Word: matadors
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...visible at the same moment. Fifteen years ago, it was more or less obligatory for American critics to focus on the "radical" formal aspects of Manet's work and, in particular, on his use of flat (or at least shallow) pictorial space. Lone figures like The Fifer and Matador Saluting were posed against a background too flat to be a room, too brown to be outdoors; it was no more than a neutral backdrop, an exaggerated version of the depthless space behind Velásquez's portraits and some of Goya's. This concern for silhouette...
...force, you enlist that myopic master of outrageous disguise from Middlesex, England, Reginald Kenneth Dwight. In standard police clothing and cruiser, Hackett and Dwight then casually drive the 15 blocks to the Gateway Arch. Once backstage, Dwight looks around, then begins to peel the blue to reveal a black matador outfit trimmed with gold sequins, a gold belt and a pink sash, and his true identity for more than a decade: Elton John, 35. The crowd gets its man, but the police lose a future New Centurion. Says Hackett wistfully: "He looks pretty good in uniform...
...Dryads in the Act II dream sequence, Laura Young (who alternates the role with Mouis) has a lovely, lyrical style and a great deal of fluid grace. Stephanie Moy, as the dream sprite Amour, delivers a quick, pert performance characterized by rapid-fire precision. The two male principals, Matador Augustus Van-Heerden and Gypsy Boy Tony Catanzero, both exhibit crystalline definition and punctilious accuracy. As Don Quixote, Donn Edwards is appropriately clumsy, bumblingly gallant, dedicated to the service of his imagined Dulcinea...
...stage is the performer's space: it belongs to the actor - or the character - who is always "on." He is the metaphor matador, the tale twister, the verbal bully who mesmerizes those onstage and in the audience with his endless conjury of felicitous syllables. He is the theater's grand gabby old man, the shaman, the incantator, who goes back to Aeschylus and forward to O'Neill and Osborne, Stoppard and Shepard. Put a spotlight on him, and the eloquence swells, the spell continues. He simply will not shut...
...animal metaphor obtains here. Blake is a rambunctious baby bull, snorting and butting and pawing the ground, looking for a matador his own size. Cannon is a gorgeous, frisky filly with a case of the giggles. Together, even in a pasture full of chuckholes, the lovers have a lot of fun, and some of it is infectious. Director Sargent orchestrates the punch-drunk merriment with finesse. But one cannot help remembering that the movie's working title was What's That Funny Smell? Under any title, it offers the film equivalent of a day on the farm...