As I didn’t like The Phantom Menace in 2-D, and don’t care for 3-D movies, the answer is no, George Lucas. No.
Ryan Gosling, Zooey Deschanel, and gender equity
Top image is from a gallery of more-than-lurid image macros with Gosling from Digital Moms Blog (another caption from the collection: “Hey Mom…I think Moms are hot” and they range from laughable to mundane to troubling). Lower image is one I made this morning.
Not a fan of spouses/partners calling each other “Mom” or “Dad” or “Mother or “Father”. If people want to do that during role play, go ahead (post photos/video!). I can understand that partners using “Mom” or “Dad” comes from referring a kid to the other adult (e.g. “Go ask your Dad”), then it becomes an arch label, then sticks. Still, eww.
Both Gosling and Deschanel are born in 1980. Both seem intelligent. Gosling has a “I’m almost an adult” persona. Deschanel’s persona is “I may be a grown-up, at some date of my choosing. Or I may remain pixie-ish and the kind of spinster who names all the spiders in my home.”
And Gosling, veteran of the New Mickey Mouse Club with Britney Spears, Justin Timberlake, and Christina Aguilera (and some other N’Sync dude, right? dignity keeps me from researching that) has likely witnessed things while peristalted through the intestines of the Orlando entertainment system, dark things, of a nature hopefully few of us can imagine.
Saw this on the internet, and it seemed kind of wrong-ish, and wanted to ponder its wrong-ness by turning the genders around. Thoughts?
Dissecting ‘Doctor Zhivago’
Doctor Zhivago is not a great film. Though I’ve seen it a dozen times, it may not even make my list of top 20 favorites.
Cupcake, cheesecake.Director David Lean’s film before Zhivago, Lawrence of Arabia, is my favorite movie (don’t tell Singin’ in the Rain, m’kay?) and watching Zhivago (same composer, a lead, director, screenwriter) always gets me contrasting art that works (Lawrence) to art that falls flat (Zhivago). I’ll probably never write my thoughts out about Lawrence, there’s not enough internet space for all the slop that would pour out, but it’s interesting that Lawrence has no speaking roles for women, and the only time women are heard are ululations of women sending their men off to battle. It IS an army movie in the Middle East and I don’t recall T.E. Lawrence mentioning women in The Seven Pillars of Wisdom. Oh, shit. Right. Zhivago. See? It’s easy to get rolling about Lawrence. Staunching that gusher and getting back on topic…
Producer Carlo Ponti wanted Sophia Loren to play Lara. Lean thought her too tall. Julie Christie was hired instead. And I can’t make up my mind about Geraldine Chaplin as Zhivago’s wife and cousin. In many shots she seems alert and intelligent, others like a ninny. And her appearance changes from gaspingly cute to weird-looking.
Christie was already a notable actor and beauty, Chaplin would become a prominent actor and had already been a teen model. Like any good devotee, I demand consistency from objects of worship. Fluctuating levels of beauty and presence are confusing.
Lean decided to make the character of Yuri Zhivago an observer, to Sharif’s initial frustration. He was to take it all in, hardly emoting, but he and the audience would know Zhivago would express himself through poetry. Don’t worry, Lean assured Sharif, despite the beautiful spectacles and actors emoting all around him, at the end of the movie they will think most about Sharif as Zhivago.
“[The novel] Doctor Zhivago is a sorry thing, clumsy, trite and melodramatic, with stock situations, voluptuous lawyers, unbelieveable girls, romantic robbers and trite coincidences.” – Vladmimir Nabokov
Would it shock you to know that Doctor Zhivago is not a documentary? Turns out the scenes in the ice palace home were not done in a ice palace that just happened to be there. The ice effects were done with beeswax coating the set, the drippings flash-hardened by being sprayed with ice water.
Speaking (okay typing, you stickler!) of fake cold, and fake heat. Something about the movie remains unconvincing. The actors don’t quite click. I may have started to put my finger on it.
