The Never-ending Story

Review: Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part 1

Raise your hand if you rolled your eyes when Warner Bros. announced that the seventh Harry Potter book would be split in two. By the end of the franchise, I will have shelled out around sixty dollars for eight matinees, adjusting for inflation and omitting repeat visits. Imagine those paychecks. But as A.O. Scott noted, the Harry Potter film series has also been good to the audience.

If the movies aren't J.K. Rowling's originals, we have much to be thankful for. Chief among them is the studio's commitment. Despite a revolving door of directors, the actors were able to inhabit their characters across eight films, with the late Richard Harris the lone exception. Released over a ten-year period, the films mostly allowed Hogwarts students to age with their characters. 

Just think of the mediocrity of other recent franchises; the Narnia films come to mind. The Potter success came at the same time as the books (and the midnight releases, costume parties, collegiate Quidditch...). After the first Harry Potter film, the rest never felt overwhelmed by CGI and special-effects wizardry. Warner Bros. was smart not to convert the seventh film to 3-D. 

Good choice: Deathly Hallows, Part 1 is a quieter adventure. It makes its emotional impact by placing the three young heroes in the real Muggle world for large stretches. Stripped of constant reliance on magic, this movie lets itself be morose and even unexpected. Harry and Hermione burst into spontaneous dance to the radio, their only window to the world in their isolation. A London coffee shop shootout, with eerie silence exploding into Tarantino-sudden violence, and the Ministry of Magic infiltration show the films at their best.

Some of my generosity may be rescinded with the eighth installment. The final fifty pages do not quite live up to all that comes before. But for now, I'll enjoy this intermediate film, a film of anticipation, which satisfies (oddly enough) by continuing.

Bing Crosby's White, Weird Christmas

Everyone dreams of a white Christmas. That is, until they are sitting in Logan Airport (as I am), enduring gate changes and flight delays.

But earlier this week I watched White Christmas (1954) for the first time, and zoned out a lot to think about snow. White Christmas has the most famous standard ever standard-ed, some Irving Berlin (including an homage to "Abraham"), and Vera-Ellen's freakish skinny legs, but I wondered if it was a classic for the right reasons.

Then Bing Crosby opened his mouth. Not to sing, though that's also worthwhile. But I'm convinced nobody has ever talked like Bing Crosby in White Christmas. Granted, I haven't seen all of Bing's ouerve. If his lines here are an accurate representation, though, Bing is the lovechild of Dashiell Hammett and Dr. Seuss.

Danny Kaye: I guess I just laid an egg.
Bing: An egg? Brother, you laid a Vermont volleyball!

Danny Kaye: I don't seem to have any cash.
Bing: Where'd you leave that? In your snood?

Does anyone still wear a snood? And when did Vermont reign supreme in the volleyball championships? Other classics:

I don't know what you see in this tall drink of charged water, but after you get to know him he's almost endurable. 

You're lucky! You might have been stuck with this weirdsmobile for life! 

The thing about Bing is that he was possibly the squarest man in America. Or so we remember him, with his pleasant boo-doo-doo baritone. But he also experimented with jazz and black music early in his career. Let's not forget that he crooned in blackface in five (!) movies. Uncomfortable now, no question, though I bet he felt some kind of musical hipness just by dressing up and getting down with it.

He's always playing himself, but it's a self that's always in character. He constantly dons roles within his films. But he's so genial and, I'll say it again, pleasant on the ears that those characters always seemed just like Bing. The Bing we could identify with. And so it's easy to overlook that he was an odd duck. Or that he tried very hard to be an odd duck. Even in Holiday Inn (1942), he was spitting out lines like "take a slug out of the mug."

Is he going for Tough Guy? Is he trying out Cool? Somehow, it makes my days merry that normal old Bing Crosby himself was a weirdsmobile.

Someone Tell Me, When Is It My Turn?

Review: Black Swan

When was the last time we witnessed a truly magnificent horror film? The kind that makes you squirm in your seat, bite your nails, and grip the armrest? Darron Aronofsky's Black Swan, a thriller that elevates ballet to Grand Guignol intensity, offers one of the most exhilarating visions of sustain terror in recent memory. Given Aronofsky's emphasis on fingernails, you might not want to chew yours.

His protege is Natalie Portman, who has rarely been given the chance to play a full-fledged woman before. Over the course of a strenuous performance, she breaks free from her girlish cocoon. She plays Nina, a ballerina of technical excellence who is hired for Swan Lake in a dual role: the demure White Swan, a natural fit, and the seductive Black Swan. The company's director (a sinuous Vincent Cassel) pushes her toward letting go of her rigidity. But in her drive for perfection, she slowly transforms from controlled and disciplined to violently reckless.

Beyond her unquenched lust for the role of the Black Swan, two women propel her toward paranoia. Mila Kunis plays her nemesis Lily, a fellow ballerina who seems to befriend Nina only to steal her part. Kunis meets the challenge of a character whose every enticing smile might be imagined. While Nina battles to keep her role, she also lives with her controlling mother (an excellent Barbra Hershey), who was once a dancer herself.

Aronofsky flirts dangerously close with parody, seeing just how far he can push the horror-genre elements. Shadows give way to lurkers; doors slam and wounds bleed. As Lily adopts the movements of the Black Swan, her offstage life is overwhelmed with hallucinations and self-harm. Even though it fulfills the horror-movie quotient for jump scenes, the film locates the emotional horror of unceasing dedication to an artistic ideal. Lily becomes consumed; the script mirrors with heavy doses of manipulation.

But these gimmicks speak to the glitz and the grittiness of the ballet world. Members of the industry toil for the opportunity to exhaust themselves physically and mentally. The scariest moments are visceral; danger lurks behind every curtain naturally, but we squirm most at mutilation to hands and toes. Black Swan is a real talent showcase for Aronofsky and Portman, as well as a splashy, riveting exercise in genre.

The Great American Songbook: "Bridge Over Troubled Water"

Written by: Paul Simon

First performed by: Art Garfunkel, 1970

For my Great American Songbook series, I try to spotlight songs that have become standards, not associated with just one artist. This latest entry in my desert island canon, though, was as iconic for its performers as for its timeliness. Released in January 1970 on Simon and Garfunkel's final studio album, the song captured the end of their relationship (until modern reunion concerts) and the end of the sixties. 

This year's end is fast approaching. Songs like this always seem at home to me over the holidays, joining seasonal weepers like "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas." Paul Simon penned an anthem to a country losing its identity, while senseless wars raged on... sound familiar? Meanwhile, the tsuris over who would sing--Simon or Garfunkel--led to bitterness and the dissolution of a thirteen-year partnership. Their final album was due to have twelve tracks, but they cut it short bickering over the last song. 

Once it went big, the usual suspects ate it up. Johnny Cash's cover, in the lowest key imaginable, gets points on simplicity; Simon's composition sounds like a back-porch church-town strummer. Aretha Franklin amped up the production with background singers and organ (sometimes accompanying herself). She changes the last verse to "Sail on, Silverboy": is this suddenly about romantic heartbreak? Then there's Elvis giving a straightforward cover, few stylistic additions, with room to breathe. 

