Five men, five directors: “Even if the specifics of their process vary, they approach filmmaking similarly — responding emotionally to material; sweating over casting more than any other choice; persevering to create an on-set atmosphere where accidents, the good kind, can happen.”
Tag: 01.22.12
Wendy Whelan Ties New York City Ballet To Balanchine, But Dances For The Present And Future
The 44-year-old dancer, now rehearsing for shows choreographed by Christopher Wheeldon, came to City Ballet in the early 1980s. Now, “she is one of a dwindling few active company dancers to have worked with Jerome Robbins and the only link to the great personalities handpicked by Balanchine.”
Who’s The Dark Horse In The National Book Critics’ Circle Awards? (It’s Not Jeffrey Eugenides)
“Great reviews do not guarantee an NBCC nomination. Some of the year’s best-received books were among the missing, including Chad Harbach’s ‘The Art of Fielding,’ Karen Russell’s ‘Swamplandia’ and Christopher Hitchens’ ‘Arguably.'”
Tilda Swinton Talks About ‘We Need to Talk About Kevin’
Swinton says her character is “living this life that is so isolated and so self-determined within which you get the sense that there is no place for chaos. This is a recipe for disaster. If you’re going to encounter becoming a parent, if you’re not up for a bit of chaos, let alone a lot of chaos – and I speak as the mother of twins – then you are riding a kind of really dangerous horse.”
Music, The Wonder Drug (Music-Lovers Are Not Surprised)
“The practical applications of music for healing are irresistible. Cutting-edge music therapy can help Parkinson’s patients walk, enables the autistic to rehearse their emotions and provides opportunities for stroke victims to regain speech and motor movement. Music is usually the last thing Alzheimer’s sufferers recognize. It is our final way to communicate with them, and now it seems music can play a significant role in forestalling Alzheimer’s.”
Will The Last Film Critic Out Please Turn Off The Village Voice? A Q&A With J. Hoberman
“At The Voice it was possible to believe that intellectual work was a form of real and effective political activism and that resistance to the machine (Hollywood included) was not only possible, but also necessary. For Voice writers, a movie was never only a movie: it was a way of seeing, living in, understanding and, yes, even changing the world.”
Young Singers, Young Musicians And Operas Recovered From The Nazis
The L.A. Opera’s James Conlon works with musicians from the Colburn School and singers from the opera’s Domingo-Thornton Young Artist Program on two operas suppressed by the Nazis. Conlon: The young musicians “are like sponges. And now every one of these young artists is going to know what it’s like to be in one of these operas. They will know there’s a lot of great music to be discovered.”
Younger Than Standard Time, L.A. Artists React To The Shows
Not surprisingly, young artists in L.A. have conflicting reactions to Pacific Standard Time. “It felt odd to see the whole institution historicized in this way. It’s like if you take your childhood and make a museum show out of it or something.”