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Watch him school Ricky Gervais's character on the most subtle tricks of the trade. Watch Gervais (as Andy Millman) struggle to prevent his trademark inscrutability from giving way to slack-jawed incredulity. Watch him fail to conceal his alarm and consternation (always signalled by the trademark blinking and mouth-breathing)!
Do you not own the DVD set yet? If you don't, this is a taste of what you're missing. Gervais really is one of the most talented people on earth, which is why it's such a treat to see him with another one.
I probably haven't mentioned several thousand times, but I am not a fan of music videos---I mean the contrived sort you see on video stations-- in general. In general, as I've said, they tend more often than not to ruin the song for me. They're never quite what I imagined. Sometimes the director's sense of whimsy ruins the song forever. At You Tube, Cap'n Fix comments:
An excellent music video that aired briefly on MTV in 1994 and
soon became largely forgotten. This one was filmed in B&W to
produce an old-timey ambience that works very well with the ragtime
sound. Pay close attention to the continuity. The whole video was
filmed with a steadycam, in one continuous shot...an unbelievably
difficult task that only someone like Michel Gondry could pull off.
This catchy vid is no longer in production and a rare treat to find,
wherever it happens to bubble up ;-)
I had fun recapping some of last season's episodes, but then I also got bored. It's harder than it looks, man. I mean it's harder if you care about accuracy, detail, and incorporating your own commentary (which was kind of the point.
After a certain point I just decided I didn't want to go on with it. So what's a fan of The Office looking for more recaps to do?
Why go here, of course. Finally, finally Television without Pity decided that The Office, though a comedy, was recap-able. Or perhaps their Bravo masters decided for them! I was disappointed that they weren't handled by Jacob---whose strange and poignant insights entrance me and whom I tried (palely) to emulate in my own recapping career---but they are still pretty good, especially M. Giant's and Joe R.'s. They don't have the detail or nuance of, say, M. Giant's Rome recaps, because, in TWoP parlance, they are "weecaps." This too was disappointing----The Office has depths to plumb and M Giant is a pretty astute (and pretty damn witty) commentator. (Where, by the way, IS Jacob Clifton?)
I just feel for a show this nuanced, Jacob or the lamented djb would have provided the spin I was hoping for.... Still, if you're looking for recaps, there you are: TwOP weecaps "The Office." . They started back in Season 1 and have worked their way forward.
Fats Waller, one of my husband's heroes, just before he died (1943) at the age of 39. He died of pneumonia on a train. Fats Waller plus a lovely singer named Myra Johnson in a mock catfight; what could be better? I couldn't find out much about Myra Johnson, beyond the fact (I got this from a book of my jazz-loving husband's) that she recorded with Boyd Senter and his band in 1938. She recorded two sides. That's all I could learn..
No, this isn't the title of an avant-garde film or an HBO Series about the mysterious love child of two rival politiicans, now even more mysteriously translated into a higher state of being and appearing as her own ghost to reconcile them. I refer to the Nineties Band.
Back in the early Nineties, everyone was listening to Michael Cretu'sEnigma. I started thinking of them while viewing/listening to all of Callas I could find on You Tube.
As so often is the case, the video for "Callas Went Away" doesn't match up at all well with the images that the music put in my head. You may feel differently.
I do love the way they've worked Callas's voice into the song itself (an aria from Werther, which sounds completely different
against this background music.)...Anyway, I had the image whenever I
listened to it of her driving off in her carriage (because of the hoof
sounds) while, say, petals blew in the wind. You know, all pink, white, rose, red, and gold infusing heavenly blue: a
metaphor for the death of a great diva. This is quite different from what I imagined.
"Callas Went Away" isn't the best known song on the album: I suspect "Mea Culpa" and "The Principles of Lust" are better known, not to mention Sadeness. Both helped bring about a revival of interest in Gregorian Chanting. (But it's just not the same without the background effects of Enigma...)
This band's definitely worth looking into if you're too young (or too old) to remember when their music was everywhere. I recommend pouring a glass of wine and listening to the entire album in a darkened room.
