ellen_datlow (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
ellen_datlow) wrote2011-03-26 12:46 pm
ellen_datlow) wrote2011-03-26 12:46 pm
a play and two movies
I went to see Tom Stoppard's Arcadia Thursday evening. I know I saw the 1995 NY production, also with Bill Crudup but didn't remember much of it.
We were in the "gods," so I (at least) had trouble hearing some of the dialog--luckily I brought my opera glasses so I could see the whole thing).
It's a lovely piece, roaming back and forth in time between the inhabitants of an English country house in Derbyshire in 1809 and those living and visiting that house in the present day. The contemporary characters are writers and literary critics researching the family that used to live there. I loved the unfolding of the past events, and how some of the guesswork by those in the present is so wrong-- despite the fact that the audience can see how they came to those mistaken conclusions.
I had problems with one of the main characters--not really a spoiler: the present day writer Hannah, who is affianced to the current owner of the house seems to be actively against physical intimacy, which just seems odd. No explanation no backstory. Nothing. What I don't get is not that someone could be this way but why is she engaged--there's no context for this behavior --which would have been odd even when the play was first produced in 1993. Overall, a funny and sad and enjoyable play.
Last night I watched the 2006 movie The Hoax about Clifford Irving's faked biography of Howard Hughes. With Richard Gere, Marcia Gay Harden (both of whom were terrific). Very 70s. It was fascinating to see the meticulous process Irving and his cohort Dick Suskind (Alfred Molina) go through to put together a very persuasive biography of the billionaire who in the last years of his life became an eccentric hermit. Irving comes across as a jerk but a charming jerk.
From Dusk to Dawn was a revelation. I'm so glad I never saw it when it first came out (unless I could have seen it before the buzz/talk). Because I knew nothing about the movie in advance, I was surprised by the change in direction 2/3 of the way through the movie. It was great fun! George Clooney is (of course) gorgeous and charming--I don't think he cannot be, Quentin Tarantino makes a chilling psychopath, Juliette Lewis actually seems normal, Harvey Keitel does a good job as a lapsed pastor. And Selma Hayak makes a sexy snake dancer in a very nasty little titty bar.
We were in the "gods," so I (at least) had trouble hearing some of the dialog--luckily I brought my opera glasses so I could see the whole thing).
It's a lovely piece, roaming back and forth in time between the inhabitants of an English country house in Derbyshire in 1809 and those living and visiting that house in the present day. The contemporary characters are writers and literary critics researching the family that used to live there. I loved the unfolding of the past events, and how some of the guesswork by those in the present is so wrong-- despite the fact that the audience can see how they came to those mistaken conclusions.
I had problems with one of the main characters--not really a spoiler: the present day writer Hannah, who is affianced to the current owner of the house seems to be actively against physical intimacy, which just seems odd. No explanation no backstory. Nothing. What I don't get is not that someone could be this way but why is she engaged--there's no context for this behavior --which would have been odd even when the play was first produced in 1993. Overall, a funny and sad and enjoyable play.
Last night I watched the 2006 movie The Hoax about Clifford Irving's faked biography of Howard Hughes. With Richard Gere, Marcia Gay Harden (both of whom were terrific). Very 70s. It was fascinating to see the meticulous process Irving and his cohort Dick Suskind (Alfred Molina) go through to put together a very persuasive biography of the billionaire who in the last years of his life became an eccentric hermit. Irving comes across as a jerk but a charming jerk.
From Dusk to Dawn was a revelation. I'm so glad I never saw it when it first came out (unless I could have seen it before the buzz/talk). Because I knew nothing about the movie in advance, I was surprised by the change in direction 2/3 of the way through the movie. It was great fun! George Clooney is (of course) gorgeous and charming--I don't think he cannot be, Quentin Tarantino makes a chilling psychopath, Juliette Lewis actually seems normal, Harvey Keitel does a good job as a lapsed pastor. And Selma Hayak makes a sexy snake dancer in a very nasty little titty bar.