Edmund White: “His first night in Banville’s maid’s room, he stood in the illuminated window stark naked and threw down his lice-laden clothes into the street. Within a week Banville had asked the miscreant to leave, but only after Rimbaud had smashed the china in his room, soiled the bed sheets with his muddy boots and sold some of the furniture.”
Author: Matthew Westphal
Jeanne Dielman – The Power Of One Little 34-Year-Old Belgian Movie
“Today the film’s observational strategies – its long takes and scrupulous framing – practically amount to a lingua franca of international art film… Nothing can quite prepare the first-time viewer for the force of [director Chantal] Akerman’s concentration, for the film’s overwhelming concreteness or the horrifying logic of its ending.”
Being George Plimpton
“Throughout five decades, the writer and editor, to a breathtaking degree, enacted his daydreams and fantasies and fashioned them into a glittering persona. He was ‘George Plimpton’ – editor, host, naturalist, toastmaster, celebrity escort, fireworks specialist, athlete, gossip and playboy… [Yet] underneath Plimpton’s deeply amiable exterior was a person who sometimes came across as a Man Without Qualities.”
Why Are We So Fascinated With That Awful Gabler Woman?
“A more repellent personality would be hard to imagine, and yet Hedda Gabler is one of the eternal fascinators of the world stage… So what is the mystery of her attraction? Probably her mystery itself. No matter how many times we encounter her, how many new angles we view her from, Hedda remains strangely inscrutable.”
Marilyn Horne Gets Hands-On
“Once, while explaining the vital importance of firm diaphragm support to a young singer who feared that her strapless gown might fall down if she pressed too hard, Miss Horne literally took matters into her own hands. ‘I’ll hold up your dress,’ she said. ‘You get your support going.'”
Terrorism On The Silver Screen
A spate of feature films is causing controversy in Europe “for choosing to depict terrorism from the terrorists’ point of view,” with detractors accusing the filmmakers of glorifying murder. Says one screenwriter: “We didn’t set out to glorify the character at all, but it seems people still find it very difficult to watch a bastard go about his business.”
Dallas Critic Says Steel Was ‘Miscast’ There
Scott Cantrell suggests that the marriage between George Steel and The Dallas Opera is better annulled: “[I]t wasn’t long after Steel’s arrival here, in October, that whispers of discontent became a crescendo of complaint.” And anyway, when he took the Texas job, “there was boo-hooing in the New York media at the loss of one of the artsy crowd’s darlings.”
How To Keep Dancing Into Your 50s
For Peggy Baker, 56, “the choice to become a solo dancer has been the secret to extending her life onstage. ‘I would not be dancing for as long as I have if I were in a company. No company could put up with the way I have to take care of myself now. But because I’m totally in charge of myself, I can decide how hard I’m going to push myself on a given day.'”
Veronika Dudarova, 92, Moscow Conductor With 60-Year Career
“Dudarova became a conductor at the Moscow State Symphony Orchestra in 1947 and in 1960 was named chief conductor and artistic director. She left the orchestra in 1989. From 1991 until the end of her life she headed the Symphony Orchestra of Russia, which she had founded.”
Michael Jackson, The Musical Hits West End
In the age of the jukebox musical, it had to happen. ‘Thriller Live, a new West End show built around the music of Michael Jackson, features a moonwalking lookalike, zombie choreography and prepubescent singers who hit the high notes on ‘ABC.’ What’s absent: any backstory about the elusive King of Pop… There’s no plot or dialogue – just music.”