These are all fine, catapulted the song into the public consciousness, but it's tough to surpass the tension of Garfunkel's original take. The drum hit going into the third verse, like explosions; the strings building to the last chord. Heard in a demo recording by Garfunkel, the final verse was more passive originally, offering some unknown "it" as a crutch rather than the speaker:

Sail on, Silvergirl, sail on high

Your time has come to shine
Put your faith on me

And if it shines, I'll see the sun

Upon your bedroom blinds

Like a bridge over troubled water

Let it be your guide

Like a bridge over troubled water

Let it be your guide

The recorded version concludes, "I will ease your mind." A more proactive statement in the midst of uncertainty.

Mirror, Mirror on the Wall

Review: Circle Mirror Transformation
Wimberly Theatre, Boston
November 10, 2010

The Wasserstein Prize, named after the late playwright Wendy Wasserstein, was supposed to be awarded this week. Every year, the prize goes to an upcoming female playwright, 32 or younger. But no award was given, causing an outcry (at least in the theater world) that the committee is suggesting no young female playwrights are worthy. What about Annie Baker, some have asked?

Baker, who is 29, won an Obie Award for her two Off-Broadway plays Circle Mirror Transformation and The Aliens. Now Boston has taken up Baker in residence, more or less, with "The Shirley, VT Plays," a trio of small-cast plays set in a small Vermont town. Though I didn't make it to all three, I caught Circle Mirror Transformation in its final week, and was impressed at the confidence and control of the author's voice.

Baker assembles five residents of Shirley, Vermont, who are taking part in an acting class led by the ebullient Marty, co-director of the community center and likely a former thespian (played with gusto by Besty Aidem). Part of Baker's charm is finding humor in the actorly rituals and exercises that fill these classes without poking too much fun. Marty's approach to theater is earnest and ebullient, though she is challenged after a few weeks by the gawky, near-silent teenager Lauren: "When are we going to do some acting?"

The play glides carefully forward without being pushed. Exchanges on break or after class set off small but electric frissons. Slowly the players who seem most together (including ex-actress Theresa, in the most grounded performance by Nadia Bowers) lose their balance, thrown off-kilter by the weight of these innocent classes. As weeks pass, the ensemble among the five breaks down, through relationships forged and failed, marriages rocked, and secrets shared. But the cast is unified, no doubt from Melia Bensussen's steady, calming direction. 

Despite Lauren's plea, no genuine on-stage acting occurs. They pass around sounds and gestures, lie still and count up to ten, re-enact their childhood bedrooms or parents' arguments. Most damaging of all, they share anonymous secrets ranging from porn addiction to being in love with a classmate. Baker records all these strange intimacies without passing judgment. She discovers the worth of these theatrical efforts: not to transport but to remind us. 

Have It Your Way?

I'm all for customization. My job is in custom textbooks, for goodness' sake. But yesterday I'm in Wendy's, and between looking at the menu and ordering a baked potato, I overhear one of those customers.

It's safe to say the man's a few cards short of a full deck. But when he starts by asking the price of every item he's stewing over, I expect trouble. And isn't it sad that I expect this sort of thing when I'm downtown? His next point of contention: "I don't know if I want fries with my combo." The cashier suggests a salad. More grousing, then the fries are back on the table. The cashier rings up a chicken sandwich.

"How do you know what I want?" he asks. Because he ordered a number 6, and that's the sandwich in the number 6 combo, she tells him. "But no, no, no," he says. "I don't get to pick what I want on it." It comes with lettuce, tomato, and mayo. "No, I don't want that. How come I don't get to pick? Right next door, over at Burger King, it's 'Have It Your Way'. But now you're telling me I have to have it your way. I'm the customer! I want it my way."

There are several possibilities. One, he's never been to Wendy's, which includes lettuce, tomato, and mayo on everything. Two, he's never been to a fast food restaurant. Otherwise, he would know to request what he wanted up front.

Then at the theatre afterward, a woman barges into her row in a huff, winter coat in hand. The coat check is closed for the evening, and she is appalled. I remember her exact words as she sits down: "This is inhuman." Ma'am, your coat is the size of an igloo, so I understand the inconvenience, but is inhuman the best word here? On a grand universal level, it's slightly above unwrapping candies during the show.

She was agitated because she couldn't have it her way. Well, I would prefer if my audiences didn't shuffle around noisily or text, but part of buying a ticket means that I have to share the space with others. Play nicely. As the last line of The Apartment goes, "Shut up and deal." It's not about doing it My Way. That philosophy's already killed a few in the Philippines, anyway.

The Great American Songbook: Unchained Melody

Written by: Alex North, Hy Zaret

First performed by: Todd Duncan, 1955

Since tonight is Halloween, I'm treating readers to a great American song in honor of Ghost. All we need to hear is that first "Oh, my love, my darling," and we are transported back twenty years, when Patrick Swayze and Demi Moore made pottery erotic.

But "Unchained Melody" was letting loose long before 1990. Alex North, film composer for A Streetcar Named Desire and Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, was urged to write a song into his score for Unchained, a 1955 prison movie. (Now you understand the title, in all its creativity.) He teamed up with Hy Zaret, who was rumored to have written the lyrics for a girl when he was sixteen. Listen to how Todd Duncan (original star of the opera Porgy and Bess) croons it in his quasi-operatic fashion:

As expected, pottery wheels weren't spinning yet. The singer (a prison inmate) pined for freedom, not for sex: "I've hungered for your touch / A long, lonely time. / And time goes by so slowly / And time can do so much." Motown knew how to translate Alex North's jazz-flavored melody into a "Melody" that topped the R&B charts. Both Al Hibbler and Roy Hamilton (both videos linked) recorded North's ballad, now expanded to a full-length hit with busily swooping strings.

Still, Moore and Swayze might have spun urns in silence if not for The Righteous Brothers. Their 1965 cover has prevailed as the radio go-to, even if it owes a debt to Roy Hamilton's tremulous vocals. Bobby Hatfield, one of two Righteous Brothers, sang solo on the track, pouring out melismas and caressing every vowel. He even re-recorded the ballad after its recurrence in Ghost, insisting his falsetto had endured over time. It was strong to start with; listen to this live performance, which ends on a high G:

What keeps "Unchained Melody" in the Great American Songbook for me is that resilience. There's urgency and desperation in the lyrics: "Lonely rivers sigh / 'Wait for me, wait for me.'" The Righteous Brothers' cover is removed from the original anguish, but its sensuality convinces as the song builds to a full-voiced climax. Many artists continued to cover it, including Elvis in his later days. One thing's for sure: we haven't lost this loving feeling.

Though you might lose it looking at the album cover.

500 Million People Like This

Review: The Social Network

I remember friends coercing me into joining this Facebook website my first month of college. It was fall 2004, and the gimmick was that you could compare your interests (say, that The Godfather Part II was your favorite movie) with other users. But instead of spawning campus-wide movie nights, Facebook has grown into a grimly indispensable social sphere. Now, in a truly poetic turn of fate, Facebook users will be supplementing their profiles with The Social Network, a savvy modern thriller of wits and web-smarts rather than bank heists or shoot-outs.

When the project was announced, it was hard to foresee The Social Network as more than a marketing gizmo, a movie-of-the-week. But this prognosis underestimated the team of screenwriter Aaron Sorkin and director David Fincher, as well as a top-notch cast led by Jesse Eisenberg. Sorkin is an answer to calls of why don't they write pictures like that anymore?, a holdover from the screwball days tossing off fast-paced, scalpel-sharp dialogue that illuminates the Harvard hauteur and incisiveness.

