It's a Wonderful Life (an opera review post)

Wait, what? Opera review? It's a Wonderful Life is a movie, not an opera!
Don't worry; it's still a movie but, now, it's also an opera.
And, of movies that could be turned into operas, It's a Wonderful Life is, on many levels, the perfect choice. It's also a very daunting choice. I mean, the movie is beloved by so many people... It's a fine line to tread to reproduce something in another medium to the satisfaction of people who love it in its original medium and, yet, make it attractive to people who have no association with it. It's why adapting books can work so well. The percentage of readers is usually small enough that it doesn't matter if they like an adaptation or not. But taking a beloved movie, a movie that millions of people watch every year... Well, that's another story entirely.

And let's just get it out of the way:
I love It's a Wonderful Life, which has nothing to do with it being a Christmas movie (because, let's face it; it's not) and everything to do with loving Jimmy Stewart. And this isn't even my favorite Jimmy Stewart movie, just the one I've watched the most and the one that most people know him from. That said, I wouldn't want to be the one cast to fill his shoes in this operatic adaptation.

But before we get to that, does the opera make me want to partake of the source material? That's a much easier question to answer when you're not already familiar with the source material, just by the way. That said, I don't think the opera would have made me want to watch the movie if I hadn't already seen it. I could be wrong. However, we went to see this with a couple of friends who were both mostly unfamiliar with opera and had never seen the movie, and both of them said they felt like, now, they needed to see the movie. They both had a much greater positive reaction to the opera than I did, which could account for that, especially considering some of my lack of positive reaction came from places where I thought the adaptation was lacking.

The greatest area it was lacking was in its George Bailey. George was played by William Burden, who never felt George enough for me. In the movie, one of the main qualities about George is his enthusiasm, his excitement over all that he plans to do. That's really lacking in the opera and, instead, George comes off as seeming rather depressed through most of the opera, sad all the time. It gave the opera a melancholy feeling that the movie doesn't have. Being a story of hope, I think the melancholy dragged the opera down somewhat; at least, it did for me.

On the other hand, Andriana Chuchman really nailed Mary Hatch. She was a pleasure to watch and listen to.

On the other other hand, Rod Gilfry wasn't quite evil enough as Mr. Potter, though that probably wasn't his fault. He doesn't have enough stage time to let the audience know how despicable he is. We have to rely on George's pronouncement that Potter is like a fat spider in a web preying on everyone else as our measurement on how evil Potter is.

The music and singing were good but, overall, not very memorable. It never really soared, and it seems to me that there should have been opportunities for that. Then, again, I'm not a musician.

Then there's the stage...
SFO generally has great sets. You should know; I talk about them pretty much every time I do an opera review. But this one... Well, it was interesting and a great way to handle the first part of the story. The stage was full of doors floating out in space and was where the angels viewed George's life, where Clara (the angel sent to save George (rather than Clarence from the movie)) learns what she needs to know so that she can help George Bailey as he stands on the bridge ready to jump. And they had angels flying around the stage, too, which was really cool.

As they progressed through George's life, different doors would open and the actors would come out and act out the scenes of the important moments. It was really cool, like visions in space for the angels to watch.

The problem was that that was all there was. When they finally got up to "now" in the story and everything was progressing in the moment, the action was still happening in front of the doors. It made the ending seem less real than it should have. At least for me.

All of that said, I did enjoy the opera. It was good; it just wasn't great. And certainly not as great as I wanted it to be. It was something I was glad to see, but it's not an opera I'd go out of my way to see a second time. And, really, there's nothing wrong with that.

The Man Who Knew Too Much x2 (a movies review post)

There was this singer, once, I used to follow. His first album flew way under the radar, but he had a huge hit song off of a later album that blasted him to a niche fame. Around his sixth album or so, after he was popular, he pulled one of the songs from his first album and included it on the new one. Evidently, it was a song he really liked. When asked, once, in an interview about why he re-released that one song, he said, "I didn't think anyone was listening the first time."

