Larry Kart

So you mean that Kehr writes about films but doesn't make them? Brilliant point. But among those who write about films -- worthless endeavor though that may be -- Dave is highly regarded.

So this guy (and you) don't like Woody Allen - all right we get it! Christ, but that's the most subjective, mean spirited review I've seen in a long time. TPROC is a charming wonderful film, with a dark heart - it swoops and glides, full of unexpected riffs (I particularly like the champagne when she's 'in the film'). As for the line about the gags in the early movies being typically verbal - that is total nonsense. Take The Money And Run, Bananas and Sleeper are crammed to bursting with some of the funniest sight gags ever - IMO of course. Playing cello in the marching band, using the glass cutter to steal from the jewellery shop window. Whoever wrote that review had it in for Woody, and resorted to outright untruth to boot. I have zero respect for someone who misrepresents the case like that. Dave Kehr is no pile of chopped liver: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dave_Kehr For your dining and dancing pleasure, Kehr on "Purple Rose": "Woody Allen's naive notions of art—he thinks it means a story with a moral—might have some primitive charm if he didn't put them forward so self-importantly. And the sophomoric illusion-versus-reality games he plays in this 1985 film might be easier to take if he had the directorial skills necessary to establish a meaningful demarcation between the two worlds: as it stands, his “reality” is just as flimsily conceived, and populated by characters every bit as flat and arbitrary, as the romantic illusion the film is meant to criticize. The film's small-town Depression-era setting is picturesquely bleak (under Gordon Willis's brackish cinematography, it makes the London of Michael Radford's Nineteen Eighty-four look like Club Med) and peppered with poetically wistful Fellini-isms (run-down whores, an abandoned amusement park). And as the put-upon housewife who finds escape and fulfillment at the local Bijou, Mia Farrow is the embodiment of every obnoxious Hollywood cliche of the “little person”—fragile, waiflike, terminally pathetic. When an actor (Jeff Daniels) steps down from the screen and sweeps her off to a land of perfect romance, we're supposed to feel the wonder of fantasy transforming a tragic reality, but it's really just one sentimental convention running off with another." Also, the line about the gags in the early films being typically verbal is mine, not Kehr's. "I know how to use a gub" -- right. Finally, in case anyone complains about violating forum rules, the two capsule reviews of Kehr's I quoted are not IMO copyrighted material. Dave wrote them for the Chicago Reader, on whose website they can be found, but the Reader essentially stole the rights to them from Dave in an ugly manner, and thus I feel free to liberate them. If the powers that be feel otherwise, I will reduce the quoted passages to links.

Because in some of your recent posts you adopt (and I can only hope you're horsing around by doing so) a rather flowery-genteel mode of speech -- e.g. "I honestly feel that advocating a thrashing is not beyond the pale ... an expression of extreme umbrage" -- which is the sort of thing that led W.C. Fields to use that phrase.

That's what I like about the early films, they're just absurdist set-ups for situational humour. Kinda like if a more proactive and animated Chauncey Gardener from Being There pulled a bank heist. Or became an accidental revolutionary. I really disliked the Paris movie as well. It resembled to me the kind of Romantic bed-time story 'Woody Allen' might trot out to a seventeen year old Mariel Hemingway type. And I disliked it more because everyone else seemed to like it so much. About "absurdist setups for situational humor," compare Allen here (I suggest) with W.C. Fields, where the absurd situations either arise from the absurdities of the charters' lives ("It's a Gift" especially) or take place with within acknowledged realms of near-total absurdity (e.g. "Never Give a Sucker an Even Break"). I can't help but feel that those who fall so hard for the gags in Allen's early films have as their basic point of comparison Mad Magazine parodies. Hey -- I laughed at/still laugh at some of those gags in the early Allen films too, but Allen's not a patch on, say Harvey Kurtzman/Will Elder or Kurtzman/Wally Wood.

