Schizophrenia of Doom
For any given moment that I think about writing in here, about ten percent of the time, I actually open up the internet and sign in. For any given time I sign in, I start an entry...oh...ten percent of the time. For any given time I actually write something, about 70 percent of the time I don't finish it. And this last is only a recent development. Before, I would write and actually post, but now, I write and then don't have time to finish, or don't like what I've written, or just run out of writing steam and end up changing things, deleting things that I didn't know I ever posted and starting all over again. So, in the last four weeks, I've started no fewer than three entries and only one showed up (and I didn't know that it even had shown up until I signed in today and discovered an unfinished and relatively incoherent entry posing as an actual one!). This entry will be different. I swear it will, if for no other reason than that I might not ever finish one again if it is not. I do have quite a few things to ramble about anyway...so...there really is no reason why it should be incomplete.
Christmas is over. I never really got into the Christmas spirit this year, which is pretty sad. Normally I love Christmas, but where I am usually bursting with goodwill, admiring decorations and carefully selecting gifts, I was simply on endurance-mode. Not that I didn't have fun, but my heart wasn't in it as much as it usually is. Truthfully, I'm a bit glad it's over. I did get some nice things (earrings my aunt made, a beautiful silver necklace, movies, books....money :)), and I gave some nice things, I ate a bit too much and saw most of my family. It was a good Christmas, but not a great one. It's good that it's over.
In an effort to move to more enjoyable things, I have an important announcement! My friends, the decision has been made...::drum rolls:: it will be Mac after all. After many months of research and the tearing out of hair, I have returned to my original impulse and decided that I will get a Mac laptop to replace my poor old Dell desktop. ::Wipes brow:: Though I've not yet actually bought the computer, I am enormously relieved to have the decision behind me.
I suppose the real purpose for this entry (and for most of the unfinished ones of late) has been review. I've seen things and wanted to put some of what I thought about them down. Theatre makes me happy, and several good films make me happy too!
~Cyrano de Bergerac
It's about time I got to this. Cyrano has the distinction of being the only play on this list and has had the misfortune to have me--the writer with no ambition and little talent--trying to review it for the last few weeks. Two weeks and four days, to be precise.
My latest visit to Broadway was the result of one thing and one thing only. Due to my lack of work at work and consequently, the frequency of my internet surfing, I will regularly check broadway.com and see what's coming up. On one such visit, I was ecstatic to discover that Kevin Kline...THE Kevin Kline...was going to star in an upcoming revival of Edmond Rostand's classic romance. Alas, it is Kevin Kline that made me spend absurd amounts of money on a relatively crappy seat just so I could see him live onstage in front of my very eyes. I also got to see Jennifer Garner as Roxanne...a bonus because she was relatively fantastic, and Chris Sarandon ("Humperdinck, Humperdinck, Humperdinck!") as the Comte de Guiche. I'm not very familiar with the young man playing Christian, Daniel Sunjata, but as he was good, that was also a bonus.
I would love to go on and on and on about the things I loved about this play, but I'll restrain myself a little only because the more I say, the less justice I do it and the more incoherent I become. In short, I ruin it for myself and for the people who might be reading this. I love this story...it's sad, unapologetically romantic and beautiful to watch onstage. Kevin Kline knocked it out of the park as Cyrano, who is heroic and confident and at the same time, distressingly insecure. I know, I know, all men are like that..:) But the thing about Kline's portrayal is that his heroism and confidence are not informed by his insecurity or the other way around, but the insecurity seems a separate part of him. The only insecurity he has is superficial...his physicality, and the only thing the insecurity really influences is the reaction he has to his love for Roxanne. Cyrano's entrance (from an empty box house left...yay! audience entrances are the best!) and his opening fight scene (awesome choreography, a great use of the stage!) were awesome and the non-verbal communication between him and Roxanne (as well as between Roxanne and Christian) was thoroughly amusing. He threw his scabbard to her at the beginning of the fight and she uses it later to stop the enemy from slashing Cyrano...to great hilarity, as she seemed almost as shocked that she had done it as Cyrano was amused. I hardly recognized Jennifer Garner's voice, though it shouldn't have surprised me that her vocal work was so good. She gave Roxanne the extra zing she needs to be truly notable in this play and not just an object of desire. She was funny and pretty and understanding. She knows what she wants and she wants so to see this in Christian that Cyrano almost has no choice but to give it to her. I love how it was so apparent he was desperately in love with her, and yet Christian only suspects it because of the letters and Roxanne only when it's too late. And somehow, it never bothered me that they should have seen it all along because...well, Roxanne and Christian are too wrapped up in each other to notice. I thought Christian would annoy me as much as Raoul in Phantom but he didn't. Sunjata played him with an innocence that makes you understand why he accepts Cyrano's offer, and it was easy to see the sincerity in his love for Roxanne. I read somewhere later that the two character's are incomplete without each other. Cyrano is completed with Christian's physicality and Christian with Cyrano's heart. Neither can get past those insurmountable blocks without the other to help them. Or something like that.
