papeetepatrick

Maybe, but that article doesn't even mention 'letters from the earth', which already took me way beyond this-- "Wry and cranky, droll and cantankerous — that’s the Mark Twain we think we know, thanks to reading “Huck Finn” and “Tom Sawyer” in high school"-- well before I was even in high school. It seems to me that the NYTimes is doing some 'errors in transmission' a lot these days. I've noticed unbelievably idiotic things in the Opinionator (they publish embarassing things that are like Creative Writing Course 'compositions'), and censor comments on their blogs when there is no abuse, profanity, or off-topic. One still has to use NYT, but it's not up to its Paper of Record reputation anymore. But while I know what your point is, I think this article is poorly researched, if they'd do an opener like that, plus the below entry was interesting for the decision on Clara's part to oppose the 'Soviet propaganda', which is, of course a bit ironic, since they did nothing but suppress. Maybe 'gradual release' is par for the course in a lot of domains. It certainly is with govt. secrets, but that's normal. That Letters from the Earth is 'stories' is beside the point. You definitely already see another side of Twain that you'd never gather from HF or TS, and a lot of people have read LFtE. I'm definitely startled at some of the half-assed things I read in the Times, esp. when it's not an urgent matter or world affair, and there's plenty of time and personnel to get it right. Of course, the article is correct that we learn much more from the autobio, but we knew a lot already. The Wiki entry on LFtE isn't half-bad: "Letters from the Earth is one of Mark Twain's posthumously published works. The essays were written during a difficult time in Twain's life; he was deep in debt and had lost his wife and one of his daughters.[1] Initially, his daughter, Clara Clemens, objected to its publication in March 1939,[1] probably because of its controversial and iconoclastic views on religion, claiming it presented a "distorted"[2] view of her father. Henry Nash Smith helped change her position in 1960.[2] Clara explained her change of heart in 1962 saying that "Mark Twain belonged to the world" and that public opinion had become more tolerant.[1][3] She was also influenced to release the papers due to her annoyance with Soviet propaganda charges that her father's ideas were being suppressed in the United States.[1] The papers were edited in 1939 by Bernard DeVoto.[1] The book consists of a series of short stories, many of which deal with God and Christianity. The title story consists of eleven letters written by the archangel Satan to archangels, Gabriel and Michael,[1] about his observations on the curious proceedings of earthly life and the nature of man's religions. Other short stories in the book include a bedtime story about a family of cats Twain wrote for his daughters, and an essay explaining why an anaconda is morally superior to Man."

I know, the capitalist commercialist in me started going all dizzy, realizing that although we know that the best things in life are very often bought with money (or at least nicely mixed with some), maybe we might end up not being able to sell anything, if everything gets so vaporized, but don't mind me. And, after all, free long distance is also very common now, everybody i know has it, including myself. Isn't it only about 5 years since we were always making sure we didn't stretch our time into impossible long distance bills?

I have no knowledge with which to address any of these specifics in your post, but this further movement into interpreting something as a 'civil right' is very like the term 'human rights' itself. I think it was in the 90s, with lots of reports on the old MacNeil-Lehrer Report, in which it began to stand out that certain nations--China always seemed to be emphasized, but was not alone--were always having this 'human rights' balanced against matters of 'trade'. I hadn't ever thought as an American of 'human rights' as something that was thought of as a separate category from other large fields of endeavour, labour, international cooperation, even though 'human rights', like certain seemingly obvious 'civil rights' have often been neglected here as elsewhere and had to be corrected through legislation, fighting and determination, and over many years. But politicians were all of a sudden (I thought it was all of a sudden) talking about 'well, yes, we have to take into consideration human rights', and I think they were usually talking about nations with whom they enjoyed important trade relations and with whose treatment of their citizens they knew perfectly well they couldn't interfere and dictate. But then there were the real organizations Human Rights Watch, I remember that woman who was the head of it then (adrienne something?), but not her name. In any case, I don't think you hear the term 'human rights' applied to conditions in the U.S. either, even though civil rights obviously always did refer to specific movements against racism here. But in America, 'human rights' never seemed to be a subset, or secondary consideration, at least as something to be esteemed and held precious, even when failure to uphold what was meant by the term was often blatantly obvious. In these interviews with Lehrer and MacNeil discussing China, I really did notice that 'human rights' was given a very openly secondary importance, insofar as it was being explicitly balanced against other 'goods' and there was going to be willingness to sacrifice these 'human rights' sometimes. It must be the matter of the powerlessness to control the internal machines of other powerful nations. But Americans are in the position of talking about 'human rights' because we supposedly (and may actually) value them, whereas you wouldn't hear any talk of 'such nonsense' in authoritarian countries. So I guess it doesn't seem that strange to me to here this kind of terming of 'communication as a civil right' in Finland, where there wouldn't be a problem with it (or most human rights either, given that that's prosperous), but I may be completely missing your point here, not to mention knowing nothing about the Trusts & Estates, and obviously this matter may be very peripheral to what your main point is about the Balanchine Trust (and the others.) Edited to add: It occurs to me that you may mean 'communication' in the more contemporary sense of 'communications' as a 'civil right' in the Finland reference. In that case, it's pretty complicated, and 'communications', when they began to involve commerce, wouldn't necessarily be a civil right unless you had the 'privilege of paying money for it'. I think I'm going into a mild fugue state on this, though, now imagining that YouTubes should necessarily be forced from ballet companies etc., they have to wise up like the newspapers, for which we internet users pay nothing, etc.,

