I've been asked why I didn't write anything about the 2018 World Series. My answer is not that the Fox broadcasters and TV coverage were so lousy (they were, but that was not at all surprising; I listened to Dan Schulman on ESPN, allowing me to "see" more of the game than the TV version, which focused more on the stands and the dugouts than the field) but I've had it with players who have more strikeout than homeruns (the Dodgers had 34 hits and 56 strikeouts in five games, the Red Sox 42 and 53), pitchers who can't pitch to locations but ruin their arms trying to throw 100 mph and managers who yank pitchers and replace them with a parade of muscle-bound relievers. As Michael Powell wrote in the January 6, 2019 NY Times:
Game 4 of the 2018 World Series presented something of a nadir when Los Angeles Dodgers manager Dave Roberts, a bright fellow no doubt, pulled his starting pitcher after he had yielded a single hit through six and a third innings and was ahead, 4-0. The Dodgers ended up marching six relievers into that game , lost, 9-6, and exited the World Series the next day.
Received wisdom from the front office (who hires and fires managers) is that no pitcher should go more than 100 pitches or too many times through the batting order. This, and other dubious analytical imperatives --no sacrifice bunts, no stealing bases, no hit-and-run plays, no hitting the ball on the ground -- have turned an exciting and beautiful game into something of a travesty. Powell talks to the great pitching coach Leo Mazzone, who believes the current pitching wisdom is absurd, "a manager covering his ass." Powell studies the history of some great pitchers and finds that most pitchers had their worst ERA in the first inning; Tom Seaver pitched the ninth inning 17 times in 1969 and did not give up a single run!
If we don't watch out, the rule of starting pitchers having to go five innings could be changed and if some announcers (such as the annoying Michael Kay) have their way there may no longer even be a winning pitcher designated! As I've said previously in this blog: increase the strike zone, raise the mound, legalize the spitball, and, as Powell says, "let starting pitchers pitch."
Tuesday, January 8, 2019
Thursday, January 3, 2019
Remember the Night (1940), directed by Mitch Leisen and written by Preston Sturges
Remember the Night is a prosecutor (Fred MacMurray) in love with a shoplifter (Barbara Stanwyck); it is close to a great film, and arguably the most human love story Preston Sturges ever wrote.
---David Thomson, The New Biographical Dictionary of Film (Knopf, 2014).
Remember the Night is the last film Preston Sturges wrote before he began directing his own screenplays and, though I am a great admirer of the films Sturges directed, Leisen brought a level of emotion to Sturges's screenplays (he also directed Sturges's script for Easy Living, 1938) that was sometimes lacking in Sturges's own films. I think that Remember the Night is still not the popular Christmas movie that Frank Capra's banal populist It's a Wonderful Life (1948) is, less because of the presence of African-American actor Snowflake (as some have suggested; he is also in several of the films Sturges directed and plays a canny employee) than the subtlety of Remember the Night which, unlike Capra's film, doesn't cover up the darkness with angels and a forced happy ending. One of the themes of Remember the Night is that one has to be accountable, not to God or authorities but to oneself. My seven-year-old daughter Victoria watched the film with Susan, Gideon and me and seemed to enjoy it until the end, when Barbara Stanwyck accepted that she would have to go to jail and MacMurray said he would wait for her. Victoria doesn't like it when characters she likes have to go to jail; she loves Chaplin's short films but hates when Chaplin is arrested or ends up alone, as in Modern Times(1936) or The Circus (1928) -- I am now saving City Lights (1931) for when she is older.
Although Leisen's films can be quite funny (see my post of May 19, 2016, about Suddenly It's Spring, 1947, also starring Fred MacMurray) Remember the Night is also quite serious, as the best comedies always are. Though MacMurray's rural family is quite charming Sturges and Leisen also show the darker side of small-town Indiana: a farmer does a citizen's arrest of MacMurray and Stanwyck when they accidentally end up in his cow pasture and use a cow's milk for breakfast; then when Stanwyck goes to see her mother for the first time since she ran away as a teenager her mother throws her out of the house as a "no-good thief." So they spend Christmas with MacMurray's mother, maiden aunt and hired boy. One of my favorite scenes in the movie is when Aunt Emma takes out her wedding dress for Stanwyck to wear to the barn dance; Emma was briefly engaged and with the dress is a bundle of letters, which Emma holds up briefly and then quietly puts away.
