In America, the 1960s were the golden age of the foreign film. Film directors like Michelangelo Antonioni, Jean-Luc Godard, Ingmar Bergman, and Alain Resnais were considered “superstars,” and[…]
Thank God for the Benny Goodman Quartet
Let’s start with the most obvious correlation, other than perhaps the fact that both artists are likely to appeal to folks like me who strongly identify with the technical experimentation[…]
Two golden-age musicals get the deluxe treatment
Actors & Personalities · Documentaries · Music & Musicals
I’m not the one you want babe / I’ll only let you down.”
Crime · Music & Musicals · Reviews
“Paris at night in black-and-white with Miles on the soundtrack? It’s a perfect fit.”
Composers · Essays · Music & Musicals
“Alexei must be condemned to the pointless, loveless, and finally false freedom of a spinning limbo, as unfinished and unfinishable as the best Bakhtinian polyphony.”
This month sees the DVD release of old Night Flight favorite, LADIES AND GENTLEMEN, THE FABULOUS STAINS (1981). A young Diane Lane leads the fledgling and titular punk band, which[…]
“Suddenly my senses are all incredibly acute … I’m different, more alive, stronger … “
Actors & Personalities · Music & Musicals
“This MGM movie is studio-system filmmaking at its most protective, and it’s designed entirely to showcase Leslie Caron …”
Composers · Essays · Music & Musicals · Sound & Language · Writers & Critics
“Defenseless against music, I must submit to its despotism and, depending on its whim, be god or garbage.”
“Macheath: I’m not asking you to put on an opera.” ~ Bertolt Brecht, The Threepenny Opera, Act 1, scene 2 Down the crooked lanes of London, gangster Mackie Messer stalks a[…]
DVD & Blu-ray · Music & Musicals · Reviews
“It flashes before our eyes, and we are not even sure what we have witnessed.” There is an incongruous moment in Please Leave Quietly (2006), the long-awaited concert DVD from[…]
“Shot in earthbound Eastman color, It’s Always Fair Weather doesn’t look or feel like the Technicolor froth that preceded it.” There’s a scene in the 1949 musical On the Town when Frank[…]
Jürgen Flimm and Brian Large supply a stage production that lives on DVD A stage production that doesn’t look stagy on home video? I said it couldn’t be done, more[…]
Documentaries · Music & Musicals · Reviews
A group of rather spectacular performers – Nick Cave, Rufus Wainwright, Anna McGarrigle, Martha Wainwright, Kate McGarrigle and Antony among them — gathered at the Sydney Opera House in 2005[…]
Directors · Music & Musicals · Producers & Studios · Reviews
Come and meet those dancing feet, and pianos, and buildings, and . . . Give the nearest Warner Home Video executive a big hug. The company has at last remastered[…]
“Who doesn’t want to be rescued by their narrator?” Sometimes a film’s camera takes you on one track, while its music sends you on another, wider one: it offers you[…]
“You’d be hard to replace”? Damn near impossible! How hard is it to lose those last ten pounds, eh? Well, pretty damn hard, but if Ginger Rogers had been able[…]
