The Jazz Singer

Il primo film sonoro – prodotto dalla stessa Warner e proiettato per la prima volta il 27 ottobre 1927 – fu Il cantante di jazz (The Jazz Singer) nel quale, oltre a varie canzoni, si udivano una frase rivolta al pubblico dal protagonista e un breve dialogo tra questi e la madre. Il protagonista, interpretato da Al Johnson, è un ragazzo ebreo che non vuole cantare in sinagoga, come hanno fatto tutti i maschi di famiglia prima di lui, perché ama il jazz. Nel film canta però Kol Nidre, in una versione molto commovente. A proposito del Kippur appena trascorso.

The Last Caravaggio

In May 1606, Caravaggio’s rackety life caught up with him. He already had a long list of misdemeanours against his name. He had been twice arrested for carrying a sword without a permit; put on trial by the Roman authorities for writing scurrilous verses about a rival, Giovanni Baglione (or “Johnny Bollocks” according to the poems); arrested for affray and assault, in one incident being injured himself (his testimony to the police survives: “I wounded myself with my own sword when I fell down these stairs. I don’t know where it was and there was no one else there”); arrested again for smashing a plate of artichokes in the face of a waiter; for throwing stones and abusing a constable (telling him he could “stick [his sword] up his arse”); and for smearing excrement on the house of the landlady who had had his belongings seized in payment of missed rent. There were more incidents, all meticulously recorded in the Roman archives. Michael Prodger, New Statesman

“The Last Caravaggio” shows at the National Gallery, London WC2, from 18 April to 21 July 2024

Verdi’s Jewish Opera Grandly Staged at the Metropolitan

Nabucco is widely seen as a political opera. But while Verdi’s nationalist operas have mostly dropped out of the repertory of major venues, Nabucco is still performed widely, in part because it has better music, and also because it is not so much a nationalist opera as a religious one. With the arguable exception of Mozart’s Don Giovanni, Nabucco is the most Jewish of operas, with a deeply sympathetic portrayal of the First Exile. David P. Goldman, Tablet

Baritone George Gagnidze makes his Met role debut as the imperious king Nabucco, alongside soprano Liudmyla Monastyrska reprising her thrilling turn as his vengeful daughter Abigaille. Mezzo-soprano Maria Barakova and tenor SeokJong Baek, in his company debut, are Fenena and Ismaele, whose love transcends politics, and bass Dmitry Belosselskiy repeats his celebrated portrayal of the high priest Zaccaria. Daniele Callegari conducts Verdi’s exhilarating early masterpiece, which features the ultimate showcase for the great Met Chorus, the moving “Va, pensiero.” Al Metropolitan fino al prossimo 26 gennaio.

Pretend It's a City

 

Is there anything more delightful than watching Martin Scorsese enjoy someone? One of the best things about his new documentary series, “Pretend It’s a City,” is getting to see the filmmaker react to his subject, the author and humorist Fran Lebowitz, who is also his good friend. Ten years ago, Scorsese made “Public Speaking,” his first documentary about Lebowitz, which was an ode to a vanishing breed of New York celebrity, as well as a portrait of the city itself. Sitting in a booth at the Waverly Inn, Lebowitz expounded on her various hobbyhorses, including her rejection of technology, her love of talking, and her addiction to smoking. (“The clerk said, ‘Oh, you know, Marlboro Lights, they’re on sale.’ And I thought, Really? Why? . . . They could be a million dollars, I don’t care.”) Now Scorsese and Lebowitz have made a kind of sequel, which comes, in the manner of the hour, as a streaming Netflix series rather than a feature-length film. Naomi Fry, The New Yorker

The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel

The first season of Amazon’s “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel,” about a brassy 1950s housewife-turned-stand-up-comic, debuted last fall to swoony reviews (including one from the The Times which described Midge Maisel’s “bon mots rattling like ice in a cocktail shaker”). Though the second season of the cult-favorite show has just landed, many fans have hurtled through it at breakneck speed and are already in withdrawal. If you’re one of them, we’ve got some books for you to read. Gal Beckerman and Tina Jordan, New York Times.

