By now you've probably all read Alice Coote's piece in the Guardian about gender fluidity on and off the opera stage, but here it is in case you haven't. All in conjunction with this.
There's a new kid on the opera streaming block, free, ungeoblocked, and with some interesting stuff coming down the pike.
Meanwhile, Digital Theatre -- not free but damn cheap -- has added Nicholas Hytner's Così and Michael Grandage's Figaro to the Glyndebourne section of their burgeoning opera video library.
Lastly, Kerry Candaele's documentary Following the Ninth, about Beethoven's 9th Symphony in times of social upheaval, is up for streaming on Amazon.
Showing posts with label flicks. Show all posts
Showing posts with label flicks. Show all posts
Wednesday, May 13, 2015
Wednesday, March 25, 2015
an idea whose time has
Me: Just saw branagh's cinderella flick. It's like trollope, only disney LOL
ETF: I don't know if I can see Branagh as Cinderella. When do we get Trollope World tho?
ETF: I don't know if I can see Branagh as Cinderella. When do we get Trollope World tho?
Sunday, March 15, 2015
undelivered
One of the UK's great songwriters, Steve Tilston, gets an interview in the NYT, if only to talk about someone else's work. Oh well. Some days we're really glad life isn't a movie where your favorite people are mutated into some dude played by Al Pacino.
The things Steve Tilston gets up to here and here.
The things Steve Tilston gets up to here and here.
Saturday, January 17, 2015
Monday, July 15, 2013
Violeta Parra bio pic
It's been out for awhile making the festival circuit, but maybe an NPR story means we get to see it some day.
Sunday, March 18, 2012
when the gloves came off
Frank Bruni has a piece in the NYT on David France's documentary How to Survive a Plague, about the birth of AIDS activism, showing on 3/24 and 3/26 at Film Society of Lincoln Center.
Friday, February 10, 2012
sundry items
late addition: "After two hearings I still couldn’t fathom whether it was a comedy or a tragedy." The answer is Yes. Sameer Rahim, Opera Novice, scales Mt. Rosenkavalier.
and NYC Arts has an interview with Angela Gheorghiu, wherein she says pretty much the usual Angela Gheorghiu things (starting about 9 minutes in):
Previously:
"I do not think that the function of the visual world...necessarily needs to mimic or copy or even add to the narrative surface of the opera." From back in October, John Conklin talks about "the performative power of design".
Countdown to Klinghoffer: In anticipation of the ENO premiere, Jessica Duchen rounds up the controversy, and librettist Alice Goodman discusses the aftermath.
Money and ideas: The FT has the numbers on the business of converting novels to film.
and NYC Arts has an interview with Angela Gheorghiu, wherein she says pretty much the usual Angela Gheorghiu things (starting about 9 minutes in):
Watch NYC-ARTS Full Episode: Angela Gheorghiu, Spanish Dress on PBS. See more from NYC-ARTS.
Previously:
"I do not think that the function of the visual world...necessarily needs to mimic or copy or even add to the narrative surface of the opera." From back in October, John Conklin talks about "the performative power of design".
Countdown to Klinghoffer: In anticipation of the ENO premiere, Jessica Duchen rounds up the controversy, and librettist Alice Goodman discusses the aftermath.
Money and ideas: The FT has the numbers on the business of converting novels to film.
Saturday, January 21, 2012
sundry items
A reminder came down the pike today that tomorrow is Bayerische Staatsoper's live videocast of Don Carlo -- Kaufmann, Harteros, Smirnova, Kwiecien Daniel, and Pape, all if the creek don't rise -- starting at 11:00am, Eastern Time. (5pm CET)
Update: Well, that had its moments, but if you're going with glitter confetti in the auto da fe, there can be no half measures.
Update 1/23: Staatsoper reports 459,000 views of Don Carlo livestream.
Schiller and Verdi tell us power corrupts, but John Webster, Thomas Middleton and their drinking buddies would probably say what corrupts absolutely is just the act of being born, so you might as well poison, stab, and screw (in that combination or any other) as many people as possible, and anyway it's all in good fun. Andrew Dickson muses on the present theatrical ubiquity of Jacobean tragedies. The New York metro area's next opportunity for gleeful exploration of vintage vice will be Cheek by Jowl's Tis Pity She's a Whore, which comes to BAM in March.
Before the Jacobeans' reckless abandon there was Shakespeare's military-political meatgrinder. The Arts Desk has a review of the new film adaptation of Coriolanus. Reviewer Matt Wolf says it's all down to Fiennes and Redgrave. (I'm in just for John Kani, because there really is a world elsewhere.) Over at The New Yorker, Richard Brody is less enamored.
Update: Well, that had its moments, but if you're going with glitter confetti in the auto da fe, there can be no half measures.
Update 1/23: Staatsoper reports 459,000 views of Don Carlo livestream.
