Alan Sepinwall

Band of Brothers rewind, episode 6 "Bastogne"

We're now into the second half of our trip through "Band of Brothers," and if you don't have the DVDs, or missed HBO's On Demand window, History Channel is doing another marathon this weekend, with the first five episodes Saturday afternoon (1:37-8), and the next five on Sunday (12:16-7, and don't ask me about the weird start times).

Spoilers for "Bastogne" coming up just as soon as I go in a dell...

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Alan Sepinwall

Band of Brothers rewind, episode 7 "The breaking point"

As I said when I reviewed "Bastogne," "The Breaking Point" seems to be the consensus favorite episode of the series, and I can certainly understand why. It combines the point-of-view storytelling, which makes the second half of the series so much more intense than the first, with the amazing spectacle that we so often got in the first half of the series. It features both one of the lowest points of the series (Buck losing it as he stares at Toye and Guarnere's broken bodies), and one of the highest (Speirs running to Easy's rescue during the attack on Foy). And it has a superb central performance by Donnie Wahlberg as 1st Sgt. Lipton, the man holding the company together while the officers are flaking out.

Read entire article at Alan's blog

Alan Sepinwall

Band of Brothers rewind, episode 8 "The last patrol"

Getting very close to the end of our trip back through "Band of Brothers" -- close enough, in fact, that I'm going to break my rule about who lives and who dies to discuss the fate of the episode's central character -- so know that there are bigger-than-usual spoilers for "The Last Patrol" coming up just as soon as (and I mean that) I divvy up the PX supplies...

We're close enough to the end of the series -- and Easy Company is close enough to the end of the war, with "The Last Patrol" offering up the last significant combat action we'll see -- that I'm going to violate the "who dies" rule. There are still some casualties to come, but I don't think I can properly discuss "The Last Patrol" without saying that David Kenyon Webster did, in fact, survive the war, but died decades before Ambrose's book was written.

Read entire article at Alan's blog

Alan Sepinwall

Band of Brothers rewind, episode 9 "Why we fight"

We're in our final week of looking back on "Band of Brothers," with spoilers for the penultimate episode, "Why We Fight," coming up just as soon as I borrow your lighter...

There are essentially two halves to "Why We Fight" -- one of the finest episodes of this damn fine miniseries -- that seem unrelated at first by anything but chronology, but which turn out to be inextricably linked in the final moments.

Read entire article at Alan's blog

Alan Sepinwall

Band of Brothers rewind, episode 10 "Points"

Because the war more or less ended for Easy Company with the Battle of the Bulge, give or take some minor skirmishes like the one depicted in "The Last Patrol," there was a danger that these last two episodes of the series could have felt terribly anti-climactic. But "Why We Fight" found power by dealing with the liberation of the concentration camp outside Landsberg (which only merits a few paragraphs in Stephen Ambrose's book). "Points," meanwhile, turns the lack of action into its primary theme, showing both the advantages of life in an occupying army (more free time, gorgeous scenery, grand moments) and the drawbacks (the men all want to go home, and they keep dying or being wounded for stupid reasons). Anchored by Damian Lewis' narration and some of Michael Kamen's most beautiful music of the series, it feels like a fitting epilogue to all that came before.

Read entire article at Alan's blog

thisislondon.co.uk

Chanel’s Lagerfeld puts the fashion back in ballet

A glamorous first-night audience turned out for English National Ballet's centenery celebration of the legendary Ballet Russes, with some of the costumes designed by Karl Lagerfeld.

Among those in attendance were Lagerfeld's muse Amanda Harlech, milliner Philip Treacy and Jasmine Guinness.

Also present were actors Damian Lewis and his wife Helen McCrory, Richard E Grant and Jeremy Irons.

“It was fabulous,” Lewis enthused, while the new Dr Who, actor Matt Smith, described it as ”wonderful”.

“They're absolutely fabulous,” said Jo Wood, estranged wife of Rolling Stone Ronnie Wood. “If I had my time again I'd definitely be a ballet dancer.”

The performance was made up of four dances, including the Dying Swan. It also included the world premiere of Faun(e), a re-imagining of Nijinsky's L'apres-midi d'un Faune, by internationally acclaimed choreographer David Dawson.

Lagerfeld's designs for the principal dancers in The Dying Swan and another dance, Apollo, continue a tradition begun by Coco Chanel, whose Parisian fashion house he now heads.

Last night The Dying Swan was danced by Elena Glurdjidze, the senior principal dancer with the ENB, wearing a tutu designed by Lagerfeld using ostrich and a variety of other bird feathers. The four-minute dance was originally created for the legendary Anna Pavlova.

In Apollo, the principal dancers, real-life husband and wife Thomas Edur and Agnes Oaks, wore costumes based by Lagerfeld on classical Greek designs. Chanel herself was a close friend and benefactor of Sergei Diaghilev, who founded the Ballet Russes in 1909.

She created the original costumes for Apollo in 1929 and had an affair with its composer, Igor Stravinsky.

As well as Chanel and Nijinsky, Diaghilev collaborated with other major choreographers, composers, artists and dancers including Pavlova, Picasso, Debussy and Matisse.

Two of the original Ballet Russes dancers, Dame Alicia Markova and Anton Dolin, went on to become founders of the ENB.

The Ballet Russes season continues until Saturday.

Read entire article at thisislondon.co.uk