papeetepatrick

http://www.imdb.com/gallery/granitz/2547/E...?hint=nm0000849 I wasn't familiar with Bardem. I don't know anything about his acting, but he has definitely got THE LOOK. It may be a little too primordial for Guido, but I think most of us could live with it.

I think we disagree on this, because I wish it were true as I believe you mean it, and you may believe it is. I think Marshall McLuhan knew what he was talking about with 'The Medium is the Message', and I think media is becoming culture more and more. Many young people are as interested in the iPod as they are in what's on it. In other words, I think media affects and alters content immeasurably, and therefore culture. All you have to do is look at what TV has done.

I wasn't thinking, since I didn't see La Vie en Rose, yes, obviously they will use Cotillard for Folies Bergere.

This is great news, although I like lining up Penelope Cruz and Sophia Loren better than I do Catherine Zeta-Jones. Mary Stuart Masterson sounds great in the revival recording, but not big enough name by now, I guess--would probably kill them to use her, although she'd be great. Oh well, neither is Ms. Zeta-Jones, according to the T-Mobile people, who finally fired her--I couldn't bear when she'd say 'Get more...' at the end. Sounds as though we may get more non-dancing and more dumbed-down choreography, if they'd throw about Bob Fosse's contributions so cavalierly, in order to let Renee Zellweger do what amounted to little more than a buck dance. Will be interesting if they get someone as interesting as Liliane Montevecchi for the 'Folies Bergere' number. I guess we have 'Dreamgirls' and 'Hairspray', with their enormous financial successes, to thank for the new developments in musicals on film.

Does content have to be a consideration? The intention here, as far as I can tell, was to find out if people are picking up anything at all between two covers. Also, no matter what people like Jason Epstein say about people wanting the sensation of holding a book, e-books, like e-commerce is making its way. As long as there are libraries, even people who don't want to spend money on books can avoid e-books, but I have gotten totally used to reading all the big newspapers online, having to pay only the annual TimesSelect fee, the rest free. I don't like it that much, but it's money I have to use elsewhere. So maybe this is , but it's certainly pertinent to such discussions, insofar as it does become important to find out if people are still 'picking up anything at all between two covers'. E-books aren't between two covers, and I've read only things, one or two, that I could not get elsewhere--some Dutch Fairy Tales, etc. Every time I read, as recently, that e-commerce has slowed down its rate of growth and that brick-and-mortar stores are now trendy again even with e-shoppers, I am glad to hear it, but I don't know if there is any reason to think that it is more than a trend. Already, some of the best sci-fi novels, like those of Neal Stephenson, have the highest class being the only one to read its newspapers in paper form--100 issues printed per day from an ancient 100-year-old press. Everyone else gets varying degrees of the virtual.

