Rinaldo

They seemed like a fun group, but not so much with the actual playing of games most of the time. At least this was a disaster final game that could be blamed equally on both participants; basically neither of them knew anything. (Bailing on Billy Joel? really?)

Oh, I was devouring the Sepinwall recaps while I was watching. It was the food of the gods for me to be able to turn to one of his spoiler-free versions each time I finished an hour. I looked around on other sites for writing about the series too. I ended up slightly spoiled for a few developments, but I don't lose my mind over that, and a lot still came as a surprise. And in any case the quality trumps everything else about it.

I still watch The Amazing Race, and even enjoy the occasional short stretch. Phil's opening speech at the starting line still stirs me. But the show is a shadow of its former self and seems totally by rote now. Even if some of the teams care, the producers don't seem to, except in the sense of filling up each leg efficiently so there are X number of episodes to show, on to the next. I stopped making permanent recordings of it a year or so ago, when I realized I no longer cared about preserving it, and was surprised to find that I felt not the slightest pang about the decision. Now I delete it from the DVR as soon as I've watched, and often I've been doing other things while watching. I don't hate it, but I sure don't care about it the way I used to.

Love Me Tonight is really something special, with the magic of those two stars at their peak, the inventiveness of Rodgers & Hart creating the unusual songs, and the master hand of Rouben Mamoulian controlling it all. In some ways, movie musicals still haven't caught up to it since.

I guess I disagree. Perpetual unresolution artificially prolonged irritates me. And I don't find anything sucky about what Parks and Rec did. A relationship between two such different people (if that happens) would have drama, and comedy, of its own.

I'm interested in theory, though I've never participated in a rewatch and don't know if I'll be able to keep up in actuality.

Long openings were standard back then, and I'd say there were plenty of longer ones (in fact MTM's was relatively short -- it didn't introduce the cast or anything like that). The Quinn Martin crime-story intros tended to go on, and as we get into the 80s, Bosom Buddies and Hill Street Blues set new records for length. (Or so it seems looking back.) I preferred the new setup for the opening credits for the last three seasons, beginning at home and going to work -- largely because the new arrangement of the theme song was much snazzier and didn't slow down partway through.

I remember when the series started, the two of them seemed like an incongruous pairing -- they had had such different sorts of careers till then, a standup and a hot starlet. And they turned out to be a match made in heaven, perfect foils for each other. That was a lovely tribute from Ken Levine. One movie in which Suzanne got to curse more like her real self was Hot Stuff. It's no masterpiece, but I remember enjoying it when it was on cable all the time. I hope it still turns up occasonally.

I think the show was good pretty much throughout its six-season run. I thought it took a while at the start to hit its stride and build up the stock company of Bob's patients (we'll never speak of the regrettable real pilot, which ended up buried partway through Season 1), and in the last year or so they were sometimes reaching for stories, so that it's probably good that they called a halt then. But there were funny episodes throughout the run, and I'm always happy when I get a chance to watch Bob and Emily.

All reports from his stage performances agree with that. While never having been considered a vocalist, he was the one who introduced the classic "September Song" in the Kurt Weill / Maxwell Anderson operetta Knickerbocker Holiday, playing Peter Stuyvesant. This recording doesn't use the stage orchestration, but it suggests what was special about him.

I'm very pleased with how it came out. The melange of different kinds of scenes -- personal, political, emotional -- works better on film, and better yet with each one given its distinct setting. Mark Ruffalo, Matt Bomer, Jim Parsons all did admirably, and I'm especially glad that we now have evidence on film of what a great actor Joe Mantello is, just in his one big speech. Good job, all.

vera charles (love that name and reference, by the way), that's so cool that Asner repeated the same role in both H50 series! I somehow missed hearing about that. And of course in the last few years he got maybe his biggest and most-seen (or more appropriately in this case, -heard) credit on the big screen, the central character in Up.

