Their Best

For the first time in my albeit brief blogging career I am attempting to jump-start a meme all my own. Well, not really all my own since all I've done is take the music meme I stole from Jaquandor a while back and transplanted the rules to authors instead of artists. Consider this an open invite for other bloggers to take this and run with it--and most definitely add their own authors to the mix, since the number of authors I've read multiple works of is woefully small.
Anyway, here are my initial scribes:

Stephen King - It - Probably still my favorite novel of all time. I'’ve read it, all 1,100+ pages of it, six or seven times. The structure is perhaps what impresses me the most, the way King deftly keeps jumping back and forth between the 50s, with kids, and the 80s, with the kids now as adults, all bracketed by the recurring flashbacks to other killings in Derry. The Stand gets noted more often, but to me this is really the ur-King; the epic, overstuffed length; the very knowing treatment of children; the smorgasbord of horror archetypes; and the wonderful characterization that are his trademarks are all here, and in splendid form. Truly a masterpiece.

John Irving - A Prayer for Owen Meany - A haunting novel. The Meany character should just be laughable, what with the all-caps yelling and the exaggerated characterization and the rest of it but it just works.

Barbara Kingsolver - The Poisonwood Bible - Another novel with a different and extremely effective structure. A missionary reverend and his wife take their four daughters to Africa for missionary work. Each chapter is narrated in the first person, present tense by one of the girls. All four get plenty of chapters to narrate, with the whole thing interrupted periodically with third-person, future remembrances from the mother. A powerful novel about religion.

Isaac Asimov - The Robots of Dawn - I've always loved this at-one-point final chapter in the robot books best of all; the robot books in general I always enjoyed much more than the Foundation series, which is of course, wonderful in its own right.

Robert R. McCammon - Swan Song - Sure it's very Stephen King-influenced, but its epic scale and end-of-the-world story stands as a fine complement to King's similarly themed The Stand.

Arthur Miller - Hard to beat Death of a Salesman really.

Terrence McNally - Love! Valour! Compassion! - A heartbreaker of a play that offers, at the same time, real gut-busting laughs. Just some beautiful, very natural writing.

August Wilson - The Piano Lesson - The central stage-prop metaphor of the piano really holds this one together.

Shakespeare - Gotta be Hamlet, really. Mel GibsonÂ’s performance is well worth a look-see if you haven't.

Anyone care to add to the list?

Until Whenever

Tom's Indy Meme

OK.

Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark
Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom
Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade

That was easy.

What? Not what he wanted us to do? OK, let me look again.

Ah.

OK. From Empire magazine's list of the 50 greatest independent films, I'm going to bold the ones I've seen, italicize the ones I haven't seen, and underline the ones I haven't seen and don't want to.

1. Reservoir Dogs
Love it, but I don't think I've ever made it through the ear scene without looking away.

2. Donnie Darko
3. The Terminator
This actually could be pretty good.

4. Clerks
Not a bad film, but the pass the critics and public have given it on the really, really, atrocious acting has always puzzled me.

5. Monty Python's Life of Brian
Never seen any of the Python stuff. Shame on me.

6. Night of the Living Dead
Not a gore/horror fan.

7. Sex, Lies, and Videotape
8. The Usual Suspects
That devil line has always struck me as actually pretty lame.

9. Sideways
As good as advertised, a tough feat.

10. Mean Streets
11. Bad Taste
12. Eraserhead
13. Memento
14. Stranger Than Paradise
15. Blood Simple
I SO have to see this.

16. She's Gotta Have It
I LOVE Do the Right Thing and yet haven't seen any other Lee joints. Must rectify.

17. City of God
18. Withnail and I
19. Lone Star
20. Slacker
21. Roger and Me
22. Nosferatu
23. The Evil Dead
24. Happiness
25. Drugstore Cowboy
26. Lost in Translation
Also as good as advertised, to my surprise.

27. Dark Star
28. In the Company of Men
29. Bad Lieutenant
30. Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song
31. Pink Flamingos
Gross.

32. Two Lane Blacktop
33. Shallow Grave
34. The Blair Witch Project
My friend doesn't follow news much, and hadn't heard a thing about the film before we went to see it. It scared the crap out of him; he thought it was real.

35. THX-1138
36. Buffalo '66
37. Being John Malkovich
Is it just me or did this movie kind of inadvertently kill Malkovich's career?

38. Grosse Point Blank
Underrated. As is, come to think of it, Minnie Driver's beauty.

39. The Passion of the Christ
I'm on the pro side. Brilliant filmmaking.

40. The Descent
41. Dead Man's Shoes
42. Swingers
43. Shadows
44. Amores Perros
45. Mad Max
46. The Texas Chain Saw Massacre
47. Blood Feast
48. Cube
49. Run Lola Run
50. El Mariachi

Until Whenever

I Did Not Know That.

Finished No Direction Home, the Martin Scorcese documentary on Bob Dylan, recently and may have more expansive thoughts at some later date. But the most striking thing that I came out of the multi-hour documentary?