Naturally, I feel just the opposite, both about Travolta and Audrey Hepburn (who I think made the movie really work--no offense to Julie Andrews fans, and obviously this is only personal taste--she's wonderful in 'The Sound of Music' and 'Mary Poppins'--but I don't see her as a great film star after those two films--and my vote for idiocy goes to most of Denby's writing, which I've always hated, he of the original chorus of 'Paulettes.' In any case, the 'My Fair Lady' lines were long ago drawn, and I think bringing it up again is especially tedious of Denby.) At any rate, I think this is the best film adaptation of a Broadway show since 'Hair', most likely. The material and score are lightweight, but they're directed, choreographed and sung and performed by such a superb cast with imaginative editing and sets that somehow it all comes together in an inspired way that not a single other American musical I've seen in the recent decades even approaches, except maybe 'Yentl', but that was made for the screen. (The one recent musical I've seen that is also superlative is not American, France's 'Pas Sur la Bouche' from 2003, and stupidly, never shown anywhere except at festivals. It's brilliant.) I had seen and enjoyed the show at the Hollywood Pantages in the National Company in 2004, don't remember who did Edna, but these kids in the movie were all good, all the pretty cute ones, all the fat cute ones--and they can all do their jobs, which is a lot more than can be said for any of the leads in 'Chicago', who then got awarded for it. I can't speak for 'Dreamgirls', but this 'Hairspray' was also light-years beyond 'Rent', pretty much DOA; and no mention even for such drek as that 'moulin Rouge' thing with animation and Nicole Kidman. The first hour is absolutely hilarious, one thing after another, Travolta is funny, Tracy is funny, all the kids are funny, then there is the march, and we get a chance to come down from that much of a high after all that excitement, so that we can enjoy a big climax of giant Hairspray tubes and multicultural dancing. The score is much more attractive than I remembered it from the show, but this kind of show in which you are trying to recreate styles of songs gone by, works primarily, in the case of the score, within the show and within the show only, because, when pressed, almost anyone would rather hear the original songs from which these imitator-songs were derived (shows like 'Grease' come to mind, for which I cared little on B'way or onscreen). Still, 'Welcome to the Sixties' and 'You're Timeless to Me' rang a clear bell--the latter which was, as I recall, a sort of soft-shoe thing in the stage version. But I've literally never thought about the show again. The movie, was for me, therefore, a radical improvement on both the stage musical and even the original movie. I don't take this sort of show seriously in terms of social message--of course, even though 'Gentleman's Agreement' had great people like Kazan and Moss Hart, not to mention a stellar cast, it does go back to 1947, and yet is still very intelligent about the subject of bigotry (in that case anti-semitism), and 'Hair' is a lot more persuasive in the social-protest mode and has a much more powerful score with songs that work within the show and also outside it--they are not so derivative. (I need to remember to put 'Hair' on my 'musical score' thread, because I think it's one of the greatest ever written, and sounds like no other.) But still, since 'Tommy' and 'Hair', I'm hard-pressed to think of Broadway shows that have been so perfectly adapted (actually, 'Tommy', may not have preceded the Ken Russell film as a show, but rather the Who's rock opera...I don't know all the pre-history at the moment, and didn't keep up with the B'way stagings that came later.) I have not read many of the mainstream reviews, but while I love Travolta and Queen Latifah and James Marsden andZac Efron and Amanda Bynes and Nikki Blonsky PLUS a great bit with Jerry Stiller (!), the ones I read did not concentrate on Michelle Pfeiffer. I remember thinking what a strange casting choice--and yet, for me, she steals the show. They try to make her a hag and a bitch, and can only succeed with the latter. She is hilarious, has true diva creds by now, and I leave it to someone else to tell me if she did her own singing. I simply had no idea she could do this kind of thing. And with all that attempt to make her into the Evil Plastic Selfish Harridan, they cannot cover up the fact that she is still probably the most beautiful of all the current Hollywood stars. I mean, I did not go to see this expecting to 'discover' Michelle Pfeiffer--but now that I have, I can just see either Glenn Close or Nicole Kidman not managing to pull off half of what she did. It was either a much enlarged role from the stage show, or she brought it to life, because I only see a shadow or two when I look back to the show, only a few years ago. Edited to add: I think I'll slightly retract some of the 'social tolerance' part as regards to 'Hairspray'. While it's not bad on racism, so many others have been so much more profound it's mostly just a pleasantry here. However, it does have something to say on 'fattism' or whatever the term for intolerance of fatness. Lord knows, I have to work at this far more than racism or sexism or any of the other intolerances, although I don't think I've ever done anything overtly hurtful in front of someone overweight.

Talk of Henry Miller made me think of Lawrence Durrell, whom he admired greatly. I read 'Justine' in high school and part of 'Balthazar' as well. They seemed very difficult at the time, more difficult than Faulkner. Two years ago I began at the beginning of 'Balthazar' and then read 'Mountolive' and 'Clea'. I think it is a wonderful work, romantic, sensuous and sensual--and you get a vision of an exotic city that you wouldn't have otherwise, because Durrell's Alexandria has been barely there at all for decades by now, the Europeans and Jews expelled largely after the 1952 Egyptian Revolution and during the Suez Crisis of 1956. Like dirac, I don't do too much rereading, usually it will be something difficult like Faulkner's 'The Sound and the Fury', which I did do, and hope to schedule a rereading of Joyce's 'Ulysses', especially because I find 'Sirens' the most beautiful section, and also the most difficult. I also reread Capote's 'Other Voices, Other Rooms', which made him famous and which he never, in my opinion, quite equalled, although 'Breakfast at Tiffany's' is very special too--and anybody who loves the movie ought to read the story to understand who the real Holly Golightly was. Somehow, the movie works wonders anyway and is full of incredible magic, but the ending is a well-known enormous compromise. The film of 'Other Voices, Other Rooms' is simply unspeakably bad, though, easily one of the worst films ever made. Edited to add: I just remembered I also read about half of John O'Hara's Hollywood novel 'The Big Laugh' in high school as well, and got around to going all the way through it in 2005 as well. You don't hear too much about him these days, but I think he's one of the fine American novelists.