I kind of wonder if this was one of those kinds of things for Hitchcock. The first The Man Who Knew Too Much came out in 1934, well into Hitchcock's career, actually, but he felt the need to re-make it 22 years later. Or maybe it was just a Star Wars kind of thing and he thought he could do better. He did say in an interview once that he was only a talented amateur when he made the first one but felt himself to be a professional at the point he remade it in 1956. The 1956 version was certainly better.

Of course, I watched the '34 version first. Even without having seen the second (well, I'm sure I saw the second one when I was a kid, but I didn't have any real memory of the movie), the first one felt... sparse. There's no real development of the story to give you any empathy for the characters. The mother, played by Edna Best, seems to not like her daughter very much, repeatedly calling her names and blaming her for her loss in a shooting competition, and taunts her husband about leaving him for other men. It makes it difficult to have sympathy for her once her daughter is kidnapped.

Then, once the daughter is kidnapped, the Lawrence's go back to England and try to act as if nothing has happened. It's kind of weird.

The best part of the '34 version is Peter Lorre. He's just the right amount of creepy for a bad guy. Plus, there's a cult and some hypnotism thrown in for good measure. I suppose the cadre of bad guys in the first movie is actually more interesting even if it is a little less believable. Cicely Oates is also decidedly creepy as the kidnapped girl's caretaker/cult leader.

But the remake is immediately better than the first movie. Maybe it's the charisma of Jimmy Stewart that does it, or maybe it's just a more believable scenario, a family on vacation rather than a family of, what, Olympic competitors? (It's never really clear if they're competing in the Olympics, but the father, Bob Lawrence, lost a skiing competition and the mother, Jill Lawrence, lost her sharp-shooting competition.) At any rate, the '56 version opens with some banter between the family as they ride a bus to Marrakesh, friendly banter and story-telling. They're likable. The McKenna's, though, have a son, not a daughter.

There's much more buildup to the kidnapping in this one, and you feel the loss with the family, the frantic-ness. There's love there, and you believe the lost-ness of the characters as they realize their son has been taken and they've been given no other instruction than to keep their mouths shut about what they know. It's, then, also believable when Ben McKenna tries to work out what to do and how to save his son on his own. Not that his wife, played by Doris Day, is to be left out of things, which is something else I like about the movie. The woman is no fainting flower (unlike Jill Lawrence who literally fainted when she found out her daughter was kidnapped).

There is an important scream in each movie -- I'm not going to tell you why because spoilers -- but the two screams are also significantly different in motivation. In the '34 version it's a woman screaming from fear much like the fainting episode: It's just what women do. Or some such. But in the '56 version, it's made very clear the scream was a deliberate attention-getting act. A brave move rather than a cowardly one. It's an interesting difference.

The two movies, despite the same basic premise and a few equivalent plot points, are surprisingly dissimilar. Actually, that's easy to see just at a casual glance considering the '56 version is about 45 minutes longer. Plus, there's Jimmy Stewart. If you had to choose between the two, the one with Jimmy Stewart is the easy choice, and it just so happens that it's the better movie. Oh, and the '56 one is also in color, so there's that, too. But I would really suggest watching both. The first one is worth it for Peter Lorre alone. Seriously.

Clone Wars -- "The Jedi Who Knew Too Much" (Ep. 5.18)

-- Courage begins by trusting oneself.

[Remember, you can sign up to join the Clone Wars Project at any time by clicking this link.]

[Well, actually, considering that we're into season five, now, probably no one new is going to sign up, BUT! Hop over to The Armchair Squid for his take on the current episode.]

I'm sure the title of this is a reference to the Hitchcock film The Man Who Knew Too Much, but it's been so long since I've seen that movie that I don't know how the episode relates to the film.
Fun fact: The 1956 film featuring Jimmy Stewart and directed by Alfred Hitchcock was a remake of his own 1934 film of the same title. I've only seen the Jimmy Stewart version so, now, I need to watch both of them!

