Just over a week ago I wrote about a week in prospect that would take in two plays and two eagerly anticipated films. Did it live up to its cultural and entertainment potential?
I've already written about Bright Star which was certainly the highlight but there was much else to be enjoyed.
The play's writer Pedro Calderon de la Barca was sort of a Spanish Shakespeare and was writing at a time when Spain's golden age of discovery and the wealth and culture it brought with it had be frittered away.
Life is a Dream captures that feeling of having had something so good it was like a dream. It tells the story of Prince Seigusmundo (West) who is secretly imprisoned at birth by his father after hearing a prophesy that he'll be a tyrant. Grown up, his father releases him as a test of his character but having had a closeted life he behaves badly and is taken back to prison having been convinced his time of freedom was in fact a dream.
His existence now known of by the people of his father's kingdom he is broken out of prison and embarks on getting what is rightfully his but this time in constant fear that he is living a dream and is therefore determined to behave better.
It is both comedic and philosophical something some of my fellow theatre-goers had problems but I think the two are inextricably linked.
West put in a stirling performance and I've now ordered first series of The Wire by way of a contrast.
It was an enjoyable play, easy to follow with the language updated in its translation and entertaining enough that the two and half hours flew by.
Next up was The Habit of Art a new Alan Bennett play at the National Theatre. And what a contrast.
It is a play about a play about a fictitious meeting between poet W H Auden and composer Benjamin Britten. On one level it is about two talented men reflecting on their careers at a time when their creativity is dwindling.
On another it is a behind the scenes expose of theatre life: the ego's, the tantrums and again the creative process.
It was very funny with some typically brilliant Bennett one-liners, none of which I can remember. Richard Griffiths as the dial-a-rent-boy loving Auden commands the stage and sparks off the wonderful Frances de la Tour who plays the production manager.
A highly amusing evening all round.
It you try and explain it, it sounds ridiculous: Psychic spies.
The cast is formidable with Jeff Bridges, George Clooney, Ewan McGregor and Kevin Spacey all doing wonderful turns at comedy something which is refreshing to see.
I know it's had mixed reviews but I think it worked really well and perfect Sunday afternoon silliness.
Oh and you get to see McGregor and Clooney walking away from the camera with their bums hanging out of hospital gowns. Perfect.
This is what happens.
I'm going to get the mail and I hear or think I hear "Magnet & Steel" coming out of a passing car.
And then the song is stuck in my head.
And then I remember that the song is prominently featured in the movie Boogie Nights.
So I pop in the disc and watch the movie. Cuz, hey, what else am I going to do today?
So I finish the movie and I remember that the directors audio commentary is maybe the best audio commentaries every recorded.
So I watch / listen to that.
Then I say, hey, I'm still not doing anything and have some time to kill so I'm just gonna go ahead and watch the other commentary track featuring many of the actors in which Marky Mark is drunk and discusses having broken his penis (not the prosthetic in the film but the real thing.)
So I watched/listened to that.
And that is how I ended up watching a very long movie three times today because I may or may not have heard a song coming out of someones car.
(On top of that I watched One Flew Over The Cucukoo's Nest. Which damaged me for life when I read the book and saw the movie as a early teenager.)
1) Because one of the first things he talks about in his Boogie Nights commentary is how much he learned from listening to audio commentaries on LaserDiscs.
2) He's really insightful as to the craft of movie making
3) I would love to hear him discuss the making of Punch Drunk Love, what the writing process was and the score of the film and how brilliant Adam Sandler is in it.
4) I'd also love to hear him discuss, at length, There Will Be Blood.
When Michelle & I went to the Outer Banks of NC in September, we stopped by a really nice store called Sandy Bay Gallery. After making our jewelry purchases and chatting with the owner, we walked back outside and stopped to admire the hippo pottery. But oh look! Hippo Mouth has a resident!
Is that the blurpiest little frog ever? The shop owner saw us looking and came out and said he lives in there, and that sometimes there is another one that hangs out close by. But before I could get more photos inside the hippo, she coaxed him out onto the wall:
and that is about half of my vacation photos right there....
- 20:58 Am watching X Factor half an hour behind so I can fast forward through the crap bits. Will catch up v. quickly no doubt. #
- 14:43 Time for a bit of george and ewan. #
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Slightly disturbed by what appears to be Prince Harry and also Daniel Radcliffe included among these. Do you think there is something subliminal going on which makes certain faces stand out the most? Mine was Jake Gyllenhaal.
- 22:06 Blubbed all the way through Bright Star. Walked past Edgar Wright on way to Leicester Square. #
- 22:10 @adders Hope you got to Guildford OK and had a nice dinner. #
- 22:43 Off to bed. Exhausted by all the excitement #
- 08:44 Right, Bright Star blog post written, pancakes for breakfast I think. #
- 17:30 Good Bye Lenin! is on BBC 4 tonight. It's a fab film, you should watch it. #
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Woke up this morning to bright blue skies so I just had to make the most of it. I've been meaning to try and take some nice Autumnal shots so I walked up to Green Park to see what there was by way of subject matter.
Just a few of my favourites the rest are on Flickr
Leicester Square reflection, originally uploaded by Rev Stan.
I'll always remember taking this picture. Not because of the picture itself - Leicester Square after a heavy, Autumnal downpour - but because of what happened leading up to taking it.
I'd just cried my way through Bright Star at the Curzon and was on my way to the bus stop, hat pulled down low to try and cover my face, trying to compose myself and I passed Edgar Wright in the street and then I came upon this scene.
OK so Bright Star was in a win-win situation:
John Keats: check
Jane Campion: check
Ben Whishaw: check
The trailers were promising. Campion was going to have to do something pretty stupid for me not to like this film, for me not to love this film.
For those who don't know the story, it is told through the eyes of Fanny Brawne, the neighbour and object of romantic poet John Keats' affection and some would say muse. The two were unable to marry because Keats didn't have any money as his poetry was yet to gain mass market appeal and then his life was cut short by TB.
Keats wrote beautiful poetry and this is a beautiful film. The setting, showcasing the simple beauty of English nature is like a third character next to Brawne and Keats.
The script is kept simple almost with the attitude that less says more leaving Abbie Cornish who plays Brawne and Whishaw who plays Keats to showcase a more subtle side to their acting abilities.
There is one particular scene which cements Cornish as such a talent, I find it hard to believe that she could have produced such overwhelming emotion for more than one take. It is when Brawne finds out from Keats' friend Charles Brown that he has died in Rome, where he had traveled to for the good of his health to avoid the British winter.
The performance touches on such grief and heartbreak that it brings tears to my eyes just thinking about it. And it is up there with Juliet Stephenson in Truly Madly Deeply.
If I was to judge this film on tears alone, my tears that is, not the actors, it would get a very damp 10 out of 10 as blubbed the whole way through. And I wasn't the only one in the cinema.
Not that I particularly care but here are what some of the professionals thought:
Daily Telegraph "It’s by some measure the best film she’s ever made. It feels special without being at all precious. Eloquent, too, but not self-consciously lyrical or florid."
Time Out "A combination of unstuffy dialogue, wise casting, unselfconscious performances and sensuous but never pretty photography makes Campion’s version of the nineteenth century feel current but not anachronistic."
- 17:29 At curzon sitting on comfy sofa with a glass of red waiting for my bright star #
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