howeird | Entries tagged with review

Part of Dragon Theater's play development workshop, Almost Happy had its second reading this afternoon, my first time seeing it. I am surprised it beat out 50 other scripts because the writing is awful, and the plot is contrived. ( spoiler alert )

Katie Rose Kreuger plays Naomi, and she has the same little girl high voice IRL as she has on stage. She is very easy to look at, not as easy to listen to. Sara Luna is Tess, and she does strong, sarcastic activist very well. Rory Strahan-Mauk is about 6'8" tall and beanpole thin with an auburn beard which halos his face. They all seemed to struggle with the script. Toward the end of the show, it was clear that Tess' script was missing a couple of pages or inserts. Having directed a play-in-progress myself, I know how this can happen. But it shouldn't.

This is basically a 1-act plot stretched into a 2-act play.

There were a few clever lines here and there. "I've been seeing him vaginally" stands out. There were some lame attempts at bringing modern politics to bear (occupy).

I've crossed off next weekend's final reading from my calendar. It needs far more work than the playwright (Jacob Marx Rice) has any idea about, judging from the questions he asked at the feedback session.

I won't say this was 90 minutes of my life I'll never get back, because I was part of a play development process, and one of the occupational hazards of going to a new play reading is the "not ready for prime time" thing.

Current Mood: cynical
Current Location: Home

Fessing up: I fell in love with Avenue Q when I heard the Broadway cast CD, and saw the touring company production in SF a couple of years ago and enjoyed it a lot. So local community production in a tiny space which used to be where Los Altos repaired their school buses did not set the bar very high.

In many ways it was better than the touring company. Pacing, timing and harmony in the chorus numbers were better. Having one performer per puppet was better. While both had great sets, it's pretty tough to build a great set in a bus barn. They added a setup of singing boxes which was highly amusing.

In some ways it was not as good. Anthony Chan playing the lead character, Princeton, couldn't be heard in the back of the theater unless he was all the way downstage. Neither could Warren Wernick, playing "I'm not gay" Nicky. And this is tragic because the back row is row G. Close enough to throw a pie and hit an actor. The 3-piece band was mostly too loud. And they were out of sight behind the set.

And then there was something which I don't know was better or worse, but was very very different. The touring company was made up of professional puppeteers. This show was made up of theater people with some dance background. In the touring show, I was watching the faces of the puppets, because like good puppeteers (ventriloquists) the face of the puppeteer was always neutral. At Los Altos I had to try very hard to look at the puppets, because the faces of the cast were showing the emotions the characters were feeling, and it made the puppets superfluous.

A little about the characters. Mylissa Malley's Kate Monster was awesome. Great voice applied to her character voice. Fine Fine Line as poignant as it could be. Tomas Theriot as Rod the flaming Republican was easy to hear and understand and in total denial, as written. David Mister as Trekkie Monster blew me away completely. He had the voice down pat, and did some clever things with the monster puppet/costume. Jen Wheatonfox as one of the Bad Idea Bears has these searchlight eyes which made it impossible for me to concentrate on her puppet. Mark Sanders is listed as a Bad Idea Bear, but he was also the second puppeteer whenever a puppet needed two operators.

Non-puppeted characters:

Adam Cotugno as Brian looked too much like a winner to me. Brian ought to look like a 33-year-old couch potato. But other than looks, he did a great job. His other half, Christmas Eve (Kathryn Han) was too tall for the part. She looked way too good in that wedding dress. She also either forgot or made the choice to not convert her L's to R's. Kinda destroyed the When You Ruv Someone song. Other than those two nitpicks, she was a much stronger player than the touring company's.

And finally, Gary Coleman. Avenue Q was written for him. He played it on Broadway, but by the time the touring company was cast he was either too ill or too dead to audition. In the touring company, they substituted a petitely chubby woman of color. Los Altos cast Nicole C. Julien, who is anything but petite. She's a fine actress, but woefully miscast.

I think the show would be better if they rewrote the part to be some more easily mimicked personality. It would only change a couple of lines and one verse of one song. It just needs someone famous who has gone from hero to zero. Maybe that Culkin kid, or Rosie O'donnel.

For all my gripes, this is a must-see-if-you-can-get-tickets show. Small theater = sells out fast. Performances through June 22. Details here.

Current Mood: cynical
Current Location: Sequioia Center Starbucks

Work saw some progress on scripting after initial head-banging. Went out to the car at lunchtime, drove a few blocks. It was 85° and I wasn't hungry so I just turned around after a mile or so and came back. I was planning on leaving early.

Which I did.

But first, I called Toyota to let them know the refund showed up in my Discover account, and called Audio Design and was able to make an appointment to get the Kenwood backup camera installed.

And got to the train station in time for the train before the one I had planned on. This one, as it turned out, was an express between all the non-express stations, and passed Redwood City without stopping. I got off at San Carlos, walked through the tunnel to the other side of the tracks, and in 18 minutes caught the next train south, next stop Redwood City. I think I still got there sooner than if I'd waited for the second northbound train.

Dinner at Fishes Wild again, short ribs again. Tried to order it with only one side of salad, they had no way to do that apparently and delivered a double serving of salad. Yummy ribs!

Walked across the street to the bakery, but they were out of the best desserts so I just walked to the theater.

Got there a wee bit early, maybe 10 minutes, and ran into Meredith, the theater owner and long-time friend. Strange seeing her as a blonde - I like her better as a redhead, Oh well.

Saw the second reading of Sexbot 2600 which started 15 minutes late because there was a festival next door and parking was a bitch. Glad I took the train.

Much bigger house than last time, so the feedback session was more interesting. The playwright had made a lot of changes, most of them improvements, most of them based on feedback from last week. The changes pointed up what still needs work. But it's pretty much ready for prime time. I'm planning on going a week from Sunday for the final reading.

Plans for tomorrow:
Drop off the car at 10 am
Bus to the mall/Santana Row and hang out
Pickup car late afternoon
Avenue Q at Bus Barn in Los Altos at 8

Current Mood: good
Current Location: Newest Furball Hall

The latest Star Trek was today's entertainment. I've seen a lot of bellyaching online about it, and went in expecting the worst.

My no-spoiler answers to some of the whining:

W. It has no story
You must have been watching Babylon 5. There is a very clear story line, with a couple of sub-plots and a love story.

W. It was all about special effects, which were not that good
You expected maybe a national geographic special? Of course it had a lot of special effects. None of them impressed me, but I did like what they did with the "go to warp" view of the Enterprise.

W. The new actors were like caricatures of the originals.
Not hardly. Each of the main characters did a decent job of acting the parts we know and love.

Having said that, I'll add that physically many of the main characters did not match the originals. Spock is too chubby. Scotty is way too tiny. Sulu is Korean. The Bad Guy is way too tall and his eyes are very not-brown.

OTOH, I think Kirk and Uhura were excellent matches, and Checkov was spot-on. Bones was pretty close, too.

