Posts Tagged ‘Shakespeare’

A Midsummer Night’s Dream

Thursday, September 12th, 1996

Shake­speare’s A Mid­sum­mer Night’s Dream is about a roy­al wed­ding, lovers lost in an enchant­ed for­est, mag­ic spells, and fairy sprites. But most­ly it is about imag­i­na­tion. In the course of the play, as the char­ac­ters move in and out of the world of dreams, cer­tain words repeat over and over again: Fan­cy. Imag­i­na­tion. Dream. Vision. Trans­port­ed. Trans­fig­ured. Transformed.

Read the full article »

The Fire of Hephaistos

Wednesday, May 1st, 1996

These ancient bronzes, which have long since lost their gold­en gleam, are still numi­nous frag­ments of a van­ished world. One stat­ue of young man was recent­ly pulled out of a riv­er; his pale sea-green body is scratched and scarred; but he is still a love­ly appari­tion, remind­ing me of some lines from Shakespeare’s “The Tempest”:
“Nothing of him that doth fade
But doth suf­fer a sea change
Into some­thing rich and strange.”

Read the full article »

Emma

Monday, January 1st, 1996

Hol­ly­wood has fall­en in love with JANE AUSTEN. Her scripts fea­ture snap­py dia­logue; her plots fol­low the clas­sic for­mu­la of girl meets boy; girl los­es boy; girl gets boy; her sto­ry lines move deli­cious­ly from chaos and con­fu­sion to har­mo­ny and delight. The lat­est is EMMA, played to per­fec­tion by GWYNETH PALTROW in Wedg­wood col­ors, Empire dress­es and pearl-drop earrings. 

Read the full article »

Gene Kelly

Tuesday, April 24th, 1990

GENE KELLY was a great dancer because his danc­ing seemed to be an over­flow of his superb vital­i­ty — a nat­ur­al exten­sion of his per­son­al­i­ty. In all his movies, the tran­si­tions to dance are incred­i­bly smooth, because even when he’s not danc­ing he’s think­ing about dancing–his ath­let­ic body is flexed and lim­ber– and he’s ready to roll, even on an emp­ty set with 500,000 kilo­watts of elec­tric light mim­ic­k­ing star­dust and a giant fan cre­at­ing the sen­sa­tion of a moon­light breeze.

Read the full article »