Another new toy

It must be the time of year where I get a bit gadget happy, because I didn't stop at the Blu Ray player I wrote about in my last post; I also have a shiny new phone. But this isn't a product review – there's really no point, since what I've got isn't exactly new on the market; it's a Samsung Galaxy SII, which came out early last year.

Skyfall

It wasn't a given that I would go see Skyfall; while I was a big Bond fan when I was younger, watching pretty much all of the films, things had changed. I had, come the end of the Brosnan era – when I was old enough to know better – realised just how hackneyed they'd become; while I'd liked Goldeneye, both The World is not Enough and Die Another Day were poor, and Tomorrow Never Dies only tolerable.

When they announced the re-casting of Bond with Daniel Craig I was happy - I've liked him in pretty much everything I've seen him in, with his small but significant role in The Road to Perdition being the standout¹ – and I was even happier they were hinting that it would also be a reboot of the style, since that was the biggest problem; they'd gone way overboard with the gadgets, the seductions and the double entendres.

A new toy

Despite my love of film, I'm not actually all that into watching movies at home – I find it hard to sit through a whole one because of all the distractions; this, of course, is another reason why I do go to the cinema as much as I do: to overcome my problematic attention span.

But I'd like that to change, mostly because even though I get to see most of the films I want to see at the cinema, there are a few that I miss for different reasons, such as just not having the time, the dumbasses at the cinemas putting things on at inconvenient times, or the film distributors not bothering to release them in this country.

The week that was #31

Have had a pretty busy month or so – luckily I've had enough time to crank out the occasional post – but I've been up to a bit lately, so it's time for an update.

My Romantic History

Finished the show I'd been stage managing - I did intend to include a writeup in this update, but once I started I realised there was enough material to constitute a standalone post and will post it another time.

How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying

After a succession of serious roles (namely Alonso in The Tempest¹, Glenn in Suddenly at Home, Ross in Macbeth and Evan in Don's Party²) over the last few years, I was in the mood to do something a little lighter – either a musical or a comedy. I was probably leaning more towards doing a comedy because I'd be more likely to get a lead (or a least a major) role in a play than I would a musical, but as the shows for the 2013 season were being announced, I realised there wasn't anything that particularly caught my eye; therefore, the best option for me would be a musical.

Pride & Prejudice (on stage)

Just quickly – I don't have much time – I'm just putting down some thoughts about the stage production of Pride & Prejudice I saw yesterday. It was by Independent Theatre, one of my favourite Adelaide companies; over the last few years they've done some great shows, most of which I've been lucky enough to see.

Anyway, I was very keen to see this - P&P is one of my favourite books; I wrote about it here - and with Independent's history of clever, faithful adaptations, I had high hopes.

I was not disappointed. It was a very good adaptation, with all the dialogue taken from the book with an emphasis on retaining the great characters and (more importantly for me, an unrepentant word-nerd) exquisite language in all its brilliant, snarky glory.

Disney and Lucasfilm

Just a quick post on this, since it's been a topic of discussion on the internet and amongst the geekier of my friends (Sean Fewster, an Adelaide journalist, wrote about for The Punch), and I want to jump on the bandwagon before it gets all the way out of town and into a galaxy far, far away.

Basically – if you haven't already heard – Disney Pictures have bought Lucasfilm and everything that goes with it (i.e. the rights to Star Wars and Indiana Jones; they may be other 'brands' as well, but I haven't heard any mentioned) for the rather astonishing total of $4.05 billion.

The week that was #30

This is actually from a while back, but I've been so sodding busy that I haven't actually had time to finish it until now. It was a pretty interesting few days, though, so I didn't want to to let it go undocumented.

Mumford & Sons

Monday night was the Mumford & Sons gig at the Adelaide Entertainment Centre theatre – the smaller hall that's part of the AEC complex; I've seen a few gigs there in the past few years: Massive Attack, Ben Folds and Regina Spektor, to be specific. It's a good venue, and I've liked all the shows I've seen there, with Regina Spektor being a standout for excellent sound quality.