A chacun son gout. I think David Bowie light-years better as a singer (and maybe even Elvis if you stretch back). In a general sense, I think Bowie is the greatest musician in all of rock. Although I love all periods of the Beatles' work, whether 'If I Fell in Love with You' or 'She's Leaving Home', and 'Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds' is a masterpiece; although not much 'All We are Saying is Give Peace a Chance', which is tiresome even if you want peace (I never am sure anybody wants it for very long). Yoko's influcnce is a bit much for me, although she's certainly clever at real estate and Strawberry Fields is gorgeous. I also think the Stones are great, that the Who are great, that Iggy Pop is great, that Janis Joplin was great,the Doors are great, Deborah Harry is great (later, of course), there are just so many different kinds of talent throughout rock, it's hard to know for sure except that some are your favourites.I don't know if Kate Bush is considered 'rock', but she's incredible. That's just a few. As a composer, McCartney with his 'Liverpool Oratorio' has not produced the greatest choral work ever written, but it's often pleasant (I think Carl Davis thought it was 'just so English'), it's got good things in it, and that cathedral (glorious, and only finished in 1978 after a hundred years' work) deserved Kiri and poor Hadley, both of whom sounded great in it.

I thought about all the Beatles when I was with a friend for 5 days in 1987 in Liverpool. We stayed at this divine hotel in Toxteth, Ringo's neighborhood--oh, it was just perfect with spirals of loam alternated with tea roses as a garden design, and homemade Chicken Pie with Sage and fabulous steaks. Alas, it is no more. We also saw the Polytechnic Institute of something or other in D'town that McCartney attended. We still talk about the magical and slightly haunted quality of our Liverpool trip as being a trip unlike either of us ever took before or since. And I do think you can understand more about how the Beatles have their own brand of soulfulness by going to L'pool, because that is a soulful town, but tough. The trip was about equally inspired by the Beatles and the Masterpiece Theater miniseries based on Priestley's 'Lost Empires', from which was saw a number of landmarks, including the Empire Theater (still there), and dined at the Adelphi Brittannia. I DO recommend people go to L'pool!

Don't worry, he was.. Does resemble Rita Tushingham, whom I always have liked, and need to see all her old movies again. But doesn't look too much like a girl, although as he's aged, those sensual lips have thinned. I recall Cokie Roberts complaining about the star of 'Titanic', saying 'well, I just thought DiCaprio looked too much like a gurrrrrllll..' I loved it. I 'Beatled' my hair like crazy when I was in Junior High School, and this helped me induct the new members of the National Honour Society, of which I was the reluctant and totally irresponsible president. My homeroom teacher told me that my 'Beatled hair' looked great, but that she was determined to see if she could impeach me anyway, as she was giving me a D in Conduct! (did anybody else get separate 'conduct grades'? oh that was just so hick, I think). I didn't get into Cuban heels till much later, but I don't see a thing feminine about them, acc. to who's got 'em on.

As well as easily the most attractive.

And my above post doesn't show under Sandy's on the list, although it's somehow there, but his is noted as last post there. Plus, it doesn't go up into the Active Content. Don't know what it is. Okay, seems to be working now, but I have been having some problems, would think it was the heat even, except everything else working on this end.

