Friday, January 12, 2018

Something Rotten at the Eccles

My first theatre performance of 2018 was the Broadway touring company production of Something Rotten at the Eccles Theater.  I absolutely loved it!  I didn't know much about this show so when I got to the theater last night I started to read the program and discovered that Adam Pascal plays one of the lead roles!  Squeal!  He originated the roles of Roger in Rent and Radames in Aida on Broadway and I listen to the original recordings of those shows all of the time because I love Pascal's rock and roll tenor voice.  To say that I was excited to see him would be an understatement.  In fact, I haven't been this starstruck at a theatre performance since I saw Lin Manuel Miranda!  I may or may not have screamed like a thirteen year old girl when he first appeared on stage (for about ten seconds).  Adam Pascal aside, the show is hilarious!  It is a fantastic spoof of Shakespearean plays and Broadway musicals (over 60 different musicals are referenced).  Nick and Nigel Bottom (Rob McClure and Josh Grisetti, respectively) are playwrights who are tired of being outshined by William Shakespeare (Pascal).  Nick wants to do something new so he contacts Nostradamus (Blake Hammond) to see what will be popular in the future.  Nostradamus suggests writing a play with singing and dancing in one of my favorite numbers from the show, "A Musical."  Things go slightly awry when Nick asks Nostradamus to look into the future to see what Shakespeare's most popular play will be and, instead of Hamlet, Nostradamus sees omelette.  Nick tries to produce Omelette The Musical while Shakespeare tries to steal his own play back.  I loved all of the references to Hamlet (my seniors just finished reading it), especially the song "To Thine Own Self."  I think I may need to download the soundtrack and play it to my students!  I also really loved all of the references to Broadway musicals.  As an English teacher who is also a theatre junkie, this show was practically written for me!  Adam Pascal did not disappoint and his voice was perfect for the songs "Will Power" and "Hard to be the Bard" because Shakespeare is portrayed as the biggest rock star of the Renaissance.  I had so much fun watching this incredibly entertaining show and I highly recommend it!  Something Rotten runs through January 14 at the Eccles Theater (tickets may be purchased here).

Thursday, January 11, 2018

The Room

After watching The Disaster Artist a few weeks ago, The Room became a must see!  Luckily I had the opportunity to see Tommy Wiseau's epic masterpiece on the big screen last night.  This movie is an absolute riot and I saw it with a loud and rowdy crowd which made watching it so much fun!  The story is essentially a love triangle between Johnny (Wiseau), his best friend Mark (Greg Sestero), and his fiancee Lisa (Juliette Danielle) with a revolving door of characters who live in their same building.  The  plot is meandering, the dialogue is completely over the top (it was supposedly inspired by Rebel Without a Cause and the plays of Tennessee Williams), and the acting is stilted and tone deaf.  There are innumerable scenes of characters having awkward sex with strange moaning sounds and there are wide shots of San Francisco with melodramatic music in between every scene.  The lines "I don't want to talk about it" and "Don't worry about it" are repeated endlessly and the audience in my screening began yelling them out with the actors!  In fact, the audience laughed uproariously at just about everything that happened and applauded when Johnny spoke the immortal line, "You're tearing me apart, Lisa!"   I don't know when I have had more fun watching a movie so, in a strange way, Tommy Wiseau really did create something epic.  I can honestly say that it is the best bad movie I have ever seen and I recommend it highly (for laughs).

Wednesday, January 10, 2018

I, Tonya

My first movie of 2018 was I, Tonya and, boy, did I pick a good one to start the year!  It is a dark comedy about the real life Olympic figure skater who rose to notoriety through the actions of the idiots surrounding her.  The narrative is told though present day interviews of Tonya Harding (Margot Robbie), her ex-husband Jeff Gillooly (Sebastian Stan), and her estranged mother LaVona (a brilliant Allison Janney) interspersed with flashbacks to events in Tonya's life, including the "incident."  The fact that all three of them are unreliable narrators makes this one wild ride and I loved it when the characters broke the fourth wall to make snarky comments to the audience about the goings-on.  This movie is very funny and over the top but I also found Harding to be an incredibly sympathetic character (which, remembering this incident vividly, I was not expecting).  Tonya went from one horribly abusive relationship with her mother to another one with her husband.  She was an incredibly gifted skater but, because she couldn't afford to maintain the image the U.S. Figure Skating Association wanted to project (she sewed her own costumes), she was often judged unfairly.  Her environment was so unstable that it really is a wonder that she was able to rise above it all to compete at the highest levels of her sport.  I was really struck by the scene of a young Tonya begging her father to take her with him when he leaves her mother and the scene where Tonya begs the judge to let her do jail time rather than ban her from competitive skating for life is very poignant.  However, the scene that resonated with me the most was just before her long program at the Lillehammer Olympics when the lace on her skate breaks and she is forced to begin or be disqualified.  Her panic and despair was difficult for me to watch because I remember thinking that she was such a prima donna when I watched this event live.  It is so easy to judge someone without knowing all of the circumstances.  Robbie gives an amazing performance (she even learned how to skate!) but Janney bats it out of the park by giving a monstrous character just a bit of humanity (the scene where she watches Tonya skate at the U.S. Championships on TV is brilliant).  I highly recommend this movie!