It has to do with too much emphasis on the look of things. How the shot is lit, in focus, holding a pose as if for a movie still. In the throes of passion, or deep feeling, the leads don’t comport themselves the way people do. Too many shots of the gorgeous Julie Christie as Lara being lit achingly right:
And, with Sharif’s Yuri Zhivago relegated to being an observer, the movie is a parade of sustained white glints of light in his moist eyes. It’s not subtle. It’s distracting. A simulcra of a highly attuned human and artist shown so deliberately he seems a falsely-moved mannequin. Take this still which is the shot right after the one of Christie above:
Feeling the passion? Neither are they, but they are optimally lit, and Sharif’s sleeve is smoothed out just so.Omar Sharif is a great actor. Julie Christie is a great actor. It’s a fault of the direction and cinematography. Has David Lean done a convincing love scene? It’s a mood killer, and irreparably harms a grand melodrama like Zhivago. Any-hoo, having pinned that down I’m going to sleep knowing the world is a better place having helped us all get more precise about a supreme piece of middling entertainment.
‘Neath Neil Sedaka
During a morning walk, a turn of brain had me switch from the audiobook for A Dance with Dragons (why, Roy Dotrice, must you lose track of your character voices from book to book?) to the two songs on my iPod by Neil Sedaka.
I know he’s recorded a lot more songs in his long career. I recall an odd love duet with his daughter. What trips me out about “Calendar Girl” and “Breaking Up is Hard to Do” is the forced cherubism. “Though sad inside, I shall for the sake of commerce and Tin Pan Alley heave a superhuman effort into PROJECTING MIRTH THOUGH ITS FORCE MAY REND TIME/SPACE ASUNDER!”
Let’s focus on his shout out to “December” in “Calendar Girl”. He uses the word “‘neath”. He could have used “beneath” and it would have still flowed. But no, he formally sat at a table, wrote the word “‘neath” on the music sheet and thought “How winningly informal and crafty. I shall keep it.”
He gives out a “Whoo!” at the start of the bridge (at 1:26 in the clip below) that is hilarious. “Holy Christmas on a cracker, I got so much groove I don’t know what to do but whoop in exultation!”
Drafting this on my phone, its AutoCorrect suggested “Meat” for “Neil”, “Defamation” for “Sedaka”, “Shop” for “Whoo”. Good summary, phone! Somewhere out there my smartphone has a funnier, more concise blog than mine.
The person leaves but the workspace remains
Each day I walk past the cubicle you were in. I think of you every day, but some days, and those days are increasing, I don’t think of you each time I walk by.
It’s not the first space you were in, but at least the third here. For diplomacy that of course seems stupid now, but merely dopey then, I convinced you to move from the previous spot to this one.
I miss your lamentations about the latest groaner emails. Your laughter at times with sunshine, other time with rue, once in a while with malice. And some times with victory and happiness, or a mix of it all.
We packed your things the first day we were all back. Mournful, needing breaks. Lots of laughter. Lots of wit, even in your workplace residue.
Even after two workplace piques of protest where you hauled a lot of the clutter in your workplace away, your workplace still had a lot of clutter. Not from compulsion of needing every damn thing in a series of things, but what you thought was funny, object designs you admired. Same as your brain. Packed with memories and trivia and delight and revulsion at the aesthetics of things.
We each each nabbed a few things of yours to hold and be reminded, or things that simply made us laugh. Now that space is blah and boring, and someday will be filled with someone else. Better to have known and lost. And the loss is getting easier, but it’s still not fair.
Music shopping, opera speakeasy, candy ploy
Largely house-bound day, about 5:30 p.m. I rustled the family up, insisting on a field trip to the record/CD store while they still exist. Music Millenium (“A place where the music and the people still matter”). I was on the hunt for a next opera CD.
I’d taken the kids there before, but it was several years ago and they had no memory of it. They found the candy section right away and started bargaining. “Can we get candy instead of music?” “NO! Go look around.”
We went separate directions. Where is the opera section? Over in classical, duh. Down the stairs, then some other stairs. Gotta open a door then down OTHER stairs to get into the classical room, then opera is in a closet of THAT room. Like finding a brightly lit opium den.
Got there, browsed a bit, took some tips from the “Opera 101” book I’m reading. Side track: the author is bugging me. He loves using the phrase “the fact that”, once using it in consecutive sentences (*wince*).
I’ve already got Maria Callas in Norma, the first opera CD I bought (bet Fanny Chicken can suss out why) and have listened to Callas’ studio recording of Carmen loads of times, leading to seeing it a few weeks ago. Thanks, T! Madama Butterfly probably the next opera I’ll attend, probably in a few weeks. Found a recording of … Maria Callas performing THAT, nabbed it. Double CD (w00t!) with a bonus CD-ROM of material (wh@t?).
