The Robot Horror Picture Show

When the summer rolls around, and everyone gets excited about the newest big-budget smash, I save my cash. When I'm paying $7.50 for a movie, I want it to linger in my mind. I am not that sold on "mindless entertainment"... at least not if I pay for it. "Mindless" is what TV is for. Do I want to sit in a theater for two hours, laugh along with popcorn spillers and Diet Coke guzzlers, and then get home and not remember any of the punchlines? Not usually. My preference is for movies that leave lasting impressions. I just read Revolutionary Road, the Richard Yates novel, this week and it was astonishing. Many of the feelings I had during the film came flooding back. Some people excoriated it, but I could still remember each scene vividly as I flipped the pages. I've only seen it once, like a riveting piece of theater, and it stays with me.

So, yes, call me anti-populist, but I'm just not into this idea that entertainment has to be primarily "entertaining." It never hurts to at least go for something slightly deeper. Last year, The Dark Knight was a big deal... well, yeah, because it tried to merge comic book icons with myths of American culture. Not to mention the Oscar-winning performance, and the accompanying curiosity (the "too soon?" factor). Oh, right, and Batman's cool. Yes, but see, I assumed that it did so well because people want more than surface "cool." There was, maybe, a purpose for spending trillions of dollars on a few reels of celluloid.

So I respected America and then came Judgment Day. I paid $7.50 to see Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, and could I tell you anything about the Fallen? It was part of a man-night before a wedding, and a fantastic weekend, so I was happy to join in and not upset or bitter that I saw it. But the thing is, nobody seemed to think it was that great. And yet, even though people walked out un-transformed, they're making millions (and I bet a three-quel).

In lieu of "reviewing" or being negative, because the whole idea of Transformers II holding a box-office record is just ridiculous and needs no editorializing, I came up with a wholly positive critique. No use of "cretinous" or "noxious" here; no words like "a horrific experience of unbearable length." Here goes:

Thank you, Julie White. Now that there are 20 spots in the 2010 Oscars for Supporting Actress in a Summer Blockbuster, you are guaranteed a nomination for being hysterical as a mother who endures a ruined kitchen island, her first reefer brownie, and a sudden re-emergence in the narrative to console her son after he dies, enters Alien Robot Heaven to be told, "it is your destiny," and rejoins the living with nary a wound. You may now return to an acclaimed Twelfth Night in Central Park knowing that your rent is covered. And that they can't take your Tony away.

Sing Once Again for Me: Phantom... an Appreciation?

I was talking with Connie this weekend about The Phantom of the Opera, and how it turned me on to the world of theater, just like John Grisham turned many people on to reading adult novels or Titanic got people excited about going to the movies. It's not that any of these are "bad art," but let's be honest: they are kitsch, and they know it.

So I sat down and thought about how Phantom, which I loved enough to see three times in my youth, has changed for me. It's a love letter to the theater and a fervent embrace of Romanticism. You can't deny that many find the show irresistible, and a living, breathing paradox. Yes, it's a pop-opera, but somehow elevated by its operatic pretensions. It stirs emotions despite the mega-musical trimmings and trappings: the hundred-some trap doors, the dry fog that spills onto the poor orchestra. It's the epitome of everything wrong with long-running spectacles, yet wouldn't you rather see it than Mamma Mia!?

It worked well enough to survive this long, garner a Las Vegas run without casting Celine Dion, and outlast a film adaptation with beautiful sets and vocal mis-casting. The thinness of each role, which also plagues the show on stage, originates in Gaston Leroux's late-nineteenth-century novel: a true "pulp fiction," sewing together detective-story journalism with eerie Gothic archetypes. The sweet ingenue with a dark past, the sinister but cultured villain: both would be resurrected in the realm of film noir, but without the innocents like dashing-but-dumb Raoul. What keeps it Romantic is artist and audience's longing for the tortured Heathcliff figure, though earthbound convention would not permit such a spiritual, sensual union for the heroine.

I'd be the first to criticize those who foolishly call Phantom an opera. But really, its virtues/flaws are how many stereotype opera: vocal acrobatics come first, wrapped in elaborate stagecraft, while substance is checked at the door with your coats. The beauty of Phantom is that it doesn't need substance. Just like many Andrew Lloyd Webber vehicles, the whole adds up to more than the sum of its parts. If we try hard, we could search for deeper meaning: something about beauty internally, and the cruelty of a society bent on persecution. But Phantom echoes the 1980s era of excess and Reaganomics more than anything. Think of how Bret Easton Ellis characterized Les Miz, another '80s British Invasion bombast, in American Psycho as the ticket for the rich and soulless. We as an audience think that because the sopranos sing higher than before (don't mind that Christine's high E is prerecorded) and the pyrotechnics outweigh the Fourth of July's, size matters on all levels.

