman was teetering on the verge of caricature, vocally. It will be interesting to see what the actor Toby Jones does with the role in another Capote movie that’s in the works. The picture you’re thinking of was “Murder by Death,” I think.

It's been years, but I remember that as a lovely little movie, with all three stars at their most appealing. (Cagney is torn between the glamorous Rita and the 'mousy' Olivia de Havilland.)

Scorsese's admiration for the work of the director Michael Powell and for The Red Shoes in particular is well known. The DVD extras for the picture include items from Scorsese's extensive collection of Red Shoes memorabilia.

That's true. She made no great films, but she did better than, say, Betty Grable, an even bigger star in her prime. She'll always have her place, though, if only for those sumptuous looks.

Mendelson didn’t write an article about the marketing of Brokeback Mountain. He touched on the issue in the course of a long and thoughtful review, which elicited the letter from James Schamus and response by Mendelson printed in TNYRB.