The Week in Entertainment
A mixed week - slow start, crammed middle, and busy weekend!
Live: Two operas - went up to the Met for Thomas Adès' The Tempest, with Simon Keenlyside (for whom the role was written) singing an angry, vengeful Prospero and Audry Luna dazzling as an Ariel whose voice ranges well into the very top of a soprano's range, spiky and unhuman... I wasn't totally crazy about the staging - La Scala? Except that in Act II we're in a forest and on a beach? What the heck? I don't get what the point was. Also, sorry, but the first act was unattractively scored and the libretto was, well, trite throughout (They are so noble and so grand and I am loved by Ferdinand) - though possibly many Italian and French libretti are as trite, I don't know. Anyway, the cast was brilliant and the singing masterful. That said, this afternoon's La Bohéme at the Lyric in Baltimore was much more to my taste, a really beautiful production.
DVD: Babul, in which Amitabh Bachchan decides his widowed daughter-in-law deserves a second chance at love, which sparks anger from his more traditional relatives, including his older brother - and his own beloved wife.
TV: Watched a couple of old Spencer Tracy movies (Inherit the Wind, The People Against O'Hara, Judgement at Nuremburg) and The Terminal with Tom Hanks, which was a pleasing story.
Read: Sungudogo, which was quite entertaining right up to the very end, where the big twist was - imo - unfounded and silly. Your mileage may well vary on that. The Marrying Kind, a very engaging book about a gay wedding planner who decides he can no longer support an institution he's barred from - which is fine until his sister decides to marry his partner's brother.
Labels: entertainment
3 Comments:
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At 3:36 PM, November 05, 2012
Kathie had this to say...
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At 10:06 AM, November 06, 2012
The Ridger, FCD had this to say...
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At 5:48 PM, November 10, 2012
Kathie had this to say...
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<-- Older Post ^ Home Newer Post -->Are you as bothered as we are by Final Jeopardy questions TWICE last week that purportedly were chosen at random, yet played directly into the wheelhouse of a contestant? In one case, the solution "What is Helium" enabled a research chemist to win; in the other, a fellow Old Blue knew the nickname of the college football team that plays home games in a stadium under which the Hayward Fault runs (duhhh!), although she still didn't win. If I were producing "Jeopardy!" I would've substituted different Final Jeopardy clues in both cases, to avoid even the APPEARANCE of being preferential. Grrr...
I probably would have been - and it's a good idea that - but I ended up only seeing the show once all week.
Another misstep on "Jeopardy!" was a clue re who was the Mayor of Chicago from 1989 to 2011, for which a contestant was initially adjudged wrong for asking, "Who is Daley?" Alex then gave credit to another contestant who asked, "Who is Richard Daley?" Well, that doesn't narrow down the identity of the Mayor in question (Richard M. Daley, fils) the least little bit. Fortunately, during the intermission the producers decided to credit the original "Who is Daley?" response.
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