Penny pinchers

Yes, the economy's bad. Time to kick ourselves when we're down, right? I can be guilty of this: it turns out I held well to my budget for March, so I rewarded myself with CDs from Amazon this morning. (Still coming out in the black.)

I do wonder, though, about the timing. Monsters and Aliens, this new 3-D movie, made $58.3 million this past weekend. Thing is, it costs $1.50 more at most theaters, because it's in 3-D. You take your two kids to the Loew's right next to Emerson, and spend $10.75 per ticket plus the 3-D bonus charge for all four of you. No money for dinner now, but that's okay; you can feast on the memories. 

If the moviegoers seem a little ridiculous, well, Fox is being even worse. The company wants theaters now, in the midst of economic woes, to install 3-D projectors and screens. They aren't rolling in money, really. Popcorn sales are way down these days; you have to cut back somewhere. And, the cherry on top of all this, Fox is insisting that theaters install 3-D equipment but then tells them to scrounge up their own 3-D glasses. They can't take $1 million from the $58.3 they made and do struggling movie theaters a favor?

Only around half of the weekend gross for Monsters and Aliens came from 3-D-equipped theaters. The rest paid $1.50 less and sat wondering the whole time why they're watching a 3-D movie not in 3-D. Now they'll probably go back with their kids, skipping the popcorn, but also having to skip grocery shopping to compensate.

And let me remind you, Fox, that the movies tried 3-D in the fifties. You can watch Dial M for Murder and imagine the scissors jabbing into you, or Kiss Me Kate for Ann Miller's legs (make sure you duck). Anybody remember any other 3-D movies from the '50s fad? They've died off, entering extinction along with the 3-D gimmick. Here's hoping its resurrection--if Fox decides to keep being tools--doesn't make it either. The children need to eat!

We'll be loving you, always

Review: Blithe Spirit

Shubert Theatre, New York
March 11, 2009

I still have fond memories of watching Judi Dench skip across the Haymarket stage in London, doing charades for the word "winsomely." The play was Noel Coward's Hayfever; Dench was vivacious and earthy, yet light as air. And now another Coward play, Blithe Spirit, returns to Broadway with another winsome leading lady.

A better word for Angela Lansbury would be "legend," but she doesn't rest on her laurels. At 83, despite some fumbling for lines, she's dancing about the Shubert, tossing herself into trances, sprawling across the upper-crust furniture indecorously. You see, she plays Madame Arcati, a psychic who bikes eight miles from home and is beyond thrilled to summon the spirit of Charles' first wife back from the dead. Lansbury never submits to the cuteness of Murder, She Wrote. Her face, with those giant Tweety-bird eyes, registers best when she shoots cold glares at those who question her spiritual powers. And she's full of dotty energy: "Let's really throw our backs into it," she says as the seances kick off.

Despite Lansbury's generous supporting role, Coward's play requires other actors to sharpen their teeth and their wit. Rupert Everett looks right at home in his character's posh English manor; he lives up to the wry but weary dialogue as a man-child in love with his brandy and in dread of his two wives' machinations. His second wife, Jayne Atkinson, is the strongest on stage; she finds humor in being so stalwart and uncompromisingly English. Christine Ebersole, the sexy Elvira who filed the right paperwork to return from death, is a luminous, slightly off-kilter comedienne, but she is miscast. Her nasal, American voice and contemporary line readings feel out of place among the other actors. What fits is how, over scene changes, she applies her ghostly soprano to Noel Coward songs, and to one Irving Berlin standard ("I'll be loving you, always...").

With many rounds of exit applause, Angela Lansbury proved why she's such a loved actress in the theater. If she never does another play, her buoyant performance here will be a solid farewell. If she chooses to come back again, say in A Little Night Music, we could only be so lucky. With the Broadway climate looking so green -- not just the ogres and high-belting witches, or the ticket prices, but also the untried, naive TV stars -- she proves there's room for experience.

On the 23rd Day of Lent, My True Love Took From Me...

Eleven days have gone by. I'm sure you were in despair, unsure of what to do with your life, unwilling to accept that my blog had died. Good news -- it lives again!

You might have thought I gave up blogging for Lent. Not the case. This year is only the second year (and not consecutively) I've given up something for the Lenten season. When I grew up at the Gayton Kirk, a Presbyterian church, sacrificing things for Lent wasn't part of the protocol. Yes, Catholics did it, but they also gave up meat on Fridays if they were strict. My mom, from a good ol' Irish Catholic family, has specific rules about the food she serves, but nothing to do with Lent: Sauerkraut on New Year's Day. Corned beef and cabbage for St. Patrick. Lasagna is a winter meal. No repeats: no chicken Wednesday night if we had it Tuesday night.