Mark Zuckerberg and his allies (soon to be enemies) inhabit the dingy dormitories and social aspirations of this Harvard community, and all are in their own way moved by the exclusivity and their entitlement of Bacchanalian fantasies like "finals clubs." Everything's vying not for connection but for betterment. Soon Zuckerberg, along with co-founder and CFO Eduardo Saverin, has launched his own website for the who's who: Harvard e-mail addresses only for the first run of Facebook. But as with successful business ventures, the end game is expansion; Facebook moves from college to college at dizzying speed, thanks to marketing guru and infamous Napster founder Sean Parker (played by eternal frat-boy Justin Timberlake).

Fincher's directoral hand is felt most in the eerie social atmosphere--the physical, non-web-based, one. The camera spies on cheerless finals club meetings, back-alley tete a tetes, and Parker's seductive Facebook parties with menace. Though the Harvard students manage to create a phenomenon and become billionaires, the film reminds us that they haven't escaped the non-stop collegian parties they longed to join. The only character who sees past the Facebook zeitgeist is Saverin, the co-founder who is ousted when Parker proves better at securing investment capital. The film doesn't try to take sides--business is business. But thanks to Andrew Garfield's earnest performance, it's hard not to feel for Saverin, betrayed by flesh-and-blood friends for online ones.

The film is not just social commentary. The ironies of Facebook friending are well-noted already. And claims of misogyny, though intentional, aren't entirely forgivable: a female second-year law associate comes across much more naively than she should. The Social Network works primarily as intrigue, showing how they got there and how tenuous the climb was. Eisenberg doesn't try to cull favor as Zuckerberg. He projects his superiority with a grimace, a permanent non-smile that hints at the insecurity beneath. What was it all for? Sorkin's supposition that it was a girl all along feels superfluous, yet it's great to see Zuckerberg longing for connection at the end. Even as the creator of the world's largest social network, he still wants to be included.

Where My Mind Went Listening to Mahler

The Boston Symphony Orchestra began its 2010-2011 season last week, and I saw two consecutive Thursday night concerts. Each featured a symphony by Gustav Mahler (1860-1911), a late Romantic composer infamous for his bombast. Now, if you've ever seen a Mahler symphony, let alone two back-to-back, you know what to expect. They are long. Over eighty minutes long. And even when one enjoys the music, one's mind tends to wander. Imagine this interior monologue (condensed, of course):

Movement I. I'm glad to see James Levine has recovered. What was the face he just made at the first violins? Did they screw up before they even started playing? Ahh, the opening fanfare; I forgot how simple Mahler is. Wait... simple? What am I saying? There are enough musicians on that stage to fill Rhode Island. I wonder how they all fit. Perhaps Symphony Hall removed the first few rows of chairs. These seats are terribly creaky. I wish that kid in front of me wouldn't bob his head to the beat. Is there a beat?

And it's over. What a swell symp... oh. That was just the first movement.

Movement II. This second movement is even darker than the first. Listen to those trills, the horn solos, the high violin passages. The program notes say "tempestuous." I bet it will rain when I leave. And is there an umbrella in my bag? I can't check now. The girl next to me is practically having an affair with my armrest. Why are there more empty seats for Mahler than there were for the first half? Did everyone else get the memo about how long this is?

In the last Mahler symphony I went to (No. 6), there was a cowbell. More cowbell, please? More cowbell?

Movement III. Thank goodness, the seventeenth movement. I'll get home before tomorrow. I should go into work early tomorrow, and take the afternoon off. Or maybe I will sleep in and show up at noon; my back's been a little stiff. Grown man behind me who is kneeing my chair repeatedly--you are not helping.

The ushers are rushing about in the corner. Hope that old man's all right. Is he breathing? If someone kicked it at Symphony Hall, would the concert stop? He could be wailing in agony, but you can't hear it over that music. Oh for the love of Mahler, man in Row L, get your middle-aged knee out of my seat cushion.

Movement IV. Groceries. I didn't buy groceries this week. Groceries require a whole movement of thought.

Movement V. The finale, at last! How come it took longer for the paramedics to arrive than the last movement? At least the old man's walking out. He's probably hungry. So am I, come to think of it. Maybe I shouldn't go to the gym before BSO concerts; too much of an appetite. Who was it that thought Mahler made pastries? Just down around the corner, come get your piece of Mahler's. I see the last page on the stands. Maybe it's a trick. Maybe there's an encore hidden behind their folders. Elaine Stritch thought Mahler was a baker, that's it!

Why is everyone rising? Is all this clapping written in? No: the symphony's over! We made it to the other side. You'll have to excuse me, fawning seat-neighbor. I have to get out of here presto. I've been thinking of nothing but Mahler for the past two hours.

For your reference: Elaine Stritch on Mahler.

My Short-Lived Spelling Bee History

S-E-S-Q-U-I-P-E-D-A-L-I-A-N. Sesquipedalian. Given to the use of long words. Also describing long words. Also describing itself. I wish it were a more accurate descriptor for myself.

I went to the Lyric Stage Company production of The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee two weeks ago, and it reignited my lost spelling-bee glory. Imagined glory, at least. To quote Marlon Brando, I coulda been a contender. (Of course, Blogger's spell check program dashes its red underline under "coulda" the moment the fingers type it. It's challenging me: "Are you really serious about spelling?")

One of the best aspects of Spelling Bee, the musical, was how it entered the audience. From the thrust stage and volunteer audience spellers to the trophies hanging around the exits, I felt almost immersed in the spelling competition. What would it have been like to compete in this rigmarole bee, where I might face a word like either phylactery or cow? (The judge's sentence: "Please spell cow.") What if I had gotten sesquipedalian? When I looked the word up online, I realized one of my e's should have been an i. It's always the vowels that trip me up. No trophy today.

Nor in third grade, the first year I remember our class participating in the spelling bee. You rarely hold on to the answers you get right when you're growing up, only your mistakes. Like when I had a test with the word "transparent." Choosing between pictures of a rather masculine-looking mother and a window, I settled on the woman. Maybe I was ahead of my time. But though confident in my spelling skills, acing  vocabulary quizzes every week except for the zucchini incident, I never made it to the top. A minor victory in my third grade class led to my shot at the school-wide bee. They held it in my kindergarten classroom. Perhaps that's why I choked on valorous. When I asked for the definition, I imagined a mountain valley, replete with lush gardens and running waters. Two l's later, the buzzer binged.

Applause for the Clowns

Review: A Little Night Music
Walter Kerr Theater, New York
September 11, 2010

When Bernadette Peters and Elaine Stritch were announced as the replacements for A Little Night Music, anticipation was high. Isn't it bliss, it seemed, to have two prime interpreters of Stephen Sondheim's work appearing in one of his shows again? Two thrilling moments happened when I returned to the Walter Kerr. The first was a collective hush as the clarinet began "Send in the Clowns." The second was a sigh of relief: Elaine Stritch remembered her lines.

From other reports, this isn't always the case. Time takes a toll on the memory, as Sondheim duly noted in his lyrics. "Remember?" an omnipresent vocal quintet sings as they fill the roles of narrators, servants, a theater troupe. And when Madame Armfeldt sings "Liaisons," recounting the extravagant affairs she held as a young courtesan with kings and dukes, she searches between verses for the next: "Where was I, where was I? Oh, yes."

