One day, six episodes of the Amazon series featuring Michael Sheen and David Tennant as angel Aziraphale and demon Crowley. I first read the novel by Pratchett and Gaiman as a high-schooler, shortly after reading Neverwhere for the first time.
The show is said to be “every bit as entertaining as the novel”, and I’ve been looking forward to it since I heard that it was in preproduction.
Between that today, and a stack of grants I have to finish reading, I’ll have little time for anything else.
Saw the new Disney offering on Friday. Aladdin’s live-action film, directed by Guy Ritchie and starring Mena Massoud, Naomi Scott, and Will Smith, was received with mixed reviews. Myself? I’ll give it a three-star rating.
The movie musical was strong in cinematic ambience, but musically it felt stunted. I often have problems with movie musicals in contemporary cinema. Classics seemed to fare much better – Singing in the Rain, Guys and Dolls, or Oklahoma, for example.
One musical element of the film I did greatly enjoy was the Bollywood-style choreography in several of the songs. The adaptation gives a more authentic Arabian style, even if it is still lives entirely in the fantasy realm.
Some revisions to the script also gave more body to Aladdin and Jasmine, and both Massoud and Scott performed well. Smith also added flair to the performance, though competing with the voice talents of Robin Williams would be a challenge for just about anyone.
Individual performances varied from meh to good. No character was a breakout, however the cgi-renderings of Abu, Iago, and Raja very nearly stole the show.
There was a moment, some three-and-a-half years ago, that started a chain of events still unravelling even now. I’ve often called Cameron’s The Artist’s Way my commencement down this road of self-discovery and change. To be fair, I’d always been inclined towards researching the spiritual and investigating possibility, but I was stuck. We all get stuck sometime.
Twice I’ve tried to work my way through The Artist’s Way. Once, three years ago, ended when I just didn’t have the will to continue with it. The second time, just under two years ago, I made it through ten weeks of work, but only half-heartedly.
There it sat, this book that I bought used and started investing my time into. I look at it from time to time, and consider revisiting it. Today I pulled it off the shelf, and while I’m not committing to it yet, it holds the possibility of more changes to come.
Avengers is… well, done. I’ve been considering the movie since seeing it a few weeks ago. Without spoiling it for anyone, I guess I’ll just try to work through some thoughts.
Knowing that the MCU had to wrap up this first chapter, I had some opinions (as we all did) about how it should be done. I think the movie did a decent job of it, and even left some openings for future changes – though likely not to be capitalized on. Ten years ago Iron Man gave birth to a whole new system of filmmaking, and we’re still seeing the ramifications of that throughout the entertainment industry.
There are some characters that will likely never appear in the new films again, and that feels somewhat devastating. At the same time, actors age. Comic book characters don’t. Rather than pull a Red Skull or Spider-Man and change actors out, better to close doors on characters and open doors to new ones.
I laughed during the movie. Very nearly cried a couple of times (Downey Jr. and Holland about did it, thank you very much). And I left feeling neither disappointed nor contented. It was an end to the first part, and it feels final. Some endings don’t feel like endings. Some leave you room to imagine the next adventure. The next chapter.
Some endings are ambiguous. They can be anything.
And some endings – like Endgame – just end.
My last employment contract ended with two-months paid vacation, a box of business cards I shredded, and a stack of bookmarks from last season’s shows. And after thinking on the bookmark, I decided to keep them. Because, when I grab a new book off the shelf and start reading, I may make it 15 or 20 pages and then put it back. It’s not the book I’m devoting myself to now, just a quick jaunt into another author’s thought process. With these readily available bookmarks, I’m not scrounging for scrap paper, using stick notes, or dog-earing a page.
So, though the employment may have gone afoul, thanks for the bookmarks. And the paid vacation time.
Last year I was in a production of Little Women, the musical with book by Allan Knee, lyrics by Mindi Dickstein, and music by Jason Howland, adapted from the novel by Louisa May Alcott. Admittedly, Alcott is an author I’ve never read (with Senior year English Lit possibly being an exception – I don’t recall), though her contemporaries and acquaintances I’m quite fond of – Emerson, Thoreau, and Longfellow. In the show I was Professor Bhaer.
There is a scene in the show where, after feeling left out by her sisters, Amy burns a story that Jo has been working on. Most people feel revulsion at the act, and Amy’s excuse that Jo has everything and she has nothing comes across as spoiled and bratty.
From my view, though, Amy is nearly a middle child, and shows very little talent of her own. The youngest (who later dies from illness) is loved by all and a budding pianist. Jo writes, and Meg is a proclaimed beauty. Amy therefor feels out-of-place in her own family and thus acts out. It isn’t right for her to do so, but it can be understood.
So, I was labelled an Amy apologist and have been trying to defend my stance for nearly a year. Then I saw a production of Little Women: The Musical just last month, and I thought Amy was a complete brat.
You want to do this, be it paint that canvas, write that book, make that movie, or learn that instrument. You want to do that so you can feel the accomplishment you’ve known you longed to feel from the time you first had that thought, probably so long ago.
What no one told you is that it’s very rare indeed to find time to make the art that we long to make. Time isn’t a commodity we just have in abundance. Time is finite, and we have more and more ways to fill it. Five centuries ago it was work, sleep, and family. One century ago it was work, sleep, and family. Even fifty years ago, it could have been work, sleep, and family. Now, the possibilities are endless.
So, no. Don’t find time to be creative. Make time. Schedule it in, and guard it as you would anything else important. It’s the only way to get it done.
There’s a fun book titled The First Time I Got Paid for It, which chronicles the stories of writers in Hollywood selling their first scripts. As I deposited my understudy check this week, amazed that someone actually gives me money for pretending to be someone else, I thought about the first time I got paid for this.
My first check tied to real theatrical work was a $100 split off from a check from the director of a show that I assistant-directed. I wasn’t experienced at all, and she walked me through the process pretty much all the way. It was the first time that I learned anger was a boring emotion for the stage.
Since then I’ve been a part of a number of professional productions, and even worked in film and television some – to varying degrees of success. Some of my footage will never be seen, and that’s probably a good thing.
But, to quote Jonathan Larson, “What a way to spend a day.”
The early days of film showed us new possibilities in the world of reality. Images that moved as in real life – no longer just things of fanciful imaginations.
Now, the experience has evolved. And the way that we were cultivated to view cinema is changing as well.
Netflix came under attack recently from industry elites, such as Steven Spielberg, who said that Oscars should be limited to cinema releases, not the Netflix brand of entertainment. (I can’t help but imagine the discussion surrounding film as it related to theatre when cinema began its rise in popularity.)
The joke is, it is industry elites vs. streaming elites, when the real change is through the democratization of entertainment. What will make the most radical difference is how user-uploaded streaming is going to continue to change the face of moving image-making, and what that will mean for the industry.
With Disney’s acquisition of Fox, the Mouse has become the entertainment leader (if it wasn’t already) across multiple channels – theatrics, film, television, broadcast, merchandise, and (of course) theme parks.
Blue Sky, 20th Century Fox, FX, National Geographic, and Fox Searchlight are just some of the assets being brought into the Disney brand. What this will mean for the future of cinema is nothing but conjecture.
However, I’m reminded of the argument that arose with the massive popularity of Disney Theatrics (Disney’s Lion King musical I believe was the first incident) – the Disneyfication of Broadway, where spectacle was more important than theatre.
I’d say that Broadway has always been about spectacle, and it’s not mutually exclusive of theatre. But, we’ll see what happens over the next couple of years.
Michael's Musings 