Tuesday, January 31, 2006

Busy day, SONDHEIM

The new Sweeney Todd CD signed by the cast, including Patti LuPone (topmost left) and Michael Cerveris (topmost left), and also Stephen Sondheim (middle top!):

So, I had four classes today and then went to work. Blah blah blah. It was the same old thing I do most days.

Then, around 9 PM, I went up to the Eugene O'Neill Theatre on W. 49th Street to the signing of the new Sweeney Todd Broadway cast recording. I waited from about 9:30 with Jaron and Josh Barajas from my floor, and we finally got in pretty close to 11. We were back by about 11:30. Anyway, I stood in the presence of my favorite human being, Stephen Sondheim, and I told him I liked his work. He thanked me, and I moved along, but it was still quite extraordinary. He seemed to be tired of signing, but it was nice of him to do it. For the most part, the signing was ran methodically. The CDs were passed on down the table and picked up at the end, so talking to the people wasn't too strongly encouraged. I told the people who play Anthony and Johanna that they were good, and I talked to Laura Molina (Johanna) for a second about how I like that she plays Johanna as a flawed, fully human character rather than the coquettish, prissy character that she can be made to be.

Anyway...what a night! I love the new recording, by the way. The pared-down orchestrations make it feel even creepier!

This week

Tuesday: Class, work, Sweeney Todd signing on the stage of the Eugene O'Neill Theatre with the show's cast (including Patti LuPone) and Stephen Sondheim

Wednesday: Class, work

Thursday: Class, LGBT knitting circle

Friday: Work (extra shift to qualify for bonus)?

Saturday: ??

Sunday: David Lehman's poetry reading at Bowery Poetry Club at 4 PM.

Monday, January 30, 2006

Naomi's New(est) Morning

Anyway, today, after dissecting a sheep's brain in Brain and Behavior lab, I returned to Naomi's New Morning at 105 E. 106th Street. I had been there yesterday, and the audience coordinator, Samantha, called me to come in yet again today from 12-4.

Overall, it was a much smoother experience. Naomi was more on-the-ball and able to get through things quickly. The main guests were Catherine Hicks from Seventh Heaven and Diana DeGarmo from American Idol. Both of them were amusing, and Diana DeGarmo sung the hell out of a so-so song called "Emotional." I always enjoyed her on American Idol and was glad to see that she's become very professional.

The main theme of the show was money, and a crucial feature of the show was that several audience members were supposed to ask questions of Naomi's life coach. Anyway, I was initially selected as one of the audience members to pose a financial question, and my question was going to be about student debt, but it ended up that Naomi wanted a different question to be asked, so I quietly relinquished my spot. Anyway, one of these days I'm going to be featured on Naomi! I think it's a new goal of mine to keep going to the show until I'm on it.

Also, I found out that the show tapes only once a month. Considering it's a weekly show, that makes sense. They do all of the shows in one weekend and then get together monthly. I'm probably going to get called up to do the next round of shows, so I'm actually relatively excited. Today was a much more positive experience -- I brought water and candy and was prepared for the long amount of sitting.

Also, Samantha Green, the audience coordinator told a really interesting story about her sister-in-law's being accused of stealing money from her mother and their seeing a traditional Jamaican obeah-woman (psychic) to solve the problem while on vacation in Jamaica.

Also, I got a free book that there's 99% chance I'll never read by the financial advisor on the show. It's called The Financial Wisdom of Ebenezer Scrooge. On the show, the guy kept on making these weird comments about Scrooge and about how Cratchett shouldn't have been spending so much money on Christmas dinner when his son has a terminal illness. It was freaky.

Naomi also gave me a look and thanked me really briefly for showing up again. She's starting to grow on me. She's definitely not a great personality, but she's still nice. Of course, today she sort of made some stupid comments about sexuality and how that's a topic one shouldn't even discuss. In other contexts, she supports homosexuals. She's kind of flip-floppy and discreet about the issue. Her show overall avoids any topics with too much controversy.

Anyway, that was my day! I'm off to work soon. Tomorrow's another day.

Sunday, January 29, 2006

A lovely weekend

This weekend has been quite nice overall!

Yesterday was a beautiful day; the sun was shining and the temperatures were perfect for walking around the city. I took my TV to finally get repaired at 7th Avenue and 20th Street and then walked up to the public library at 42nd Street in a failed attempt to acquire a library card.

