Month: October 2006

odds and ends

~ jamie ~ Leave a comment

finally someone actually gets the importance and quality of the movie “shortbus”. the movie had a $21,000+ average per screen in its first weekend, so i have a feeling that the ride on the shortbus is just beginning.

the folks who run the website for grey gardens, the musical were kind enough to link to my original post about the play, when it ran at playwrights horizons. i’ve written a lot subsequently as well–this is a must-see if you are in the city.

i finally get to see “the cave”, steve reich’s piece that

explores the sacred locations of the burial plots of Abraham and Sarah from the perspectives of Arabs, Israelis, and Americans.

kirk worked on this show when it toured jerusalem, and i’ve always wanted to see it. it’s at lincoln center as part of the composer’s 70th birthday celebration. we’re seeing it on saturday, november 4, when there’s a post-show discussion with reich himself. should be fascinating.

i had my very first “i want my apple itv moment when watching the first episode of the new show ugly betty. it’s amazingly good, and i didn’t have the second show on the dvr. if i had an itv, i could just watch it on my tv. as it is, i’ll have to watch on the computer, which isn’t nearly as satisfying. hurry up apple.

kirk and i have booked our flight to paris next january–we’ll be in strasbourg from the 12th to the 14th, and in paris after that until the 21st. and kirk, knowing how i love cheese, found the restaurant with the world’s largest cheeseboard in strasbourg. i am so there. and i’ve posted a list of possible paris dining destinations on egullet. it’s the new post, at the end of the thread. if you have any suggestions, let me know. we have our favorites, but there’s always room for exploration.

shortbus: instant classic

~ jamie ~ 1 Comment

kirk and i saw shortbus last night, and loved it. the times has a great review (registration required).

i’ve written about it earlier–it’s the new movie from john cameron mitchell, the creator of hedwig. he wanted to make a movie that celebrates sex, and depicts it graphically and honestly in the context of story, plot, and art.

and wow, did he succeed.

the characters are all on a journey to reorder their lives for a variety of reasons. and through sex, they embark on a voyage of self-discovery that is honestly and beautifully depicted–more so than in any film in recent memory. it’s the movie that robert altman should have the guts to make, but probably doesn’t.

and the sex is real, human, hysterically funny, tender, shocking, outrageous, and occasionally degrading–just like sex in real life, and most unlike most cinematic sex.

but ultimately, the movie for me wasn’t so much about sex as it was about control. self-control, the difficulty with reclaiming control ceded to others, and the difficulty in knowing when to cede it yourself. sex is the vehicle that’s used to flesh out the concepts (so to speak), but to say this is a movie exclusively about sex is to miss the point entirely, i think.

and, oddly enough, it’s the feel-good date movie of the year, a movie with its heart on its sleeve, with the happiest of happy endings that sends you from the theater on an emotional high, more appreciative than ever of the relationships in your life. after seeing the process that the characters collectively go through, and where they collectively are at movie’s end, you know that, with someone you love at your side, there’s nothing you can’t work out, together, ever.

the movie is clever, honest, beautifully filmed, riotously funny, tender and tragic, and above all, real. really really real. and a poignant love letter to new york city as well–through the content, the characters (the faux ed koch is perhaps the best character in the movie) and through the device mitchell uses for scene transitions (i won’t spoil it for you, but it’s stunningly gorgeous).

in these times where so much is repressed that we no longer have the perspective to determine the extent of our represssion, this movie is the perfect reset button. go see it, get some perspective back, and be reminded of just how wonderful life is.

oh, and how wonderful sex is, too.

a chorus line, and ted’s, and danny’s

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kirk and i saw the new broadway production of a chorus line last night.

and we are impressed.

kirk had seen the original production, with the original cast.

twice. sometimes i just get so jealous of him.

anyway, he thought that it compared favorably with the original. i’d never seen it live (only the movie and the soundtrack), so i was a tabula rasa in regards to my experience. standout performances for me were deidre goodwin (sheila), mara davi (maggie), jessica lee goldyn (val), but especially jason tam (paul) who gave a devastating performance that brought tears to my eyes.