State Theatre Company SA Season 2013

The launch of the State Theatre Company of South Australia program for 2013 was a few weeks back – I was at rehearsal, following the tweets on the #STCSA2013 hashtag – and the hard copy showed up in the mail the following day.

Father and son team Rob and Geordie Brookman – CEO/Producer and Artistic Director respectively – have put together a very impressive collection of shows with a mix of classic and modern works; big cast shows and one-handers; and South Australian, interstate and international artists.

So, like I did for the 2011 season (not sure why I didn't do one for 2012; the timing, most likely), I've written a blog post about my thoughts on each of the shows.

A visit from the grey nomads

The grey nomads – retirees who travel the country in caravans like elderly, motorised gypsies – in this instance are, of course, my parents; my mother and stepfather to be precise. But when they aren't driving around dragging a tin box on wheels around behind them, they live near Childers in Queensland, so – given that I live in Adelaide – I don't get to see them very often otherwise. But the very idea of doing what they're doing is so utterly horrifying to me – I literally cringe at the very thought of hooking a caravan up to a car and driving long distances.

And it's prompted me to think about why that is, which I've realised comes down to three things.

2012 ATG Curtain Call Awards

Sunday, the morning after: I'm in a good mood. I may be hungover and tired from having had slightly less than four hours' sleep, but that does not diminish how happy I am about how last night's ATG Curtain Call Awards dinner went.

This wasn't necessarily a given – but not because of the night itself, but instead because of my occasionally problematic social anxiety issues; last year these turned what should have been a good night into an unpleasant one that I've all-but blocked out any memory of - I didn't even write about it afterward.

The week that was #29

This week's post covers a tv show about cricket, a musical comedy gig, a recent Stephen King novel about time travel, and one of the best films of the year.

Howzat! Kerry Packer's War

[For the non-Australians/Australians who don't know the story, this was a tv mini-series about a man named Kerry Packer, who was an Australian businessman whose primary interest was in broadcasting and publishing; in the late seventies he wanted the television rights for cricket and was refused. He found out many of the players were dissatisfied with the poor wages they were paid (relative to the money the organisations were making) and together they attempted to stage their own cricket competition. As you can imagine, it was not well-received by the very traditional cricket boards around the world, and it went to the courts.]

I started watching cricket in the early 80s, by which time all the events covered in the mini-series had taken place, so most of what I knew about the formation of World Series Cricket came from some televised interviews with Ian Chappell – mostly that the players were extremely poorly treated by the cricket boards, who were making large amounts of money but refusing to play the players what they were worth.

The Week that Was #28

Top Girls

I reviewed State Theatre's production of Top Girls; you can find the review here.

It was a tough review to write, mostly because while I'm not entirely ignorant of feminism, I wouldn't presume to be an expert. But the play itself has strong feminist themes, so there was a need to demonstrate at least some insight.

Some other reviews:

No Plain
Kryztoff Raw
Marginalia
Barefoot Review

Barrymore

Another filmed play – though not through the NT Live program (which I've mentioned here and here) but rather a collection of Canadian film and theatre companies – Barrymore, starring Christopher Plummer, is (somewhat unsurprisingly) a play about noted stage and film actor of the early 20th century, John Barrymore. He was one of the legendary Barrymore acting family (his brother Lionel, sister Ethel and father Maurice were all actors; Drew Barrymore is his granddaughter) and a very interesting – and tragic – character.

The Week that Was #27

Okay, so I'm going back to the weekly – well, try at least – blog post thing, doing short summaries of things that have happened recently. This one, though, is going to include some stuff a bit further back than the last week or so, simply because there were longer blog posts that I decided to not finish.

The Dark Knight Rises

While I wouldn't call myself a fan of Christopher Nolan's Batman series – I didn't like the first one all that much, and while I did like aspects of the second, that was mostly because of Heath Ledger's amazing performance as The Joker – I did want to see the third and final installment, both to see how they ended it and (once again) because of the supporting cast, in this case Anne Hathaway (for whom my fondness is already documented here) as Selena Kyle/Catwoman and Tom Hardy as Bane.