After that, I walked uptown to Central Park because it was so nice out and took a stroll past the zoo, through The Ramble, and then around the Jackie Kennedy Onassis reservoir. I sat around Bethesda Fountain watching the ducks for quite some time. I never really realized how pretty ducks can be, but they're really colored quite beautifully. It was so pretty in the park, and it was nice to see people out and about. What an absolutely beautiful day it was for January. I ended up going as far uptown as 96th Street and then took the subway back to my area.

Today, I bought a play (A Number by Caryl Churchill) for Eurotics (European Drama) and also the play that Julia Roberts will soon be starring in, Three Days of Rain by Richard Greenberg.

After that, I went to a taping of Naomi's New Morning with Naomi Judd on 106th Street between Park and Lexington. The taping ended up taking 4 hours for a 1-hour program, which was, in my opinion, pretty pathetic. The show is supposed to be Naomi telling about her down home philosophies. Anyway, the guests were Latin singer and two-time Grammy-winner Jon Secada, who was pretty good and very attractive, and Hillary Johnson, an up-and-coming singer-songwriter. Besides for them, the show's topic was "Are we born evil?" Naomi had some professionals, a philosopher, a rabbi, and a pastor, to speak about the implications of evil. She then did an interview with the daughter of a serial killer and with a psychological professional. There were also two short taped segments: one about survivors of the World Trade Center attacks who opened up a restaurant and one about some country star who has a large family.

It's really not a show I would probably watch besides for at a live taping like this. Sure, I love chatty, fabulous women who have their own talk shows, but Naomi just doesn't live up as a personality. She needs to get some slightly more high-profile guests on her show. It was pretty obvious that the show is a pretty small affair. The studio was in a nondescript building, and the audience consisted of only three rows. As soon as someone mentioned that there would be an "organ" in the studio, I got worried that it would be some sort of gospel show, but it definitely wasn't. I was glad to see the representation of the Jewish faith as well and also the consideration of atheists in the segment about good and evil. The set was made to look like a country-style house, and it was pretty nice overall.

Anyway, it was a relatively nice experience. At least now I know not to do it again. Also, there was a woman in the audience, Lanette Ware, who is a soap star on "The Guiding Light" and was in Shaft and Bad Company, who I talked to on the subway after the show. She totally thought I was older than I am, but she was really nice, and we talked about Pennsylvania and a little bit about her acting experiences and the fact that all of America is being so overcommercialized.

Wow! Just as I was writing this, who else would call but Samantha Green, the audience coordinator at Naomi's New Morning, who needs audience members for tomorrow's show from 12-4. And what did I say because I'm a pushover? Yes. She said that there would probably be something in it for me, so I hope I get hooked up. Apparently, tomorrow's topic is money.

Anyway, I'm going to go get some dinner and do the homework I would normally be doing tomorrow so I can relax during the taping and not have to worry about things being due.

Friday, January 27, 2006

Work and more

Well, the past few days have been pretty nice overall. The environment at work has been pretty calm, because the Phonathon is a transition phase where it's looking to hire a lot of new employees, so there aren't a whole lot of people still working there from last semester. I've been doing pretty wall as far as pledges overall.

On Wednesday, I got really good sushi with Ally at this place that had an offer for $1 a la carte sushi, so I got egg omelette, tuna, shrimp, octopus, and salmon. I'm a pretty big fan of sushi, so it was good to get some good quality sushi for a change rather than the grocery store variety. The restaurant was really nice as well, and the iced green tea was very pretty to look at. Anyway, Ally and I (particularly me) are very bad at eating sushi. Neither of us like wasabi, and this place included a little bit of it underneath the sushi on top of the rice that is placed beneath it. Also, the octopus that I got was extremely unnerving! I didn't really figure it would actually look like part of an octopus, but it turned out to be an actual portion of tentatcle, and the suckers were still there. It was really chewy and tough and overall unpleasant. Besides for that, the rest of the sushi was amazing.

Yesterday was just plain busy; I had class and worked, and that was just about it. I didn't feel too good in the morning, but I felt better as the day went on. I think it actually may have been the sushi.