---David Thomson, The New Biographical Dictionary of Film (Knopf, 2014).
Remember the Night is the last film Preston Sturges wrote before he began directing his own screenplays and, though I am a great admirer of the films Sturges directed, Leisen brought a level of emotion to Sturges's screenplays (he also directed Sturges's script for Easy Living, 1938) that was sometimes lacking in Sturges's own films. I think that Remember the Night is still not the popular Christmas movie that Frank Capra's banal populist It's a Wonderful Life (1948) is, less because of the presence of African-American actor Snowflake (as some have suggested; he is also in several of the films Sturges directed and plays a canny employee) than the subtlety of Remember the Night which, unlike Capra's film, doesn't cover up the darkness with angels and a forced happy ending. One of the themes of Remember the Night is that one has to be accountable, not to God or authorities but to oneself. My seven-year-old daughter Victoria watched the film with Susan, Gideon and me and seemed to enjoy it until the end, when Barbara Stanwyck accepted that she would have to go to jail and MacMurray said he would wait for her. Victoria doesn't like it when characters she likes have to go to jail; she loves Chaplin's short films but hates when Chaplin is arrested or ends up alone, as in Modern Times(1936) or The Circus (1928) -- I am now saving City Lights (1931) for when she is older.
Although Leisen's films can be quite funny (see my post of May 19, 2016, about Suddenly It's Spring, 1947, also starring Fred MacMurray) Remember the Night is also quite serious, as the best comedies always are. Though MacMurray's rural family is quite charming Sturges and Leisen also show the darker side of small-town Indiana: a farmer does a citizen's arrest of MacMurray and Stanwyck when they accidentally end up in his cow pasture and use a cow's milk for breakfast; then when Stanwyck goes to see her mother for the first time since she ran away as a teenager her mother throws her out of the house as a "no-good thief." So they spend Christmas with MacMurray's mother, maiden aunt and hired boy. One of my favorite scenes in the movie is when Aunt Emma takes out her wedding dress for Stanwyck to wear to the barn dance; Emma was briefly engaged and with the dress is a bundle of letters, which Emma holds up briefly and then quietly puts away.
Sunday, December 30, 2018
Balanchine's The Nutcracker, NYC Ballet, Dec. 28, 2018
Aside from the fact that it requires a number of professionally trained children, which most ballet companies do not possess, The Nutcracker is not suitable for a company built, like the majority, around a few soloists and with a corps de ballet capable of little more than calisthenics. George Balanchine has always set his face against such a structure. The ideal he has worked for is a company in which every member is technically capable of dancing a solo role; in his choreography, instead of the conventional corps de ballet acting in unison, everyone has his unique part to play. Balanchine sees The Nutcracker as a festival of joy, a sort of Christmas pantomime, and only those who have lost their sense of joy and for whom, consequently ballet is a meaningless art, will find it juvenile.
---W.H, Auden, 1954 Program Note.
The Nutcracker is still the only ballet that too many parents take their kids to. And too many people see it for its story and not for its intricate and extraordinary choreography. But I'm becoming resigned to that. The Nutcracker, like the best popular entertainment, can be enjoyed on multiple levels, from the spectacle of the costumes and scenery to the incredible dancing. Perhaps it's wishful thinking, but I think that New York City Ballet has improved immensely since the departure of the autocratic Peter Martins and his replacement by the "interim artistic team" of Jonathan Stafford, Justin Peck, Craig Hall and Rebecca Krohn. On Friday all the dancers --including sixty-three children from the school, rehearsed and supervised by Dena Abergel and Arch Higgins -- were at the top of their form, especially The Sugarplum Fairy and Her Cavalier, danced by soloists Sara Adams and Sebastian Villarini-Velez, dancing passionately to the energetic conducting of the Tschaikovsky music by music director Andrew Litton.