Anyway...

This is one of the most pivotal story arcs in the entire Clone Wars series. Everything changes here, and I think this story more than any other one gives insight into the fall of Anakin, though, ostensibly, this arc isn't even about him. Having seen it before, it's interesting re-watching it now and seeing how they put it together, because it feels like I should have known what was going to happen before it happened, kind of like watching The Sixth Sense for the first time.

Tarkin is back and back with a renewed agenda to cut the Jedi out of... well, out of everything but, initially, out of the clone war. Tarkin's presence in this arc is also a sign of the significance of this story.

And all of this, again, makes me really wonder where they were going to go with this series because it feels like everything before was just leading up to this stuff here at the end of season five (and the limited amount of season six that was later made available), and this stuff is great. It's intense. It's moving. It's powerful. You should watch it.

Look Homeward, Angel

My oldest son's newest drama production opened this past weekend: Look Homeward, Angel. The play is based on the book by Thomas Wolfe, which is considered a masterpiece of American literature. The play ran on Broadway for nearly 600 shows and won several awards. Most importantly, though, this was my son's first lead role.

He was in the role of 17-year-old Eugene Gant, a boy desperately wanting out from under his mother's controlling thumb but unsure of how to do that. That is until 23-year-old Laura James shows up at his family's boarding house. Without meaning to, my son completely channeled Jimmy Stewart for this role, and it was impressive. There's this one scene where Eugene is telling Laura the kinds of things you can feel and see by laying your hand on a train, the places you get pieces of, and it could have been that scene from It's a Wonderful Life where Stewart is talking about how he's going to see the world. Mostly, though, he takes that stammer and transforms it into a boy who is unsure of himself and how to get what he wants out of life. He was really quite good.

The rest of the cast was good, too, just mostly not as good. The girl who played Eugene's mother was probably as good, though I found her to get better as she moved through the play, which leads me to think that her performance in the first act may have been a little weak. The boy that played Eugene's father had moments where I thought Jim Carrey had stepped in for him.

Overall, I just continue to be impressed and more impressed with the drama department at my son's high school. They do good work and, most impressively, they do most of it themselves. They have a teacher there, but he seems to be there mostly to supervise and to prompt them to work it out for themselves. Whatever he does, he gets good stuff from the students.

Shadow Spinner News

Every year, the school my younger kids go to has an auction fund raising event. It's kind of a big deal as it accounts for the bulk of the school's funds every year. This year, I decided to donate one of my proof copies of Shadow Spinner to the auction. After all, I had an extra one, since no one won it back during the Greatest Chocolate in the World contest. Just to be clear, only three of these books exist: the one I'm using as my editing copy (that's got red marks all in it), the one my younger son stole from me, and the one I donated (signed). There will be no other proof copies like this as next time I order proofs, there will be cover art on the book.

I was kind of unsure about donating the book. I mean, although I have fans at the school, it's not a kid event, so it made me a bit uneasy. What if it just sat there and no one bid on it at all, you know? That would be, like, the height of embarrassment to have them bring it back to me after the auction with a "sorry, no one wanted it." But! I took it up and donated it anyway. I mean, even if someone paid $5.00 for it, that would be $5.00, right?

I had to fill in a retail value of the book on the donation form, so I put $12.00, because I think that's what it's going to be priced at in physical form. I think. The woman taking the book from me, though, told me I should point out on  the form that it was a proof copy and not something you could actually buy, so I wrote that in.

Now, I didn't go to the auction (because it was the same night as my son's opening performance in Look Homeward, Angel), so I'm not sure if that information was available to the public or not. I have no idea how the items were displayed and what information was included or anything (it was a silent auction), but I imagine it just sat on a table somewhere with a sheet of paper next to it for people to write their bids on. Just a plain gray book with no cover art sitting on a table.

And it went for $30.00. I'm pretty pleased with that. I hope it turns out to be a worthwhile investment for the family that got it.