Now 84, Stritch hasn't lost her spit-and-vinegar attitude, nor her razor-sharp timing. She finds unexpected laughs, with perhaps an ad-lib or two, but also poignancy. Her predecessor, Angela Lansbury, had a crisp, Old World haughtiness camouflaging the tenderness beneath. Stritch seems cognizant of death, that the parade has passed before her eyes. She started on Broadway as Ethel Merman's standby, and what a relief to see the old girl's still got it.

Bernadette Peters was last seen in two Merman revivals, Annie Get Your Gun and Gypsy. Though she impressed in an unlikely turn as Rose, Peters is a more natural fit as touring actress Desiree Armfeldt. Her Desiree stays an actress off-stage, even around her old flame, middle-aged lawyer Frederick Egerman (Alexander Hanson, still giving a relaxed but confident performance). But as the inevitability of losing her lover sets in, her facade melts, setting up a "Send in the Clowns" for the ages. Formerly sung by the vulpine Catherine Zeta-Jones, the song now centers on the deep regret of "losing my timing this late in my career."

My opinion of the reduced orchestra and the younger members of the cast has not changed. But the two new actresses's performances alleviate some of the production's Bergman-esque chill with an added dose of comedy, which infects the other players. In place of lavishness, we get truth: from an old woman who winks at death to an actress worried she's past her prime. Make way for the clowns--they're finally here.

The Show Mustn't Go On

Know how Amazon.com loves to sell you great deals you didn't know you wanted? The online seller (that maybe I visit once a day; maybe I have a problem) sent me an e-mail about Nip/Tuck: The Complete Series, daring me to turn them down. But you bought Mad Men, their theory goes, so of course you want Nip/Tuck too.

Oh, Amazon. The honest truth about my relationship with that frothy, overcooked soap opera is that there isn't one. Nip/Tuck and I parted ways seasons ago. Maybe the blame falls on me. I have expectations for TV shows. Like logic and character development. Clearly Nip/Tuck never aspired to the dramatic/nostalgic heights of Mad Men. But halfway through its run, I realized it didn't aspire to much at all. Shock factor, sure. But after separating conjoined twins, Christian and Sean's menage a trois with a prostitute resembling Sean's wife, Julia's near-murder of her mother, Matt and Kimber's drug-addled marriage, Gina's post-climax fall to her death... and of course, the incest... the territory was covered.

Oh right, and Matt was a mime who robbed convenience stores.

Originally the show was outrageous and grotesque, but it didn't take itself so seriously. The fatal move was relocating to Los Angeles, which only magnified its journey toward superficiality. If you're starting from the beginning, don't move with McNamara-Troy. Other TV shows have suffered the same fate when they jumped ship. Weeds began as a jaunty suburban satire, but the call of the Mary Jane blurred the creators' vision. Suddenly, in season four, the show has been reborn in Mexico after Nancy Botwin's drug ring burned her California suburb in a blazing wildfire.

Let's not forget Entourage, which has always been immersed in L.A. superficiality. But when I tuned in again last season, it was as if the creators hadn't felt the recession during their hiatus. Vince's first dramatic challenge was to buy new cars. And after Sushi-gate, it's hard to enjoy Jeremy Piven quite as much. Like Nip/Tuck and Weeds, I cut it off right there. No patch or gum required for quitting.

When I tuned back in this season to see if the groove was back, the hubbub was Vince's hair. Yes, dear readers, the plot revolved around a haircut. The dramatic tension? Movie re-shoots! What will he tell the director? What about his agent? If only Billy Wilder had thought to give Norma Desmond a new bob, just imagine how much greater Sunset Boulevard would be.

The season-changing hairdo. Everything you know is a lie.

TV shows these days jump the shark so easily. How many cast members will sleep together? How many children will have tragic deaths? Countless other shows (Hung, True Blood, Rescue Me, Grey's Anatomy) lost their integrity or never had any and vanished from my viewing schedule. I ask you readers: when did you sense your TV obsession was going downhill?

Murder, She Wrote: Me and Agatha Christie

I'm obsessed with murder. Nothing gets me more than a gripping whodunit, a murder mystery that takes us from corpse to culprit with all the swiftness that a good, juicy offing should have. Why are murder mysteries so ghoulishly fun anyway?

When I was ten, my parents took me to see Agatha Christie's The Mousetrap in Toronto, which is the longest running play in theater history in its London incarnation. And from then, trapped I was. I can't say I've read Christie's oeuvre, but I'd wager on twenty out of her eighty detective novels. It's hard to remember exactly which ones. Most are works of instant thrills, to be read on pins and needles amid the guns and daggers. She hardly ever strays from a tried and true formula: we meet the cast, one meets an untimely demise, and in swoops the detective for interrogations, clues, epiphanies, and the explication. None of her mysteries are left unsolved. That wouldn't be very British of her.

Like afternoon tea, Christie's books feel punctual. The train to murder takes off and arrives exactly on schedule, with all loose ends tidied up and no lingering sentiments except discouragement that, once again, we've been bested. I have never successfully deduced the solution to the crime, which is precisely how the author intended. But reading more of her novels helps understand their structure, the frequent fake-outs, which details will resurface as clues for Hercule Poirot or Miss Marple.

The murder mystery that's most rewarding, I find, is the most lighthearted. The more disconnected our emotions are from the murder, the more potential arises for comedy and social critique. Perhaps this is why I prefer Agatha Christie to the endless CSI and Law and Order gristmill. At least Dame Agatha has fun, writing with the panache of Julia Child frosting a cake.

You Make (Us) Feel Like A Natural Woman

Review: The Kids Are All Right

The opening credits to The Kids Are All Right scroll around the screen like graffiti while skateboarders cruise the California streets, over grainy indie film stock and a Vampire Weekend song. Does the movie already intend to be ironic, or is there secret joy in being part of this hip vegan eco-crunch neighborhood? It's the land of opportunity, where a scruffy motorcycle man makes enough income from his organic restaurant to afford a sprawling, self-consciously indigenous garden in his backyard. It's also the land of normalcy, where two women can share the same over-represented suburban paradise/malaise as everyone else.

Director Lisa Cholokendo straddles this line of parody and sincerity as she navigates the problems of this upper-middle-family, headed by Annette Bening and Julianne Moore. The two moms bicker over hers and hers sinks about their daughter off to college, and their son who isn't realizing his potential. Of course Bening's character Nic imposes too much, and can't please her wife Jules (Moore) emotionally or sexually. Nor does she support Jules' wandering ambition, now manifested in her new startup landscaping business.

It's harder to feel for Nic through all this. She's unfailingly uptight, while Jules' free-spirited (and somewhat free-loving) impulses befit her lackadaisical California lifestyle so well. But Cholokendo has created a comedy that finds humor in common relationship and parenting moments, such as two parents' simultaneous eagerness and reservation over the possibility their son is sleeping with his best friend. It's appropriate for a story about gay marriage that isn't really about being gay at all.


Cholokendo knows how to assemble a top-notch cast, with an especially luminous and relaxed Julianne Moore. Mark Ruffalo's leather jacket and five-o-clock shadow fit the sweet but impossibly naive sperm donor of the couple's son. His interaction with the family, over a few bottles of wine and a few more rolls in the hay, is an engaging comic premise--one laced ultimately, and realistically, with emptiness. The traditional family structure is what lasts.

