OSCARS!! Animated Films Edition

Paul Rudd and Melissa McCarthy in a classically bad bit of banter about actor's voices as tools of the craft. They tried, but the material was weak. Oh, and what a surprise! Pixar won for "Paperman."

Animated Feature Film--is--Brave! The non-brave choice--it goes to Pixar. But I do like the kilt on the producer/director.

Reese Witherspoon has to introduce three best picture nominees. This is kind of awkward, but probably necessary. Les Miz, LIfe of Pi and Beasts of the Southern Wild--quick! Why group these ones together? I guess they all have boats?

Avengers cast taking digs? Not really funny, but not UN-funny. Cinematography going to Life of Pi makes sense because it's a gorgeous looking movie--but is he high? Way to just say thanks and get the heck off the stage.

Visual Effects? Any of these is decent--special effects have gotten so good that there's really no difference in craft--it's sort of a matter of artistic effect now. And Life of Pi used the special effects in service of a story, rather than in service of the special effects. A logical win.

Using the music from Jaws to play off the speaker--rude, but kind of awesome. Shouldn't there be a hook or something coming to pull them offstage if they overrun the  allotted time? When you are playing "Jaws" the menace is palpable.

OSCAR Ceremony!!

We are inside the theater, seeing Renee Zellweger in gold Carolina Herrara, looking good but also kind of old. Time is not kind to women.

Queen Latifah looking BOSS!! Badgely Mischka FTW!

Credits are running and now it's the last sponsors before the higher ad fees kick in maybe? Let's check and see if Levi's/J.C. Penny's has any ads during the actual ceremony. . .

And we're starting! Lots of LED lights! Seth McFarlane and his punchable face.

Let's make Tommy Lee ones laugh. It worked.

The monologue jokes are old--really a joke about accounting for no profits?

But the Captain Kirk thing is working! "We Saw Your Boobs" as a kind of parody of bad Oscar musical performances actually works. Charlize Theron and Channing Tatum doing a sort of Astaire/Rogers dance to "Just The Way You Look Tonight" is actually charming. How did that happen? The changing newspaper headlines, the sock puppet re-enactment of Flight. . . .not terrible. Especially the dryer tumbling the socks. JGL and DRadcliff dancing to "High Hopes?" He's all the way up to "mediocre." He's willing to take "mediocre."

The Green Room Sally Field and Seth in the Flying Nun sequence is a bit off, but using the "alternate history" approach allows him to have his cake and eat it too. And really, he's got to be nervous--this is a lot of singing and dancing for a guy who isn't usually in front of the camera. And I haven't wanted to punch him even once. So I'm calling this a success.

Octavia Spencer for Best Supporting Actor. She's charming and lovely and amazing. And the winner is--Christoph Walz! I didn't pick a winner here, but what a great clip they showed. Bounty hunting--"much like slavery, it's a flesh for cash business." And Walz is a classy speech-maker. A well crafted speech and they didn't even have to play him off!

Hey--Seth McFarlane does the voice over outro to the ads. He's a bargain! And we're into commercials.

OSCARS!! E! News Working their Blackout

I just checked out what was happening on E! while ABC was on ad break--they are pimping the heck out of E! shows that will happen later. Because guys! They totally aren't just watching TV and commenting just like you are at home! No way!

We have Giuliana Rancic and Kimora Lee and Ryan Seacrest and Kelly Osborne (and someone from Marie Claire) and they are wearing expensive dresses and they are totally not just watching TV! They are "Live from the Red Carpet!!"

Back at ABC and KChen and her Oscar Mystery--Anne Hathaway just guessed Dorothy's Slippers, and that's what it was! We have a winner!

Jamie Foxx is here with his 19 year old daughter. They talked about college in the limo on the way over--that's great. Makes me like Foxx better.

Daniel Day Lewis and his wife, Rebecca Miller--she looks like a smart person--mostly because I want that to be true. I want them to be a marriage of interesting minds. (I think he's a lock, by the way.)

So, less than 12 minutes to broadcast. Shall I make some picks?

Best Picture:I'm going with Lincoln.
Best Actor: DDL--Daniel Day Lewis
Best Actress: Jennifer Lawrence--as the "token" SLP winner
Best Supporting Actor: No Clue--everybody has won before, so it doesn't matter.
Best Supporting Actress: Hathaway is also a lock

SLP for Adapted Screenplay
Moonrise Kingdom for Original Screenplay
Best Animated Feature Film: Brave is the logical one, but I'm going to pick Wreck It Ralph, because that one had the whimsy and cleverness that we expect from Pixar and didn't get in Brave.

Those are the only ones I feel are worth predicting. I'm going to go out on a limb and suggest that Seth McFarlane isn't going to be asked back after tonight. I have no inside info--this is just my gut.

Enjoy the show!

OSCARSII Is it a Head?

Hugh Jackman guesses the Oscar Mystery is a head--just like Amanda Seyfried. The clue has changed--the first clue was "over 2000 components." The new clue is "It was given as a gift." Can't say to whom.

Chris Evans also brought his mom as his date.

DeNiro and his wife--she's younger but not exactly young, and African American, which I didn't know. Robyn Robinson is asking DeNiro about Cooper, which is nice.

Dan Radcliff is cute, and HP is clearly over, since there aren't hordes of screaming fangirls dogging his progress. It must be a relief!

So many many ads! We're already at another commercial break, which is kind of nuts. I didn't realize just how little content there is between the ads.

Jennifer Aniston in red--not black? Is the world ending? She's got her hair down and minimal make up and no visible jewels--oh, there's a bracelet and ring and a clutch. Now we can see the earrings inside her hair, which is kind of a loss for Fred Leighton. The dress is Valentino, of course.

Jennifer Garner in purple looks awesome, with a ruffled train down the back, and what looks like a vintage elaborate necklace

Halle Berry and Robyn Robinson. Berry has a lovely black and beaded thing in stripes that looks great. She's a Bond Girl too! And this is the 50th anniversary so there's going to be a tribute. The dress is Versace, it looks great.

Chenoweth and Adele. Adele is about a foot taller than Chen, and they are talking about how heavy Adele's dress for performance is. "How tall are you?" Adele is 6'1" in her heels. They are darling together.

George Clooney--he and Walt Disney have the most different category nominations. Stacy Keibler looks very vintage. Cloons has a nice beard--he looks charming, and Keibler has lasted HOW MANY award seasons?

Sandra Bullock in Elie Saab look tall and lovely. THere's a problem with the sound--they start out booming over speakers, and then Chenoweth is heard gabbling about something. Accountants are in the house!

Are we going to get the answer to the "Oscar Mystery?"

OSCARS!! The Who Is Taller Edition

K Chenoweth is comparing height with Mama Cooper, and takes off her heels to see she's shorter--then Bradley Cooper gets down on one knee to help her get it back on. Very lovely, and a complete rehab from his smirky, fratty character from The Hangover.