Joan Baez was hot. Really hot.

Until Whenever

Laugh It Up

Picking up the Scalzi-begun film comedy meme, here's my look at the 100 canonical film comedies according to Bob McCabe, author of The Rough Guide to Comedy Movies. I've bolded the ones I've seen.

Airplane!
Entertainment Weekly named this (probably 5-10 years ago now) the greatest comedy ever. Hard to disagree. (Note--the list is alphabetical, not ranked, so McCabe isn't naming it as the greatest.)

All About Eve
Amelie
Annie Hall
The Apartment
Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery
Blazing Saddles
Bringing Up Baby
Broadcast News
Caddyshack
Le diner de con
Dr. Strangelove: Or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb
Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story
Duck Soup
Ferris Bueller's Day Off
Four Weddings and a Funeral
I actually was very underwhelmed by this--which is odd, since writer Richard Curtis' other romantic comedies, Notting Hill and Love, Actually are very high on my list of great romantic comedies. Love, Actually, in particular, is a lost gem of a movie, a new holiday classic that pretty much landed with a big flump two or so years ago.

The General
Ghostbusters
What do you say when someone asks you if you are a God?

The Gold Rush
Good Morning Vietnam
The Graduate
Groundhog Day
I've never been able to figure out just how many times Phil repeats the day. It must be in the thousands, no?

A Hard Day's Night
His Girl Friday
Kind Hearts and Coronets
The Lady Killers
Local Hero
Manhattan
M*A*S*H
Monty Python's Life of Brian
National Lampoon's Animal House
The Odd Couple
The Producers
Raising Arizona
Roxanne
Nice to see this. An oft-forgotten, sweet little movie.

Rushmore
Shaun of the Dead
A Shot in the Dark
Some Like it Hot
Strictly Ballroom
Sullivan's Travels
There's Something About Mary
Just saw this again, after not seeing it since it first came out. Holding up very well.

This is Spinal Tap
That rare comedy I really need to own on DVD. It's on the list.

To Be or Not to Be
Tootsie
Toy Story
Good call. Many would have forgotten it given its animated status.

Les vacances de M. Hulot
When Harry Met Sally...
Did you know those interstitials, of the elderly couples reminiscing, are all scripted and acted? I always thought they were real.

Withnail and I

I am a bad blogger and all-around human being, never having seen any Marx Brothers film, among many other deficiencies revealed above. I have a lot of great comedy to catch up on.

Until Whenever

The Wit of Elmo
First a public service announcement. Tosy and Cosh haven't been the tragic victims of any untimely deaths, but more simply, and mundanely, the victims of a sudden and unexpected, and unwelcome, intense busyness in the real world of jobs and such. In any case, they apologize for their absence, while at the same time admitting that said absence is likely to continue for a bit--this brief post notwithstanding.

With that out of the way, let me say that, as the father of twin 20-month old girls, I have, in the past two weeks or so, seen the film The Adventures of Elmo in Grouchland, or, as the girls call it, Elmo, many, many times (though not nearly as many times as my poor suffering wife). It's not a bad pre-school-aimed flick at that, and for this devout Mandy Patinkin fan, Patinkin's presence as the stock bad guy Huxley (he's greedy, and insists that everything he touches his his) just sweetens the pot that much more. Two lines, in particular, have been sticking with me these past few weeks, and I felt compelled to share them with you kind folks:

Elmo: (Zoey has Elmo's blanket, to which he has, even at this early stage of the film, displayed a perhaps unhealthy attachment to, and won't give it back) Elmo needs his blanket, Zoey! Elmo has a nice washcloth you can have.

Bert: (Bert and Ernie appear in meta-fashion throughout the film to interact with us, the audience, and to discuss the film. Bert continuously shows much anxiousness at the darker turns the story takes--Huxley's taking of Elmo's blanket, Elmo's getting lost, etc.) Ernie, what if Elmo never gets his blanket back!
Ernie: Don't worry Bert, movies always have happy endings.
Bert: (muttering underneath his breath). What about Gone with the Wind? Dr. Zhivago?

Great stuff.

Until Whenever
10

C3PO Meets Po-Mo

Want to read an entertaining, if odd and very acrobatically reaching, post-modern-type reading of the Star Wars films as Pirandello-esque meta-meataphorical "texts?" Go here.

Until Whenever

Batman Begins

Finally saw the new Batman film on DVD and was, if not mightily, plenty impressed. My take on the series so far has been, like so many others', one of rapidly diminishing returns. And not just in the quality of the films as the series wore on, but in how they individually, especially the decent first two, held up over time as well.

I remember being very excited for the release of Burton's Batman in 1989 (I was 14 at the time), and absolutely loving the movie that summer. But as the years wore on, and I'd revisit it every now and then, it seemed less and less impressive. Nicholson's Joker was a great hammy piece of acting, but he wasn't really playing the Joker, now was he? And the plot was pretty boilerplate and uninteresting. And the Batplane is taken down with a gun?

