Pre-holiday hustle and bustle

I chose not to follow my yearmates into the the wide, wide world....and at this moment am wishing finals would be over.

Thoughts of the day, week, month, or whatnot, until the next erratic post, on movies in particular.

1. Why is it that one can never have the time to see all the movies, classics, current and future, that one wishes to see?

2. Dan in Real Life. Go see it. I don't usually go for the type of movies Steve Carell is in, but this isn't what he usually does. The movie paints an authentic portrait of life, love and family; it plays very simply and sweetly and never once feels contrived. Check out the music as well.

3. P.S. I Love You. This is now officially on my "to-see" list (which stretches on and on and makes the likelihood of seeing any movie from 2007 this year quite slim). Yes, the plot isn't brand-spanking original, and yes, I expect the usual tugging-at-the-heartstrings tactics, but it still looks like I could enjoy it. And Scotsman Gerard Butler doing an Irish accent intrigues me. I loved him in Dear Frankie and tolerated him in Phantom of the Opera (as a die-hard phan I have high standards for my Phantoms), and haven't been interested in seeing Dracula or 300, some of his other well-known movies. So from what I've seen, Butler doesn't ever completely mask his brogue. Why did the director or producer decide to go with Irish? Is it because he couldn't manage the others? Because an Irish dialect is closer to Scottish and therefore something he was familiar with? The matter bears further thinking and research.

4. Movies I definitely must see this holiday season:

a. The Golden Compass - Phillip Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy ranks up there with fantasy writers like C.S. Lewis and Tolkien, with those multiple layers of complexity and symbolism hiding just beneath the superb storytelling. I first read these books beginning in seventh grade and have enjoyed them up to the present day as a grad student. I have faith in the director, but they'd better not mess this one up.

And those allegations about the anti-Church stance of the books and film? Cool it, folks. Those who are condemning this movie without even seeing it are acting just like the institutions that Pullman really is against: those who stifle free thought and the desire to learn new things even if it means challenging the status quo.

b. Sweeney Todd - I love this musical. I don't have as much invested emotionally in this musical-to-movie adaptation as I did Phantom, so I am remaining open-minded and am keeping my expectations low as regards the singing and the cuts to the libretto. The look of the whole thing (black, white and red) is very fitting; no complaints on the sets or costumes at all. And Johnny Depp and Helena Bonham Carter, as actors, also fit well with the dark/surreal mood of the show as well. I agree with the casting choices for the other characters, except Sascha Baron Cohen as Pirelli (who knows, though, he might surprise me).

It's the singing, however, where I'm certain I'll be underwhelmed. As a work of musical theatre, ST often verges in complexity on operetta, and has been performed by opera companies. I've seen clips from the movie and the main characters are all quite light-voiced, so despite the visuals, the voices aren't adding the menace, edge or depth that makes the difference between a good Sweeney and a great one.

Doubtless with the advent of this film will come a rift in the fan community between the ones who love the film and the purists who hate it, and between the fans who were loyal to the stage version and the ones (often young and afflicted with an unfortunate grasp of orthography) who became enamored of the movie because of the stars more than the show. It's happened before, it'll happen again.

Oh well.

Pithy Bits

I'm a theatre fanatic. Particularly musical theatre. Therefore musings pertinent to the aforementioned will abound.

So, for today: Sweeney Todd by Stephen Sondheim. Considered by some to be the greatest work of musical theatre in the 20th century. Winner of eight Tony Awards in 1979, and two more for the 2006 revival. Songs considered to be some of the most difficult in vocal repertoire. The movie adaptation by Tim Burton starring Johnny Depp and Helena Bonham Carter set to hit theatres this December. You get the drift.

So of course I'm going to show my reverence by being irreverent:

Sweeney, baby, you need to get some real friends, not the razor-and-chair variety.

For information on awards, songs, and productions: http://www.ibdb.com/show.asp?ID=8451.
The libretto: http://libretto.musicals.ru/text.php?textid=516&language=1

In Memoriam - Sept 11, 2001

There's less than a half-hour remaining in the day and somehow I've been so busy I scarcely even remembered what today was. I was on my way to an appointment this morning when a mention on the news recalled the fact to me abruptly. Six years ago, over 2,000 people died horribly and needlessly, and today, life went on.

Somewhere else in the world, another tragedy like September 11th occurred, today, last year, 50 years ago, a century ago. They've touched all of us, and yet not at all. At this moment, tears are streaming down someone's face for a loved one lost in an attack or epidemic or war or genocide, and I'm worrying about my lesson plans for tomorrow. The juxtaposition is...somehow surreal.

Where were you the day the planes hit? I remember it as a day of an underlying, unnatural quiet. The day before, I had found out about the death of one of my piano teachers. I was still at home that morning, having slept late for one reason or another and was getting ready for class when my father phoned and told us to turn on the television. That was the first plane. I thought it had been an accident. It wasn't until I'd gone to school and settled in homeroom when I heard of the second plane, and the words that would eventually become part of the national lexicon: Terror. Taliban. Tragedy.

The entire day was full of a hushed anxiety, mingled with mundane concerns like whether school would let out early because of the attacks. (Strange, that events like disasters and terrorism and standoffs should grant students that happy boon, time off from school.) The televisions remained on, fuzzy-screened though they were, in most of the classrooms throughout the day. My math teacher left in a flurry of tears and worry, not knowing if her husband's meeting in the Pentagon had doomed him (it didn't). And then I was in French class when the news came of the plane that had been brought down in Pennsylvania.

The tension didn't ease with dismissal. I was at skating practice when a resounding bang! reverberated throughout the rink. Everyone froze. My heart did too, for a moment. There was a half-hearted effort to begin skating again, but it quickly faded. We strained for more sounds, whispering as we left the ice and began gathering our things. A rumor circulated that smoke had been seen rising from the nearby VA hospital. The eventual report that the noise had been a sonic boom from a jet taking off from the area's military base didn't sooth us. It had been a day like no other, why should we expect things to calm down?

And yet they have, for most of us. We will wake up on September 12, the memory of yesterday already blurry in the rush of today.

Launch

Well, here it is, the result of spur-of-the-moment inspiration put on hold. I don't expect this place to have much of an effect anywhere, or to accomplish anything magnificent. Hope you enjoy your stay, whatever it was that led you here.

Wondering about the title? It means a choice or chosen landscape in French, and this blog will be such a place for my thoughts. The source is one of my favorite poems, Clair de lune by Paul Verlaine:

Votre âme est un paysage choisi
que vont charmant masques et bergamasques
jouant du luth et dansant et quasi
tristes sous leurs déguisements fantasques

Tout en chantant sur le mode mineur
l’amour vainqueur et la vie opportune
ils n’ont pas l’air de croire à leur bonheur
et leur chanson se mêle au clair de lune

Au calme clair de lune, triste et beau
qui fait rêver les oiseaux dans les arbres
et faire sangloter d’extase les jets d’eau
les grands jets d’eau sveltes parmi des marbres

My adaptation:
Your soul's a chosen landscape where lightly
dance charming masquèd figures side by side
playing the lute while a melancholy
beneath their fantastic disguises hides

While they sing in a minor mode about
victorious love and gracious life's boon
their own happiness they appear to doubt
mingling their song in the light of the moon

The calm moonlight, whose sad beauty aches
and sets to dreaming the birds in the trees
and among the marblèd statues makes
slim fountains sob in ecstasy.