removal, replacement and the random
About two weeks ago, I started a post I never finished. Locking it securely in the private view, I promptly lost all desire to complete it and subsequently forgot about it. How typical of me. I'm not feeling particularly passionate about writing today, but I'm very bored and I'm sure there is something I can write about that will alleviate the boredom.
My unfinished post relayed the dissatisfaction of having only four days off for the Thanksgiving holiday (which, at my job, is just not enough days). It wasn't enough...it's true, but I got over it. I reflected on the meaning of Thanksgiving, but it only illustrated that I should be more thankful for the good things in my life instead of being focused on the bad things. Also true. Right now, I'm feeling like an ambivalent human being, not really feeling good about life, but not feeling bad either. I tell you though, I really need to buckle down on this research for Earnest. Prepping to do something I love to do will make me feel more subjective about life again. Hey, I'm perking up right now just thinking about it.
Perking up enough to write about some pretty great things I've seen recently. The week of Thanksgiving I threw myself at two happy films that had just come out. One was August Rush (with Freddie Highmore, Keri Russell and the swoony Jonathan Rhys-Meyers) and the other was Enchanted (yes, I invested in Disney and therefore supported their veiled hostile takeover of the world). Both are clearly fairy tales, though one more obviously than the other. Sometimes you just have to get out of your artistic philosophical mind and watch something that gives you warm, fuzzy, uplifting feelings. That was August Rush, for me. I kept having to push the little voice saying "that couldn't really happen" and "that isn't logical" out of my head, but I truly enjoyed it. And the music...::sigh:: I love music. Music...the connection I experience with music is different from the connection I have with any other thing. Watching August Rush was an aural experience as much as it was a visual one...not all over amazing music (though the guitar duet was *awesome*), but heartwarming, and combined with the story, it was like music-happy-feeling-adrenaline-rush-of-doom. I really liked it. And Enchanted was so cute. James Marsden as the human version of a cartoon character was so pitch perfect, it made me giggle inside even when it wasn't supposed to be funny. Happy fun movies, both, and they put me in a rom-com happy movie mood that has lasted through to the present.
This is going to seem unrelated, but I finally got a library card from my local library (an interesting experience, it turned out, as I had had a library card from this library before--as in eight years before--and never paid my fifty cent late fee). For a county library, they have rather an amazing film collection, and so, due to my desire for happy movies, I've been slowly but surely going through the happiest of happy movies. Some silly ones aren't too worthy of artistic mention, but they were fun at the time. I pulled An Ideal Husband off the shelf last week and as it is based on a play written by Oscar Wilde I figured that watching it would be at least partially research justified (it's set in the same period as The Importance of Being Earnest). I really just wanted to watch something fun. And it was...a slight bit of drama amidst heaps of triviality. Rupert Everett was born to play parts written by Oscar Wilde, but the true highlight of the movie for me was the relationship between married couple Gertrude and Robert Chiltern, played by Cate Blanchett (who moves up in my estimation with every film I see her in) and Jeremy Northam (face it, I have another, however fleeting, actor crush. Between this and Emma, how could I not?...he's adorable and I'm deprived any suitable swoony males in real life). Meep...meepity meep.
On a similar movie-note, my current To Watch list consists of Bigger Than The Sky, a film recommended by a great friend from school (and most recent Director of Doom, see below) which apparently illustrates the most idyllic of ideal community theatre situations. A theatre movie + theatre person = me, excited. Also, for my planned emergence from the world of happy feel-good movies, I am very much looking forward to seeing Atonement, if I could ever find a blasted theatre to watch it in, and Sweeney Todd, which I'm skeptical about, but very much looking forward to. I just watched the trailer for The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian today and it looks *fantastic.* ::growls:: It doesn't come out until next May though...bummer. I'm not even going to talk about The Dark Knight except to say that I'm totally going opening night and growl similarly about it not coming out until next summer. Moving back to things that come out before the New Year, There Will Be Blood looks very interesting, or that could just be my lingering obsession with Daniel Day-Lewis talking :). Everything else I've heard about of late I'm remarkably disinterested in. The Kite Runner was an amazing book and as horribly judgmental as it might be, I think it is precisely for that reason that I have no real desire to see it on film. So...that takes care of that.
Continuing on in my schizophrenic entry of doom, I went to the Alma Mater this past weekend to see the Director of Doom's show. Suppressed Desires by Susan Glaspell and George Cram Cook is one of the funniest things I think I've ever seen onstage. Short, but sweet with a biting humour and sharp wit. I really liked it and am so proud of Director of Doom (she Stage Managed my senior project at the Alma Mater and I swore I would come to see hers if I had to hitchhike my way down to Pennsylvania). She did a really great job with it, as did the designer and the actors. Much fun and it was a great end to the irritating and oppressive week that preceded. I miss the Alma Mater...I love going down there and it's just inevitable that when I go, I wish I could get there more often and I get sad when I hear about great things that I couldn't get down to see. I miss the tight community that's there, living and breathing theatre.