This film shares some aspects of that other female-driven summer comedy, Eat Pray Love. That movie feels constantly like it's driving toward the inevitable romantic outcome; of course this independent woman will find a man. Yet the narrative wanders to get there. Maybe because the movie comes from a real-life quest for life and love, which seems manufactured but really happened as authentically as a writer with a book deal can proclaim. And though the makeup and wardrobe (not to mention culinary) budgets are many times the size of Cholokendo's, Julia Roberts has such a natural charm and radiance, we know everything's all right. Her men need her more than she needs them.

Dream a Little Dream of Me

Review: Inception

When Alfred Hitchcock directed Vertigo in 1958, he and his cameramen invented a new camera move, tracking back with the camera while zooming in, to capture Jimmy Stewart's acrophobia. The Vertigo effect was the wonder of its day. In many ways, Christopher Nolan's summer film Inception shares the bitter romance and disorientation of Hitchcock's movie. But special effects have advanced greatly in the last fifty years, and Nolan takes full advantage of twisting, turning CGI-scapes that would tickle M.C. Escher.

Though not as profilic, Nolan has proven himself to be a sort of modern Hitchcockian. From The Dark Knight and The Prestige to his best work, Memento, Nolan has played the showman with tricks up his sleeve, who gleefully manipulates the audience then reminds us it's just a movie. The wonder of Vertigo is that it uses the same tricks as Hitchcock's usual crowdpleasers but sinks deeper as it unfolds. Nolan goes the opposite route with Inception, trying to force profundity upon a fun popcorn flick.

Leonardo DiCaprio plays Dom Cobb, a single father in exile, gifted at extracting information from entering people's dreams. He is called upon by a Japanese industrialist to enter his competitor's dreams not to remove an idea but to add one, a process known as inception. Within the running of the film, though, the rationale behind this entry into dreams becomes the MacGuffin, glossed over in the sea of exposition that makes up the first hour. Nolan's rules for inception are complex, and slogging through them at first feels turgid because the script doesn't allow its characters to breathe. Nor does Hans Zimmer's oppressive score, which overstates with crashing timpani and wailing brass.

Just when I was wishing the whole thing would lighten up, the actual inception begins. Suddenly we're watching a different movie--an elaborate bank heist that wows more as it goes along. The inception team enters dreams within dreams, and watching these overlapping worlds line up is the real fun. Joseph Gordon-Levitt even gets a moment or two of levity, not to mention a thrilling levitation stunt in a hotel lobby and elevator. Ultimately, the scales tip in favor of Inception: all the rules that were explained pay off in the final act. But I do wish Nolan had found more ways to humanize his film.

Marion Cotillard is his secret weapon. She looks ravishing as Cobb's deceased wife, whom he recalls by revisiting his memory-box of dreams, and ironically feels the most flesh-and-blood of the cast. Everyone else is subservient to Nolan's mind games except for Cotillard. Her eyes, cruel and agonizingly sad, are something out of a nightmare. In a movie of dazzling plot twists and shifting city streets, her performance is the stuff dreams are made of.

When Book Covers Wax Poetic

They say don't judge a book by its cover. But when you're window shopping at bookstores, it can be hard to believe them (whoever they are). Book covers are marketing, pure and simple. The ideal cover matches thematic content with a sharp selling point--but like titles, sometimes sales outweigh the "art" of it. Fine by me; as long as good books sell, I don't care how their covers look.

Unless the covers are boring. Public-domain classics are the worst offenders. Have you looked for a Moby Dick you can be proud of? I searched the Harvard Coop for a good cover, but the whole batch looked unoriginal, so unfailingly historical. (Art department: "Let's go outside the box. We'll draw--wait for it--a whale.") Herman Melville is soporific enough on his own. Where's the adventure?

From the odd indie press to giant publisher Penguin: Call them Ish-fail.

But Penguin Classics has a trick up its sleeve, the Deluxe Editions. Welcome to a world of deckled edges, French flaps, and provocative cover art. They range from Jane Austen to Thomas Pynchon in style and age. They're appealing, whimsical, and often humorous. Hey, look--color! But I also wonder if the designers have ever read the books. What do you think about these?

1. Candide: Voltaire meets the comics store! Calling X-Men fans--there's a French satire with your name on it.


2. Ethan Frome: Edith Wharton might purse her lips at the title, embossed in red letters like a Harlequin paperback. The lovers look caught in the spell of winter romance--but read the book and you'll realize a much different outcome is in store.

3. Adventures of Huckleberry Finn: The most puzzling. Why is Huck walking underwater? Is this a reference to Mario Puzo (sleeping with the fishes)? The credit to Mr. Mark Twain is a clever in-joke, though.

4. The Scarlet Letter: Nathaniel Hawthorne's original subtitle was A Trip to Hot Topic.

5. Pride and Prejudice: You know, I like this one. It's a Jane Austen for those of us with Dickensian aspirations. Though it looks like the man is named Pride and the woman Prejudice. Cruel parents they had.

6. Wuthering Heights: Or, Wuthering Catherine, who hasn't eaten a meal in weeks. What's the phallic tower behind her? Is Heathcliff's home now at Mordor?

Penguin even carted out a Deluxe Edition of Moby Dick full of color, energy, and violence. And also a whale jumping over a ship. I'm pretty sure that happens in chapter thirty-one, right? Chalk it up to whimsy.

Ms. Kubelik, Shut Up and Deal

Review: Promises, Promises
Broadway Theatre, New York 
July 24, 2010


Promises, Promises was born from the past and the present. Even its source material, Billy Wilder's 1960 film The Apartment, conveyed the drone-like existence of corporate America. By the time the musical opened in 1968, the culture had shifted. People were shedding their inhibitions; the tribe down the street at Hair was shedding even more. What a drag to be a suit. But the show became a strange hybrid of the trusted and true--bookwriter Neil Simon--and the new sounds of Burt Bacharach. Within a somewhat conventional boy-meets-girl comedy lurked a pulsing, driving New York.

Over forty years later, the revival of Promises, Promises sinks into this rhythm like an old pair of shoes. The sleek orchestra voices and varied meters are reminiscent of days gone by. Mad Men has educated us: it was a simpler time with undercurrents of sexism and conniving. The premise begins with C.C. "Chuck" Baxter, never noticed at work until a co-worker with a hot date borrows his nearby apartment. Word spreads among Chuck's superiors, and soon enough, he finds himself a Junior Executive who rents his place to the boss, Mr. Sheldrake. 

Sounds cynical, but the revival carries all the sheen of a Doris Day-Rock Hudson flick. The show still works, and the audience eats it up, though as more of a sixties nostalgia-fest. Don't forget their memories of sitcom stars. Thankfully, Sean Hayes makes an appealing Chuck Baxter. He's more Puck-like than virile, closer to the film's Jack Lemmon than Jerry Orbach in the original production. Hayes clowns his way along, milking laughs whenever Baxter's not pining over the cafeteria worker Fran Kubelik. 

Which leads to the Chenoweth conundrum. It's nice to see Kristin Chenoweth stretch herself, and a thrill to hear her sing anything. But as many have written, she's an odd choice for Fran Kubelik, who lets Sheldrake seduce her and toss her back at his whim. Too old, too well-adjusted, too vocally trained. Again, rawness has eluded this revival. Such things are ephemeral, of course. (As is sound design that isn't over-processed. At least there was a full orchestra with three trumpets.) Neil Simon jokes now often land with a mild chuckle of familiarity. 

