papeetepatrick

The whole obituary is very interesting, I knew few facts of her life. I've seen only 4 or 5 of the major films, but my best memory of her is as a toddler watching 'The Jane Wyman Show', which I loved.

Hey, sz--and remember another wonderful thing about the original--it's got Jacques D'Amboise.

Too bad Hubbe is not staying just a little longer. He's the only one I'd be interested to see do it. It's so special and singular a piece that none of the other dancers there come to mind as being able to have the presence for it. This is a true example of the Arlene Croce quote made on the ABT thread today about 'ballet is only good when it is great', and this one is so specialized that it is close to impossible to make great, is impossible without the right dancer.

Farrell Fan--I too loved your story.

I see little to recommend in the Turner/Lamas 'Merry Widow'. Turner's glamour doesn't even matter here, she is allowed to give such a bad performance. When she waltzes with Lamas at the end, she is so stiff it is inexcusable--at least, in some of the soap opera things like 'By Love Possessed', where she is not required to do much more than just show up, her obvious deterioration in these lurid-looking things doesn't matter so much--even has some unique interest when combined with Ross Hunter and the other crews who used her after the Stompanato business. And there are a few legitimately good performances before that, 'Cass Timberlane' among others, and the obvious ones like 'Postman Always Rings Twice'etc.. But I think 'Merry Widow' is perhaps her very worst performance. The McDonald/Eddy wouldn't have had to be much more than decent to surpass this. They might pull something off with a remade 'Carousel', but I rather doubt it, and the original, though not a masterpiece, was quite good in many ways. I don't see it as needing a remake.

Most of the big musicals adapted from B'way don't get remade. Showboat was an exception, and that was early on. There's much that is great in 'West Side Story', but I have heard how wonderful Carol Lawrence and Larry Kert were in the original, and therefore in some ways I'm sure it was even fresher and greater, because Natalie Wood was good, but maybe not great, same with Beymer. Chakiris was a knockout and Moreno excellent too.

I also remember, in their struggles to get something done with this mess, that they said, along the lines of what you just quoted from Dunne, that they finally answered their question of 'what is this movie about?' The answer was 'Two stars.' After hearing that, I never saw films in the same way again. My feeling was that Deneuve was better than she'd ever been in this--when you finally see her in it, you think, of course, she's been supposed to do this all her life. She can be very expressive without moving and this was very effective in this role, when she'd stand silent and mostly expressionless at a moment when anyone else would have reacted with some form of anger, hysteria, or something externalized. And she's played plenty of aberrant types before, as in 'The Convent' with Malkovich' and 'Belle de Jour' and 'The Hustle' and 'The Hunger' and 'Place Vendome', just to start-- so this was the place she needed to end up. The miniseries is lavish and lasts 302 minutes. I had never heard of it, and just saw it at the video store. It's from 2003. Everett's French is perfect, and Kinski is excellent as their victim. They modernize it in a way you don't notice too much, it's set in the 60s; I can't put my finger on why it works, that sort of thing usually bothers me. I agree that Moreau is a little too naturally warm for Merteuil, and although Deneuve is capable of great warmth, she is also the master of *cool*. The miniseries comes across as much more naturally vicious than the others, to my mind.

I think that was her normal perspective, according to many who knew her well. Liszt, one of the most generous of men, had no liking for her, and she did spread malicious gossip and unnecessary details about her lovers (I guess this was done by word of mouth before we had the Tabloid World.)

I just finished William Gibson's 'Spook Country' last night. Quite admirable, and useful as a kind of technology manual for navigating the streets and new virtual mazes better. After about 250 pages, in which you thought you were really reading a truly fine novel, it begins to weaken steadily and become repetitious, with mostly cartoon-like characters, and it ends so anticlimactically you are literally astonished, having been given to think that all manner of sinister everything was going to happen. I can't see what the fuss over this one is beyond amazing precious detailing of locales, whether W. Hollywood, Manhattan, and (I imagine) Vancouver. There's almost no humour and absolutely no sex, unless you inlude throwaway lines like 'She had had carnal knowledge of him in such a bed'. Gimme a break. He does construct the novel with several separated strands of plot much like Don DeLillo sometimes does, and let them be brought together, but it's a superficial resemblance. Gibson's high-strung writing has no flesh and blood.

Oh yes, I love that. Yes, it is very good, but is there one before that? 'What Price Hollywood' would make Streisand/Kris the 3rd remake, not 4th, unless there's one we haven't mentioned. Yes, and they had all manner of trouble with that one too, it was supposed to be loosely based on 'Golden Girl' about Jessica Savitch. Dunne wrote 'Monster!' about this movie, which was entertaining, but nothing so special. But they had been pretty fantastic with 'Panic in Needle Park', and really did their field work on it. At one of Didion's readings, she talked about hanging out with the junkies on the Upper West Side and seeing them shoot up. Although their best might be 'True Confessions', based on his novel.