W. Next time they should hire writers
The script was fine. It wasn't Poetry, but there was nothing which was downright stupid, and there were plenty of clever lines.

Speaking of which, there were also a few LOL-worthy sight gags, plays on the previous movies and TV shows.

W. It was all pore-examination close-ups and long shots, no middle shots
Those are pretty much your only options about a ship. They did have mid-range shots in the outdoor scenes.

Bottom line: worth full 3D price (I paid matinée senior price)

Current Mood: creative
Current Location: Shoreline Starbucks

KBB.com said to look at the Mazda3. I did, and it has Tom Tom nav with voice commands. I had a previous entanglement tonight, so I'll bug them after work tomorrow. Nearest one is Stevens Creek, PIA to get to during rush hour.

Work was another scriptfailfest. Team meeting was short because we're done with our projects, and the next one is a few months away. So the word is to hone automation skills. :-(

Yesterday I found a command which did not work, today I found a command which errors out, telling me I am missing a variable, but the syntax dictionary doesn't list another variable. Automation Guy is out till humpday, I'll have to ask his backup. She's fun -she grew up in a town in Malaysia which I visited often when I lived in southern Thailand. It was basically the next major town on the train line south of where I lived. I amused her once with the number system in malay being one off from Fijian. Well, not really, just that "dua" is 2 in Malay and 1 in Fijian. And 5 is "lima" in both.

Lunch was split between waiting in a SLOW but not all that long line at Costco for gas. It was apparently National Drop Your Credit Card Under Your Car Day. Coupled with Oh, I Have To Swipe My Costco Card First? Day. That gave me just enough time for a Western Bacon Cheeseburger and a shake at Carl's Jr.

After work I headed for one of my old haunts, Cupertino's Oaks shopping center, which has the cheapest (in every way imaginable) cinema in the Bay Area, now aptly named Bluelight. It was Oaks for the longest time, then went under, and is now reborn. I got there early enough for dinner at Togo's, but not early enough to hang out at Coffee Society.

At the cinema was the world premier showing of an indie movie (which had, I am told, and $3k budget) called Black Cat Whiskey. My long-time theater buddy Jeremy Koerner stars as the creeptastic gangster. The plot is basically: Vulnerable Southern woman is married to a moonshiner, but she doesn't know it until he gets killed by his gangster customer, who comes around to collect the 300 cases of prime whiskey he thinks her husband had hidden in their house. Tired of being slimed, she goes to the FBI where one agent pretends to help her, but really just wants One Thing™. No spoilers version, much violence ensues, orchestrated by FBI guy. And then by her. The opening scene is what happens at the end, but not quite. I would bet real cash dollars there were other endings written.

Very well acted and directed, photography was very good throughout, as was audio. It screams for a higher effects budget, but they did well for what they could afford. There is one scene which I thought was far more violent and long then it needed to be, in part because it is way over the top compared to the rest of the film.

Worth missing BASFA for. Well worth missing car shopping for.

Plans for tomorrow:
Work
Mazda

Current Mood: happy
Current Location: Home

Got lots of sleep last night. Yay!
Did nothing useful until about 3, when I headed for PA to be early enough at Starbucks to buy Janice a half price frappuccino, since she might not get there before 5. She got there at 4. That gave us a lot of time to chat.

From there to Lucie Stern Theater, way early, which let me sit in the shade on a park bench far from the screaming children, and read A Box of Oxen, Alan Dean Foster. I always enjoy his writing, and this one starts quickly and is keeping up the pace.

Picked up my ticket and sat in the garden in front of the theater with the others, they did not open the front doors until after 7:30 - odd, because they usually open for concessions at 7, and open the house for seating at 7:30. The show started about 10 minutes late, too.

Miss Saigon by Palo Alto Players was a mixed bag for me, but 90% of the mix was excellent. Teeny tiny Katherine Dela Cruz as Kim was out of this world, a total rock star. Strong voice, all the acting skills a director could want, and she did okay impersonating a Vietnamese. Brain Palac as The Engineer was given many completely over the top assignments, and he was world class in performing those. I did not like those numbers, they were too long, too insane and did not move the show along, but he didn't let that keep him from nailing them.

John was played by Adrien Gleason, who was one of the stars of my last SBMT show, and he was very good, with a stunning solo to lead off Act II. They did the show as a 2-act, but it looks like it was written to be 3. The audience could have used a break before the "3 years later" section.

Ed Hunter's lighting was great, impressive right from the start. There was a lot of scrim work, flys, spotlights and cyc effects in the show and the action was usually weighted to favor stage left.

Costumes were a mess. The People's Republic army uniforms were too ornate, way too much insignia & piping. The bar girls were wearing all the wrong kinds of outfits in both the Saigon and Bangkok bars, but that wasn't nearly as bad as dressing the female Bangkok street vendors in formal Vietnamese gowns. Speaking of women, only two of the bar girls had figures which would be seen in a SE Asian bar. Most were too fat and too tall. I understand more than 200 people auditioned for this show, I bet a lot of women who looked the part were turned away. In some shows, the reason is they need to also be strong singers, but not in this one.

One of the PR things they did early on was hint that they might have a helicopter on stage. They made a mock-up of a cockpit and front door which was "flown" in from stage right, way upstage. It was tacky and fake, but it would have worked for me if they had not put a stuffed dummy's torso & head in the pilot's seat. Hueys in the Saigon evacuation had heavily tinted windows, you probably would not have seen the pilot.

Danny Gould, playing Chris, had some issues with articulation and staying on key. It's a tough part to play, and I don't think he go enough guidance from the director. Lindsay Stark, playing Ellen, Chris' American wife, was unconvincing in both her acting and looks. This is supposed to be a woman attractive enough to make Chris forget his fantasy wife. She sang well, though.

Enough already. It was a good show, I'm glad I saw it, and am recommending it to others. One more weekend to run.

Plans for tomorrow:

Fremont: Take the camera to Ardenwood Farms in south Fremont, then up to Fremont auto mall to see car dealerships there, starting with an appointment at Chevy.

Current Mood: full
Current Location: Home of the Weird

I had four items on my list for today:
Piazzi's, buy frozen matzo balls and primo chocolates
Office Depot/Max, buy a Fragile stamp
UPS Store - P/U new microwave
8 pm Little Women musical at Sunnyvale players

What I actually did:
Woke up at 6 because Kaan was digging into my back, trying to get his fetching toy. We played fetch for a few minutes. I went back to sleep.
Woke up at 10, went online and handled all the email and FB/LJ traffic. At 11:15 I started to fall asleep at the computer so I went back to bed
Woke up at 12:30, showered, dressed, did my meds.
Watched some NFL draft, until it was clear that ESPN's pundits were no longer paying attention to the draft as it happened, but instead decided the reason they were in prime seats at Radio City Music Hall was so we could hear them blather to each other, argue, poke fun, and occasionally show film and talk about someone who was drafted 2 days ago. NFL Network also had a draft show, but they did that from ESPN studios, and they made no pretense of following the draft itself, instead showing interviews with players, coaches, players' families, coaches' pet llamas, and Some Drunk Woman On The Street in NYC Wearing a Red Sox cap.

