Mel Gibson's Apocalypto

They say it's not easy to be a pimp. The same can be said for being an anti-Semite.

Mel Gibson will now be going onto Good Morning America to prevent an Apocalypto of his career.

Bravenet Post

La Boheme: NYC Opera For All

Last night, Lucky and I saw La Boheme for the first time. It was her first opera. It was my third.

The house was packed. I and many others took advantage of the special deal offered by the New York City Opera. I paid $25 per ticket for any seat in the house. Of course, we ended up in the fourth ring. However, we sat in the center so we could at least see the faces of the singers.

We did a lot of reading. Since we speak at best two words of Italian between us, we had to read the supertitles above the stage. Lucky found a good method for reading. She would read the sentences as quickly as possible and then look down at the singers and focus on the action. I found myself doing that by the third act.

The singers were very good. Shu-Ying Li, who played the title role of Mimi, sang very well. She gave the necessary gravitas to the dying woman she played. James Valenti also gave vigor to the role of Rudolfo. He really seemed like a young intellectual in Paris. Elizabeth Caballero was a hoot as Musetta, the free-spirited woman whose chief role in life is making her lover Marcello jealous. Caballero's voice soared into the rafters.

I also liked the scenery and the lighting. The scenery was spare to evoke the austerity of the lives of these characters. The claustrophobic room they were in really gave one the sense that these people lived in poverty. In addition, I noticed that there was no spotlight when Mimi first arrived on the stage. It was a good touch. There is no spotlight for starving intellectuals on Paris's Left Bank.

The City Opera also did a good job of explaining the production to the audience. The Opera showed short films about the staging and the opera itself. For Lucky and I, people without much knowledge of opera, the films helped to truly understood what we were seeing. It was a good touch.

The only downside to last night's experience were the seats. I told Lucky, "I feel like I'm in tourist class on a 747." Oh well, you can't have it all. In addition, these seats were not designed for a 6 foot 2 man who should have been a basketball point guard.

When we left, Lucky told me that she wanted to come back. We will.

Technorati

Technorati Profile
script type="text/javascript" src="

Celebrity Baby Names

Finally, a normal baby name! Maggie Gyleenhaal and Peter Sarsgaard named their child Ramona. After Apple and Suri, we have Ramona. This child is lucky. She will not be abused at school by the other kids. She was not named after a fruit or the kabbalah. Finally, some celebrities with common sense. There is hope for the world.

All Hail the Queen!

I had the great pleasure of watching Part I of Elizabeth I on DVD the other day.

Helen Mirren gave such a wonderful performance. Playing a queen, she provided the right combination of strength and vulnerability. Her Elizabeth was a real, breathing human being. It was so wonderful to see a great actress at work.

I am eager to see The Queen. It's only fair to visit the second Elizabeth after having seen the first.

Hollywoodland-Adrien Brody's Movie

As I said above, this was Adrien Brody's film. Even though Ben Affleck somehow convinced the people at the Venice Film Festival that he should be best actor of the year, the real honors should go to Adrien Brody.

His performance in Hollywoodland was stellar. When you compare him to the Holocaust survivor in The Pianist, the difference could not be more marked. His character is so sleazy and so lacking in decency that you cringe. However, it has a great effect. He is the heart and soul of this film. He provides the atmosphere. Brody joins the rank of our great actors like Russell Crowe and Edward Norton.

Kudos should also go to Bob Hoskins. I have been watching that man's performances since Mona Lisa in 1986. I think the best scene he ever acted in came in Hollywoodland. The scene where he tells Diane Lane that she is beautiful and safe with him is just fantastic. I could watch that scene again and again. There is so much feeling and calculation in that moment that you are just drawn in.

As for Mr. Affleck, he was just adequate. I think Lucky's verdict on him sums it up. "Ben Affleck is a bad actor."

Writing a Historical Novel

Yesterday, I pushed the personal and dispensed with the historical in my novel.

I looked at my first draft and saw more history lesson than novel. I had a scene where I described the funeral of Stonewall Jackson in Richmond. I also had paragraphs describing the actions of the Twentieth Massachussetts regiment on Day 2 of the Battle of Gettysburg. I eliminated them. It seemed clear to me that I was showing off my research. That can happen to history writers. You spend so much time researching a subject that you cannot resist the temptation to treat the reader to an info dump. I am always reminding myself that I am telling the story of my characters, not the history of the Civil War.

I think Louis Menand put it perfectly in The New Yorker. He said,"Conventionally, a historical novel is a personal story with a world historical rear-view projection."

I could not have put it better.