papeetepatrick

Curious, though, since all the others would have followed from the platform, there's plenty of anti-semitism in the other Wagner even if not so overt-- 'Die Meistersinger' is my favourite of all operas! I guess the nicest thing for me to say is that I would not want to see Ms. Clarke's 'Giselle', because I feel about it the way your husband does about 'Die Meistersinger...' The parallel is both imperfect and perfect.

Not worked up at all, although I admit I'm bored. I was just trying to clarify, and most of my previous post does so. I said the BNP is evil, that's all. Even if I don't think Ms. Clarke herself was all that naive, I doubt she's got the time for serious evil, even if capable of it. That's done by all media all the time. If she were to use it properly, Ms. Clarke may have actually been saved by the Guardian guy, even if he was just being opportunistic. Non-liberal is all right. Fascist is different, although your point below about Ms. Fonteyn is good in that regard. Yeah, that's true, and I wasn't as aware of the others' leanings at the time they were happening--never knew about Nureyev's infecting of sex partners, which I did need to know. Still, if Clarke wants not to be guilty of the same thing, she can't stay in the BNP unless it's so important to her that it's the most important thing. Also, maybe it will blow over and ENB won't really think it's that terrible. Not because of the mere 'political views' themselves. But she needs to try to get out of the BNP, I would think, because things do not follow by the most desirable and noble logic. For example, Nureyev and Fonteyn are not more excusable for what they did, and maybe are even more culpable, but their higher profile did probably make it possible for their actions not to be questioned. I still think the Guardian article is something that could work to benefit a ballerina. In fact, it has to have done already. She knows what the risks are, if nothing else. I'm not that much of a moralizer. If she thinks the risk is worth it, then she will figure out what the stakes are. She might decide she cares more about her last few really good years of ballet.

I was just making the distinction between aurora's phrase 'fired for their political beliefs' and membership in an actual group. I think people defending Al Qaeda would probably not have to be a member of any org. to get in trouble just for expressing their support of them. I know I have no patience with any of them who do (including the rank 9/11 truth conspiracy nuts), but I think it's not necessarily illegal to say things supporting such terrorist groups, but that even without membership in supportive groups, it's likely that legal action might be taken. I did not suggest 'evil', I suggested 'fully aware', and after the several days since the Daily Mail, she has to be by now even if she wasn't when she joined. If nothing else, the Guardian article and expose educated her on the BNP if she somehow managed to know little about it from being a member. If I suggested she knew what she was doing and no longer think it's naive, that's certainly my prerogative and I stand by it. We did no such thing of taking a 'journalist's agenda as the word of law.' Most of us never even read the Guardian article, we just read the Daily Mail that Pamela gave us the link for. In that report, we read some direct quotes by Ms. Clarke and drew our conclusions from that. Technically she is if she is a member of the BNP. Or I thought that members of Fascist parties were Fascists. If they are not due to not knowing that they are members of a Nazi Party, then they can get out of the Fascist Party that they find themselves in when they do know. That's the problem: She doesn't seem to want to get out of the BNP, now knowing what they are (without question she now knows it unless she has so barricaded herself that somehow she still doesn't think they were anything but some party that stood for her immigration ideas). I hope so. Yes, they were using her, most likely. But does she at least know this by now? She might, as they are likely pretty rough. I didn't see anything restrained about it, for which I was glad. You could figure out more since she said a lot more than I would have under the circumstances. 'We' didn't ask for that, including myself. I said ENB is the only entity that has the rights and powers to weigh what needs to be done. If you read my posts, you would see that I don't care what they do because I think they would be the ones to know. I didn't condemn her as an artist, I said I wasn't interested. I am also not interested in the ballerina in the Universal Ballet whose marriage to the Reverend Moon's dead son's ghost, just because they have sometimes rented the NYState Theater. I also don't read writers I think are unintelligent, or pay attention to composers or instrumental soloists who I don't think are intelligent. I didn't doubt she could dance or she wouldn't be doing Giselle with any company. That's not the same as what I find to be an artist, but that's neither here nor there on this issue. I still think the Guardian expose was a good thing, because it may keep her from getting deeper into the BNP, and maybe she will be able to get out of it all the way.