The Nutcracker is such a holiday staple now that not everyone is aware that when Balanchine choreographed it in 1954 it was mostly a forgotten ballet, the 1892 original choreography by Petipa and Ivanov mostly lost. Balanchine had danced in The Nutcracker as a teenager at the Maryinski in Russia and felt that there would be an audience for it in the fifties, with spectacle and costumes and a fairytale story for most people and new dances for Tschaikovsky's beautiful music. What he didn't figure out was how to get the adults who brought their children to this ballet to bring them to his more abstract and austere ballets to the music of Stravinsky, Hindemith, Bach, Bizet, et al. In some ways, of course, perhaps it didn't matter: the sold-out crowds for The Nutcracker (48 performances this year) help finance the more abstract ballets and those who are interested manage to find their way to them, at whatever age. Balanchine's Nutcracker has now found its way to other ballet companies, most of whom do not have the resources to do it at the level of New York City Ballet, but it might help keep ballet alive in the 21st century while we wait patiently for new and inspired choreography
---W.H, Auden, 1954 Program Note.
The Nutcracker is still the only ballet that too many parents take their kids to. And too many people see it for its story and not for its intricate and extraordinary choreography. But I'm becoming resigned to that. The Nutcracker, like the best popular entertainment, can be enjoyed on multiple levels, from the spectacle of the costumes and scenery to the incredible dancing. Perhaps it's wishful thinking, but I think that New York City Ballet has improved immensely since the departure of the autocratic Peter Martins and his replacement by the "interim artistic team" of Jonathan Stafford, Justin Peck, Craig Hall and Rebecca Krohn. On Friday all the dancers --including sixty-three children from the school, rehearsed and supervised by Dena Abergel and Arch Higgins -- were at the top of their form, especially The Sugarplum Fairy and Her Cavalier, danced by soloists Sara Adams and Sebastian Villarini-Velez, dancing passionately to the energetic conducting of the Tschaikovsky music by music director Andrew Litton.
The Nutcracker is such a holiday staple now that not everyone is aware that when Balanchine choreographed it in 1954 it was mostly a forgotten ballet, the 1892 original choreography by Petipa and Ivanov mostly lost. Balanchine had danced in The Nutcracker as a teenager at the Maryinski in Russia and felt that there would be an audience for it in the fifties, with spectacle and costumes and a fairytale story for most people and new dances for Tschaikovsky's beautiful music. What he didn't figure out was how to get the adults who brought their children to this ballet to bring them to his more abstract and austere ballets to the music of Stravinsky, Hindemith, Bach, Bizet, et al. In some ways, of course, perhaps it didn't matter: the sold-out crowds for The Nutcracker (48 performances this year) help finance the more abstract ballets and those who are interested manage to find their way to them, at whatever age. Balanchine's Nutcracker has now found its way to other ballet companies, most of whom do not have the resources to do it at the level of New York City Ballet, but it might help keep ballet alive in the 21st century while we wait patiently for new and inspired choreography
Thursday, December 27, 2018
Nicholas Ray's The Savage Innocents (1960)
Ray does have a theme, and a very important one; namely, that every relationship establishes its own moral code and that there is no such thing as abstract morality.
--Andrew Sarris
Nicholas Ray's beautiful The Savage Innocents is another of Ray's poetic films about outsiders to traditional Western culture and mores, including women (Johnny Guitar, 1954), gypsies (Hot Blood, 1956), rebellious youth (Rebel Without a Cause, 1952), outlaws (The True Story of Jesse James, 1957) and others. The DVD of The Savage Innocents does not begin to compare with the exquisite Technirama 35 mm print that I saw twenty-five years ago at MoMA but it does capture some of the beauty of the Arctic environment shot by Italian cinematographer Aldo Tonti and the geographical and behavioral differences between the West and the Inuit, with Ray obviously influenced by Robert Flaherty's Nanook of the North (1922).