I agree. Then there was the DeMille silent of 'The Ten Commandments', but I don't know anybody who has seen it to compare to the 50s blockbuster we all know. In that TV movie category were the bios of Frances Farmer with Jessica Lange (film) and Susan Blakely. I believe the film was supposed to have changed some basic facts about Farmer's life, which I don't find appropriate for that kind of film, but I imagine hers was the stronger performance. Then there's the famous early teleplay of 'Days of Wine and Roses', then made into the Lee Remick/Jack Lemmon film. I didn't see the teleplay, but maybe someone did--hard to imagine the original was actually better than the film, but I think Piper Laurie was in it, so it was probably good all the same. Edited to add: I just found that NYPL has a copy of the silent Ten Commandments, and so I'll report on it soon. There's also the 4 versions of 'Les Liaisons Dangereuses', the Vadim/Moreau, the Close/Malkovich/Pfeiffer and the French miniseries with Deneuve/Kinski/Rupert Everett/D. Darrieux. The latter I far prefer to the others, as might be expected, but in addition to my prejudices, they got it French enough without being just sort of trivial, the way the Vadim was. (There seem to be more than 4, but the 4th one was also from 1989, with Bening/Firth, and I've not seen it, usually called 'Valmont')

But you can see it on video, I remember watching it about 10 years ago and remember little of it now. Just checked: yes, vhs and dvd, 97 minutes worth. She's all right, and I thought she was excellent in 'Reversal of Fortune'. I agree that an opera sounds right, and someone should maybe still try to do it. I'd rather see Babs, but the acting may be more important if anything is to be salvaged or made truly worthwhile here.

Actually, I didn't know about this story, papeetepatrick. The . was a tribute to a number of cheapo remakes -- often "made for tv" -- which I've forgotten in detail, but recall vividly as a type. Oh yes, the endless fact-based movies and so on. And it goes the other way around, too, with Charlize Theron in 'Monster', which story of Aileen Wuornos had been done in the early 90s with Jean Smart (I saw only the TV one, 'Overkill: The Aileen Wuornos Story", which can't have been as good, but Ms. Smart was pretty sharp, as usual.) The one I was referring to was the Streisand/Kristofferson remake of 'A Star is Born', in case anybody missed that. John Gregory Dunne and Joan Didion ran into all manner of horror in the working-up of a script to this, and got out of it with a huge settlement. Dunne tells the story, leaving out some of the ego-details, which there would have to have been.

Actually, I didn't know about this story, papeetepatrick. The . was a tribute to a number of cheapo remakes -- often "made for tv" -- which I've forgotten in detail, but recall vividly as a type. Oh yes, the endless fact-based movies and so on. And it goes the other way around, too, with Charlize Theron in 'Monster', which story of Aileen Wuornos had been done in the early 90s with Jean Smart (I saw only the TV one, which can't have been as good, but Ms. Smart was pretty sharp, as usual.) The one I was referring to was the Streisand/Kristofferson remake of 'A Star is Born', in case anybody missed that. John Gregory Dunne and Joan Didion ran into all manner of horror in the working-up of a script to this, and got out of it with a huge settlement. Dunne tells the story, leaving out some of the ego-details, which there would have to have been.

Yes, thanks from me as well, miliosr, because you've written some very interesting things, none of which I knew, since I didn't even see the oriignal.

I dunno about Berry and Gyllenhaal, but I think the anonymous producer is right and there is little chance that the stage version as performed will come to the screen. There may be something to the retro 70s idea, though. How about Jake and Stevie Nicks?. But when you include the upcoming 'Nine' in the crop, his reasoning may not be so apparent: I think 'Nine', though to me light-years better than 'Sunset Boulevard' (the Lloyd Webber version), is going to be far less accessible to younger audiences than Norma Close/Streisand/Streep. I mean--what do they know of any of the announced casting possibilities except Penelope Cruz and Zeta-Jones? Love the quote from Ms. Smith, though. I wish we could know if it's an exact quote, because the 'Oh please. Forget the musical. It's not going to happen' is hilarious, and sounds slightly inebriated as quoted, since he doesn't seem to literally mean that 'it's not going to happen' in some form or other. I can't say I personally find the disco era thing very appealing, and Halle Berry doesn't make sense, but Jake Gyllenhaal is truly a wonderful idea if they go on and do the basic show as is. I knew 90s kids who went to the B'way show and went on and on and 'how wonderful' it was. I mean, face it, Lloyd Webber shows are all easy, kids have all seen them who have come as tourists with their parents, so that the only reason I think he might have a point is that 'Sunset Boulevard' didn't run as long as expected, and not nearly as long as 'Cats' and 'Phantom'. When you're talking about names as big as these ladies, all of whom would surely enjoy doing it, it doesn't sound as though it would be shelved in its current form. But we'll see, hopefully soon, as it's not worth this much fuss!