Schiller and Verdi tell us power corrupts, but John Webster, Thomas Middleton and their drinking buddies would probably say what corrupts absolutely is just the act of being born, so you might as well poison, stab, and screw (in that combination or any other) as many people as possible, and anyway it's all in good fun. Andrew Dickson muses on the present theatrical ubiquity of Jacobean tragedies. The New York metro area's next opportunity for gleeful exploration of vintage vice will be Cheek by Jowl's Tis Pity She's a Whore, which comes to BAM in March.
Before the Jacobeans' reckless abandon there was Shakespeare's military-political meatgrinder. The Arts Desk has a review of the new film adaptation of Coriolanus. Reviewer Matt Wolf says it's all down to Fiennes and Redgrave. (I'm in just for John Kani, because there really is a world elsewhere.) Over at The New Yorker, Richard Brody is less enamored.
Friday, January 6, 2012
Sunday, September 25, 2011
daze of yore
A. O. Scott writes in the NYT about the cultural legacy of Margaret Thatcher. (Will history prove that, in tandem with Ronald Reagan, she created a bubble in the music industry the Post-Thatcherite world could never sustain, and thus contributed to the downfall of major label domination?) A biopic is due in December, directed by Phyllida Lloyd, who brought us the most recent stage iteration (in the anglophone joint) of Schiller's Maria Stuart.
"Police hunting the individuals who have threatened to kill Mrs. Thatcher say that their investigations are making good progress, and that 47,000,000 people are helping them with their inquiries." - Not the Nine O'Clock News
"Police hunting the individuals who have threatened to kill Mrs. Thatcher say that their investigations are making good progress, and that 47,000,000 people are helping them with their inquiries." - Not the Nine O'Clock News
Tuesday, May 31, 2011
The fur-lined bathtubs of moral rectitude
Mark Lawson's analysis of why 19th century novels (a select few, anyway) make attractive options for tv and movie producers may be found here. It's an interesting read if you've been wondering why the Austen / Dickens / Brontë juggernaut seems to roll along with only an occasional veering off into the odd siding. His chief argument comes at the end:
At their simplest level, each of these books features a couple whose union is impossible or dangerous: Cathy and Heathcliff face the bar of class and propriety, Anna and Vronsky challenge the adultery taboo, and Pip and Estella are thwarted not only by their starkly different social backgrounds but by her bizarre guardian... Fiction is driven by friction and taboo but, in most parts of contemporary society, we have created a society in which there are few obstacles to people doing what they want or being with the person they desire.
In other words, we've torn down the walls so convenient for characters to smash into, so contemporary life isn't interesting enough. Which is to say modern moral ambivalence makes for bad television.
It's arguable, I suppose, to a point. Really what he means is we like straw men to tilt at, particularly in these troubled times. It is, after all, excellent fun catharsis to watch people -- particularly women in corsets -- be persecuted for loving the wrong people, and yet how pleasing it is to think that it could never happen in this day and age. Or at least not in those clothes.
Update: Meanwhile, over at The Independent, D J Taylor wonders why we're still taking the 19th century's phone calls.
At their simplest level, each of these books features a couple whose union is impossible or dangerous: Cathy and Heathcliff face the bar of class and propriety, Anna and Vronsky challenge the adultery taboo, and Pip and Estella are thwarted not only by their starkly different social backgrounds but by her bizarre guardian... Fiction is driven by friction and taboo but, in most parts of contemporary society, we have created a society in which there are few obstacles to people doing what they want or being with the person they desire.
In other words, we've torn down the walls so convenient for characters to smash into, so contemporary life isn't interesting enough. Which is to say modern moral ambivalence makes for bad television.
It's arguable, I suppose, to a point. Really what he means is we like straw men to tilt at, particularly in these troubled times. It is, after all, excellent fun catharsis to watch people -- particularly women in corsets -- be persecuted for loving the wrong people, and yet how pleasing it is to think that it could never happen in this day and age. Or at least not in those clothes.
Update: Meanwhile, over at The Independent, D J Taylor wonders why we're still taking the 19th century's phone calls.
Monday, May 9, 2011
"Beige"
So when we alerted our Special Envoy to the Court of King Festus that we were going to see the latest Jane Eyre flick, the reply we received was "Beige." Anyone might be forgiven for thinking that was code (wikileaks take note), but no, in fact it was a thoroughly accurate assessment. And as I was watching the film, and all those endless shots of Landscape, or People Observing Landscape, or People in the Landscape Observing the Landscape, I was trying not to laugh, because our Ministry of Elsewhere has a zero tolerance policy for shallow pretense masquerading as art, and I was imagining our Envoy sitting through this movie while gnashing her popcorn in an ever-increasing state of irritation, wishing for an Eddie Izzard-style Room with a View OF HELL!! scenario which, sadly, would never come to pass.
