A Tale of Two Musicals

So, I've seen two musicals recently. One blew me away, and one didn't. I'll start with the one that didn't (since I feel pretty confident you know already what blew me away).

Once upon a time in high school Spanish class our teacher showed us two slides. The first was a painting Picasso had done that was nearly identical with Velázquez's Las Meninas. I love the original painting, and it's technically impressive to see one master artist duplicating another. But then came the next slide: Picasso painting Las Meninas in the cubist style:

My point? As impressive as it is to paint like Velázquez, it's more impressive to go somewhere new with it, and Picasso was way new. Watching Across the Universe was a lot like that first Picasso painting: technically brilliant but not really new. It is a very well done film, gorgeous to look at and wonderfully performed by mostly unknowns. But I found it pretty pointless. Picasso painted like Velázquez to learn from his style, not with the idea of presenting his copy to the world as a work of great art (and I guess he did 58 different versions of Las Meninas, so those above are only two). I'm not sure what I'm supposed to take away from overly literal interpretation of the Beatles songs. "For the Benefit of Mr. Kite" as a circus? Duh. Although Eddie Izzard is always cool. Bono and Joe Cocker are clearly having fun as well. But like I said, it was well done, just pointless.

Perhaps the real thing is that this very much a Beatles in the 60s film, and I was listening to the Beatles in the 80s. The Beatles to me aren't about Vietnam or psychedelic drugs or any of that. Also, as I referenced when talking about Walk Hard, this movie was far too reverent of the Beatles for my taste (and so are most Beatle covers, frankly. They sound like church music). The Beatles always had a great sense of humor, which this movie doesn't even touch on. But mostly, what with this and Mamma Mia (which I'll certainly see what it's out on DVD) - yes it's great music and all, but what I really want is something new.

Which brings me to what I did enjoy the hell out of: Dr. Horrible's Sing-along Blog. This was done on the cheap by Joss Whedon, his two brothers, one of their girlfriends, and a bunch of friends (geeks like me who can recognize Buffy writers will particularly enjoy act 3). It's nowhere near as visually slick as Across the Universe, it's not quite 45 minutes long, and it's only ever appeared on the internet. Still, one of my main gripes of Across the Universe is that not only was it obvious where the story was going, you could even predict with stunning accuracy which song was coming next. Dr. Horrible, like all Whedon endeavors, is comedy and tragedy all at once and you never know which you're going to get next, or where it will all end up. I certainly wasn't expecting the way it all ended here. But then the other cool aspect: you look back and it all seems rather inevitable. It had to end this way, didn't it? It's led to some great dinner time conversations here, as the boys have watched it half a dozen times already (although they've been told that "we do the weird stuff" will have to remain in the realm of things they will understand when they're older). And we have a CD of the songs in the car and all know all the words.

I would love, love, love to see a real musical in the theaters, the kind where it's all surprising and new and takes me on a ride that I can't see the end of. I was hoping after Moulin Rouge (which didn't have new music, but did use old music in new and surprising ways, my fave being the tango "Roxanne") that we'd have a musical resurgence, but alas, that never came to be. My fondest wish would be for a feature-length Dr. Horrible sequel (come on, the story totally doesn't end there).

Of course Joss may be busy...

(And fellow MST3K fans, TV's Frank has a cool blog entry about it over here. I didn't really touch on the larger significance of Dr. Horrible as artist-controlled, although that was the whole reason they got together and made this thing during the SAG strike. Well, read Frank; he's got it covered).

OK, technically not done with those things that needed doing, so I'm back at it.

Gon Out Backson, Bisy Backson

Ow! Ow! Ow!

That's the sound of things falling out of the sky and pegging me on the head. My planned writing break is suddenly getting very writing-busy. Damn muse, can't keep a scheduled to save her life. Going to take a few days to do some stuff. Bisy Backson, indeed.

Movies in August

First off, I think I burned my brain. It's been a few days now since I typed "The End", but I seemed to have lost all ability to summon words. If you try to have a conversation with me, it will be a lot of "you need to do that thing with the thing. You know, the thing, the thing in the freezer? That goes in the back of the whats-it? The yard?" and fifteen minutes later, in the middle of doing something completely unrelated, will finally burst out with "you need to take the compost out!" Sheesh!

So, let's see if I can remember the movies I watched last month and find something intelligent to say about them...

