I've been busy III

Someday I'll catch up.

5/24: After another great dinner at Marseille, we went with a friend to see Faith Healer. I liked playwright Brian Friel 's Dancing at Lughnasa, when I saw it 15 years ago, and this had a super cast: Ralph Fiennes, Cherry Jones and Ian McDiarmid. What I didn't realize was that this was a revival--a revival of a play that lasted only 20 performances after it opened on Broadway in 1979. I found out why it lasted only 20 performances. It was simply one of the worst dramas I ever had the misfortune to see. No matter how good the performers (and they were all excellent), when you start with a bunch of unsympathetic characters just reciting their memories of past events, slowly, teasingly, adding a little fact here and there, everything out of sequence, so the audience doesn't really know what happened until after 2+ hours, it does not make for good theatre. I should have known that having Lord Voldemort and Emperor Palpatine on the same stage would produce something very evil.

5/26: Mission Impossible III--not bad, really. Since I agreed 100% with Michael Phillips' review in the Chicago Tribune, you can go there for a more detailed opinion.

5/27: New York Philharmonic Music Director Lorin Maazel conducting. The concert started with Hector Berlioz' Harold in Italy, Symphony in Four Parts for Orchestra with Solo Viola, after Byron (that's quite a title). Philharmonic Principal Violist Cynthia Phelps did the solo part. I like Berlioz' music a lot, but this one doesn't generate as much excitement as some of his other work. This was a good performance both by the orchestra and soloist--though I suspect Pinchas Zukerman might get something more out of this piece than Phelps, who seemed a bit restrained. She did wear a great dress, though, an unusual one for a soloist--most usually wear solids, but this was a print. Phelps (who would have no trouble convincing anyone that she was a cheerleader in her California high school days--which she was), however, could pull it off. After intermission it was Gustav Mahler's First Symphony--with its Frère Jacques third movement theme. Maazel's conducting kept everything flowing nicely.

5/28: The Da Vinci Code. I haven't read the book, and I did my best not to learn anything about the plot beforehand. About the only thing I did read about the film was the difficulties they encountered filming in the Louvre. So everything was pretty new to me--which I suppose is the reason why I wasn't totally bored by this mess (well, that and looking at Audrey Tautou). Since I don't happen to believe in the divinity of Jesus, the plot had some plausibility to me, but the gaps of logic were too many. All of the characters were more characatures--Tom Hanks playing the semi-befuddled American professor sucked into this thing, Paul Bettany playing the evil monk, and everyone else having at least two motives for doing anything. Ian McKellen did stand out as the most convincing character. I found Alfred Molina's bishop even less convincing than his Tevye in Fiddler on the Roof on Broadway. I did like the cinematography--they shot Paris well. But, I really have to wonder about one thing though--are French detectives prohibited from shaving?