slaytonf

Humboldt County is on the California coast, north of San Francisco. Known for redwoods and some of the best pot grown anywhere.

What a catastrophe!

No, I just like to watch. It started when I happened across the Baryshnikov/Kirkland Nutcracker on YT. Combined with the Red Shoes (1948) and Moira Shearer's work in Tales of Hoffman (1951), I looked for ballets that were mentioned, and got hooked. What the dancers do can be astonishing and heart-stopping.

Not a favorite of mine. If it's the one with Gelsey Kirkland, that's my favorite. You have exposed my ignorance of ballet moves. Yet I doubt if you see many pliés in public.

What's there to talk about? There's nothing to talk about. I don't need to talk about it. It's just cat videos infecting the message boards. Ohhh, the horror. . . .

I think, a long way back in the thread. But it bears repeating.

TCM's airing of The Red Shoes (1948) got me thinking about ballet in movies. There are lots of them about the dancers and their lives, or with dance numbers that are, well, at least balletic. But unlike stage musicals I don't know of any that are made of actual ballets, except for Dr. Coppelius (1966), a movie adaptation of the beloved Coppelia. You'd think something like Swan Lake at least would have been made into a movie, and to be sure, there do seem to be some theatrical releases of ballets. But they all appear to be just filmed stage performances. One explanation might be that while musicals have a wide appeal, ballets are more limited, if not elite. On the other hand operas have been made into movies, maybe not at a great rate, but certainly not unknown. But operas have singing, and even if it's artsy, that still has more appeal than performing astonishing physical feats mutely. If we can't sing like Callas or Pavarotti, we can at least hum a tune. Not so an arabesque or plié.

Oh no---cats.

I'll have to check it out.

It isn't pretty when they do.

George Putnam shows that bombast has been around for a long time, probably since there were people. So we must always be ready with our needles to puncture it.

So I watched it, but it doesn't feel like the Hitchcock movie I was thinking of. I'm starting to think it was a phantom memory and the murder in Vertigo (1958) was the only one in his filmography that someone really gets away with.

To paraphrase: "Bombast is an ugly ting, und I tink it is yust about time we had some!"

But that is a fair representation of him.

And now you malign a great newsman. For shame.