[CROSS-POSTED FROM THE FLATLAND CHRONICLES] I'm not comparing the technical proficiency of these singers and do not intend to comment. Everyone has an iconic Carmen. These are some different conceptions of her. Back in the day when I hoped to make myself a singer, I wanted so badly to grow up to be her. I had the idea of playing her with wit rather than the smouldering, half-threatening seductiveness that is usually her lot.
However, speaking of seductive....opera doesn't get any grander than this: Callas singing anything at all. I not only love her voice; I love the way her face changes into Carmen's the minute she starts singing. But her voice is not the voice of the True Carmen as I secretly conceive her. Callas's voice is too pure, like liquid light. I admit that she really puts across the sexual intensity. I don't know. It's pretty damn compelling.
Carmen's ought to be rich and rough, like certain types of red wine. She's a virago. She's got an almost masculine sensuality. That's why poor Don Jose has no chance against alpha dog Escamillo, the bullfighter.
Frankly, Lori-Kaye Miller'svoice is more in line with my idea of Carmen's. I like a lot more mezzo in Carmen's soprano. And there's that slightly ragged edge. Je l'adore!!!
On the other hand, here's a very seductive version featuring Julia Migenes, though (speaking as a mere viewer of this one scene), I'd prefer a more highly-colored set. This is like Carmen as imagined by Miles Crane: all beige everywhere: ecru, wheat, ivory, etc. etc. Meh.
Romanian soprano Angele Gheorghia sings it. She's extremely beautiful in that "old Hollywood" way. It's not because she's Romanian, but something about her hungry expression as she sings that suggests to me a new permutation on an old theme: Vampire Carmen. That would be awesome....Say she first turns Don Jose into a vampire and then he stakes her at the end.... Anyway, a beautiful voice and a beautiful singer and another great version.
I know there are a lot of music resources out there, but this site's really good....See it now. I like listening to jazz as background when I work and this is a great selection....
Man, I love the Memphis Jug Band. And thanks to the wondrous Yazoo Records I was able to buy a recording of their music.
One of my friends who claims to be able to do "past lives" readings says I was African-American back in the days of the early Twentieth Century. Maybe it's so because nothing gives me the faux (or are they?) flashbacks known as deja vu like the real, raw musical stylings of the gutbucket/barrelhouse period. I'm talking about early blues, not jazz. It's exactly the combination of diffidence and detachment, of moan and resignation that hits me where I live, as they used to say.
Love Yazoo. Love it.
And I really enjoy this---a contemporary tribute by a band called Snakehead Run to the original Memphis players' "KC Moan", though without jugs and washboards, alas:
Posted by Nicholas We never got the 1950s Superman TV series in England, so I never saw it, but I do remember a childhood friend (American) talking about it and telling me that the actor who played the Man of Steel had become convinced he really did have super powers and had died when he fell from a high window, trying to fly. That story stayed tucked away in some mental filing cabinet all these years, dispelled only a few days ago. Apparently, it was once of the urban myths about George Reeves, who was the first TV Superman, who was the subject of the surprisingly entertaining film “Hollywoodland” (2006), with Ben Affleck in the lead role.
The movie is a glimpse of Hollywood at the end of its Golden Age, when the film industry was terrified of television. Some actors were even forbidden by the terms of their movie contracts, to appear on TV, on pain of dismissal. George Reeves as portrayed by Affleck, turns out to be a capable actor with some solid credits behind him – he was one of the Tarleton brothers in “Gone With The Wind” – who auditions for the part of Superman for a projected television series. He gets it, and makes a success of it.
I was fortunate enough to find my favorite version of "The Siciliano" from Macagni's "Cavalleria Rusticana" on YouTube (below). Maybe because the first version I ever heard featured Franco Corelli, I've never been able to love any other the same way. I think it was in a set of opera records (Italian) my father bought me for Christmas. I was at the age to fall in love with this opera (a gritty "verismo" piece which my snobbier friends nevertheless call "smarmy.") And the very first time I heard this song---I was fifteen, so it was 35 years ago and yet I remember it plainly---I was hooked.