Today, I woke up pretty early to attempt to go to a taping of The View, which I thought was having Angela Lansbury and Emma Thompson today. Anyway, when I got to the studio, I found out that they weren't taping a show today, so I went to Tower Records at Lincoln Center, which is just about the most splendid record/DVD store I've ever seen, and I bought Arrested Development seasons 1 and 2. I'd never seen the show before, so I took a gamble, but those were $35 together, and I used part of my gift card, so I thought it was worth the gamble. I had read a lot of really positive feedback about the show, so I had been meaning to give it a try. Plus, Liza has a guest role in some of the episodes as Lucille (#2). It's a pretty funny show, though it takes some time to get used to the format. It's shot with a single camera, so it has a documentary-style feel to it. It reminds me a little bit of Christopher Guest movies (Best in Show, Waiting for Guffman, A Mighty Wind). There were so many tempting things at Tower, but I always like buying TV shows on DVD, because you can watch them over and over again because of the short duration of the episodes. It's also nice, because you get a much larger running time for only slightly more money. When I buy a season of a TV show, it's usually only about twice or three times as much as one DVD, and it usually includes upwards of 15 hours of material.

Also, I finished knitting my first scarf on Wednesday night, and during the day on Wednesday, I went back to Purl Yarn on Sullivan Street and bought supplies for my latest scarf project. I'm knitting one with robin's egg blue and grass green colors now, and the knitting work is looking pretty good right now. Despite the fact that I made a lot of errors on my first scarf, I still really like it, and I got it to look quite nice with some interesting tassles that I added. I also signed up for an LGBT knitting circle through the LGBT office at NYU, so I'll be going to that next Thursday. By being one of the first to preregister for that, I won free needles and yarn, so I'm anxious to see what color/colors the yarn is. I think it's about time I got out of my room and did something vaguely social, so a knitting circle seems like a tame way to do that.

Anyway, tomorrow I'm most likely taking my broken television to be fixed. Other than that, I'll be doing some homework and unwinding.

Auf Wiedersehen!

Wednesday, January 25, 2006

"Last Holiday" and more

Last night I rescheduled my shift at work and went to see Last Holiday with Queen Latifah at the Loews on 3rd Avenue. It was a pretty good movie. Obviously, it was pretty predictable considering it would be a pretty bad movie if she actually died in the end, but it was entertaining, and all I really wanted from the movie was a few laughs. It definitely delivered at least that.

Yesterday, I finally got my copy of the The Color Purple cast recording. It's pretty damn amazing if I say so myself. Between Dessa Rose and The Color Purple, these past few weeks have been amazing for cast recordings. Both of them are so good that they really don't even have a single track that has to be skipped because I can't stand it. Not coincidentally, LaChanze stars on both CDs. She's quickly becoming one of my favorite Broadway performers. I really wish I had had the chance to see Dessa Rose last spring at Lincoln Center. I had really wanted to, but it just wasn't too practical at that time for me to take the journey.

Today, I've been listening to a really great podcast that I became acquainted with a month or so ago called The Entertainment Beat with Frances Gumm. Frances Gumm is Judy Garland's birth name, and the show imagines what it would be like if Judy were alive today grappling with today's culture. It's a really imaginative show, and it has some absolutely amazing performances of Sondheim songs. In the last episode I listened to, she did a surprisingly entertaining performance of "Don't Tell Me" by Madonna. I definitely suggest people check it out. Even if you're not really familiar with Judy, it would still be entertaining.

Anyway, I'm probably getting sushi a bit later, then doing some homework, perhaps buying yarn for my next project (this scarf is almost finished), and watching some TV on DVD. Tata!

EDIT: I just got a call from the audience coordinator for Good Morning America, and I'm going to see Naomi Judd's morning show on Sunday. It's a show on the Hallmark channel where she espouses her down home tips and tricks -- in other words, sounds pretty hideous. I hope it will at least be bad in a funny way.

Tuesday, January 24, 2006

A series of uninteresting events

So my Sunday and Monday were pretty boring. Yesterday, well Sunday since it's now technically Tuesday, I knitted for most of the day and didn't really do much else of interest. Today (Monday), I had a lab at 9 that didn't last very long. Tuesday is a busy day for me, so I'm not really looking forward to it, but I'll probably call in to work and reschedule Tuesday's shift for Wednesday, because David is probably staying over at his friend's dorm.