If there were people in ENB who expressed pleasure at Al Qaeda's terrorist attacks and support for Bin Laden's organization, I can easily imagine you would find Miss Clarke calling for their resignation or even arrest (I probably would). Since these events happened rather recently, Fascists like herself (and she is an avowed Fascist if she is a member of BNP; now that we've discussed this, I don't believe any of the naivete business as I first did. I think she knew everything that she was getting into from the very beginning, or found out in quick order. Why on earth would anybody believe her? I don't believe a thing she's said) are given a little more leeway than they were in the past, so 'no matter how repugnant' is relative, I'm sure you'll see. I was interested that a great deal of searching by even the most fanatical balletomanes to find out about her dancing was a somewhat arduous matter. People here who go to the ballet nearly every night had sometimes not heard of her, and only one (who is in the UK, I think) had ever seen her perform. I don't think there's any serious principle behind preserving all sorts of liberal attitudes and policies in regard to her, as she herself is defending her right to be as intolerant as possible by joining a Nazi organization. I don't know how anybody could 'feel for her', and the story is really peevish and stupid. ENB should do whatever they feel like is best for the company. Maybe she brings in a lot of money as a 'lead harlot in Romeo and Juliet' as well as her Giselle, I don't know, but I sincerely doubt it, and definitely not now. It's not that big a deal that she got 'outed' by an undercover person. She's no Valerie Plame as far as I can see, and Robert Novak is still working WAPO. She should have been more careful and not gone around blabbing--after all, isn't the BNP a sacred trust to its members? ENB should therefore be a sacred trust unto itself. If they think she should be fired, I don't think philosophy has much to do with it, and philosophy will be proved not to have mattered if they go ahead and 'freeze her out'. It just doesn't matter that much beyond what is best for the company.

Why should her career be in jeopardy for making a choice to support a legal, if repugnant, political party in a free society? I was not talking about 'should', but whether she thinks it's worth it to choose BNP over ENB, which she may or may not be, in fact, doing. We have to wait and see what the concensus is going to be, whether management thinks it can absorb this. She may have made commitments to the BNP that are making her unable to move from what seems like an intransigent position. Yes, it can, and when you make choices like this, you have already chosen for something obviously ugly, and you have to pay the price for your mistakes, even if it's legal, unless it is decided otherwise. She is not a scapegoat, and could easily undo this (unless her involvement with BNP is somewhat more intense than we may imagine, in which case they could easily be good at intimidation. About this, nothing has been said yet). Otherwise, she is welcome to try and balance out BNP and the ballet world and see if nobody cares. If she will not be flexible, I don't have any way to gauge what ENB's policy will be on this. She hasn't less right, but not more either. If she doesn't recant, and this appalls management and they fire her, I don't think it's serious. If they don't fire her, I probably won't think it's all that serious, either, most likely. This is that difficult area of 'being tolerant of the intolerant'. It's pretty much a toss-up on that one, and I usually opt in favour of seeing that the intolerant--which is Ms. Clarke here (and her BNP) or she could not defend so vehemently a totally intolerant and moronic organization--does not deserve any more tolerance than she is capable of herself. She has chosen BNP and supports it as the organization of intolerance it is, but expects ENB to be an organization of tolerance, because that would be very convenient. Yes, including when to fire someone. I am not personally concerned, because I am not familiar with her. I only know I'd never be interested in her work, because I do not consider her to be an intelligent person. I find the policy at NYCB of ridiculous tempi in 'the Nutcracker' by Karoui and others--as beautifully explained to us by sz as to why this has been happening more and more, and how little the dancers are allowed to say anything about this--to be a far more urgent matter for ballet and its future than some dizzy bimbo who can't figure out what she wants (and 36 is not all that young.) Again, it's a question of tolerant people being asked to be tolerant and allow the intolerant the freedom to be intolerant. But it's not even the point if she has the right to continue to be stupid, which thus far she seems to want to be--because it is not possible that by now she has not been made fully aware of all the ramifications of the whole situation. It has to do with if she knows how to pull this number off, given that by now she must surely have been told what everybody else knows about the BNP, even if she did not bother to inform herself before. If by now, and fully informed (and how could she not be?), she thinks the choice for a holocaust-denying, overtly racist organization is the thing to stand by obstinately--and they do fire her-- then that's the breaks. Rumsfeld wasn't fired till the mid-terms were hugely lost by Republicans, and he would not have been had the results been otherwise. Yes, ENB will decide if and when she is 'inexpedient' to them. I don't think it's all that simple when a serious artist gets involved with an extremist organization that is overt about its hate. And calling the BNP 'honest' is absurd: It is like saying that people with racial bigotries who go ahead and say 'nigger,' 'kike', 'chink' and 'get whitey', etc., are being more 'honest' than people who also share these bigotries to some degree but have the social decency to keep the peace by shutting up and controlling themselves. The FBI got after Jean Seberg when she was involved with the Black Panthers, and she was a lot less involved with hateful politics than Ms. Clarke is.