I had an image of a young man---face in shadow----playing the guitar under massive trees and a violet sky. Fifteen, of course, is a sort of sexual turning point for a young girl. Perhaps part of the trouble I had settling down in my younger days is that what I really wanted was someone who would break my heart by sitting under the trees singing about another woman. Perhaps it's unfortunate that the most impassioned love song I'd ever heard was being sung by a man who had abandoned his pregnant girlfriend to start up a liaison with a married ex.
Strangely, no one else reacted to the song the same way. "Nice," said my father politely. "Mmmph," said my mom (who didn't care for opera). That was seventies; none of my friends got it; they were mystified why I liked listening to opera at all when there was so much great rock music out there (there was, and I loved it too).
I remain surprised that this hasn't been "arranged" for today's youngsters. Whenever anyone talks about a "haunting" melody, I flash back on the Siciliano.
The Animaniacs perform some of Gilbert & Sullivan's Greatest Hits; a new generation learns an updated version of "I am the Very Model of a Modern Major General" (which Aaron Sorkin subsequenty attempted with considerably less success)...I am as certain as I can be after a gap of many years that the wee, belligerent pirate is directly based on one of the illustration's to one of Gilbert's poems. "Though I be a pirate swine, still I have to draw the line/And I will not push you overboard!" Can I hear you say, "Arrr!!"?
In my younger days, I studied music and specifically capital-V Voice. Yes, my friends, at the age of 15, while other girls dreamed of being rock stars (not too many credible women back in those days except Janis, who was already long gone), I wanted to be Beverly Sills. Alas, I lacked only the voice and the ear. I wasn't even, I'm afraid, a particularly gifted amateur. Even so, it was a very good thing for me since I learned what kids today seem not to be taught: aspiration and enthusiasm and even discipline are no substitute for talent. Over and over I saw others more gifted than I win the competitions, the important roles in performances, and the big solos. I can't think of any better training for life than successive demanding and disappointing auditions with judges generally more tactful but no less ruthless than, say, the infamous Simon Cowell (who---I confess---I've seen in action only once, and by accident).
I got a lot out of it. Through my adolescent ventures into territory where I simply didn't have the talent to stake a claim, I learned the joysof participating in the production of a great work of art and also the relief of letting go of the desire to be center stage.
The Jekyll thing was exciting in that sick adrenaline-fueled way that leaves you feeling exhausted and a bit in need of a good brain bleaching afterward, but my real James Nesbitt love is reserved for him as Murphy. Yet another reason you need---or should have had---BBC America. That said, he should have had the Golden Globe for Jekyll. I didn't care for it, but he was amazing. I'd watch it again if I could stomach the violence. Much as I love Jim Broadbent and liked Longford, that must have been a relatively easy task compared to what Nesbitt had to do, surely (?)
CROSS-POSTED FROM THE FLATLAND CHRONICLES. I have said before how I love The Animaniacs (here and here, in fact). Spielberg, is of course, a genius. And speaking of geniuses, here is one of my all-time favorite clips, from the episode called "The Genius." This is one of at least two episodes in which Spielberg goes after Jerry Lewis. Here's Jerry Lewis (the Genius) trying to teach the Warner kids how to do comedy. But the Warner kids already know comedy.
Here's a little summary of the show that explains its appeal to adults:
(CROSS-POSTED TO ANGLO-SAXON ATTITUDES)
In England, Harry Enfield----tragically, you may know him only as the voice of the Travelocity Gnome--- had a hit comedy show (described in more detail here) in the 1990's which he---supported by the great Kathy Burke and the equally great Paul Whitehouse---starred as a variety of characters who very quickly evolved into English comedy classics, which is how I came to know and love him. You can rent Harry Enfield and Chums from Netflix, and you really, reallly should.
Here's one sample recommended by my internet friend Chris H. And it is indeed one of my favorites: the sex education video to end all sex education videos, newsreel style (circa 1940). In this educational video, Harry Enfield is Mr. Grayson. Learn all you need to know about the "horrid beastliness" marriage requires:
The availability of this clip demonstrates the ways in which YouTube is a boon to humankind, never mind the ways in which it is sometimes the opposite. This is the art of the (jazz) dancers as it's seldom been practiced. The clip is from the 1943 African-American film "Stormy Weather," "loosely based on the life and times of its star, Bill "Bojangles" Robinson." The Nicholas Brothers dance; the great Cab Calloway opens with a bit of scat-singing. Seriously, even if you don't know in advance whether you in fact like this sort of thing, you need to jump to "A Gentleman's Domain" to see this.
