For this week’s Rhapsody, we have Rhapsody for Trombone and Piano by Eric Ewazen
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This week I decided to watch films where some of the great Hollywood first began their team ups. (Actually, I had hoped to do this one as a double header with “romantic comedies done right” but while the second film had many fun moments was not a comedy)
THe First on my list we have the first film that Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn first worked together in, Woman of the Year . directed by George Stevens. Tracy and Hebburn play sports columnist, Sam Craig and political columnist, Tess Harding who first meet after being called into the Editor’s office to stop a war of words the two have been in that was started after Tess said that there was no point in sports during an interview, something that a sports columnist like Sam can’t let stand.
They quickly fall in love and after a rough start dealing with their two different interests, Tess’s packed schedule they marry after just two dates.
Of course, it’s after the marriage where the hilarity truly ensues.
While this film was fairly well done, I just couldn’t get into it. Perhaps it’s because I’m so far away from the forties it feels like looking at an alien world. I had trouble believing in people jumping into marriage after just two dates, and the way the story mostly took Sam’s side. It frequently puts me off that in too many of these movies intelligent assertive women have to be “tamed” with this movie ending with Tess utterly failing in the kitchen (though I must admit Hepburn’s physical performance in this scene was pretty funny)
My next film, To Have and Have Not, directed by Howard Hawks, begins the professional team, and off screen romance, of Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall.
Bogart plays Harry Morgan the captain of a fishing boat out of Vichy controlled Martinique.. After his client is killed before paying him, he finds himself mixed up with some French freedom fighters who need to smuggle one of their people onto the island.
While this is going on he meets Marie (Slim) Browning, (Becall) a beautiful wanderer, singer and sometime pickpocket and a relationship between the two begins as all the craziness builds up around them.
This one is very much a classic. (It’s the film where the “you do know how to whistle?” line comes from.) Becall is amazing in this film with an amazing presence that goes way beyond just her incredible beauty. Her chemistry with Bogart is the stuff of legend.
The other thing I liked about it was its soundtrack performed by composer and pianist, Hoagy Carmichael.
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For this week’s Rhapsody we finish off Dvorak’s Slavonic Rhapsodies with his third and final Slavonic Rhapsody
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qoDmbLK5cQc
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Been meaning to start to do some more cast pictures and side art. So here’s my first one with Kate and her cousin (and newest employee) Erika.
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The theme for this week’s selection is immortality be it the quest for eternal life and or what happens if you get it.
So this all started when I first heard about Darren Aronofsky‘s The Fountain (okay I know I’ve heard about it before but I’m pretty sure most of the time I got it mixed up with either The Cell or the Prestige)
The Fountain tells several stories, the primary one is about a neuroscientist played by Hugh Jackman who obsessively is trying to use his findings to treat dying wife (played by Rachel Weisz) He makes some progress based on a mysterious sap from a South American tree that shows some incredible healing properties.
In the mean time we go back and fourth from here into the past in a story being written by the wife about a Spanish conquistador (played by Jackman) sent by the queen, (played by Weisz), the tree, and then forward into the future where a space traveler (Jackman again) is seeking a nebula in a ship powered by the tree.
All in the name of eternal life.
I’m honestly not sure what I think about this one. Aronofsky’s certainly good at his craft with some great visuals but I’m not sure if I’ve ever been his target audience. To be blunt, he’s a little too weird for me. Still it was solid performances from Jackman and Weisz.
From the quest of immortality we move on to one who has had immortality thrust upon them. Tilda Swinton plays Orlando in the film of the same name by Sally Potter.
Orlando is a rich courtier in Queen Elizabeth I’s court. Elizabeth, entranced by the young man’s beauty tells him to never grow old… and so he does not. From here we of through Orlando’s life as he falls in love, tries to be a writer, travels to Constantinople, and, oh yes changes sex.
This was an interesting small film. It has a surreal quality about it, frequently with the years passing by as if like a dream. But it’s Swinton’s calm understated performance what really makes it work. She treats everything in stride from the passage of years to the sex change. (And with Swinton’s naturally striking androgynous appearance all it takes is a change of clothes to make this work.)
But what makes it all the more interesting is that no-one seems to notice anything strange either. As the narrator says… The English just don’t talk about these things.
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I haven’t had done one of these Tuesday Rhapsodies for ages! But having sat down and figured out some ways to catalog the rhapsodies that I’d already used making my search for new ones relatively easier. (by relative I mean the longer I do this the more obscure the remaining ones become) So anyway, let’s start out from “Behind the Wheel” by Maxence Cyrin from his Modern Rhapsodies album.
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