Rambling

I haven't written any blog posts for a while; this, of course, is somewhat annoying, given that I have one for the sole purpose of making me write about things on at least a semi-regular basis. But that's less about speaking my mind and more about making sure that I am writing simply for the sake of writing; I believe that writing is one of those things that you need to practice, regularly, to stay good at. And while I write a little for work, it's not quite the same – to put it bluntly, the writing I do for work is not that demanding; sadly, explaining and interpreting figures for the gas industry doesn't require elegant prose.

Three reviews

I've been slack in my blogging lately, for lots of reasons; some good (busy) and some bad (vaguely disillusioned about certain things) – but now I'm back with some thoughts on a few things I've seen recently – a filmed play, a stage musical and the biggest cult film of all time.

One Man, Two Guvnors

I missed this the last time it was on, so I was very happy that they decided to replay it – the National Theatre Live production of the multi-award-winning One Man, Two Guvnors.

Vegetable matters

Earlier this year, after nearly an entire lifetime (well, nigh-on forty years at least) of eating of what can only be described as the bare minimum of vegetables required for survival, I decided I'd actually try finding a way to increase my intake of the dreaded plant matter.

It wasn't that I didn't eat vegetables at all; I've always eaten tomatoes¹ and salads and so forth, and a couple of years ago added a red lentil curry (with broccoli, carrot and cauliflower) to my regular menu; I also included things like carrots and mushrooms² to my (meat) bolognaise sauce, and when I made stir-fry I'd throw in a few frozen beans and/or carrots.

Next to Normal

Not a review per se; rather, a quick report. I saw the SA premiere of Next to Normal last night; it's being staged as a co-production by Adelaide companies Factory and Six Foot Something. I'd heard of the show before, but know practically nothing about the specifics – and a whole bunch of recommendations from people who'd seen it that it was excellent.

And they were right; it's an absolutely brilliant show. It has an unusually strong narrative for a musical, so much so that, combined with the way they segued into each other, it was several songs in before anyone remembered it was a musical and applauded.

The Avengers

A couple of Mondays ago I saw The Avengers; then, a few days later, I saw it again. So, it probably shouldn't come as much of a surprise that I've written about it – though it's taken me a bit longer to finish than I anticipated; such is my life at the moment.

Oh, and medium-level spoilers ahoy. I don't like doing that, but I really can't talk about the bits that I liked without giving too much away. If you want a very brief review it's as follows: it's a stunningly well-written and well-made action blockbuster film with great characters and some of the cleverest and funniest dialogue I've heard – albeit with a couple of fairly minor flaws.

Thorough review below the fold.

Jay and Silent Bob Get Old

In an echo of sentiments that I've made in the past about people like Ian McKellen, John Cleese and Olivia Newton John, I had never at any point expected that I would one day have the chance to see writer/director Kevin Smith live on stage – in fact, in a way, it was even less likely than those other people, since they all have a history of live performance and Smith (until fairly recently) was purely a filmmaker. But in the last few years he's taken to doing public 'performances' - including sellout shows at the Sydney Opera House and a seven-hour long Q&A session in New Jersey in 2005 – and selling tickets to those; thus began what appears to be a successful sideline career.

This has evolved into doing regular series of podcasts with assorted different people including his wife, Jennifer Schwalbach; producer and View Askewniverse performer Scott Mosier (the official name for what is now a network of recordings is SModcast - S for Smith and M for Mosier, since the first of them featured those two); and Jason Mewes, who portrayed Jay in all the View Askewniverse films alongside Smith as Silent Bob – and the name for the Smith/Mewes show is Jay and Silent Bob Get Old.

And at some point they decided to bring that show to Australia.

Henry Rollins

When I heard that Henry Rollins – easily my favourite combination punk/hard rock band frontman, writer, publisher, activist, actor, radio show host, spoken word artist and documentary film maker¹ – was coming back to town for a spoken word gig, I made sure I got a ticket straight away.