Television without Pity watches crap television so I don't have to and writes up the episodes so I can ridicule it without having (in the time honored favorite metaphor of its forum posters, "scrub out my brain with bleach" afterward).
They're usually at their best when the show is constructed to highlight not the worst aspects of human nature, but the most embarrassingly, humiliatingly petty and ridiculous. In other words,they really come into their own for bad reality TV. With the writer's strike, I expect to be reading many a reality show recap.
With Jacob Clifton nowhere to be seen, my favorite recapper bar none is the divine Miss Potes, currently recapping "Rock of Love," possibly the best reality television I have never seen. Picture this: a passel of young girls, whose main qualification appears to be artificially enhanced boobs plus a propensity to party (and many of whom make their living as strippers) all assemble in the home of one of rock's time-tarnished idols of yesteryear, of whom I have of course never even heard. Much talk---natch!---of bitches, boobs, booze, and boners. Much twirling also around the stripper pole which the production company (MTV) has thoughtfully supplied.
I thought of looking at YouTube to see if I could find footage of this "blue-eyed...veritable Rock God"'s work, but then I thought better not. I am not even going to look for clips from the show. It might ruin it for me. But there is a photo gallery here, if you would care to see it. It's a scary, stressful world: I want my bread and circuses and I think you do too.
CROSS-POSTED AT ANGLO-SAXON ATTITUDES |
If you're not in need of light-hearted fun or something upbeat to take your mind off this, that, or the other, I would strongly recommend this film: the misleadingly titled The Last Hangman, in which the always extraordinary Timothy Spall plays Britain's Albert Pierrepont, the most humane hangman in history. (The trailer for the film is here).
I knew before watching the film that Pierrepont was an exceptional character since my death penalty-abhorring British husband, Nicholas, has always (based on Pierrepont's biography) admired and respected him. (Pierrepont even makes a brief appearance in the first chapter of Nicholas's novel, Elijah). Pierrepont's distinguishing trait was the utter respect with which he treated the people he executed, his careful use of techniques designed to cause instant death (to avoid the suffering and indignity that goes with the lynch-mob style of hanging practiced elsewhere), and his belief that those who died on the gallows thereby redeemed themselves ("they paid the price") and were thereafter entitled to the respect due to the dead anywhere.
I oppose the death penalty in every circumstances, but I would like to see Pierrepont's spirit infuse those who still promote it. The grisly hunger for revenge of most death penalty advocates, and their disrespect for the death itself, would have disgusted Pierrepont as much as it does me (and in fact, he later concluded that the death penalty was wrong).
It's a great and humane, if grim, film. In a review in the Boston Globe, critic Ty Burr writes:
Life on Mars is currently my favorite show. In a nutshell (this is the IMDb quick plot outline): "After being involved in a car accident in 2006, DCI Sam Tyler (Simm)
wakes up to find himself in 1973, the era of 'Sweeney' type policing,
Mark III Cortinas, and flared trousers." That's what it's about. But it's only the barest outline of what it's really about, as Sam---aware that his real self is lying in a coma in the 21st Century and that somehow or other every move he makes in his dream life or alternative life controls his fate in the "real world"---adjusts to policing in the Seventies.
None but the Brits could produce something so dark, so darkly funny, so witty, so gritty, so bleak and violent, and so intrinsically terrifying----or so beautifully produced and acted. See the BBC website (quite cool), and for a detailed synopsis, Wikipedia (no reason to reinvent the wheel).
Some of You Tube's fans have created "tribute vids." The best part of these is that they include the David Bowie theme song, "Life on Mars," sadly missing from the second series. (Hearing this made me realize that I needed more David Bowie in my life).
If you don't have BBC America, I am really, really sorry.....
Only people who get BBC America would have seen this and then only if they knew how awesome a program about cars can be if Jonathan Ross is the "presenter." Ramsay was actually rather gentle and endearing (if not exactly diffident) in this one. This is why you need BBC America, people!