Pamela--I think I agree with Helene about the use of this publicity. I know what you mean, but I think that publicizing this has helped in this case. It's true that no publicity is bad publicity--usually--but this is not good publicity for Ms. Clarke, and by now, even those 'foreign company members who never even heard of the BNP' have probably caught up with their lessons. I also agree with Beck Hen on 'contemporary apologies'--excellent, the kind of thing Frank Rich is always writing about.

She should shy away or not from discussing it, according to what she values most--her career or membership in a party that she didn't even bother to fully understand when she joined it. She talks in platitudes about 'I think I'm normal' and 'people like me who like Christmas.' I went through 9/11 quite directly myself, and that did not make me turn to Fascists like Griffin--or even to near-Fascists in non-Fascist parties that made themselves readily available. She probably has advisors telling her what is going to be the best damage control. If she wants to join a party that supports Holocaust denial and extreme racism of blacks in Britain itself, she should either have informed herself fully beforehand on what this might mean, or it should certainly come as little surprise that people are not going to fully embrace it, in fact, that they would obviously condemn it. Of course, it is all naivete, but you'd think she'd at least have 'asked around' about such a thing before expecting to have her cake and eat it too, in such a hugely controversial matter that does not reflect any group of ballet people I have ever heard of--even the ones stuck in very small towns are the ones who aren't into backward thinking, they are always the cosmopolitans. If she didn't know that it was quite possible she'd have to choose between BNP and ENB, then she is not quite mentally equipped enough to go it alone without a huge staff of advisers. Of course it does not, but it does go without saying that BNP is a Fascist organization, and her focus only on immigration and PNLU (People Not Like Us) probably indicates that she is trying to take the overwhelmingly obvious matter of what BNP actually is well-known to be and say 'well, they were doing pretty well with some issues that were important to me.' She thinks she can stop short of getting rid of her membership and not denouncing the party by trying to divert the attention to her little fears--fears which, incidentally, we all have. After some time in the BNP, it's impossible to imagine she didn't know what they were actually made of--or if she's become enlightened since being outed, how can she not know what they are? She's still got time to prove whether she's just naive, or whether she's just not very bright--because she'll never turn the ballet world into a BNP-loving special-interest group. Agree with GoCoyote, therefore, on most points. In other words, maybe it's less important what she did previously and then what she did 'in the discussion' than whether she gets smart enough to know that BNP is not the same as being Democratic, Republican, Green Party, Tory, Labour, or even Socialist Workers Party, etc.: It is the same as American Nazi Party, or at least closer to that than any of the mainstream or non-violent alternative parties--maybe like Jean-Marie le Pen, who also has been convicted for holocaust denial. She's not even an intellectual lightweight, much less anything more, so it is a little absurd for her to be taking a stubborn stance, and my guess is that she's probably trying to figure out how to get out of this with the least embarassment possible. I don't see why not. It doesn't somehow seem 'quintessentially British', frankly. The only thing that does is the way she uses some old phrases much like Margaret Thatcher's early campaigning in the late 70's like 'it just doesn't seem very British, does it?' which were playing to the bigotries of the day.What the Daily Mail says here sums it all up for me. If she didn't even know this much, then Pamela Moberg's term 'pathetic' definitely applies. 'Instead it [the current BNP] is led by a savvy Cambridge graduate in a suit. That leader, Nick Griffin, advocates the repatriation of Muslims, denies the Holocaust and believes that black footballers who represent the national team cannot be classed as English.'