Kidman and Urban! She looks actually human. She's got a black and gold sequined sheath and it's lovely. L'Wren Scott--it's classy and fabulous.

Charlize Theron again. The costumes from Snow White and the Huntsman is the topic of the interview. She's refusing to take any credit for her look, giving props to her styling team. I like it, but there's a train that comes out from her butt crack, which I don't like.

Oh, Robin Robinson--it's so good to have you back!  (Okay, I had to say that.) Cobalt blue looks really good on her.


I'm not fond of the "Oscar Mystery" nonsense, but I'm guessing it's the Ruby Slippers from Wizard of Oz. Amanda Seyfried has guessed "A Head" and Bradley Cooper said "A Parrot?"

Over on E!, the aggressive Size 0s saying ANYTHING about Adele is just obnoxious and hypocritical. Adele does look great and happy, but also exactly like she always looks. Big black dress, big hair. Salon nails and make up. She's awesome, but shut up Giuliana. You look like you have a padlock on the fridge and you lost the combination on purpose.

Okay, I'm posting this one and switching back to ABC.

OSCARS!! Again!

Why am I doing these serial posts? Because I have lost too many posts to inadvertent deletions. So I'm posting as soon as I have a break so I don't lose it all.

ABC is doing something foolish--an Oscar road trip? No thanks. Back to E!

But, E! is doing something on the Governor's Ball. It happens on the top floor of the theater, which you can check out if you tour the theater--like we did a hear and a half ago.

Giuliana Rancic is dark haired?!?! And understated in something black and strapless.

Bradley Cooper and his mom! Mom is about Chenoweth height! They are representing Philadelphia! Mom looks great, sporting a cape of feathers, and Brad is cute and awkward as he stands on somebody's gown.

Anne Hathaway was supposed to wear Valentino? She's in a pale pink Prada, and I like it. I like the simplicity, but I don't loke the double waistline--Empire and one at the waist too.

Back to ABC,  which apparently has dibs on red carpet for the last hour before the actual ceremony. Reese Witherspoon rocking the Veronica Lake glamorous hair. JGL showing off his funky fly socks. ABC is showing clips of Movies of 2012--while E is recapping fashion. So that's where I am.

Jessica Chastain--her dress is kind of the same color as her hair. It's tailered and subtly beaded, but it just doesn't show on the red carpet. It's too understated, really.

Hey! The crawl says that the Governor's Ball crew will be eating chicken pot pie too! Just like me! Although theirs will be prepared by Wolfgang Puck and includes shaved black truffles. Mine is not going to be so glam, but then I get to have mine earlier than they get theirs! Win!

OSCARS--The Switch to ABC

There's an alternative to Ryan Seacrest! And it's on ABC--and Kristin Chenowith is interviewing Amanda Seyfried and doing a MUCH better job getting Amanda Seyfried to say anything. There is also a gimmick, an "Oscar Mystery" with clues and making people guess.

Quvanzhane Wallis getting her first red carpet interview, and is at least as good as Seyfried is. And Wallis is only 9 and ridiculously poised. She's wearing an age appropriate cobalt blue dress.

A salute to movie fashions! Since we keep asking the stars who they are wearing, this makes sense. In fact, it's kins of neat as they talk about what the fashions SAY about the characters.

JLaw and KChen. The second question is "How tall are you?" KChen is 4'11", JLaw says she's 5'8", but wearing "9 inch heels." And they are bonding over watching "Dance Moms." This is cute.

Zoe Saldana--we aren't asking who she is wearing? I lover the hem, love the belt, love the earrings. No so fond of the appliqué and the bow as well.  There is just a little too much going on in the top half of that dress.

ABC commercial break! So we switch channels again!

Over on E!, Anne Hathaway showing some side boob, and her hair is growing out beautifully. She's reaqlly working it. It's a nice pink Prada with a very interesting back.

Naomi Watts in a sparkly Armani Prive that is rather sci-fi--cutout neckline unlike anything ever seen on the Oscars red carpet. She's lovely, I loved her so much in Mullholland Drive, but Liev Schriber on her arm is the BEST accessory.

Charlize Theron--in white Dior Courture, buzzed for "Fury Road" and she's following Anne Hathaway in the "how to rock the new cut" reality show. I'm reminded of a dress Kate Hudson wore last year, I think--white sculptural fabrick like ice cream.

OSCARS!!--Red Carpet part Deux

During this commercial break, I am making a confession. The plan was for pizza and wine and serious couch surfing. HOWEVER--I am out of wine, so I decided to substitute rum-and-diet-pepsi. Then I punted on the pizza, because the one I like best requires actually leaving the apartment and driving to pick it up. Yes, outside the delivery area sucks.

So to make a silk purse out of the sow's ear of my own laziness, I'm having "Life of (chicken pot) Pi(e)" and the Pepsi version of "Zero Dark Thirsty" (which should be Coke Zero, which I don't have, and dark rum, which I do.)

Back to the red carpet!

GJL and Sally Field nattering about JGL's inability to tie a bow tie, while CZJ and Michael Douglas are in the background--girlfriend is looking FIERCE and FABULOUS. She was pregnant when she was here for Chicago. Is this her first time back since then?

Dustin Hoffman and Sally Field hug delightfully, and JGL is totally star struck. Dustin is spared the ManiCam. Why?

Charlize Theron is rocking a seriously short haircut. Melissa McCarthy looks lovely and nice nice hair, but almost no visible jewels--not snark, given she's got the #1 movie of the week.

Jennifer Hudson looks great, but I don't like the bangs--it makes her look ridiculously generic.

Back to the B team (Ross and Kelly in the sky box) reprising Seyfried in Alexander McQueen--it's lovely, but it's getting overpowered by the carpet.

Sneak peak of Jessica Chastain, who is so talented an actress, and such a disappointment on the red carpet. Last years black and gold gown was fabulous, this year looks washed out and small.

OSCARS!!

I'm late to the red carpet, but I managed to catch Jacki Weaver standing over Daniel Radcliffe's shoulder, rubbing her teach to make sure there's no lipstick for her interview with Ryan "The Tool" Seacrest.

I predict this is the high point of the night.

Although Zoe Saldana's dress is architectural and fabulously understated.

Amy Adams and Amanda Seyfried look like the same person.

Octavia Spenser, looking awesome and amazing in an asymmetrical beaded and tulle-topped gown.

Is that a drawing of Bette Davis in an Edith Head dress in the background?

Kelly Osbourne--lose the purple hair. It's really not doing anything for you.

Amanda Seyfried's dress is the EXACT SAME color as Kelly's hair. Also, her eye shadow is the same color.

