dirac

I see what you mean, ViolinConcerto, but in a sense you’re comparing apples and oranges. Astaire was a dancer from the world of musical comedy, what we just call musicals today, not a pure tap dancer in the way Honi Coles was and Glover is. And a career like Astaire’s wouldn’t be possible today in any case.......

I don’t see any downside. I’m just grateful that it’s not another [big Name Ballet Company Here] in Swan Lake. Not everyone can buy or see the DVD, so to have the ballet broadcast, especially on a non cable network, is great. Looking forward to it. It won’t have any immediate effect, but write PBS via regular mail if you want to see more dance – especially if you’re a subscriber. The halcyon days of the seventies are not coming back, but we can try for improvement.

I too would watch Glover in anything. Amazing dancer.

Thank you for your list, cygnet (although bear in mind we’re looking for overrated items, and I’m not sure that some of the items on your list qualify. Successful, yes, profitable, yes, but artistically overrated, no ). Yes, but it had Jodie (and another favorite of mine, Peter Sarsgaard) and sometimes a fan’s gotta do what a fan’s gotta do, even if it means paying to see Panic Room.

This article about The New Yorker set appeared in today’s Wall Street Journal. http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1131586194...ml?mod=2_1168_1 Interesting comment from Lessig: No such thing as context? I can see some issues with that.

“Nick! Heath! Jarrod! There’s a fire in the barn!” There’s a scene where Robert Stack charges through the airport punching out various mendicants of the sort that used to hang out there, and the applause in the theatre where I saw it was HUGE. True, but I still like Lloyd Bridges saying “Looks like I picked the wrong week to quit sniffing glue” and the bit where the heart transplant specialist is on the phone saying something like, “We’ve found a heart” and it’s bouncing around on his desk. I regret to say that I've always found "To Be Or Not To Be" a trifle overrated -- good but not great. But then, as a Carole Lombard fan I always want to see more of her, and although she plays up to Benny beautifully and graciously it's still a supporting role.

The Magus drove me nuts but I enjoyed it. The French Lieutenant's Woman is a favorite of mine, and I like The Collector too. Daniel Martin, I fear, was chloroform......

Lane may very well be overcompensating for Broderick, who isn’t ideally cast either, I’d imagine. However, given the success of this engagement, I suppose we’ll be seeing them as The Sunshine Boys a few decades down the line.

John Fowles, the author of The Collector, The French Lieutenant's Woman, et al., has died, age 79. Obituary in The Guardian. Another obit, by Sarah Lyall for The New York Times.

Or Jack Klugman in The Odd Couple, I should have added. (I don't know that you would say he was quite as good as Matthau, but the television show was far better than the play and I'm sure Klugman was better suited to the role than Lane.)

Thank you for chiming in, beck_hen. I think you’re getting close to the heart of the matter. Edwin Denby wrote much of his stuff for dailies. And I enjoy reading Tobi Tobias online, but it’s a crying shame that she’s not doing her stuff for a general interest print publication. It’s off topic, but I thought I’d plug another favorite paper of mine, The Christian Science Monitor. It’s available online, but if you have a Reading Room nearby, stop by and pick up a print copy. They appreciate it!

Not me, but I'd be interested to hear from anyone who has!

I haven’t seen “Looking for Richard” but Pacino’s take on Shylock (“I crave da law!”) didn’t leave me hungering for more of Shakesperean Al. He wasn’t terrible, mind, just – odd, as you say, bart.

A passing note: True, but the more subtle forms of gushing are sometimes missed. In size and space the Kwan article is out of proportion and looks like fan stuff, and a dedicated fan also posted the entry on Pancho Gonzales, I can tell you. But I love the site, it’s a magnificent effort.

Matthau is irreplaceable. I saw the Bad News Bears remake on cable recently and it only reinforced this sentiment. From what one reads, the revival of "The Odd Couple" with what I would imagine to be a seriously miscast Nathan Lane would do the same. klingsor writes: Agreed on both counts. Interesting to note that Unfaithfully Yours was a major bomb when it came out.

Bergman is one of the great artists of the previous century, someone who enriched an art form by addressing himself to it. If he’s not your cup of tea, that’s perfectly legitimate and it’s true for many people, but his ranking as an artist isn’t something this observer is going to argue about. Sorry, folks. I can’t address the quality of his stage work, but Kevin Spacey is a gifted and intelligent performer who’s by nature a supporting actor, at his best in secondary roles with limited exposure (this is not an insult, often as not the secondary roles are more interesting than a bland lead), but not meant to carry a picture on his own. No reason why he shouldn’t try, of course, and win Oscars doing it, but I still don't think he's at his best. I like his ensemble work (LA Confidential, The Usual Suspects), IMO. Again, in the theatre in the right role, it could be a completely different situation. Nice to hear his performance is so well received -- let's hope we get a look here in the States some time....