But he sure knew how to craft bit parts. Take the scene-stealing lush who helps Baxter drown his sorrows on New Year's Eve. Katie Finneran, who won a Tony for this brief role, digs into it with gusto and every character voice in the book. While Chenoweth is left to her ballads, Hayes and Finneran play drunkenly off each other with Shakespearean grace. "Forget the past and think about the present," she and Baxter sing. A tall order for Promises, Promises, which can't seem to shirk the past at all. 

¡Buzz Lightyear al rescate!

Review: Toy Story 3

Books and TV shows depend upon the series. The bottomless pit of plots and whodunit this time have a history in serialized Dickens novels, radio shows, and Keystone-cop nickelodeons. When the summer movie season rolls around, though, we bemoan the dearth of originality. The barrage of numerals after titles can make a ticket buyer feel he's trapped in some sort of time warp: a radio station stuck in the nineties.

The trilogy has become the most stable form of movie sequel-dom, if you're in the superhero or science fiction business. Properties like the original Star Wars films, Indiana Jones, and more recently The Lord of the Rings have fused in our cultural psyche into one entity. The Ewok battle may not be a cinematic high-point, but that third installment rounds out the series efficiently. After The Empire Strikes Back, all moviegoers and filmmakers surely could hope was that the third didn't sabotage the rest. Remember the dwindling cultural opinion of The Matrix.

All of this build-up is my way of giving Pixar credit where it's due. Toy Story 3, presumably the final chapter in the Woody-Buzz Lightyear saga, doesn't try to aim for infinity and beyond. The film is content to remind us how much we'd missed those gosh-darn-lovable toys. The first film hit theaters in 1995, when I was still in single digits. In the time since, we've been at war, waited in line for iEverything, started blogs, forgotten about Tim Allen... and gone to college.

Though Andy (the kid who owns these toys, now a college student) is moving on, the movie remains deliberately old-fashioned. Sure, there's the 3-D version, for those who want to shell out next week's lunch money. But Pixar's great innovation even at the dawn of computer-animated movies was its storytelling. No matter the voice casting, no other animation studio has churned out a film as great as Toy Story yet, with the possible exception of the first Shrek.

Toy Story 3 works well as part of a package. If I hadn't grown up with these characters, I might have wanted more of a character arc. Wall-E and Up may best it for the audacity of their imagined worlds, sure, but Toy Story 3 is a delightful piece of familiarity. And who would have imagined such an emotional ending to the saga fifteen years ago? Like Andy, we've grown up since the first film, and all it heralded for movies. Sit back and watch as Pixar passes on its patented brand of wonder to a new generation.

The Great American Songbook: Over the Rainbow

Written by: Harold Arlen, E.Y. Harburg

First performed by: Judy Garland, 1939

It's too well-known to even write about. Countless volumes have been written about The Wizard of Oz, about Judy Garland. Multiple "Songs of the Century" lists top off with "Over the Rainbow" (the "Somewhere" is optional).

Aunt Em tells Dorothy to find "a place where you won't get yourself into any trouble." The neglected girl leans into a bale of hay, yearning for a place beyond the rain. But though "Over the Rainbow" seems like a lark, completely organic to the film and to Judy Garland's voice, the reality was that the song created its own trouble. Studio executives at MGM wanted to scrap the ballad altogether. In 1939, pictures were rarely longer than one hour, forty-five minutes (the major exception being Gone with the Wind). The song, over which the songwriters agonized, was cut from several previews. Who wanted to listen to a teenager singing in a barnyard? their wisdom went. Arlen and Harburg fought for its inclusion, and eventually Louis B. Mayer decided the film would survive with "Over the Rainbow."

Could Oz have survived without it? Apocryphal stories credit the image of a rainbow, introduced by lyricist Harburg, with the sepia-toned look of the Kansas sequences. I saw an outdoor screening of the film last week where audience members applauded at the first splash of color. Without this traditional "I want" song, and without the two-tone opening, would the land of Oz still mesmerize?

When I was a five-year-old, Margaret Hamilton's Wicked Witch of the West terrified me. Now that I'm twenty-three, the adult ambitions of Oz become more clear. Take, for instance, the satire of the Wizard bestowing brains, hearts, and courage. Every other song in the score appeals to the jolly, singsong, tra la la jingles we expect of children's musicals (though with undoubtedly great wit). "Over the Rainbow," though skyward-bound, is as down-to-earth. It's a sincere character song, outwardly hopeful but inwardly reaching, a little desperate. "Why oh why can't I?" are the final words.

Listen to how the song starts right in on the chorus. Arlen and Harburg composed a verse but never intended it for The Wizard of Oz. Hear how the orchestra seems to open up on the second "Somewhere," and how Garland's voice sounds older than her sixteen years. Some dreams are too good to be true, which she learns through the Wicked Witch and the sham Wizard. Going home makes perfect sense story-wise, but isn't it a bit deflating to see the sepia-tone again? To know that the storm destroyed their crops, and Mrs. Gulch still has it out for Toto? Like the film, "Over the Rainbow" is really about the need for escapism--not just escapism itself.

Holding Out for a Superhero

Review: Iron Man 2

The ending of the first chapter used a smart segue to the impending sequel: Tony Stark confesses he's Iron Man at a press conference; fade to black. As is the way with Part Twos, when we fade back in, everything's pumped up a few notches. Crowds have increased; explosions have tripled. Villains and sidekicks who command high salaries have sprouted like weeds. Imagine the catering bills.

But while some sequels add superfluous subtitles, grow bored with their leads, or ship their characters off to Abu Dhabi, Iron Man 2 has the good sense to understand its strongest ingredient: Robert Downey, Jr. The film series (a third Iron Man is in the works) charts Downey's real-life near-biblical fall from Hollywood grace and re-establishment as a newly risen hero to the masses. While the actor keeps his high profile in check these days, Iron Man 2 presents Tony Stark as an uncomfortable hero, thwarted by his own self-destructive tendencies. Villains are inside us, too.

Nevertheless, externalized baddies are requisite to the comic book genre. Mickey Rourke swings electrified nunchucks like they've been in his arsenal for years. He's a comeback king like Downey, praised for his recent work in The Wrestler. But while Downey maintains a persona of a healed man, a team player, Rourke still plays out in left field, master of the inappropriate award-show outburst. It's fun to see their real-life personalities reversed in the film. Rourke's diabolical Russian engineer is cool and collected, not one for smalltalk, while Tony Stark throws million-dollar temper tantrums.

Iron Man and its sequel obey the classical rules of comic-book films, with a touch of witty repartee a la Nick and Nora Charles. Don't expect too much out-of-the-box from these ventures. Gwyneth Paltrow, Scarlett Johansson, and Samuel L. Jackson have been hired as the archetypal damsel in distress, sexpot, and one-eyed badass. Much of the sequel feels like filler story, dangling new threads that will wow (pow! zam!) us in future installments. After the poor taste of Transformers II last summer, though, this franchise earns cred for letting its oddball actors hog the spotlight. They're the real heroes.

The 2010 Tony Awards: Don't Rain on Memphis!