Have had some trouble accessing the site today and one other day (yesterday or Monday). Only about ten minutes, but I don't have any other problems on this end with other sites at the moment. you may be aware of this, and still working on the customizations, although I don't know if that affects it.

Yes, it's beautiful, although there is a chord progression in one phrase toward the end that's a bit cheesy and out of the character of the piece (not his fault, though.) Proof that this kind of musical comedy song can be sung well by opera singers (and has been both in the original show and the movie.) I haven't heard the Pinza in a long time, but I do also very much like Tozzi's dubbing in the film. Just found that one chord, it's altered from the original, and sounds strange: It's in the interlude before the last 'Once you have found her...' and is where the 'a-' of 'a-lone' is when sung. Instead of the usual Dominant 7th from the 7th with the G Natural, they've put in an A Flat, which gives a weird 'Bell Telephone Hour effect' that doesn't really match the seriousness of the mood, but they don't use it the other times. Nope, I listened again, it's the G Natural, but the orchestration takes on this touch of 'springtime fresh sound', maybe to make it a kind of vignette, because the Nellie is not meant here to be all that much in character.

Okay, just put a hold on that R plus J, might as well catch up on some of these things. I did see 'The Women' about 4 years ago, and I'm sure she'd come back to memory if I watched it again, but I remember Joan Crawford more. Not really a Crawford fan, but I think she's very good in at least 4 movies I can think of, esp. 'Flamingo Road'. Oh yes, liked Roz Russell a lot in that, too, but never saw her in anything I didn't like. She was great.

I had forgotten about that. Yes, it's a very strange and laconic scene -- Sternberg based some of those moments on little things he saw Dietrich do in real life, not in front of a firing squad of course ... I wonder if she was channeling the Biblical Jezebel, whose adornment needs in terms of painting her eyes and lips were not the least bit deterred by what would be her (immediate) future! I've always found that a very impressive action, and have never understood why she's never been portrayed in a film (I always thought the Bette Davis one was about her for years, although when I finally saw it, I quite liked it as a Southern Belle as well, having known a large number of these meself, with two big sisters who are, like, totally into it), but maybe she thought the eunuchs would hang at least a little tougher when they were confronted with Jehu (Victor Mature would have been good at that, and clearly Marlene already knew the scene.)

What do you mean? Of course it stands. I was giving another example, because it interested me that Colbert still made so many more. Please explain. I thought you or someone else might know why some big stars began to make films more sparsely and some continued to turn them out.

Here's part of Claudette Colbert's schedule, although I don't know if it's apropos of Paramount vs. MGM, but although she slowed down, she still was turning out 3-4 films quite a few years after she became one of the major stars, maybe not quite as big as Garbo (but I'm not sure about box office), but definitely as big as Shearer. May have had to do with contracts, about which I know little: So Proudly We Hail! (1943) .... Lt. Janet 'Davy' Davidson No Time for Love (1943) .... Katherine Grant The Palm Beach Story (1942) .... Gerry Jeffers Remember the Day (1941) .... Nora Trinell Skylark (1941) .... Lydia Kenyon Arise, My Love (1940) .... Augusta (Gusto) Nash Boom Town (1940) .... Betsy Bartlett Drums Along the Mohawk (1939) .... Lana (Magdelana) It's a Wonderful World (1939) .... Edwina Corday Midnight (1939) .... Eve Peabody aka Baroness Czerny Zaza (1938) .... Zaza Bluebeard's Eighth Wife (1938) .... Nicole De Loiselle Tovarich (1937) .... Grand Duchess Tatiana Petrovna Romanov I Met Him in Paris (1937) .... Kay Denham Maid of Salem (1937) .... Barbara Clarke Under Two Flags (1936) .... Cigarette The Bride Comes Home (1935) .... Jeannette Desmereau She Married Her Boss (1935) .... Julia Scott Private Worlds (1935) .... Dr. Jane Everest The Gilded Lily (1935) .... Marilyn David Imitation of Life (1934) .... Beatrice 'Bea' Pullman Cleopatra (1934) .... Cleopatra It Happened One Night (1934) .... Ellie Andrews Four Frightened People (1934) .... Judy Jones Torch Singer (1933) .... Sally Trent, aka Mimi Benton Three-Cornered Moon (1933) .... Elizabeth Rimplegar I Cover the Waterfront (1933) .... Julie Kirk Tonight Is Ours (1933) .... Princess Nadya The Sign of the Cross (1932) .... Empress Poppaea The Phantom President (1932) .... Felicia Hammond The Man from Yesterday (1932) .... Sylvia Suffolk Misleading Lady (1932) .... Helen Steele The Wiser Sex (1932) .... Margaret Hughes His Woman (1931) .... Sally Clark Secrets of a Secretary (1931) .... Helen Blake The Smiling Lieutenant (1931) .... Franzi Honor Among Lovers (1931) .... Julia Traynor L'énigmatique Monsieur Parkes (1930) .... Lucy Stavrin La grande mare (1930) .... Barbara Billings Manslaughter (1930) .... Lydia Thorne The Big Pond (1930) .... Barbara Billings Young Man of Manhattan (1930) .... Ann Vaughn

