Word: songfulness
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Attractive notions, all. So why don't they coalesce into a fully satisfying film? In part, because they expose the show's structure as a variety program, an episodic fashion show. Each of the women in Guido's life comes on, talks about her life, performs a song, then fades into the crowd. Some of these solo spots are pretty wow-y: Cruz's writhing sensuality in "A Call from the Vatican," the surprising sass and vocal authority that Judi Dench brings to "Folies Bergere" and a nicely gaudy turn by the pop star Fergie as a zaftig whore...
...have been issued a bit cavalierly - self-referential cinema, as it was called, could easily turn self-reverential - but it spawned some fascinating films, including Paul Mazursky's Alex in Wonderland, Woody Allen's Stardust Memories and above all Bob Fosse's All That Jazz, a collision of song and dance, skyrocketing neurosis and open-heart surgery, energy and entropy. Nine hit Broadway three years later, with Raul Julia declaiming Maury Yeston's songs in Tommy Tune's black-and-white, beyond-chic production...
...best clue to Boxing Day's origins can be found in the song "Good King Wenceslas." According to the Christmas carol, Wenceslas, who was Duke of Bohemia in the early 10th century, was surveying his land on St. Stephen's Day - Dec. 26 - when he saw a poor man gathering wood in the middle of a snowstorm. Moved, the King gathered up surplus food and wine and carried them through the blizzard to the peasant's door. The alms-giving tradition has always been closely associated with the Christmas season - hence the canned-food drives and Salvation Army Santas that...
...wren, in which boys fasten a fake wren to a pole and parade it through town. Also known as Wren Day, the tradition supposedly dates to 1601, to the Battle of Kinsale, in which the Irish tried to sneak up on the English invaders but were betrayed by the song of an overly vocal wren - although this legend's veracity is also highly debated. Years ago, a live wren was hunted and killed for the parade, but modern sentiments deemed it too gruesome...
Singing "White Christmas" is fine if you're Bing Crosby or you're safely ensconced in front of a fire in a mountain hideaway somewhere. But hum a few bars of the song at the Eurostar terminals in Paris and London these days and you may get dirty looks. As difficult as it is to believe, snow is what apparently caused the breakdown of the Eurostar train network over the weekend that left service indefinitely suspended - and an ever-growing number of people stranded, their holiday plans in disarray...