Now, if you're not familiar with Henry Rollins, here's this thing: he's a scary looking guy – he's spent a lot of time in the gym, has a bunch of tattoos, and is one of the most intense people around. Here's a picture from his website:

2012 Global Atheist Convention

Circumstances have conspired to get in the way of my writing up the 2012 GAC – partly because of my being busy with assorted aspects of theatre (rehearsal, shows and reviews) and partly because I got a shitty head cold that rendered me incapable of writing.

Unfortunately, it taking so long has meant that I've lost both momentum and some of the details of what I actually experienced; so, rather than struggle to dredge up what might be inaccurate information, I'm going to focus more on the 'bigger picture' rather than the specifics of what happened.

Putting it in context

Once again the question of 'what's the point of an atheist convention?' came up, this time on an (atheist) friend's Facebook status; this led to a somewhat complicated discussion in which I ended up being a little blunt with the person who'd asked it – and which subsequently became a lot more heated after I'd left it.

And, since it's a question that's been asked by a few people since – both atheists and theists – I thought it worth answering as best I can.

The current state of affairs

I haven't posted anything for a while, even though I was intending to write my now-standard blog post about festival season. Some of that is down to how ridiculously busy – even by my standards – I was during the final weeks of Fringesanity and the immediate aftermath; some down to the emotional/mood issues I found myself experiencing at the same time.

Unfortunately, those now seem less like moods and more like a permanent shift in temperament – but that's not (directly at least) what I'm here to write about, other than as an explanation for why I haven't been writing much lately.

2012 Adelaide Fringe picks

Sadly, I haven't had time to do a proper Fringe report – it's just been way too busy with all the shows plus the reviews I've had to write and the 100+ reviews I've had to edit and upload to the ATG website (which, by the way, you should check out) – but I want to 'share the love' for the shows I've seen and liked so far and which are still going.

As in the preview, there's a link to that show's FringeTix page so you can get more info and/or buy tickets.

If you haven't read my preview you should as it has thoughts on other shows I haven't seen (yet) and therefore haven't included in this post, which deals exclusively with shows I've seen and which are still on.

Adelaide Fringe 2012 Preview

It's that time again – when I sit down with the Fringe guide and pick out the shows I think are worth seeing. It's a combination of returning shows I've seen before, new shows from people I've seen before, shows that sound interesting, and those featuring friends of mine.

Should you be so interested by what I've written that you want to buy tickets straight away, just click on the link following each entry.

Familiar with their work

Guy Masterson and the Centre for International Theatre

A Day at the Cricket

For the third year in a row I got myself along the the picturesque Adelaide oval to watch some test match cricket; this year it was against India, and was the fourth and final test of the summer – in a series which Australia had dominated; it was, prior to the Adelaide test, 3-0 in our favour.

The powers-that-be, in their infinite wisdom, had scheduled the test to begin on a Tuesday, a truly mindboggling decision given that the vast majority of people don't actually take time off work to go to the cricket, preferring to go on the weekend. Yes, it would mean that the third day would be the Australia Day public holiday (falling this year on the Thursday), but if they'd made that the first day, they'd have gotten that huge crowd plus good ones on Saturday and Sunday – should the match go into its third and fourth days.

The week that was #26

Was out and about a bit this week – I saw a film, a musical and a gig – so I thought it was worth a week-that-was post to bring it all together.

Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows

I'd been looking forward to the Sherlock Holmes sequel ever since I saw the first one (I have a feeling that by the time I saw the first one they'd already announced there was going to be a sequel – and I probably saw it no later than a week or so after it came out at the cinema; it was also set up with a 'sequel hook' at the end) and all the previews I'd seen and buzz I'd heard/read indicated that they'd done a good job of it.

Plus there was the casting news: Stephen Fry was to be portraying Holmes's even-cleverer brother Mycroft, and Jared Harris¹ – who I've liked in everything I've seen him in, particularly his recent appearances in the television shows Fringe and Mad Men – was to be playing his arch-nemesis, Professor Moriarty.