Favorite Songs/Tracks of 2011 Sunday, Feb 19 2012 

music thisgaudygildedstage 7:48 pm

I’m finally ready to do my annual post about my favorite songs and tracks of the previous year. I’ve had the list for a while; I just haven’t had time to write the post.

This year, however, I’m going to do it a little differently. Instead of listing the songs in some sort of order of preference (which in the past has only been a step above being random), I’ve decided to choose my favorite and then list the rest alphabetically. This seems a more honest way of presenting the songs that I’ve loved during 2011.

My favorite song of last year was “What the Water Gave Me” by Florence and the Machine:

I hadn’t really listened to Florence and the Machine’s first record, but I loved Ceremonials. This is my favorite of several tracks on the album. I appreciate this song’s allusions to Virginia Woolf and Frida Kahlo. It’s a smart, beautiful song that’s perfect for singing along with at the top of your lungs while driving!

I’ll post the rest of my list after the break.

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The Tree of Life: A (Very) Brief Review Monday, Feb 6 2012 

art and movies thisgaudygildedstage 7:50 pm

PJ and I recently saw The Tree of Life, directed by Terrence Malick and starring Brad Pitt, Sean Penn, and Jessica Chastain. It started a bit slow, I thought, but the more I watched the more I got into it. It’s a movie that you have to let wash over you — just sit back and experience it rather than follow a plot or try to figure everything out.

By the end, I was convinced that this is a beautiful, amazing film that is one of the most interesting movies of recent years. It’s clearly auspicious in its imagination — a work of art more than a typical movie. Even though I don’t understand much of it, I loved it! It’s certainly one of the year’s best films.

 

The Iron Lady: A Review Friday, Feb 3 2012 

movies thisgaudygildedstage 2:11 pm

Last night, PJ and I saw The Iron Lady starring Meryl Streep as Margaret Thatcher. We both love Streep, so we’ve been waiting for this movie to come to Athens and eagerly anticipating seeing it. Here’s the trailer:

The Iron Lady has gotten mixed reviews. The main problem, it seems to me, is the trailer, which gives the impression that the movie is about Thatcher’s years in office and gives viewers the idea that Streep’s performance is a caricature. Both are wrong.

The film is really about what it means to be old and dealing with the overwhelming loss of one’s mate. Margaret Thatcher is just the vehicle for an exploration of what it means to be near the end of one’s life and to have lost almost everything that gave that life meaning. In this case, that includes one’s husband, political power, and national visibility.

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SotW: “I Won’t Give Up” by Jason Mraz Monday, Jan 30 2012 

music and song of the week thisgaudygildedstage 7:12 pm

The first Song of the Week of 2012 is Jason Mraz’s new single, “I Won’t Give Up,” which I love!

I love Mraz’s music — his last album, We Sing, We Dance, We Steal Things, was especially great — so I’m looking forward to his new album, which is set for release sometime this year. In the meantime, this song is a beautiful one!

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Shame: A Review Sunday, Jan 8 2012 

movies thisgaudygildedstage 7:59 pm

While we were in New York City last month, PJ and I saw Shame directed by Steve McQueen and starring Michael Fassbender and Carey Mulligan. Fassbender plays Brandon, a high-functioning sex addict who’s delicately balanced world is thrown off keel when his sister, played by Mulligan, comes for an unexpected visit. Here’s the trailer:

Shame is a fascinating character study. The film’s emphasis is less on plot — Brandon drifts from one sexual liaison to the next without a whole lot of direction or purposefulness — and more on examining what’s happening to Brandon as he grapples with trying to make connections without other people. The way I saw it, sex is the only way in which he can connect, and when women — his sister and a beautiful co-worker, played by Nicole Beharie, begin to make demands on him that involve anything even remotely emotional, his world begins to fall apart.

We first saw Fassbender in Hunger, McQueen’s 2008 brilliant first feature about the 1981 Irish hunger strike. Fassbender was amazing in that role, and he’s equally great here. Both films focus on Fassbender’s body, but in very different ways. In Hunger, his character starves himself to death. Here, Brandon is obsessed with replacing the emotional with the physical. He’s a man who can’t satiate his emotional needs with sex, but he nevertheless tries and tries and tries.

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SotW: Somebody That I Used to Know by Gotye Thursday, Dec 22 2011 

music and song of the week thisgaudygildedstage 10:51 am

I heard Gotye’s “Somebody That I Used to Know” in the car recently and immediately fell in love with it:

Gotye was born in Belgium but grew up in Australia. After listening to this song a few times, I tried out some of the other tracks on Gotye’s new album, Making Mirrors, which is great, and so I bought it. It’s now one of my favorite albums of 2011. Gotye has been compared to Sting, especially in his interest in drawing on various forms of world music, which seems an apt comparison.