Bart--'A Star is Born' is the perfect example of Remake Improvement and Remake Decay (I assume the 's were about the 2nd remake, which is truly a phenomenon, especially when you read, in John Gregory Dunne's account in 'Quintana and Friends', how thrilling it was to get off the project.

I would like to know how Nureyev's sex life made him a great artist? I know it made him dead. I took this to be Leigh speaking tongue-in-cheek, which he does so well. Leigh? When I posted the above I had just read Segal's article and I was extremely irritated by it, so much so that I missed the irony in Leigh's comment. My apologies. Someone's sex life does tell us about what makes them a great artist when it is obviously libido that goes into all kinds of artistic artistry, and there is not even always even any gap in someone like Nureyev between aspects of their sexuality and their art. Other dancers too, he was just more flamboyant, I think that's cool enough and that his wildness of sexuality should have been part of what made him unique. In any case, it's not possible that it would not. Of course, details of it are unnecessary for that art and this then forms a new more pornographic field. I believe it is in Suzanne Farrell's 'Holding on to the Air' that she says something about how neither she nor Balanchine were especially interested in sex. So the libido gets redirected effectively--this doesn't mean Farrell didn't come across as very sexy sometimes, but it was a different sort of sexuality one would see with a dancer like her than with someone like Nureyev who did go to the Eagle's Nest and did go to the piers on the Hudson. So what? I did too. But Bart is right about the way everybody in the Arts knew about Nureyev's sexual adventuring in the 70s--at least in New York. There were photos bandied about, he was seen frequently in racy places (by me among others), this was all even more well-known to me through friends of Nureyev by about 1973 onward in a good bit of detail, and even before that people talked about it. I haven't read these articles, and don't see Nureyev especially as a 'sociopath' or 'psychopath' even if all or most of the details written about his sex life are true. But I see little reason to expect new documents on any famous people to be discreet and tasteful, that's not what they're about, they're about selling to current tastes for gossip, of course. On the other hand, things like Norman Mailer's 'Portrait of Picasso as a Young Artist' shows you a way of dealing with this kind of genius celebrity-artist that also does not cover up his faults. Picasso was clearly an incredibly selfish person in some of his actions even early on, and I haven't gotten to his middle and later years. What he did in terms of his cowardice in terms of Apollinaire is quite as reprehensible as possible. It is a peculiar contradiction that sometimes the greatest artists' ruthlessness may be what makes their particular art possible, it is all definitely a part of what goes into the art. It is possible to try to overlook this because of an artist's greatness, but this is more wishful IMO than anything else, because you don't find out the full range of what went into making this exceptional being. It is necessary to accept that one has to live with the uncomfortable, unresolved contradictions. Mind you, not that I think the contemporary way of explicating every single drop of sweat and cheap pop-song synthetic-romance baubles is admirable, but I don't take it as seriously as some do. Ultimately, the Mailer books on Monroe and Picasso are higher-toned versions of the same thing. It's probable that most of us involved in the Arts think that artists deserve some special privileges and immunity from intrusion. I often feel this, but do know it is pretty much unrealistic, simply because that immunity has been steadily eroding and anyone can get arrested for almost anything, much less gossipped about. But I think the healthiest way to look at Nureyev's promiscuity is to see it as a part of his adventurous artistry: People going on endlessly about his 'animalism' and 'raw sensuality' didn't pull it out of nowhere; to say otherwise is only to repudiate something very fundamental about Nureyev's very character, but which is to me a mostly positive kind of energy, but this is often done with sex when it gets into some of the less conventional practices (I don't mean homosexuality so much as public sex and promiscuity--and these don't work at all outside very free zones). Now someone on this board mentioned, during that discussion of Simone Clarke and the BNP, that Nureyev had 'knowingly infected partners with HIV', but without any proof of this. If that part is true, then that is a different story, as no one can really expect such to be excusable. Personally, I don't believe that is probable, and don't think Nureyev would have done this. I asked a few people who might have known, and they agreed--however, I can't say that I know for sure about this. I do think that in the early 90s, people still were not as highly tuned to carefulness as they have steadily become over the years since the beginning of the AIDS epidemic, and that there are periods in which people are more careful vacillating with other periods of greater strictness.

Yes, but I love the music.