A capsule review by Dave Kehr of "Stardust Memories" that touches upon some of the many reasons I dislike Allen and most of his stuff: "A drab, crowded, ugly film by Woody Allen. Meant to be a confessional in the style of 8 1/2, this 1980 feature is more or less a steady stream of bile: Allen plays a famous film director who hates his movies, hates his audiences, and hates himself. During a seminar at a Jersey shore resort, his life passes before his eyes; the scenes center on his bumbling relationships with what has become the standard Allen complement of three women: the dark (Charlotte Rampling), the fair (Marie-Christine Barrault), and the lesbian (Jessica Harper). Allen is working his camera more, though his visual coups mainly consist of more self-conscious ways of creating the claustrophobia that has always ruled his work. With its blunt, artless angst, the picture leaves you feeling depleted, squashed." I particularly dislike "The Purple Rose of Cairo" and except for a few set pieces don't care much for the early movies (among Allen's chief flaws as a directer IMO is that he not only often sacrifices dramatic versimilitude for the momentary gag but that the gags also are typically verbal, and airlessly, "smartly" verbal at that). The only Allen film that got to me some was "Annie Hall," and that I think may have been because Dianne Keaton herself momentarily got to Allen -- penetrated his at once smug and fearful isolation -- though I suppose that's more or less the subject of the movie: how does a dick like Woody Allen react when that happens to him. That recent "Paris" movie made me want to thrown things at the screen.

Ah, yes, my little chickadee -- "extreme umbrage." Returning to one of Holloway's points, I could hear quite well what he meant in one of of his points while listening yesterday to the Violin Sonata Op. 134 -- some 35 minutes of "deprived" gloom. That is, to create the feeling of extreme deprivation that DS almost certainly was going for in that piece (written for Oistrakh, it apparently sprang from a then-recent governmental campaign of harassment against Oistrakh that was mounted to set an example for other artists and intellectuals to fearfully take heed of -- this info from liner notes by R. Dubinsky, former leader of the Borodin Quartet, who is the violinist on this disc) DS virtually deprives the music itself of all normal harmonic, melodic, and developmental sustenance, and yet the piece -- virtually in rags and tatters, so to speak, a walking skeleton -- still staggers on. I can see, again, the validity of Holloway's complaint -- it's close to anti-musical to not only place so much weight on a near-static act of "expression" but also to chose to express what one wants to express by almost baldly curtailing the means of music-making. And yet, contra Holloway -- at least for me, at this time (and maybe it will be only a few times for me) -- the piece does work quite powerfully and uniquely. BTW, I think one of the things in the back of Holloway's mind here was that DS might serve (might already have served, in the case of Schnittke, for one) as a dire example -- furthering the idea that the viable future for music was for it to be placed upon a funeral pyre of its own devising, and/or that the continuing semi-suicidal "sacrifice" of much of the means of music-making was what meaningful music-making nowadays absolutely required.

Tricky memory for sure. I was at the Parker Memorial Concerts (in Aug. 1970) and heard Von there, so the South Side party gig I was at must have taken place sometime before then, because I'd certainly never heard Von in person prior to that afternoon. I remember talking over how stunned we both were by what we had heard with Harriet Choice, who was there with me that day. Maybe I transposed the Atlantic album backwards in time because his playing on the album, when I heard it, was not at the level I recalled from that party. Von didn't get onto record at his best until Chuck did the glorious deed.

Will never forget the first time I heard him in person, in the late' 60s or early '70s, not too long (I think) after he came back to town from his time with the Treniers in Las Vegas. He was playing a small social affair (I think it was someone's wedding anniversary, perhaps a friend of his) in a nice room above a South Side restaurant, with Don Patterson, guitarist Sam Thomas, and Wilbur Campbell. I knew Von's Atlantic record, but what I heard that afternoon was almost beyond belief in its power and mastery -- and ease, too. I remember telling Joe Segal about what I'd heard the next time I ran into him, suggesting that he bring Von into the Showcase. I swear Joe said something like "Von Freeman? Never heard of him." Probably he was just putting me on.

Composer Robin Holloway's negative views on Shostakovich: http://books.google.com/books?id=b0KonLPQndcC&pg=PA297&lpg=PA297&dq=robin+holloway+shostakovich&source=bl&ots=Xbb7PC_e1s&sig=fe9VgIXeX7JbV-Szee1S26UWIs4&hl=en&sa=X&ei=uB8pUO-JDaqMyAGArIHoBw&ved=0CEcQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=robin%20holloway%20shostakovich&f=false

I see that I have Michael Borgstede's set, which I liked enough to get rid of my numerous Kenneth Gilbert Couperin LPs on MHS in order to save space. I suspect that was a mistake, though I do like Borgstede, but it's not a mistake I can take back. Did the same thing at about the same time with all my Fernando Valenti Scarlatti LPs on Westminster. What a maroon, in the words of Bugs Bunny.

Cochard (on Spotify) sounds excellent to me. I love Couperin, have ever since i first encountered him in Sylvia Marlowe's hands.

Yes, that's the one. "At a price" sounds ominous. I think I'll stick with my Kenneth Gilbert LPs and check periodically at Amazon to see if the Rannou shows up there. BTW, I did found her Forqueray set at Berkshire, and it's on its way to me.

