Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

benjbrantley.bsky.social @benjbrantley.bsky.social · 1d

Feeling happy shivers as I romp through recent seasons of "Inside No. 9," the Pemberton and Shearsmith anthology show. Love its creators' giddy avidity in sampling the darks arts of storytelling, from true crime docs to commedia dell'arte, in pursuit of the "gotcha!" punchline.

2 2

benjbrantley.bsky.social @benjbrantley.bsky.social · 3d

Stumbled tonight into the 1967 "Camelot," and whoa! -- it's a Harper's Bazaar fashion shoot, with an elfin Arthur and a mod Guenevere striking rueful, sensual poses against snowfalls and castle walls. What I retained from childhood: Redgrave's raw, tear-blotched face at the end.

8

benjbrantley.bsky.social @benjbrantley.bsky.social · 5d

They've both been given impossible roles. The instinctive Bergman can't help acting anyway; Peck's part lets him stay blank. And yes, there's the bilge of Hecht's psychobabble script. But to be allowed to feast on those faces, in shadow, in black and white... "Spellbound" is on TCM.

5

benjbrantley.bsky.social @benjbrantley.bsky.social · 6d

Taking on the state of the nation and the state of the theater, the already notorious little musical "Slam Frank" may be the most important new show around. It rides one sacred cow to skewer a herd of others, ranging wildly and widely through the land mines of identity politics.

2

benjbrantley.bsky.social @benjbrantley.bsky.social · 6d

I had to turn off Fosse's "All That Jazz" on TCM. (Its self-regard does try the patience.) But I did stick around long enough to reexperience the high delight of "Everything Old Is New Again," danced by Anne Reinking and Erzsebet Foldi.

5

benjbrantley.bsky.social @benjbrantley.bsky.social · 8d

This long-bodied being showed up this morning, according to schedule, and of course sought out the most complementary background. I have asked it to pray for all of us.

1 5

benjbrantley.bsky.social @benjbrantley.bsky.social · 10d

Happy birthday to Julie Andrews, who glistened and sounded like newly polished silver. Such shininess is most seductive to a child, and I fell unconditionally in love with her, my first show biz crush. I still know every lyric from "Mary Poppins" and "The Sound of Music."

3 8 83

benjbrantley.bsky.social @benjbrantley.bsky.social · 10d

Happy birthday to Len Cariou, who is forever and always the definitive Sweeney Todd. It's hard to convey now just how shocking, and thrilling, "Epiphany" was when he first sang it on Broadway, audaciously followed by "A Little Priest" with the divinely demonic Angela Lansbury.

3 1 25

benjbrantley.bsky.social @benjbrantley.bsky.social · 11d

We were honored this morning by a visit from a Northern flicker.

1 2

benjbrantley.bsky.social @benjbrantley.bsky.social · 11d

The view from the last day of September.

6

benjbrantley.bsky.social @benjbrantley.bsky.social · 11d

Dignity officially no longer exists in the United States. Those who insist on holding onto it will be prosecuted.

3

benjbrantley.bsky.social @benjbrantley.bsky.social · 12d

The exhilaration, the anxiety, the adrenaline/endorphin rush that never stops: High on the high-octane "One Battle After Another," which I watched with a jack-o-lantern grin. Paul Thomas Anderson has created the movie-est movie I've seen in ages, and it's one hell of a ride.

4

benjbrantley.bsky.social @benjbrantley.bsky.social · 14d

(Fairytale ending): And the time came when the scales dropped from the eyes of Americans, and the spell of poisonous enchantment dissolved. And they saw what they had been, whom they had followed and what they had allowed to happen in his name. And they were sore with shame.

2 6 25

benjbrantley.bsky.social @benjbrantley.bsky.social · 15d

Plato goes to the Milan collections! In the Times, Vanessa Friedman, describing a piece from Prada, uses a phrase I never expected to see in a fashion review: "an anamnesis of a bra." This is what it describes:

2

benjbrantley.bsky.social @benjbrantley.bsky.social · 16d

Farewell to punster par excellence Mel Taub, who understood the special, shameless glee of Dad humor long before it was identified as such. I was always delighted to find his name (in tiny print) on the Sunday Times puzzle pages.
www.nytimes.com/2025/09/24/c...

Mel Taub, Creator of a Pun-Loving Puzzle, Is Dead at 97

www.nytimes.com

2

benjbrantley.bsky.social @benjbrantley.bsky.social · 16d

When was the last time you read a review that made you feel you had -- but had -- to see a movie? Manohla Dargis delivers a contagiously passionate case for the latest from Paul Thomas Anderson, and I am so there. www.nytimes.com/2025/09/25/m...

‘One Battle After Another’ Review: Paul Thomas Anderson’s Rallying Cry

www.nytimes.com

1 1 2

benjbrantley.bsky.social @benjbrantley.bsky.social · 17d

Have any other eyes ever signaled SOS so fiercely and relentlessly? Ever since I saw "Sudden Fear" (1952) on TCM last week, I've been trailed by visions of the flashing headlights of Joan Crawford's gaze. The acting may be mannered, but the eyes are fight-or-flight primal.

4

benjbrantley.bsky.social @benjbrantley.bsky.social · 17d

This is terrific, Jason. You, too, have risen to the moment.

1 3

benjbrantley.bsky.social @benjbrantley.bsky.social · 17d

Farewell to Claudia Cardinale, who bathed any scene she appeared in with a radiance that melted shadows; it was as if she had swallowed the sun. On screen, her very presence seemed to bestow new life on the weary, from Mastroianni (in "8 1/2") to Lancaster (in "The Leopard").

5

benjbrantley.bsky.social @benjbrantley.bsky.social · 21d

And sometimes there is sanity so quickly. “A complaint is not a public forum for vituperation and invective. Not a protected platform to rage against an adversary," writes Federal Judge Stephen D. Merryman, in dismissing someone's defamation suit against the New York Times.

1 5

benjbrantley.bsky.social @benjbrantley.bsky.social · 22d

Bye bye, Hulu

15

benjbrantley.bsky.social @benjbrantley.bsky.social · 22d

Happy birthday to Rosemary Harris, who finds an unbending strength in delicacy of craft. Who suggests the storms within the most tranquil surfaces. Who, sounding the depths beneath filigree artifice, lights up the shadows in playwrights as different as Albee and Noel Coward.

1 5

benjbrantley.bsky.social @benjbrantley.bsky.social · 23d

This is really where we are now? Can topical comedy even exist in this environment? And are we all going to passively accept that we are being transported back to the governmental censure and censorship of the McCarthy Era? Scary, scary times.

1 1 13

benjbrantley.bsky.social @benjbrantley.bsky.social · 24d

Has "Art" grown a heart since I first saw it or have I? I never expected to cry at Yasmina Reza's tidy comedy of friendship under siege. But in Scott Ellis' Broadway revival, Neil Patrick Harris, Bobby Cannavale and James Corden uncover an aching fear of loneliness that left me in tears.

1 5

benjbrantley.bsky.social @benjbrantley.bsky.social · 25d

Farewell to Robert Redford, one of the last of the mythic movie stars, who seemed to glow like a sunrise. As an actor, he made understatement magnetic, and he conjured irresistible slow-burning chemistry with costars from Newman to Streisand. Then there is the bounty of Sundance.

7 18 230