The print publications really are stuck between a rock and a hard place. You do have a new generation arising that seems to feel put upon whenever they have to pay for something online. And yet if you try to make people pay, as is the case with Times Select, people either find a back door or they just don’t link to your articles. And with the rise of the blogosphere, an important part of getting your stuff read is getting it linked to. It will be interesting to see how this all works out. Thank you for the link to Ken Auletta’s article about The Los Angeles Times, kfw. The history of ownership at the LA Times is a demonstration of the worst (and best) aspects of family ownership, and the story of the paper since the Chandlers sold it to the Tribune Company shows what happens when corporate types take over. (And the Tribune Company is far from the worst.) I used to be able to buy the LA Times on any number of Northern California street corners. No more. Such availability isn't just a question of access -- it reflects a paper's reach and ambitions. I add my thanks to bart's. I was trying to say that, but you put it so much better, sandik. You are very lucky to have two dailies in your town, although from what I’m reading that may not be for too much longer. kfw, I loved this quote:

Good point, scoop. The digital divide may disappear or even vanish with time, but we’re nowhere near that point yet. On the other hand, considering your employment prospects, maybe you'll just be employed differently. Of course, those like kfw and myself who have an atavistic attachment to newsprint will be out of luck (or in the great beyond.).

I’d suggest that the broadsheet version of the paper, at present, is superior to the net in terms of drawing and holding a reader’s attention, particularly for complex stories. (As a West Coast reader of the paper, I’m not really looking for the most up to date information; I’m less concerned with breaking news than with thoroughness and the finer points.) From the newspaper’s point of view, if you’re looking at a hard copy of the Times, chances are you’ve paid for it, unless you’re in a coffee shop or a library. The Sulzberger family, like the Grahams, are a public spirited group and they accept a smaller profit margin to put out a better paper, but there are limits to everyone’s generosity.

indeed.True, but that’s actually a pretty good description of newspapers before the rise of a)“objective” reporting and b) the monopoly paper. Although I do think that, taking the long view, “objective” journalism -- however flawed in practice -- is superior, the earlier state of affairs had its positive aspects –competition was remarkably intense, and papers tried hard to scoop each other and poke holes in each other’s stories, which was all to the good. “Partisan” doesn’t necessarily mean “inaccurate.” What’s lost when people substitute the net and other media for a newspaper is the depth and detail that kfw mentions. And the other media frequently take their cue and get their information from the major papers.

Keith Money. Gordon Anthony. George Platt Lynes. Barbara Morgan for her Graham photographs. Bert Stern for his photographs of his ex, Allegra Kent and fellow dancers like Villella, even if you did behave like a major league jerk, Bert..... Great topic, bart, thanks.

Quiggin, that's a classic, too, but since I'd already listed two Preston Sturges pictures I thought it would be overkill. "Hail the Conquering Hero," "The Miracle of Morgan's Creek," etc. -- the list goes on. "Sullivan's Travels" has Joel McCrea, too, and I always thought he was an undervalued actor.

Thank you for that, Quiggin. Good article. The papers’ desperation to reach new and younger readers is directly responsible for the general decline and disappearance of serious arts coverage, and the young, from all reports, don’t care. However, the author of that article doesn't allow for the fact that the papers do have to try something. Otherwise, their readership will continue to age and gradually drop off, and there will be no young eyeballs to replace the old ones. (Regarding the NY Times’ arts coverage, in the fairly recent past the paper’s popular culture coverage was indeed notoriously clueless (now it’s just intermittently clueless) and they were right to try to correct the balance. They just went too far in the other direction.) I do feel an obligation to take a subscription to the paper I read every day, the NY Times national issue in my case, and I also take a subscription to my town paper as a public spirited gesture even if I don’t get to it every day. Most people may not want to go this far, I realize, but I do feel an obligation to subsidize in some way the publications that give me most of my news whether I read it or get it off the net. Bart raises some interesting points – it may be that people are no longer willing to take the thirty to forty five minutes it takes to read a paper like the Times properly, and the social changes and impulses that led to the widespread newspaper habit are giving way to changes that work against that same habit. It’s true that the afternoon papers are virtually gone, killed by TV news (and now the early evening news broadcasts that killed those papers is threatened by cable news and the internet).

The most distressing thing about the Homans piece is that many TNR readers who don't follow ballet may think, Yes, yes, that Ashton, so quaint. Argh.

Newspapers experiencing a very bad year, according to the MediaDailyNews. http://publications.mediapost.com/index.cf...e&art_aid=35690 Most of the nice free news we get from the internet is from those boring old papers nobody wants to read. (Ballet Talk Links, for example.) Maybe they’re not all that “visually engaging” but for browsing through the news you want (and news you didn’t think you wanted until you just happened to see it) they’re still the best thing going. That’s hardly surprising – papers have had centuries to work out how to present information in a readable and helpful way and the net is just starting, really. It does take time to get into the habit of reading the daily paper – I didn’t really start until college – but I do think that the internet isn’t yet ready to replace hard copies entirely. It may be true that papers are doomed. But we don’t yet have an adequate replacement for them.