Essentially the only interesting thing (at least in my homopinion) is that The Color Purple cast recording gets released today (Tuesday). So far, I've only been able to find the 30 second clips on BN.com, but I'm buying the CD as soon as my second class is over tomorrow. I'm quite excited to finally have the music available to me on my iPod whenever I want. It was probably a mistake to see the show before the CD came out, because, of course, it created a long week of difficult anticipation.

So far my homework has been pretty all right. I had to read two plays (Waiting for Godot by Samuel Beckett and Rhinoceros by Eugene Ionesco) for Eurotics (European Drama), and both of them were at least interesting. I think I'm going to have a hard time grasping absurdism very comprehensibly. I'm looking forward to what she has to say about the historical context of the plays. I think that probably has some effect on my understanding of what's going on and probably helped the early audiences for the play to fully appreciate the works.

For World Cultures, I had to read a Vietnamese book-length poem called The Tale of Kieu, which was surprisingly good. I was expecting it to be harder to grasp and more obscure, but it ended up being pretty much a spiritual fairy tale/adventure tale.

It's only Tuesday, and I already can't wait for the weekend! Oy.

Saturday, January 21, 2006

"Against Gravity," crochet?

So, last night I went to a book signing for the novel Against Gravity by Farnoosh Moshiri, an Iranian author who immigrated to the United States. She had a lot of really interesting things to say, and read some really beautiful passages from the book. I can't wait to read it now, but I'll have to wait until I have a break from school books.

After I got back, I hung around my room. David and Emma were knitting/crocheting, so I watched them and obssessively helped untangle some yarn. Emma taught me how to crochet a little bit, and I'm thinking of going today to get a hook and some yarn and take a stab at making a scarf or something. We also listened to some interesting music, and, once Emma left, David put on "A Single Man" by Elton, which I love.

Friday, January 20, 2006

Good Morning America!

So, yesterday was a hectic day. I had four classes and work at night. Work went pretty well. I got three pledges totalling $485. When I'm doing well in regards to pledges, I don't mind my job so much, because there's less pressure on me.

Anyway, I went to bed this morning at 1 and woke up at 5 to go to Good Morning America. I put in for a reservation online and received a confirmation a few weeks ago. Anyway, I left my dorm by about 5:40 and stood in line at the 44th Street studio from about 5:50 to 7:05 in the cold. After being let into the studio, we the audience essentially sat around for most of the show until they did the little weather segments where we're being excited in the background.

The main guest today was Emeril, so they did the cooking segment down in the studio where we the audience were. Most of the show is broadcast upstairs in the studio overlooking Times Square. Diane Sawyer, Charlie Gibson, and the rest of the people came around and greeted everyone. They were some of the friendliest "celebrities" I've ever seen. After the cooking segment, the came around and gave some of the audience food (I didn't get any, but it was still a nice gesture). He made apple chutney, a special egg dish, and sausage.

Afterwards, Diane had to leave (though she was very sweet about it, as if she wished she could stay and meet and greet), but Charlie stayed and signed autographs and took pictures. I got a picture with him (top of this post). As an aspiring journalist myself (though probably not in the broadcast journalism world), it was nice to see such friendly anchors.

Diane also looked stunning in a green and yellow striped sweater and sleak pencil skirt, complemented beautifully by a pair of impressive 3-inch green heels:

Today, I have a lot of reading to do, but at least I got up bright and early so I have time to accomplish what I have to.

I've got to read The Tale of Kieu for World Cultures for Tuesday, as well as Waiting for Godot by Samuel Beckett and Rhinoceros by Eugene Ionesco.

Hopefully, I'll still have enough time to rest up so I'm not quite so stressed out next week.

Wednesday, January 18, 2006

"The Color Purple"

So, this morning I woke up at 7 and went to my two classes at 8 and 9:30. Then, realizing that, by a stroke of genius, I had inadvertently scheduled my classes and work so I could attend Wednesday matinees of Broadway shows if desired, I went to the Broadway Theatre on 53rd Street to buy a rush ticket to the matinee. Having read a lot online about how a lot of people rush the show, creating a need to come early, when I got there there was no one in line. I got my Row B ticket and came back to my room to eat. Anyway, I thought that Row B was the second row, but, when I arrived I realized I was in the front row center seat.

