John Danaher pays an operatic tribute to the writings of James McCourt, an author who captured the spirit of opera as queer and dangerous like no other.
Beatrice Page is a wonderful fit for Ginger Rogers, who plays it with brassy charm and a laudable sense of humor, since the character seems not to notice that she has aged out of her 20s by a couple of decades.
“Camp” is exactly the lens through which The Velvet Touch is best examined, including an utterly bewildering cross-pollinating of genres.
The candor of some aspects of Now, Voyager—which at times can feel fairly formulaic—has moments that are truly startling, and there is something surprisingly modern and frank in the not-entirely-fulfilling concluding moments.
We put together these two very different movies from more than half a century apart—Of Human Bondage (1934) and The Whales of August (1987)—and thus get a sense of the long arc of a career.
Johnny Guitar, the delightfully subversive Western by director Nicholas Ray, features one of Joan Crawford’s most iconic performances.
What Ever Happened to Baby Jane is, of course, the founding document behind the concept—itself almost a piece of Grand Guignol theatrics—of horror as the genre to which female stars are left once they’ve hit 50.
By the end, we have rolling heads, a lot of screaming, and cheap horror too often overwhelms the better instincts of the screenwriters.
It’s the legendary Jeanne Eagels in the spotlight, which is exactly the right term. From our first glimpse of her fabulous face, she seems almost lit from within.
I’ve heard admirers for years describe this as their favorite Bette Davis performance, and it’s easy to see why; she brings her entire range to the role, and you can’t take your eyes off her.
This season’s Met Donizetti Tudor Trilogy concluded with Roberto Devereux, given its penultimate performance by HD transmission Saturday, April 16. It is good to see these works finally given here; they are too important, too crucial a part of the operatic repertory to have been ignored for as long as they have.
La Cieca is not at her happiest dishing a librettist; I mean their dreary overshadowed inkstained lives are already punishment enough, right? But still, it gets under your doyenne’s skin more than a bit to hear Terry Teachout‘s blogging self-aggrandizement at the expense of one of the greats of English literature. Teachout is, as well…
Tell us: Filth or dementia?
Hasten thee to feed another quarter of conversation for The Talk of the Town!
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