That’s Entertainment Friday and The Aquamusical

September 2, 2011 by 3 Comments

It’s Friday! Watch this! It will make your life better. It has giant plumes of colored smoke, and seahorses.

That’s Entertainment is a big giant love letter to the musical, from Hollywood, to Hollywood. I had the original VHS of it, and watched it, oh, about a thousand times.  This clip came up because I watched Esther Williams’ first aquamusical, Bathing Beauty, and was getting itchy sitting through two hours and to wait for only 1 scene of actual aquamusicality. That one scene does satisfy, but I recommend just fast forwarding to the end to see all the fire, water, and women in large chartreuse hats.

The other really quite astounding moment in Bathing Beauty is this, which you should watch for the shoes alone:

By the way, there is more organ (heh) in this movie than swimming.  There is more everything in this movie than swimming. But, maybe Hollywood hadn’t figured Esther out yet.  I forgive them. They made up for it eventually.

And the movie does start with this charming card, which I would like as a bookplate on my one day bestselling, scandalous autobiography (ghostwritten, of course): Cheap Seats: Who Says Sequins Aren’t a Girl’s Best Friend!:

 

May you dive from a trapeze swinging out of purple smoke into a small ring surrounded by smiling couples this Labor Day weekend,

Yours,

CF

 

 

Filed under Gold Saints, Spectacles, Uncategorized Tagged with , , , , , , ,

Gold Saint: The Munro

September 1, 2009 by Leave a comment

Dearest Millicent,

As we have our odd saints, I offer a new category, a kind of hall of admiration and esteem, tentatively labeled Gold Saints.  The first great beacon? Alice Munro.  You know why.  Why even start the long list of sighs and pangs the great woman bestows in us? Well, today she delighted me in a whole other way.  She removed herself from competition for Canada’s Giller Prize in order that other new voices might have a chance.  From a lovely article on the announcement at the Globe and Mail:

“Her reason is that she has won twice and would like to leave the field to younger writers,” Munro’s publisher, Douglas Gibson, confirmed this week. “In my role as greedy publisher I pointed out that the Giller Prize produces so much publicity, that even to be nominated for it is tremendous publicity,” he said. “But her mind is made up on this. Alice preferred to withdraw from the competition.”

The gaga continues.

Yours,

CF

PS: Am also reading The View From Castle Rock, by chance, and she gets so much work done in the last part of her last lines.

Filed under Gold Saints, Uncategorized Tagged with , ,