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| Tuesday, May 31, 2005 12:42 PM |
| Weekend Round-Up and Movie News |
 by Fëanor |
- This weekend:
- Friday night, Peccable, TrackerNeil, Sarcasmo, poppy and I attended a performance of "Sweeney Todd" at the Arden Theatre. It was a first viewing for TrackerNeil and poppy, but Peccable, Sarcasmo, and I are long-time fans. Regardless of our familiarity with the material, we all enjoyed it. It's my favorite musical, actually, and this was a great performance, with excellent staging, acting, and singing. The set consisted of a two-tiered central area, a lower back-stage off to the right, and a series of stairways and catwalks that connected directly into the audience seating area. This meant that the actors were constantly wandering in amongst us and pointing at us and so on. There was no "splash zone" as I had hoped, but we were still in the middle of the action. When they sang, "Isn't that Sweeney there beside you?" at the end, the answer could have been, "Why, yes! Yes it is!"
Despite the fact that it's a bloody, tragic--though also darkly humorous--story that involves quite a bit of cannibalism, we were all quite hungry and ate before and after the show. Good times were had by all, as they say.
- Saturday I went to a carpet store with the intention of picking out styles for the new condo and getting that whole thing done. But upon entering the place and seeing their overwhelmingly huge and varied selection, I was struck with a great paralysis of fear and indecision, and just let the sales dude talk me into putting down a $50 deposit and letting him measure our new place, which was way easier than trying to pick out something right then and there.
- Sunday we visited with my brother, his wife, and their baby, and met my parents and my uncle and aunt there. My uncle and aunt are in from New Mexico and wanted to see the baby. It was good to see everybody again. Poppy also had the good idea to bring along a baby carrier dealie (it's sort of like a harness for your baby so you can strap the kid onto your chest and have your hands free to do other things), which seems to have been well received. After eating far too much food at my brother's, I went with poppy to have dessert with her friends. They generously gave us a brand new Kitchen Aid mixer as a wedding present*! Score!
- Monday we helped poppy's friend and her fiance move into their new apartment, which, conveniently enough, is only a couple minutes away from both our current apartment and our future condo. It was actually good to do some physical work for a change and get a nice workout. I feel sore and tired from it today, and I picked up a few bumps and cuts, but all of that just adds to the feeling that I overcame difficulty to accomplish something useful.
- Poppy and I also got a good deal of chores and cleaning and packing done this weekend (not to mention that I finished the first episode of my film festival diary finally), so I think we can feel pretty good about that.
- Now for the fun stuff I read about on my blogs this morning:
- First of all, Ancient Giant Lemurs! The story's pretty interesting--the concept of so many unique species of creature descending from a single primate ancestor is amazing--but it was the giant lemur phrase that really made me link to this article.
- The Movie Blog is becoming a very good source of linkage for me. This story reminds me of the one about Rodriguez and Tarantino that I linked to in my last post, except this time it's a horror trilogy and the famous directors involved are Dario Argento, Tobe Hooper and Monte Hellman. I'm going to accept the loss of film geek cred and admit that I've never heard of Monte Hellman, but I'm definitely familiar with Argento and Hooper. In my opinion, they're both very hit-and-miss, each having made a few great films and a large number of terrible films that are extremely over-rated, but I'd still definitely be interested in seeing how they'd work together on a horror trilogy.
- Another discovery via the Movie Blog: they're making a "live action" (by which I assume they mean, a few live actors combined with a huge amount of computer generated characters and effects) Transformers movie! And apparently Michael Bay is directing. I was always a huge Transformers fan (there's one sitting on my desk right now, and a ton more at my parent's house, unless Mom finally got tired of them collecting dust in the attic and threw them out), and I actually still really enjoy the original movie, and of course I'm always up for a big budget sci fi/action extravaganza with robots, so I'd be into the idea of a new film. But Michael Bay? Blech. I'll admit that I liked The Rock the first time I saw it, but I've come to feel ashamed of that opinion, and I have even less love for the other movies on his filmography.
* Yeah, it was a bit belated, but mainly because we don't get to see them that often. |
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