Month: May 2017

Three years ago I mentioned the necessity of being able to see a high-def version of Ken Russell‘s The Music Lovers (’70), his Tchaikovsky biopic with Richard Chamberlain as the closeted Russian composer. (Russell’s pitch: “A homosexual married to a nymphomaniac.”) Douglas Slocombe‘s luscious widescreen photography demands this, if not as a Bluray then at least via HD streaming. Back then it was only viewable now as a 2003 MGM Home Video DVD; now it’s also viewable in standard-def (480p) streaming.

The Music Lovers was the third of Russell’s five biographical films about classical composers. Elgar (’62) and Delius: Song of Summer (’68) came before it, and then Mahler (’74) and Lisztomania (’75).

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Remember when House of Cards was something everyone had to see? Delicious, cunning. I did a weekend binge-watch of season #1 and season #2, but when season #3 began I said to myself “yeah, I know, good show and all but when will it end? Because I see a series that’s continuing so that the creators and actors can continue to earn dough.” Now we’re facing season #5. Will Kevin Spacey‘s Frank Underwood finally go down or will this thing just keep trudging on and on and on? It pops on 5.30.17.

Sidenote: Spacey deserves respect for saying “twenty-sixteen, twenty-twenty, twenty-twentyfour,” etc. We’re 17 years into the 21st Century and a sizable chorus of newcasters and politicians are still referring to the year as “two-thousand-something.” I’ve been reminding the realm for 15 years that it’s wrong. Everyone said “two thousand” when 1999 was over, of course, but after that I blame the template of Stanley Kubrick‘s 2001: A Space Odyssey. I presumed people would get past the absurdity and start saying “twenty-something” within a few years or certainly by 2010, but they didn’t.

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