Robert Garis, in his memoir "Following Balanchine," describes her as "brilliantly intelligent, articulate, and self-aware as an artist and as a woman, and as charming, chic, open, and warm as her stage persona." Oh yes, Violette hadn't immediately sprung to mind, but yes, she too was/is spectacularly articulate. Unfortunately, I only saw her dance once. It was a wonderfully expressive voice, too, full of energy.

Melissa Hayden in the '6 Balanchine Ballerinas' was excellent in describing Balanchine in terms of the music and dance being one, and how her body was stretched/elongated after she began to work with him.

It's not really surprising, some of these things, except things like really thinking 'Martin Luther King freed the slaves' (because that's also not entirely untrue, but it's not the sense in which there is the common knowledge). One of the places where you find this out is in the area of current students--undergrad, grad, and also even professors--in theory and philosophy: They know far more than most on this board about all the classical and modern philosophers, but few would know who Nijinsky was, and really only a few Nureyev, and only the New York ones would know of Farrell and Balanchine and Graham. And yet they know Irigaray and they know Goodchild and they know Hardt & Negri and they know Badiou, and they also usually know the same major literary people that people at BT are aware of. They usually do know the great classical composers--which proves the much greater mobility of music than dance, due to mechanical reproduction: there's a sense in which CD's and records are more 'like music' than videos and DVD's of ballet are 'like dance'. Dance you really need to see live, or at least you need to see a good bit of it live. Point being that many people interested in classical philosophy and literature, and occasionally music, will follow the more popular trends when it comes to culture--and this goes for music too, the classical philosophy or literature student almost always knows much more about pop music and everything new in those realms. they do keep up with all television and movies, no matter how this goes against the grain of all their readings of Hegel, Aristotle, Heraclitus, Nietzsche, Fuller, Sartre, Derrida, Deleuze, you name it--they want to go to Goth clubs and they want to listen to Noise music. There's a weird sense in which the classical philosophers are not identified with aristocracy or ruling class esthetics, and there is a great sense that classical music is (although with the exceptions I've noted) and classical ballet is hardly even given a nod, it's considered so elitist.

I agree, except the ballerina's choreography. That's enough to redeem it. That's another one I see mostly in terms of Suzanne Farrell, but I don't think it's at all boring as a work the way I do 'In Memory Of...' , especially if you're seeing the whole 'Jewels'. I don't think it works nearly as well by itself, whereas 'Emeralds' does, but not if it's badly cast, as on the DVD using Merrill Ashley, who looks so strange and struggling-so-hard-to-reach-it dewy-eyed student in it. Farrell has a hard balancing act (I don't mean when she was dancing), one might say. There's wanting to be devoted to the Balanchine work, which she never abandons her faith in, and there's the fact that she's a star no matter what. There's a singularly non-commercial integrity that she's supposed to represent, but I used to go to see her a good bit in the 80s, so it could be said that 'Farrell sold me more tickets than any other dancer did.' Why not? Somebody had to sell them, and I wanted to see her at that period, and did. I think 'Diamonds' gives the impression of beginning to exist outside time so that extremely intense space begins to become more emphasized than time. This idea is found in many places, and one of these is in 'Parsifal', where Gurnemanz sings about it. I don't believe anybody will ever be fully inhabit 'Diamonds' the way Farrell did. Instead, there needs to be a new choreographer and some new works and new dancers that get up to that level on their own, instead of expecting Balanchine to ever reach the heights he did when both he and Farrell were working together. Farrell and Balanchine and Diamonds are too singular a thing to be able to reproduce truly fully--although I certainly think it should be attempted, and that some of the failures may be wonderful. I probably see their 'Diamonds' as like a piece of unique sculpture, almost, maybe more than other ballets--even more than 'Mozartiana', which I can imagine someone else finally ascending to.

That's another one that proves Bart's part of these points--the dancer transforming the ballet, although I think Coppelia is quite charming. But Pat McBride in Balanchine's 'Coppelia' is one of the most delicious things I've ever seen, and Peter Schaufuss as Franz in the National Ballet of Canada was pretty smashing.