Burton's second entry, Batman Returns has similarly devolved in my estimation as the years have worn on. DeVito and Pfeiffer are great, but the plot gets a bit silly and Batman is never quite as threatening or intimidating as a character as he should be. And the less said about the Schumaker films the better.

So I was very happy to hear that Warner Bros. was restarting things with an honest-to-goodness origin film. And now that I've finally seen it I can say that it easily outpaces its predecessors. Why?

• Bale as Batman. I liked Keaton quite a bit, actually, but Bale was at least his equal. I don't know whether it was his idea or director Christopher Nolan's, but having his Batman speak in a whispered, gravelly growl--for Wayne to disguise his voice, essentially--was an inspired choice.
• The plot. I had read the leaked script, so wasn't surprised by the third-act twist, but I thought it worked very well. And as an origin story they were nicely comprehensive, and surprisingly effective in handling the flashback-heavy opening. Wonderful writing. I even liked the added twist of having Bruce's fear of bats tie directly into his parents being murdered--it was a nice touch.
• The action. I was suspicious of the Batmobile when I first saw pictures, but in context it was perfect, and the chase scene was well-handled. Sure, some of the Batman fighting stuff overplayed the "get into the criminals' mind by never knowing where Batman is" stuff, with a panolopy of very quick cuts defining each fight scene, but the truth is that in a Batman film I don't need to see the unparalleled fighting skills--in a Captain America movie, say, sure, that'd be key, but the key to Batman isn't his karate skills.
• Gary Oldman as Gordon. A wonderfully understated and underplayed performance.
• The comic homages. That the swarm of bats rescuing Batman and Gordon's look were taken directly from Year One and that Falcone is a Loeb/Sale Long Halloween invention I know, and I don't doubt that there were many others.

I did have some minor misgivings, especially around the opening "Bruce Wayne in Nepal" stuff, and how the training montage and the black-garbed ninjas and several other elements from that section of the movie felt like they could have been lifted directly from a bad Van Damme movie, but the movie quickly gained its feet once it centered in Gotham.

I hope they are able to maintain the quality and tone in further installments, especially if Nolan and writer David S. Goyer bail at some point (which presumably they will), but this is a wonderful re-start to the franchise.

Until Whenever

Did You Miss Me?

As is my wont (you know, I don't actually know what "wont" means? I like using it though), I hereby return from a brief, unexpected blogging hiatus by stealing one of them squirmy meme things, from here in this case.

Feeling ________.
Still a little sleepy, after a particularly unrelaxing weekend of painting and housecleaning. Coffee isn't doing its job. Bad coffee.

Listening to ________.
Nixon in China. I likes me the John Adams.

Spent last night ________.
Showing off the monkeys in their Halloween costumes, finishing up the aforementioned cleaning, and scanning through the Sunday paper that had been waiting unread all weekend.

Missing ________.
The girls. After a near-week off, it's always a shock to go back to work and see them for an hour a day.

Had breakfast of ________.
Oatmeal.

Thinking of ________.
Going back to the gym after a two-week hiatus.

Would love to ________.
Get away with the wife for a weekend.

Planning to ________.
Relish the Tuesday cafeteria regular buffalo chicken wrap.

Working to ________.
Get the house cleaned and ready to decorate for X-Mas. Having just put in a new kitchen, this will take more time than may seem necessary.

Favorite time of day is ________.
Those four or five hours between getting home and going to sleep.

Always wanted to play ________.
Sweeney Todd, in the Sondheim musical.

Dreaming of ________.
Someone, somewhere, publishing something I've written (you know, on paper.

A dream comes true when ________.
Depends on the dream, well doesn't it?

Really hate ________.
Raw tomatoes. Blech.

Until Whenever

The U2 Canon - The Joshua Tree

No look at Wide Awake in America. Sorry. I don't have it on disc and don't feel like digging out my old cassette to take a fresh listen. So on to what is for me, and many fans, critics, and others, the pinnacle of U2's output.

The Joshua Tree is the first U2 album I really fell in complete and utter love with. Ironically enough, my first exposure to the band at all (I was just a kid during the early-mid 80s and was pretty much completely oblivious to music in general, never mind U2) came with the "With or Without You" video's omnipresence on MTV. I had only just started to develop the primordial beginnings of musical taste, and was very keen on, ahem, Huey Lewis and the News, Phil Collins, and Bon Jovi. (I learned.) At first I had an intense dislike of the video and song, and would get visibly annoyed when it came on TV. After a while though, and I'm not sure when or how it happened, I began to develop an affection for it. When "I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For" was released I took immediate interest, and it was pretty much all over from there.

I can still remember riding my bike into the downtown main street drag of the next town over, to the only easily accessible record shop for my 13-year-old self. The shop was in the basement of the local bookstore, and was always filled with older kids in leather and jean jackets who, quite frankly, frightened me in their insolent attitudes and height and omnipresent cigarettes. I purchased the cassette, rode my bike home, stuck the album into my small boombox, and started listening. And I haven't stopped since.