There is an effective documentary quality to Ray's film, with seal-hunting, igloo-building and an aging mother left on the ice to be devoured by a polar bear. The film is mostly cool blues and whites as well as earth tones, with Ray's signature garish red only showing up when Inuk (played by Anthony Quinn) makes his way to a distant trading post to trade furs and clashes with Western traders and priests Ray does not claim that the Inuit are "noble savages" in any sense, rather that they have a unique culture that is gradually being eroded.
--Andrew Sarris
Nicholas Ray's beautiful The Savage Innocents is another of Ray's poetic films about outsiders to traditional Western culture and mores, including women (Johnny Guitar, 1954), gypsies (Hot Blood, 1956), rebellious youth (Rebel Without a Cause, 1952), outlaws (The True Story of Jesse James, 1957) and others. The DVD of The Savage Innocents does not begin to compare with the exquisite Technirama 35 mm print that I saw twenty-five years ago at MoMA but it does capture some of the beauty of the Arctic environment shot by Italian cinematographer Aldo Tonti and the geographical and behavioral differences between the West and the Inuit, with Ray obviously influenced by Robert Flaherty's Nanook of the North (1922).
There is an effective documentary quality to Ray's film, with seal-hunting, igloo-building and an aging mother left on the ice to be devoured by a polar bear. The film is mostly cool blues and whites as well as earth tones, with Ray's signature garish red only showing up when Inuk (played by Anthony Quinn) makes his way to a distant trading post to trade furs and clashes with Western traders and priests Ray does not claim that the Inuit are "noble savages" in any sense, rather that they have a unique culture that is gradually being eroded.
Wednesday, December 26, 2018
The Oxford Murders
In between reading Guillermo Martinez's novel The Oxford Murders (published by Penguin in 2005, translated by Sonia Soto) and watching Alex de la Iglesia's film version (2008) I read John Lancester's essay "The Case of Agatha Christie" in The London Review of Books. I mention this because the book and the film (which follows the book fairly closely) are rather anti-Christie, i.e., they emphasize randomness rather than logic. A graduate student narrates the book, as he tries to figure out a series of murders based on codes the murderer left in notes. He is helped by aging philosopher Arthur Seldom, who considers the universe random, suggesting that the clues in the notes do not make an orderly series, in the same way that an SAT question asking for the next in a series could have many possible answers, depending on how complicated one wants to make it.
The film subtly supports the random theory of the universe as cinematographer Kiko de la Rica follows one person and then abruptly shifts to someone else and then someone else again, none of whom seem to be relevant to the plot, the wide-screen image showing Seldom and students randomly intersecting. There is much discussion of Wittgenstein, Fermat, Godel and various other philosophers and mathematicians who have tried to make sense of a seemingly random world in which there is disagreement on whether we have somehow discovered maths (as the British call it) or invented it. I especially liked the low-key manner in which de la Iglesia (and to a lesser extent Martinez) use Scrabble and squash in the plot, games which involve different ratios of logic and chance.
The film subtly supports the random theory of the universe as cinematographer Kiko de la Rica follows one person and then abruptly shifts to someone else and then someone else again, none of whom seem to be relevant to the plot, the wide-screen image showing Seldom and students randomly intersecting. There is much discussion of Wittgenstein, Fermat, Godel and various other philosophers and mathematicians who have tried to make sense of a seemingly random world in which there is disagreement on whether we have somehow discovered maths (as the British call it) or invented it. I especially liked the low-key manner in which de la Iglesia (and to a lesser extent Martinez) use Scrabble and squash in the plot, games which involve different ratios of logic and chance.