I love it when people expect every aspect of their controversial behaviors to be respected in the name of celeb privacy--especially when it isn't all that private or she wouldn't even have gone on and on about immigration and how the BNP 'is honest'.(or somebody in the comments said, who cares) after she was 'outed'. I think I'd have a hard time watching Nikolaj Hubbe in 'Apollo' if I heard he'd just joined the KKK. I would be incapable of seeing it in any way but small and pinched, sort of a dime-store Apollo. I have a hard time with Tom Cruise and I thought it was because of the Scientology, but I don't have as hard a time with John Travolta, because he doesn't advertise it all the time and act loathsomely. It mainly makes her seem like a bore, especially howlers like 'In the end, nobody said anything about it at work,' she said. 'I think it's because there are a lot of foreign dancers who have probably never even heard of the BNP.' Is that deductive or inductive reasoning? I never have been able to keep them straight. Or just another aspect of her racism, here infantilizing the 'foreign dancers' who 'wouldn't know'? It's kinda like when some parts of the BNP manifesto were 'over her head.' Sounds sort of like a Britney or Paris story, replete with Power Couple. Pamela, I appreciate your seriousness, and always especially enjoy your lovely writing as you did at Christmas and many other times, so please excuse me for finding this a bit hilarious, even if ultimately I agree with you completely.

I made a Panettone from scratch last night and iced it with Marzipan, in honour of the kids in 'Nutcracker' and a few other things as well. The commercial sort is all right, but you can get this kind a bit moister, and it rises in this big dome shape, when you leave it at very low temperature in the oven before the serious baking. Happy Holidays, Ballet Talkers and Lurkers.

Flipsy and sz--Thanks so much for the tip on Kaplow. There's no way I'll forget that, and it will determine my next sojourn into 'the Nutcracker'--whether next week or next year. I'd usually want to choose by the cast, but at least the very next time, I want to see and hear what you've both described as what Kaplow helps bring about.

dirac--I must emphasize that this Afterword is entirely, radically different from any author reaction to a film treatment I've ever read. For one thing, he certainly didn't need to write it to sell the movie, and I'm sure it had very little effect on moviegoers, if any. When you read it, you see that he voluntarily wrote every word of it. He keeps living this story. The Afterword is a RAVE of the movie, and is as if he conceives of the story by now as much more what DePalma did with it than what he'd done with it 20 years before. I think not all authors (in fact, not even many) think of their fiction as 'living material' that is 'still growing' in this way. They may reassess it, but when they do, it is not usually as if the old completed work seems almost as if a sketch compared to what this New Genius (here DePalma) has done with it. It has to do with his personality, of which Helene has given some facets. I think you will see that all of it is enthusiasm and none of it courtesy, that he's just different, when you see the Afterword. If it helps for now, I couldn't believe what I was reading in the Afterword. It could also be that he is very convivial and that he struck up a relationship with the filmmakers and was made more of a part of the process than is usual. For myself, I can't get past half-rehearsed performances and hybrid weird ones like Swank's. I thought his approach to perceiving the new version was interesting, even though I had not thought the film was outstanding except that somehow Mia Kirchner in the within-film porn loops did capture the neediness of the Dahlia herself. Only that redeemed the film for me, and ironically, it was the most important thing as well. I thought Oprah was also wonderful in 'Beloved', and I agree, as before, that I had no idea what Morrison didn't like. I thought 'Beloved' was a beautiful movie.