Tuesday, January 9, 2018

The Disaster Artist

There are good movies and bad movies and then there are movies that are so bad they become good and gain a cult following.  For me that movie is Flash Gordon but for many people it is The Room, which still has midnight screenings around the country and audience participation that rivals The Rocky Horror Picture Show.  On New Year's Eve I saw The Disaster Artist which is about the making of The Room and it is absolutely hilarious.  Not only is it an homage to the relentless pursuit of your dream against all odds and despite what everyone tells you, but it is also an affecting story of a friendship.  Greg Sestero (Dave Franco) meets Tommy Wiseau (James Franco) in an acting class and they soon become friends after bonding over the movie Rebel Without a Cause.  Tommy is eccentric (to say the least) and of an indeterminate age with mysterious origins (he says he is from Louisiana) and a seemingly limitless source of income but he somehow convinces Greg to move to Los Angeles to pursue their dreams of acting.  After much rejection Tommy decides to make is own movie as a vehicle for Greg.   He writes the script, buys his own equipment rather than renting it, hires a production team, auditions actors, and begins filming in some highly amusing scenes.  The shoot is fraught with difficulties, not the least of which is Tommy's inability to remember his lines (which he wrote), but somehow the movie is completed and given a premiere (paid for by Tommy).  The two friends are estranged at this point but Greg comes to the premiere.  When the movie isn't received as Tommy intended, there is a touching moment when Greg tells him that not many people get to live out a dream and to be proud of what he has created.  I laughed and laughed at this movie (as did everyone in my packed screening) but I also really enjoyed the message of pursuing your dreams.  I loved Josh Hutcherson and Zac Efron as characters in The Room and Seth Rogen (hit or miss with me) as the exasperated script supervisor but James Franco does a brilliant job portraying such a bizarre character without turning him into a caricature.  It was a lot of fun to see side by side shots of scenes from The Room with the same scenes filmed for this movie during the credits.  Last New Year's Eve I saw the film Fences and I can definitely say that seeing The Disaster Artist was an infinitely more enjoyable experience!  I highly recommend it!

Note:  I haven't seen The Room but now that I've seen The Disaster Artist, I really want to.  Fathom Events is sponsoring a special screening tomorrow (go here for info) and I can't wait!

Monday, January 8, 2018

Molly's Game

The next film on my winter break movie list was Molly's Game, which tells the true story of the rise and fall of Molly Bloom (Jessica Chastain).  Most of my friends really liked this movie (and it's getting quite a bit of Oscar buzz) but, to be honest, I wasn't very keen on it.  After a devastating accident ends her amateur skiing career, Molly is at loose ends and decides to move to Los Angeles where she becomes the personal assistant of a wannabe Hollywood player.  Among her other duties, she is tasked with setting up and running his weekly poker game with a well-known actor and other notables who tip her extravagantly.  She decides to learn everything there is to know about poker and, when her boss treats her unfairly, she woos the actor (reportedly based on Tobey Maguire) to a game that she runs.  She makes a fortune until a few incidents lose her the game.  She decides to take what she has learned and start a new game in New York which eventually includes members from the Russian mob.  Her involvement with mob leads to an arrest by the FBI so she hires Charlie Jaffey (Idris Elba) to represent her.  He becomes exasperated with her because she won't disclose information about the participants in order to clear herself.  This film reminded me a lot of The Big Short because there are some amusing montages and onscreen descriptions of poker but, for me, the stakes (pun intended) weren't high enough to make the story as compelling.  Jessica Chastain is receiving a lot of attention for this role but I found her performance (and endless voice-over narration) to be very monotone and devoid of emotion as she spits out the words as fast as she can (a criticism I also have with Jesse Eisenberg's performance in The Social Network).   I also have a problem with Sorkin's ultimate portrayal of Molly as a victim of the men in her life.  After the first two acts show Molly as an intelligent and resourceful entrepreneur, there is a scene with her estranged father (Kevin Costner) near the end of the film where he tells her that all of her behavior has been a reaction to him.  Ugh!  This scene invalidates the theme of the entire movie!  I didn't really like Molly's Game but I suspect that many people will.
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