Absolutley. Exception always can be made for a truly extraordinary -- or historic -- cast. For example, I was totally absorbed while watching the 1960 video of Pas de Quatre with Alonso, Hayden, Slavenska and Kaye. They say that a great actor can make reading the phone book spell-binding -- so why not certain dancers? This made me think of 'In Memory Of...' which I loved the one time I saw it because of Farrell, and only because of Farrell. I would never be interested in seeing it again, and would not even really have wanted to see it with her more than once. But other discussions like 'The Dancer or the Dance' come to mind too, in which people were talking about the work coming first. I think it definitely works both ways, with both good and bad works. I know that I have very often gone to see certain dancers rather than keeping the image of the holy work before me in all-hallowed awe. I obviously will never achieve the inner circle of balletomanes, because I don't like 'Giselle' much even with Makarova and Baryshnikov in it (well, maybe the once.) I also do like anything with Nureyev and Fonteyn in it, literally anything with the two together (yes, I would have liked them in 'Giselle'). A number of people find Macmillan's 'Romeo and Juliet' boring, I see, but that never occurred to me when I saw the Czinner movie. I also saw a bunch of 'R & J's done by the Stuttgart one summer, and they may have also done the 'Dame aux Camellias' that someone else had found boring. Marcia Haydee was doing it a good bit then, but I still found it boring. Some ballets like 'Raymonda' also depend for me on the company and production, as I am not entranced by this ballet nor with its score. 'Don Quixote' is pretty corny, but if there are some spirited dancers like Ananiashvili in it, I don't mind.

I loved 'Watermill' and saw it only once. But I think I associate it totally with Villella--I don't think it would interest me to see anyone else in it.

I also find 'Glass Pieces' and 'Songs of the Auvergne' boring, and all but a split-second or so of 'Friandises' is boring.

I find 'Mayerling' boring and also hate it.

God, i SO HATE that bed WANDERING AROUND BY ITSELF!!!. ..For some weird reason, everytime i have to get throught it i can't stop thinking about "The Exorcist"!!!! I like the bed. It's a sort of realism that is so out of place it's striking and even surreal. It looks like there'll be real human-type sleeping there, although insomnia problems do come to mind, as they sometimes have when I've seen TV couples shutting out the lights and turning on their sides away from each other in too small a double bed. Also, don't object to the angels, but maybe I just don't know 'Nutcracker' well enough. I did mention somewhere else that I don't like the way Aurora snatches the roses out of hands in the Rose Adagio, at least the way Viviana Durante does it. I haven't seen enough productions to know if this is traditional, instead of to take them more gently as I would have expected.

Yes, it is, and interestingly, to me it is for the same reasons I think 'South Pacific' works, right down to replacing Mary Martin with a purer voice. But the location shooting, while technically better than in 'south pacific' mostly, is better-known to most people who would see it; and while it looks beautiful, I don't think Austria is as hard to evoke onstage as a South Pacific island (even though the actual islands, 'vanikoro' etc., from the book, were in the New Hebrides, and the real Bali H'ai, acc. to Michener is/was a filthy village in the Solomon Islands that is still off-limits to all but the most intrepid, etc., he just liked the sound of the name). Actually, there were some noteworthily good reviews of 'South Pacific' (Bosley Crowther mainly praises it, including even the colorizing to some degree) and people did like it at the time, though not in a phenomenal way like 'The Sound of Music'. Anyway, some locations are still more remote and less amenable to importation than others--Polynesian restaurants outside the islands themselves, long in bad odour, still are; but you can find a very satisfying Schnitzel with Noodles in most large cities.

I think it depends on the material. For example, "Cabaret" on film is quite a bit different than "Cabaret" on stage. Good point about 'Cabaret', but it's not an example of score-cutting, is it? I saw them both and didn't notice any songs gone, but then I'd only thought a couple were particularly distinguished anyway. In any case, the public knew only 'Cabaret' and 'Wilkommen' as well-known songs. By contrast, most knew before seeing the film of 'South Pacific' that they could look forward to 'Some Enchanted Evening', 'Younger than Springtime', 'Happy Talk', 'Bali H'ai', 'Wonderful Guy', 'Wash that Man Right Outta my Hair', and 'There is Nothing Like a Dame'. There is constant loathing of this adaptation, which I find exaggerated, even though I know the colorized stuff in parts of it is a little ridiculous, given that it was filmed near Tahiti, etc.. Fact is, that movie is perfectly cast, and Mitzi Gaynor, who never really gives another important performance, brings a perfect new freshness to things like 'Cockeyed Optimist' that Mary Martin's voice did not possess--no 'all-American girl' there in the purest vocal sense. Rosanno Brazzi was well-dubbed by Giorgio Tozzi and was at his hottest--so much so he was even featured in the somewhat biologically-oriented documentary 'Mondo Cane' (which even now is one of the most bizarre films ever made, what with 'More' without words in different variations almost turning it into a form of freak musical), as the necessary Italian to succeed Valentino (there were some generations in between that the film didn't cover, but nevermind). So that sometimes new casting, however controversial, will transform the musical from the stage, even if you disagree with me about 'South Pacific' (most do, but I think its strengths far outweigh its weaknesses, and it does successfully convey the magic of Polynesia--which I am sure has never even been remotely done in a single stage production of this show. It had been a very expensive show, and took its toll on everybody in the B'way production, as I recall, and so they then did the pleasant but banal Harold Rome show about summer camp, I believe, 'Wish You Were Here'.) Thanks, both sidwich and glebb, for mentioning 'Good News'. I'm going to order it up forthwith.

