It's nearly time for the Gay SuperBowl aka "Oscar Night" and today we had the preliminaries, the announcement of the nominees. Note that this year the rules have been modified to accomodate the plethora of fine motion pictures that came out this past year, and,7 therefore the number of nominees for Best Picture stands now at 10.
[drumroll please]
And the nominees are:
Best Supporting Actress
Penelope Cruz, Nine
Vera Farmiga, Up in the Air
Maggie Gyllenhaal, Crazy Heart *big surprise
Anna Kendrick, Up in the Air
Mo'nique, Precious
Best Supporting Actor
Matt Damon, Invictus
Woody Harrelson, The Messenger
Christopher Plummer, The Last Station
Stanley Tucci, The Lovely Bones
Christoph Waltz, Inglourious Basterds
Best Actress
Sandra Bullock, The Blind Side
Helen Mirren, The Last Station
Carey Mulligan, An Education
Gabourey Sidibe, Precious
Meryl Streep, Julie & Julia
Best Actor
Jeff Bridges, Crazy Heart
George Clooney, Up in the Air
Colin Firth, A Single Man
Morgan Freeman, Invictus
Jeremy Renner, The Hurt Locker
Best Director
James Cameron, Avatar
Kathryn Bigelow, The Hurt Locker
Quentin Tarantino, Inglourious Basterds
Lee Daniels, Precious
Jason Reitman, Up in the Air
Original Screenplay
Mark Boal, The Hurt Locker
Quentin Tarantino, Inglourious Basterds
Alessandro Camon & Oren Moverman, The Messenger
Joel & Ethan Coen, A Serious Man
Pete Docter, Bob Peterson, & Thomas McCarthy, Up
Adapted Screenplay
Neil Blomkamp & Terri Tatchell, District 9
Nick Hornby, An Education
Jesse Armstrong, Simon Blackwell, Armando Ianucci, & Tony Roche, In the Loop *big surprise
Geoffrey Fletcher, Precious
Jason Reitman & Sheldon Turner, Up in the Air
Foreign Language Film
Ajami (Israel)
El secreto de sus ojos (Argentina)
The Milk of Sorrow (Peru)
Un Prophete (France)
The White Ribbon (Germany)
Animated Film
Coraline
Fantastic Mr. Fox
The Princess and the Frog
The Secret of Kells
Up
Best Picture
Avatar
The Blind Side *big surprise
District 9
An Education
The Hurt Locker
Inglourious Basterds
Precious
A Serious Man
Up
Up in the Air
Best Art Direction
Avatar
The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus
Nine
Sherlock Holmes
The Young Victoria
Best Cinematography
Avatar
Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince
The Hurt Locker
Inglourious Basterds
The White Ribbon
Best Costume Design
Bright Star
Coco Before Chanel
The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus
Nine
The Young Victoria
Best Documentary
Burma VJ
The Cove
Food, Inc.
The Most Dangerous Man in America: Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers
Which Way Home
Best Editing
Avatar
District 9
The Hurt Locker
Inglourious Basterds
Precious
Best Makeup
Il Divo
Star Trek
The Young Victoria
Best Score
Avatar
Fantastic Mr. Fox
The Hurt Locker
Sherlock Holmes
Up
Best Song
"Almost There," The Princess and the Frog, Randy Newman
"Down in New Orleans," The Princess and the Frog, Randy Newman
"Loin de Paname," Paris 36, Reinhardt Wagner & Frank Thomas
"Take It All," Nine, Maury Weston
"The Weary Kind," Crazy Heart, T-Bone Burnett & Ryan Bingham
Best Sound Editing
Avatar
The Hurt Locker
Inglourious Basterds
Star Trek
Up
Best Sound Mixing
Avatar
The Hurt Locker
Inglourious Basterds
Star Trek
Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen
Best Visual Effects
Avatar
District 9
Star Trek
Best Documentary Short
China's Unnatural Disaster: The Tears of Sichuan Province
The Last Campaign of Governor Booth Gardner
The Last Truck: Closing of a GM Plant
Music by Prudence
Rabbit à la Berlin
Best Animated Short
French Roast
Granny O'Grimm's Sleeping Beauty
The Lady and the Reaper (La Dama y la Muerte)
Logorama
A Matter of Loaf and Death
Best Live-Action Short
The Door
Instead of Abracadabra
Kavi
Miracle Fish
The New Tenants
Showing posts with label fabulous. Show all posts
Showing posts with label fabulous. Show all posts
Tuesday, February 02, 2010
Monday, March 30, 2009
West Side Story - A Review
Background. I'm a show freak and mighty damned proud to admit it. I've seen everything, over the years. Twice (if not more). With one notable exception, that is. West Side Story. Music by Leonard Bernstein, lyrics by Steve Sondheim, book by Arthur Laurents. Choreographed and directed by Jerome Robbins (with the able assistance of Peter Gennaro).
