dirac

Koznin's piece mentions McCartney's "Liverpool Oratorio," which had its own tv feature tracing its genesis. This is a work that explores every possible apect of insipidity. She definitely had a right to sing the blues. A long time ago Streisand made an interesting crossover attempt with an album called Classical Barbra. Some of it was a trifle Mermanish, but it was a gallant try, as I remember, haven't listened to it for some years and don't have a copy handy.

To quote the playwright Peter Barnes, when I pray to God, I find I’m talking to myself. However, my secular good wishes go out to Bujones, his family, and his company.

Delighted to hear it, as long as libraries aren't inspired to toss out all their old New Yorkers.....

Was Rent ever intended as a gateway to opera? I’m inclined not to think so.

I never saw "Rent" but what I heard of the score sort of reminded me of Blue Oyster Cult, not my favorite group. I don't have high hopes for the forthcoming movie version, but again I didn't see the show. Mozart might very well be composing for contemporary instruments, electric guitar included, but not that kind of stuff, I'm sure.

Yes, exactly. For me, that’s part of the problem. I don’t turn up my nose at crossover on principle, but even with singers who have a “jazz” background, their years of classical training tends to deprive them of the right style and approach for show tunes composed after the era of operetta. I don’t mean that they shouldn’t try if they wish, but most such efforts don’t work for me. Of course, for singers like Callas, Puccini was pop.

Thanks for that very good summary of the situation, oberon.

Garbo could have had Olivier for Queen Christina, but she insisted on Gilbert out of loyalty – his career had tanked, in part because Gilbert had incurred L.B. Mayer’s wrath by backing Garbo in her salary disputes with the studio. I’m not sure Olivier at that point in his development would have been that much better – he was awfully callow then – but it would have been an interesting pairing. I haven't seen "2046" yet, but I may as well confess that after sitting through "In the Mood for Love" it's not high on my to-do list......

There’s good crossover and bad crossover, well intentioned crossover and crassly mercenary crossover, and it’s always been that way. The sky’s not falling. I don’t think Elly Ameling, Eileen Farrell, Helen Traubel, Dawn Upshaw, et al. were/are sluttishly whoring after a different audience. Strictly speaking, Millo was going to sing pop, as she was apparently planning to include some Rodgers and Hammerstein. That’s not quite the same thing as Millo singing “My Heart Will Go On,” but it’s a question of quality and not genre. As Mel Johnson pointed out on another thread, some pop music has a way of becoming light classical with time, and after awhile the inclusion of “I Have Dreamed” with the encores raises no eyebrows.

Thank you for reporting back! Hmmmm......at this period, Cukor was the favored director of the producer David O. Selznick and had already directed one of MGM’s biggest productions to date, “Dinner at Eight.” He also had “Little Women,” “David Copperfield,” and several other high profile productions under his belt. So he was pretty well versed at this point. (As a rule, the pacing of thirties movies tends to be brisker than those of today, but we’re not accustomed any more to the longer scenes and medium two shots that were also typical of the “Golden Age.”) Garbo’s movies are classics primarily because she is in them, alas. In the case of Camille, MGM’s great fields of artificial flowers are distracting, Taylor is inadequate, Lionel Barrymore makes one want to sprint for the exits, and Henry Daniell, as you observe, is almost the only other actor in the cast apart from Garbo who has the right feeling and sense of style for his role. (I didn’t find the pacing slow, but that’s just a difference of opinion. As for focusing too much on Garbo – well, it’s one of the greatest performances ever to make it to celluloid, and I never tire of gazing at the lady myself, so there you go.) The following is also a matter of taste, but I thought Ninotchka was, apparently unintentionally, a rather cynical picture. We don’t see the West as a place of liberty and opportunity, but as one where people correctly positioned can enjoy expensive consumer goods and live frivolously without doing anything in particular to earn or deserve their pleasures. Ninotchka has to learn to focus less on advances in industrial technology and more on clothes. It’s certainly more attractive than the gulags and forced collectivization, but it’s still not a pretty view, not to me anyway. Melvyn Douglas is charming and Garbo is very touching (and it’s great to see her square off against that great comedienne of the stage, Ina Claire), but the movie left me with an unpleasant feeling.

I love Mary Renault too, Mashinka. (Stone's "Alexander" steals from her shamelessly, although not the best stuff, unfortunately.)

Going by the article, it looks as if there is more to this than meets the eye, and I wouldn't necessarily take all of this at face value. Thanks for posting it, kfw.