As I've mentioned previously, to me The Joshua Tree and Achtung Baby are easily the two all-time classics in U2's catalog. In my personal estimation, the former outguns the latter, if only by a hair, because of a few things. To me, the mood on The Joshua Tree is somewhat more coherent and sustained than on Achtung Baby; stylistically it's more of a whole, more of a seamless entity. And I like that The Joshua Tree is consumed with an outsider's look at America, unlike Achtung Baby's more inside look at European themes--my feeling is that others have looked at Europe musically through a vaguely similar lens, whereas The Joshua Tree is more unique in its perspective. And, of course, above all of this is the fact that The Joshua Tree was the first album I truly and deeply fell in love with. That that may be coloring my judgment isn't just something I suspect, but something I'd be surprised to find not to be true. In other words, much as I might like to pretend otherwise, I am not objective, nor can I be, when it comes to this album.

1. "Where the Streets Have No Name." - My favorite rock song, by anyone. I love every inch of it, from the marvelously solemn and hushed series of keyboard chords that ushers the song in; to the faint ringing guitar figure that drifts in slowly, gaining strength throughout the intro; to the way the drums kick in with power and an urgent drive partway through; to the impassioned and open-throated pure singing Bono indulges in throughout, to the perfect, symmetrical ending. And live, as anyone who has attended a U2 show could tell you, the song takes on added power and urgency--see the Rattle and Hum film for a stellar example.

2. "I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For" - That simple guitar figure that defines the song is very sneaky in the way it expands beyond its basic structure to really give the song an urgency and a mood. And what a vocal on this one--those notes are high, and Bono handles them with seeming ease. The searching, hopeful religious themes that U2 highlight on pretty much every album take center stage here, but never get preachy or overbearing.

3. "With or Without You" - Only two U2 songs have ever reached #1 on the Billboard Hot 100 charts in America--this one and "I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For." "With or Without you" may have been somewhat overplayed, and as a result lost some of its power to the ear, but this is a marvelous song, a gorgeous, plaintive ballad that makes use of Edge's infinite guitar to give it an almost otherwordly underpinning. The discipline and control in Bono's vocal is inspiring.

4. "Bullet the Blue Sky" - One of Adam's most indelible bass lines, and a mean backbeat from Larry anchor this U2 classic. Defining guitar work from the Edge here as well, as he shifts from the ringing, repeated guitar figures to try on a distortion-heavy, power-chord dominated approach married to just a hint of funk. Bono's mid-song rap is infamous ("Outside is America!"), but really it works wonderfully in context. This is one of the band's most blatantly political songs, and its indictment of a warring America rings true today just as much as it did nearly 20 years ago.

5. "Running to Stand Still" - One of the slower songs U2 has ever recorded, this is a spare and stripped-down track, with quiet piano and scratchy slide guitar giving the music a clear blues feel, while not really straying into hard blues land. Bono unleashes a clear and strong falsetto here that matches the quiet of the song well. The build to the end is masterful, with the band coming together to affect a hushed, effective climax that leads out to a sad, harmonica-tinged coda.

6. "Red Hill Mining Town" - Rumor has it that the band abandoned support for this as the album's fourth single when Bono realized he wouldn't be able to hit the high notes night after night on tour. I love how this song marries the scratchy, fingers-on-fretboard blues guitar sound with the Edge's own signature ringing tones. And, while maybe impossible for him to do live for weeks on end, this is a wonderfully passionate vocal from Bono.

7. "In God's Country" - A great, blistering short pop song, faintly reminiscent of some of the Boy material.

8. "Trip through Your Wires" - An old-fashioned blues romp, harmonica. hootin' and hollerin' and all, U2-style. While it can be looked at as somewhat of a throwaway on the album, I think it does serve to really drive home the American musical inspirations that are littered elsewhere by very virtue of its status as a straightforward roots music homage.

9. "One Tree Hill" - One of my favorite tracks. A slow, patiently building song highlighted by some wonderful guitar work by the Edge and some remarkable singing, especially at the end, by Bono.

10. "Exit" - "Love Is Blindness" aside, perhaps U2's darkest song. A kind of hymnal innovation to God sung by Bono at the beginning gives way to a very, very quiet intro, with the bass and Bono's opening lyrics barely audible. The guitar kicks in after a verse in almost as quiet a fashion, picking out an ominous, foreboding melody. By the time the whole band is up to full volume, Adam, Larry, and the Edge are thrashing together almost (almost) like a heavy-metal band, with particularly fierce guitar work from the Edge.

11. "Mothers of the Disappeared" - An inspiringly solemn piece inspired by stories the band heard of South American women--the "mothers of the disappeared"--whose families were the victims of political violence, who danced as a silent means of protest (Sting's "They Dance Alone," off of . . . Nothing Like the Sun is a song about the same story). "In the trees, our sons stand naked/Through the walls our daughters cry/Hear their tears in the rainfall." Bono's heartbreakingly pure falsetto "tears" in the second verse chills my blood. A great way to end the album.

