Two Dates
In between Christmases and Christmas-prepping and traveling and Trons, Marisa and I have had a little bit of vacation time to use on dates. This is weird because we are married now and everyone knows married people are bored and boring. We tricked the system by making sure we are exactly as boring as we were before we got married.
For date one, we broke from tradition and saw a Broadway show outside of any anniversary or birthday gift or press tickets, because Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson is closing in early January. I hate to be a dick and project my own criticisms on popular reaction, and by no means do I think it's cool that it's closing while Mamma Mia continues to live, but I can kind of see why this isn't lasting on Broadway. At first I was taken in with the rock-and-roll energy and satirical tone, but about thirty or forty minutes into it, I was getting pretty annoyed; it starts to play like a bunch of theater dorks cracking each other up. I often go on about the difference between "Broadway musical funny" and "actually funny" (for example: Spamalot is Broadway musical funny, while The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee is actually funny; Avenue Q is a mix, although in the end it's more Broadway funny), and the opening of Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson, which consists so largely of big laughs (for some segments of the audience) generated by anachronisms and caricatured gay voices, serves as a chilling reminder that hipster theater people can succumb to that clumsy sense of comedy just as easily. The tone is so aggressively arch and campy that the dialogue and characters can barely interact; everything's just another goofy voice shouting and mugging. I get it, he said "fuck." I get it, John Quincy Adams is gay for some reason! Hilarious. Giggles abound, if you don't have much experience with comedy that's actually well-written.
As it goes on, though, starting around Jackson's first run for the presidency, the show gets a lot better. As the laugh lines get more sporadic, they also become more barbed and precise, and I started to believe that the characters in the play had a relationship apart from extremely silly behavior. So in the end, I did enjoy it, especially because the second half takes a bit more of a direct spin on the historical narrative stuff and finds a more interesting parallel to our current political climate, and I generally find old-timey American political stuff pretty fascinating. I could probably watch a musical about the personality clashes of any U.S. presidential election from the country's history. But I understand why the general public maybe wouldn't cotton to paying eighty bucks or more for a musical that sometimes has the tone of a smug campus exercise.
Date two: we somehow got ourselves out to see a non-True Grit movie in an attempt to save True Grit for a Christmas treat with my mom and sister. So instead we went to see the charming romantic comedy All Good Things, in which that charming fellow Ryan Gosling plays this creep who likely murdered his wife, played in the movie by Kirsten Dunst (they change most of the names for the movie). It's not exactly a fun time, and could easily be a high-toned TV movie, but it's an interesting and well-acted bit of speculative true-crime storytelling. It's nice to see Kirsten Dunst again, and in a serious movie, even. I'm glad, by the way, that I'm married to someone who is totally cool with going to see a movie like this on a date yet has very rarely insisted on seeing anything with Katherine Heigl or Jennifer Aniston.
We're saving True Grit for Christmas in part because I've seen every 2010 version of the kind of crappy movie(s) my sister and I tend to go see on Christmas Day. I saw the talking-animal/live-action cartoon movie. I saw the expensive-but-cheap-looking fantasy comedy -- my review of Gulliver's Travels isn't up at PopMatters yet, but it will be soon, and, you know, probably isn't necessarily unless you're curious about the specifics of why it's about as bad as you think it is. And I saw Little Fockers for review. So all that's left is the good stuff.
For date one, we broke from tradition and saw a Broadway show outside of any anniversary or birthday gift or press tickets, because Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson is closing in early January. I hate to be a dick and project my own criticisms on popular reaction, and by no means do I think it's cool that it's closing while Mamma Mia continues to live, but I can kind of see why this isn't lasting on Broadway. At first I was taken in with the rock-and-roll energy and satirical tone, but about thirty or forty minutes into it, I was getting pretty annoyed; it starts to play like a bunch of theater dorks cracking each other up. I often go on about the difference between "Broadway musical funny" and "actually funny" (for example: Spamalot is Broadway musical funny, while The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee is actually funny; Avenue Q is a mix, although in the end it's more Broadway funny), and the opening of Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson, which consists so largely of big laughs (for some segments of the audience) generated by anachronisms and caricatured gay voices, serves as a chilling reminder that hipster theater people can succumb to that clumsy sense of comedy just as easily. The tone is so aggressively arch and campy that the dialogue and characters can barely interact; everything's just another goofy voice shouting and mugging. I get it, he said "fuck." I get it, John Quincy Adams is gay for some reason! Hilarious. Giggles abound, if you don't have much experience with comedy that's actually well-written.
As it goes on, though, starting around Jackson's first run for the presidency, the show gets a lot better. As the laugh lines get more sporadic, they also become more barbed and precise, and I started to believe that the characters in the play had a relationship apart from extremely silly behavior. So in the end, I did enjoy it, especially because the second half takes a bit more of a direct spin on the historical narrative stuff and finds a more interesting parallel to our current political climate, and I generally find old-timey American political stuff pretty fascinating. I could probably watch a musical about the personality clashes of any U.S. presidential election from the country's history. But I understand why the general public maybe wouldn't cotton to paying eighty bucks or more for a musical that sometimes has the tone of a smug campus exercise.
Date two: we somehow got ourselves out to see a non-True Grit movie in an attempt to save True Grit for a Christmas treat with my mom and sister. So instead we went to see the charming romantic comedy All Good Things, in which that charming fellow Ryan Gosling plays this creep who likely murdered his wife, played in the movie by Kirsten Dunst (they change most of the names for the movie). It's not exactly a fun time, and could easily be a high-toned TV movie, but it's an interesting and well-acted bit of speculative true-crime storytelling. It's nice to see Kirsten Dunst again, and in a serious movie, even. I'm glad, by the way, that I'm married to someone who is totally cool with going to see a movie like this on a date yet has very rarely insisted on seeing anything with Katherine Heigl or Jennifer Aniston.
We're saving True Grit for Christmas in part because I've seen every 2010 version of the kind of crappy movie(s) my sister and I tend to go see on Christmas Day. I saw the talking-animal/live-action cartoon movie. I saw the expensive-but-cheap-looking fantasy comedy -- my review of Gulliver's Travels isn't up at PopMatters yet, but it will be soon, and, you know, probably isn't necessarily unless you're curious about the specifics of why it's about as bad as you think it is. And I saw Little Fockers for review. So all that's left is the good stuff.