It’s time to mutter and murmur about what’s in the air and on the air or in cyberspace:
I never watched an episode of Lost until last night. I remember seeing “the hobbit” during ads for the show, but Dominic Monaghan’s face disappeared from those previews a few years ago. During the “warm up” show I found out what happened to his character almost immediately. I learned a few things about the outlines of the scenario, and stuck around for the finale. Spoiler alert: NOTHING WAS RESOLVED AND THE SHOW IS OVER. Flash-forwards, flash-backs, and flash-sideways ??? — There was no committment to completing any plot lines. The producers could put out a DVD of “alternative” segments that would make as much sense as that post-sensical mess.
Mea Culpa: I was a fan of Dark Shadows in the late 1960’s — especially after the story-arc of Angelique the witch. Unfortunately, the best was already over, and I structured my time to watch a show which got stupider and stupider every day. I consoled myself with a fake aesthetic that the show was “camp,” and that “nothing happens” was the point of it all. When a graveyard full of zombies was tearing up Collinwood, I was cheering for them.
“There’s Sam Hall,” I said (one of the head writers). I was joking, but he could have easily been wrecking the set, and I would have enjoyed being in the bust-up crew as well. When I lived in Seattle, Twin Peaks in the 1990’s reminded me a lot of Dark Shadows with it’s shoddy writing hiding behind a veneer of subjectivity, but the leaden perversity and sadism totally creeped me out. I gave it a few looks because it was filmed nearby — the yuck factor was too much for my taste.
I saw James Cameron’s Avatar via DVD — missing the whole big-screen 3-D experience, and being left to deal with plot and acting instead. The protagonist was several exponential degrees of stoopid, and the action was mostly digital violence. There were occasional verbal clues to what was supposed to be going on, but plot, motivation, and back-story information tended to be hurriedly voiced-over instead of shown. Several very large omissions and mistakes marred the movie — How did Sigourney Weaver’s avatar travel to the Indigenous camp? Sam Worthington’s was already at the scene physically, and it took him quite a journey to get there. There were no “Ah Ha” moments when the major characters turned from “the dark side.” The villains showed nothing compelling about their characters either — one was just f’ing mean and the other was just f’ing greedy. To Cameron’s credit, Avatar actually told a story — the dynamics of spectacle made the movie entertaining, and it moved along pretty well for over two and a half hours. I was pleased to see the name Richard Taylor as chief of Special Effects — I knew him slightly from the University of Utah in the early 70’s. He was a friend of Paul McCarthy.
In my personal opinion, Avatar‘s content is shallow to a fault, despite its popularity and putative anti-imperialistic message. I’ve read much better Sci-Fi on this subject than this movie achieved — I recommend the works of Cordwainer Smith and James Tiptree.
Opera on the radio — Somebody had a thing about femme fatales at the Met this season! They ended the season with the misogynistic Lulu by Alban Berg a couple of Saturdays back. Last weekend the Chicago Lyric Opera performed Káťa Kabanová (1921) by Leoš Janousek — a rather pointless tale of tragic forbidden love. (Only the soprano dies.) There was an on-air critic comparing it to Puccini’s “great tragedies,” but I heard nothing as soaring in this one piece of Janousek’s music as I’ve heard in Puccini’s best. The great Italian composer was stricken by throat cancer about this same time, and working on Turandot when he died during radiation treatment in 1924. It is sad that a golden age of vocal music seemed to die with him — if the mythical Muses of song actually passed torches, I think they favored the social circles of Kurt Weill, Cole Porter, and Jerome Kern after WWI.
Keith Jarrett and Charlie Hayden on National Public Radio — so fine, so nice, and a joy to hear! Also unannounced one night on Montana Public Radio — three solid hours of Bob Dylan. Every song was good. So good I didn’t care about the quality of the singing, plus the guitar playing and arrangements ranged from incredible to brilliant.
Dancing With The Stars is headed for its last round, and the audience will decide between the singer and the skater — I doubt the sportscaster has much of a chance. She’s barely above average as a dancer, and would have gone earlier in most seasons, but this season was stacked deep with schlubs. The professionals have been all sorts of fun, and I’m glad they are there! Little Anna is a compelling dancer, and I’d be happy to see her win, but Derrek Hough has done awesome work as a partner, teacher, and choreographer. Big Macksim has been funny for a change, and I appreciate seeing that side of him. Monday night’s show left the ice skater in 3rd place, however — tomorrow, stick with utterly enthralling Anna, and don’t dance alone!
My own darn media: Flash Gordon; Cellulose to Celluloid is at Chapter 10 with only two more chapters to go before I finish the whole project. You can’t have melodramas without villains! Charles Middleton was by far the best actor in the Flash Gordon movie series, and 20 year old model Anne Gwynne played treacherous spy Lady Sonja.
The second version of Princess Aura was pretty weak tea, but then again she wasn’t the same double-dealing spitfire she’d been in the first serial — wasn’t as barbaric or pretty either! Dale Arden’s portrayal was all over the map — I think the directors shot some of the last chapters early in the filming, but I don’t know for sure. Carol Hughes was elegantly beautiful, but so petite she seemed doomed to lose almost every damn fight she fought.
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