See your point, but don't think massive cuttings of really good scores is the way to do it. I'd rather end up with a slightly museum feel than see fine songs get cut out. I keep harping on the most unforgivable, 'On a Clear Day You Can See Forever'. Many don't like 'Gypsy', the movie, as much as I do, but they only cut 'Together' from it as far as I can tell. I think 'Cabaret' kept most of its songs, but, although it's considered a fine film, I'm not a big fan of Kander and Ebb, and so I wouldn't have much cared if they had wanted to leave some of those songs out. There are more, but things like 'Louisiana Purchase', that I really had no idea of before seeing the movie I can find more acceptable with their song cuttings, because I don't have a preconceived idea. Indeed some of the R & H and L & L shows do transfer to the screen slightly moribund, but those scores were probably too well-known by people all over the country who didn't see the B'way show, that it wasn't really an option to leave out those songs. I think one of the reasons 'Hello, Dolly!' does work for me is that do such a good job of the score, even though I don't consider Herman to be one of the greatest composers of musicals. But it's true: not only the well-known classics like 'Band Wagon' and 'Singin' in the Rain', but the Judy Garland 'A Star is Born' do have a specialness that films like, say, 'Carousel', simply do not (at least in the sense of seeing something really new.)

http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/arts/AP-Dancer-Charged.html Strange.

Yes, it seems that way until you remember that there many instrumentalists and singers who definitely can be said to be 'unmusical' while even being called musicians! so the stretch is not very far to the plenty of dancers who can do the basics of keeping beats more or less--but so can amateur orchestras and high school bands. My point only that there are myriad levels to what is real musicality in a dancer, including the lower echelons of 'not being very musical', if there are in instrument players and singers as well.

Thanks, glebb! I think this is the only thing I've seen that you haven't, and it was pretty wonderful, especially Dorothy Collins in 'Losing My Mind' and perhaps even more, with John McMartin, in 'Too Many Mornings', which I sometimes think may be Sondheim's most beautiful song.

That was all terrific, but if you have favourites among the scores and composers and lyricists, feel free to tell us that too. You certainly have seen more than anybody I know!

I dont know why I originally forgot what is one of my all-time favourite scores--Arlen's gorgeous 'House of Flowers', with 2 Ladies in De Shade, Sleepin' Bee, Waitin', 'Slide, Boys, Slide', 'One Man Ain't Quite Enough'. They did an Encores! of it a few years ago, which I completely was unaware of, but since the book is a bit mild for some tastes, this one has not ever really caught as a cult show. But the score has always been a gold mine for singers--Capote said Diahann Carroll's beautiful 'Sleepin' Bee' was the best, but Streisand's elaborate one is also a masterpiece, and one of her best pieces of work. Arlen has another Caribbean-based score with Lena Horne in 'Jamaica'--this has some pleasant songs, but not quite up to Arlen's usual standard, and nowhere near up to standard of 'House of Flowers.' I see shows like 'My Fair Lady' as having the proper balance of tunes. If they're all good, as 'fair lady's' are, that's really what a musical is about. The recent pared-down book of 'Gypsy' shows what a huge score that one has, but that's what it's all about, those numbers.. The other extreme, very few songs, is well-illustrated by the movie version of 'Louisiana Purchase', which has only 2 or 3 songs from the original. Somehow they turned it into a good movie, but I don't know how they left out all those Irving Berlin songs from the original. I think 'One Touch of Venus' in film version has also left out a lot of songs, maybe someone else knows the original to verify this. The movie with Ava Gardner has 'Speak Low', of course, but I can't remember much else, and it's been some time since I saw it. Another discovery I made recently is Jule Styne's 'Subways are for Sleeping', with wonderful singing by Carol Lawrence and others. It didn't last too long, though, and I don't think has ever been revived. Phyllis Newman is also funny in it, this may be what she won Tony for.