what I've liked lately
Last Friday's Real Time with Bill Maher was a keeper: Salman Rushdie, Andrew Sullivan, and some Hollywood actor were all sharp and funny. Even Ann Coulter couldn't ruin the hour.
Saw Serenity thanks to Josh Marshall's preview (thanks, Josh!) two days before it opened. It was nice, but I hoped for more than nice. The SciFi channel had run all of Firefly the day before, and I just think that Joss Whedon's prodigious gifts require more than a 120 minute time limit.
Attended Strauss's Ariadne auf Naxos at the Met last week. Susan Graham is superb as the Composer: great singer, great interpreter, and a great actor. Lovely. The first act (known as the Prologue) was more fun than the longer "Act I," which is actually Act II (what? you want logic from opera?). I've never seen this work before. In this production, the work felt like the feel-good mirror-image of Lulu: sexually empowered Zerbinetta has a great time fooling around, does no harm, and no one harms her. Very few operas are happily sexy; this is one of them. See it if you can. (If you don't know the URL, it's metopera.org)
Sunday, went to the closing night of the New York Film Festival and saw Haneke's Cache (yeah, it's missing the accent ague: I'll try to fix it at some point). I didn't not not like it, but it left me confused: surely it's meant to be more than just a shaggy Algerian story?
And I ADORE Clement Crisp's ballet reviews in the Financial Times, especially his elegant filleting of pompous non-choreography such as the execrable Tricodex by the Lyon Ballet Company. Heee. (Anybody who calls the kids who attend Christmas-time performances of The Nutcracker as "Herod fodder" will always have a special place in my cold cold heart.)
Saw Serenity thanks to Josh Marshall's preview (thanks, Josh!) two days before it opened. It was nice, but I hoped for more than nice. The SciFi channel had run all of Firefly the day before, and I just think that Joss Whedon's prodigious gifts require more than a 120 minute time limit.
Attended Strauss's Ariadne auf Naxos at the Met last week. Susan Graham is superb as the Composer: great singer, great interpreter, and a great actor. Lovely. The first act (known as the Prologue) was more fun than the longer "Act I," which is actually Act II (what? you want logic from opera?). I've never seen this work before. In this production, the work felt like the feel-good mirror-image of Lulu: sexually empowered Zerbinetta has a great time fooling around, does no harm, and no one harms her. Very few operas are happily sexy; this is one of them. See it if you can. (If you don't know the URL, it's metopera.org)
Sunday, went to the closing night of the New York Film Festival and saw Haneke's Cache (yeah, it's missing the accent ague: I'll try to fix it at some point). I didn't not not like it, but it left me confused: surely it's meant to be more than just a shaggy Algerian story?
And I ADORE Clement Crisp's ballet reviews in the Financial Times, especially his elegant filleting of pompous non-choreography such as the execrable Tricodex by the Lyon Ballet Company. Heee. (Anybody who calls the kids who attend Christmas-time performances of The Nutcracker as "Herod fodder" will always have a special place in my cold cold heart.)
posted by sinyet at 11:24 PM
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