And speaking of theatre, the weather better behave itself this weekend, because my sister and I bought tickets last night to see Cyrano de Bergerac in New York, with Kevin Kline in the title role and Jennifer Garner (who's getting great reviews) as Roxane. Woohoo!
My unfinished post relayed the dissatisfaction of having only four days off for the Thanksgiving holiday (which, at my job, is just not enough days). It wasn't enough...it's true, but I got over it. I reflected on the meaning of Thanksgiving, but it only illustrated that I should be more thankful for the good things in my life instead of being focused on the bad things. Also true. Right now, I'm feeling like an ambivalent human being, not really feeling good about life, but not feeling bad either. I tell you though, I really need to buckle down on this research for Earnest. Prepping to do something I love to do will make me feel more subjective about life again. Hey, I'm perking up right now just thinking about it.
Perking up enough to write about some pretty great things I've seen recently. The week of Thanksgiving I threw myself at two happy films that had just come out. One was August Rush (with Freddie Highmore, Keri Russell and the swoony Jonathan Rhys-Meyers) and the other was Enchanted (yes, I invested in Disney and therefore supported their veiled hostile takeover of the world). Both are clearly fairy tales, though one more obviously than the other. Sometimes you just have to get out of your artistic philosophical mind and watch something that gives you warm, fuzzy, uplifting feelings. That was August Rush, for me. I kept having to push the little voice saying "that couldn't really happen" and "that isn't logical" out of my head, but I truly enjoyed it. And the music...::sigh:: I love music. Music...the connection I experience with music is different from the connection I have with any other thing. Watching August Rush was an aural experience as much as it was a visual one...not all over amazing music (though the guitar duet was *awesome*), but heartwarming, and combined with the story, it was like music-happy-feeling-adrenaline-rush-of-doom. I really liked it. And Enchanted was so cute. James Marsden as the human version of a cartoon character was so pitch perfect, it made me giggle inside even when it wasn't supposed to be funny. Happy fun movies, both, and they put me in a rom-com happy movie mood that has lasted through to the present.
This is going to seem unrelated, but I finally got a library card from my local library (an interesting experience, it turned out, as I had had a library card from this library before--as in eight years before--and never paid my fifty cent late fee). For a county library, they have rather an amazing film collection, and so, due to my desire for happy movies, I've been slowly but surely going through the happiest of happy movies. Some silly ones aren't too worthy of artistic mention, but they were fun at the time. I pulled An Ideal Husband off the shelf last week and as it is based on a play written by Oscar Wilde I figured that watching it would be at least partially research justified (it's set in the same period as The Importance of Being Earnest). I really just wanted to watch something fun. And it was...a slight bit of drama amidst heaps of triviality. Rupert Everett was born to play parts written by Oscar Wilde, but the true highlight of the movie for me was the relationship between married couple Gertrude and Robert Chiltern, played by Cate Blanchett (who moves up in my estimation with every film I see her in) and Jeremy Northam (face it, I have another, however fleeting, actor crush. Between this and Emma, how could I not?...he's adorable and I'm deprived any suitable swoony males in real life). Meep...meepity meep.
On a similar movie-note, my current To Watch list consists of Bigger Than The Sky, a film recommended by a great friend from school (and most recent Director of Doom, see below) which apparently illustrates the most idyllic of ideal community theatre situations. A theatre movie + theatre person = me, excited. Also, for my planned emergence from the world of happy feel-good movies, I am very much looking forward to seeing Atonement, if I could ever find a blasted theatre to watch it in, and Sweeney Todd, which I'm skeptical about, but very much looking forward to. I just watched the trailer for The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian today and it looks *fantastic.* ::growls:: It doesn't come out until next May though...bummer. I'm not even going to talk about The Dark Knight except to say that I'm totally going opening night and growl similarly about it not coming out until next summer. Moving back to things that come out before the New Year, There Will Be Blood looks very interesting, or that could just be my lingering obsession with Daniel Day-Lewis talking :). Everything else I've heard about of late I'm remarkably disinterested in. The Kite Runner was an amazing book and as horribly judgmental as it might be, I think it is precisely for that reason that I have no real desire to see it on film. So...that takes care of that.
Continuing on in my schizophrenic entry of doom, I went to the Alma Mater this past weekend to see the Director of Doom's show. Suppressed Desires by Susan Glaspell and George Cram Cook is one of the funniest things I think I've ever seen onstage. Short, but sweet with a biting humour and sharp wit. I really liked it and am so proud of Director of Doom (she Stage Managed my senior project at the Alma Mater and I swore I would come to see hers if I had to hitchhike my way down to Pennsylvania). She did a really great job with it, as did the designer and the actors. Much fun and it was a great end to the irritating and oppressive week that preceded. I miss the Alma Mater...I love going down there and it's just inevitable that when I go, I wish I could get there more often and I get sad when I hear about great things that I couldn't get down to see. I miss the tight community that's there, living and breathing theatre.
And speaking of theatre, the weather better behave itself this weekend, because my sister and I bought tickets last night to see Cyrano de Bergerac in New York, with Kevin Kline in the title role and Jennifer Garner (who's getting great reviews) as Roxane. Woohoo!