Grade: A+

Until Whenever

Surprise! No, No, No, All Wrong. Again. Surprise!

TV Barn points to this piece from a local Ohio paper in which the local reporter gives out some details on what being a Three Wishes town is really like. Interesting, if brief, reading. My favorite detail is that the spontaneous reactions to some of the surprises -- "we're giving you a new kidney!"-- are deemed unworthy by producers and new ones asked for. Hee.

Until Whenever

Dylan Speaks Truth

"Everybody's going to remember your songs; it's just that nobody's gonna be able to play them." - Bob Dylan, speaking to the Edge about U2's music and legacy.

Love that quote. Dylan, as might be expected regarding things musical, knows of what he speaks. U2's music is remarkably specific to U2. They aren't great songwriters in the traditional sense of the word; that is, they don't write solid, well-constructed, ingenious combinations of melody, harmony, and lyric, like, well, Dylan does. One can easily imagine a multitude of singers a hundred years hence making much hay out of the Dylan songbook--the material there is as strong as a Gershwin's or Porter's, and I don't have much doubt that much of Dylan's best will decades from now have been folded seamlessly into the body of work we tend to think of as the "Great American Songbook."

Not so U2's music. There are exceptions, but for the most part the quality, the greatness, in a U2 song is in how the band makes it so much more than the sum of its parts. The harmonic structures, the variety of chords and chord changes, and the variety in melodic lines in a U2 song are not particularly innovative or challenging or elegant. But the way the band has marshaled its distinct sensibilities into those songs is. "Where the Streets Have No Name," for example, isn't a brilliant song because of the inventiveness of the melody, or the wit or craft in the lyric. It is a brilliant song, though, because of the way the band takes a simple harmonic development and expands it into something greater; for the way the pulsing rhythm of the drums is charged with doing something more than just defining a beat; for the way the minimalist guitar figures at the beginning and end define the parameters of the song while also building a soundscape for Bono to inhabit with his vocal. All valid, wonderful things, but not, per se. "songwriting" things. U2's genius is on record and on stage, not on the page. That's not a bad thing, but it is a thing worth noting.

Until Whenever

Doin' the Friday Shuffle

Act I, Scene I

1. "Danced with a Girl" - Michael John LaChiusa - Marie Christine (Original Broadway Cast)
Medea set in early-20th Century New Orleans. Here, the Medea character, Marie Christine, is seduced by her Jason, Dante.

2. "Rebel Prince" - Rufus Wainwright - Poses
Just got this after reading much praise for Wainwright and was heavily impressed. Melodic, quirky, interesting pop songwriting.

3. "Suzanne" - Leonard Cohen - The Songs of Leonard Cohen
I need to get a cover of this song--it's a great song, but Cohen's not much of a singer.

4. "Bad" - U2 - Rattle & Hum
My favorite rendition of this song, recorded during the Joshua Tree tour, with Bono in probably the best vocal shape he was ever in. A little less flabby than the album cut or the live version recorded on the EP Wide Awake in America.

5. "In the Arms of Sheep" - Smashing Pumpkins - Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness
I hear some Radiohead in this song, with the electronic tone over the strummed acoustic guitar.

6. "Secret of Night" - Stephen Sondheim - Follies in Concert
The only film score Sondheim ever composed was for a film called Stravisky. The score was included on the second disc of this 2-disc Follies recording to fill it out. Interesting historically, but not a favorite.

7. "The Death of Saul" - Alan Menken and Time Rice - King David (World Premiere Recording)
One of the better songs from this score (see the previous post), an anguished, shifting lament with choir, synthesizer, pounding drums, electric guitar and some dramatic singing.

8. "Rain on the Roof" - Stephen Sondheim - Follies in Concert
I get the novelty factor here, and how it makes sense in the context of the show, but ths song is not a favorite on CD. Still, it's very cool to hear the acclaimed writers Comden and Green have such obvious fun with it here.

9. "Sleigh Ride" - Johnny Mathis - A Time-Life Christmas
Classic.

10. "Heaven" - Ricky Ian Gordon - Bright Eyed Joy: The Songs of Ricky Ian Gordon
Not really a musical but a song cycle by the composer. This is a very short, plucky, joyful song introducing the rest of the material.

Until Whenever

Music Morsels Volume XI - King David

I'm an unabashed lover of the compositional work of Alan Menken. From his doo-woppy Litte Shop of Horrors score, to his Disney work, I'm, a big fan of his simple love for grand, emotional melody lines and his fierce lack of shame in being openly, well, sappy. King David was performed, to my knowledge, just once, a live recording that was captured on a now-out of print disc. The occasion was the gala opening of Disney's New Amsterdam Theater on 42nd Street in New York, the Broadway home of, since its opening, The Lion King. For the celebratory opening, Disney commissioned from Menken (who was their house composer at the time, having written the scores for The Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin, Pocahontas, The Hunchback of Notre Dame, and Hercules), an oratorio, basically, around the Biblical King David story.

