Gene Hunt's wife
6 January 2021 11:05 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
igenlodeI've been re-watching the first series of "Life on Mars", and was rather surprised by the frequent (in the last few episodes at least) references to Gene Hunt as being married. He certainly doesn't seem to be encumbered by a wife for the purposes of "Ashes to Ashes", let alone taking exception because a colleague 'made a pass at the Gov's missus'...
I also watched the musical broadcast of "Kinky Boots", which left me with the impression that the original film was probably a rather attractive Ealing Studios-type drama that I would have enjoyed watching. Unfortunately I didn't like the music at all.
Likewise the Matthew Bourne ballet version of "The Red Shoes" ended up simply inspiring me with a desire to see the Powell & Pressburger film (I may just have a videotape of it somewhere). If I hadn't had the advantage of knowing the original plot I think I'd have been as lost as I was in the Bourne "Swan Lake", where I had literally almost no idea what was supposed to be going on :-(
As it was, I wasn't exactly impressed by the apparent decision to have the heroine reduced cartoon-fashion to prostituting her art in the East End music halls as opposed to the original, where her husband encourages her to pursue her career with other ballet companies after the breach with Lermontov. I suppose it makes for better visual shorthand, but it turns her into an impoverished supplicant female who gets humbled into submission, rather than a woman who has personal and material success in her own right, yet is drawn back to the one thing she has been barred from; the mesmeric power of her single-minded Mephistopheles, who creates greater ballet than anyone else by virtue of being completely ruthless.
I did enjoy the completely original (so far as I can remember) "Red Shoes" ballet-within-a-ballet sequence, even if I couldn't quite understand all of it; presumably because the original film version was written for the screen and the stage version had to be actually performable as live dance without the reliance on camera magic, a new plot has been devised which manages to feel if anything more Hans Christian Andersen than before. (In fact I'd assumed it was based on the original tale, and it wasn't until looking up the latter just now that I realised it's really not!)
I also watched the musical broadcast of "Kinky Boots", which left me with the impression that the original film was probably a rather attractive Ealing Studios-type drama that I would have enjoyed watching. Unfortunately I didn't like the music at all.
Likewise the Matthew Bourne ballet version of "The Red Shoes" ended up simply inspiring me with a desire to see the Powell & Pressburger film (I may just have a videotape of it somewhere). If I hadn't had the advantage of knowing the original plot I think I'd have been as lost as I was in the Bourne "Swan Lake", where I had literally almost no idea what was supposed to be going on :-(
As it was, I wasn't exactly impressed by the apparent decision to have the heroine reduced cartoon-fashion to prostituting her art in the East End music halls as opposed to the original, where her husband encourages her to pursue her career with other ballet companies after the breach with Lermontov. I suppose it makes for better visual shorthand, but it turns her into an impoverished supplicant female who gets humbled into submission, rather than a woman who has personal and material success in her own right, yet is drawn back to the one thing she has been barred from; the mesmeric power of her single-minded Mephistopheles, who creates greater ballet than anyone else by virtue of being completely ruthless.
I did enjoy the completely original (so far as I can remember) "Red Shoes" ballet-within-a-ballet sequence, even if I couldn't quite understand all of it; presumably because the original film version was written for the screen and the stage version had to be actually performable as live dance without the reliance on camera magic, a new plot has been devised which manages to feel if anything more Hans Christian Andersen than before. (In fact I'd assumed it was based on the original tale, and it wasn't until looking up the latter just now that I realised it's really not!)