I'm wondering why you have a two-week work trip to such a small community. I admit that I had to look up Hayden, and there it is--right between Steamboat Springs and Craig, neither of which is exactly a booming metropolis, although Steamboat has a ton of stuff going on. Especially during ski season.

But what I really want to know is: how much art did you come away with during your art-filled vacation?

I have nearly finished packing for my work trip to Hayden, CO.  Tomorrow morning, I will be flying into Eagle/Vail and then driving up to Hayden.  And then drive back to Eagle/Vail in two weeks.  I am very glad, so far, there is very little snow in the forecast through the 13th.  I looked into driving into Denver but it is a four hour drive.  I guess I will have to find things to do in the Steamboat Springs area. 

Off-topic, but I've been having an unusually rewarding Thanksgiving week for beautifully-made, new-old-fashioned award-bait movies: Wicked on Wednesday morning, followed by The Piano Lesson on Netflix last night and Blitz on Apple TV+ tonight.

Blitz is as visually spectacular (in its own head-swimmingly darker register) as Wicked, and more immersive; but while it has received mostly respectful reviews, I was surprised by how mixed many were — only the NYT and Vanity Fair seem to me to properly appreciate writer-director Steve McQueen's accomplishment.   His aesthetic and narrative instincts have never been sharper, and his cast expertly inhabits the sweet spot between the intimacy of McQueen's dialogue and the grim spectacle of his mis-en-scène.

The Piano Lesson is smartly adapted, gorgeously performed by a brilliant ensemble, and beautifully staged and photographed, all on a satisfyingly intimate scale.  I imagine August Wilson would have been proud — producer Denzel Washington and his son, director Malcolm Washington, certainly must be — and I'm more anxious than ever to see the remaining seven works from Wilson's Century Cycle make the leap to film.

In this company, obviously, Wicked stands out as by far the blockbuster-fluffiest of the three.  At the other end of the scale, Piano Lesson is by far the most modest of the three.  And Blitz is the only one that has no magical/supernatural element.

All three incorporate music as a structural or thematic element, and all three examine racial discrimination, inherited trauma, and social or familial breakdown in the context of their respective, wildly-different but vividly-explored worlds.  All three are directed by men of color whose artistry could be described as symphonic.  All three boast flawless casts led by extraordinary women (Erivo and Grande in Wicked; Saoirse Ronan in Blitz; Danielle Deadwyler in The Piano Lesson) who might all plausibly reap Oscar nominations for their respective performances.

And I might very well re-watch all three at some point over the remainder of the holiday season.

I'm posting this here as a suggestion to the universe: this new Earnest needs to come to NT At Home — or at least an NTLive cinemacast — ASAP:

NYT:   This Importance of Being Earnest Is a Fabulous Romp


It sounds delightful, but more specifically: Sharon D. Clarke as Lady Bracknell?  Intoning "a handbag...?" in Caribbean-accented subterranean rumble?
Yes, please.


[Ed.: I guess ASAP is relative, but February will do.]

Last month when I saw Sunset Boulevard, I arrived at the St. James an hour early to check out their new Ambassador Lounge in the former office space of Jordan Roth, Rocco Landesman and David Merrick.  Only it turns out that the lounge occupies only a part of that space, at the back of the building — so Merrick's view onto 44th Street was inaccessible; one of these days I'll have to call ATG and see if they'll let me take a peek during the day or something.  After a quick drink, I went back down to the street to at least check out the early-evening skyline from below, in light of all the research I'd been doing (and bearing in mind how much has changed since Merrick's day).

At that point, Gypsy was in the middle of loading-in to the Majestic across the street, with stacks of scenery and roadboxes lining the sidewalk, and the wide-open loading door offering an expansive view of the stage-left wing.  (All I could really glean about Santo's set was that it involves acres of black faux-brick masking flats, which I'm guessing will form a "bare stage" surround of some sort — although their arrangement suggested, from my limited vantage point, a series of portals rather than an architectural shell).

I was mildly disappointed, though not surprised, by the show's marquee: a video loop of the "Audra/Gypsy" logo, with bulbs flashing and neon flickering.  It's a lovely design — utterly wasted on video in an outdoor context like this, where they could've realized it in three (actual) dimensions on the newly-restored façade, at larger scale and with real bulbs and real neon, to truly spectacular effect.  They could even have programmed it to replicate the original animation's flashes, flickers and subtle twinkles.  Presumably video is much cheaper; among other practical considerations, I'm guessing the screens themselves belong to the Majestic and therefore cost Gypsy's producers nothing.  But it still seems sort of comically disappointing to have designed such dramatic old-school signage to serve as the show's entire visual brand — and then to extinguish its visual impact entirely, as we arrive at the theater, by keeping that design trapped on a screen (like every other sign in the neighborhood).  In the context of the show's website, banner ads, etc., the video looks fabulous: simple, elegant and sharply impactful.  On the marquee, predictably enough, the same video looks dully underwhelming.

