I went to hear John Williams and the LA Philharmonic at the Hollywood Bowl tonight, and while of course John Williams’ music is awesome and it was great seeing all the clips of Indy and Star Wars and Close Encounters along with the live orchestra, the highlight for me was when Stanley Donen turned up to introduce selections from his films with Fred Astaire and Gene Kelly. Fred’s dancing-on-the-ceiling number from Royal Wedding, the barn dance from Seven Brides (the travesty of the night, though, was that they showed this in the pan-and-scanned version - with the director sitting right there!), Gene on roller skates and with Jerry the Mouse and in the rain. But even though I knew they’d do “Singin’ in the Rain,” I secretly hoped they’d do some part of “The Broadway Ballet” instead. They didn’t. So I must do it instead, with the aid of lovely YouTubers. I love the whole thing, but obviously the parts with Cyd Charisse stand out. (It’s fourteen minutes long, and thus won’t fit in one YouTube video; part two, with the romantic flowy veil part, is here).
What happens to a dream deferred?
Does it dry up
like a raisin in the sun?
Or fester like a sore--
And then run?
Does it stink like rotten meat?
Or crust and sugar over--
Like a syrupy sweet?
Maybe it just sags
like a heavy load.
Or does it explode?
- Langston Hughes, "Harlem [2]"
In an effort to get caught up on these recap posts, I did shorter write-ups on some of the films I didn’t care about as much (and I’m going to do the same thing for August, hoping to get it out by, you know, the end of September so I can, you know, do September’s). […]
In May I was home for a few weeks, and took advantage of the amazing St. Louis library system to knock several films off my 2007 Goal list. Then I got burned out on that and just watched some random old stuff. After the jump, reactions to Spider-Man 3, The Great Dictator, They […]
