Movies: “Isn’t It Romantic?” doesn’t look romantic — but that’s the point, right?… I need to see “Cold War” again before the Oscars. TV/Streaming: I tried, really tried to watch “Russian Doll” on Netflix, but mostly what I saw was yet another project inspired by “Groundhog Day.” But I have to say I’ve always liked Natasha Lyonne and her gumption. Music: My local Starbucks has been playing a lot of Common lately: make it stop! (The baristas don’t listen to me.)… Cortot playing Chopin never ceases to amaze. Books: I’ve finally caught up to Chigozie Obioma’s novel “The Fishermen” — beautiful. Obioma teaches at the University of Nebraska. Sports: All-star games bore the shit out of me, so I’ll be watching soccer this weekend, not NBA.
The 1950 movie “All About Eve” starred Bette Davis and Anne Baxter and was written and directed by Joe Mankiewicz. It has been adapted for the London stage, and directed, by Ivo van Hove, who also directed the current Broadway hit “Network.” Lily James and Gillian Anderson star. The reviews for the new “Eve” are mostly mixed. Read excerpts here.
This week, Michelle Williams transformed into the great Broadway dancer Gwen Verdon on the snowy Manhattan set of Fosse/Verdon, which premieres April 9 on FX. The 38-year-old actress covered her platinum pixie cut with a curly short red Stacey Butterworth wig to better embody the four-time Tony Award winner, who passed away in 2000.
Carole Naggar writes: ‘In Paris, in the late 1970s, the Hungarian émigré photographer André Kertész told me that he was the one who taught night photography to Brassaï (himself Hungarian-born), and it is true that Kertész had made such pictures in Budapest as early as 1914. But the student soon exceeded the master. Brassaï’s nocturnal photographs, collected in the seminal 1932 book Paris de nuit, with a text by Paul Morand, brought him considerable attention; Kertész instead roamed the Paris streets by day and also focused his energies on portraits of artists and writers like Marc Chagall, Alexander Calder, Colette, and Sergei Eisenstein.’
Jeff Wells reports: ‘Glenn Close has toldDeadline‘s Antonia Blyth that she’d like to produce an alternate version of Fatal Attraction (’87) — one in which her character, Alex the “bunny boiler,” is presented as a “tragic figure” rather than an evil one. And is therefore more sad than scary. In other words, a smart but neurotic woman who’s desperately lonely and believes that her life is downswirling and that she’ll never find anything close to the domestic serenity that Michael Douglas (with whom she’s had a weekend’s worth of mad, passionate sex) and Anne Archer and their daughter apparently have.’
The Grammy Awards proudly positioned 2019 as the Year of the Woman, but in the end, after more than 140 trophies were handed out, did parity pan out? In terms of the final female count on stage, it was no contest. Between the opening surprise of Michelle Obama, host Alicia Keys (herself a 15-times Grammy winner), Kacey Musgraves (who performed twice), Janelle Monae, Camila Cabello, and the all-star tribute to Dolly Parton, which featured Miley Cyrus, Maren Morris, and Little Big Town, among others, the first hour of the broadcast was a celebration of the female voice, if ever there was one. The proof was in Monae’s “Pynk” appeal: “Let the vagina have a monologue.”
Each week, Pitchfork takes an in-depth look at a significant album from the past, and any record not in its archives is eligible. Here, the site revisits an ambitious, righteous piece of hip-hop storytelling from 1999.