Since I was spending every possible moment writing, most of my movie watching was with Quin, and hence in English. The first was a heist film called Flawless, set in the 60s with Michael Caine as a janitor nearing retirement age and Demi Moore as a woman butting her head against the glass ceiling of the diamond company she works for. After she gets passed up yet again in favor of a younger man with less experience than she, Caine convinces her to help him pull off the heist he's been planning forever. He's not forthcoming about his reason for wanting to do this, but he has a very, very good one. I don't remember hearing anything about this movie when it was in theaters, but I do recommend it. Good story, good acting, and wonderfully plotted.

I can't really say any of those things about In the Name of the King. It is, in fact, a film based on a video game. But it does star Jason Statham and is tons of unpretentious fun. The film makers take every opportunity to rip off stuff we've already seen in The Lord of the Rings, and Ray Liotta as the bad guy is just one goofy hat away from being Jack Palance; clearly this is not a film that was ever aspiring to greatness.

In the category of fantasy films that do aspire to greatness is Beowulf, which I liked better than I thought I would. This style of animation has progressed since the zombie kids of Polar Express (that movie still gives me the willies), and the low lighting through most of it help to sell it. The monsters are really well done. It was intended as 3D, which is a bit distracting when you watch it in 2D, but storywise I liked this retelling of the old tale. But then, I also liked The 13th Warrior's retelling, so...

Because Quin insisted I had to see it: Priscilla Queen of the Desert. I was actually supposed to see this movie lots of times back in the day, it played as a midnight show at the Uptown for years. But everytime my friend and I would go to see it, we'd always end up at Bryant Lake Bowl, hanging with his friends, a diverse group that even included a Korean Elvis impersonator. This movie made me nostalgic for those days; that particular friend of mine tended to fall for guys faste and drop everything to follow them to far-off cities. This was in the days before mobile phones, and I wouldn't hear from him for months. Then out of the blue he'd call, back in Minneapolis with a long tale to tell. I haven't heard from him since just before I got married; I like to think he found someone he could settle down with. But I'm still here, same house, same phone number. Perhaps someday I'll get another call out of the blue. (Also, Hugo Weaving is the bomb).

So after setting up my super-PC I got rid of my TV and DVD player in my office/work-out room. So of course the DVD player in the PC promptly kacked. Now I read on walking days, but on walk/run days I like to watch movies. Otherwise I get bored; running is very, very dull (my husband, who runs 5-6 miles at a time, says otherwise, but I think that's just because he has a cat-brain that lets him think about nothing for great tracks of time. If I'm running and thinking, I'm mostly thinking about all the things I have to get done when I get off the treadmill. Which is mostly conducive to getting off the treadmill). I have a program that lets me record from my satellite receiver onto my hard drive, so I tried that out. My test run was with a movie from the same director as Marigold, something called (very generically) Playing By Heart. I remember when this movie was still in the works it was meant to be titled Dancing about Architecture, and I think they should have stuck with it. It comes from a line Angelina Jolie says, "talking about love makes as much sense as dancing about architecture", which fits the movie better; it's a whole series of scenes of people talking about love. There's an old couple, a young couple, a married couple, a middle-aged couple just starting to date. It was a quiet sort of movie but had lots of great dialogue. I'm not sure exactly how old it is, but Angelina Jolie looked like she was barely more than 20. It also had Gillian Anderson, Jon Stewart, Dennis Quaid, Sean Connery, and Madeline Stowe (and a few more, this is off the top of my head a month later).

I was less impressed with Notting Hill. I confess that, for no discernible reason, I just don't like Julia Roberts. I don't hate her, I don't avoid movies just because she's in them, but I always find her very cold and never feel like she has any chemistry with the guy she's playing opposite to. I did like the secondary characters in this one, particularly the roommate, but unlike Four Weddings and a Funeral, this wasn't a film primarily about a group of friends.

Something borrowed: Walk Hard, the musical biopic parody film. Not only was it funny, the music was good enough to stand on its own; they sounded like real country songs, real Brian Wilson songs. My favorite scene was the one when Dewey Cox goes to India and hangs with the Maharishi and the Beatles. The Beatles are played by a bunch of familiar actors (you'll probably know two right off, and the other two will be naggingly familiar - thank you, Wikipedia, who that was playing George was going to drive me nuts) with great love but no reverence whatsoever. Which is in my book ideal. I love the Beatles, but I love them as human beings with lovable flaws, not as near-saints of musical perfection. (Keep this in the back of your mind, being overly reverent of the Beatles is going to come up again next month...)

