Wolf Hall 5 & 6: What human beings are capable of

Cromwell (Mark Rylance) holding up crossed wrists at Henry’s seething onslaught of accusation of plotting against him with Chapuys for the Emperor Charles V; Anne (Claire Foy) shivering in the wind, trembling as she waits to be beheaded (Wolf Hall 5 & 6) He doesn’t exactly miss the man. It’s just that sometimes, he forgets […]

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Wolf Hall 3 & 4: A Stealth heroine & Man for All Seasons

Anne (Claire Foy) has had a miscarriage (penultimate sequence, Wolf Hall 4), POV, Thomas Cromwell aka Mark Rylance first observes the sexually spiteful Jane Boleyn (Jessica Raine) and then stands before Anne … the historical novel has been one of the sites where women writers have had most freedom to examine masculinity as a social […]

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Wolf Hall 1/2: Father & son

Wolf Hall 1, early shot, Thomas Cromwell (Mark Rylance) listening to Norfolk (Bernard Hill) and Suffolk (Richard Dillane) threaten Wolsey (Jonathan Pryce) at York palace (1529) “A strong man acts within that which constrains him” …. to Henry, who resents being told he cannot war on France easily (Wolf Hall 1) “I have never known […]

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This year’s consuming costume historical film adaptations: Poldark and Wolf Hall

Mark Rylance as Thomas Cromwell (Wolf Hall 3) Natasha Little as Elizabeth Wykys Cromwell, Thomas’s wife, who dies of sleeping sickness early in the series Eleanor Tomlinson as Demelza rescued from an abject life by Aidan Turner as Ross Poldark (2015 Poldark 1): she is facing down Heidi Reed Elizabeth while Ross turns away Dear […]

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The Rake’s Progress, Wolf Trap; Emilie, Lincoln Center, 2012

Hogarth, the first of 9 engravings, “The Heir” Stravinsky, Auden, the last scene, “Madness” Dear friends and readers, In the last couple of days I’ve watched two operas based on 18th century sources: Kim Witman’s production of Igor Stravinsky & W. H. Auden’s adaptation of 9 engravings by Hogarth, The Rake’s Progress, as performed at […]

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Wolf Trap, Castleton: Sweeney Todd, 7 Deadly Sins, L’enfant et les sortileges

Otto Dix, The Seven Deadly Sins (done in the same year that Weill wrote his Seven Deadly Sins) Dear friends and readers, How hot was it? Hitherto I’ve reserved “super-hot” for temperatures of say 100 to 105; yesterday we were told the heat index hit an astonishing 125F. I know the temperature was a mere […]

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A tangent I can’t resist: Women Detective Stories

The author’s real name is Carolyn Heilbrun, the detective Kate Fansler Jane Tennison (Helen Mirren) of Prime Suspect fame Friends and readers, An interim blog: this is me thinking out a few semi-conclusions I’ve come to after a couple of months of reading books about women detectives (history, literary criticism, culture, feminist) and reading and […]

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John Lewis’s Good Trouble; Ella Fitzgerald’s Just One of Those Things; and Lin-Manuel Miranda as Hamilton: three movies about African-Americans

John Lewis as Congressman not long ago Good Trouble: its value is it shows the courage, bravery and real intelligence of John Lewis and brings together through flashback and forward what a horrific struggle and sacrifice it was to get the vote finally for African-Americans, with the Civil Rights Voting Act of 1965, and at […]

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Pandemic: Angela Merkel’s speech to the German people — leading by example & a Corona map; some Gilbert & Sullivan cheer, an absorbing movie series & book

How she looks while you are watching. Dear friends, I usually reserve this space for cultural events, talk or writing about books, movies, theater, operas, concerts, visual art, but I thought I’d break my self-control or habit/convention here, and offer a URL to Angela Merkel’s speech to the German people — and by extension as […]

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2019: this year in books & movies, the best or my favorites

From August Wilson’s The Piano Lesson: this is the version I watched as a YouTube on-line “It is all very well planning what you will do in six months, what you will do in a year, but it’s no good at all if you don’t have a plan for tomorrow.” Cromwell to his son Gregory […]

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