Anyway, the show was absolutely spectacular! I rented the movie a while back in anticipation of the musical, figuring that I'd like to see it just in case I saw the show. The show was definitely comparable to (better than in some aspects) the movie. The cast was absolutely top-knotch, particularly LaChanze, a personal favorite of mine from several cast recordings like Dessa Rose and Once On This Island. She embodied Celie so beautifully, and watching her journey from timid young girl to confident older woman is absolutely amazing. I don't know if another actress could pull it off quite like she could. In the Oprah Winfrey role of the movie (LaChanze played the Whoopi Goldberg role), Felicia P. Fields shone as well. It's hard to believe the show is her Broadway debut, but I hear she's a Chicago favorite. When we find out her character, Sofia, has stood up to the mayor's wife and she has been beaten, Fields is able to embody her pain with such wonderful skill.

Besides for the performances, the music in the show was also really enjoyable. It wasn't a masterpiece or anything musically, but the point of a story like The Color Purple is to get to the heart of the story but to also remain accessible. A lot of the audience members were talking about the movie and the book, so I assumed most were familiar with the story. Anyway, the songs were great, particularly "What About Love?" and "I'm Here." I can't wait for the cast recording, which will be released next Tuesday. They were selling them early at the theatre, but for a steep price of $25.

The Color Purple was certainly one of the most emotional shows I've ever seen on Broadway. Plenty of musicals entertain me, but not a whole lot of them really move me emotionally. I have to say that, during this show, I was near the point of tears on a few occasions, and I could hear sniffling from the audience behind me and beside me at several points during the show, particularly toward the end. I read a lot of reviews of the show and most were concerned with the quick pace of the show and how a lot of plot has to be crammed into a show about 2 hours and 45 minutes long, but I had no problem with the flow of the story. I think there was plenty of time to develop the characters so I cared about them and that the music really heightened the story. Besides for a few things that seemed out of place, it was an incredible show that I'd highly recommend to anyone with a heart. Hell, the show even got me to leave the theatre humming "The good Lord works in mysterious ways" and "God is inside me."

Tuesday, January 17, 2006

First day of classes/work

So...today was the first day of class. I must admit I was slightly frightened. It's always weird starting all new classes, and I'm not a very big fan of those games you have to play (even in college!!) to introduce yourself. Fortunately, there were none of those games today, though we did go around in two of my classes and introduce ourselves. I suppose I'll go through class by class and give a few little observations.

World Cultures: Chinese and Japanese Traditions

Well, the teacher is quite old and wise. He knows quite a bit about Chinese idioms and interesting things like that. We found out what our first reading was, and he read us part of it. It seems quite interesting. I really like the Asian style of prose with its intriguing descriptions. My teacher also said that there would be no written papers!! Yay!

Intermediate German I

My teacher for this, whose name is Amir (one word, like Madonna), seems nice and looks like Jeff Goldblum. He said that essentially if we went to class and filled out all of the tests that we'd get at least a B. That seems like a fair deal to me.

Contemporary Central European Drama

So...this class is sooooooooo weird. It's my hypothesis that all of the guys in the class are gay, which is quite interesting. The teacher is quite interesting, and a lot of the course material seems quite intriguing: lesbian performance art, a woman who got plastic surgery to look like Mona Lisa and videotaped it as a statement, along with a lot of more conventional plays. It was interesting to hear people's opinions of Aristotlean (I'm probably misspelling that) drama (a la current Broadway plays).

Natural Science II: Brain and Behavior

This class seemed all right. It's not a subject that intrigues me or anything, but the teacher seemed lively, at least better than my QR professor last semester.

Anyway, tomorrow I have two early classes and then an entirely free day. I'll probably read my World Cultures book, The Tale of Kieu. Then, I have another full day on Thursday. Friday should be interesting. I'm seeing Good Morning America early in the morning (a live taping). That evening I'm going to a signing by Farnoosh Moshiri, who wrote a new book that I bought to read soon called Against Gravity. I haven't read it yet, so I can't comment, but it looks intriguing, and I wanted to hear her speak about it so I can get a little context (and a signature). This weekend, I'll probably also see a Broadway show, though I haven't decided which yet.