OK, I did squeeze in three Hindi films. Silsila is a film Amitabh Bacchan did with his wife Jaya in I think the early 80s, about a man who marries his dead brother's fiance because she's pregnant with his nephew/niece and then regrets it after she loses the baby when he drives their car into a tree. As the movie progresses and he continues to pursue the woman he wanted before his brother died, even though she's also now married, you will want to smack Amit with a brick (I'm not saying I found him unsympathetic or anything).

Eklavya is a more recent film starring Amitabh Bacchan, and this one was nearly perfect. There are no musical numbers, so it clocks in pretty short for a Hindi film. I found it very Shakespearean in terms of plot, with the assassination attempts and concealed parentage of children. I thought at first it was a period piece, the clothing and palace are so ornate, but Saif Ali Khan as the young prince returns in a helicopter, clearly modern. Part of the story is past vs. present, tradition versus new ways. Most of the story, though, is about dharma. I've read a lot of books that have mentioned dharma, but there is nothing like a good story with a memorable character like Amit's palace guard to make you really feel it in your bones.

(I did think the ending needed one or two more scenes; some characters went through major changes that needed to be set up a bit more. They weren't unbelievable in themselves, they just happened a bit too fast. Minor gripe, though).

The last movie was so old it was colorized back and white: Mughal-e-Azam. I had to see it; both Saawariya and Om Shanti Om referenced it. It was way, way cool. The colorization was an enhancement; it gave the movie a sort of fairy tale feel. And it was old school, casts-of-thousands for the fight scenes. It's weird watching those in these days of everything-done-by-computer; you see elephants charging and you realize someone had to actually make that happen, and control it, and film it. This film is based on an old story about Akbar, the Mughal emperor, and his son the prince who falls in love with a dancing girl. The sets were amazing; it reminded me a lot of Aleksandr Ptushko, especially Ruslan and Ludmila (a very cool movie with mindblowing visuals, highly recommend).

So my clip this month comes from Mughal-e-Azam. The director originally intended to shoot in color but the budget wouldn't allow it, so only this scene was shot in color. Watching it on YouTube probably won't do it justice, but the part where her dancing is reflected off the facets of all the jewels set into the ceiling is to die for:

Act 3, here I come!

Because I've finished my fourth novel (rather, I've finished a draft of my fourth novel, there is still work left to do). How engrossed was I while finishing this up? So engrossed I didn't even notice I didn't have any phone service. Luckily I noticed that today, before I have to go back to work. Kinda need a phone to work, you know.

So the whole family is going out to dinner tonight (to the Olive Garden, which just goes to show my boys are two susceptible to the lure of commercials on television), and then we'll all gather on our new sofa to watch all three acts of Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog.

I do feel like a ran a marathon, then got up the next day and ran another marathon, over and over for seven days. Except I was running with my brain and not my legs. I'm sort of twitchy and exhausted. But hey! First draft done. Yay me!

Oh So True

“I hate being in the final stages of a story. It's like trying to run programs on a computer with 100% CPU use. I'm left with just about enough native intelligence to walk, talk monosyllabically, and tie my shoelaces. I assume that I'm off figuring out the end of the story I'm writing, because the alternative, in terms of sudden-onset mental decay, is too dreadful to think about. Meanwhile I walk around aimlessly, cannot remember where I put things, or the names of the things that I can't remember where I put them. And I say "er..." a lot, and pick things up and look at them.” – Neil Gaiman 01/10/03

On the upside, it seems more likely that I will actually finish before Friday (for certain definitions of "finish").

Writing update

So here's where we're at:



Just a hair under 20,000 words to go. Which means if I want to be done by Friday, I have to crank out 4000 words a day all week. I did 4500 each on Saturday and Sunday, which is pretty damn productive for me, but of course I wasn't also doing school those days. Well, we'll see how it goes.

I pushed hard to pass the 40,000 word mark last night so I could hit my goal and finally watch Act 2 of Dr. Horrible with the boys. They are enjoying this almost as much as I am. Quin is going to wait to watch all three acts together, hopefully on Friday, because he doesn't dig the incremental thing. Of course we've thoroughly ruined the experience for him, as the other three of us can't stop singing the songs and quoting the jokes.