Hmmm... the comic phrasing comes from Ninotchka’s bureaucratic and technical background and her characteristic way of denying the emotions. I don’t think it’s necessarily an evasion of the Code. (You could also rephrase it more explicitly and it would still be funny.) A scene from that movie that could be described as a way of getting around the rules would be the hotel scene with the cigarette girls, I think.

oberon writes: You're right, Maurice is very romantic -- too romantic, perhaps. We are veering off topic, but yes, Holleran was doing serious channeling of F. Scott Fitzgerald. Too bad the subject matter was/is untouchable for Hollywood -- Redford would have made a fine Malone, back in the seventies. Of course, he was too busy flirting with Paul Newman.

GWTW writes: Maybe we need a new topic for favourite gay love/sex scenes. I think not. A romance-based topic is fine, but we don't want to get too specific.

oberon writes: Hmm. Only by default, may I suggest respectfully. I hope we do better eventually. We'll see what happens with Brokeback Mountain. Although it isn't really a "love story" I thought the liaison between Daniel Day-Lewis and Gordon Warnecke in My Beautiful Laundrette was romantic. And that bit with Day-Lewis surreptitiously licking Warnecke's neck in full view of Day-Lewis' skinhead chums is one of the sexier scenes in my recollection.

bart wrote: They'd revive Adriana Lecouvreur for Domingo if he wanted to sing it. What will they do without him? We do need more opera on television, although my impression is that it's still doing better than dance in that regard.

Thanks to bart and leibling. I enjoyed reading these!

Thank you for the report, atm711. If you see more this season, please let us know! I always thought that Callas’s voice at its best was absolutely ravishing, but certainly at the time of her later Toscas it was far from that.

Wikipedia has a good entry on the Code, here. While it’s true that less is sometimes more, I think the negatives of the Code far outweighed any positives. The Wikipedia entry will indicate what I mean. The Code was a boon to certain genres – the great era of screwball comedy was a direct outgrowth of the advent of censorship, I think – and encouraged the proliferation of musicals, adventure stories, etc. – types of pictures where the naturalistic or realistic depiction of events wasn’t central or even especially desirable.

Singin’ in the Rain is in some ways more successful as a comedy than as a musical, I think. The story and the dialogue play an exceptionally large role in making the movie successful. And Jean Hagen, a nonsinger and nondancer, gives the outstanding performance. I agree that the Debbie Reynolds part doesn’t work, but not that it’s necessarily her fault, although she is green. For all his good looks and physicality, Kelly was not at his best as a romantic lead. The big duet with him and Reynolds is a washout, but if she’d been paired with a fine partner, like Astaire, she might not have looked great but she would have looked better. Unless Kelly is paired with a big(ger) star, like Hayworth or Garland, he tends to dominate his female leads out of existence. kfw writes: I haven’t seen it, but that doesn’t surprise me. Because of the arcana of Academy rules and plain bad taste, the Best Foreign Film nominees are often mediocre a/o obscure and occasionally worse.

canbelto writes: I know a Miles too, although he doesn’t read Barely Legal. At least, I hope he doesn’t. Old Fashioned writes: Unfortunately, that still leaves the rest of the picture. No offense, carbro. I agree with you, canbelto, that The Godfather Part II is not clearly superior to Part I, taken as a whole. Part II has the splendid Little Italy section, with De Niro at his best, but on the other hand it has too much Diane Keaton, not that it’s all her fault – the part is poorly written-- and other weaknesses. On the good side, it relies less on bloody shock effects and Brando’s not in it (speaking of overrated performances......).

Sideways was overpraised, IMO, but not bad – just not that great; it stood out because last year was not a very good one for movies. It’s a good candidate for the category under discussion. (Note: I am not saying no good pictures were released, only that the pickings were not especially stellar.) Much depended on how you took the character of Miles (the Giamatti role) and I didn’t take him well at all. I agree with canbelto that in a choice between Million Dollar Baby and Sideways, the latter wins hands down. But I'd prefer not to choose. I'm not sure that I would classify von Trier as overrated, because there is actually a very sharp controversy as to the nature and quality of his work, and as a rule his pictures receive highly mixed and polarized reviews. The Piano was insanely overrated, in my view. The few things I liked about it were vastly outweighed by the demerits. My heart went out to poor Sam Neill. There were many, many people who didn’t like Titanic, and most of the reviews were more negative than not, so I’d agree with Old Fashioned that we can’t call it overrated. I’m prepared to mount a defense of it, should anyone ask. Wild Strawberries is a classic, but I’ve actually read quite a few critics who were not that enthusiastic about it for the reasons you’ve cited, canbelto, and I’m not sure we can call it overrated, either.

Psycho isn't graphic by today's standards, but along with later Hitchcocks like Frenzy I think it helped open the door. Frenzy is actually a better example of what I was objecting to, but it wasn't as widely praised as Psycho.

Much obliged for those, thanks!