Twelve O’Clock High
(dir. H. King) (1949) Bureaucratic office thriller masquerading as WWII bomber film. If Gregory Peck chewed out a shirker today as he lashes Hugh Marlowe, he’d be prosecuted for bullying.
Continue Reading →Twelve Angry Men
(dir. Lumet) (1957) Still the best case against majority verdicts, a stagey but compulsive jury-room drama with Henry Fonda a standout as Liberal Conscience.
Continue Reading →Triumph and Demise
(Paul Kelly) An account of the Australian Federal Labor Government 2007 – 2013. Kevin Rudd, his bete noire Julia Gillard, et al, stalk about like characters in The White Devil, passionless and brainless villains. You could play ‘Sortes Virgilianae’ in respect of some of the players, substituting DSM 4R.
Continue Reading →Tristan und Isolde
Beware matchmakers. Beware writing opera when in lust with Mathilde Wesendonck. Beware love-of-death; it leads to the death of love, or death-porn. Wagner must have seen himself as Tristan to Mathilde’s Iseult, Lancelot to her Guinevere, when he shelved the Ring and forged perhaps the most beautiful opera of all. T & I poses a number of problems. Its staging should be spare yet lush. It requires a measure of taste and discretion, for Wagner wrote this work while well-unzipped (he expected the work to be censored unless it was played as parody) and the material can stray dangerously near…
Continue Reading →Tosca
Callas wouldn't cop Spoletta
(Melbourne, 2010) What on earth were alleged professionals thinking with this? A set from Rebus or The Wire and a finale where Floria, rather than hurtle over the parapet, has her brains blown out by Spoletta? It is such textual vandalism that renders Joseph Kerman’s sneer (a ‘shabby little shocker’) as true. Grumbles with setting and textual vandalism aside, Nicole Youl was a fine leading lady and the incomparable John Wegner a formidable, ferocious and frightening Baron Scarpia.
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