Finally got email from UPS that the microwave was ready to pick up, took my dolly there, got it back home. Took lots of photos of the seriously battered box, the broken foam "protective" padding, the broken foam disk which was supposed to hold the glass turntable in place and keep it intact, and the ding in the side of the unit. Later also saw the side opposite the ding is bent a bit out from the unit.

Bought it for the sensor reheat function. Put four stuffed grape leaves in mint sauce on a paper plate and pushed the button. 10 minutes later it was still cooking, and when I stopped it, the food was one messy pile of slag, and smoke was pouring out. Very angry.

Just when I had gotten most of the burned smell out of the apartment from the last one.

I'll have to report this to Amazon, and see what they say. This monster is too big & heavy to ship back on my dime, and the box and foam lining are not usable. It would cost more to ship it than it is worth.

Thanks to the added excitement, I only had time to do some chores and some reading. Lots of chores. Hang up the laundry I'd run the last 2 days, cut down 3 months' of amazon/mail order boxes and haul them to the dumpster, take out the garbage.

Sunnyvale Players performs down the same road I live on, about 4 miles, so it only took a few minutes to get there, even hitting all the red lights. I picked up my ticket, read from my Kindle by the fountain for half an hour, then grabbed a seat toward the middle of row 3, figuring people would not sit right next to me. When it was too late to move, two whole families parked themselves to my right, with the largest member choosing the seat next to me. This in a theater which was only 1/3 full. Asshole.

Mini-review: I had many friends in this show, and they all did well. One of them completely owned the show. The last time I was on stage with Molly, she was playing Aldonza the kitchen slut in Man of La Mancha. Tonight she was playing the straight-laced, stern, dowager aunt. Quite a range! Unfortunately, her character does not sing. Also unfortunately, the two main singing roles were played by people who did not have much of a singing voice. All in all, this version of Little Women did not impress me. The only tune I remember is a novelty song done by The Girl Who Dies and The Rich Old Man. The latter was played superbly by a fellow I have not seen before, which is odd because he's about my age and that's a part I might have auditioned for if I wasn't already in a show. Ross Harkness. Looking at his resume, I see why. He mostly performs in the East Bay.

The plot did not speak to me at all, maybe because I have three very different, independent, strong sisters whose lives did not derail when they got married.

At halftime I changed seats to the back row, which was a lot roomier, and actually had better acoustics, probably because of being far from the too-loud orchestra. The orchestra started off out of tune and cringe-worthy, but got it together after a few numbers.

The set was the usual SCP joke. Some boxes, a couple of stair steps, and some furniture was moved to denote a new location. Lighting was overdone, too many changes for what was needed. The audio depended on the cast, they were not miked, and a couple of them needed to be.

Worth seeing for some of the individual performances, but kind of like Brigadoon, not really a show one can relate to.

Plans for tomorrow:

Sleep
Piazzi's, buy frozen matzo balls and primo chocolates
Office Depot/Max, buy a Fragile stamp
Pay a visit to a Ford and a Honda dealership.
De-slime

Current Mood: cynical
Current Location: Home

I feel completely detoxed from the month+ of Brigadoon exhaustion. Sunday after strike I took back my evening, and Monday's BASFA meeting was refreshing. Tonight I went to Mountain View, Janice's co-subscriber for TheatreWorks was unable to attend so I got to see Being Earnest, a musical adaptation of Oscar Wilde's The Importance of Being Earnest. It was a lot of fun. All-Equity cast, which did not mean all-up-to-snuff. Amazing set by Joe Ragey, excellent small pit band, three out of four of the women were stellar. Algernon (Euan Morton), the main character, has a reedy voice, and was hard to understand at first, but then during one of the songs he remembered the director yelling "enunciate!" at him, and did so for the rest of the show. One man (Brian Herndon) played four small supporting parts, almost well enough to make us think there were two of him. Almost. Jack (Hayden Tee) was solid, Gwendolen (Mindy Lym) is stunning, and very precise, and got the sexiest costumes. Lady Bracknell (Maureen McVerry) was the ultimate stuck-up socialite mother, she also got some attractive outfits. Cecily (Riley Krull) played the innocent wanting to be corrupted to a T. They only gave her one simple dress to wear, but she filled it out beautifully. Miss Prism (Diana Torres Koss) was the odd woman out, unconvincing as the strict tutor who has the hots for the minister.

Kelly directed it, and even had I not known that, I would have recognized this from the needless tableau which starts the show.

The musical is very true to the original. I don't know if it is written to be set in 1964, or if that was Kelly's idea, but except for the costumes and Act I furniture, it read as 100 years earlier.

There are easter eggs after the curtain call. Some of them very funny.

Work today got hijacked by a bug which was showing up on my PC but no one else's.

Lunchtime I went to the PO, it was deserted. In and out in < 5 minutes. Time to go to Denny's for lunch and be back early.

Plans for tomorrow:
Work
CHM program with a couple of computer pioneers from SRI.

Current Mood: cheerful
Current Location: Home

Woke up at 6:30 but the internet clock said 7:30, so I went around the apartment changing all the clocks which needed it. Microwave was one of the first. The bathroom clock radios have DST buttons, but the one in the main bathroom was set backwards. The in-dash unit still has the Fall-winter time, because I thought it took the time from the GPS, but it doesn't. Finding settings on that thing is difficult.

Did not get out in time for the 10:30 showing, so relaxed and made the 12:45 of Silver Linings Playbook. Jennifer Lawrence earned that Oscar. Otherwise it was meh. The writing was average with far less clever lines than the plot required, film editing was inconsistent, definitely not a powerhouse best picture. De Niro played himself, with a little bit 'o' tears. Jacki Weaver wasn't given enough of the script to show what she could do. Bradley Cooper did not measure up to the rest of the Best Actor field. I would have tossed in a best audio editing nom, because it was seamless and when they had a chance to be annoyingly loud they weren't. There were some great spandex scenes, and the mock dance competition was very well done by the pros. Utterly predictable telegraphed ending.

Went from there to Costco, surgical strike shopping was sabotaged by several of their fridge banks being out of commission and lots of things I was looking for relocated to the other side of the building. Plus palettes of baby wipes at one end of each aisle to keep us from passing through (probably protecting exposed wires or something from the dead fridges).

Met Janice for coffee, she had a lot of news. She's going to the Caribbean this week, her first time there. I told her the Jamaica penis joke, since she had not heard it. She laughed a lot.

Back across the street to see Oz The Great And Powerful, which did not live up to the hype. James Franco is not nearly convincing enough, Mila Kunis rocks both her characters, Rachel Weisz and Michelle Williams not so much. Great costumes, hair & makeup. Some killer special defects, lots of beautiful CGI. Audio was a little mumbly in places, WTF is with flying baboons? Opening and closing credits were so artistic it was hard to tell who was in the show. Way too violent for the G rating it should have aimed for. Sam Raimi got hypnotized by the power of fireballs and green lightning. ( spoilers here ) Barely worth senior 3D price.