According to Aldis Hodge himself, it was not his playing that was heard. I recall reading his remarks -- here, for instance -- that much as Rogers liked to hype "Aldis plays the violin!" as one of the actor's many talents in the preview publicity, Hodge had only been studying violin for a couple of years. He had enough training to fake the right fingerings and bow movements, but not to develop the tone quality needed to be plausible in that piece, specifically in the very high register where the solo is written, and where a sweet smooth sound is so arduously acquired. (I've been teaching in a university music department for 3 decades now, and I know that even kids who've been studying for a decade or two can sound thin and scratchy.) The DVD commentary makes it clear that this is the sound of another violinist, but the producer whose wife is a violinist herself (is that Rogers?) quotes her as saying that his fingerings and shifts of position were pretty convincing. In any case, whoever was playing, it would have been pre-recorded and played back for the instrumentalists to sync with. That's how this sort of sequence is filmed. And the synchronization was visibly off; that was my original point. I wasn't knocking Hodge for not being the audible violinist, as he never claimed to be (and I wouldn't expect him to be).

Jason Segel, Paul Rudd, Hank Azaria. All seem tuned in and quick of tongue.

Mekhi screwed the pooch on the final round, and had he gotten over himself and just said "Taxi Driver" and "our President" when the time came, they could have had time for a simple "Two and Half Men" to get Charlie Sheen and win. That civilian did seem to have a bit of a crush on Mekhi, he kept picking him for things for no evident reason. That said, I'm not sure there was a clear Best Choice on the guys' team; all of them had their fumbley moments. Actually, all in all this was one of our better combinations of celebs, I think. Nobody was really bothersome to me (Billy did his shouty shtick only between games, not during), they were fun, and they were all in there doing their best.

I'll be very interested to see this. I saw the recent Broadway revival of The Normal Heart and was moved, especially by the work of the quite exceptional cast. The HBO cast is mostly different, with Joe Mantello (one of the best actors of my theatergoing experience, who pretty much gave up acting for directing after Angels in America) demoted from the leading role to a secondary one. The play itself I would call "historically important" or "necessary" rather than great or even always good. But it will always have a secure place because of that importance (I remember when it was new and said things that needed saying), and it's possible that adaptation for film might even improve its shape. We'll see.

OK, I know what you're saying here, and I know Kane has devoted fans in real life. I'm not saying he couldn't attract them. But just practically speaking: how did he? He sings one evening in a bar to which none of these girls could be admitted, and then by 10 the next morning they've all cut school to follow him around the streets of Memphis? On the basis of what? :) If he'd made a TV appearance, sure.

I don't know... isn't it true that it's much easier, as well as more fun, to talk about what we don't like than what we do? I find that true for myself, anyway -- certainly when I'm reviewing recordings or videos, I have to work hard to give substantial space to discussing what I liked; otherwise my negative comments would take over the whole review, and would misrepresent what I thought.

Heh. Yeah. Can't waive that one away. I like the episode but there should've been another way to manage the virtuoso thing. I like it too. I saw it first-run (Alan Sepinwall, who in general didn't cover the show, did a special write-up in advance that alerted me to watch) and as a lover and teacher of classical music I was pleased to see this piece featured so prominently, with both the violin solo and the orchestral climax (shades of The Man Who Knew Too Much!) crucial to the plot. But so many things were wrong with its treatment (each one ignorable on its own, maybe, but as a group, not): the composer's surname is Rimsky-Korsakov, not Korsakov (and Sophie, the sophisticate, should have gotten it right); the fourth movement is never done on its own; there are violin solos all the way through the four movements, not just at the very end; the solos are done by the concertmaster (first chair in the first violin section), not an outside soloist. Some of that might be waved away as the result of this being a special short concert to honor a foreign guest, and I can try to dismiss some of the rest as "things are done differently in this fictional world"; but there's no way to imagine that a conductor would show up for a concert never having rehearsed with the soloist or heard him play. Not on any planet. Also the errors of Aldis Hodge's finger-syncing... John Rogers tries to pass them off as his fault because of editing necessities, but I can't picture an editing need that would require picture to be slightly off from sound. But you know, I can ignore most of that if I try, because the premise is so fun for me. But "The Studio Job" -- how's the chronology on that again? Eliot acquires a flock of screaming fangirls the morning after he played in a Memphis bar? John Schneider thinks he can pass off a song as his own after someone else played it in public as their own the night before? And sundry other bits I won't go into, but they're a matter of surface believability, not specialized knowledge. But in the end I forgive it, because I do enjoy the series so much. I bet it'll have a long life in cable syndication and other such outlets. (fastiller, I didn't see your response till I'd posted. But as the above makes clear, I hope, the points you mention weren't what I was thinking of at all.)