Tuesday, December 25, 2018
Turner Classic Movies, Jan. 2019
A pretty good line-up of classic films in January, including several by Anthony Mann (I especially like The Black Book, 1949, a film noir about the French Revolution, with exquisite cinematography by John Alton, on Jan. 8); Michael Curtiz's The Breaking Point, 1950, on the 25th; John Ford's Young Mr. Lincoln, 1939, on the 11th; Douglas Sirk's All That Heaven Allows, 1955, on the 20th; Nicholas Ray's In a Lonely Place, 1950, on the 25th; and several films by the great Ernst Lubitsch on the 29th, including Ninotchka, 1939,
Other films include Leo McCarey's elegant comedy The Awful Truth,1937, on January 1 and two off-beat Westerns on Jan. 4: Sam Peckinpah's The Ballad of Cable Hogue and Joseph Mankiewicz's There Was a Crooked Man, both from 1970.
If you have any questions about any other films on Turner in Jan. please feel free to contact me.
Other films include Leo McCarey's elegant comedy The Awful Truth,1937, on January 1 and two off-beat Westerns on Jan. 4: Sam Peckinpah's The Ballad of Cable Hogue and Joseph Mankiewicz's There Was a Crooked Man, both from 1970.
If you have any questions about any other films on Turner in Jan. please feel free to contact me.
Monday, December 24, 2018
The Library Book by Susan Orlean
"The most dangerous man in America: a nigger with a library card."
Brother Mouzone (Michael Potts), /"The Wire" season 2, episode 10, written by Ed Burns
Susan Orlean's book (Simon and Schuster, 2018) is a meditation on libraries and the fire in the Los Angeles Public Library of 1986, when 400,000 books were destroyed. Orlean had been fascinated by libraries since she was a child in Cleveland, when her mother regularly took her to the local library, and some of us share her fascination. I grew up without books and without a library in Kinderhook, N.Y. and was always desperate for something to read. Then we moved to Delmar, N.Y. and when I was in third and fourth grade there the elementary school had a pretty decent library and I read several books a day, taking the books out one day and returning them the next; I don't think I was aware at that time that there was a local public library, since neither of my parents were readers and did all they could to prevent me from reading, on the dubious grounds that it was bad for my eyes. When I was in fourth grade we moved to Hudson, N.Y., at that time an anti-intellectual blue-collar town that regularly voted against funding a public library, with an elementary school "library" that consisted of a few non-fiction "Landmark" books (some may remember them from the 50's and 60's) and some old copies of National Geographic.
I struggled in Hudson to find reading material. Ironically, my father had worked for a book distributor before we moved to Hudson so he could work for an auto-parts distributor. For my father books were just widgets to be sold and we had almost no books in the house except an encyclopedia; my parents did not believe in "reading for pleasure," since reading could give you ideas of your own and books cost money. When a volunteer library opened in downtown Hudson I gradually read all the books that were donated until my father caught me with a copy of Catcher in the Rye when I was thirteen and made me return it. When I asked him if he had read it he said no, but that he had formerly worked in the book business and he knew what was in it (I secretly finished reading it before I returned it), One Christmas I asked for The Scarlet Letter but my parents "investigated" it and found it too racy and subversive!
In my later elementary school years I managed to read whatever books I could borrow from my friends; I was particularly fond of The Hardy Boys. When I turned 12 my parents said no more allowance; I was told to get a paper route if I wanted any spending money. In a way this was liberating, as I mostly used my several earned dollars a week buying paperbacks off the racks at the local grocery store, accidentally discovering such gems as Herndon's Life of Lincoln and George Orwell's 1984, a particular favorite.
After graduating as my elementary school valedictorian I went as a freshman to Hudson High, where the library was rather surprisingly off-limits unless one was doing research using library materials. In my freshman English class we were given books to read --The Microbe Hunters, Death Be Not Proud and similar middlebrow material. Parents were outraged, how dare they make students read entire books! My parents seemed okay with it, as long as there was no sexual or political content.
I lasted one year at Hudson High before I was fortunate enough to get a scholarship to Phillips Exeter Academy in New Hampshire, where my world totally changed. I probably would have had a better academic record at Exeter if they didn't have such a wonderful library: I had a lot of catching up to do, discovering everyone from Dickens to Nabokov, and spent every moment I could reading. When I graduated from Exeter I went to Columbia in New York City, with its many bookstores and its excellent public library system.
