Word: altmans
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...there was illicit gambling and who knew what else. But up on the bandstands, the jazz musicians of Kansas City swung through it all. Absorbed, imperturbable, they played within a sort of bubble of purity: theirs were the only disinterested passions in town. Or so it seems in Robert Altman's new film, Kansas City, set in the 1930s heyday of "Boss" Tom Pendergast, when an extraordinary concentration of jazz talent flourished in the city (and a wide-eyed Altman was growing up there...
...Daniel Altman '96 was editorial chair of The Crimson...
Back on the movie screen, some of the big names besides Bertolucci were disappointing their fans. Robert Altman's Kansas City, starring Jennifer Jason Leigh and Miranda Richardson, shrouds the aimless bustle of its plot--kidnapping, murder and political maneuvering set against a 1934 jazz milieu--in an opium haze of dramatic anomie. Stephen Frears' The Van, third in the series that includes The Commitments and The Snapper, is a noisy mess, with shouting in lieu of wit and brawls stunt-doubling for character conflict. But this pub/pug violence was mild next to the atrocities in David Cronenberg's Crash...
Postscript: Many have cited Mandy Grunwald and sister Lisa Grunwald--a published novelist--as potential co-authors with both the inside knowledge and literary skill to have pulled off Primary Colors. Mandy denies it and has her own suspect: Roger Altman, the former Deputy Treasury Secretary who was an economic adviser to Clinton during the 1992 campaign. Indeed, since leaving the Administration in 1994 after a dispute over his testimony to the Senate Whitewater committee, Altman may have had the time to write a novel. His response: "It's both flattering and preposterous...
This is Daniel Altman's last column...