Split screen Amanda Seyfried and Jennifer Lawrence--again, two women, one look. Seyfried is also refusing to participate in the Seacrest Show--it's kind of obnoxious. Is there a "Big Showstopper Surprise" musical number that nobody knows about? Then answer the damn questions.

Sally Field in Red--Nice.

JLaw--now with Seacrest, and she totally towers over him. SHe's being charming, voluble, and looking creat in a white Dior, with an interesting find chain necklas that runs down her back. Love her classy hair, and the GIANT diamonds in the earrings.

Mani-Cam failure? That's a feature, not a bug!

Downton Abbey Season 3

Well, that was weird. Not quite as weird as season 2--no creepy Canadian "heirs" for example, but still really weirdly paced. It's the way that the major plot developments get introduced and resolved in minutes, while the small things get drawn out to such a degree that the whole season feels out of balance.

For example--

And for gods' sakes, there will be spoilers, so only read this if you are prepared to discuss endings!

For example--

We spent two years worth of episodes on the Matthew and Mary story line. TWO YEARS. And they get married in the first hour, and the honeymoon takes place in the gap between episodes. Meanwhile, Anna and Bates (who are really hopelessly boring) take a picnic and walk the garden paths and look at each other with an appalling amount of schmoopiness. I'm glad they are together, I'm glad they are happy, but who cares if Anna knows how to reel? Who really wants to watch her take lessons from Rose? It's not dramatic, the payoff is non-existent, and it's hopelessly dull.

Or the restructuring of Downton Abbey and the elevation of Branson the Estate Agent. We had to sit through Lord Grantham being a big whiny baby about making any changes to the farms and the estate, we had to listen to him flirt with Ponzi schemes as a better solution than adopting efficient farming practices, we had to put up with his whinging about "but is it fair to the tenant farmers" far too many times...

...and suddenly it's all be done already, the entire business plan for Downton has apparently be created, adopted, and successful, to the point where Shrimpy simply says "If only we had restructured like Downton, then I could have saved Duneagle. . . ." What? In a single year? A farm-based economy has, within a single calendar year, been entirely restructured and the economic benefits became sufficiently apparent by mid summer? How is that even possible?

It's not. It's like Fellowes has an attention problem--he seems to believe that he needs to have major plot developments, but he's really not interested in them. What he is interested in are the details of how a life like the Downton's is actually lived. That's why the question of Thomas and his sexuality plays out across several/many/most episodes, ending in the weirdly anti-climactic scene where Jimmy confronts him and in two sentences they agree they can be friends, no problem.

Similarly, the Big Plot Twist at the end of the season. It's only a Big Plot Twist if you hadn't seen the many many articles about Dan Stevens' decision not to sign on for another season. Or if you didn't know he's been starring on Broadway with Jessica Chastain for the last several months. Of course Matthew had to be killed off. But killed off in the Fellowes Fashion (TM), where there is really no emotional arc or resolution. Nope--he gets run off the road, and the season ends with nobody learning about it. What do you bet that next season is at least another year later, and everybody is over him too?

BUT! He couldn't die without leaving behind a male heir, because as much as Fellowes hates change, he hates chaos more. That's why Thomas had to not be dismissed, despite everything--because he's part of the furnishing of the plot by now. He had to come back as a servant, even after his war service, and his attempt at entrepreneur status, because Downton without Thomas is apparently unthinkable. It's why Branson is staying with his aristocratic in-laws instead of setting up his own life, but he remains an employee so they don't have to call him "Tom."

I really wish Fellows would recognize that he really doesn't do melodrama very well, and just drop it. It's the small details--what does a Gillies Ball look like? How do Scottish people wake up in the morning? (To a piper treading across the bridge over the dry moat, apparently.) What is it about Rose's dress that is so scandalous, and what did the Dowager wear to her first ball?

At least Lord Grantham apologized for his opposition to Matthew, so perhaps he can stop being such a whiner and idiot. Plus, he did it just in time so Matthew can die without anybody thinking he was anything less than perfect. And Lady Mary is now free to "inherit" as regent to her son. Too bad she's such a nasty woman too. Matthew at least got to die without getting tired of her snobby, bitchy comments about Edith and Michael. So I guess it was a win-win?

There have been internet commenters who feel that Dan Stevens should have remained with Downton, either because Matthew was their favorite character, or because they feel he is not "good enough" for a different career path. Frankly, as boring as Matthew's character arc has been this season, and as uneven a writer as Fellowes has shown himself to be, I have a lot of sympathy for someone who wants to do something different for a change. I wish him luck.

Shackleton's Journal--Day 27

Honestly, things are so hard while one-legged and on crutches that it feels like a frigging expedition around here. "Today, the team rested, for tomorrow we attempt the Changing of the Sheets on the Bed."

I mean, when you have only one leg and both your hands are needed for the crutches, how do you get the sheets off a bed, ferry them to the washing machine without tripping on them, and then get them back onto the bed? Much hopping, and I wound those sheets around me like a Bedouin in a sandstorm. Literally, I had them around my neck and looping over my shoulders and I even carried the pillowcases in the hollows made by the swathing.

"Day 25--despite the cold temperatures and my continued disability, it was clear we had to attempt to change the sheets, as the sled dogs were beginning to complain of the odor.  After we assembled the materials, we made a cautious foray to the laundering area. No casualties were sustained. Once the sheets were returned to the camp, we had a secondary expedition to the showers, so as to retain the fresh laundry smell."

A shower is kind of tricky too, what with getting over the lip of the tub without standing on the injured leg. Once in, there is no rail, and balancing on one foot while washing is harder than yoga. Then the whole tub is slippery, so getting out again involves a hand towel to sit on while drying off and strapping the boot back on.

It's hard, but a cast would only be worse, because you can take the boot off.

"Our next expedition will be tomorrow--a long crutch hike to the mail box! We may need to bring suppllies."

The Saga of the Broken Ankle

It is very important to me that this is a story of me being a Good Person and Helpful Motorist, because then I don't feel like such a dork for breaking my ankle.

Back around December 13th, we had quite a snowfall, and the sheer amount of the damn stuff coupled with some crappy weather meant that streets were not cleared in anything like the manner in which we have become accustomed. So that four days later (FOUR DAYS!) traffic was still hopelessly slow due to icy conditions. At about 5:30, I was stuck at an intersection behind two cars that couldn't make it through due to the ice. The traffic lights kept cycling, and they weren't moving because whatever motion they had got stopped by the lights turning red.

The guy in the stuck car next to mine hopped out to push the car in front of me, and he couldn't do it alone. So, subject as I am to peer pressure, I got out of my car and went to help. We got that car moved safely through the intersection, and I walked back to my car.

