Category Archives: Art, Theatre, & Film

Bitter

MSN has a good article mourning the loss of Angel.

It’s easy to appreciate fans’ inability to let Joss Whedon’s Angel go quietly into rerun heaven. Some of the sting of last season’s Buffy the Vampire Slayer finale was lessened by knowing that the characters would continue to fight the good fight on Angel. But now that the Charmed-gets-renewed-and-Angel-doesn’t network went all Mister Pointy on the lovable vampire and his team, audiences are about to be completely Jossless for the first time in seven years.

Aye, there’s the rub, folks. We’re Jossless. Charmed gets renewed; Angel doesn’t. Perky girls with funky witchy powers in a soap opera versus a darker good-vs-evil-and-which-is-which-anyway show with better writing. Of course it got axed.

Don’t mind me. I’m just bitter. Bitter about Angel and this wretched manuscript.

Go Forth and Create

April 21 is International Creativity Day, which gives you complete and total license to doodle when you ought to be working. The creative collective I belong to (tentatively named the Penslingers, pending any veto) has planned an evening meeting at HRH’s studio to do art stuff, try out new techniques, and generally celebrate how creativity is cool.

I, of course, will be at orchestra, celebrating in a different way.

So enjoy a round of gardening, dancing across intersections, random poetry, web design, cooking, calligraphy on an address label, sewing, or rearranging your furniture. Everything is creative. Think outside the box, and congratulate yourself for doing it. The creative force fuels our lives, initiates evolution and progress, and besides, it’s fun.

Neil Stephenson and Satin Spike Heels

It’s been a while since I updated my reading list. I’m now enjoying Zodiac, a vintage Neil Stephenson. I really like his early work. I’m the only person I know who’s read The Big U.

I’m currently munching rice cakes. While people might surmise that this might have something to do with shaping up my physique for my annual body-skimming superhero costume, it’s nothing so health- (or fashion-) conscious: I just like the little spiced styrofoam disks. I’m weird that way.

Speaking of superhero costumes, I found the wickedest red satin spike heels with ribbon lacing today at the Le Chateau outlet. I also found the perfect top and skirt to kit-bash to make my costume, which I will pick up when the bank thaws my money at the beginning of May. (Yes, “thaws;” Ceri and t! came up with the term as an alternative to “unfreezes”). Hey, if it cuts down on the amount of sewing I have to do, and the cost ends up being approximately the same as material plus sewing-machine hours would be, I’m all for pre-fab costume elements. I’ll actually be picking up two skirts, one to wear and the other for extra material to with which to do other nifty costume stuff. Everything will require modification, but modification will take significantly less time than kit-bashing a pattern and sewing it from scratch.

The shoes are just so damn funky. The heels are hilarious. The idea of me in spike heels just makes me giggle helplessly, especially woven satin spike heels with ribbon lacing all the way up the calf. I’ll never wear them again, but for nine bucks, I couldn’t resist.

By the way, go to CBC’s Great Canadians contest and vote. Canadians are cool. Molson says so, but we knew the truth long before the commercials told everyone else, didn’t we.

Orchestral Confessions

It appears that I only hate Strauss when I can’t play it. Once I’m comfortable with a Strauss piece, and I can settle into the rhythm of it, it’s actually fun to play. The only problem with it now is holding the celli back – we keep wanting to spin the waltz faster to keep it moving!

I’m also guilty of being very pleased that the incredibly disturbing individual who sits behind me hasn’t been to rehearsal in two weeks. It upsets me that he affects my enjoyment of playing with the orchestra so much. He’s a bit hyper, and he can’t stop talking; he also plays too loud. Three rehearsals ago he drove me right to the edge, forcing me to grit my teeth through the first half. I couldn’t hear anything but his voice and his mishandling of the rhythm and dynamics. When Douglas called break, his cello was down and he was out like a shot for his cigarette. My old stand partner turned around and smiled at me, asked me how I was, and I did something I rarely do with acquaintances: I said, “If he doesn’t stop talking, I’m going to kill him. I’m going to turn around and plunge my bow right into his chest.”

“Qu’est-ce-qu’elle a dit?” our principal cellist asked. My stand partner relayed the information, laughing, and the principal turned around to look at me and say with all sincerity, “And I will sharpen your bow.”

It wasn’t nice, but it felt good to know that others were just as fed up as I was.

Now, I know that words have power. They hurt, or they heal. Sometimes, though, words have to come out so that they stop hurting you. And yes, he hasn’t been at rehearsal for the past two weeks now. No one has said anything, but I know that we’re all relieved. And the dynamics are better, both musically and otherwise.

Hellboy

The four-word review:

They got it right.

Yeah, sure, they took a few liberties with the stories in order to make a unified two-hour plot, but they got it right.

The characterisation, the art direction, the cinematography, the music (who the heck is Marco Beltrami anyway?), the pacing, the editing…

I find myself flipping through the calendar to figure out how many days I have to wait before the film premieres in general release so I can see it again.

A colleague sitting next to me at the advance screening said at the end that it wasn’t as good as X-Men, but I disagree. This is the most realistic superhero-type-genre film I’ve seen, with a better script. But they’re apples and oranges, really. This is, well, dark comedy/occult/action. I’m a fan of dark comedy and the occult, and hey, well-done action’s all right too, if it has a purpose.

It was a geek reunion at the advance screening too, with a significant portion of old clientele from the four-years-defunct F/SF bookshop at which I used to work in attendance.

All in all, it was a wonderful day, what with speaking with my author of the Pacific coast and confirming a major amount of the revisions in the first half of the manuscript, beautiful weather, seeing my goddaughter, taking my husband out to dinner, seeing a fantastic film, and having coffee with friends afterwards. I haven’t felt so good in ages. And of course, none of this would have been possible without Debra, who gave us the movie pass! You made my day, and quite possibly my week. Maybe even my month.