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.