The resulting piece is wonderful in the sheer amount of music it afforded. Menken's film scores for Disney tended to run at about only six songs each. His expansion of the Beauty and the Beast score for the Broadway show was satisfying, but here he had the chance to do the through-sung kind of pop opera composing that Andrew Lloyd Weber and the Les Miserables guys had had so much success with. I'd imagine that he had higher hopes for the work, that that original concert presentation would evolve into a full-fledged stage show. That never happened, and Menken's expansion of his Hunchback work into a full-length show, while enjoying a nice run in Berlin, never made it to Broadway either. With Beauty & the Beast pushing up against 12 years on Broadway, and its status as one of the longest-running shows ever pretty safe for a while, you'd think Menken would have had more stuff on the boards in the eight years since this concert, but alas it hasn't happened.

Still, this is a great score, full of stirring, juicy singing and melodies, and I am supremely grateful that it was made in the first place. Some of the material gets a little too poppy for my tastes, including some almost-embarrassing smooth jazz type stuff late in the disc, but overall this is very solid big Broadway music.

Grade: B

Until Whenever

UPDATE: A little surfing reveals that the original concert was a nine-performance deal, not one, and that the Lyric Stage in Dallas performed a scaled-down version last year, and that Landmark Christian School in Newman, Georgia will be doing the oratorio in full this November.

Sing, Sing a Song

From Jaquandor, I steal this. My favorite songs by these artists (I've left blanks for artists I know pretty much nothing of).

Favorite Beatles song: "Something"
Bob Dylan's site includes a bunch of streaming live stuff, including a cover of this song he did as a tribute when George Harrison died. How many songs were covered by Dylan and Sinatra?

Favorite solo song by a former Beatle: "Imagine"
I've plugged Jordis Unga's stellar cover from RockStar INXS before, but I'll do it again. Check it out.

Favorite Bob Dylan song: "Tangled Up in Blue"
Oddly enough, my least favorite Dylan song was Jaquandor's favorite.

Favorite Pixies song: ?

Favorite Prince song: "Purple Rain"
Pretty. Did Prince just write or also perform "Nothing Compares to U?" Either way, that's an amazing song.

Favorite Michael Jackson song: "Smooth Criminal"
Say what you want, but that is a killer groove.

Favorite Metallica song: "One"
Not that I know much Metallica, but this combines pretty and hard very effectively.

Favorite Public Enemy song: ?

Favorite Depeche Mode song: ?

Favorite Cure song: ?

Favorite song that most of your friends haven't heard: "Like an Angel Passing through my Room"
Originally by ABBA but as performed by Anne Sofie Van Oter.

Favorite Beastie Boys song: ?

Favorite Police song: "Synchronicity II"
One of my favorite lyrics ever. "Many miles away/There's a shadow on the door/Of acottagee on the shore/Of a dark/Scottish lake."

Favorite Sex Pistols song: ?

Favorite song from a movie: "Philadelphia"
Neil Young's so-superior-to-the-Springsteen-Oscar-winner contribution

Favorite Blondie song: ?

Favorite Genesis song: "The Lamb Dies Down on Broadway"
Never got into Genesis, but I always liked the swagger of this song.

Favorite Led Zeppelin song: "Kashmir"
I can take or leave Zeppelin normally, but for that string riff alone they deserve accolades.

Favorite INXS song: "Never Tear Us Apart" It's hard to pull off a sax solo that's not cheesy.

Favorite Weird Al song: ?

Favorite Pink Floyd song: "Comfortably Numb"

Favorite cover song: "Come Down in Time"
Sting's cover of the Elton John deep cut. Gorgeously melancholy.

Favorite dance song: ?

Favorite U2 song: "Where the Streets Have No Name"
Also my favorite song, period.

Favorite disco song: ?

Favorite The Who song: "Won't Get Fooled Again"
The greatest rock scream, intro, use of synthesizer, and fake ending in any song ever--that's a lot of best-evers for one song.

Favorite Elton John song: "Come Down in Time"
See "Favorite Cover" above.

Favorite Clash song: ?

Favorite David Bowie song: "All the Young Dudes"
For the longest time, I thought this was a Beatles song.

Favorite Nirvana song: "All Apologies"

Favorite Snoop Dogg song: ?

Favorite Ice Cube song: ?

Favorite Johnny Cash song: "The Long Black Veil"

Favorite R.E.M. song: "Nightswimming"
I love me some good piano pop.

Favorite Elvis song: "Can't Help Falling in Love with You"
It's not as good as the original, but Bono's cover off of the "Honeymoon in Vegas" soundtrack, in which he sings the song in three different octaves, is a great one.

Favorite cheesy-ass country song: ?

Favorite Billy Joel song: "And So It Goes"
Betty Buckley sings a tender and haunting cover of this song.

Favorite Bruce Springsteen song: "Brilliant Disguise"
Just brilliant songwriting.