I cross-posted these entries on different days in my "Chronicles" because the text is really more about me subjectively
than about these songs objectively.
I can't even explain why the first one I discuss gets at me so much. The lyrics aren't what you'd call poignant.
SON OF A GUN by THE LA'S. Ever since I heard this song---after many, many years---on "British Spongebob"
(right; just see the post...), I can't get it out of my head. You know
how some songs evoke all sorts of ideas and images that you can't
explain and that seem to belong to someone else (or some other
lifetime)? This is one of those for me. And it isn't the words, but
the tune.
I really DO intend to begin blogging about my own life again. But getting Buck Naked Politics
up and running (and with a 200+ technorati ranking) and still working
full-time has absorbed all my energy. Please visit me there!
[SPOILERS] Let me be honest: I've fallen so far behind in my recapping of this season's The Office that I might as well have given it up altogether, except that there is a part of me determined to finish off this season (including all missed episodes). Why? you ask. Who reads recaps after the season is over?
I don't know, but I expect I'll find out. I haven't had a lot of time these last six months to recap, but it is sort of a labor of love for me, even though no one may ever read them. If you're a recap-reader-for-fun, check back by in due course and you'll see.
Like the previous two episodes, the finale was a sort of sweet 'n sour experience, that left me feeling a bit baffled but also a bit painfully puckered around the mouth. I knew, being a fan of the original show, that the likely scenario was someone being put over Michael whose authority would cause him to chafe, but I didn't picture Ryan as a contender. Well, for one thing, we weren't told he was interviewing for the job at "Corporate" (we knew only about Michael, Karen, and Jim). I thought it was sort of a stroke of genius to have it be Ryan and to capture his look of triumph in the final moment as well as his first order of business (breaking up with Kelly).
So was he? Reading comments of other viewers, they don't seem to have interpreted this scene the same way I did. Was Ryan offered some other job? A commenter at the NBC website speculated that Karen got the corporate job and that David Wallace was offering him a job as Karen's assistant. Really? An MBA?
Weirdly, I was under the impression that Jan had quit or been let go and that the job the kids were all applying for was hers. I was surprised when it turned out that she didn't know that the job was even available. I was also unpleasantly surprised at her total meltdown (the least troubling aspect of which was having her get enormous artificial boobs installed as a lure for Michael). I've been having trouble with the Jan/Michael hook-up since The Cocktail Party and I haven't actually enjoyed any of the episodes that featured this as a major element.
Last night, while watching an almost unbearably tense episode of The Sopranos, it occurred to me that the final episodes have focused heavily---though as a latent and peripheral theme---on Tony's relationship with his father, Johnny, whom Tony has always idolized. Fathers have figured heavily throughout these last episodes: little Carmine dreamed his father told him to fill his life with happiness; Christopher, Tony's surrogate son, betrays Tony by showing him through "Cleaver" how he really feels; during the episode by the lake, Bobby and Tony talked about his hit man father, who never expected Bobby to follow in his footsteps and Janice told a story that fully revealed the violence underlying the relationship between Johnny and Livia, infuriating Tony, and therefore leading directly to his initiating Bobby in the cult of murder; Uncle Junior proves to be a disappointing replacement father for a young psycho who nearly murders him; we see Tony's first kill----a pathetically terrified, trembling, skinny bookie----ordered by his father; and finally, last night, the consequences of Vito Jr.'s extreme anger with his father. Last night's episode ends with what I imagine is a permanent rupture between Tony and Hesh, whom he made it clear during the episode he regarded as a father figure.
I'd like to think that before the series ends, Tony will come to terms with the real elephant in the room: his father's role in creating the life he is living, a life which he obviously no longer wants and has begun to hate. Throughout the show, Livia has consistently been portrayed as the true villain of the piece and the person most responsible for making Tony and Janice into the people they've become.
The truth is, it was Johnny, whom Tony still idolizes, who made Tony into the lost and violent soul that he is. Last week, Tony hears that the only time Johnny ever cried was on the night Tony was born. But Tony says "I never really knew where I stood with him."