Back in the day (as kids like to say, I’m trying to reach their demographic – how’s that coming across? Cool? Kinda molester-y?) I really like the interactive CD-ROMs put out by Peter Gabriel (still think about those), Sting ‘All this Time’ (Andrew & I joke about that one), and Prince’s ‘Interactive’ (wish there were a smell-o-vision feature). Haven’t tried the opera CD-ROM, but it’s probably documents, not interactive games like “coax the diva to the stage after she received an underwhelming bouquet from her new paramour”.
Also got a Callas opera buffet CD – more than 100 songs over 6 CDs! – that I’ll use as a reference when the various operas get a mention in the Opera 101 book. Small doses. Looking at the track lists made me woozy what with all the languages that weren’t American.
The Madama Butterfly did not have a price tag on it. Asked a clerk in the middle of the store for a price check. Clerk got nervous. “That’s from the opera section.”
“Can you look it up here?”
“Yes. But, it’s from the other section.”
[Non-verbal ??? on my face]
“There may be a special deal or something. They would know.”
“I assumed the whole store would be connected to the same system.” What is up with this opera ghetto treatment?
Clerk scanned it, $23.99. Thanked him, still baffled. But there are old-school rectangular red or white or orange price stickers on the CDs at Music Millenium, and the clerk wanted to make sure I was getting any sale they might be having that would not be reflected in the computer system. So, sorry for my faces, brother. It was $23.99 in the opera/classical register, too, this time.
Daughter got the new Muppet Movie music CD. Son picked nothing. Spouse got a few CDs including a greatest hits of Pink Martini. A new Decemberists CD sits in our home, so far unopened this last month. Tough for parents to find time to listen to new music, but why am I reluctant to seek out music by local artists? I have this threshold for only listening to artists after they hit the mainstream. Never hire me to be an A/R guy, I’d never go anywhere to seek out prospects.
Also picked up the new Patton Oswalt CD. No idea he had one. Why didn’t he tell me?
Snap.
I still look through the big circle of the lens to the back of the camera and wonder.
Pepsi: demi-retro-chic sugar water.
Astonished that the growing disfavor over high fructose corn syrup has led to a sense that regular sugar soda pop is a healthful choice. And companies are marketing to nostalgia for sugar soda pop. Oh, I’ll choose sugar over corn syrup. But it’s saying: “Hey, remember when we used to sell you a different type of poison?”
2011 Carmen: Opera! Acting! Singing! Thank you!
Got this book for Christmas. Doesn’t cover ‘Carmen’, but I’ll be reading it in 2012.People who know or like opera may want to avert their eyes, I’m about to fling ignorance around like water off a wet dog.
I had only seen three operas. In the late 70s or early 80s I saw a family friend in the female lead of Pirates of Penzance. In the 90s I saw another friend in Candide. Around 1990 PBS aired all of Wagner’s Ring cycle done by the New York Metropolitan Opera. I made it through the first show, and part of the second, then interest waned. A foreign language! Subtitles? German? Even as a fan of Norse myths it was too slow, too much work.
Julia Roberts about to bug the shit out of me.So, in the dark I remained. Yet, I knew enough to get PISSED at Pretty Woman during the scene where the prostitute (Julia Roberts) is told by her aristocrat Wall Street tycoon john (Richard Gere) that people either get, nay FEEL, opera or they don’t. And only the first time. After that, they may LIKE opera, but they have a never-to-be-remedied manqué soul or something like that. Sure as shit, arriviste Julia Roberts weeps at the opera. Her first time. Ah! See? Heart of gold! What if it were a bad production, Richard Gere, and she were turned off by that? Eh? Even though I didn’t know opera, I knew enough to think: “Stop! In the name of Art! Fuuuck YOOOUUU, Pretty Woman!”
I didn’t (and still mostly don’t) like musicals. And operas amplified what I didn’t like about musicals. As a story conveyance device, they were terrible. Rarely showing anything. Flooding the audience with repetitive wordy words, in a foreign language, and not offering much wisdom. Do operas even try have a message? Modern operas, maybe. There’s a new one about Nixon going to China. Watching Pat Nixon sing songs might be funny. Otherwise, whatever.
But during 2011, something clicked, and I got interested (though still intimidated). I finally got that operas were not meant to be didactic, they were pageants for humans to stand in defiance of nature’s amoral flow. That flow will always prevail, but the demiurge to create a moment and marker was important. Melodrama was inherent. We, as humans, would never win, but identity is conflict, and maybe we would find something of ourselves in that temporary stand. And then the catharsis thing and watching people we empathize with suffer as scapegoats for the expiation of our sins (“Die before me Carmen, so that I may mourn the zesty side of me that yet dreams!”) and on and on.
