Hamlet

To be or not to be...whatever

    Probably, my favorite part of Hamlet staged by National Theatre Live was at the beginning when Hamlet was listening to Nature Boy sung by Nat King Cole on his record player. It set the period and tone of the piece. It also reminded me of me.

    I remember sitting in high school English class and talking about Hamlet. Something about iambic pentameter, Shakespeare...blah, blah, blah. Now I get it.

    Benedict Cumberbatch is great.  To be honest, if it weren't for Dr. Strange I may not have gone to see the Fathom Event at all. (Shush, tell no one.)

    Sian Brooke is just annoying as Ophelia. I mean, pick a twitch and just stick to it. 

    Ciaran Hinds is as cantankerous as Claudius in Hamlet as he was as Big Daddy when I saw him in 'Cat On A Hot Tin Roof' on Broadway.

    The lady dost need a tissue, methinks. Please, someone give Gertrude (Anastasia Hill) a handkerchief. I loathe disingenuousness.

 

   The play's the thing.






  

Links:

National Theatre Live

Fathom Events  

Nature Boy Nat King Cole

Rocket Man

Rocket Man

"Rocket man burning out his fuse up here alone"

     I remember listening to 'Good Bye Yellow Brick Road'  in my sixth grade music class. My music teacher and I shared this little downward smile and subversive wink and nod, although I didn't have a clue what these songs were about.

     Later, I remember doing the twist to 'Crocodile Rock' when I was about 13 years old. Again, I had no idea what I was doing, but I was having fun doing it. For that, I say thank you Elton John.
     I watched Rocket Man with friends, which is probably the best way to see this movie. The best part is that there is no sense of nostalgia about this film. Elton John is unapologetic. For gay men of a certain age, like me, it's a time capsule.

     Taron Egerton takes ownership of his role. That little downward smile gets me every time. He can sing too. I loved the scene where he played the first few chords to 'Candle In The Wind' and admitted that he didn't have lyrics for the song yet.
     Anyway. What I'm trying to say is...I don't know. I'm baffled. Stop. Go. See the movie. I'm about to cry.

References:

Vulture

Candle In The Wind. 1973 Video.

The New Yorker

Variety

Bad Times At The El Royale

Can't Take My Eyes Off Of You

"Miles, I fell down. I'm old, shit happens. Get the whiskey."

Father Daniel Flynn

     This film is right up my alley. I love almost everything about it. The period. The music. The cinematography. The actors.
     The only thing I don't love about the story is that it's talky. It works best as a hard boiled detective story, kind of a whodunit. The backstory scenes could have been edited a little bit and made shorter. While they do give us insight into the characters, they take us out of the moment.
     Billy Ray (Chris Hemsworth) appears later in the story. His arrival is portentous. Billy Ray gives new meaning to the word "Bad" in 'Bad Times At The El Royale'. Chris Hemsworth is great in this film. He moves like a snake charmer in a den of snakes. You might think Billy Ray is a snake, but he's not the only one. 
     Watch the movie. Figure it out.

References:

Variety

Days Of Wine And Roses

It Wasn't Fun Anymore

They are not long, the days of wine and roses:
Out of a misty dream
Our path emerges for a while, then closes
Within a dream. Ernest Dowson One day you're a highly functioning alcoholic, and then the next day you're not. It's as simple and as complicated as that. Many people think alcoholism is a progression of behavior. A gradual slip and slide into oblivion when actually it is more like a switch. Kind of like blowing a circuit breaker. Suddenly, everything goes dark.

Joe Clay had the gift of gab. Oh boy, he was a pretty boy with a great line of bull. As a PR man that worked in his favor until he started to believe his own bull shit. That's when everything went sideways. He lost his career. He lost his beautiful wife Kirsten who as it turned out was also a raging alcoholic. Sadly, as a result he also lost his own mind. Joe Clay sought redemption, but it's not really clear that he found it. I've received a call from an alcoholic who was trying to make amends. I wondered to myself if I was just another step in his ladder as I had always been. Today we call it alcohol abuse in order to relieve some of the stigma of the word alcoholism. This is so that all the bro's can feel better about binge drinking a six pack after work, and the house wives can feel a little bit better about finishing that bottle of wine. It is what it is.

Reference links:

Alcoholics Anonymous

Al-anon