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Wednesday, March 18, 2009
Natasha Richardson, 1963-2009
I wish I could say I knew Natasha Richardson’s film work well, but I cannot. Still, I find myself deeply saddened by her untimely passing all the same.
That’s largely because of the sudenness and cruelty of her accident, no doubt, and of profound sympathy for her mother, Vanessa Redgrave, aunt Lynn Redgrave, sister Joely Richardson, husband Liam Neeson, sons Michael and Daniel, and the rest of her family.
I think it’s also because I wish I had known her work better. I read one article that said she was “best known” for playing the mother in Disney’s 1998 Parent Trap remake.
Really? That wasn’t true for me. Her best role was a performance I never even had the pleasure to witness.
When the Kander and Ebb classic Cabaret was revived on Broadway in 1998 by Sam Mendes and Rob Marshall, Natasha Richardson took on Sally Bowles (a role close to my heart because a friend of mine did an excellent job following in Richardson’s footsteps) and won a Tony for her efforts. Save for a few clips here and there, I never saw her performance, but I heard it on the CD cast recording, and she blew me away through sheer vocal prowess. Richardson wasn’t a singer, but then, Sally wasn’t supposed to be much of one, and Richardson sold that for all it was worth and then some.
Here’s a clip of her performing my favorite song in the show, “Maybe This Time.”
If that isn’t talent, ladies and gentlemen, I don’t know what is. “Isn’t that long a stay” indeed.
Prayers and condolences to all.
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Do you ever watch/listen to DVD extras?
Reading this Variety story about how well Netflix and Redbox are doing in the economic crunch, this sentence caught my eye:
“Fox has decided to pull extras, like commentary tracks and featurettes, off discs it offers as rentals, beginning with pics like “Slumdog Millionaire,” starting this month. Other studios are expected to follow suit.”
On the one hand, I understand this move. My educated guess is that most people who rent discs rarely, if ever watch the extras. I make an educated guess because, being a movie nut, I’m not like most renters. I actually eat up the extras myself.
So on the other hand, I regret this decision because occasionally I use Netflix to rent DVDs to see extras of movies I don’t intend to buy. For example, after I purchased Steven Spielberg’s Munich, I rented the bonus disc from Netflix to watch the making-of material, because I didn’t see the need to shell out more money for extras I wouldn’t watch more than once. If extras start to disappear from rental copies, that’s something I will miss.
I understand most people are happy to own just the movie, but if you’re missing, say, the second disc of the WALL-E package, you’re missing some fascinating and fun material about how the movie was made, including an illuminating piece on how Pixar hired cinematographer Roger Deakins (who shoots most of the Coen brothers’ films) to help them achieve the look they wanted.
If you haven’t heard Francis Ford Coppola’s commentary tracks, some fascinating stories are passing you by. For instance, did you know that those evocative opening shots of the jungle catching fire in Apocalypse Now were almost thrown away? Coppola gets so intimate and confessional, that even commentary tracks to lesser films of his like The Godfather Part III and the turgid Finian’s Rainbow are fascinating.
So do you ever indulge in DVD extras, and if so, which? Deleted scenes? Documentaries? Commentaries? What have you gleaned from them?
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