While the trailers were playing I saw there was voicemail on my phone - it never rang...again. Starbucks (which was closed by then) telling me they have my laptop bag. So I'll go there in the morning and snag it.

Home, put the food away, registered the Fastrak gadget which I'd bought at Costco, which will get me onto the HOV lanes on 237. And across any of the bridges. The tag is free, but Costco bundles $30 of tolls for $24. I may even try it out on the Golden Gate.

Made 3 of the 6 crab cakes I bought at CCo, these are Baltimore style, no fillers. So I was not surprised when they completely fell apart in the frying pan. But after draining off the oil and half an inch of paper towels, it was very good. Probably should have had it over bread, but all I have is Health Nut.

Dessert was an impulse buy - CCo house brand cashew clusters w/almonds and pumpkin seeds. Yummy. Good snack to take to work. Not as sugary as Payday bars. I really wanted dark chocolate hollow Easter bunny, but they didn't have those.

Looked at the new backup cam, to see if I could adjust it upward, but it needs a very small torx screwdriver. I have a set, I'll try to adjust it tomorrow in daylight.

Plans for tomorrow:
Starbucks
Work
Brigadoon rehearsals which was supposed to be music TBA but is suddenly an Act I run-thru. We really need to get off of Act I and on to Act II.

Current Mood: critical
Current Location: Home of the Lost

Slept well last night. Both cats joined me for most of it, and managed to cohabit without fighting.

That's me taking this photo with the phone's webcam app.

Got up & drugged and dressed by 10, headed over to Fry's after one last check to see if I could find the camcorder remote. There was an actual Sony camcorder expert on site, he told me every HDR series camcorder uses the same remote, and I could go online and buy a used one on eBay, or call Sony parts, and they ought to be able to provide a replacement based on my serial number. The latter I know is not quite right - they would charge a lot, the camcorder is way out of warranty.

I also went hunting for the Bose earbuds for Android, willing to pay too much for them, but Fry's doesn't carry them. They carry almost everything else by Bose. So home I went, and bought both of those items online.

Watched some of the NFL Combine, highly annoyed that the commentators insisted on running not a commentary but a private conversation between them going off on all kinds of tangents. I wanted to hear the action on the field, not them. Even worse than Sunday football games.

Also watched an episode of Shark Tank in which the investors all consistently refused to put money into projects which had not already sold a huge amount of product. The theme these days is "I just want to make money from your proven idea" and not "I want to help your new idea make both of us money". Pansies.

And another Elementary. I absolutely hate, despise, am reviled by two things about this show:
1. They have named the leading characters Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson.
2. The fellow playing Holmes. Jonny Lee Miller.

The show is a ripoff of Lie To Me, which I thought deserved more than just the 3 seasons (it was killed last year). Tim Roth was brilliant as its star, and the fact that both men are Britts is a major clue of how stolen the idea was. Miller has no charm, acts like a wooden automaton, and speaks way too articulately for someone who is supposedly recovering from years of heavy drug use. I like many of the supporting characters, Lucy Liu is miscast but a good enough actress to not let that get in the way. Aidan Quinn is very good as the skeptical police captain and Jon Michael Hill holds up well as the detective usually saddled with Holmes as a consultant. The story format is a lot like The Mentalist, usually starts with a murder, which Holmes almost single-handedly solves by seeing clues no one else has the skill to observe. Hmmm. Maybe that's the show it is really ripping off. Hmmm.

Somewhere in there I finished highlighting my part in the Brigadoon vocal score, added the latest set of vocal parts to the web site, took out garbage, did laundry, ran the dishwasher and made pot pie for lunch. Safeway brand's latest, pretty good.

At about 5 I turned on the Oscar red carpet show, on channel 7, ABC. I'll be going to an Oscars party at the home of one of my theater friends in 15 minutes. Except Janice called. She is home, and can't get any audio on her TV. She insists the Oscars are on channel 3. She says the football game was fine, so what is wrong? What football game - there are no football games. The Superbowl. That was almost a month ago. She says her TV is saying ABC is on channel 3. I have no idea what is going on, so I tell her to call Comcast, which is what she should have done in the first place. Well actually she should have gone to an Oscars party as she had done for the past 25 years. Way later I figured out that she uses the TV mostly to watch DVDs, so she probably forgot to push the button on the DVD player to use the cable feed as the source.

So, a little late getting to the party, but in time for the first award. There were about a dozen people, including two from the Anything Goes cast. The hostess went all out, there was a lot of food and cheese and cookies. A red carpet from the door to the livingroom. From the start I couldn't hear the show because half the guests were shouting quips across the room, and the TV didn't stand a chance. I took lots of photos for her FB page, but after the Les Mis cast was shouted down I left. Totally appalling that theater people would be that rude to performers. Got home in time for best actor, director and film. I disagreed with all three, but at least I got to hear the speeches. Also in time for the In Memoriam which would not have been audible at all over the snarks and shouting by the riff raff at the party. I will have to catch the best supporting actress and best actress on youtube.

Made a small dinner, did not eat much at the party (it was mostly Mexican food). Posted the party pix to FB and fond some cat pictures to post to Flickr.

Plans for tomorrow:
Work
Rehearsals (music)

Current Mood: grumpy
Current Location: Home

Washed the whites last night, put them in the dryer late, decided they can stay till tomorrow, I have better things to do.

Work was another adventure in automation. Automation Guy told me that a script I wrote in Jython to upgrade the firmware is going into his library. Brownie point for me, I guess. Finally discovered how to make a Do While loop with our scripter program - turns out the loop feature is all I need.

Lunch was stupidity. Four of us went to a new Korean chicken place - it took 15 minutes to get there, half an hour to get a table, 20 minutes to get food after ordering. I keep telling these guys not to go at noon on a Friday. At 1 there were plenty of free tables. We're not on a schedule, we can make lunch hour any time we want. The chicken was very good. The cole slaw was okay. They didn't need to put the cubes of what looked like Jicama in a little bowl on the plate. The stuff which was actually a radish.

After work I got my nails done. Vanessa was busy, she called Joy over. Joy is Asian, speaks Vietnamese to her co-workers, and no-accent American English to the customers. When I mentioned Thailand, she asked if I speak Thai. Turns out she is half Thai, was born there and left when she was 4. We chatted a little in Thai but she was more comfortable with English.

Next stop, the McDonald's nearest the nail place. It looks great on the outside but inside it's a lot older than the one I went to yesterday. Wi-fi was better, but there were no AC outlets. I got a chocolate shake, and sat down to write a book review. After about half an hour, the beeper on something in the kitchen went off, and it just kept getting ignored. Finally drove me out of there, I went home, put the doc on a thumb drive and ported it to the PC to finish it.

It is on its way to

johnnyeponymous for one of his ezines.