I really didn't think I'd go through with this, but I'm glad I did. The Afterword, which I only noticed as I was finishing the novel was written by Ellroy on February 27, 2006! He praises the film in a way which demonstrates how differently authors feel about how their work is adapted. Truman Capote was always disgusted. I read 'Beloved' before seeing the film, and then was surprised at how faithful it was to the novel, or so I thought, and how much better I thought it was than critics I'd read had. Then I saw Toni Morison on Charlie Rose and she said they didn't get it right at all. All I can say is that they followed her text closely. In 'the Black Dahlia', Ellroy's text is given faithful treatment in terms of plot and character about 3/4 of the way through, then it's as though Friedman and DePalma smash an enormous lot of what remains to bits. It's not distorted with weird pieces of plot conjoined in new ways the way 'LA Confidential' was, but the characters are often nearly unrecognizable, which I'll mention presently. But Ellroy is a different sort of bird, with all this emotion about his mother and the Dahlia, and this book, which he calls his 'signature book' was clearly worth all the trouble of reading a 4th long Ellroy novel: It's far greater than the others, because Elizabeth Short was real and inspired as well as inspiring. He's talking about the movie 20 years after he wrote the book I'd just finished, and which as an object at a distance I could see no comparison at all: The book is a thousand times greater than the film, and not just in the matter of changes. Ellroy looks back, unlike Chandler and MacDonald, who have a romanticism and elegance due to writing about things that were happening within the periods in which they were written. What he mainly offers more of is not more insight into detectives in SoCal or detective novels, but about the LAPD and intricate detailing of police corruption and police work. He thinks Josh Hartnett is perfect as Bucky Bleichert, for example! That it's a 'trinity' of Bleichert/Ellroy/DePalma. That's why this mind-blowing Afterword Ellroy wrote for the edition to accompany the movie's release ought to be read by anyone who found the movie interesting. And if you read the book, it's simply nearly unbelievable; but if the film interested you, then read the Afterword even if you don't read the novel (only in the 2006 edition, as mentioned.) Characters such as Madeleine (played by Hilary Swank) are infinitely more developed and complex in the book and her outcome is not even vaguely similar to what happens in DePalma's film. Ellroy's mother, also murdered, however lived a few blocks from 39th and Norton when the Dahlia was murdered and his parents constantly discussed and 'lived' the case. He talks in the Afterword of continuing to work on this fusion he's been obsessed with for years between the two murdered women, and how he loved the unknown one while repudiating the wayward parent, murdered by a man who had just raped her. This is a rare opportunity to see how a writer views his own work and how this work was always kept alive long after it was published and marketed. It does make you see the film differently, but I don't really like it any more than I did when I first saw it, nor do I think it is a fine work as I do the book. I am not emotionally involved with it as Ellroy is. I'd want to see an 8-hour miniseries to think before what I thought the novel was would have been done justice. His plotting and twists are incredibly intricate, but for himself that novel is no longer the way he sees the characters. Just for one small example of how characters were changed, De Witt is killed in Tijuana by Blanchard just a few days after his release, and Emmett Spraque, Madeleine's 'father', is not her real father although he thought he was for 11 years, and when he found he wasn't, he became her lover. She works the Black Dahlia motif long after the murder when she does her clubbing. And so on. I could go on and on, but I won't. The book is phenomenally good, and the Afterword is then simply mind-boggling.

Thank you so much, sz, I really appreciate such a thoughtful response. I've thought a good bit more about it since writing up while it was fresh. But it does seem that everybody is noticing this cranked-up tempi and people like you who see many performances would know for sure that it is happening regularly. It occurred to me that 'Waltz of the Flowers' can still be a real waltz at a somewhat more relaxed tempo than what Karoui was forcing yesterday, even though it's obviously not the kind of waltz like a Strauss Waltz with Viennese lilt to it and would never be supposed to contain that going from the 2nd and 3rd beat bending that conductors will work a lifetime to make natural. In other words, 'Waltz of the Flowers' has to have a lot of smooth flow to it, but there's no reason it can't be an easy flow. What I heard was just like beating time for each 4 bars--the lightness of the 3 in each bar was just rushed through from start to finish! I just don't get it at all. It was as though he could not slow down. And Mearns and the Flowers were so lovely and you were just so annoyed that you had this feeling that the piece was over almost after it had just started, it was that mechanical. None of them seemed out of breath and they even managed to conceal that they literally had little choice in the matter--which meant, that they all knew that they had so much more that would have been so naturally expressed had they been allowed some time. I thought Tyler was very commanding and strong (jumps were indeed beautiful) and that his turns were good, but that they started a little more energetically than they finished (but then I think the Grand Pas was too fast too, which I suppose could affect energy level too, but I'm not sure, this sounds like it should be the opposite of what you saw in the slower performance, but maybe the same thing can sometimes result, I don't know). But I am glad to have read a lot about him as he's been making his way into real visilibility in the company in the last season and now into this one. I saw him in 'Liebeslieder Walzer' in May, but thought he had far more presence here. But again--Karoui had got going with the Waltz so that my impression (I wish there was somebody who saw yesterday's performance because I'm just getting familiar with all of the work) was that he still couldn't slow down, including with the Grand Pas and finale. I still think I saw a beautiful 'Nutcracker' because I couldn't believe how Mearns and her Flowers were such good sports about having to do their jobs no matter what--they refused not to be radiant despite this grinding-out of their music. And you describe that so perfectly. I think that not using the teenage dancers as in Royal Ballet makes the 'advent' of the Snowflakes all that much more effective and deeply affecting in the gentleness of it. The perfect little Marie ('Clara' is her real name as Carbro told me) and the little boy (whose name I missed) were also delightful throughout. What a wonderful thing to get to do as a child, to be in the Nutcracker like that, and as you begin to enter into the spell, Act I does begin to mean just as much to you as does the much more showy Act II. I look forward to seeing it many more times, now that I have finally gotten started. But I really do hope that enough people are hearing these tempi, which sometimes could even be described as 'anxious', that something can be done about it. EDITED TO ADD: One other thing bothered me. The theater was nowhere near full! I have always been during the regular winter and spring seasons, but I had thought Nutcracker always packed the houses. I talked to an usher who had been there since 1994, and she said that attendance had not been good this season, or at least at not at all like it had been when she started working there