And yet, cynics abate! In 2009, Phantom is far more relevant than the still-touring Rent; maybe it's the music. Typical through-sung Lloyd Webber, but with more stolen Puccini than ever before. (If you think that he doesn't recycle fragments of classical music in his melodies, listen to "I Don't Know How to Love Him" and the violin entrance of the Mendelssohn Violin Concerto's second movement.) Thievery or tribute? Well, both; it's part of the paradox. His score is a mixture of influences. In diegetic opera scenes, he spoofs Mozart coloratura up through twelve-tonal dissonance.

The title song: great on its own, jarring in context. Lots of sound and fury symbolizing niente. It's like Queen just took over the theater. Christine rocks out to silent-movie "horror" chords and a disco beat. Primo example of schlock-aretta.

But let's take "All I Ask of You," more harmonious with the rest. It's brazenly a break-out hit, and yet the music writing is mature. Listen to the descending ninth on "Say you'll love me," and then the descending seventh in "every waking moment." Harmonies shift on that same phrase under the repeated notes ("waking moment"). Unexpected dissonance when the chorus enters the second verse: "that's all I ask of you" ends with a D-flat, while "Let me be your shelter" overlaps on an E-flat.

Upon this melody sit the words of Charles Hart. And he gives the actors nothing:

Say you'll share with me one love, one lifetime,
Say the word and I will follow you.
Share each day with me, each night, each morning.
Say you love me. (You know I do.)
Love me: That's all I ask of you.

Seems she asks an awful lot. If Sondheim had written this, the irony would be obvious: she doesn't really want the safety white-bread Raoul offers, she just makes herself believe that. But instead, we get platitudes. Each syllable scans well, and there's lovely alliteration ("to hold me and to hide me"). But this is empty poetry. Unlike in penny-dreadful-inspired Sweeney Todd, there's nothing behind these stock characters, nothing true beneath the artifice.

Granted, the title role is showy. Another part of the illusion: every time you hear the Phantom's voice from off-stage, it's actually recorded in advance, because it doesn't make sense otherwise. In act one, he basically sings two big numbers and then leaves until the last five minutes, when he pops up to hurl a chandelier at us. Not much work for all that makeup. Carlotta, who actually sings her high tessitura eight shows a week, is also a flashy part; the two romantic leads are thankless. This show has probably placed tons of Christines into career limbo. What do you do after you've mastered the art of sweet, vacuous pseudo-legit pop soprano? If you're lucky, you'll get hired for the 2010 sequel, Love Never Dies. (Rebecca Luker was a lucky Christine: she triumphed during 1990s revival-mania. Recently Sierra Boggess got to expand her range with The Little Mermaid, as a sweet, vacuous belting pop soprano.)

Here's something that bugs me: We meet Christine singing a pop ballad masquerading as an aria, "Think of Me." Then Raoul jumps in, in a box in the opera house. Is he, by dramatic logic, really singing? I hope not; major audience faux pas. Is his "singing" an expression of internal monologue? Then the melody returns in "Masquerade," but neither is actually singing within the world of the show. We could concoct an argument for this, but it's more honest to say it's sloppy recycling of music.

But there are also nice things in the score. Look at the internal rhyme in all lyrics set to "Angel of Music":

Angel of Music, guide and guardian,
Grant to me your glory.
Angel of Music, hide no longer,
Secret and strange angel.

Angel or father? Friend or Phantom?
Who is it there staring?
Angel, oh speak, what endless longings
Echo in this whisper?

The comedic lyrics in "Notes" a la Gilbert and Sullivan use some cool wordplay:

It's really not amusing.
He's abusing our position.
In addition, he wants money.
He's a funny sort of specter
To expect a large retainer,
Nothing plainer,
He is clearly quite insane.

And it's easy not to realize that the final lines ("You alone can make my song take flight / It's over now, the music of the night") are actually set on the "All I Ask of You" melody. The orchestra comes crashing in, though, with a swell of "The Music of the Night" to suggest the tunes are forever inseparable. And unstoppable; they repeat all night long! But see, it's that Phantom paradox again: just try to get them out of your head.

Spam-a-whole-lot

Short and sweet tonight. You should open your spam folder, if you're lucky enough to have any unread messages, and delight in the complete and entire absurdity. Note: I didn't actually open any of the messages or any attachments and allow their viral infections to spread.

My current four beloved spammers:

1. "Places to visit." Looks innocuous. Maybe they are reading my blog. The sender's name, though, is Cynthia Hiajyfq. Is that an American Indian tribe I haven't come across? Or, when doling out last names to the blacksmith (Smith) or the local philanthropist (Green), the official sur-naming committee ran into an alcoholic drunk-texting his friends and knew exactly what to call him/her.

2. "Hi! It's Jane, from school." Hi Jane. Oh, from school! 'Cause that's specific since I've only been in school 18 of my nearing-23 years. I guess I went to Shakespeare rehearsals with a Jane, and we talked once. And who's the sender? Is it Jane? Nope: Mariano. (Post-it note: submit to Fail Blog.)