Got email from the Brigadoon producer, with a rehearsal schedule. No weekend rehearsals except for the Saturday before we open. This means I won't miss much going to

conflikt (they already know I'll be gone) and I can go to

consonance_con. So I printed a check¹ and an envelope and those will be on their way to Dr. Jim tomorrow. Yay!

Went to reorder litterbox refills, and Amazon has stopped selling them, with a note that there have been many complaints about defects. Yup, I noticed the quality of the last batch sucked. So I found someplace called "wag.com" and ordered from them for about the same price for a 6-pack.

12:15 am noticed I had not eaten yet. Heated up a bagel & yellow cheese-like substance after unwrapping it individually from a sheaf of plastic. Slapped on some lox. Yum. The cats both thought so too.

Everything online tonight took too long, missed the strip club. Must go there tomorrow, I am almost out of 1's. I ran out at work yesterday, had to go to the car and steal some parking meter quarters.

Plans for tomorrow:
Sleep
Spend quality time with my socks
Football games don't start till 1:30, 49ers at 5. Should be done at a good time for Cheetah's.
¹ Actually, I printed 10 checks. The first 3 were alignment adjustments I was too lazy to make when I first created the check design, then I noticed it still had my old address, and the rest were adjustments to the positioning of the payee, amount, memo and signature lines. I have several tons of blank check paper which came free with the check designer software.

Current Mood: crazy
Current Location: Home

The music of Les Mis found me through auditions and Lea Salonga's concert albums. There is some powerful, tuneful stuff, most of it needing phenomenal voices. So I also bought the 10th anniversary concert CD and the 25th. World class voices, unencumbered by blocking, props, set, the demands of cinematography or any of that acting stuff.

Many of my musical theater friends have seen and commented on the movie, and most of them said Anne Hathaway deserves an Oscar, Russel Crowe croaked his way through the songs, and Hugh Jackman did okay vocally.

I have never seen the show done on stage with all the trimmings. I have not read the book, and only vaguely knew the plot. To give you an idea of how vaguely, I kept wondering why they cut the part about the knitting.¹

What I saw in the theater I was totally unprepared for, despite all the comments and reviews. Here's what I saw:

Director Tom Hooper chose acting instead of singing.

This was not Les Mis, The Musical, this was Les Mis, the stage drama, with occasional singing.

Anne Hathaway has major league pipes. I heard her sing the hell out of Fantine's number on a talk show a few weeks ago, can't find it online now. It was the concert version, sung with clarity and power. In the movie all of that is lost, but what we get in exchange is a believable scene with hints of her singing talent far overshadowed by her acting talent.

Russel Crowe I think does just fine with his musical numbers, he is actually allowed to sing a lot, but I'm pretty sure he is at the edges of his vocal range. He gets to wear a series of uniforms, increasingly ornate as he rises in rank. Again, the acting justifies the borderline singing.

Hugh Jackman (I will never know why he chose to keep his porn star screen name when he went legit) has some pipes too, but again and again Hooper has him emote instead of sing.

The show opens with a chain gang chanty followed by a full ensemble number. Both of those were thin and weak musically, but the visuals were superb. Okay, maybe the obviously artist-drawn galleons weren't very good, but the rest was.

And that brings me to another conundrum. There is a lot of scenery. Some of it is real, some is artist renditions. For the most part, indoor scenes did not match the fascades.

Cinematography mostly sucked, with flashes of brilliance here and there. Way too many close-ups where we really needed to see the whole scene. Hand-held cameras during the battle scenes are a total WTF/FAIL. The super-fish-eye lens used in the Empty Chairs scene made me want to throw up, but only after I had slapped the director and cameraman upside the head.

Audio is great. There were only three times where I reached for the non-existant REW button because I couldn't make out a word or two, the score never overpowered the dialog and I never needed to plug my ears, even during the battle scenes.

A highlight of the film for me was the acting of street urchin Gavroche played by Daniel Huttlestone, but his cockney accent was out of place among all the American accents. I see from IMDB he was plucked from a London production of Oliver!.

Another excellent child performance was by young Cosette, 10-year-old Isabelle Allen. She and Jackman totally clicked on screen. However, Amanda Seyfried who played older Cosette was insipid. There was no hint of the strength of the young orphan she had been. And her vibrato! She is one of the few characters who is allowed to sing out her solos in full voice, and she sounds like a chipmunk. There were several women in the cast who had better voices and were, to me, more attractive. Samantha Barks won my heart as the older Éponine, and was lucky enough to be allowed to sing On My Own without choking on emo. She was not so lucky with A Little Fall of Rain, again the sacrifice of music to make a more realistic scene.

There was some stand-out singing by Eddie Redmayne as Marius, Aaron Tveit as Enjolras, though both were a little inconsistent.

I am going to ignore Sasha Cohen and Helena Carter, except to say they were victims. Repulsive makeup and costumes, over-choreographed numbers, pushed way over the top. And neither of them were playing old enough for the parts by half.

There was a lot of repulsive costume and makeup in the show, mostly among the peons and prostitutes. Which is amusing because in most of their close-ups, Crowe, Jackman and Redmayne did not appear to be wearing any make-up at all. In his Empty Rooms close-up, you could count the freckles on Redmayne's face and the hairs in his wanna-be mustache.

I liked what they did with the finale sequence. Hathaway is allowed a little more vocal freedom. There was one minor puzzlement - why didn't Fantine have long hair in Paradise?

All in all, I give it 3 stars out of 5. Worth matinée.

¹ That was in another revolution story, A Tale of Two Cities.

Current Mood: critical
Current Location: Home

The Hobbit in 3D, 24 fps because they only offered 48 fps in IMAX and I get acrophobic in IMAX theaters. And I have this to say to those who are blaming 48 fps on making them nauseous. It is not the frame rate - you see HD TV at 60 fps, and that doesn't make you sick, probably because very few of you not in the HD video field even know HD has a souped up frame rate.

I got dizzy in the first minute or two as the camera panned OUT OF FOCUS (WTF Peter Jackson?) too fast, too close up, at a steep angle. Most of the rest of the film was in focus, but there were several more scenes shot to make you dizzy.

I found the cinematography the 2nd worst aspect of the movie. Worst was incredibly poor audio mixing, which was exacerbated by AMC theater turning up the volume too high, starting with the pre-movie trailers. Even if the theater volume had been normal, the audio on the too-many battle scenes was Rock Concert level. And that brings me to the score. There wasn't much of a score, there was mostly shouting and metal clanging. I suppose there was something resembling music underneath, but find a tune, win a prize.

Makeup. Except for Bilbo, Frodo, Gandalf, and the elves, the hair and beards are insane. Oh yeah, the goblins and orcs have no hair, and their makeup was pretty good, except for the goblin king's double chin, which was the size of Bolivia.