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I set up my Time Machine drive. I named it Fritz.

What I have found most helpful/necessary in setting up the new computer: silly little dongles that convert from USB-A to USB-C, since the new computer has none of the former and the old computer has none of the latter. I'm sure there is some wonderful, sophisticated way to transfer everything using the cloud, but I'm finding flash drives and hard drives to be easier.

I thought we were supposed to have Snowmageddon today, but it stopped this morning after maybe one inch.

Well, I saw it this morning in a decent-size but relatively-empty theater, with maybe twenty other (mercifully quiet) viewers and a hundred vacant seats.  (Citywide, most showings seem to reverse these proportions, or sell out entirely, but a seemingly random handful of weekday-morning matinées have remained sparsely attended.  But I expect that may change over the long holiday weekend, which is why I roused myself to go see it today).

Dept. of Bad Planning:  Having downed an entire large soda by about ten minutes into the film itself (after a half hour of previews), I eventually had to make a quick trip to the loo, in the process reluctantly missing "I'm Not That Girl" in its entirety.

The movie has its strengths and weaknesses, though its delirious ambition sometimes makes it hard to say exactly which is which.
It's a lot.  (By comparison, Chu's In The Heights looks like a model of even-keeled restraint).
But I was never bored, I look forward to seeing Part 2 next year, and I'll probably watch Part 1 at least once more before then.

Grande is very good — indeed, the whole cast is excellent — but it's Erivo's film, and she holds it together better than ought to be possible given the material's tonal whiplash, to which Chu and his team commit so zealously that, again, it kind of becomes both a feature and a bug.  (Some have opined that the show's weaker second act may make the second film a bit of a slog, but I wouldn't be surprised if its more-consistent darkness ends up suiting me fine).  On the other hand, I remain grateful for his abiding interest in pulling as much emotion from smaller, quieter moments as from blow-the-roof-off anthems.

I won't say more now; only that I enjoyed it quite a bit, but I don't feel in imminent danger of becoming a superfan, which is fine.

Hah! Wonderful. I have been demolishing the ridiculousness that are their press junkets. It's like some sort of trauma cult

Admirable choices indeed!  I mean, Sondheim, of course, but he's an entire genre by now — those three specific albums bespeak excellent taste within the SJS "universe".  (I haven't actually listened to Liaisons more than a few times, back when it first came out, but you've inspired me to put it back into rotation).

I picked up my new MBP almost a week ago but haven't even taken it out of the box yet.  I've gotten all my files loaded onto my external hard drive, but I need to set aside a half-hour to be coached online — or sit with a Genius at the Apple Store — about moving Photos, Messages, Notes etc. onto the new MBP either from the old one, or from the cloud, without doing a full migration which might inadvertently transfer a lot of outdated and possibly bug-ridden old system files which I don't want clogging up the new computer.  I also want to make sure, before beginning setup, to similarly declutter my iCloud storage.

I'm being a little precious about keeping the new laptop as pristine as possible, but I'm sure I'll loosen up once I dive in.  I'm also curious about the new OS, since at this point I'm several behind: my old MBP, on which I'm typing this now, is still running OS12 Monterey, so I'll be leapfrogging past Ventura and Sonoma to begin with OS15 Sequoia on the new one.

I've never explored font management at all, and while I don't have anywhere near as many fonts as you, it might be a good thing for me to look into, while I'm looking at organization and housekeeping more generally as I set up this new computer.  Indeed, the extremely-modest rate at which I've accumulated fonts over the years is probably due, as much as anything, to my never having figured out how to go about organizing them once I got them.

Quote from: Leighton on Nov 23, 2024, 02:04 PMHave you been holding space for the lyrics of Defying Gravity though?

I haven't personally, but as a New Yorker I think a sliver of our local taxes is earmarked for their care and upkeep.  (Allegedly they're warehoused here for spaceholding on behalf of all city residents).

[Full disclosure: I originally responded to your post with a quizzical huh?; then decided you'd maybe been referring facetiously to the singalong phenomenon, and replaced my huh with some ramblings on private-vs.-communal spectatorship.  Then, earlier today, I finally, belatedly twigged your reference when I stumbled across this.  I had actually watched the interview in question a week or more ago, registered what little there was to register (maudlin unseriousness distilled into buzzy word-salad — hardly a late-breaking innovation in the world of movie junkets or of pop culture more generally, but if folks find this an especially exquisite specimen, I'm not saying they're wrong)... and then deleted it from my brain within seconds.  I'm torn between frank relief at not being online-enough to have clocked its viral moment at all, and mild sheepishness at having missed your point so thoroughly as a result.]