The week that was #2

Sorry, should have had this up yesterday but was too busy. This is for the week ending Saturday September 19.

Dr Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog

While it’s hardly new – it came out last year – I think it’s worth mentioning this week because on Sunday (our time) it won an Emmy award - specifically, the somewhat awkwardly titled Outstanding Special Class - Short-format Live-Action Entertainment Programs.

It’s interesting that it won because it’s never actually been broadcast by a network – since the Emmys are awards for television; it may be the first time that’s ever happened. It was a web-broadcast program (made up of 3 episodes about 14mins each) put together by Buffy/Angel/Firefly/Dollhouse creator Joss Whedon with his brothers Zack and Jed as something to do while the Writer’s Strike was on.

The cast includes Neil Patrick Harris (Doogie Howser/How I Met Your Mother) as the titular Dr Horrible – a wannabe supervillain (‘I have a PhD in horribleness!’) who’s being considered for entry into the Evil League of Evil, Nathan Fillion (Firefly/Castle) as his nemesis Captain Hammer and Felicia Day as Penny - with whom they form a somewhat bizarre love triangle¹.

And yes, it’s a musical. There are quite a lot of songs and if you liked Once More With Feeling! (the Buffy musical episode) then you’ll probably like this – they’re wickedly funny songs that also happen to be quite catchy.

Last time I tried, though, I couldn’t actually watch it online – for some reason it’s not available outside the US. But I decided I had to have it so I bought it on dvd from the US.

Short version: it’s great. Low budget and corny but still great – though I’m of the opinion that anything involving any of Joss Whedon, Nathan Fillion and Neil Patrick Harris is going to be good; mathematically, then, anything with all three pretty much has to be brilliant.

Plugging an awesome production aside, I’m mentioning it more because of the Emmy win – despite being one of the most talented writer/director/creators on the planet, Joss hasn’t won one before – not for Buffy, for Angel, Firefly (admittedly, considering how it was screwed over by Fox that isn’t too surprising) or Dollhouse. Travesty is probably the nicest way of putting it.

Putting it bluntly: it’s about damn time. Buffy alone included some of the best, cleverest and most worthwhile material ever shown on the small screen. Sadly, it seemed that because a show was about a vampire slayer and not a hospital full of neurotic, troubled doctors or courtrooms full of neurotic, conflicted lawyers² it wasn’t taken seriously enough to even be nominated in the major awards³, apart from a writing award in 2000 for the truly deserving episode Hush.

But that’s in the past now, because he’s got one – perhaps (fingers crossed) the first of many.

¹ I will beg New Order’s forgiveness at a later date.
² I deliberately didn’t mention a White House full of neurotic, verbose political staffers; as much as I love Joss and Buffy, I rate the first two seasons of The West Wing as pretty much the best television ever made – at least so far.
³ It was nominated for several (and won some) technical awards.

Jesus Christ Superstar

Starting next week I’ll be doing backstage crew for the Marie Clark¹ production of Jesus Christ Superstar – apart from the nights where I’m rehearsing Arsenic and Old Lace, and opening night when I’m going to be seeing The Whitlams at The Gov. So, on Monday night I went to rehearsal, mostly to familiarise myself with the show it’s never a great idea to turn up to be crew for a show without knowing something about it.

I contemplated auditioning for it, since I knew some others from the cast of Me and My Girl² were going to try out, and I’d had fun doing that so it seemed reasonable to assume that more good times could be had. But I got the part in Arsenic and Old Lace, and since it’s one of the best parts I’m ever going to get to I took that instead.

Northern Light³ did JCS a few years back, and I did see it – but (to my surprise, and no small amount of embarrassment) I don’t seem to have remembered it very well. The only songs that struck me as familiar were the really well-known ones that I’d heard because they’d been played on the radio when John Farnham, Cate Ceberano and Jon Stevens did their versions of them.

But, my poor memory aside, it’s a powerful show (even if you aren’t a Christian; I’m not, and it still got the hairs on the back of my neck standing up) with some amazing songs – being sung by some very talented performers - and I’m really looking forward to seeing how it looks when it’s ready to go on. I haven’t yet been allocated any particular tasks but there are bits of sets to be moved about; it’s probably fair to assume that’s what I’ll be doing. Well, that and maybe huge cross duty.

¹ A theatre company.
² The last show I did, which was with Marie Clark.
³ Another theatre company.

Wine tasting

For no particular reason (that I could ascertain, at least) the powers-that-be at my work organised a wine education session at the Wine Centre on Friday afternoon. After waiting for about 20 minutes for the free bus to take us from one end of North Terrace to the other – it’s allegedly meant to come every 5 minutes – we got off at the RAH and walked the rest of the way to the barrel-shaped building devoted to all things wine.

A man talked to us about wine and we sampled three different Cabernet varieties. What I learned from the experience is that a) I don’t like Cabernet anywhere near as much as I like Shiraz and b) the majority of people at my work (or, at least, those at the table I was at) don’t like red wine at all.

On the plus side there was cheese and biscuits and, since I appeared to be the only person on the table who liked blue vein, it got a whole big wedge to myself. After that we went upstairs to the Gallery (or maybe it was called something else) where we had a tab at the bar. I resisted the urge to get the $25-a-glass Shiraz and went for the more moderate $12-a-glass.

I would have stayed longer – and partaken of more of the bar tab – but I had to go home and dry out a bit before heading off to The Gov to see Tex Perkins. I was contemplating writing about this but a) I don’t have the time, and b) there’s not a lot to say; he was good and I had a good time.

Beatles: Rock Band

I was at a friend’s place on Saturday evening; during the week he’d picked up Beatles: Rock Band. So we had ourselves a bit of a rock-out.

While the game aspect is pretty much like any of the others in that spectrum (Guitar Hero etc.), what makes this stand out is the animation. Each song is played in the appropriate setting - either in a recording studio or, if the song was done famously somewhere else (such as the Ed Sullivan show or on, like Get Back, on the rooftop) it’s played there. They also use lots of extra recorded material – the lads themselves talking and so forth, including Ringo’s famous ‘I’ve got blisters on my fingers’ at the end of Helter Skelter.

In short: it’s lots of fun. There were only two of us; I’m hoping before too long we’ll have a night where there a four or five and we can get the whole band thing going.