Whereupon I stepped on an icy patch, my ankle gave way and I ended up on my butt in the dark and the cold, surrounded by skidding traffic. I hopped up with immediate big pain in my right ankle and right wrist, but dammit, I had to get my kid to a doctor's appointment, so I carefully avoided getting my car stuck at the spot I just pushed somebody out of, and I drove myself to that appointment, and then drove myself home.

I didn't take off my boots until I made it all the way to my own couch, because it HURT! I iced it and elevated it and had to miss my last class of the semester. And much of it got better, but part of it didn't. Turns out that, yes, it was broken, which I found out a full 7 days after the accident.

(I am prepared to deliver a rant about the bad medical care I got when I went to the doctor, but I'll save that for later.)

I finally saw an orthopedist who put me in a boot, stuck me on crutches, and said "that's a weight bearing bone you broke. Stay off it and come back in two weeks."

Which in some ways is a relief, because before I got the crutches, I was crawling around on my hands and knees--at least this way I was upright and could even go out in public! Sort of--crutches are not something one can be agile and graceful with right away. Furthermore, you don't really think about how much you rely on having both your feet and your hands available to do stuff. Because make no mistake--when you are on crutches, you don't have hands. And so you can't carry stuff around--like laundry. You can't push a grocery cart--but that doesn't matter because with a broken right ankle, you aren't driving anyway.

So that's the background for why I am housebound mostly, and why things are so hard to actually accomplish. The good news is that my ankle seems to be healing, there's only a slight misalignment in the healing, which couldn't be improved by surgery so I've dodged that. I go back in 10 days, and gods willing I'll be allowed to put some weight on in, and maybe even drive.

The Big Lebowski, A Review

Honestly, this?

This is the huge pop cultural touchstone of the last decade and a half?

Seriously?

I mean, it's a clever inversion of Raymond Chandler's The Big Sleep, and I totally made that call on my own recognizance. Chaos explodes all around The Dude, and he just keeps chugging along. He does get entirely freaked out, he gets panicky, he gets overwhelmed, but he keeps going. Even with a marmot in his bathtub.

Sure, it's clever, it's got some odd dream sequences and stuff, and Julianne Moore is a sport, but why this one? I can't tell you.

The plot is straight out of a number of Hitchcock films and parodies. The Dude, Jeff Lebowski, gets attacked in his home by a couple of thugs who are looking for some money and pee on his rug as a message. The Dude is bummed, because "that rug really tied the room together." He decides to call on the other Jeff Lebowski--the Big Lebowski--a crippled millionaire with a trophy wife and an unctious personal assistant played by Philip Seymour Hoffman (who is brilliant). Since the thugs were looking for payment owed by this Lebowski's trophy wife, the Dude figures he should replace the rug.

I get it--it's a karmic debt that balances the universe.

But there are wheels within wheels, and soon the Big Lebowski's trophy wife has been kidnapped, and he decides to hire the Dude to carry the ransom, in case he can identify the criminals as the ones who attacked him earlier. But Dude's bowling pal Walter (John Goodman) wants to keep the ransom themselves and prepares a dummy package full of his own (dirty) underwear.

People start coming after the Dude, looking for the money. He gets beaten up, drugged, seduced, beaten up again, and a marmot gets dropped into his bath. He drinks a lot of White Russians--which he calls "Caucasians" and he wanders around in pajama pants and jelly sandals. In the end, there was never any money because even the Big Lebowski was working a con. Dude ends up back at the bowling alley, and Sam Elliot delivers a folksy closing monolog which is the biggest tonal misstep of the whole movie. Should have been cut.

But--it was fine. The Cohens made an odd little movie with a lot of name stars and a generally obnoxious attitude toward women. The plot is convoluted and there's a lot of damage inflicted on a couple of cars. Overall, I didn't hate it, but it's no Raising Arizona. Not even an Oh Brother Where Art Thou which I liked much better.

Back to Blogging

Back in school, yadda yadda, no time to blog, too busy writing papers.

TL;DR--we're back!

Taa daa!

Silver Linings Playbook, A Review

Just saw this movie as a "special screening" with the writer of the novel in attendance for a post-flick Q&A. Really a very good film, and worth seeing.

Bradley Cooper plays Pat Solitano, a Philly man who is just being released from a mental hospital as the movie opens. He's been in for 8 months as a plea bargain for "an incident"--he came home early from work one day to find his wife in the shower with another man, and nearly beat the man to death. He's signed out by his mother AMA--against medical advice, and brought back to his parent's house.

Pat's dad is Robert DeNiro, a man who has his own issues with OCD and anger management. Dad has lost his job and is making money by running bets on Eagles football games. The family dynamic among the three of them is toxic and extremely believable--they are all trying to be heard over each other, all desperate to be understood, to connect, and they set each other off in the worst ways.

Pat's wife has distanced herself over the 8 months of the hospital stay, sold the house, and gotten a restraining order against her husband. Pat is convinced that he can pull himself back together, get healthy, get his job back, and reconcile with his wife. Then he meets Tiffany, the sister-in-law of his best friend.

Tiffany has her own issues--she's a very young widow of a cop, who acted out her grief by inappropriate sexual activity. She's living in a renovated garage behind her own parents' house, and she and Pat have a prickly relationship based on their inappropriate responses to their own wounds.

They are attracted, but damaged, and married to other people--more or less. In the end, Tiffany agrees to pass a letter to Pat's wife (which would violate the restraining order) but Pat has to agree to be her partner in a dance competition. Meanwhile, Pat's dad is trying to make enough money from bookmaking to open a restaurant, and he's convinced that if Pat will watch the games with him, the Eagles will win.

The final showdown happens after Dad makes an incredibly ill-considered bet and then blames Pat and his dancing with Tiffany as the cause of the Eagle's loss. (Like I said, Dad has mental problems too.) There is a "double or nothing parlay"--if the Eagles win against the Cowboys on December 28 and Pat and Tiffany score a 5/10 points in their dance competition, the restaurant dream will be saved.

Things get worse--Pat figures out that Tiffany wrote the letter supposedly from his wife, the wife shows up at the dance competition so Tiffany gets drunk, the competition is professional and the grading is really really hard--how is this going to work out?

There is a bit of Too Much Coincidence--the Eagles win their football game exactly as Tiffany and Pat are called to dance, the final score is exactly a 5, Pat's wife actually shows up and they manage to talk without any hostility at all, the bet itself is nonsensical--but it doesn't really matter. I was caught up and deeply engaged. Things end up happily, and the movie ends with all the characters at Mom and Dad's house to watch the Eagles in the playoffs.

I have never been a Bradley Cooper fan--he just is too fratty for my taste. I've never thought he was quite as handsome as he seemed to think he was, he was just a bit too smirky for my taste. Here, he is manic, he is uncontrolled, he is abashed, he is ineffectual, he is inappropriate, but he is sincere. There is nary a smirk in the entire movie.