Maybe not, if you go back especially--as with 'Showboat,' which didn't need to be remade since the first was so good, but the remake was equally interesting and has far more fans, I think. Remakes of Raymond Chandler have sometimes been at least as good, and brought out other attributes of the same material: 'Farewell, My Lovely' with Mitchum and Rampling from the mid 70s is wonderful, even though 'Murder, My Sweet', based on the same material, was excellent too, with Powell and Trevor. Garbo remade 'Anne Christie' after her own silent version (one of the few of her films I've never seen, but I've heard it's good), and the talkie, her first, is an important classic, much better known than the first. Although Claudette Colbert is generally a better actress than Lana Turner, the 1958 remake of 'Imitation of Life' is far more powerful and popular than the early 30s original with Ms. Colbert, IMO, has more dimension and much more imagination in the use of colour, which is still striking here. Usually, they're probably not as good, even when the author, as Stephen King, wants to remake his own work, in this case, 'The Shining' because he disliked what Kubrick had done, although I thought Kubrick just improved King's material. 'Born Yesterday', 'Sabrina', 'State Fair', 'Breathless' are just a few off the top of my head that are vastly inferior to superlative originals or earlier versions, but I do think it varies. Remakes should be done if the original was truly dreadful for identifiable reasons, and those problems are then possible to largely solve. However, it is true that most remakes are of something that was already good to begin with. 'Moulin Rouge' barely resembles the glorious original with Jose Ferrer and Zsa Zsa Gabor, so my disliking it may have nothing to do with whether that one is a remake or not. I can think of a number of movies that could only be improved in the remake. Yeah, sure, miliosr, tell us how horrible the remake is--I love a good diatribe of a horrible movie.

I think I see Patricia McBride talking to Reid Olsen in that rather grainy video 'The Art of the Classical Pas de Deux' made in 1986 in Los Angeles. They're doing 'Tchaikovsky Pas de Deux', and he's not really the ideal partner, or it looks somewhat as though we're getting a filmed rehearsal (even if 4th or 5th or so), so in this case it could have been making the best of a not great situation. Would be interested if someone else noticed this, as I don't remember seeing it in live performance, although it may well have been going on.

I think I'm beginning to see the light! Glenn Close IS Norma Desmond! Totally delusional, in terms of not having quite as much talent as she thinks she has, doing Nellie Forbush on television 25 years too old and also not being able to sing a lick with actual real songs...plus making the audience in 'Meeting Venus' hear her do Wagner before TeKanawa dubbed her so it would be more authentic--eh bien, of course it was authentic: The audience was wide-eyed, in a state of Central Nervous System Shock...and yet somehow loathe to applaud...I think she is fully capable of embodying the Full Odium of Norma Desmond, since she always thinks to herself 'I AM big. It's Meryl who got small...' Come on, I want a big fat mess of vaudeville trashing. Gimme Babs any day, she got da Chops!

Thanks, glebb--I woud be fine with their not making this, but I would have also been fine with not ever making almost any Lloyd Webber show, whether on stage or film. I hated 'Evita', the movie and 'Phantom' from 2004 is just putrescent. Since they're going to, I'd still like to see Streisand do some big old-fashioned singing once more (at least), because she still can, and in that appalling 'Meet the Fockers' proves that she doesn't mind really getting vulgar and grubby if necessary. I wouldn't care if she didn't pull off some of the part, because this show is never going to replace the great Swanson/Von Stroheim original in any way--so I guess I'm just looking for something enjoyable. The show is of no other interest to me, although I might see it if Streep does get it. She sings pretty well and might make something of it, in her 'there goes Meryl's technique again' way. No fan of Glenn Close, and think she can't sing, period--ran Lupone out of B'way role, as is well known. I doubt Liz Taylor is in shape to do any kind of big part, so don't you think that was just a little feature and bit of publicity? At least they're not considering Helena Bonham Carter.

http://www.keralanext.com/news/?id=1071368 However, this is almost the movie itself, without making it. Even if she could get through scenes, she's been away from acting too long, would just camp it up. This Liz talk may just be talk.

http://www.baltimoresun.com/entertainment/...0,2043342.story I put this here out of superstition in hopes that Ms. Streisand can pull this coup off. As far back as July, 2005, from things I just Googled, there was talk that Glenn Close had already edged Barbra out. Now Meryl Streep is in the running. But I want Barbra to get it, because she's lived an eccentric enough life to be able to embody Norma quite well (those 4 houses now comprising part of the Barbra Streisand Conservancy in Malibu that she lived in in the Jon Peters years sound strange enough..), and she alone could really do something with those songs, having recorded a couple. Anybody else in our Musical Comedy Department have any fingers to cross on this one?