There was some acting. Martin Freeman (not to be confused with Morgan of the same surname) had his moments, but for the most part he limited himself to one expression: bemused. Ian McKellen was not at his best - I suspect his character was seriously throttled back by the writers. Richard Armitage as Thorin displayed two emotions: stoic and angry. However, he is very pretty in a king-to-be kind of way. For the several nanoseconds of screen time they were given, Dean O'Gorman and Aidan Turner as Fili and Kili were charming during the quiet scenes and did angry, scared, defeated and victorious at all the right times. Andy Serkis' voice-over for Gollum was suberb, a shame that scene lasted the better part of an hour. Sylvester McCoy (aka the 7th Doctor) was unrecognizable as Radagast The Brown, a wizard who went off the deep end so long ago that they made him a lifeguard. Excellent acting, but one can argue that his scenes were also too long.

There is much CG, some of it quite clever but most of it overwhelming.

After 3 hours, the plot has barely moved forward. I checked my watch a few times, and even ducked out for a restroom break, something I haven't done in years. I didn't need the facilities as much as I needed a break.

If I see the next one, I may brave the IMAX just to see the 48 fps, but my 25+ years in the video industry tells me that it's a wash - the bigger screen needs higher resolution, and the double frame rate may just make it look as good as the normal rate on a normal screen.

Worth Senior discount price, just so I can say I saw it.

Current Mood: meh
Current Location: Newest Furball Hall

As planned, this morning I watched football, then drove to Woodside which has a fairly new performing arts center, to see a friend play Maria in Sound of Music. She was wonderful. Flawless. The Abbess did an excellent job with Climb Every Mountain, in a clear voice, minimal vibrato, she did not make it sound pompous as so many of them do. The children were not adorable, They were 2 actors and 5 actresses who just happen to be relatively young. It was a joy to see a version where the children were intelligent, excellent singers, and did not act at all "cutesie". The youngest did have some of the wrong-way schtick, but she knew what she was doing. The nun's choir was a surprise because they all wore wireless mikes, and the audio system is 2D, so no matter where they were, offstage or onstage, they sounded like they were everywhere, which often did not match how they looked. They sang so well I thought it was a recording at first.

The Captain was young, and almost a dead ringer for Christopher Plummer, and that put me off at first because I prefer the captain to look (as the script describes him) like a weathered, experienced warship commander. Theodore Bikel played the role on Broadway, I preferred that look. But this fellow did okay.

The tech was outstanding, several fly-in sets, very quick set changes thanks to minimal on-stage pieces. Spotlight operator was off a lot, though.

Orchestra was in the pit, and never overpowered the singers. Once in a while they were at a different tempo.

Costumes were wrong in several places. The children's opening scene sailor suits were Nazi grey with black piping/ribbons. The Nazi uniforms were brown instead of grey. The Captain wore a tux to his wedding instead of a full dress uniform. The butler wore livery and the housekeeper wore whatever was on the costume rack in her size.

The show was brilliantly directed and choreographed. A lot of work went into it by the cast. One of the Producers for Anything Goes played a major supporting role, which explains why he was not around much to annoy us.

The standing O did not start until the children took their bows, and Maria got the hoots and hollers she deserved.

The pre-show curtain speech included an announcement that the show would be over half an hour before the World Series game was due to start. That got major cheers.

Home, switched on football, taking occasional peeks at the baseball game. Another torture game, the other guys got a lead for the first time in the series, and it was tied at the end. I didn't tune in again until Facebook posts sounded like the Giants won it, then I watched all the post game coverage.

I was happy to hear in interview after interview, all the players and the coaches said this was a team effort. Everyone on the roster made a significant contribution, and even The Panda, who hit three homers in the first game, series MVP, was not taking credit for himself.

While that was going on I recorded the videotape of my 1986 Wizard of Oz. Eventually all the postage stamp videos of scenes I was in will leave my web site and appear on youtube as viewable size.

Plans for tomorrow:
Work (9 am team meeting)
Football (49ers)

Current Mood: happy
Current Location: Home

Allegiance is a musical about the US Government's concentration camp program during WWII, where Japanese citizens and residents were forced out of their homes and lands, then taken 1,000 miles away to live one family to a room in camps guarded by Army troops.

The show opens with an elderly Sam Kimura (George Takei) in a US Army uniform with lots of service ribbons, getting ready for a Pearl Harbor Day ceremony. There is a knock on his door, and a woman says Sam's older sister has died, and as executor for the estate she hands him a box of things which belong to him. He has not seen his sister in 60 years.

Inside the box is a baseball, which he takes out. The half of the stage Sam is not on becomes an internment camp, his younger self, Sammy (Telly Leung), takes the baseball and starts trying to organize a game.

Through excellent simple set changes and some amazing projection work, the play weaves back and forth between camp and pre-camp Sammy and his big sister Kei (Lea Salonga), father Tatsuo (Paul Nakauchi) and grandfather Oji-san (Takei). It eventually settles on the camp, with scene shifts between parts of the camp, the JACL in Washington DC and eventually follows Sammy to war in Europe, and finally back to San Francisco.

The tech is astounding. Lighting, projections on moving flats, sound effects, all very well done and added a lot of emotional impact to the show. The only sore spot in tech for me was the orchestra mix was far too loud.

The ensemble is vocally very powerful, though not as Japanese as I expected. Out of the 12 members listed in the program, only one has a Japanese name. Among the leads, only Takei and Nakauchi are of Japanese descent. Salonga is a Filipina, Leung and the man playing Kei's boyfriend Frankie Suzuki (Michael K. Lee) are Chinese-American, bad JACL rep Mike Masaoka is played by Filipino Paolo Montalban (no relation to Ricardo).

The story moves along quickly, and is very gripping. All the leading characters are very strong, except for token white girl ingenue Hannah Campbell (17-year-old Allie Trimm). In most other casts she would have been fine, but not among all these powerhouses. Having her mike fail at the start of a love duet with Sammy did not help.

Jay Kuo wrote the music and lyrics and co-wrote the book with Marc Acito and Lorenzo Thone. The script starts out as a fine balance between serious and humorous, but by the end of the show the humor has gone away. There are 25 "songs" listed in the program, but I can't remember the tunes of any of them. Several are not songs, but operatic dialog.

The show ends with a plot revelation which I have problems with. No spoilers - so let's just say that it reveals the true nature of one of the characters about 50 years after Sam would have known IRL. And had he known, he would have had a very different relationship with his sister. I personally would have preferred that plot choice.

But despite all the minuses, I was one of the first on my feet for the full house standing ovation. Salonga was actually embarrassed by the amount of approbation she was given, but it was well-deserved.

There are two more performances of Allegiance at the Old Globe Theater, Balboa Park, San Diego: 10/28 at 2 and 8 pm.

The staff wants to take this to Broadway next, but I don't think it's a Broadway hit show. The story is too West Coast, the music and lyrics are not catchy enough, and it would only last as long as Takei and Salonga were on board. I don't think either of them would stay with the show for very long. I'd love to see it instead travel up the coast and play LA, Bay Area, Portland and Seattle.

In May 2010 I won a contest on Facebook to see an investor's preview of this show. I met George Takei and Jay Kuo, who were both very gracious and friendly, and I heard Allie Trimm, then 14, perform a couple of numbers. They also showed a video which included Lea Salonga and there was a song Takei sang in a beautiful bass voice.