Monday, January 16, 2006

Anticipation

Well, tomorrow is my first day of classes, and all of them start tomorrow. I also am starting at work again. All of this is making me quite overwhelmed. Plus, my classes start at 8 AM, which is earlier than I've woken up in the longest time, so I'm afraid that I won't even be able to wake up in time for class. AAAH!

Anyway, today was pretty nice. I woke up around 10, strolled around the city, bought a new pair of jeans at Gap (the first pair I've ever bought there -- all of their jeans are usually far too big for me), browsed in Barnes and Noble, and bought a gingerbread man and two bottles of apple juice (raspberry and fuji apple). Then I had a nice dinner at Downstein and went to see Breakfast on Pluto with Cillian Murphy. It was pretty good, certainly entertaining, and Murphy did a good job acting in it, but I had a very hard time understanding a lot of the dialogue because of thick accents and relatively poor sound quality at the Quad Cinemas on W. 13th Street. Anyway, it was diversion enough to entertain me at least.

Afterwards, I browsed around at Strand for a bit. Now, I'm getting ready to watch a movie or television show before going to bed. I have a long day ahead of me tomorow: classes at 8, 9:30, 12:30, and 2, as well as work from 6:30-9:30 and a floor meeting at 10. At least on Wednesday I only have class at 8 and 9:30 with no work! Yay for Wednesday!

Sunday, January 15, 2006

Movies again, break, returning to NYC

Around the beginning of the year, I like to list the movies I saw the previous year, partly to show off (as if that's some sort of accomplishment) and partly just so I remember myself. Here:

War of the Worlds, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, King Kong, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, Bewitched, Brokeback Mountain, The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, Fever Pitch, Rent, In Her Shoes, Memoirs of a Geisha, Shopgirl, The Family Stone, The Producers, The Squid and the Whale, Me and You and Everyone We Know, Match Point, Proof, Fun with Dick and Jane, Mad Hot Ballroom, Junebug, The Prize Winner of Defiance, Ohio.

I'm trying to think of others, because that seems like a relatively short list, but that covers most of them.

Anyway, break was nice and relaxing, but I'm really glad to be back in New York City. I'm sort of anxious about classes starting. Inevitably, there will probably be plenty of things about my classes to piss me off, but I'm mostly just glad to be in a more exciting place than Drexel Hill.

As soon as I got back, I unpacked and then went out to McDonald's, Tower Records (4th St. & Broadway), Virgin Megastore, Strand Books, and then uptown to Tower Records in Lincoln Center. I was mostly looking for a specific CD, Dessa Rose, that I've been looking for for over a month and not yet been able to find. I had heard it was in stock at the Lincoln Center store, so I went there, and, sure enough, they had a pretty large quantity there. I've been listening to it for a while now, and it seems really good. The score is written by Lynn Ahrens and Stephen Flaherty, who are two of my favorite composers/lyricists in musical theatre. They have an excellent knack for creating songs that are melodic and catchy and commercial enough to attract an audience yet never lacking in artistic credibility and creativity. Some of my other favorites of theirs are Ragtime, Once On This Island, Seussical, and A Man of No Importance. They also wrote My Favorite Year and Lucky Stiff, though I'm not quite as fond of those two.

Over break, I read two really good books as well, The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion and On Beauty by Zadie Smith. The book by Joan Didion is a memoir of the loss of her husband and the illness of her daughter, both of which befell her within five days of one another. To some extent, it was sort of a one-note book, the entire book dealing entirely with the subject of death and little beyond that subject. Still, it was interesting to read a book dealing with death that doesn't turn the subject into something melodramatic. On Beauty was a really amazing novel to read. It deals with the relationship between a liberal family and a conservative family, focusing mainly on the liberal family. Besides for a relatively dissatisfying ending, I enjoyed the novel very much for the most part. I plan to read Zadie Smith's White Teeth soon.

Currently, I'm reading Interview with the Vampire by Anne Rice in anticipation of Lestat on Broadway by Elton John and Bernie Taupin. So far, the book is quite intriguing, but I'll post more about it when I finish if I get a chance to finish it.

I plan on seeing quite a few shows in the near future. Hopefully: The Color Purple, Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, Rent (with Will Chase), Three Days of Rain (with Julia Roberts), Lestat, and The Threepenny Opera (with Alan Cumming, Cyndi Lauper, Jim Dale, and Ana Gasteyer).

