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Black Swan: Just One More Disturbing Portrait in Mind-Game Movies

A study of a disintegrating mind is a growing film genre devoted to the human condition under pressure, where all is not what it seems. Ever. ‘Oh poor perturbed spirit’, as Shakespeare put it. In Black Swan, almost two rivetting hours of senses awakened with superb acting, amazing camerawork, lavish music and wits scared, are hallmarks of a great movie. To spend hours afterwards perturbed, thinking through what was actually seen, is how mind-game movies hook people. Black Swan (2010) is about a young ballet dancer, given the White Swan role in a production of Swan Lake, who gradually lost her grip on reality, as she became like the evil twin sister, the Black Swan. Directed by Darren Aronofsky, Natalie Portman mixed the subtleties/horrors of acting with dancing perfection. The film is about … Read entire article »

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Musicals Are Made From Any Subject Matter, However Unlikely

No theme is too tired, weird, wacky, bizarre or downright unusual, that it can’t be set to music, choreographed and performed on a stage somewhere. Many stage musicals across the world in the past hundred years have featured unexpected settings, stories, places and events. Murder, rape, incest, betrayal, war and politics have become staple fare of the musical adaptation. Treatments of Shakespeare (West Side Story; Kiss Me Kate), Victor Hugo (Les Misérables), Dickens (Oliver; Pickwick), Robert Louis Stevenson (Jekyll and Hyde; Treasure Island) and George Bernard Shaw (My Fair Lady); mixed-race relationships (Show Boat) and the game of chess as US-Russian politics have established themselves in the cannon of traditional musical theatre. Cabaret (1966), set in 1920s Berlin as the Nazis rose to power, incorporated sleaze, corruption and music; The Sound of Music … Read entire article »

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Opera Can Be As Unpredictable and Experimental As Other Arts

Opera may be regarded as ‘high-art’ or ‘heavy’, but it embraces themes worthy of as many ‘low-life’ settings, criminals and psychotics as ‘lighter’ work. Interpreting ‘opera’ quite generously, it’s possible to look at musical treatments of stories, novels, people and events, myths and legends and conclude that many of them really are the most far-fetched themes imaginable. It clearly doesn’t matter, though. In early 2011, Britain’s Covent Garden opened a new work, Anna Nicole, about the life of a breast-enhanced Playboy centerfold and television personality who in 1994, aged 27, married 89 year-old oil billionaire, J Howard Marshall II. She died in 2007 of prescription drugs, leaving behind court cases from his family. As Rupert Christiansen, The Daily Telegraph’s opera critic said in January 2011: ‘opera is in reality no stranger to the … Read entire article »

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Visiting North and East Norfolk: A Taste of the Real East Anglia

Some pointers for visitors to the Norwich-Norfolk coast triangle and how to make the most of the many original attractions on offer in a limited time. To a native East Anglian, the counties of Suffolk and Norfolk make up East Anglia. Essex, Cambridgeshire and the Fens don’t come into it. A visit to Norwich and fanning out to the coast is do-able and makes for a rewarding break. In the east of this triangle, the dawn can be watched rising over the North Sea; in the west, sunset can be observed as the sun sinks into The Wash. There are beaches, museums from historical to transport, the usual mixes of wildlife, wild areas and urban interest, and it is home to one of the Royal Family’s residences. It’s where the Norfolk and … Read entire article »

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Visiting North and East Suffolk: A Sample of the Real East Anglia

Some pointers for visitors in the North Suffolk coast to Norwich triangle, and how to make the most of the many attractions on offer with limited time. Norwich is the heart of Norfolk and north Suffolk, and whether driving in or flying from within Britain or internationally via Schiphol Airport in Holland, it’s the start and end of a mini visit to the real joys of the most easterly part of the British Isles. Lowestoft houses ‘Ness Point’, that most easterly spot, bravely adjacent to a usually very busy North Sea. Windfarm off Great Yarmouth to the north, Sizewell power station on the horizon to the south, with oil and gas installations offshore between: all pay tribute to the area as an energy hub. However, the history and the culture, the wildlife, openness … Read entire article »

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Multiple Roles: Stanislavskian vs Brechtian Techniques in Acting

  Sometimes performers play many parts in a show or film; or a part is shared by several. Some even just swap roles. It’s all part of art’s rich diversity. Professional musical performers are used to being ‘swingers’: they swing from role to role in the company according to need or illness of others. Often they don’t know till they arrive. These are not just understudies, because they play something every performance. In ballet and opera, there’s frequently doubling-up of lead roles, or in a long run of any kind of show, the lead will occasionally be taken by somebody else. That is entirely different from multi-roling. An actor plays more than one role in a given production, as a deliberate device. John Cleese played six in Monty Python and the Holy Grail … Read entire article »

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The Dark Side Reflects People in Their Lives, Movies and Arts

Why people are drawn to the dark side and why so many hide dark sides of their own has fascinated philosophers, film makers and artists for centuries. ‘The Devil shouldn’t have all the best tunes’, (commonly attributed to the English evangelist Rowland Hill, 1744–1833), sums up some people’s views of the darker side in others. The 2010 movie Black Swan unleashed fresh soul searching and anguish about how the arts’ appeal to the innate darkness within most people. New York based British writer and critic Tom Shone wrote in the Sunday Times (Jan 2011): ‘Darker=deeper=good is one of our more unbreakable pop-culture shibboleths’. He cited Darth Vader from Star Wars (1977-2005) urging the hero to ‘give yourself to the Dark Side’; the severing of his own arm by the protagonist in 127 … Read entire article »

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