Word: diva
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That would be just fine to many men, and not a few women, with more traditional ideas of female beauty. Insists Beverly Sills, the diva who now runs the New York City Opera: "There is a growing strength in women, but it's in the forehead, not the forearm. Men will always be attracted to women with nice soft arms and a fleshy bosom." Playboy magazine's 1982 Playmate of the Year, Shannon Tweed, is about the same height and weight as Mariel Hemingway, but her contours are different ? in the soft lines and curves that her beau, Publisher...
...join the Vienna Royal Opera. At the Metropolitan Opera, where she sang from 1921 to 1932, the director reported that the largest ovation he had ever heard followed her "Vissi d'arte, "the great second-act aria in Tosca; she sang it prostrate on the floor. A tempestuous diva onstage and off, Jeritza gathered three husbands, prompted whispers of affairs with composers and feuded audaciously with tenors and other sopranos...
...Diva, a first feature by Jean-Jacques Beineix, 35, has flair to spare. No picturesque French location, from a bombed-out concert hall to a Normandy lighthouse, is too remote. No surface-water, a car hood, sunglasses-is too outré to keep it from reflecting a passerby's face. No character is too quirky to escape shoehorning into the film's delirious narrative. Jules (Frédéric Andrei) is a postal messenger in love with an opera star (Wilhelmenia Fernandez)-a diva so protective of her gift that she refuses to record even her greatest...
...hardly matters that Diva's plot components do not parse. The best thrillers rarely traffic in linear common sense; nobody, including Raymond Chandler, ever figured out who killed the chauffeur in The Big Sleep. But they did evoke a world so cohesively ominous that when life and death eyeballed each other at the denouement, it mattered which one blinked first. No such laws operate in Diva. In an early scene, we see a harried woman trudging barefoot through a Metro station; she recognizes two men-a skinheaded punk and a swarthy rake-and smiles enigmatically as they pursue...
...better part of two hours, he keeps the viewer interested too. In this torpid movie season, Diva is to be seen and savored for Philippe Rousselot's electric-blue imagery, for Hilton McConnico's extravagant decors, even for the prodigal joy Beineix derives from parading his talent. And there are some quietly astonishing moments when, with just the touch of hand on neck, the film suggests a growing, reciprocal affection between diva and devotee. It is on these occasions that Beineix's seems a promising movie career indeed-when you can see the young man of flair...