Favorite Big Audio Dynamite song: ?

Favorite New Order song: ?

Favorite Neil Diamond song: ?

Favorite Squeeze song: "Tempted"

Favorite Smiths song: ?

Favorite Tragically Hip Song: ?

I'm adding a few bands/artists as well, because, well, I want to:

Favorite Beach Boys song: "God Only Knows"

Favorite Dave Matthews Band song" "Everyday"
The album cut is OK, but the acoustic version Matthews did for the 9/11 telethon is the beaut.

Favorite Dire Straits song: "Romeo and Juliet"

Favorite Elvis Costello song: "What's So Funny? (About Peace, Love, and Understanding)"
It pains me to say it, since it's one of the few Costello songs he didn't actually write.

Favorite Guns 'N Roses song: "Sweet Child O' Mine"
That opening riff is just so perfect.

Favorite Jimi Hendrix song: "The Wind Cries Mary"

Favorite John Mellencamp song: "Check It Out"

Favorite Living Colour song: "Love Rears Up Its Ugly Head"
If only for the title alone.

Favorite Neil Young song: "Harvest Moon"

Favorite Paul Simon song: "Hearts and Bones"

Favorite Simon & Garfunkel song: "Kathy's Song"

Favorite Queen song: "Show Must Go On"
Freddie Mercury singing about his impending death.

Favorite Radiohead song: "True Love Waits"

Favorite Sting song: "When the Angels Fall"

Favorite Tracy Chapman song: "For You"
Just Tracy and her guitar.

Favorite Van Morrison song: "Moondance"

Favorite XTC song: "Peter Pumpkinhead"

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Random Box Office Thoughts

Did you know that Shrek 2 is the third-highest grossing film ever (domestically, at least)? Behind only Titanic and the original Star Wars? See for yourself. Sure, that's before you take inflation into account, but still. That's a lot of tickets. Maybe I'm crazy, but I don't think it's going to be remembered the same way in 20 years. It's already become pretty forgettable, no? I mean, when Jurassic Park, or Titanic, or Star Wars Episode I hit as hard as they did originally, really reaching those upper stratosphere levels of box office, didn't it seem like they were still in the collective pop consciousness longer? Not even 18 months after Shrek 2 was released, it doesn't seem like people think or talk about it anymore.

All but one of the ten highest grossing films ever feature imaginary or fantastic creatures. All but two of the top twenty. All but four of the top thirty. (I'm counting that strange devil-like thing in Passion of the Christ as imaginary). And fully half of the top ten feature either Darth Vader or Spider-Man. Imagine the money that could be made by a film featuring Spider-Man and Darth Vader fighting hordes of imaginary creatures. It's box office gold!!!

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Previously, on Star Wars . . .

The news that two (two!) Star Wars TV shows are coming our way in the not-so-near future is hardly new. But the latest dribbles of info released by the gatekeepers at Lucas HQ (see the link) have raised a few questions for me:

1) According to Lucasfilm, each ep is expected to cost $1.8 million to produce, about normal for a new hour-long drama. Here's where I get confused. Episode III had a budget of around $115 million for two hours or so of movie. Even for only 40 minutes or so of an episode, shouldn't the budget be comparable? A third of $115 million is almost $40 million, not $2 million. Why is the TV show so much cheaper than the films--for that matter, why are TV shows in general so much cheaper to produce than films? Why could they make the Lost pilot, which for all intents and purposes was a movie, for so much less money than a Hollywood production would cost? It can't all be more expensive actors.

2) Where will the dramatic tension come from? Throughout the prequel trilogy, even though we knew that Anakin would become Darth Vader, all the Jedi would be killed, and the Emperor and Empire would rise, there was still dramatic tension to be had around just how and why those things would happen. In the live-action series, which will take place between Episodes III and IV, what dramatic tension will there be, given that we pretty much know what's going to happen within the next 20 years? I'm not suggesting that there won't be any, just that exactly what it is should be a key question they are trying to figure out, as it's not built in like it was for the prequels.

3) Will Lucas' relative non-involvement (he won't be writing or directing episodes) bring a new pulse to the franchise? I loved the prequels, as I've said, and yet I acknowledge that the acting and dialogue were less than they could have been. How different will Lucas let the tone/feel be--how much leeway will he give the creators of the episodes?

4) Will tradition continue and C3PO and R2D2 appear in the new live-action series? And will the writers and producers avoid the temptation to visit Yoda on Dagobah? Will McDermid sign on to do Emperor cameos, and if not will they use someone else or just avoid actually showing the Emperor at all? Will they stick to their guns and not make this the Darth Vader show, as I can easily imagine it becoming?

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Why Hollywood Sucks

Because it took this beautiful young woman:













And convinced her that it was actually a good idea that she look like this:

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Undeclared - The Complete Series

Recently rented Undeclared and was, as expected, happy to have done so. I had seen probably a good majority of the episodes when they originally aired, but this DVD set still featured a fair number of episodes I had never seen.