Finally seeing my first Balanchine 'Nutcracker' live this afternoon (or any live 'Nutcracker', for that matter), I won't say too much about details that I know nothing about, but am grateful for those in the business for writing about them here. They've enhanced the pleasure of seeing the piece immeasurably. I like the way the first act opens up slowly into real dance, I think the first time you see what looks to us amateur viewers as traditional ballet movement may be Frau Stahlbahm, but I lost my program. Maybe I like the real children better than what I had seen in the Royal Ballet DVD, where you have teenagers who are already professionals and definitely don't seem like children. I don't know. It's beautiful and enchanting in the NYCB production when it opens up into the Snowflakes. The Miniature Overture sounded perfect. I thought I'd have little if anything to criticize, but before looking back at some of sz's and others' writing about Karoui, it just seems to me that 'Waltz of the Flowers' is a different, more special and more opened-up sort of thing than Coffee, Candy Cane, etc., and that it was played as if it would be illegal to take a more leisurely tempo. If this is the traditional tempo, I will never really enjoy the 2nd Act, because that is where it seems you ought to take some time, bend things a bit and relax, not just thrust on ahead inexorably; it just does not sound like a waltz like this, but rather just a hasty something-or-other in 3/4 time. Mearns and the rest could do it, but if there are supposed to be nuances and a sense of grace in the form of graciousness and generosity, you don't see them when rammed from beginning to end like this. This then made the Pas de Deux seem too fast (even if it wasn't), and everything then seem to be all of a single piece in the whole Act II--a whiff of automaton about it therefore. To stay in the wonderful mood of everything dispensed with as efficiently as possible, I left after one curtain--worrying about catching the next subway didn't seem to break the mood. Candy Cane was not too fast, and Sugar Plum was delicious (Scheller is lovely, very light and musical but also, as a nice change from what I'm used to here, rather full-figured too). Tyler Angle terrific too. I think there's something medieval and work-ethic about playing 'Waltz of the Flowers' like that, that's the number that ought to have a whole sense of rubato within the whole bunch of Sweets' dances. It definitely looked to me that Mearns would have liked to expand in places where she was simply forced to fit in the minimum. Needless to say, I didn't know whether Coffee, Chinese or Candy Canes did any of the things they should or should not have done that sz and Michael and Dale were talking about, although I was impressed with the Arabian. The Ginger Queen is funny being vain, so I neglected to watch the little kiddies much in that scene. I thought Marzipan (Reed-Flutes) could have relaxed a little too. 'Snowflakes' was probably the high point for me, although I did love Scheller's Sugar Plum.

Esp. appreciate this review, sz, because this has 4 of the cast/roles I'll see Wed.: Mearns, Scheller/Angle, and Schumacher. I wonder if I'll know whether they do bent-knee pirouettes in Coffee...

Techine's LES TEMPS QUI CHANGENT. I'd seen this about a month before dirac put this post up, but I think it should still qualify for the awards season even though it was released here late. Nothing from the Golden Globes. I don't know if they are the same as the Oscars, with sometimes nominating an actor/actress from a foreign language film, but separating off the film. Anyway, I remember Deneuve and Depardieu both being nominated for Oscars. It might sound ordinary-snooty, but I really don't care too much for any of the awards and never watch them, because all I want to know is what goes on politicking behind the scenes and I don't know anybody who's going to tell me. So, when they nominate and award all sorts of things I can't stand, I don't care much for the animal behaviour you get in the presentations and acceptances; and when several do a political statement, it is just too gross. 'Babel' is a film I liked and got the most Golden Globe nominations, but I still don't care that much. I think 'Changing Times' is a terrific and beautiful film and there is this wonderful editing of scenes that is very abrupt: especially if there's sex implied, there's a refreshing lack of foreplay and all those idiotic bedroom things full of pop-song 'passion.' Better to do this sharp cutting or just go ahead and show it as in 'Pola X.' I've liked Depardieu a lot in the 70's, 80's and 90's, but haven't kept up with his work in the last 7-8 years. But Deneuve has surely made more excellent films since 1998 than any other star: 'Place Vendome,' 'Pola X,' 'Est-Ouest', that very fine mini-series version of 'Les Liaisons Dangereuses,' 'Dancer in the Dark', 'Time Regained', even though there have been some silly commercial things like that theme-parkish '3 Musketeers', which I just fast-forwarded through. She gets better and better as the years go by and is easily the most interesting film actress still working IMO. I'm not sure I could have imagined anyone who used to be the very embodiment of Parisian chic so able to throw out all vanity (quite zaftig here, dowdily dressed, and doggedly common and no-nonsense in her inhabiting of the role) and, especially in this film, show her warmth which was really always there. Not to mention her extraordinary intelligence, which has always been obvious. Depardieu is understated but exactly right, and the little subplots with other family members are all very effective, and with Techine's economy, he does not worry about making all sorts of connections between one and the other. Not overdoing this somehow makes all the supporting actors and their own stories very much alive. The connections are simple; they don't need emphasis. There was a good review of this in the NYT during the summer, but it was good because it made the film sound very enticing but gave away nothing of what happens--which then is not at all obvious. I hadn't any idea what would happen with the old youthful lovers now meeting 30 years later. It seemed to me that things could have gone in almost any direction, and there is a lot of very fast, busy development that goes on. Definitely my favourite of all films I saw in 2006. I went on and on about this because I don't believe I've seen anyone post about it here. I think the DVD has been out for some time.