No, don't know that one, and 10 discs of François Couperin is a bit much for me. How's this Blandine Verlet François Couperin 2CD-set: Amazon (it's much cheaper in Europe) How Moms can recommend Baumont's Couperin after his endorsement of Rannou's Couperin baffles me. Encounters with Rannou's Couperin on Spotify (that album doesn't seem available on CD right now in the U.S., only for download, but perhaps that's different in Europe) make it clear to me that her Couperin is in a different class altogether. Compared to Baumont, I much prefer my old Kenneth Gilbert LPs.

Among the heaps of brick and plaster lies a girder, still itself among the rubbish. - Charles Reznikoff

Some good stuff there. I particularly liked the last one.

Valeria -- please heed this: Although he had used other drugs in the past, including weed and heroin, it was the first time Boy George had taken acid. Compared to other drugs he had taken, there is a long delay between taking LSD and the drug taking effect -- typically up to an hour. George got bored waiting after taking the first tab, and took a second dose, so the trip was very intense. George and his friends headed to a club. After a bout of paranoia about the police presence outside, and upsetting another celebrity, George felt he had lost control of his body. The visual hallucinations made it feel like "everything was breathing and coming at me. I started shrinking and feeling scared. We had to leave." He then alienated most of his companions, who left him alone with celebrity pal, Marilyn. By then, George had lost control of his bodily functions. "I was tripping so badly I couldn't get myself to the toilet. Marilyn led me to the loo in hysterics and left me staring at the bowl. I caught my melting face in the mirror and started to freak. 'I can't go, I can't' [then] I pissed myself."

Valeria -- From now on we all shall be following your 'contributions' with a keen eye.

It's "Wuorinen." The album is on the Russian Disc label, from 2011, but I can't find it on Amazon or other similar sites. It can be downleaded, though.

Can't find it now, but I was reading last night that Wuorinen said that the pieces to him were about the notes more than the instrumental colors, and that recasting them for the piano or pianos made the not-to-note relationships clearer. I certainly see/hear what he means, though especially in the slower portions of the Chamber Symphony No. 1 there are some obvious losses, e.g. the magical liquid ascent (but not liquid here) that begins the central slow section. OTOH, in addition to the clarifying factor, I just found this arrangements to have a fascinating sound of their own. No other music for piano that I'm aware of sounds like this.

If you've got Spotify, check this out; it's nutty in a good sense. I found it by plugging in Wourinen; it's the first album that crops up. The album also includes Wuorinen's two-piano arrangements of Chamber Symphony No. 2 and (hold your breath) the Variations for Orchestra. The arrangements were done for a ballet company or companies, but I'd say they are far more than work for hire.

Because it's been my experience, for the most part, that "for that long" is a significant part of the overall musical/aesthetic effect. Also, as far as I'm concerned, "minimalism" (or Minimalism) has nothing to do with it, nor with anything that Feldman meant or had in mind. Don't know if Morty himself ever recorded his opinions about any of the Minimalism we've come to know as such, but I'd be surprised if he found it anything but annoying and/or simple-minded. And IMO anyone who thinks that Morty's music is simple-minded is ... you know the rest. P.S. about "for that long"-- Do you think Bruckner symphonies should be shorter?

Allen -- We've exchanged view son Mulligan before, I think, but to me he was always very charming and quite individual as a composer/arranger and at his best a good deal more than that (e.g. his sublime version of "All the Things You Are" for Columbia). As a soloist I thought he was, as Whitlock says, rather formulaic, and not a patch on Chaloff, Gullin, Bob Gordon, et al. during his years of peak celebrity, but he did get a good deal better/less formulaic as a soloist in his later years.

When did I say that? While I'm not a Feldman completist, I do have a lot of Feldman, and everything I have (if the performance is good one) I'm very glad I have. Exceptions would be most of the late orchestral "tapestry" pieces. The problem there may be Feldman, and it may be me, but I suspect it's the performances -- that for those pieces to work, at least for me, the performances need to be exquisite (for want of a better term) to a degree that most existing orchestras and conductors aren't going to realize. But perhaps in due time...

Is there any connection between Mark Russell and Mel Brooks, or is this a case of [insert any name here]? Not speaking for Goodspeak, but I assume he meant that while they both have fans, Russell and Brooks were as far apart as two comics could be.

Check out Barbara Harris in Hitchcock's "Family Plot." Fabulous/hilarious. Her boyfriend is played by Bruce Dern. Good grief what a couple. I ran across Harris at a Second City reunion some years back. She had quite an aura.