2 Things @ Once

Review: Frost/Nixon (2008)

The fun in this movie is watching two clever actors portray two clever opponents matching wits in the forum of a television interview. As depicted by screenwriter Peter Morgan, who adapted his stage play to film, both Richard Nixon and David Frost had much at stake when they sat down together for 20+ hours of televised interviews. Where truth ends and artistic license begins isn’t really the point. The sharp writing and the double-duel between Nixon/Frost and Frank Langella/Michael Sheen is worth seeing, even if the rest of the film is well done but uninspired.

I give it 3.5 out of 5 pairs of Italian loafers

Ironside: Girl in the Night

Ironside and the gang are in Vegas, baby!

My next installment in the Ironside episode guide on The Beachwood Reporter.

You Can Almost See the Waves of Mind Control

This photograph of Dick Cheney skulking in the bushes while W. speaks in today's New York Times is absolutely hilarious.

Review: The City

Joel Kotkin (2005)

Reading a concise chronology of the urban environment from ancient Mesopotamia to the present seemed like a good idea, until I sat down and actually read it. I got as far as 15th century before I realized I wasn’t having any fun. It felt too much like reading a high school textbook, jogging through centuries of history. So, back to the library it goes, unfinished.

Tragic Love Suitable for a Valentine’s Day Weekend

By coincidence, my weekend was choc-full of unrequited love, betrayal, passionate revenge, and romantic tragedy. Happy Valentine’s Day!

It began with my reading (nearly in one sitting) of Ethan Frome, Edith Wharton’s classic tale of snow-bound, star-crossed tragic love. Otherwise known as happy times in New England. Or, let’s go sledding! (Review to come.)

Saturday I attended the opening night performance of Lyric Opera’s Cavalleria Rusticana and Pagliacci. Known in opera circles as “Cav/Pag,” these two one-act Italian operas were the perfect anecdote to a sappy Valentine’s Day. No sailing off into the sunset happy endings here. Betrayal, adultery, despair, madness, and a few rounds of deadly knife play. True love.

The staging is the same that I’d seen a number of years ago, but still well worth seeing again. Guang Yang, as Santuzza in Cav was wonderful and the music was beautiful. Set in 19th-century Calabria, the sets and costumes were wonderful, with kids and chorus members aplenty, giving the audience much to see and hear.

This production of Pag is given an effective post-war Italian update. The action centers around a group of traveling players, complete with stilt-walkers, clowns and jugglers so there’s lots of fun stage business going on. Mark Delavan was good in his double bill as Alfio in the first and Tonio in the second opera, and Vladimir Galouzine as Canio had the audience with his famous aria, containing perhaps the most well known two lines in opera history. (It comes at about the two minute mark in this clip.) It was funny to note as well, when so many death scenes in opera go on and on and on, the deaths that conclude each of these one-acts come right at the end, barely before the final curtain hits the floor. Wham, bam, thank you ma'am.

To round out my Valentine weekend, I started reading Birchwood, a remarkable Gothic Irish novella by John Banville. Riveting prose and about as romantic as Mr. Rochester’s first marriage.

Shout Out to the House on Sheridan Road in South Evanston

Valentine's Day is over.

It's time to take your Christmas tree down!

Review: Thunderstruck

Erik Larson (2006)

I wanted to like this book more than I did. Larson is a good writer and a whiz at making history feel tangible and contemporary. He’s also a master storyteller, weaving suspense to create books that are genuine page-turners. Larson's style is to ping-pong between two different but connected stories, a technique he used effectively in his best-selling Devil in the White City. In this case, Larsen’s subjects are Guglielmo Marconi (inventor of the wireless) and Hawley Crippen, the second most-infamous murderer in Britain’s history. How their personal histories intersect is one of those historical happenstances that make truth stranger than fiction.

Personally, I didn’t find the turbulent trial and error of the arrogant Marconi’s revolutionary invention all that fascinating and I couldn’t help feeling Larson’s book was padded by about 100 pages or so. That didn’t stop me from ripping through the book, eager to get to the end, even if the ending was somewhat anti-climactic given recent forensic evidence that sheds doubt on the outcome of the Crippen case.

Emergency Christmas!

The Daily Show With Jon StewartM - Th 11p / 10c

You're Welcome - Emergency Christmas

Daily Show Full Episodes
Important Things With Demetri Martin

Funny Political News
Joke of the Day

Look Who Was Bored During Tonight's Episode of "ER"

Yeah, I changed the theme to my blog again.

I can't resist a snappy new theme and TypePad just added this one to the mix. I really like everything about it--it's clean and simple, the comment and navigation links aren't underlined, the font is darker and more legible, and the side rail is wider. The only thing I'm not crazy about is it's not so easy to add my own banner since this is a fluid design. So I'm going really clean and simple.

Review: The Wordy Shipmates

Sarah Vowell (2008)

This book was a real disappointment, so much so that I couldn’t bring myself to finish it. I find Vowell’s contributions to the NPR radio program This American Life entertaining, and I’d enjoyed a few of her newspaper pieces, so I looked forward to reading her examination of the Puritans and their settlement in America. It’s just the sort of historical examination I usually like, but something about the author’s tone became grating and the subject just didn’t draw me in.