11:03  The season was kinder to plays and musical revivals than to new musicals. Only one Best Musical nominee had an original score. Here's hoping that next year provides a stronger candidate pool. Could the 2011 winner be Catch Me if You Can? Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown? Or Spiderman? Tune in then for more live blog!


10:58  Bernadette Peters presents Best Musical, as usual, to Memphis. And they perform again because they won? It's like American Idol at Radio City. What if some other show had won? Did all the casts get into costume just in case?


10:50  Bebe Neuwirth and Nathan Lane are the best presenters of the night, and Catherine Zeta-Jones is adorable in her shock (I don't know why she's surprised) winning Best Actress for a Musical for A Little Night Music, and trying to drag Michael Douglas on stage, "who's a movie star, and I get to sleep with him every night." Douglas Hodge wasn't at all surprised that he won Best Actor for a Musical riding on the La Cage train.


10:42  Okay, Sean Hayes as Spiderman mumbling through "Parade"... was probably better than Spiderman: The Musical will ever be. La Cage aux Folles may be the luckiest musical ever: it won Best Musical back in 1984, Best Revival in 2005, and now Best Revival of a Musical once again. Only ten seconds for a speech so that Billie Joe Armstrong can come out and be a complete weirdo introducing American Idiot. Note to future Tony-aspiring lighting designers: strobe lights. Seizure-inducing strobe lights. (Joelle terms this number "bro overload," or for short, "bro-verload.")

10:30  This just in: Glee star Lea Michele wins Best Performance by a Barbra Streisand Impersonator for her "Don't Rain on My Parade."

10:21  Fences wins Best Revival of a Play, Red wins Best Play, and the white people get twice as much time to talk. Just saying. (Also, vibrator count: five.)


10:15  Dear Oscars: Please watch the Tonys for lessons on the In Memoriam montage. The camera did not pan all over the place, the clapping was quieted, and Sarah McLaughin did not sing "I Will Remember You."


10:10  Another win for Fela!, this time for Best Choreography. Potential mutiny against Memphis? How odd that, during the list of nominees, both Come Fly Away and Promises, Promises performed their choreography... and then neither won.


9:51  Will Smith and Jada Pinkett Smith's terrifying facelift introduce Fela!, which will not win Best Musical because it won't tour outside New York.


9:44  Sean Hayes in a curly red wig: "Did you hear? Annie's coming back to Broadway. So I dressed up like Bernadette Peters. She's the BP that isn't ruining the planet." Then Viola Davis and Denzel Washington take Best Actress and Best Actor in a Play for their work in Fences. Does their director, Kenny Leon, look angry because he's on the verge of tears?


9:39  "To a nunnery, go!" Play montages of Shakespeare and August Wilson are much better set to a rap beat.


9:30  Idina Menzel makes three cast members of Glee so far. Shame that Christiane Noll only gets to sing the second half of "Back to Before," from the closed Ragtime, but Finian's Rainbow (also shuttered) isn't performing at all.


9:25  Catherine Zeta-Jones' tips for singing on the Tonys: 1) Swivel your head wildly. 2) Take pauses in the middle of each sentence. 3) Look stunning. Seriously, though, her "Send in the Clowns" was the high point of her performance on stage. Tonight was just odd. But she still might win...


9:17  Kristin Chenoweth pretends to read a thank-you speech. Sean Hayes: "You didn't win anything." Kristin: "That's unusual for me." I definitely called Levi Kraus (and his hair) for Best Featured Actor in a Musical, Million Dollar Quartet. 


9:07  Mark Sanchez introduces Memphis, and I asked, "who is he?" Sports 1, Josh 0. "Listen to the Beat" seems suspiciously similar to "You Can't Stop the Beat" from Hairspray, also using catchy period music to tell a story about racial relations. Chad Kimball and Montego Glover's voices both sounded very tired. Both Beyonce, who knows how to sing, and Melanie Griffith, who... well..., barely clapped.

9:03  The Frasier-Niles reunion leads us into the most exciting category tonight: Best Featured Actress in a Musical. Angela? Barbara Cook? The winner is much-younger Katie Finneran for Promises, Promises... even though they chose an entirely different winner to print on the screen. "I want to thank the superstar Kristin Chenoweth, who loaned me her eyelashes tonight."


8:56  "Coming up next: Angela Lansbury, David Hyde Pierce, and Paula Abdul." One of these things is not like the other. Lansbury, of course, is one of two actors who have won five Tony Awards, and now she's the honorary chairman of something illustrious.


8:51  The Best Play presentations: How many times can we say "vibrator" tonight? (Up to four.) For inventing the device, Michael Cerveris says, "You're welcome, darling." Alfred Molina and Eddie Redmayne talk about how Red explores the integrity of art and creativity, but what does Eddie care? He's got a Tony in his pocket.


8:45  Sean Hayes in a dance belt. Yep, a normal night on Broadway. For Best Direction of a Play, Antonio Banderas gives Michael Grandage (Red) a Tony, which he clings to and refuses to look away from. Look at the camera, Michael... the trophy's not made of chocolate. Then Banderas announces La Cage aux Folles in a Spanish accent. Terry Johnson, a bit perplexed, gives a short 'n' sweet speech for Best Direction of a Musical.

8:34  The theater audience goes wild for a Republican! Oh, wait--it's Kelsey Grammar in La Cage aux Folles, doing very un-Republican things like running a drag club. Douglas Hodge, singing "The Best of Times," gets seduced by Will Smith and picks up a twenty from Mr. Schuester.


8:33  Eddie Redmayne wins Best Featured Actor in a Play for Red. To think, he was only cast because of his last name!


8:27  Million Dollar Quartet performed, and all I could watch was Levi Kreis' hair. His coiffure is probably why he'll win a Tony tonight: it worked for John Gallagher, Jr. in Spring Awakening. Now to a  commercial for bladder control products. For all those blue-hairs out there on the bus to watch American Idiot.


8:18  Best Featured Actress in a Play goes to Scarlett Johansson for her Broadway debut in A View from the Bridge. Jan Maxwell might push her off a bridge later, but her speech is classy (way to advertise Iron Man 2 from the stage, Scarlett). Vibrator Count: 2.


8:15  Is Sean Hayes the next NPH? "The Tony Award... or as Angela Lansbury calls it, a whippersnapper!" Way to be up for your sixth Tony, Ms. Lansbury. Greedy, greedy.


8:10  The rest of the opening medley: "I Say a Little Prayer" leads into Frank Sinatra, Motown, Afro-beat, drag queens, and punk rock. Yes sir, a typical year on the Great Multicultural Way.


8:00  2009-2010 was the season of non-traditional music on Broadway. How appropriate that Sean Hayes begins the broadcast with the Grieg piano concerto. Nice fingerwork, covering up some of the early microphone issues (please don't repeat last year!).


7:46  The official winners rules: "Be as heartfelt as you can, just do it in a minute and thirty seconds."


7:44  The rundown of the other awards: Red starts the plays sweep with Best Scenic Design and Best Sound Design. Christine Jones, who won Best Scenic Design for a Musical, thanked her husband, the love of her life and father of her children, then director Michael Mayer, "the love of my other life and father of my other children."

Robert Kaplowitz, winning Best Sound Design of a Musical for Fela!, said the Tony is "the best piece of bling ever."