It opened on Broadway in 1957 and was movied in 1960. Like many, I grew up knowing the show only on the basis of the movie. And although it was shot on the mean streets of upper Hell's Kitchen, on the very site where today's Lincoln Center stands, it was, well, it was a movie. I love movies. You can do things in movies which you can't do on stage (CGI). But the theater is my first love. It's real. Once that orchestra starts playing, come hell or high water, the SHOW MUST GO ON. And you've only got one chance to do it right ... for the audience that night. You can't beat the immediacy of it.
And so it was on Friday night. When they posted the opening notice last November I was all over the box-office website like a bird on a June bug, and booked two seats for the front mezzanine for last Friday. Not bad for a week after the opening.
How was it?
Indescribably wonderful. Artie Laurents (at 94, God bless him) did a great job of re-creating the show from memory.
The leads were adorable, able and sweetly (nearly) adolescent. Maria is beautifully played by Josefina Scaglione who is a 21 year old from Argentina where, apparently, she's enormously popular and operatically trained (it shows!). In addition to being quite beautiful, she was fragile, vulnerable and highly expressive. Matt Cavenaugh (Tony), is a ruggedly handsome young man who has got a phenomenal vocal range (it's a very tough role to sing -- Bernstein liked to murder his male ingenues voices), and he acquitted himself beautifully with a pure, sweet upper range, when required.
The other roles were handled with the sort of professionalism you'd expect from a Broadway show.
But the real hero of the evening, as far as I was concerned, was Joey McKneely, whom you've probably never heard of. Well, it was his job to do the nearly impossible, i.e. to recreate, as exactly as possible, Jerome Robbins' complicated choreography. And recreate it he does. Before this he did "The Boy from Oz", the story of Peter Allen which starred Hugh Jackman, a few years back. Somewhere along the way he had become friends with the late Jerome Robbins who, apparently, taught him all the dances.
Because everyone has heard about it, I want to talk a little about the infusion of Spanish into the show. Rest assured that it's not a distraction, it's an enhancement. We all know the songs inside and out, so that when Maria bursts into song with "Siento Hermosa!", we all know that her new-found love is making her feel as beautiful as our first made all of us feel. There is some Spanish in the dialog scenes, but you never have the sense of missing out on something. You always know what's going on.
I knew I was liking the show because my "butt alarm" didn't go off once during the nearly 3 hour long performance. I was transfixed, held, illuminated and entertained from beginning to end.
There was only a single sour note in the whole evening, and that didn't even occur on stage.
After the show, my friend and I waited outside the stage door to say "hi" to a friend of mine in the orchestra. As we waited patiently by the curb, the Co-chairman of Fox Films, Tom Rothman and his obnoxious clan, pushed me and my friend off the sidewalk into the busy street so that they could crowd around their lousy brat who, apparently, was one of the Jets.
Fans. Sheesh.
If you're planning on coming to NY, try (desperately) to get tickets to see "West Side Story". You won't regret it as long as you avoid the stage door after the show.
It opened on Broadway in 1957 and was movied in 1960. Like many, I grew up knowing the show only on the basis of the movie. And although it was shot on the mean streets of upper Hell's Kitchen, on the very site where today's Lincoln Center stands, it was, well, it was a movie. I love movies. You can do things in movies which you can't do on stage (CGI). But the theater is my first love. It's real. Once that orchestra starts playing, come hell or high water, the SHOW MUST GO ON. And you've only got one chance to do it right ... for the audience that night. You can't beat the immediacy of it.
And so it was on Friday night. When they posted the opening notice last November I was all over the box-office website like a bird on a June bug, and booked two seats for the front mezzanine for last Friday. Not bad for a week after the opening.
How was it?
Indescribably wonderful. Artie Laurents (at 94, God bless him) did a great job of re-creating the show from memory.
The leads were adorable, able and sweetly (nearly) adolescent. Maria is beautifully played by Josefina Scaglione who is a 21 year old from Argentina where, apparently, she's enormously popular and operatically trained (it shows!). In addition to being quite beautiful, she was fragile, vulnerable and highly expressive. Matt Cavenaugh (Tony), is a ruggedly handsome young man who has got a phenomenal vocal range (it's a very tough role to sing -- Bernstein liked to murder his male ingenues voices), and he acquitted himself beautifully with a pure, sweet upper range, when required.
The other roles were handled with the sort of professionalism you'd expect from a Broadway show.
But the real hero of the evening, as far as I was concerned, was Joey McKneely, whom you've probably never heard of. Well, it was his job to do the nearly impossible, i.e. to recreate, as exactly as possible, Jerome Robbins' complicated choreography. And recreate it he does. Before this he did "The Boy from Oz", the story of Peter Allen which starred Hugh Jackman, a few years back. Somewhere along the way he had become friends with the late Jerome Robbins who, apparently, taught him all the dances.