They changed the plot significantly since the preview. At that time, Trimm played the daughter of the camp warden, and there was a very strong warden role, with all the expected drama between a love-struck teenaged daughter and her Army officer dad. In the current script, Hannah Campbell is a Quaker volunteer working in the camp's infirmary, her parents out of the picture. They also took George's song away.

Current Mood: critical
Current Location: Home

I kinda sorta am now a Hugo award non-winner, because the issue of The Drink Tank which was nominated for Best Fanzine (the 300th issue) included many of my photos plus an article by me. It also had articles and art from something like 200 contributors, and really, IMHO,deserved to win.

Looking at the list of winners on the most excellent Hugo Awards web site, here's how my favorites fared:

Best Novel I did not vote on because I read too slowly to absorb 5 novels in a month.
Best Novella The Man Who Bridged the Mist by Kij Johnson (Asimov's, September/October 2011) was my first choice
Best Novelette Six Months, Three Days by Charlie Jane Anders was my second choice. I thought it was cute, and moderately well-written, but not as compelling as Brad R. Torgersen's Ray of Light.
Best Short Story The Paper Menagerie by Ken Liu is an excellent piece of writing, but he lost me at the end when he got all egocentric and a little bit whiny. My first choice was, far and away, Mike Resnick's The Homecoming. And I am oh so very happy that the horrible, IMHO, mis-categorized April Fool's entry by John Scalzi, Shadow War of the Night Dragons: Book One: The Dead City: Prologue was not chosen despite the author's well-deserved fame and Toastmaster role at the con.
Best Related Work The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction, Third Edition edited by John Clute, David Langford, Peter Nicholls, and Graham Sleight is the one I figured would win, but I don't think a 3rd edition of a standard reference deserves a Hugo, and was hoping good sense would prevail and give the rocket to the excellent compendium of sci-fi movie reviews and commentary, Jar Jar Binks Must Die... and Other Observations about Science Fiction Movies by Daniel M. Kimmel.
Best Dramatic Presentation (Long Form) Game of Thrones (Season 1) I totally disagree with, since it was not readily available to the general public. My vote went to the movie Hugo, both for the high quality of the film production, the acting, the script and the score, but also the irony of Hugo winning a Hugo.
Best Dramatic Presentation (Short Form) The Doctor's Wife (Doctor Who), written by Neil Gaiman won mostly on NG's overblown fame. I, of course, voted for "The Drink Tank's" Hugo Acceptance Speech,” Christopher J Garcia and James Bacon. Again, for the irony, but also because it was much more fun to watch than any of the other nominees.
Best Fanzine SF Signal edited by John DeNardo I have already talked about which zine should have won. Meh.
Best Fan Writer Jim C. Hines was not even on my list. James Bacon got my vote, Chris Garcia was a close second.
Best Fan Artist Maurine Starkey is my dear friend, and I was thrilled to see her win. But I have to confess I voted for another friend, Spring Schoenhuth, because she creates wonderful sci-fi-themed jewelry, and the Hugo art awards have stagnated into only recognizing 2-D, hand-rendered art. I wish photography, jewelry, sculpture and other art could get a foothold here. Or their own categories.
Best Fancast SF Squeecast, Lynne M. Thomas, Seanan McGuire, Paul Cornell, Elizabeth Bear, and Catherynne M. Valente was my vote too. What an outstanding line-up!
John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer E. Lily Yu. I don't remember if I voted, but she is very deserving. I loved the ideas in her short story entry The Cartographer Wasps and the Anarchist Bees, and her writing style.

Those are the only categories I cared about, I leave the rest as an exercise for the reader. :-)

Current Mood: thoughtful

Last night was a Retro Dome double-header, though they sold it as two separate films. The Princess Bride Quote-Along was a hoot and a half, starting with a goody bag of little props to use at various places in the film. Some of them were very clever improvisations. Before the movie there was a short slide show to introduce the newbies to some key phrases to quote-along with. "Inconceivable", and of course "As You Wish" were among them. Way too many of us knew way too much of the dialog in the film. It was a hoot and a half. It was totally old out, and they could not keep up with all the idiots who arrived at 7:30 for a 7:30 show, so it started about 20 minutes late. In the goodie bag:

A small Popsicle stick
A smaller Popsicle stick
a small rubber band peanut
A malt ball
A black mask
A sugar straw

The two Popsicle sticks tied together with the rubber band made a tiny sword for the many sword fights, the peanut was for a rhyme which ends "have a peanut", the malt ball symbolized the re-animation pill Miracle Max makes for Wesley, the sugar straw was the poison which went into the glass of wine (they handed out little cups of grape juice, but didn't make it to me until the scene was over). And of course the mask was for The Dread Pirate Roberts.

The second feature was a major FAIL. The Rocky Horror Picture Show featuring The Bawdy Cast. They totally ruined it. Aging, fat cast members (except for the delicious kid playing Rocky, who was probably jail bait), thought they were the show. They set up in front of the screen, spotlight pretty much obliterated the movie. Thank goodness they only mimed, at least the sound track was audible. They put together an okay goodie bag:

Glow stick for "There's a Light"
Bubble kit for the wedding scene (I tried it out before the movie, but the wand broke off when the scene came)
Newspaper for the rain scene (folded real small)
Confetti popper for the Frankie/Brad wedding scene
A whole roll of toilet paper for "Great Scott!"
Playing cards for the pre-finale number "Cards for sorrow, cards for pain"

Blocking the opening and closing lips sequence was a stripper. She starts her act lounging on a giant leopard-patterned high heeled platform shoe. Let me just say she was Ruebenesque everywhere but on top. The good news is she really sold it, the bad news is I wasn't buying any. Way to piss me off right of the bat.

Time Warp gets so much audience participation, why not invent a dance for a tune in the movie which has dancing with no discernable steps? Let's make up a line dance style set of steps. What fun. NOT.

All the previous RHS shows I have gone to which had a live cast, they stayed on the sides, down on the floor level and in the wings, enhancing the experience by miming the action while they watched the screen. It's not really possible, IMHO, to do better than Tim Curry, Susan Sarandon, Barry Bostwick, Richard "Riff-Raff" O'Brien, Peter "Rocky" Hinwood, Charles "No-neck" Gray and Meatloaf.

Long story short, the cast ruined the experience for me, and I will make sure not to go to an RHS with their name on it again.

Current Mood: Jazzed and Annoyed
Current Location: Home
Current Music: The Time Warp

I thought 10 would be early enough for the 10:30 band intro but I had to park 3 blocks away. 4th of July at Los Altos was very well attended, there were lots of activities for the kids, and the band was very well received. The PA system was a total fail, someone decided the speakers needed to be in the back of the park, facing backwards.

Our conductor has done a great job getting us to mind the dynamics in the pieces we play, but it backfired this time - people way in the back (about 200 yards away) said they could not hear us.

But it was a fun time for the band, at least.