Thanks so much, carbro! I erased most of my post, because I thought it was a bit too excited and poorly-written, but this was very useful reply, so I'm glad you caught it. and I think I want to check that RB DVD again, because it may be very different, and I remember it completely surprised me--all that dancing in the first act. Will try to find the Kistler one and am looking forward to seeing what cast I'll get to see when they announce on the weekend or Monday. I'm sure to love it with anybody, though, because there are a lot of things there. Thanks for cheering me up so that I can now have a nice Christmas (I chose that performance so it would be as close to Christmas as I could fit in), and hope you and other BT people will too!

I'm looking forward to seeing 'Nutcracker' this season.

'They have bird's-nest soup, seaweed soup, Noodle soup, poodle soup, Talking crows with the croup, Almost anything. If you want to buy a saw Or a fish delicious when it's raw Or a pill to kill your moth'r-in-law Or a bee without a sting, Come to the supermarket, If you come on a turtle, you can park it, So come to the supermarket If you come on a goose, you can park it, So come to the supermarket And see Pe- King!' Cole Porter lyrics for Barbra Streisand's marvelous whooping and hollering of 'Come to the Supermarket in old Peking'. Maybe we'll arrive at some new old off-Broadway stuff a la Al Carmines if we make this a creative thread. Oh, and the Benedictine Sisters won't leave this verse in, I bet: 'If you want a bust of jade Or an egg that's more or less decayed Or in case you care to meet a maid For a nice but naughty fling,'

So are all conductors and orchestra players borrowing it from the composer, the dancer is borrowing it from the choreographer. And conductors of ballet are 'borrowing' dance for their own use as well. I don't mean there isn't parasitism, but everybody is guilty.

Is he really more world-renowned than NYCB? I'm a musician myself, and I hadn't noticed This is a curious thing to say. In any danced music, the dance is obviously somewhat more the most important, no matter how sensitively the dancers must become to the music, how musical they are. The music is sometimes on the same level as the ballet, but it is never paramount in a ballet performance, and saying this does not mean the music should not be on the highest level possible. But the highest level possible for a dance performance would never mean exactly the same thing as in a concert hall or even opera house--unless, perhaps, if the music was written purely for the ballet; and in that case, there could never really be an example either in which the 'dancers would defer' because even the composition would have been undertaken with them in mind. If the music is paramount, then it can only be proved so by doing it in concert, which automatically rids the stage of dancers. A ballet orchestra can never be quite what even an opera orchestra is, because the dancers may be musical, but are not musicians in the same sense that singers are. However, a conductor, living and famous, is never so important as the choreographer, even if dead, and neither is the composer quite as important as the choreographer during an actual ballet performance. In concert, there is no dancer around to compete, as is appropriate--even if the conductor does a lot of body movement like Leonard Bernstein did, he's still not a real dancer. In opera, the orchestra is more wedded to what is sung onstage and is musically as important most of the time, even if not in star turn moments; and even the greatest conductors of opera like James Levine, are not quite the draw as the spintos and tenors. I find it difficult to imagine Pierre Boulez wanting to conduct for ballet, as he would not want to compromise in any way, in particular the rather brisk tempos he favours--but the solution thus far has been simply not to do it, as far as I know. But any conductor for ballet is, in fact, compromising if he does not recognize that the ballet is always the main event in a ballet performance; otherwise, trying to 'teach the dancers a lesson', e.g., 'stretch their experience' in whatever way, as it were, comes across as a bit of arrogant slumming on the part of someone who thinks he can better a domain which is actually someone else's. A flamboyant conductor who decided he wanted to conduct NYCB in Stravinsky would make sense only if he went in respecting the ballet tradition first. If he doesn't love ballet and want to serve it, why would he want to conduct it? to get attention? (I thought he'd gotten it elsewhere...) He cannot be the star there, and is not supposed to be. There are, on the other hand, all sorts of real nuances and refinements he could introduce that wouldn't disturb and would even enhance the dancers, but not distract from them, and even just annoy them--as speeding up things too much, for example, often would.