None of this has much to do with Orlean's book, which is focused on the Los Angeles library system and the fire, which was blamed on one Harry Peak, though evidence was lacking. In fact, as Orlean writes, "As long ago as 1977 forensic scientists warned that the principles of arson investigation were mostly myth." I recommend reading Orlean's book and watching Frederick Wiseman's documentary Ex Libris: The New York Public Library to see the importance and necessity of our public libraries.
Brother Mouzone (Michael Potts), /"The Wire" season 2, episode 10, written by Ed Burns
Susan Orlean's book (Simon and Schuster, 2018) is a meditation on libraries and the fire in the Los Angeles Public Library of 1986, when 400,000 books were destroyed. Orlean had been fascinated by libraries since she was a child in Cleveland, when her mother regularly took her to the local library, and some of us share her fascination. I grew up without books and without a library in Kinderhook, N.Y. and was always desperate for something to read. Then we moved to Delmar, N.Y. and when I was in third and fourth grade there the elementary school had a pretty decent library and I read several books a day, taking the books out one day and returning them the next; I don't think I was aware at that time that there was a local public library, since neither of my parents were readers and did all they could to prevent me from reading, on the dubious grounds that it was bad for my eyes. When I was in fourth grade we moved to Hudson, N.Y., at that time an anti-intellectual blue-collar town that regularly voted against funding a public library, with an elementary school "library" that consisted of a few non-fiction "Landmark" books (some may remember them from the 50's and 60's) and some old copies of National Geographic.
I struggled in Hudson to find reading material. Ironically, my father had worked for a book distributor before we moved to Hudson so he could work for an auto-parts distributor. For my father books were just widgets to be sold and we had almost no books in the house except an encyclopedia; my parents did not believe in "reading for pleasure," since reading could give you ideas of your own and books cost money. When a volunteer library opened in downtown Hudson I gradually read all the books that were donated until my father caught me with a copy of Catcher in the Rye when I was thirteen and made me return it. When I asked him if he had read it he said no, but that he had formerly worked in the book business and he knew what was in it (I secretly finished reading it before I returned it), One Christmas I asked for The Scarlet Letter but my parents "investigated" it and found it too racy and subversive!
In my later elementary school years I managed to read whatever books I could borrow from my friends; I was particularly fond of The Hardy Boys. When I turned 12 my parents said no more allowance; I was told to get a paper route if I wanted any spending money. In a way this was liberating, as I mostly used my several earned dollars a week buying paperbacks off the racks at the local grocery store, accidentally discovering such gems as Herndon's Life of Lincoln and George Orwell's 1984, a particular favorite.
After graduating as my elementary school valedictorian I went as a freshman to Hudson High, where the library was rather surprisingly off-limits unless one was doing research using library materials. In my freshman English class we were given books to read --The Microbe Hunters, Death Be Not Proud and similar middlebrow material. Parents were outraged, how dare they make students read entire books! My parents seemed okay with it, as long as there was no sexual or political content.
I lasted one year at Hudson High before I was fortunate enough to get a scholarship to Phillips Exeter Academy in New Hampshire, where my world totally changed. I probably would have had a better academic record at Exeter if they didn't have such a wonderful library: I had a lot of catching up to do, discovering everyone from Dickens to Nabokov, and spent every moment I could reading. When I graduated from Exeter I went to Columbia in New York City, with its many bookstores and its excellent public library system.
None of this has much to do with Orlean's book, which is focused on the Los Angeles library system and the fire, which was blamed on one Harry Peak, though evidence was lacking. In fact, as Orlean writes, "As long ago as 1977 forensic scientists warned that the principles of arson investigation were mostly myth." I recommend reading Orlean's book and watching Frederick Wiseman's documentary Ex Libris: The New York Public Library to see the importance and necessity of our public libraries.
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