7:31  Neil Austin beats... Neil Austin for Best Lighting Design of a Play in Red. Best Lighting Design of a Musical goes to American Idiot. And what music greets the Green Day winners? "If Ever I Would Leave You" from Camelot: an amusingly incongruous choice.


7:28  The Royal Family wins Best Costume Design of a Play, shocking the Memphis crew, who thought they just might conquer every category. This is the first (and surely not the last) time tonight the title In the Next Room, or the vibrator play will be spoken. Fela! takes Best Costume Design for a Musical, reassuring us that the Tony voters at least watched shows that weren't Memphis.


7:26  We're just powering through these early awards. Best Book goes to Memphis, as well. I think we can safely call Memphis as the Best Musical winner already. Good speech, though: "I never thought I'd be here tonight... The New York Times never thought I'd be here tonight." He's proud to be a theater animal.


7:24  Oh, Best Score. Two original scores: Memphis (which practically won by default) and The Addams Family, the burnt toast of critics across New York. And Enron, a play with some songs about finance and stock prices, not to mention velociraptors. And Fences, which apparently is a wonderful play revival with eleven minutes of incidental music.


7:22  First award of the pre-show: Best Orchestrations. Memphis just won, perhaps beginning the Memphis sweep of the night, a.k.a. the Only Decent Show with an Original Score This Year sweep. Is it cruel that the orchestra played the winners on with the overture to Candide, one of the best written for Broadway, and frequently played by symphony orchestras?


7:05  The Tonys have begun! At least, the Creative Arts Awards, which you can't see on CBS tonight. This is the pre-show hour where they bestow awards upon the unsung heroes of Broadway: the set designers, the orchestrators, the ticket scalpers, Catherine Zeta-Jones' chauffeurs.

Once the red carpet razzmatazz ends (who's covering these things? film students at P.S. 132?), the live blog will commence. Keep refreshing; new posts appear at the top. From Green Day to Stephen Sondheim, get ready for a melange of musical theater styles, old and new, borrowed and blue.

A Heartbreaking Reading of No-One-Cares

Now that my grad school years have ended, it's time for some perspective. Newly degree-d, I saw a fiction reading recently. But in the "real world" (which must be based on some MTV reality show), I feel less beholden to honor my noble, struggling literary friends. Yes, I've sat through poetry workshops just like you. I've churned out chapters the night before. But if you're reading, I expect you to hold my attention for fifteen straight minutes. That means...

1. Make me laugh. Not the hesitant maybe that's meant to be amusing laugh, or the oh it's so silent, I'll give a little titter laugh. You know how these stories that are so original, about what you did from 9:41 a.m. to 9:43 a.m. spread out across three chapters, and we laugh kind-of-sort-of, but they're totally unlike anything that's been published? Hint: Read something that will be published.

2. Don't ask, five minutes over, if you have time left. And seven minutes over, and nine minutes over. Bring a stopwatch. Maybe an egg timer.

3. You're among people who want you to succeed and who will clap no matter what. Don't abuse their sincere desire for you to not suck.

4. I don't want to know about your sex life. Unless it's my sex life too; in which case, please don't write a story about it.

5. Consider your spot in the queue. If you are last, don't send us off to the bar with gang rape or the Third Reich. (Though because we want you to succeed, we will probably say it was "deep" or "whoa, that was... wow.")

6. Mix and match. Listening to twenty minutes of one nonfiction piece about your grandmother, who you ate breakfast with from 9:41 to 9:43 this morning, requires superhuman attention span.

7. Don't talk about your process. Unless it involves Himalayan dwarf trolls and/or Satanic goat sacrifices.

I expect a performance. You expect to sell copies of your latest book. You don't have to read your most profound work. Or Chapter 45 from your four-hundred-page opus. Just be a down-to-earth, semi-literate dude(-ette) who doesn't take yourself too seriously. Because, let's face it, everyone pre-gamed anyway.

Judging a Song by its Cover

Because I am extremely cool, I read some message board post saying that George Gershwin does not write opera. Though his Porgy and Bess is a masterful blend of genres (see my post on "Summertime"), this poster felt music aficionados were ridiculous to compare it to the works of Wagner, for instance. It's a matter of taste.

Which got me thinking about how we construct taste. Before I go on, I'll confess it: I can be a snob. Though no expert on many aspects of film (foreign, indie), I will roll my eyes if you say your favorite movie is Austin Powers. I remember being coaxed into going to White Castle with Harold and Kumar back in high school. Surprise, I laughed a lot--but because I was able to construct a reason: the film cleverly subverted road-trip conventions and was self-aware of its idiocy. Others liked the pot humor. At college orientation, though, Harold and Kumar's wacky adventures were useful for bonding with other newbies who'd sated their White Castle hunger. So I allowed myself to enjoy it inwardly because it was a smart stoner movie, but around the guys, it was just totally awesome, man.

Many of us are self-aware of how others perceive our tastes. A colleague at work proudly displays posters of teen vampire books she loves, but if I mention one, she admonishes me: "Don't judge." Often diehard fans of "genre writing" equate their indulgence with guilty pleasure. But what's to say you can't elevate vampires and wizards into artful writing?

Speaking of bad taste... PhotoShop much?

At work yesterday, water-cooler discussion shifted from the Lost series finale to Glee. I found myself defending the fact that I watch Glee to a host of Lost fans. Aren't these shows cut from the same cloth? Neither is high art. Hard to say what alternative universes Glee will take up in the future; for some, glee club always is a form of purgatory. But this spring, I sense an effort by the writers to deepen the characters, while also churning out increasingly ridiculous musical spots. There have been stumbles. Shortly after an all-Madonna episode, we have to deal with a Lady Gaga tunestack. Then Neil Patrick Harris came in as yet another threat to the club, only to learn things about himself and fall back into his showbiz ways, never to be seen again. It's a sign of guest star fever. Why couldn't we have spent that time getting to know Idina Menzel's character (who had a big secret to share)? That she dreamed a dream feels less emotional than it should when she's been absent for a month.

But there are moments where Glee moves out of its inspirational box and appeals to more than the karaoke fanatic inside us. Future star Rachel, the self-absorbed spotlight-hugger of the glee club, recently lost her voice and, beyond the humor of her silence ("I'm like Tinkerbell. I need applause to live."), there was nuance to her loss. What if her fading voice were permanent? Fashionable boy soprano Kurt has dominated recent episodes; his struggles fitting in with his father formed the first genuine moments of Glee last fall.

Many of these high schoolers are going to graduate and stay close to home, never fulfilling their dreams of performing. That was the undercurrent of NPH's guest turn. Glee can be superficial--all that AutoTune!--but every now and then, there's something boiling underneath. Granted, as a theater nerd/musician/ex-college performer, this show is targeted toward my tastes. But it's not the cheesy episode themes (Bad Reputations, Dreams, Gaga). The best song choices this season have come from a real place, not just Jukebox 301. My favorite episode so far was "Home": three different plot lines and a hokey premise for exploring where we belong (the auditorium was closed to glee rehearsal). But each song was a guise characters could hide behind, grappling with displacement. Knowing his affection is not reciprocated, Kurt sang the melancholy "A House is Not a Home," later reprised by Will and April as they both yearn for unlikely companionship. And April's all-white production of The Wiz? Maybe in bad taste, but I'd sure rather sit through it than Wagner.