it’s a bit unfair to single out people, though, because everyone in the chorus line gave outstanding performances–some ever so slightly better than others, but no one was weak or ineffective. i’m not so much impressed with michael berresse (zach) who was so great in “light in the piazza” but here is far too sensitive with his character. zach, to my mind, needs to be a svengali-ish dictatorial force of nature. and that’s not conveyed at all. maybe it was a conscious choice, but i didn’t like it. his disembodied voice was not evocative of much emotion at all, let alone the right emotion.

everything else though? magnificent. you know all the songs and most of the dialogue, but it doesn’t matter. the production sweeps you away and effectively takes you back to a specific period of time. i didn’t find the show to be dated in the least, any more than a good production of any period piece would be.

if you’ve never seen the show, it’s a must see. and if you saw the original, you won’t feel that your memory is being trampled on. it stands on its own, i think.

dinner was at the new manhattan outpost of ted’s montana grill. to paraphrase a famous lyric from “a chorus line”:

food? 10. service? 3.

well, maybe in reality it’s food: 8 service: -1. i had a new york strip bison steak, kirk had a delmonico bison steak, and we shared. both were perfectly cooked and flavorful, tender and juicy and hot off the grill. the sides were good as well–i had a squash cassserole that was particularly good.

the problem? in-your-face, overtrained, upsell-happy, corporate-approved servers and workers. i felt like i was in a tgi fridays that was on steroids. the waiter was way way too chatty; kept at us to get a bottle of wine instead of two glasses; kept asking if we wanted appetizers and sides; didn’t give us time to peruse the menu; asked less than halfway through dinner if we wanted dessert, then brought the check immediately saying that “his manager liked it that way”.

i haven’t felt so rushed, discomfited, and unrelaxed in a restaurant in ages. maybe it’s just opening week jitters, but somehow i doubt it. i think that’s just their style–everyone chatted with us constantly, from the waiter to the hostess to the busperson. i don’t care to hear that you had salad for lunch and are jealous of my dinner. i don’t care to hear that you just moved to new york, and how cool is it that you live on a street that’s the same name as the city you came from. and so on.

i want to eat my dinner at my own relaxed pace, in a relaxed atmosphere.

maybe i’ll give it another try–the food was great and the prices weren’t bad. but if that service is endemic, i’m outta there.

the end of the evening, post-theater, was spent at danny’s, our favorite piano bar/watering hole. kirk sang (expressively and beautifully, of course) and we laughed with our friend stephen until the wee hours.

what a great night.

overall.

busy busy week

~ jamie ~ Leave a comment

kirk and i had a blast camping this past weekend. great meals cooked over a fire built with 30-year-old oak logs, an all-day hike over gorgeous wooded terrain in perfect 60-degree weather, and a tent that didn’t leak [much] during the saturday night rainstorm. who could ask for more?

we’ll probably go camping again soon–kirk’s dad has a truck with a camper that he’s willing to lend us, and it’s fully outfitted for camping. all we need to do is show up with our sleeping bags, and we can sleep in the back of the truck in bad weather. i think we’ll be doing some cold-weather camping, which sounds fun to me.

this week? busy, busy, as the title says. tonight i have a massage scheduled–trying to get my shoulder and back into shape.

tomorrow night, tickets to the new production of a chorus line. i love this show, and i’ve never seen it performed, so i’m really psyched.

wednesday night, tickets to shortbus, which i’ve written about before.

kirk has rehearsal for “taming of the shrew” on thursday. i have the night off.

and we’re responsible for coffee hour at our church on sunday, and we always put a bit of extra effort into that. it’s a nice excuse to do a bit of cooking, which i always enjoy but am sometimes a bit lazy about, day-to-day.

and interspersed in all that are mets playoff games, to which we do not have tickets, but will rabidly follow, somehow.

it’s good to stay busy, and out of trouble.