Stopped off at Fry's, did not find an SD card wallet but did find one for USB drives which will work.

Home, changed out of my uniform and into jeans shorts and a flag T-shirt from last year, then to the cinema, bought a ticket for the 3 pm show, but it was only 2 so I went to Starbucks and finished the Outlook merge I had started last night. Or so I thought. Turns out the merge program does not remove duplicates from the inbox, and does not merge archive folders with current folders. Time to see the movie.

Brave was okay. As usual, the animation was pretty good, though they seem to have trouble making noses which are not layers of polygons. I thought the messages were way heavy-handed, and the reveal at the end was not justified by the actions leading up to it. It's natural for a mother to defend her daughter. It's not natural, IMHO, for a mother to do what this one did after engaging in a "to the death" battle to defend her daughter. I'd be less surprised to see ERII abdicate in favor of her eldest son tomorrow morning. There are some parallels there, but this is a spoiler-free review.

The 3D was understated, which was nice. Oddly enough, something which impressed me more than the movie was the closing credits. They were done in a beautiful gold Celtic-like font, with three levels of depth. Names, departments and main unit designations were top, bottom and middle as the 3D layers go. Every credit to the bitter end was done with this high quality workmanship. I wish Pixar woud get a clue and stop showing credits for all the myriad people who did not actually work on the film. I really don't need to know who all the caterers were, or all the lawyers, or all the folks who slopped the stables for the animated horses. There is a cute Easter egg at the end, but I was the only one in the theater who survived long enough to see it. The staff person cleaning up was in the second to last row by then.

After the show I went back to Starbucks to finish the Outlook merge. It worked better the second time, but still left dupes in the inbox.

Home by way of Sizzler. Skipped the ice cream there because there was still chocolate cream cake at home. Sat on the patio with Domino waiting for hummingbirds to find the feeder (one had done so this morning), but gave up when it started to get dark. As soon as I sat down in the recliner two hummers landed on the feeder. Nice to know they have found it. It'll probably be empty when I get back from vacation.

Doing laundry - waited till after the concert to do the whites, so I could toss in the white uniform shirt. Waited till it cooled off to throw them into the dryer.

Did a reality check on the bag of OTC stuff for the trip, and had to jettison the clothing insect repellent because it's an aerosol spray. Everything else is okay.

Watched some fireworks on TV, because I could hear the booms from someplace not too far. Great America said they were not doing any tonight, so this must have been Mountain View or Milpitas.

Plans for tomorrow:
Work
Pack
Put Domino's carrier in the livingroom.

Current Mood: anxious
Current Location: New Furball Hall

The nominees:
Movement: A Short Story About Autism in the Future by Nancy Fulda
The Cartographer Wasps and the Anarchist Bees by E. Lily Yu
The Homecoming by Mike Resnick
The Paper Menagerie by Ken Liu
The Shadow War of the Night Dragons Book One Of The Dead City by John Scalzi

Movement is not really a sci-fi or fantasy story. It's a day in the mind of an autistic girl, onto which the author has tacked a lame sci-fi hook (there is a procedure which "cures" autism) and she gives the girl's brother some kind of futuristic iPod gadget. Neither of these things are in the least necessary for the story. It is an attempt to explain what may go on inside the mind of one autistic girl, well written and fascinating, but I don't think it belongs in the Hugo nominee list.

Cartographer Wasps is charmingly written, and starts with the premise that in a certain rural village somewhere in China, the wasps are world class cartographers, and if you break open their nests you will find highly detailed miniature maps of the area. The rest of the story tells what happens when the townspeople discover this, and start collecting the nests, and what the wasps did in response. And that's where the author lost me. Maybe not lost, but mislaid. The last 2/3 of the story may have been an allegory for current Chinese politics.

Homecoming will be getting my vote. Beautifully written, the small cast of characters are substantial, and by the end of the story we know them better and admire them all in their own way. The story begins with a long-lost son returning home to visit his mother, who is in the final stages of Alzheimer's. His father has basically disowned him for having major reconstructive surgery which made him not look human, and moving to another planet. The way the son talks with his mother is extremely moving. There were real tears for me at the ending.

Paper Menagerie would have been a close second except for the self-serving ending. A Connecticut Yankee marries a mail order bride from Hong Kong, who makes for their son the Chinese version of origami animals, except when she blows into them they come to life. The first 2/3 of the story has a playful mood, but then the son turns on his mother, wanting her to become American. The story is told in the voice of the son, but I found myself seriously disliking him. I suppose that was the point.

Shadow War was a chore for me to read. I think the author was so caught up in playing with sounds that he lost track of his audience. The first paragraph is a single sentence. It takes up half the page. The last sentence in the story is a teaser for the next story, and is straight out of a Bulwer-Lytton Award -winning work.

Current Mood: critical
Current Location: New Furball Hall

The whole idea was to be entertained, and boy, was I. Did not look at my watch until the credits started rolling. I think it completely lived up to the high standards of the franchise, and more.

Let's get some of the basic stuff out of the way. Josh Brolin was perfect as the young Tommy Lee Jones. Tommy Lee Jone was a bit more craggy faced than he needed to be, especially at the tender age of 65, and surrounded by the best makeup artists on the planet, but it worked. Will Smith is still Will Smith (that's a good thing). Special effects were...uh...out of this world. Totally gripping from the opening moment, though I thought they would have done better to give Nicole Scherzinger a more substantial part.

And the biggest surprise for me was the absolutely outstanding performance by someone of whom I thought I had never heard before: Michael Stuhlbarg, who was just plain amazing as Griffin, the wide-eyed Glamourian who can see all timelines. It is hard for me to believe this is the same actor who played Rene Tabard (the bookseller) in Hugo. What a find - an actual actor. Counting Grobin, that's two in one movie. Make that three - Emma Thompson as Agent O (please have someone bitch-slap the person who decided on that character's name) was excellent both as the Hilary-Clinton-like head of MIB and as the 1960's pouf-haired Agent Who Probably Makes Coffee For the Boss.

( Let me digress )

And I suppose Jemaine Clement deserves kudos for playing the bad guy, though 90% of that character is gorgeous special effects, costume and makeup. And stunt doubles.

If the last 10 minutes does not make you cry, there's too much Agent K in you. Brilliant way to provided a moving back-story without rebooting the series.

My only serious complaint about this film is there's no easter egg.

I may be adding this to my very small blu-ray collection.

Worth full 3D price.

Current Mood: entertained
Current Location: Mercado Starbucks

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Annoying The Neighbors Since 1950

Entries tagged with review

Almost Happy

Avenue Q - Los Altos Stage Co at Bus Barn Theater

Short Day

Into The Darkness? Not So Much...

Just when I thought I was done

Beauty Sleep

One-Trick Saturday

It Didn't Take long

Sprang

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It Can Stay in the dryer one more day

Les Miserables - Review

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Busy Weekends go by too quickly

Allegiance - a review

The Hugos and I

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Going Fourth

Hugo Short Story Nominees

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