Though no doubt it was not only the ponderous passage-of-time, nothing-ever-happens-here-oh-yeah-except-for-the-thing-in-the-attic overkill, but also the acting...the script...the general anemia of the enterprise. Really, if you're going to pay Judi Dench the fee she probably now commands, give her something to do, and not less than is in the book. It isn't like your screenwriter has to invent stuff out of whole cloth, it's all right there. And Michael Fassbender, though no doubt interesting to look at -- they seem to have done a fabulous embalming job, but seriously, people, that's not what the story is about, and if you are making Jane Eyre vs the Zombie, well, use a real zombie, they emote better. And if you're going to cut so liberally -- no torn veil? none of Mrs. Fairfax's serious misgivings? and chez Rivers, though being given pride of place in the re-worked narrative order, barely a blip on the radar, because all the scenes are left out that explain who those people are -- if you're going to leave all that out, it should be a shorter movie. Or at least not feel like you're living through it in real time, watching the grass grow like all the other inmates.
Nice lawn, though.
Though no doubt it was not only the ponderous passage-of-time, nothing-ever-happens-here-oh-yeah-except-for-the-thing-in-the-attic overkill, but also the acting...the script...the general anemia of the enterprise. Really, if you're going to pay Judi Dench the fee she probably now commands, give her something to do, and not less than is in the book. It isn't like your screenwriter has to invent stuff out of whole cloth, it's all right there. And Michael Fassbender, though no doubt interesting to look at -- they seem to have done a fabulous embalming job, but seriously, people, that's not what the story is about, and if you are making Jane Eyre vs the Zombie, well, use a real zombie, they emote better. And if you're going to cut so liberally -- no torn veil? none of Mrs. Fairfax's serious misgivings? and chez Rivers, though being given pride of place in the re-worked narrative order, barely a blip on the radar, because all the scenes are left out that explain who those people are -- if you're going to leave all that out, it should be a shorter movie. Or at least not feel like you're living through it in real time, watching the grass grow like all the other inmates.
Nice lawn, though.
Monday, March 14, 2011
Wednesday, March 9, 2011
lost Mayan calendar reckons time according to film adaptations of Jane Eyre
Update 12/12/12: If you've landed here because it's the week before the end is nigh, allow us to direct you to the Dresden Codex and the wiki that will attempt to explain the math. Good luck.
Another flick version fades into obscurity -- was it the one with Toby Stephens? Who can ever remember? -- as a new clone takes its place. The NYT reports here. The money quote from screenwriter Moira Buffini:
Jane spends a whole year [chez Rivers], agonized with longing, and that’s when she begins to see what the alternative to Rochester is: a loveless marriage or spinsterhood.
But I always thought the best part of JE was what the apparently off-putting, spinstery Rivers sisters are reading when pious, straight-laced brother St John is not home, and how Brontë reveals it through an untranslated, unattributed, and very selective quotation. lmao, as they say in the common parlance.
Will this detail ever make it into a movie version? Hell no. And this isn't what affects the gender politics of the piece -- that's always up to the screenwriter and director to emphasize or bury under the novel's own Sturm und Drang. But, for all its obscurity of reference (and it was probably obscure enough in Brontë's time that to get it you had either to be hanging out with shady disreputable Carlyle types or be a governess who could teach German), it's the true subversive element of the novel, sitting there contentedly in its spinsterhood, waiting for the world to change around it. 1848 is coming.
Update: Okay, forget the wiki link. For an astute analysis of the life of Die Räuber in England during the Napoleonic era, this is the place. (I would only suggest two alterations, apart from fixing the typos: first, that there is a difference between "carousing with" nuns and raping them. (Seriously, Professor, I'm just going to assume that English isn't your primary language.) Second, that Goethe and Schiller are spinning in their graves at being mentioned in the same sentence with Kotzebue, that traitorous hack. But never mind. He's no doubt burning in Hell by now.)
Another flick version fades into obscurity -- was it the one with Toby Stephens? Who can ever remember? -- as a new clone takes its place. The NYT reports here. The money quote from screenwriter Moira Buffini:
Jane spends a whole year [chez Rivers], agonized with longing, and that’s when she begins to see what the alternative to Rochester is: a loveless marriage or spinsterhood.
But I always thought the best part of JE was what the apparently off-putting, spinstery Rivers sisters are reading when pious, straight-laced brother St John is not home, and how Brontë reveals it through an untranslated, unattributed, and very selective quotation. lmao, as they say in the common parlance.
Will this detail ever make it into a movie version? Hell no. And this isn't what affects the gender politics of the piece -- that's always up to the screenwriter and director to emphasize or bury under the novel's own Sturm und Drang. But, for all its obscurity of reference (and it was probably obscure enough in Brontë's time that to get it you had either to be hanging out with shady disreputable Carlyle types or be a governess who could teach German), it's the true subversive element of the novel, sitting there contentedly in its spinsterhood, waiting for the world to change around it. 1848 is coming.
Update: Okay, forget the wiki link. For an astute analysis of the life of Die Räuber in England during the Napoleonic era, this is the place. (I would only suggest two alterations, apart from fixing the typos: first, that there is a difference between "carousing with" nuns and raping them. (Seriously, Professor, I'm just going to assume that English isn't your primary language.) Second, that Goethe and Schiller are spinning in their graves at being mentioned in the same sentence with Kotzebue, that traitorous hack. But never mind. He's no doubt burning in Hell by now.)
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