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Books > Arts & Architecture > Performing arts > Individual actors & performers
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On Streisand - An Opinionated Guide (Hardcover)
Loot Price: R533
Discovery Miles 5 330
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On Streisand - An Opinionated Guide (Hardcover)
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Loot Price R533
Discovery Miles 5 330
Expected to ship within 12 - 17 working days
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She said, "I became a singer because I couldn't get work as an
actress," but Barbra Streisand not only became both but
revolutionized the two professions. Her music transformed the
smooth, uninflected style of the Frank Sinatras and Ella
Fitzgeralds into an engine of dramatic vocalism in which each song
is like a miniature three-act play. And Streisand's films changed
forever the ideal of how a movie star chooses roles, going from
musicals to dramas to comedies, from period fare to ultra-modern
tales, from Funny Girl to The Way We Were to Yentl. mainstream
show-business principal to deconstruct an artist On Streisand
begins with a broad year-by-year outline of the landmark
achievements and a few of her more whimsical escapades, as when Rex
Reed apologizes for an oafish interview piece and she responds with
"I had more respect for him when he hated me." This is followed by
a long essay on how Streisand's idiosyncratic self-realization
marks her as a unique national treasure, an artist without limits.
Then comes the major part of the book, a work-by-work analysis.
This section is broken down into separate chapters, each organized
chronologically: the stage shows, then the television shows and
concerts, then the movies, and last (because longest) the
recordings. Throughout, Mordden follows Streisand's independence,
which he sees as her central quality. Throughout all of the
chapters on Streisand's shows, concerts, films, and recordings,
Mordden illustrates how she was exercising individualistic control
of her career from her very first audition, and how the rest of her
professional life unfolded from that point. pioneered an intense
and even passionate singing style at A book written by an
opinionated expert whose prose is consistently full of flair and
wit, On Streisand: An Opinionated Guide will appeal to general
readers in all aspects of American life that Streisand has touched,
from film to television to popular music to stardom. Ella
Fitzgerald and Frank Sinatra. Further, like Dustin Hoffman and Jack
Nicholson she was one of the new wave actors of the 1960s who broke
away from the standard models for movie stars. But Streisand has
much greater range than others of this kind, as comfortable in
musical comedy as in serious drama. Thus, she has moved from the
madcap roles of Hello, Dolly! and What's Up, Doc? to the tale of a
young woman at war with patriarchal religious fundamentalism (in
Yentl) and the insanity hearing of a prostitute who has killed (in
self-defense) and whose parents want to put her away to keep her
from revealing that her step-father has preyed on her sexually.
Further, Streisand has directed three of her films, rare enough for
an actor but perhaps especially for a woman. An American Original,
Streisand is controversial as well, as all Originals are.
Mediocrities may be dull, but they never get bad reviews; Streisand
has irritated many a sensibility. As she herself has said, "I'm a
liberal, opinionated Jewish feminist-I push a lot of buttons."
There is as well the "I'm so wonderful" vanity that has haunted
some of her later work, as when she records duets with the rich and
famous but isolates herself from them, letting the editing of the
tapes bring them together, as if she were an ice princess who might
melt upon human contact. Streisand, as her own movie producer, has
also been accused of recutting the director's final version to
flatter her shots over those of her colleagues. And The Mirror Has
Two Faces seems designed to let Streisand direct her own Cinderella
tale, not unlike the old Hollywood romances in which the secretary
takes off her glasses and the boss cries, "Miss
Johnson!...Clarice... Why, you're... you're beautiful!"
Nevertheless, Streisand has been, in all, an invigorating artist,
not only unique but extraordinary. It would be impossible to
imagine what American culture would have been like without her.
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