Wow, that clip. I'll go watch the rest. The first Pinter I ever saw was at some small, ambitious theater in New Jersey around '95, and the action iirc was merely a dinner, played four times, each time earlier in a couple's history. But by the end I was sitting slackjawed at how much meaning had accrued to what had begun as the simplest phrases and pauses. I will never forget the feeling of realizing I was witnessing something in art I did not know could happen. That is a rare, amazing feeling; I've had it only maybe four times in life.*
Ian Holm, of course, I know mainly as a robot with milkshake blood. But I think often about a tiny moment in that film: He is alone, standing there, early on, and for no evident reason he does a quick run-step in place. The first time you see it, you think, that was odd, it felt sort of like realism, but -- off. And then later: milkshake. I've always felt he revealed what a brilliant actor does, in that single brief moment, because he sets up his whole unforeseeable conclusion, and he does it with -- nothing.
*Two others were watching Citizen Kane at 26 and reading Moby Dick at 17.
Two great posts. I have a free subscription to Kanopy and now maybe I'll use it. Artistically speaking, I think the 70's gets a bum rap. I was looking up a play I saw at the CSC back in 1979 and came across a Times' column of "Events and Openings" for one week back then that was chock full of excellent stuff which I could afford even with one of my shitty paying jobs. The AFT may be one more example that it wasn't all Andrew Lloyd Webber and disco, not to mention that the Times still had such a column.
I just watched the great Ian Holm on YouTube in the hard to find "Game Set & Match" based on the Len Deighton trilogy. Doesn't come close to the BBC productions of Le Carré's "Tinker, Tailor" and "Smiley's People" (despite using a couple of the same actors), but Holm is terrific in it. Oddly enough, Deighton supposedly hated the casting of Holm and has refused to allow the series to be released since it first aired in the 80's.
PS Do HTML style tags work yet in this here comment section?
It might be easy to forget as a connected adult how important even little messages from The Better World can be for a child or adolescent; ten minutes of "The Bald Soprano" did not make secondary school worth it, but.
Wow. I never read so many things about the movies that I didn't know existed and still don't completely understand. Branagh's 'All is true' was very nice, though.
Nice review entertaining in itself. I may never watch these and yet I feel having read this I understand something interesting to say the least in the history of theater and cinema, broadcast and telecommunications broadly. The disruptions of the world we now inhabit have yet to be integrated into most people's daily view either in the moment or in retrospect. It's critical to remind ourselves in order to avoid sleep-walking through history what the state of these things was before, and recall those primary impressions and public reactions. Think of Amahl and the Night Visitors for instance. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xlg81twKXbY
I don't recall ever seeing the play, but "warped like bent wood sculpture" makes me feel the against-the-grain tension in that dialogue as if I had.
Wow, that clip. I'll go watch the rest. The first Pinter I ever saw was at some small, ambitious theater in New Jersey around '95, and the action iirc was merely a dinner, played four times, each time earlier in a couple's history. But by the end I was sitting slackjawed at how much meaning had accrued to what had begun as the simplest phrases and pauses. I will never forget the feeling of realizing I was witnessing something in art I did not know could happen. That is a rare, amazing feeling; I've had it only maybe four times in life.*
Ian Holm, of course, I know mainly as a robot with milkshake blood. But I think often about a tiny moment in that film: He is alone, standing there, early on, and for no evident reason he does a quick run-step in place. The first time you see it, you think, that was odd, it felt sort of like realism, but -- off. And then later: milkshake. I've always felt he revealed what a brilliant actor does, in that single brief moment, because he sets up his whole unforeseeable conclusion, and he does it with -- nothing.
*Two others were watching Citizen Kane at 26 and reading Moby Dick at 17.
Two great posts. I have a free subscription to Kanopy and now maybe I'll use it. Artistically speaking, I think the 70's gets a bum rap. I was looking up a play I saw at the CSC back in 1979 and came across a Times' column of "Events and Openings" for one week back then that was chock full of excellent stuff which I could afford even with one of my shitty paying jobs. The AFT may be one more example that it wasn't all Andrew Lloyd Webber and disco, not to mention that the Times still had such a column.
I just watched the great Ian Holm on YouTube in the hard to find "Game Set & Match" based on the Len Deighton trilogy. Doesn't come close to the BBC productions of Le Carré's "Tinker, Tailor" and "Smiley's People" (despite using a couple of the same actors), but Holm is terrific in it. Oddly enough, Deighton supposedly hated the casting of Holm and has refused to allow the series to be released since it first aired in the 80's.
PS Do HTML style tags work yet in this here comment section?
Lets's see, as tween I remember going to the grimy neighborhood theater to see the complete
Columbia "BATMAN" serials from the 40's.
So, about the same.
It might be easy to forget as a connected adult how important even little messages from The Better World can be for a child or adolescent; ten minutes of "The Bald Soprano" did not make secondary school worth it, but.
Wow. I never read so many things about the movies that I didn't know existed and still don't completely understand. Branagh's 'All is true' was very nice, though.
Nice review entertaining in itself. I may never watch these and yet I feel having read this I understand something interesting to say the least in the history of theater and cinema, broadcast and telecommunications broadly. The disruptions of the world we now inhabit have yet to be integrated into most people's daily view either in the moment or in retrospect. It's critical to remind ourselves in order to avoid sleep-walking through history what the state of these things was before, and recall those primary impressions and public reactions. Think of Amahl and the Night Visitors for instance. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xlg81twKXbY