As I mentioned near the start of this thread, I've binge-watched all 5 seasons recently -- maybe a dozen episodes were familiar to me, the rest were all new. Well, I've finished them all now (there are still some outtakes and commentaries left for me to enjoy), so I thought I should report on my overall reaction. Which is, of course, hugely positive, especially given that the family you find for yourself and the caper in the cause of good are two of my favorite premises, above and beyond the quality of the show itself. I already knew how skilled and likeable the cast was, and how clever the scripts would be. After watching the whole series in such a short time, I'm especially impressed by two aspects (well, more, but I'll single out these two for now). 1, that despite the seemingly haphazard way stories were proposed and developed (I mean that on the whole, if someone came up with a premise that seemed workable and entertaining, they went ahead and did it -- there generally wasn't a "master plan" for what each individual story in sequence would have to be), each of the five seasons, and the series as a whole, felt coherent and well shaped. Whatever the diversions along the way, there always seemed to be a consistency to a season's arc. This has to be to the credit of the creators/overseers (and the commentaries reveal that there was a one-word "theme" for each season). The little blips along the way -- I never quite bought the character of "the Italian" and her mission (I know they were going for a 60s spy-movie aura, but it doesn't do much for me), and there has to be a lot of hand-waving to explain away that Nate, after breaking out of prison, goes right back home and lives there openly for two more years -- don't really matter much in the end. Which brings me to 2, that the show did a nice job straddling the serious/fun line. I mean this in the specific sense that of course we're supposed to (and I did) get involved with the stories and characters, and take them seriously; but at the same time we shouldn't take it all too too seriously, and worry if a certain moment is impossible, or a certain plot point strains belief; it's all, in the end, for fun. Obviously a producer shouldn't be able to get away with murder in this respect, but I don't grudge him an occasional such moment, because that balance is satisfyingly maintained. (My own biggest nitpicks are in the Sheherazade and Studio Jobs, because my own musical background makes their liberties glaringly obvious to me. No doubt others focus elsewhere. Still no big deal.) So anyway, it all adds up very satisfyingly, and I'm delighted to have all the DVDs on my shelf.

My favorite comeback to this was in TAR 2, when Wil & Tara tried to jump the taxi queue leaving San Francisco airport. They screamed at the dispatcher, "We're in a race for a million dollars!" and he said "I don't care. I'm not gettin' any of it." He's one of my top five favorite people in all of TAR history.

I feel the same. What makes her so freakin' special? Every team that ever enters this race really, really, really wants to win, or they wouldn't bother. "Wanting" to win doesn't mean that God will look down and see to it that you win because, golly, you just want to win so much. This was another reason why I laughed and laughed when she cried at the end.

I must regretfully disagree. I hate the way the movie evens out the meter changes into a consistent 4/4. (Did they think the way Strouse wrote it would be too scary for a movie audience, or too hard for Hollywood studio singers to learn?)

"A Lot of Livin' To Do" is one of my favorite movie dance numbers ever, as I think I've posted in another thread here. Gower Champion's stage choreography wasn't much -- a lot of just making the kids run across and fling their arms exuberantly skyward -- but Onna White (who also did such good choreography for The Music Man and Oliver! onscreen) made a masterpiece of it in the movie. Kim, Hugo, and Birdie each having a point of view and a verse of the song to sing, and then that (yes) crazy dance. (I smile that Birdie gets just walking patterns to a cha-cha beat, even though he should be the real crazy guy of the bunch, because Jesse Pearson couldn't really do much -- he was just the right type for the part. So White had to work around him.) But Ann-Margret and Bobby Rydell are sensational. And that elbow thing everyone does to that toodle-i-too in the dance arrangement... that kills me every time, and it's pure Onna White. I mean, see for yourself!

Matthew Morrison was on the second episode.