As Tiffany, Jennifer Lawrence is brittle and damaged and fiesty and challenging and amazing. She is also so beautifully shot--all creamy skin and tilted cheekbones and juicy curves--she might as well be sculpted from ice cream.

Matthew Quick wrote the novel that David O. Russell adapted for the screenplay, and his story was quite inspirational in a wonderfully way. A high school teacher for 7 years, he was miserable. So with his wife he quit his job, sold the house, and moved to Massachusetts to live with his in-laws and spend the next three years in the basement trying to be a writer. "And I never in a million years imagined that the Weinstein Company would fly me around the country to talk to audiences about a movie." He talked about the way that writing a book is such a solitary endeavor and felt self-indulgent to do.

But then the actor who plays Bradley Cooper's therapist wrote him a letter. "And this guy has starred in like 400 Bollywood films, but he told me 'My dream has always been to work with Robert DeNiro.'" THAT is something Quick never imagined while writing in his in-laws' basement--that he would make somebody else's dream come true.

Definitely worth seeing.

Oswin Speculation--Doctor Who Redux

So the surprise introduction of Jenna-Lousie Coleman as Oswin Oswald in the series premiere Asylum of the Daleks raises the question: "How does a dead Dalek girl end up being the Doctor's companion?"

Oops.

SPOILERS!



Anyway--when Jenna=Louise Coleman was introduced to us as the Companion to follow the Ponds, we were told she would be introduced in the Christmas episode, and her character would be named "Clara Oswald." There is also a promise of something "Victorian."

Obviously, that was not entirely true. But how much is true and how much is misdirection, and how do we get a Companion after she's been assimilated and then blown up along with the entire planet?

So I'm going to call it here. Here's my prediction, based on almost nothing other than what I have laid out above. I have no inside information, I have no particular insight, nor do I have any record of guessing correctly about anything. Ever. At any time.

My Prediction:

The Christmas episode will be an inversion of "The Nutcracker" (in which the protagonist is traditionally either "Clara" or "Marie.") It will be Victorian (the high tide mark for Christmas traditions) and Clara Oswald will be from the past--an ancestor of Oswin, much like Eve Myles played her Torchwood character's own great-great-grandmother in the Doctor Who episode The Unquiet Dead. My guess is that the Doctor will take the role of the Nutcracker, will take Clara to a sci-fi version of the Land of the Sugar Plum fairy, and she will come with him and he will have to NEVER tell her about her many generations removed descendant Oswald--but he will hint that he knows she is brave and smart and strong, because he has seen her DNA in the future.

Now I just have to remember to come back here at the end of the year/series and see how well I did!

Doctor Who 7.1--Asylum of the Daleks

Whew! That was fun!

So! Asylum of the Daleks! Let's dig in, shall we?

Synopsis: Doctor meets with shady ginger lady who claims her daughter is trapped in a Dalek prison camp and she's been told the Doctor might be able to help. He's suspicious--how did she escape? No one escapes Dalek prisons. And they are meeting on Skaro, the Dalek home planet, which appears to have been rendered uninhabitable even by creatures hermetically sealed into tuna tins. (Sure, they are high tech tuna tins, but tins nonetheless). Shady ginger lady grows an eyestalk out of her forehead, and "the Doctor is acquired."

Amy Pond is on a high fashion shoot, interrupted by the appearance of her husband ("I don't have a husband!" she insists--wait. What?) with divorce papers for her to sign. We can see her sign "Williams." Rory leaves, and Amy's make-up assistant grows a blue eyestalk out of her forehead--"Amelia Pond is acquired!"

Rory's busdriver also has a blue light on his forehead--do you suppose the Daleks have replace all the London busdrivers?

Our brave trio reunites on a Dalek spaceship, which turns out to house the "Parliament of the Daleks." You can call it a parliament, I call it "Too Many Daleks."

This is quite a feat Moffat has pulled off. This may be more Daleks than even Russell T. Davies had ever assembled during his running of the series, and I don't think there was every a plot difficulty that Rusty didn't think could be solved by throwing more Daleks at it.

The Doctor screws his eyes closed, waiting for the fatal blast, but once again the Daleks have a surprise and a plan (cf. Victory of the Daleks from series 5): "You will save us" they say. They have an asylum, a planet where they dump the most damaged and ungovernable Daleks. The Daleks that all the other Daleks are scared of--that's how damaged they are. The Doctor asks "Why don't you just kill them?" Reasonable questions--Daleks kill everything. Daleks were prepared to eradicate reality just to get rid of non-Dalek lifeforms--what's to stop them from killing these criminal Daleks?

The answer comes out of the kind of twisted love that one would expect from this species--there is a terrible beauty in such hatred, and they will not destroy such a thing of beauty. And here the Doctor thought the Daleks couldn't possibly have found a new way to make him sick: to confuse hatred with beauty. "Perhaps that is why we are unable to kill you, Doctor." Oh snap! You kids, you're the Sam and Diane of the time vortex--just admit it.

Anyway, the ostensible plan is to launch the Doctor and requisite companions to the planet and lower the impenetrable force field so the mothership can explode the planet because there is someone (or something) down there who keeps playing Carmen at them and they don't like it. Should we nitpick the logical inconsistencies? How did something land on the planet through the impenetrable nano-techbabble-shield, and why (if it is impenetrable) do they think this thing could come back out? And how do they expect to get Doctor and Ponds through this impenetrable shield? And if it can only be turned off from the inside, how did it get turned on in the first instance?

No, let's just assume this was Moffat's hat tip to the dodgy science that is one of the hallmarks of this series, and move on. He's working in the venerable tradition of nearly half a century: don't stop to think, just keep running.

Screaming and falling, coming to in snow, meeting a guy in a white snowsuit who helps them look for Rory, until he and all his dessicated crew grow forehead eyestalks; seemingly dead Daleks of all shapes coming back to life, and "Souffle Girl"--Jenna-Louise Coleman in a well kept surprise appearance months before she was expected as the sole surviving member of the spaceship crash, Oswin. Oswin is a brilliant hacker who has tapped into the Dalek systems and guides Doctor and Ponds to safety, and asks to be rescued. Of course, she can't be. She wasn't just turned into a human puppet/zombie Dalek--she was brilliant so she got the full conversion. She is the maddest of the mad Daleks, kept in a solitary confinement even within the asylum, insisting on her own humanity and resisting the Dalek programming.

In a last ditch effort, she accesses the Dalek central control pathway and wipes all memories of the Doctor. She sends him to join the Ponds on the transporter deck and lowers the impenetrable shield, assuring the destruction of the planet. The Doctor transports the three of them inside the TARDIS back on the mother ship, and pops out to gloat. But wait! The Daleks don't recognize him. "It's me! The Doctor!" No information on any such being in their banks. No Doctor, no "Predator," no "Oncoming Storm." Oswin wiped all the Dalek memories. Epic series reboot for the win!

