The Incomparable Nina Simone

Nina Simone's beauty came from within. She sang from the depth of her heart, with many of her songs and interpretations of classic songs, like Pirate Jenny from Kurt Weill's Three-Penny Opera, becoming iconic of the Civil Rights Movement. It really is hard to imagine anyone playing her in film, but I see the beautiful young Zoe Saldana has been cast in the role of an upcoming biopic.

Needless to say this has caused quite a stir. Mary J. Blige was first cast in the role, which also ruffled a few feathers. My suggestion would be anyone of these four women because there is absolutely no question anyone of them can sing Simone's signature songs, and if beauty is what you are looking for there are few women more beautiful than Lizz Wright. Instead, we most likely will get another film along the lines of Ray that meticulously chronicles the life of the legendary artist, who left America to make a better life for herself in France.

Probably her greatest performance was recorded at Carnegie Hall in 1964. It centered on the Civil Rights Movement, offering stirring interpretations of I Loves You Porgy, Plain Gold Ring and Pirate Jenny, as well as her own great songs Old Jim Crow, Go Limp and the show-stopping Mississippi Goddam.

One can appreciate the effort to make Nina Simone accessible to a new generation, but her songs have already been remixed and re-imagined into House music, and made popular in night clubs. The movie will no doubt attempt to put her in proper perspective, but seems to capture her more as a sexy chanteuse than the powerful voice that she was.

Comments

The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire

Welcome to this month's reading group selection. David Von Drehle mentions The Melting Pot , a play by Israel Zangwill, that premiered on Broadway in 1908. At that time theater was accessible to a broad section of the public, not the exclusive domain it has become over the decades. Zangwill carried a hopeful message that America was a place where old hatreds and prejudices were pointless, and that in this new country immigrants would find a more open society. I suppose the reference was more an ironic one for Von Drehle, as he notes the racial and ethnic hatreds were on display everywhere, and at best Zangwill's play helped persons forget for a moment how deep these divides ran. Nevertheless, "the melting pot" made its way into the American lexicon, even if New York could best be describing as a boiling cauldron in the early twentieth century. Triangle: The Fire That Changed America takes a broad view of events that led up the notorious fire, not...

Team of Rivals Reading Group

''Team of Rivals" is also an America ''coming-of-age" saga. Lincoln, Seward, Chase et al. are sketched as being part of a ''restless generation," born when Founding Fathers occupied the White House and the Louisiana Purchase netted nearly 530 million new acres to be explored. The Western Expansion motto of this burgeoning generation, in fact, was cleverly captured in two lines of Stephen Vincent Benet's verse: ''The stream uncrossed, the promise still untried / The metal sleeping in the mountainside." None of the protagonists in ''Team of Rivals" hailed from the Deep South or Great Plains. _______________________________ From a review by Douglas Brinkley, 2005

The Searchers

You are invited to join us in a discussion of The Searchers , a new book on John Ford's boldest Western, which cast John Wayne against type as the vengeful Ethan Edwards who spends eight years tracking down a notorious Comanche warrior, who had killed his cousins and abducted a 9 year old girl. The film has had its fair share of detractors as well as fans over the years, but is consistently ranked in most critics' Top Ten Greatest Films . Glenn Frankel examines the origins of the story as well as the film itself, breaking his book down into four parts. The first two parts deal with Cynthia Ann Parker and her son Quanah, perhaps the most famous of the 19th century abduction stories. The short third part focuses on the author of the novel, Alan Le May, and how he came to write The Searchers. The final part is about Pappy and the Duke and the making of the film. Frankel noted that Le May researched 60+ abduction stories, fusing them together into a nar...

Dispatches from Vilnius

Search This Blog