I also got interested in the biography, glamor, and drama of Maria Callas. To be a strong opera performer, compelled to master that moment before a crowd, demands a strong ego. The appeal of the diva will probably be a necessity for holding MY attention. I doubt male vocalists will have that hold for me.
Asking for guidance on Facebook, one friend affirmed Callas was a good start (I already had been listening to her in Norma). Another friend suggested Carmen as the opera to get to know. Snorkeling gear on loan from Parnassus, I leaned off the edge of the boat and flopped in. Read a plot synopsis, then a couple. Read that Bizet wrote “Toreador” in a contemptuous pique of needing to throw a sure-fire hit to the rabble. Problem is, that kind of apocryphal story is told about a LOT of artists, to the modern day. It creates an artificial bond between the artist, the purveyor of the bogus story, and the listener: “Only WE get [insert name of artist]. The swine out there who think [insert name of popular work by artist] is awesome don’t know how low the artist regarded THEIR kind of taste.”
Bought a studio recording of Callas in Carmen. It became a soundtrack for writing. Much of the score was familiar, of course. Visions of The Bad News Bears during the overture. I’m down with that, though. It’s a good movie.
At the end of this year, I caught a production of Carmen on its opening night and truly enjoyed it. The theater was only half full, motivating a shift to better seats during an intermission. Pavlovian conditioning also brought me to scribble writing ideas during the show.
Voices were good, music done well. I don’t have a discerning ear about opera so I can’t get too analytical there. Some of the acting was dull, especially the body language. But the biomechanics of singing opera capably AND being a nimble performer may be impossible. How many divas wear gowns/muumuus so vast you end up marveling they can ambulate their massive torsos around on anything not a downward slope?
I knew the opera was in French, but was worried I wouldn’t be able to follow the lyrics. Yet it was doubtful Eugene was THAT full of people fluent or conversant in French. Don’t get me wrong, a college town and all, but STILL – THOUSANDS of people paying money to hear and comprehend French sung operatically? Translated lyrics were projected above the stage. Ah! Bien merçi!
José was in good voice, mostly. Body language sluggish. Carmen was lusty and unapologetic and lived large. Escamillo was funny and preening and bold. Micaëla was lovely with a great voice and the performer seems destined for ascension.
Four acts in ‘Carmen’. Act one was okay. Got swept up in Act two. Laughed in Act three. Admired the countdown of ‘Carmen’ getting sacrificed for our benefit in Act four. Was impressed that I never caught any illuminated rectangles from cellphones or cameras in the audience the entire time. Also, there were no patronizing announcements asking people to turn off their cellphones. People just KNEW and … no phones rang during the show. A good experience both inward and a mass commisseration. Felt entertained, moved, and optimistic about being a human being.
Yes, I realize if this page is setup right the video played automatically, causing music to come out of your speakers as soon as you got here like a webpage from 1997. Kickin’ it old school. To compensate, check out this charming performance of “Habanera” by Callas below … and YOU get to control the playback. You’re welcome!
Adele – girls sing strong, shove dudes aside
Girls in school seem to have taken on singing songs with great gusto. Tunefulness doesn’t really matter. That’s fine. And it’s a welcome change from singing like kittens, ring tones, or kewpie dolls. And it’s MUCH better from the decade-long tradition of most female vocalists relying on a male vocalist/rapper to cover the bridge or lend unhelpful “Yeah!” and “Uh-hunh” and “Worldwide!” while the female vocalist carries the heavy load. I hate that. Hated it. Hate it. Will continue to hate.
I understand the marketing aspects. These [“w/ …”] and [“feat. …”] songs appeal to gals and dude demographics. I’m asking the music industry: when the lady has a story to tell, if it’s not a conversation/duet with a dude, tell the dude to GTFO and let the lady do her thing.
Also, get rid of AutoTune. It sucks. In a soft moment I bought a post-Christmas discounted CD of Michael Bublé’s Christmas album, only to discover the songs had been soured by AutoTune. Just, stop it! And fuck you, producer David Foster, for your decades of purveying of cynical pap.
Hope young women continue to emulate strong singers like Adele. We don’t want them accustomed to sing two thirds of a song and then wait awkwardly for a man to chime in.