Well, that's all for now, I'm going to continue listening to Dessa Rose for a while and then probably watch Fever Pitch, which I just bought at Virgin Megastore.

Friday, January 06, 2006

Winter break and movies

So, it's winter break time. Being that I like both my home and New York City, I miss school and yet I'm enjoying my time of rest and being able to spend more time with my family and also with my friends. It's great to have a break that's so much significantly longer than those that I had all throughout my elementary, middle, and high school years. I've seen a lot of movies, probably my favorite thing to do during any break from school, and I figured I'd take some time on my blog to post about some of them.

The Squid and the Whale

Overall, this was a relatively entertaining movie. Despite the fact that essentially all of the characters, including Jeff Daniels and Laura Linney and certainly not excluding the children, were absolutely despicable, the movie managed to also be a really great movie about a sense of loss during a divorce. It was really a testament to the acting that the movie was pulled off. I felt it could have been slightly better directed; during some parts it even felt sort of cheap, but it also helped achieve a sense that the movie was really set in the '80s though.

King Kong

Well, when I first saw the previews for this, I thought it would be absolutely horrible, but after reading so many good reviews and finding out more about the movie, I went in expecting it to be really good. In the end, it was what it was: an action movie. Generally, I like action movies. They're excellent occasions to eat popcorn or to stop doing what you're doing in your everyday life and escape, but they're also, usually, wholly unbelievable, and this was no exception. A film crew lands on a "deserted island"...natives appear...a large ape appears...dinosaurs appear...huge insects appear...and, in the process, a woman falls in love with a huge ape. Of course, the movie is really meant as a throwback to the original film, so I suppose only those who truly appreciated the original can really comment on the current film.

The Family Stone

Well, I had no idea what this movie was about going into it, but it ended up being really funny and engaging. It had Dermot Mulroney, who's always hammy but handsome, and Sarah Jessica Parker, as well as Diane Keaton, Rachel McAdams, and a large number of others. It was just an interesting portrait of a quirky family around the holidays when Dermot brings Sarah Jessica home to meet the whole family for the first time. It was good in most regards, but I particularly liked the honest portrayal of a committed gay relationship and adoption. Finally (besides for Brokeback Mountain) we see gay men in a movie who don't merely serve as the sidekick to the heroine or as a stereotype plastered onto the screen. I loved how the movie treated them just like every other character.

The Producers

Hmm. Well, I saw the show The Producers when it toured to Phildelphia and thought it was generally enjoyable. During the 2001 Broadway season, the hype around the show was unavoidable, but, from the cast recording, I thought it was mostly undeserved. By no means is it the musical that deserved to win the most Tonys in history! What about Sondheim, Rodgers & Hammerstein, Kander & Ebb, Ahrens & Flaherty -- ah, I digress. Anyway, I enjoyed the show enough because of its gags, but I thought the movie version fell flat. It felt like the stage show plastered on the screen with some bigger names in smaller roles and a hammy performance from Nathan Lane, whom I very much enjoy as an actor in general. I saw it mainly in support of the form of movie musicals; in fact, I will see whatever movie musicals are released, but I felt as if I would have rathered shelled out a bit more and just seen it again on stage.

Memoirs of a Geisha

I didn't know what I'd think of this movie. The visual imagery of the previews blew me away, but the critical response was rather tepid. In the end, I was absolutely riveted. It was a beautiful movie to watch and really captivated me with its rags-to-riches story of Sayumi (sp?) blossoming into a geisha, complete with all its luxury and the excess result of shedding one's individuality. I think it was worth seeing just to learn a little more about Japanese culture and for the scenery, but the acting was also top-knotch.

Match Point

Well, this was probably my favorite movie of the break. Jonathan Rhys-Myers was spectacular in the leading role, as well as Emily Mortimer and Scarlett Johansson. It was full of drama in the beginning and suspense toward the end, and the final scenes added such an unusual touch to all that had come before. Having just seen Woody Allen's last film before this one, Melinda and Melinda, I expected the worse, but this was certainly an improvement. Perhaps Woody Allen is really more cut out for drama, no matter which he prefers. It was a gripping movie that was well-paced and kept you guessing till the end. I definitely recommend it even if you don't like Woody Allen, because it's a movie unlike most others he has made.