Undeclared was a natural next step for the Freaks and Geeks braintrust--their critically lauded, little-seen series about high school had hit the dust, so, as series creator Judd Apatow indicates in a Museum of Television & Radio panel included in the DVD set, it just seemed to make sense to move on to a series about the next step after high school--college. The Freaks and Geeks imprint can be seen primarily in the painfully realistically awkward and geeky Stephen, played winningly by Jay Baruchel, who could with slight adjustments just be Freaks and Geeks' Sam three years later. But Apatow was smart to surround his new Sam character with not the equally nerdy friends Sam had but with a random grouping of new, different friends--a very real dynamic that's repeated in colleges around the country every September as normally unlikely friendships are forged between roommates. So geeky Steven gets as new friends the almost-pretty English exchange student Lloyd; the witty Ron; and the cheerily sloppy slacker Marshall. To that core cast, he added across-the-hall roommates Lizzy and Rachel, who would provide romantic conflicts for the boys.

So far, so good. The setup was simple but real-feeling, the casting was perfect, and the writing was as sharp as it had been on Freaks and Geeks (if a bit less deep), with episodes just completely nailing that strange feeling of freedom college freshman feel, the let down of actual classes, the dynamics of dorm politics, and others. This series certainly stands on its own as an often painfully funny, real look at college. I recommend it. But where I think Apatow may have erred somewhat (and this is probably not at all the reason for the show's demise, just a fault I found in going through all the episodes one by one), was in his unflagging loyalty to his old Freaks and Geeks mates.

F&G regular Seth Rogen played Ron and was a regular writer for the show. That seemed to work, especially as Ron was demonstrably different from Ken, his old F&G character. But already in the first episode we were introduced to Lizzie's boyfriend-from-home, Eric, played by old F&G hand Jason Segel. And Jason would return for no less than six episodes--out of only 16 or so total. This clubby, junior brat pack atmosphere would extend throughout the show's run--with almost the entire F&G cast, save feature film-starring Linda Cardellini and James Franco, appearing in at least one episode. The result was that the show at times could almost feel like a club we the audience weren't really a part of. Segel's appearances, especially, seemed less an organic outshoot of the stories the series wanted to tell us, but a result of Apatow and the gang just loving hanging out with Segel and letting him go nuts on his goofy stalking boyfriend character. As I watched the episodes, I kind of wished Apatow had kept more of a firewall between the two projects, and let Undeclared be more of its own beast. It might not have saved it, but it might have let it develop--even in its short existence--as its own classic series, equal to, and different from, the classic F&G.

Sure, it's relatively a minor quibble, and the series is still well, well, well worth checking out. But that faint smell of what might have been permeates these episodes, at least for me.

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The Infamous Meat Grinder Is, Thankfully, Not One

Mark Evanier notes the American Society of Magazine Editors' choices for the "40 greatest magazine covers of the last 40 years." Here is the press release. Here is, if it's working again, the site with the actual covers.

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Listing from All the Lists

Jaquandor has reacted to John Scalzi's list of the 100 canonical science fiction films (as compiled in Scalzi's just-released book, The Rough Guide to Science Fiction) by indicating which he's seen. So, of course, must I, in yet another attempt to bare to the blogosphere my shockingly limited cultural IQ. (Films I've seen are italicized).

The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai
Across the 8th Dimension!
Akira
Alien
Aliens
Like many, but certainly not all, I prefer the second to the first, being more of an action film fan than a horror fan.

Alphaville
Back to the Future
Blade Runner
I'll join Jaquandor in reacting to this as being somewhat overrated.

Brazil
Bride of Frankenstein
Brother From Another Planet
A Clockwork Orange
Close Encounters of the Third Kind
Contact
The Damned
Destination Moon
The Day The Earth Stood Still
Delicatessen
I saw this once in a dorm room with a bunch of others in college and don't remember much--especially what made it science fiction. I do remember the brilliant percussive sex scene.

Escape From New York
ET: The Extraterrestrial
Rewatched this recently, and it holds up very well, not really reading as "dated" at all. Bodes well for its long-term life.

Flash Gordon: Space Soldiers (serial)
The Fly (1985 version)
Forbidden Planet
Ghost in the Shell
Gojira/Godzilla
The Incredibles
Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956 version)
Jurassic Park
Mad Max 2/The Road Warrior
The Matrix
Sure, but have any sequels ever lived farther down to expectations?

Metropolis
On the Beach
Planet of the Apes (1968 version)
Robocop
Sleeper
Solaris (1972 version)
Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan
Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope
Star Wars Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back
The Stepford Wives
Superman
Terminator 2: Judgement Day
The Thing From Another World
Things to Come
Tron
12 Monkeys
Saw this once, remember loving it, but can't recall hardly anything of the plot. On it goes to the re-watch list.

28 Days Later
20,000 Leagues Under the Sea
2001: A Space Odyssey
Boring. Yeah, I said it. Want to fight about it?

La Voyage Dans la Lune
War of the Worlds (1953 version)

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