Because everyone has heard about it, I want to talk a little about the infusion of Spanish into the show. Rest assured that it's not a distraction, it's an enhancement. We all know the songs inside and out, so that when Maria bursts into song with "Siento Hermosa!", we all know that her new-found love is making her feel as beautiful as our first made all of us feel. There is some Spanish in the dialog scenes, but you never have the sense of missing out on something. You always know what's going on.
I knew I was liking the show because my "butt alarm" didn't go off once during the nearly 3 hour long performance. I was transfixed, held, illuminated and entertained from beginning to end.
There was only a single sour note in the whole evening, and that didn't even occur on stage.
After the show, my friend and I waited outside the stage door to say "hi" to a friend of mine in the orchestra. As we waited patiently by the curb, the Co-chairman of Fox Films, Tom Rothman and his obnoxious clan, pushed me and my friend off the sidewalk into the busy street so that they could crowd around their lousy brat who, apparently, was one of the Jets.
Fans. Sheesh.
If you're planning on coming to NY, try (desperately) to get tickets to see "West Side Story". You won't regret it as long as you avoid the stage door after the show.
Tuesday, October 23, 2007
Absolutely Fabulous!
I nearly started to feel jinxed today. Bev tried to hang me with being responsible for the death of her friend, Michele (Yes. She was kidding). But that didn't matter. In some sick, twisted and perverted little corner of my mind, I WAS responsible. Because I AM THE MASTER OF THE UNIVERSE!!!!! ... when I'm not busy being lower than whale crap at the bottom of the sea.
I have a friend in recovery who will celebrate his 1st year of sobriety tomorrow. Yesterday morning he stormed out after a 12-Step meeting, convinced that he was going to "resign" from the Program.
He showed up this morning and shared about it. He's lucky that he has people around him, myself included, who remind him that it's perfectly natural for him to be particularly crazy around this, his anniversary time, and that we've all gone through it AND continue to go through it every year around the time of our sobriety birthdays. God, around my anniversary every year I start to feel like Mr. Spock being drawn home to spawn in whatever episode of the original ST series that happened in.
I have another friend (again, in recovery) who is under the gun at work and at school right now. I had to point out to him that he's feeling anxious and under attack because it goes to the heart of his disease ... his perfectionism. Alkies like us are fine as long as nothing ever goes awry. But we are capable of taking even the most insignificant personal criticism and turning into the worst year of our life because, of course, we're perfect... or should be... and we know this because we do everything else perfectly... mostly.
He'd forgotten that he's afflicted with terminal perfectionism. It brings down many a drunk who cannot tolerate the slightest hint of failure.
My blog title yesterday was "What's Wrong?" and, of course, nothing was. I was just alone in my head with my thoughts ... not a good place for a recovering drunk to be without adult supervision.
Thank goodness for 12-Step programs and the friends people in recovery make in them. A few minutes spent every day speaking with another person in recovery, sharing our experience, strength and hope with each other, is the key to right and stable thinking. As is working the Steps and going to meetings.
And so, today (and JUST for today), I am absolutely fabulous!
And so are you!
I have a friend in recovery who will celebrate his 1st year of sobriety tomorrow. Yesterday morning he stormed out after a 12-Step meeting, convinced that he was going to "resign" from the Program.
He showed up this morning and shared about it. He's lucky that he has people around him, myself included, who remind him that it's perfectly natural for him to be particularly crazy around this, his anniversary time, and that we've all gone through it AND continue to go through it every year around the time of our sobriety birthdays. God, around my anniversary every year I start to feel like Mr. Spock being drawn home to spawn in whatever episode of the original ST series that happened in.
I have another friend (again, in recovery) who is under the gun at work and at school right now. I had to point out to him that he's feeling anxious and under attack because it goes to the heart of his disease ... his perfectionism. Alkies like us are fine as long as nothing ever goes awry. But we are capable of taking even the most insignificant personal criticism and turning into the worst year of our life because, of course, we're perfect... or should be... and we know this because we do everything else perfectly... mostly.
He'd forgotten that he's afflicted with terminal perfectionism. It brings down many a drunk who cannot tolerate the slightest hint of failure.
My blog title yesterday was "What's Wrong?" and, of course, nothing was. I was just alone in my head with my thoughts ... not a good place for a recovering drunk to be without adult supervision.
Thank goodness for 12-Step programs and the friends people in recovery make in them. A few minutes spent every day speaking with another person in recovery, sharing our experience, strength and hope with each other, is the key to right and stable thinking. As is working the Steps and going to meetings.
And so, today (and JUST for today), I am absolutely fabulous!
And so are you!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)