The Awesome:

• Forehead eyestalks. Creepy!
• "How much trouble are we in, Mr. Pond? On a scale of one to ten? [Beat] Eleven." I love when Eleven calls himself out like that!
• Zombie skeleton Daleks reminded me of the victims from Silence in the Library/Forest of the Dead
• Oswin's dress has to be a call back to Lt. Uhura's uniform from Star Trek: TOS. Where else would that asymmetrical neckline have come from?
• Oswin.  
• "Making souffles? At the Daleks?"
• Love the newest most empathetic view of Daleks ever--Amy sees them as just people, including a little girl pirouetting in a pink tutu and tiara. At first, I thought these were people from her past--the assistant from the photo shoot, for example, or herself when she was still Little Amelia. Daleks have inner lives maybe? They can be more than just implacable Bad Guys?
• Amy's anger and hurt erupting in her declaration "I didn't kick you out. I gave you up." Ponds 4 evah!
• Daleks with their Oswin amnesia: "Doctor who? Doctor who? DOCTOR WHO?"

The Questionable:

• Too many Daleks. Honestly, large numbers of Daleks are not necessarily scary if they are all refusing to attack. One homocidal Dalek is scarier than however many thousands of inert ones.
• Why do Daleks have a parliament? Do they debate whether or not to exterminate? Is there a Loyal Opposition that has been elected on a platform on No Extermination? What are the political issues in Dalek life anyway?
• Have Daleks abandoned their superiority and adopted Cybermen tactics of assimilation? Oswin's "conversion" looked a lot like Craig Owen fighting off his conversion in Closing Time last season. (I love you, Moffat, but keep your villains straight, okay? 
• Also, Steven Moffat? I love you. I love what you are doing with Who, as well as Sherlock and even Jekyll. But you need to drop a couple of writing tics. "Wibbly wobbly timey wimey" was brilliant, but let it go. Seeing both "humany wumany" in The Doctor, the Widow and the Wardrobe right before the broadcast of Asylum where you inserted "explode-y wode-y"--you are diluting the brilliance of the first outing. Stop using it. It's not cute, and it's retroactively degrading the brilliance of Blink. Don't do that.

Fun things to notice:

• All the Daleks in the Parliament are the same make/model--gold and sleek--none of controversial iDaleks from Victory of the Daleks apparently were electable.
• The pre-airing promise that the episode would show "every Dalek from every era. EVER." is apparently technically met in the various Daleks kept in the asylum. But since most of them are basically stage dressing, there isn't really any kind of debate over which one is the *best* Dalek, which I would have enjoyed seeing played out. But this is why we have DVRs and the ability to freeze images. (But I think I spotted a camo painted WWII era one from Victory of the Daleks in the Intensive Care sequence.)
• Oswin is definitely giving off The Girl Who Waited vibes. Which is great--I really liked The Girl Who Waited. 
• Is Oswin's designation of Rory as "The Nose" and the Doctor as "The Chin" a payback to the time in The Impossible Astronaut when he called his companions "The Nose" (Rory), "Legs" (Amy) and "Mrs. Robinson" (River Song)? Now they all have "code names."

Finally--did anybody see this? My new favorite game is now "Dalek Bingo."

 

Farewell, My Queen (Les Adieux a la Reine), A Review

Of course you go to see this movie to see Versailles. Add in the ineffably gorgeous Diane Kruger as Marie Antoinette and a Rotten Tomatoes rating of 90% and it's a no-brainer. So I went to see it yesterday. And it's good. . .enough. I can recommend it, but I have some qualms about the story it is telling.

In brief, the movie covers three days after the storming of the Bastille (July 14-18, 1789) from the perspective of a minor member of the staff at the royal palace. Sidonie Laborde is the Queen's Reader, summoned on occasions to read books and plays at the queen's whim. She has unparalleled intimacy when closeted with the queen, but is only called now and again.  Then the French Revolution begins in earnest, with the storming of the Bastille, and the hundreds of people whose lives are at stake are caught with no reliable sources of information, no way to assess what is happening, and no way to protect themselves. It's a view of the privileged life of Versailles as a mixed bag of pros and cons. Sure, it's better than being poor and starving in the countryside, but it's an incredibly circumscribed and powerless life for most of the people who live there.

The first day shows a "typical" day at Versailles--Sidonie is called to read to Marie Antoinette, who is sleeping at Petit Trianon, her get-away on the grounds of the palace. Sidonie is hurried to the queen's bedroom, berated for her delay and chastised for her choice of material by the lady in waiting--only to be greeted by the queen with a bright smile and a compliment on how quickly she has arrived. Sidonie offers the Austrian sermon recommended by the lady in waiting (the funeral oration for Marie Theresa, who I believe is the queen's mother). Marie Antoinette pouts that it's too boring. Eventually Sidonie offers her own choice (which had been roundly discredited by the lady in waiting) and MA says while she likes that, a play would be better. We next see the queen (still in her nightgown, gorgeously disarrayed around her creamy shoulders) cuddled up to trade lines with Sidonie. However, MA is quickly distracted with ideas for a new dress design, fashion papers are called for, and eventually Sidonie is no longer on the queen's radar in the least. She is hustled out of the building and sent back to her quarters.

Given the prosaic nature of Sidonie's daily life, being on contact with the queen must have been a heady rush, like stumbling into a fairy tale. The queen even takes it upon herself to offer rosewood water to soothe Sidonie's mosquito bites, rubbing the balm into the sores herself, describing Sidonie's arms as "perfectly pudgy." How boring to go back to her small life, and small gossip, and rats and bugs and dark rooms. The next morning, however, there is electrifying news--the king was awakened at 2 a.m. and no one knows why. Could it be that he was sick? No, the cousin who sleeps at the foot of the king's bed has let it be known that it was not illness, it was a messenger. Could it be--? Perhaps it was--? The information trickles so slowly down to Sidonie's level, through different levels of rank and privilege, with cautions of secrecy and threats if the information leaks. Sidonie trades a chore (embroidering a dahlia for the queen) for information, and then gets further confirmation from the palace librarian.

But this only raises further questions: are the rebels headed to the palace? Are we safe? Will the royal family flee? Is this a time to worry about taking care of yourself, or is it best to put your trust in the king and cabinet? If you flee, will you be able to return or will it be viewed as a traitorous abandonment?  Several nights are passed with courtiers and servants wandering the halls holding candles and seeking information and counsel. What to do? What will happen? Some choose to flee under cover of night; one lady steals from the queen's luggage as she packs, believing that the monarchy has now fallen. One woman hangs herself to escape the future.