I libri consigliati sono: The Group di Mary McCarthy (of course), e poi Seriously Funny di Gerald Nachman (che non conosco), Crazy Salad di Nora Ephron (che adoro) e The Joy of Yiddish di Leo Rosten (This 1968 lexicon codified words like “kvetch” and “schlep” in American English). 

E con questi consigli di lettura per le vacanze e questa immagine piena di energia e allegria auguro a tutti BUON NATALE E FELICE ANNO NUOVO!

We tell ourselves stories in order to live

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“We tell ourselves stories in order to live” is one of Joan Didion’s most resonant lines and it is now also the name of a documentary in progress about her life. The movie is being made by her nephew, Griffin Dunne, the longtime actor and filmmaker, together with the documentarian Susanne Rostock. Dunne began filming his aunt Joan a few years ago, when he made the short for her latest book, Blue Nights. Fortunately for us he kept on filming. Today Dunne is releasing a trailer for the documentary on Vogue.com, above, to coincide with the launch of a Kickstarter campaign to help complete the project. Abby Aguirre, vogue.

Il bunker di Gay Talese

Under the townhouse where the legendary writer Gay Talese and his wife, Nan, have lived for over half a century is what Talese calls his “subterranean think tank.” Every day, Talese leaves his home, locks his door, walks down an elegantly curved outdoor staircase through a separate entrance, and enters this lush underground office.
There are no windows, and no phones. It is, he says, “one place where I think a writer can work without any distractions.” 
Per vedere Gay Talese che ci fa fare un giretto nel suo bunker cliccare qui.

Stephen Burt

When I asked Stephen Burt’s parents if they worried about him when he was young, Burt’s father, Jeff, replied by asking me if I was Jewish. I told him I was. “Well,” he said, “to ask Jewish parents if they were worried about their children — it is a statement of fact! But were we more worried about Stephen than about the other children? The answer is yes.” ...

“What would happen to him?” Jeff remembered thinking. “What would he become? Who would marry him?”

What he became was, among many other things, one of the most influential poetry critics of his generation. Burt is 41, a professor of English at Harvard, heir to the intellectual mantle long held by giants like Harold Bloom and Helen Vendler. He is also an avid science-fiction fan, the founder of a short-lived indie-pop zine, an authority on women’s basketball, the husband of Jessie Bennett, with whom he has two sons, and an unabashed cross-dresser. nyt.

The New Yorker on Facebook

La rinnovata pagina Facebook del New Yorker è carina! E' un modo per curiosare nella rivista mese dopo mese e anno dopo anno.  E per rivedere le barzellette, anche se spesso non si capiscono! newyorker.

Dante a fumetti

"I, Dante, will tell you the story of my trip to the after world... but will I come back?" So begins Seymour Chwast's noirish graphic adaptation of what is perhaps the world's most famous tale of spiritual tourism, the Divine Comedy. The list of artists who have tried their hand at visually interpreting Dante's epic is both long and distinguished, but it would be safe to say that Chwast, a co-founder of Push Pin Studios and a longtime contributor to The New Yorker, may have had the most fun with the subject since Dante himself. newyorker.

Drive-By Shooting

L'America vista dalla strada (una delle prospettive migliori): dall'Interstate 69, un'autostrada controversa e non ancora completata la cui storia è raccontata in Interstate 69: The Unfinished History of the Last Great American Highway (Scribner) da Matt Dellinger, che l'ha anche percorsa scattando belle foto.
E al Whitney Museum di NYC è in corso la mostra fotografica, "Lee Friedlander: America by Car".

Fact-checkers

I fact-checkers sono coloro che controllano la veridicità di tutte le informazioni, anche le più banali, degli articoli che finiscono sui giornali americani. A questi eroi invisibili del giornalismo NBC Web dedica una serie, Fact Checkers Unit. Ogni martedì esce un nuovo episodio.