Books in August

Most of August was spent finishing off the John Carter of Mars books. Namely Thuvia, Maid of Mars, The Chessmen of Mars, The Master Mind of Mars, A Fighting Man of Mars, Swords of Mars, Synthetic Men of Mars, Llana of Gathol and John Carter of Mars. Phew! Pulp fiction makes perfect treadmill reading, though. These are fun books, and I'm very intrigued to see what Pixar is going to do in bringing these stories to film (I hope they do them all). Burroughs wrote the first book in 1917 and the last in 1964 and I did get a sense of how the world around him was changing as he wrote. I mean, Dejah Thoris may be Incomparable in terms of beauty, but she's a huge liability in a fight. She's constantly getting kidnapped, nearly killed in airship crashes, used as leverage to make John Carter do things... She always struggles against her captors, of course, but completely uselessly. But as the books progress we are introduced to other female characters who can fight. It's nice that John Carter saw the value in teaching his daughter and granddaughter how to defend themselves. And I particularly liked The Swords of Mars, where the fighter thinks he's in love with the beauty but slowly realizes he's actually in love with the girl he thought was a boy a first, the one he can talk to and who has his back in a fight. But The Chessmen of Mars is my favorite, because the Kaldanes are so cool. (Did I mention I'm hoping Pixar makes movies out of all of these?)

After reading all eleven of those books, though, I was in deep need of a little Opposite of That. I was just browsing my shelves before hopping on the treadmill when I saw Learning to Play Gin by Ally Carter, the sequel to Cheating at Solitaire. I bought this the week it came out but somewhere along the line it got shelved instead of staying in the To Be Read stack on my end table where it belonged. Which is just as well, a book about smart, emotionally complex women was just what I needed. I like Ally, she has wit and is often laugh-out-loud funny. I particularly identified with the pants-shopping scene: "I have a waist! And hips! And my waist is smaller than my hips!" I don't know why fashion designers assume that because size zeros tend to be built like boys that all of us are, we're just proportionately bigger. If I find pants that fit my hips I end up with way too much hanging around my waist. Not a good look. Thank the gods for Lands End custom-made jeans.

The last book was Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens. Aidan is reading an abridged version for history, so I finally plunged into the unabridged version I've had hanging around here forever. Not particularly good treadmill reading, I'll tell you. More cuddle up with a cat and an afghan reading, although what with the heat wave that wouldn't have been pleasant either. It's hard to knock a classic, but I will say this isn't as good as his later stuff. I'm guessing Dickens was a pantser, as this story started out doing one thing and then went all over the place. Still, I like his dry humor and observation of character. I just liked it better in, say, Great Expectations.

On the writing front, I did nothing all week. Seriously. We had painters working on our house, which involved lots of guys working around all my windows all day long. I felt like I was an exhibit at the Museum of Natural History: Life of a Homeschooler or something. They were completely professional, of course, they weren't actually looking in the windows, but still. I'm a recluse; it was traumatic for me.

So that leaves me with half a novel to write in a week. Which I'm going to try to do. Because I'm nuts. Well, wish me luck!

In brief...

I didn't get as much done last week as I wanted to. The combination of needing to work longer, later hours to help cover for illnesses, having to get up early pretty much every day last week for couch deliveries and a few different home repair things, and what my husband assures me has to be the last heat wave of the summer had me falling into comas every afternoon. (I know a nap when I take one, these were definitely comas).

I'm hoping to catch up a bit this week, but since two of those three things are still going on, plus school again... well, I'm not too hopeful. Which is a shame as I'm still a few chapters short of my Dr. Horrible Sing-along Blog Act 2 mark. And I let the boys watch Act 1. They're anxious to see Act 2. Very anxious. To the point of trying to roust Mom out of her coma. I'm afraid next week when I'm finally fully alert I'll find everything I've written since last Monday will read as if it were written by someone in a coma.

I did get some good news this week, though; another grocery company bought SimonDelivers and will be making deliveries starting in October. Going to the grocery store with the whole family has been surprisingly fun (particularly for my husband, who really really likes it. No, I don't get it either). Still, I only get two nights off in a week and I'd rather spend that time doing other things.

So, try to get more writing done this week, polish off my book and movie posts for August, and post some pics of the new couch and my freshly painted walls. I might be able to get a couple of those things done...