Sidonie declares that she will stay with the queen--and finds herself used as bait by the queen. The Duchess de Polignac must escape, and Sidonie is ordered by the queen to dress as the Duchess and sacrifice herself if the coach is stopped. The duke and duchess are disguised as a maid and valet, and Sidonie is to take the fall if they are detained. Her devotion to the queen means nothing compared to the queen's devotion to her favorite. The scene where she is dressed in Polignac's dress is loaded with meaning--the dress will fit, because their bodies are nearly identical. The movie had previously shown us the duchess's nude, sleeping body, now we see Sidonie's, which is just as lovely, just as young and vital, and the cold uncaring expression in the queen's eyes says more about class privilege and resentment than the rest of the movie could. Sidonie is a lovely, as young, as vulnerable, as worthy of love as the duchess, and the queen does not--can not--see it because Sidonie is not a "real" person, only a pawn to secure the duchess's safety.

The escape is set in motion, and the carriage is stopped, but Sidonie successfully negotiates the encounter and they travel on to Switzerland and freedom--but Sidonie was the queen's reader. Who will she be now?

I loved seeing Versailles inhabited and getting glimpses of how the entire society functioned--we saw the entire hierarchy, from the king down to the rats in the garden. You saw how power concentrated in the absolute monarchs made everyone else powerless--a throwaway line about one aristocrat who lived in a "rat hole" when he had a beautiful chateau in the country, all for the "chance to see the king pass in the Hall of Mirrors twice a week." Sidonie and her friends are more or less prisoners of their rooms, since they need to be found when called for. So many people exist as merely cogs in the machine that is royal service--such a reckless waste of human talent and agency--in the service of lives of the king and queen that they themselves don't seem to enjoy either. It's just the way things are--and so the promise/threat of the oncoming revolution is not all terrible, if it frees all these people from the tyranny of The Way Things Are Done.

The problem I have with this movie, however, is that is suffers from a weird sort of  "male gaze" problem. Ostensibly, this is the story of women--Marie Antoinette's attempts to save herself, her family, and her friends; Sidonie's awakening to the charms and horrors of royal privilege; the various paths taken by women under stress--the lady in waiting who steals the queen's clothing to finance herself, the woman who hangs herself to escape the coming revolution. The ways the various maids and female servants make lives for themselves--taking lovers, making marriages, exchanging information for favors. This is a story about women who are all in various ways and degrees powerless. When you run through the events of the movie, the men are generally seen at a distance, formal bodies in finery, but (with the exception of the palace librarian) not terribly relevant to these lives.

Yet, the women of this movie are oddly sexually performative, as though they are acting out a man's fantasy of how women would act in the absence of men, and it felt weirdly voyeuristic. Like it was the costume drama/historical classy version of  the peep-hole scene in Porky's. Marie Antoinette brings up the Duchess de Polignac with Sidonie with the very oddly phrased "Have you ever desired a woman?" Pause, pause, pause so the audience can imagine that MA is actually coming onto Sidonie and that Sidonie is sexually attracted to MA. Then she goes on with the next lines, including how much she is attracted to Polignac's youth. Of course (thanks Wikipedia!) the real Polignac was six years older than Marie Antoinette--so we have this counter-factual monologue about sexual desire--there is no subtext, no hint that MA might be speaking about some other form of attraction. No, it's straight up hetero-normative description of sexual desire, with the mostly unacknowledged "fact" that it's a woman delivering the lines.

Later, MA sends Sidonie to fetch Polignac, but the duchess has taken opium to sleep and cannot be waked. Sidonie walks into the bedroom and finds the duchess sleeping nude, her arms over her head, her bedclothes artfully disarrayed, looking like a version of The Naked Maja, only asleep. For no credible reason that I could see, other than sexual jealousy, Sidonie pulls down the sheet to reveal the duchess's entire body, and gazes at it. After a discreet amount of ogling, the duchess rolls over, so we get her ass as well. At one point, Polignac comes sashaying up to Marie Antoinette in the Hall of Mirrors, in front of the entire assembled population of the palace, looking every bit like she's parading on a catwalk. It's a weirdly modern gait--again, highly performative, and then the two of them gaze into each other's eyes and walk off with their arms around each other. The court gasps. No ambiguity here!

So it felt like there were these two different narratives going on in parallel: the one that I was interested in, which was the nature of life at Versailles and the way that privilege did not equate with power; and this sort of heated sexual fantasy about lesbianism, decadence, and corsets.

Apparently, there was a lot of resentment at the time around Polignac precisely because she was such a favorite, and there were whispers that her relationship with MA was sexual, although there is no proof. But this movie doesn't toy with ambiguity--it is all but declared that the two women were lovers, and that Sidonie's fascination with MA had to do with sexual longing, rather than the many many other elements that one could imagine. I mean, this young, poor servant finds her life periodically punctuated by close association with the Queen of fricking France--a woman of such power, beauty, and wealth that it must have seemed like magic. To reduce the complex relationships of a sophisticated society into just sex feels reductive.

Of course, the specter of Sophia Coppola's Marie Antoinette has to be addressed. Both were filmed on location at Versailles, both deal with the same historical characters, but they are very different movies. Farewell, My Queen is very claustrophobic, largely taking place in unadorned corridors, small rooms, poorly lighted locations. It's in many ways about the limits of absolute royal power, and what it takes to sustain and operate a system like Versailles. Coppola's movie focuses on the little girl inside the costume of Queen of France, striving to create sympathy for a very young woman thrust into a place that made no sense and where she was not accepted and so she tried to carve out some happiness for herself in the midst of the pomp and protocol of France. Farewell, My Queen really turns the story around to focus on the way these historical moments were experienced by those who really could only catch glimpses of it.

Worth seeing, very absorbing, but tonally a bit off-kilter. In French, with subtitles.

Photo credit: EW.com and Treasure for Your Pleasure

Things That I Like. Or, Things Are Different Than They Used to Be

So, back in the olden days, when the drinking age was only 19, it wasn't hard to be a wine snob. Really! All you had to do was say something snotty about California wines, be condescending about Boone's Farm ("Kool Aid for Sorority Girls" was a good place to start), and categorically refuse to drink anything that came with a screw top or in a box.

See? Easy peasy.

How things have changed.

Now, it's all about "California root stock saved the French wine industry" and "California wines beat French wines and are complex and subtle" and "screw tops are more environmentally friendly plus they do a better job of keeping air out of the bottle."

Plus--now box wines are no longer a joke.

There are lots of reasons, and some of them have to do with the fact that ALL the cool kids are blending varietals now in order to get a better wine, or a more consistent taste, or smoothing out the variations in grape production. But the best thing about box wine nowdays?

