STAGING WAGNER
RECENTLY, I NOTED, WATCHING Bergman’s The Virgin Spring reminded me of Wagner staging of medieval interiors. I was thinking especially of the Hunding residence built around a massive ash tree … Continue reading
TIDBITS ABOUT AUNTIE BEEB
BBC WORLD SERVICE is my wakeup call at 6:00 a.m. Pacific, 13.00 GMT. They used to play Lillibullero, but now it’s just a zippy modern sound check. This year is … Continue reading
CELEBRATING TRUFFAUT, BERGMAN, AND BONDARCHUK PART 2
CONTINUING OUR FOREIGN FLICK fling, we devote Part 2 to the single, massive, expansive, (add adjective of your choice) 7 hour 11 minute epic, Sergei Bondarchuk’s Война и мир, War … Continue reading
CELEBRATING TRUFFAUT, BERGMAN, AND BONDARCHUK PART 1
IN MY BEATNIK PHASE (which lagged into the 1960s) I was into foreign films, the sort that lingered on pensive closeups and raindrops clinging to a leaf. Now, apparently into … Continue reading
EALING TIDBITS PART 2
YESTERDAY’S TIDBITS GLEANED from George Perry’s Forever Ealing focused on the earliest days of this British film studio. Today in Part 2, Ealing adds sounds to the moving images, which … Continue reading
EALING TIDBITS PART 1
IN 1950S’ CLEVELAND, a TV station not showing the Browns game would entertain us on Sunday afternoons with British cinema. Given it was before frozen TV dinners, my dad would … Continue reading
THE PEOPLE’S SONG BOOK PART 2
YESTERDAY IN PART 1 we sang in solidarity for picket lines, against dodgers, and most definitely against Hitler. Today, we continue through The People’s Song Book with songs about congressmen … Continue reading
THE PEOPLE’S SONG BOOK, 1948 PART 1
EXAMINING THE PEOPLE’S Song Book, 1948, I’m half expecting an investigation by the House Un-American Activities Committee. The book’s Foreward was written by eminent ethnomusicologist Alan Lomax, who got caught … Continue reading
THE ROARING—AND SOARING—TWENTIES PART 2
YESTERDAY IN PART 1, Yvonne Brunhammer discussed 1920s’ ballet, travel, and architecture. Today in Part 2, her focus is on a smaller scale: tableware and furniture, two genres of which … Continue reading
THE ROARING—AND SOARING—TWENTIES PART 1
DESIGN OF THE NINETEEN-TWENTIES soared. Artists and artisans, weary of World War I, responded with new perceptions of reality, some of them outright bizarre. Here, in Parts 1 and 2 … Continue reading
Simanaitis Says 