I am An Only Child, and rather than feeling guilty about it, I'm just going to say it: it's awesome. I never had concrete chores (my parents used to joke how unhelpful I was). I could drink all of the carbonated sodas and consume all the chocolate I wanted, without regulation. On New Year's, my mom would fix me green beans instead of sauerkraut because I didn't like it. So yes, privileged, loved, blah blah blah. With few rules, though, I also seldom did bad things. In third grade, I threw a friend's brother into a ditch and screamed at him when he threw a snowball in my face. I also broke said friend's swing and didn't tell my parents because I thought I'd get in trouble. Lies of omission--peccadilloes at the most.

So, with minimal rules, there's little to rebel against. You teach yourself habits (yes, I shifted to second person; deal with it). And you find that, when you get to college and can go crazy, you don't really. You find that "real world" issues seem daunting and it's best to get ready for them now. You worry that you're spending away all your money, even though you're not strapped, on stupid trifles. Sadly not on truffles, the chocolate kind.

For my first Lent (we're back to me now), I gave up vending machines. It's unorthodox, but so is bodily deprivation for Protestants. There's a joke about show and tell, where the Jewish girl shares her Star of David, the Catholic boy shares his rosary, and the Presbyterian unfurls a casserole. I would wither away my nights unproductively junior year of college, and I'd get a soda almost every night, with the occasional Reese's Pieces added on. Goodbye dollars, fare-thee-well nose-to-the-grindstone work ethic. (I don't really have one of those to begin with.)

It was a successful experiment. I still drank soda, but for free from the dining hall. Without treats, lazing about at night also felt unearned. Though returning to my Cherry Coke obsession after Easter, I broke the addiction of one (okay, two...) per night, like clockwork.

This year, I get home from class or orchestra three nights a week and do nothing worthwhile. Eating ice cream and watching Frasier are awesome, but I regret it over the weekend when there's all this work, or when I'm trying to finish up things at Da Capo because I neglected them the previous night. It's hard, basically, to think of your apartment, your home, as your work station too. So I gave up sitcoms for Lent. I am not watching Arrested Development over dinner and then playing three more. Lifetime doesn't run from 10 to 1 a.m., when I'm too tired to continue (or, most times, start) work.

Has it paid off? I felt swamped this week and canceled Writing Center hours for the first time. I stayed up until 1:30 a.m. finishing a chapter Tuesday night, but for naught: I didn't e-mail it to myself and thus couldn't print the completed opus. Last night Niles Crane was on my TV when I got home, carrying around a sack as a baby stand-in. How I'd love to, but no, I said. The true reward of mindless television is when you're done with it all. It's a relief, a reward, not a distraction. And remember, I'm an only child. I need every reward I can get.

America's Got Talent (and so can you!)

Into the Words: Part I

I once had the lifetime experience of seeing David Hasselhoff live in the West End, performing in Chicago as Billy Flynn. I will give him this: he's charismatic; he knows he's famous and thus can play famous well. This does not work for all shows: case in point.

But David Hasselhoff has another gift: you spend so much time cringing at his performance that you don't realize just how bad the lyrics are. Last week I looked at the flaws in otherwise characterful lyrics. This week, here's your dose of just how bad it gets out there. These are the types of songs that make people think they are talented. The song just keeps telling them they are!

(And yes, the Hoff sang this on America's Got Talent, proving that his name is not America.)

The scene: Jekyll's going to change into Hyde. Not that the song has anything to do with that.

This is the Moment
Lyric by Leslie Bricusse (who only writes terrible lyrics)
This is the moment. This is the day
When I send all my doubts and demons on their way.
Every endeavor I have made -- ever -- [Oh! 'Cause I didn't get it when you said "every."]
Is coming into play, is here and now -- today. [Glad we established that "this moment" didn't happen yesterday.]

This is the moment, this is the time,
When the momentum and the moment are in rhyme! [Serious WTF moment.]
Give me this moment -- [But it's already here, right? Who is he talking to?]
This precious chance --
I'll gather up my past [In a suitcase?] and make some sense at last. [Of this song?]

This is the moment when all I've done --
All the dreaming, scheming and screaming become one! [Character concern: Jekyll doesn't scream, really.]
This is the day -- see it sparkle and shine, [Again, is he talking to himself? Also, it's totally night when he sings this.]
When all I've lived for becomes mine.