Part of what makes this song great, of course, is that he inserts the woman’s point of view, underlining the male perspective, who ultimately comes across as kind of whiny. I think this is bloody brilliant! It’s also risky. I love it.

I also found a great live version of “Somebody I Used to Know”:

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Other Desert Cities: A Review Wednesday, Dec 21 2011 

New York and theater thisgaudygildedstage 10:19 am

The hottest ticket on Broadway right now is Other Desert Cities, a family/political drama by playwright Jon Robin Baitz, who my be best known for creating the television drama Brothers & Sisters. Like that show’s early days, Other Desert Cities explores big political issues by filtering them through a family’s internal rifts, recriminations, and love for one another.

In this case, the play focuses primarily on the Wyeth family’s Christmas gathering in Palm Springs, California, where the elder Wyeths, Polly and Lyman, played by Stockard Channing and Stacy Keach, live. Polly and Lyman are Old Guard Republicans who remain active in a certain kind of Republican circle. Lyman was a former actor, much like Reagan, and was appointed an ambassador during his administration. Polly is friends with Nancy.

Polly and Lyman have taken in Polly’s sister, Silda, played by Judith Light, who has had a drug problem. Now out of rehab with no place to go, she resents living with her sister in part due to their former success as a screenwriting partnership, which broke up with Polly’s turn to Republican conservatism. As Silda constantly reminds her, Polly is a Jew who plays the part of a transplanted-Texas WASP.

Rounding out the family gathering are the Wyeth “children,” both of whom are adults. Rachel Griffiths plays Brooke, an emotionally delicate writer who suffered from a six-year emotional breakdown after the publication of her first novel but who now insists that she knows how to manage her depression. Trip Wyeth, played by Matthew Risch, who will soon be replaced by Justin Kirk, is a producer on a cheesy Judge Judy type of television show in which celebrities serve on a jury and decide cases.

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Seminar: A Review Tuesday, Dec 20 2011 

New York and theater thisgaudygildedstage 3:11 pm

The third–and best–show that PJ and I saw in New York with our friends last week was Seminar, which stars Alan Rickman as Leonard, a problematic creative writing instructor teaching a private seminar for four up and coming writers. Paying $5,000 for the opportunity to study with him, these four students get more than they bargained for as Leonard upends all of their notions of what it means to be a successful writer.

Seminar is hilariously witty and a crowd-pleaser (even if you’re not an English professor!). Rickman is excellent as Leonard, a boozing, lecherous, washed-up writer who makes end meet by writing magazine stories and teaching these private seminars. He imbues Leonard with life, pathos, and egotism, making him a fully rounded character when he could easily be a one-dimensional stereotype instead.

Here are a few clips from the production:

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Private Lives: A Review Monday, Dec 19 2011 

New York and theater thisgaudygildedstage 2:16 pm

The second show PJ and I saw last week in New York was the revival of Noel Coward’s Private Lives starring Kim Cattrall and Paul Gross, who play Amanda and Elyot, respectively, a divorced couple who meet again during their honeymoons with their new spouses.

Both quickly realize that they’re still in love, and comic mayhem ensues as they flee their new spouses and run off together to Amanda’s Paris apartment. The reason their previous marriage fell apart five years ago, however, was that Elyot and Amanda fight as passionately as they make love. We see both sides of their relationship in Acts 2 and 3.

Here’s a brief glance at the Canadian production, which is nearly the same as the one in New York:

This next sentence is probably one of the gayest things I’ve ever written: one of my favorite plays as a kid was Private Lives.

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Follies: A Review Sunday, Dec 18 2011 

music and New York and theater thisgaudygildedstage 4:32 pm

As is our annual tradition, PJ and I spent a week in New York this past week. The first show we saw this year was the revival of Sondheim’s Follies, which is great! We saw Bernadette Peters in A Little Night Music last year, and so we couldn’t wait to see her in this show too.

Follies takes place on the night before an old theater is being torn down to make room for a parking lot. To say goodbye to the old place, Mr. Weismann, the former producer of “Weismann’s Follies,” hosts a party in the theater for a group of his former performers.

Here’s a quick look at these ladies:

While the former “Weismann girls” remember days gone by, two couples become the focus of the show’s plot: Buddy and Sally Durant Plummer and Benjamin and Phyllis Rogers Stone. Sally and Phyllis were showgirls, and Buddy and Ben are the guys who courted and then married them. The “ghosts” of the past take the stage throughout the show, showing us this courtship and the couples’ interactions. It soon becomes clear that Sally, played by Peters, and Ben had an affair before their respective marriages and that Sally is still in love with Ben.

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