Plus her writing can get too febrile. I wish Farrell would work with someone who knows dance (or maybe even who doesn't, but can communicate with her and together they come out with something both moving and readable) but also has a real journalistic sensibility and doesn't start indulging in the purple prose. In other words, someone who could fully avoid a sense of 'diva lit' would be most welcome.

Isn't that the album that also includes Nancy Walker doing 'I Can Cook Too?' I was crazy about that album and somehow lost it in a move or something. But now you bring it up, I also remember the sound of 'Carried Away.' And there's that hilarious 'Do Do Re Do', which surely must be a take-off of Mme. Renee Longy, who was teaching solfege at Juilliard since time immemorial. I had her too, and it was sometimes like a penitentiary, but she was great, carrying on the old French tradition that few Americans were still doing. How could any New York lover not love 'On the Town'? I think the same production people are talking about here was shown on PBS about 1993, and I remember Comden and Green on one of the broadcasts, having to do a little pledge work for Channel 13, of course. It was around the same time as that TV production of 'Gypsy,' which I found so disappointing by contrast. Anyway, this was a concert version that I saw, and it was fresh as ever.

I read some more reviews since, and one complaint I found strange was of that song 'Lovely Lonely Man', which I thought was the one truly original song in the movie, and it has a completely different mood from anything else. You see Sally Ann Howes in her own aristocratic surroundings (not just in the candy factory, but rather at home), away from the eccentric charm of Dick Van Dyke and his merry crew and the lyrics are not pedestrian. I also googled and found that the stage production album didn't list it, so I don't know if that's usually been left out. What some thought was an anomaly was to me a moment of real sophistication, a tone that is otherwise never emphasized. I am surprised Miss Howes was not used in many more musical works, because I think she was a major talent in that particular arena, every bit as much so as Julie Andrews and Shirley Jones, and perhaps more alluring. I know she did Eliza after Andrews, but I've never heard reports of it. Look at this photo of her at age 74. Still a classic beauty, and with some resemblance to Kiri TeKanawa. http://www.imdb.com/gallery/granitz/3057/S...lly%20Ann&seq=2 EDITED TO ADD: in doing some light research on Miss Howes, I saw that the only other filmed version of 'A Little Night Music' for TV in 1990, with Miss Howes as Desiree. I couldn't believe it, and have never heard of it. Now, this is the Sondheim I want to see! I bet she is magnificent! Have you seen it, sidwich (or anyone else)? I imagine it is the very ultimate production of this show. The only review at IMDB laments that there is no DVD. I think I may put a Search Favourite at eBay, because somebody might record it and then sell it. I've gotten other things that way that were never put on commercial video.

Thanks dirac, sidwich--well, it has one slight thing in common with Sondheim: 'Evening Primrose' was a charming fairy tale and mysterious as well, that took place in a department store. This 'Phantom' just feels like a claustrophobic, perfume-spray area of a Big Department Store throughout. (There were florists and candle-shops as well, of course). On the plus side, this was a perfectly serviceable way for me to finally see this phenomenon from start to finish, of which I'd never seen a production. It will be enough, even though horrible. I agree with sidwich about the Phantom's hard, ugly voice, but Christine's was very irritating too. I'm glad I've done it, though, because that will be all of my Lloyd Webber for the duration. I don't know why people complain about Paris Hilton culture--she never irreparably destroyed a whole art form. Yuck! start to finish. Not a single good performance either, even Miranda Richardson didn't know what to do besides just wander around from time to time. One of the worst things I've ever seen.