You can buy your own favorite kind of wine, and you never have to share it and you (almost) never have to throw it out. Look, even for an Evil person like me, it's hard to drink and entire bottle of wine by myself at one sitting. And as soon as you have to share a bottle, you have to negotiate what you are going to drink. Does the other person want red or white? Chardonnay or riesling? Oaked or unoaked? Sparkling or still? Viognier or Pinot Grigio? What if you don't finish the wine, even with two (or more) of you? What if you like your red wine chilled to Coca-cola temperatures?

With box wines, you get your choice, you don't have to share, and it keeps and keeps and keeps. You don't need to worry about oxidation, because the bag inside the box has been vacuum sealed and there's no risk. You don't end up with a $30+ bottle reduced to cooking wine--or vinegar!!--because you didn't come back the next morning and finish it up with breakfast.

Turns out that just about everything we thought we knew about wine was wrong.

Except for Boone's Farm. That's still Kool-Aid for sorority chicks.

Roman Holiday at the Guthrie Theater, a Review

So I apparently need to take a break from seeing plays at the Guthrie Theater, because I am not enjoying them. They are not able to overcome the killing deadness of my heart, I guess. So it's time to look elsewhere for theatrical experiences, because I am not getting much out of what is happening there.

I can certainly appreciate all the effort that went into mounting this, as well as the way the cast sang and danced its collective heart out. The costumes were exquisite, the sets were more technologically sophisticated that we are used to seeing on the proscenium stage. The play itself is a lovely portmanteau--take the screenplay from the Audrey Hepburn-Cary Grant souffle Roman Holiday and dress it up in some Cole Porter tunes, and hey presto! A brand new stage musical! One that trades on the current infatuation with 1960s style, that has glamor bred into its very DNA, that's familiar to the largely geriatric demographic that supports regional theater these days.

You can imagine a stereotypical Hollywood producer chomping on his enormous cigar and growling "It's going to be the biggest thing since nickel Havanas!"

But then the reality hits, and the souffle deflates. The story--is stale and rather static. It's An American in Paris set in Rome. It's original purpose was as a travelogue dressed up in couture and a love story. Filmed entirely on location, rather than on soundstage sets, it gave a post-WWII audience a chance to actually see a city that most of them would never travel to.

The story (of the play, which may or may not deviate from the movie, which I've never seen) is the unlikely meeting between Princess Anne, the heir of a unnamed kingdom, and Joe Bradley, an American newspaper reporter working in Rome, who secretly wants to be a songwriter. Anne, worn out from a grueling good will tour of European capitals, escapes one night from her bedroom and ends up in a trattoria where Joe is celebrating his upcoming appointment with a Broadway producer who wants to hear his songs. Anne has been given a sedative before her escape, and she falls asleep. Joe assumes she's drunk and takes her back to his apartment to sober her up with some espresso in hopes of finding out her address so he can return her to her home. She falls asleep before he can brew the coffee, and the next morning he recognizes her from the local newspaper reporting that "The Princess is ill and has canceled all her appearances." Smelling a real exclusive, he squires her around the city, visiting all the tourist locations she's never been able to see. By the end of the day, he's fallen for her charms and decided that he can't sell her out, but at least now he as a subject for his Broadway play.

Like I said, it's a travelogue, and a lot of production cash went into developing a diorama of an apartment for Joe--which actually looks more like a Spanish colonial style guesthouse at Chateau Marmont, but who's quibbling? It rolls forward on a silent platform and then retreats so the scrim can drop. It's quite charming, like a little dollhouse for a Daddy doll who wears a suit, tie, and hat, and a Mommy doll in a crinoline skirt and shirtwaist. Which is to say, it's a lot of twee that nearly overwhelms the actors. There is a trompe d'oeil approximation of the Trevi Fountain which rises up from below the stage, and really fails to look like more than the two dimensional object that it is. From straight on, the tricked out shadows and lights are effective enough, but it so thoroughly fails to fill the three dimensional space that a fountain should command that it really fails to be remotely convincing that this is any place special.

The stage flat manages to approximate the central figure in its niche, but misses all the statuary in front and further fails to even hint at the substantial water basin in front. (Photo from here.) Of course, I suspect the actual fountain is larger than the entire proscenium stage, but the problem is--it's just unimpressive as stagecraft. In the age of Google Street View and image searches and inexpensive trans-Atlantic air fares--this story really doesn't have a reason to exist unless the characters get pumped up, or the conflict becomes more meaningful, or something.

Thus the justification for the Cole Porter tunes. Because musical romance would elevate the travelogue into something transcendent. And you would think Cole Porter would be up to the task. You would be wrong.

Maybe it was the musical choices--most of them were what I would characterize as C-list songs. "Experiment"? "I'm Giving A Ball Tonight"? Have you even heard of most of these? I can answer that for you, and the answer is "no." There is good reason for that. They are fine, workmanlike songs, but not the kind of unforgettable numbers that abound in a show like Anything Goes. At least, not for the first three-quarters of the show. By the last half of the last act we get "Everytime We Say Goodbye," "Just One of Those Things," and "Night and Day," but by then it is far far too late, and a couple of good songs can't save the production.

Maybe the songs are better than I could tell from their performance, but there was such a heavy reliance on the Porteresque forced rhymes that midway through "Experiment" I was wincing before the pun was delivered because they arrived with depressing regularity. And "I'm Giving A Ball Tonight" might have been a fine song, but it really didn't benefit from repeating its verse--it felt like padding. The relentlessly cheerful orchestration tended make all the songs sound the same (with a few exceptions, at the end of the show, see above re: too bloody late).

There were some lively dance numbers featuring a large ensemble, but by the end of the show, the "big, emotional numbers" tended to rely on the discredited "park and bark" model of staging. Poor Princess Anne--her character had very little to do by the end of the play except stand in one place and look with puppy dog eyes while Joe belted out yet another pun-laden tune. 

The best part of the production were the Great Broads, Michele Barber as the princess's aunt, and Christina Baldwin as Francesca, the spitfire Italian cabaret singer who was delightfully styled to the Sophia Loren archetype and who gave crackling energy and comic timing to an otherwise rather dour story.

So, is it worth seeing? If you don't have anything better to do, it's not horrible, although I was bored well before intermission, so I can't actually recommend it.

The larger problem is that I obviously need to seek out different cultural outlets, because I am not having any success with the tent-pole events that define current culture. It's just that I want to like this stuff. I really want to go to the mainstream plays, the blockbuster movies, the popular television shows and I really want to like them. I want the built in cultural conversation that attends things that are popular, and at least that stuff is easy to find. That stuff comes with its own communities of affinity who discuss and evaluate and lovingly parody and mash-up and play with these properties. But because I don't enjoy Roman Holiday, or its equivalent, I end up bitter and disappointed and I don't get to participate in the fandom conversation anyway.

So my goal is obviously to search the less central pop cultural events and try to crack open that black heart that way.