Only in terms of skill,real nerds don't do 'Ballet Talk on Tour' and bother with the best profiterole places...

Thanks, Helene! Yes, I do like the pop-ups for pm's! It's more fun! Had no idea it was really still available. btw, Helene, just because I know you can do all this intricate stuff--that does NOT mean I think you are a DWEEB! I wish I could do it too! 'Dweeb' is a personality type, not something to do with special skills! Oh yes, Helene, the italics (and bold?) appear under 'Today's Active Users', but I don't know what it means. If it doesn't bother anybody else, it certainly doesn't bother me.

Yeah, I liked that, too, because it was instantaneous, and you would get it sometimes while you were in the site. I haven't ever seen that on other sites or bleugs, but they must have it. Was interested to know why some members here at any given time are shown bold and in italics. At first, I thought it was just the mods, but then I saw some others who weren't mods whose names were 'lit up' and some mods' names who weren't. Not important, of course, just curious.

Oh, whatever, as the twinks say. I find Gilbert extremely attractive still, and Garbo herself obviously did too for some extended period of time. They were in love. Later, I believe she said she didn't know what she saw in him, but the feeling could have been mutual. otoh, he was drinking so heavily that he wasn't in his right mind. Just tried to look up his wiki page, but it wouldn't open. Called 'the great lover', acc. to caption, 'rivalling even...' I guess Valentino. He's more charismatic to me than Valentino ever was, I never could quite get what the fuss was about. As for 'heartthrob appeal not lasting the test of time', maybe if one took a survey, but as far as personal taste, I don't find any of the current 'heartthrobs' of Hollywoods to have much appeal, maybe Liam Neesson, so that gets into the subjective areas. Gilbert Roland had some of the same animal appeal, was a gigolo, but not a really serious actor. Real problem with Gilbert was that he didn't have the voice, and yet made his way into at least a few talkies. He sure made the rounds: Not only nearly married Garbo, but did marry 4 other ladies, including Ina Claire. I hadn't known that. The highish voice reminded me vaguely of that handsome guy Lee Phillips in the movie of 'Peyton Place' opposite Lana Turner. This is a movie I like quite a lot, and Phillips was very nice in it, but his smallish voice may have been what kept him from getting any more big parts--but they were all good in that (including Lana and all the male and female starlets as well), and maybe the voice worked well enough for his part as a small-town principal. But Gilbert had a reputation to live up to and was famous with a reasonable body of work under his belt, and he had some obstacles, obviously, and some of this may have been recklessness and some of it just bad luck. I tend to like him onscreen. Managed to get it to open: "Known as "the great lover", he rivaled even Rudolph Valentino as a box office draw. Though he was often cited as one of the high profile examples of an actor who was unsuccessful in making the transition to talkies, his decline as a star in fact had to do with studio politics and money and not the sound of his screen voice.[1] According to the actress Eleanor Boardman and others, a fight between Louis B. Mayer and Gilbert erupted at what was to be his marriage to Greta Garbo, for which she failed to turn up, when Mayer made a snide remark. Gilbert promptly knocked his boss down, for which Mayer swore he'd get even. Gilbert's daughter has alleged that Mayer then proceeded to sabotage the recording of his voice by increasing the treble; giving direction of his films to an inexperienced director who was on narcotic pain medication; refusing him good scripts, such as 1930's The Dawn Patrol which directors wanted to star him in; and editing his projects to ruin his films.[2]" I have no idea how much of this is fact. Anyway, what I said about his voice may be inaccurate.