For all these years, I've faced the world alone,
And now the time has come to prove to them [World=singular.]
I've made it on my own.

This [big high note] is the moment -- my final test -- [Oh, this is the moment, not the previous ones. Got it.]
Destiny beckoned, I never reckoned second best.
I won't look down, I must not fall.
This is the moment, the sweetest moment of them all. [Fear of falling? Doesn't sound sweet.]

[Inevitable power ballad key change...]
This is the moment. Damn all the odds. [Okay, hasn't the moment happened by now?]
This day, or never, [Or never? Whoa. Way to change the entire point of the song.]
I'll sit forever with the gods. [It's Victorian London... how many does he believe in?]
When I look back, [Recall: "I won't look down."]
I will always recall, moment for moment, [Official Moment Counter: 11.]
This was the moment, the greatest moment [Aw, man. Counted too early. 13!]
Of them all!

I wish I could say these lyrics inspired nobody, but they actually inspired nobodies. Last year, on American Idol, the hit single was almost a fascimile of the above. I present you an excerpt of "The Time of My Life," without judgment:

I've been waiting for my dreams to turn into something I could believe in
And looking for that magic rainbow on the horizon
I couldn’t see it until I let go
Gave into love and watched all the bitterness burn
Now I’m coming alive body and soul
And feelin’ my world start to turn

I’ll taste every moment and live it out loud
I know this is the time, this is the time to be
More than a name or a face in the crowd
I know this is the time, this is the time of my life

Anatomy of a "Cold-Blooded Murder"

Based on George Bernard Shaw's Pygmalion, My Fair Lady has that crackling dialogue, those sweeping melodies from Frederick Loewe, and the echoes of Rex Harrison and Julie Andrews in every lyric. And on the whole, the lyrics they got to sing are expert. But I have a bone to pick with Alan Jay Lerner, the lyricist: he's just not British. I listened to the London cast recording that Harrison/Andrews made and wondered just how the Brits reacted to their language being American-ized unwittingly.

Why Can't The English?
By right she should be taken out and hung
For the cold-blooded murder of the English tongue!
Just you wait, Henry Higgins. The irony is that Lerner murders the English tongue right here. She should be hanged with a noose, not hung like laundry.

Oh, why can't the English learn to
Set a good example to people whose English
Is painful to your tears?
It works when set to music; nevertheless, there are three "to"s here. And there's so much going on: are the "people" also English? "You" is the English people, suddenly in second person?

I'm An Ordinary Man
I'd be equally as willing for a dentist to be drilling
Than to ever let a woman in my life
Just like good deeds, one "as" deserves another. A "more than" comparison might have served our expert grammarian better.

I'm a very gentle man...
Who has the milk of human kindness
By the quart in every vein
People knew this even before Pulp Fiction: Europe's got the metric system!

On the Street Where You Live
The whole song, really. Freddy's a lightweight, but I reckon he still knows that in England, one is in a street, not on it.

You Did It
Higgins: "Thank heavens for Zoltan Karpathy. If it hadn't been for him, I'd have died of boredom. He was there, alright, and up to his old tricks."
Mrs. Pearce: "Karpathy? That dreadful Hungarian. Was he there?"
Higgins: "Yes."
There's no grammatical jumble here. Mrs. Pearce just sounds like she has a hearing problem. This exchange is captured for posterity on the original Broadway and London cast recordings, but was fixed for the film.

Show Me
Don't talk of June, don't talk of fall,
Don't talk at all -- show me!
The English prefer "autumn." Lerner actually revised these for the London recording in 1959. But when the 1964 film rolled around, "fall" returned to its post. Perhaps he thought the Brits wouldn't watch because of Audrey Hepburn. The revised London lyrics (on all counts an improvement):
Please don't implore, beg, or beseech,
Don't make a speech -- show me!


Get Me To The Church On Time
Drug me or jail me,
Stamp me or mail me
We can see the problem here. The film executives couldn't; they kept the Broadway lyric. My question is, wouldn't Stanley Holloway, or Julie Andrews in the example above, have mentioned that they as Brits find these lyrics odd? The revised, London-only lyrics:
Drug me or jail me,
Bond me or bail me

A Hymn to Him
The real lyric: What in all of heaven could've prompted her to go?
Rex Harrison reads it as "What in all in heaven" on both the Broadway and London albums. Quit, Professor Higgins. Maybe the grammar slips had vexed so much by this point that he'd grown accustomed to them.

This has been an update of Musical Theater Is An Important Art Form. Time for a PBS pledge break!