My favorite scenes in this play should be easy to figure out. When Cyrano woos Roxanne in the dark, dressed in Christian's cloak and hat, while Christian waits anxiously in the shadows underneath the balcony. They played it so perfectly...when Cyrano moves out behind this amazing tree they had onstage to marvel at how he can speak his heart to Roxanne you feel triumph for him, but Kline makes you sad at the same time because though the words are his, it's Christian that Roxanne is picturing. Christian impulsively hugging Cyrano under the balcony after Roxanne finally says she loves him. Christian brazenly suggesting a kiss and Cyrano nearly throttling him with only a look. Fantastic.
I don't normally take such a strong note of it during the actual watching of the play, but this director had a great sense of stage composition. There was this great stage picture, right after Roxanne tells Christian that she would love him more if he were ugly, that Roxanne is traveling up this monstrous staircase they had constructed against the backstage wall, and just as she reaches center stage, Cyrano enters from behind the curtain, just right of center upstage (underneath the stairs) and looks up, and Christian is standing downstage, just left of center, looking up at Roxanne. Words are inadequate, but it was such an accurate depiction of the relationship. Both men, on the same level, looking up at the woman, who's concentration is elsewhere and therefore she is oblivious to what's going on beneath her. ::Sigh:: I love directing.
The last scene, the revelation, the knowledge of death. It was the only scene during which I was internally railing against the crappiness of my seat. I wanted to see their faces! He kept his face turned away from her so much it was like it pained him that she was finally seeing him. Or maybe he was still denying that he loved her, even as she had already pulled it out of him, he didn't want her to see in his face that he loved her. I couldn't tell, but the body language was so influential, and it was just performed so well and delivered so perfectly that the only thing missing was that I could not get close enough. Words cannot describe how much I loved this scene.
The whole play was beautifully done; direction, acting, the set was enormous, with that staircase and the tree that managed to be used differently in every scene (very cool), the lighting was so rich and set the tone of the play perfectly. It was such a well rounded and balanced production that I can't even say what I liked best about it. It made me happy and I can now put a check mark or gold star or something more suitably wonderful next to Kevin Kline's name on my list of "People I Must See Perform Onstage."
By the way, I was a bit disappointed that Kevin Kline did not come out the stage door, but as I'm reasonably sure that I would have made an idiot out of myself if he did, I should probably be grateful. Jennifer Garner did come out, however, and she was really nice, chatted a bit with people and signed every bit of Alias paraphernalia shoved at her. She is also astoundingly beautiful in real life...if you think she's pretty at all, she's gorgeous in real life. ::squints eyes at her in something that might be envy::
~Atonement
I finally managed to see this film (the world of movie theatres apparently decided to stop conspiring against me) after it got a wider release (a growly three weeks after the original release). This film has gotten a ridiculous amount of award-hype and though it sounds stupid, that usually keeps me away for a while. However, I've wanted to see this film since the first time I heard about it, which was early last spring sometime, so I wasn't about to stay away just because it's being over-promoted. I'm glad I went, because it really is an exceptional film. Joe Wright (the director of the most recent Pride and Prejudice, which I love) knows his stuff. He knows how to get fantastic performers and performances. Keira Knightley and James MacAvoy are excellent and though I can't really say definitively if it's their best work, they both turned in performances that speak nothing but good things for them as actors. Where they both could have waxed from one emotion to another, pushing over the boundary into melodrama, they held back and because of that, I felt their anguish more acutely. Their performances were real and their connection on film was real (specifically in the scene near the end in the threadbare apartment....that scene was easily the best in the movie for me), especially in their scenes together. The advertisements fool you into thinking the movie is their story, but it's not. They are intimately involved in it, but it's Briony's story (the younger sister). Saiorse Ronan plays her at the youngest age and she does a fantastic job. I wanted to strangle her and at the same time take her aside and explain what was going on so she didn't misconstrue it...her character is so frustrating at the beginning, but that's sort of the point, so well done on her. I have to say, though, the most amazing part of this film was the music. Dario Marianelli (did the score for P&P too) is *amazing.* Integrated into an orchestral score, most notable any time Briony was onscreen, was the sound of typewriter keys. It sounds odd, but when the film opens with Briony at a typewriter, it makes sense. And when you realize as the film rises on its narrative arc that Briony's author ambitions are a key factor in just about everything that happens, it is just a brilliant stroke of musical genius. The film progresses in a non-linear fashion, so you see how Briony perceives the events first and then you see the actual events in context. I love non-linear storytelling, especially when it truly marries itself to the story being told like it does here. All in all, a remarkable film, beautifully shot and acted. And it made me want to read the book just because I'm hoping the story might be even more layered on the page.
~Sweeney Todd
If I've talked about this film at all, it's been to say that I really wanted to see it, but was extremely skeptical about how it will turn out. Well, I've seen it and I am no longer skeptical. As the film version of a stage musical it is an unmitigated success. Tim Burton is a genius and I only wish The Phantom of the Opera had been brought to the screen with such...deftness. Burton managed to blend the innate theatricality of the story with the versatility of film. The result is a version of Sweeney that could not ever be performed onstage. Good good good because too often a Musical turned into a film and the result is virtually a filmed version of that musical onstage. Why even bother making a film? I didn't even think about this before I went and saw it, but it's totally true. Why bother making a film version of a musical if you are not going to bring to it the advantages of the film medium? So brava, Tim Burton, for using the brain God gave you, unlike Joel Schumacher.