Yes, that makes perfect sense, much like the 'future' and the 'other picture' she 'walked in' from. So her potential was indeed a nice bit of timing, since we couldn't have got the full-blown Garbo in silents. And there she was ready to take them in full stride and did so, unlike many others (the Talmadges come to mind, and said they weren't too worried about, they had enough money, etc., it was pretty funny.) Some say most (or all) of the silent techniques disappeared after a few years, but I think some of the facial expressions that were especially effective in many of the early silents were still to be seen all the way through her career, especially this particular frown she'd do. (maybe not in Two-Faced Womand and Ninotchka, but it's been awhile since I've seen those.)

Maybe you're right about Gilbert primarily being a 'silent films actor', but I probably do disagree about Garbo, in that I think she was good at both. They're just different, in terms of the techniques that are necessitated, and there is much in the movement of silent film acting that proves that the acting is just as much an art as that of talkies--and Lillian Gish is not the only one who proves that, but she's probably the most exemplary. There's Joseph Schildkraut, there's Richard Barthelmess, there's Buster Keaton and all sorts of comedians, there's Valentino (effective and fantastically popular to say the least, whatever you may think of his Thespian virtuosities or the lack thereof.) You can grade talkies more severely than silents if you want to, of course, although I don't see it that way, and there are many who think the greatest films ever made are silents (and some silents are among the greatest, and don't need a more lenient grading--Griffith again, who is incomparable, and Fritz Lang's German silents are generally considered to be far greater than his Hollywood talkies (I'd agree), although some of those are fine, too.) If you can, see if you can find a vhs or dvd of 'The Kiss'. There's Anders Randolph instead of Lewis Stone again getting cheated on (although I tend to enjoy his recurrence in her films) and the weaving in of the complicated affairs with two other men is quite skillfully handled (those are Conrad Nagel and Lew Ayres, so you have a blue ribbon cast). I believe that, although it's not the last silent film ever made, of course, it was the last MGM silent, or studio silent, or something like that. Dirac or Quiggin will know, and it had to do with fear of her voice not working in talkies (which were already very popular and widespread by then), so they keep the $$$$ signs going all the way until the last sou is collected before they take a chance. And that gives one example of how you may now, in hindsight, see Garbo as a 'talkie actress', but they weren't sure it was going to work till she said 'Gimme a whiskey'.

Delightful turns of phrase, and evocative. I haven't seen this in a long time, but it was the first Garbo silent I saw. This was on the PBS series about films from the Museum of Modern Art, and hosted by film scholar Eileen Bowser, who I later discovered to be a neighbor of mine. I talked to her a few years back about Griffith's 'Legend of Happy Valley', which her show also introduced me to (and of which I'm very fond still.) She's very much an accomplished silent-screen actor herself, although it was obviously bound to be more subtle than Gilbert's. I mention that because in the first few talkies you see the remnants of gesture that she had mastered in some of the silents, and then they begin to fade away (you'll see a lot of these in the English 'Anna Christie'.) Her scenes with him are always erotic, including much later in 'Queen Cristina'. Enjoyed the whole review, miliosr.

It is, really? 'Nazi youth look' or thereabouts, people say that a lot? I didn't know that, but that would explain it if it is. Very 'Tomorrow Belongs to Me', I guess. Pretty good for Kander and Ebb, although I find the authentic actual Nazi anthems more hair-raising, much like the old Soviet military-parade marches.

I agree he meant that, and nothing about Stiefel's political beliefs, but it's crude. Because although 'blond-and-blue-eyed' means German types, it also means Aryan and Northern European in general. Germans aren't probably as often blonde as Swedes or other Scandinavians, so he was probably trying to be witty in an obviously controversial way. You could certainly say the same thing about the young Peter Martins.

And how about Dietrich in 'Foreign Affair' telling Jean Arthur to put on lipstick, because "In Eu-wope, we heaw about the chic Ame-wee-can woe-meen..." and so forth. Oh, I love to hear 'Black Market', but I do not much care to hear 'I-OH-WAY' very often.

http://www.slashfilm...garet-thatcher/ This is the most amusingly predictable thing I've seen in awhile. What next? Mary Kay LeTourneau? Nah, gonna be too old for that one. Maybe Beyonce can do it.