3. "The Erotic Films History of Turkey -- The First All-Turkish..." Enticing. My buddy Peterschick (as he must be known in the hood) is aware I'm a film guy. I wonder, is it an erotic film that follows the lusty growth of Turkish civilization, or is it an overview of Turkish erotic cinema? I opened up the memo to see (don't try this at home!). Behold, a description that answers all my questions: "Utrine Ruins W. VVa. Courthouse Shrubbery." Oh.

4. "How to Get Any Gril Too Sleep With You." My Internet pen pal Hieb has lined up some tips he says I can "masqter" right now. Hey, I know it gets cold at night, but I don't want to be cuddling with my George Foreman any time soon.

Okay, let's read it as intended. Men/lesbians/anyone who's curious, do we really want any girl to sleep with us? I mean, any girl? Are our standards so low that they just have to be a girl? 'Cause if any is really the goal, there are better websites to peruse. So I've heard.

This one comes with breaking news: "Crackdown launched on rogue treaslure hutnters." So Aesop says, get any girl to sleep with you, good; hunting for buried treasure, bad. Mixed message?


Updated 6/21: Oh, it gets better. Today's spam e-mail: "33 Ways too Turn your Woman into a Sexual Aggressor." I wonder if those Turkish erotic films gave me a head start in this direction.

"When is it going to be Bloomsday?"

There was once a city called Dub'in
Where James Joyce would do all his clubbin'
While his wife stayed at home, sheerly 'roused by a poem,
And not by her dear husband's lubbin'

If you recognize my title right away, ten points to you. See, Mel Brooks, when writing his Oscar-winning screenplay for The Producers, set the opening on June 16. So when Gene Wilder, playing Leo Bloom, jumps on the Lincoln Center fountain and asks when it's going to be his turn, when it's going to be Bloom's Day, he receives his answer: it already is!

The 1,040 pages of James Joyce's Ulysses all coexist on this one day, the sixteenth of June, the day ordinary Leo Bloom became a somebody. Just as you can walk through London in Mrs. Dalloway, you should be able to reconstruct the city of Dublin itself from Ulysses, as Joyce once said. Having just been there, I undertook no Leo Bloom walks, didn't visit the National Museum or National Library like he did, and didn't get into a row in the red-light district. I'm just not destined for greatness the way Bloom was.

In tribute to Mr. Joyce and Ireland, well, go look at my photo spread from yesterday. There's even an (unauthorized) photograph of the first page of the first edition of today's monumental novel.

Last year, inspired perhaps by Bloomsday, I threw open Joyce's book and started off strongly with stately, plump Buck Mulligan. I made my way into the thicket: Bloom's morning sausages, his wife Molly, the funeral carriage. Somewhere around chapter eight of eighteen, my mental facilities quavered, and my plight was now a race of endurance.

Race is exaggerating; took me a whole month, the book did. See, in eight, you have to understand what a parallax* is in order to "get it." Coming to terms with how vastly not "gotten" "it" was, I just kept swimming. Chapter fourteen offers parodic recapitulations of the English language's development over centuries; fifteen finds the character lost in script dialogue and stage directions. But that last chapter, Molly's monologue: eight sentences, sixty pages, pure unadulterated unfiltered semi-consciousness interwoven with eroticism. Perfect. Go read it right now, and tell everyone you finished Ulysses. They don't have to know your dirty little secret... but you should know Ulysses's.

*Parallax=how an object being studied is displaced because its observer changes his spot. Think imperfect focusing on a lens. Think how each eye sees the same world from a slightly different angle, enabling 3-D vision. Think of your view of Ulysses when you began from when you ended... times 1,040.

How are things in Glocca Morra?

You asked for vacation pictures, and here they are...

Ten Easy Steps to Creating Your Own Irish Town
1. The first rule of Ireland is Guinness.
2. The second rule of Ireland is [insert inferior, but still drinkable, alcohol here].
3. Erect a twelfth-century church. Seriously, you have no game if you don't have an old church.
4. Three liters of dark, foreboding clouds. Sprinkle with heavy rain for two minutes, followed by 30 seconds of sunshine. Repeat. Shroud with mist indefinitely.
5. Buy a real old castle with a stone tourists can kiss. Be sure to include the requisite ten-Euro photography, and the gingivitis.
6. Saturate with Celtic crosses, graveyards, monasteries without roofs. Did I mention the mist?
7. Raise sheep, cast them beyond the perimeter of your farmlands, and dye them blue. Don't worry, they won't eat all those yellow plants on the countryside.
8. Take pride in your Irish language. The lilting cadences... the great writers (first editions of Dracula and Ulysses below!)... and other things...
9. Take Pulp Fiction to heart. Toss that American measurement out the window (except for the pint!). It's better than a foot massage.
10. Make sure there's an off-duty leprechaun at the end of the rainbow (and in Dublin's Temple Bar).

Or, if that fails, Charlie Chaplin. I hear he's always after yer Lucky Charms.