Though I did not see Oscar! material in Johnny Depp's portrayal, he turned out a great performance, singing and all. Helena Bonham Carter was pitch-perfect on characterization, if not the best actor-singer I've heard, and Alan Rickman made my skin crawl. It was a well balanced cast, both in acting talent and singing talent. Sondheim prefers actors who can sing (he was very involved in the film as far back as casting) and Burton rounded up a good bunch. Nobody is such an amazing singer that they outshine everyone else (though the young actor playing Toby blew me away during his rendition of "Not While I'm Around") and all of the acting is solid. As far as blood goes, it was a bit much for me. I mean, I normally don't have that much trouble with violence in films, but if there is one method of inflicting violence that really skeeves me out, it's the throat-slitting. As this is Sweeney's method of choice, I definitely had to shut my eyes when I knew it was coming during Sweeney's "Johanna". The blood is so theatrical, so it's not as bad as it could be, but it got to me just a little.
I saw an amazing stage version of Sweeney Todd over a year ago and one of the reasons I wasn't sure I would like this film was because that show was *so* amazing. Everything about it was amazing. I really was surprised by the film because although I missed the numbers Burton cut out, those numbers didn't fit in the film, they would not have worked and putting them in would have felt forced instead of keeping the story flowing. Burton put a lot of thought into the story he wanted to tell, and he sliced and diced (no pun intended) accordingly. His decisions are so precise, down to the colour scheme; the desaturated colours of the present (classic Burton), highlighted by the absurd saturation of Pirelli (played very successfully by Sacha Baron Cohen), and the soft, bright, idyllic past. The opening credits introduce the film as Tim Burton better than any actual name would (they're a gory version of the Charlie and the Chocolate Factory opening.) The film is strong conceptually, meticulously directed and acted, if not sung, creatively designed and shot with a flare for the dramatic. Were I for demonstrations, I would have given it a standing ovation. I will lament the day the Joel Shumacher signed the papers to direct The Phantom of the Opera forever...
~A Mighty Heart
I wanted to see this film in the theatre. I'm not necessarily a fan of Angelina Jolie, but I have to give the woman credit for this film. Her accent is excellent, her performance heartbreaking. Though I'm not sure that she'll win the Oscar, she certainly might, and I wouldn't be surprised if she did. I don't remember much of the story of Daniel Pearl. I remember hearing about it, and without going into how I feel about patriotism and politics, the story momentarily brought the world conflict sharply into focus. It reminded me that war is a personal fight and a personal loss. I wouldn't know if Mariane Pearl was a contained woman, but Jolie portrays her as such. There's a sense of dread in this film because you know how it ends, it's just a matter of time. It's shot like a documentary. I wanted to see it in a theatre because it's designed to make you feel too close to the action. You know Daniel Pearl dies, you know how it happens, and you spend an hour and a half shoved into this woman's life, waiting for her to find out her husband is dead. Jolie plays a restrained woman, with flashes of temper and you wait through the whole film to see if, at the moment of knowledge, she will crack or she will remain composed. At least, that's what I did. The flashbacks give you only a glimpse of her loss. The replayed shot of Daniel riding away in the taxi serve only to reinforce the fact that this was the last time she saw him. The story makes it personal. You feel that Mariane Pearl, after the events portrayed, went on to live her life, provide for her son, and deal with the loss of a loved one with strength and grace. Despite the restraint, you are never ignorant of the fact that she loved him deeply. I thought I would cry when I watched this film, but I didn't. I thought I would come away from this movie knowing immediately how I felt about it, but I didn't. I came away knowing one thing at the end....that I hated the director's (or whomever's) choice of closing credit music...I actively hated it. It sounds absurd, but it's definitely true. After a bit of thinking about it, I did like this film. I won't buy it, I won't watch it again and again, but I'm glad I saw it. It made me remember that war is personal, even though so often I feel like it's a state far removed from who I am.
~National Treasure 2
I'm not going to have much to say about this film, mainly because the writing was...not good and the performances were nothing to write home about. I just saw it last night, though, so it's fresh in my mind. I went in to this movie wanting to be entertained, and I was, so put a check mark next to "entertaining." I was also pleasantly surprised by two things. One: Nic Cage has a pretty great sense of physical comedy. Two: I love Helen Mirren. She had a bit of an Irina Derevko vibe in this movie and her and Jon Voight as the estranged couple was pretty hilarious (though I swear in the first movie, they definitely imply that she's no longer living...).
So...I need to go home now, because it's five-thirty now, and I'm still at work. Ick.
PS: The title of this entry sounds much more ominous than I intended it to be :). Just a thought...maybe I shouldn't add "of Doom" to the end of psychological disorders?