Friday, 5 June 2015

corner of the moon...

Riffing here a bit late at night but with intent. And wondering if the Tony Awards in NY this Sunday meant/s 'bugger all' to a West End run or box office? May I be a little patriotic and say the West End crowd are quite discerning...me kicks meself for not getting my 'arse on the road' and seeing Dr Zhivago on Broadway- critically panned. How could Des McAnuff directing a Lucy Simon score not be of interest? KICKS for not being your eyes and ears....PLEASE: kick me for THAT and not for being humble, generous, honest, insanely un-jealous, cruel to be kind! Neil Patrick Harris will kick- but he's kind to be cruel ummm, mum to be dad, ummm winter to be spring, ummm ...did you know the original lyrics of... were ...I love New York in late May how about you? I guess global warming WAS a total myth....sensing danger in the 'Will Robinson' audience.....YES Lauren Bacall PAUL ROBESON- she's a bit hard of hearing nowadays...so ain't we all dear....!

{PS (June 23)- I finally caught up with this year’s Tony Awards on YouTube. Well: I do have a lot of paint to watch drying- both literally and artistically;) Lots of post-Tony-twatting: it was “boring” and “always is”. Well: if THAT’S boring then I think moi and many many other ‘splendid human things’ are standing in line for that second-life. Hello!  Alan Cumming and Kristin Chenoweth were fun presenters. Come on…! And FINALLY the folks on Broadway get treated like Oscar/ettes with Broadway costume design legend William Ivey Long and Vogue’s Anna Wintour getting great frocks and 'DJ' socks on these people. Eight shows a week on Broadway vs  Hollywood ‘trailer-dom’…WHO gets your compassion?  How good does it get when Fun Home’s director Sam Gold receives his Tony from legend Tommy Tune! (Director Stephen Daldry was grring and secretly wishing he’d done Queen-the Musical!)- did he indeed direct that too..?

The Tonys DOES really make you want to see a Broadway show as the clichéd final auto-cue goes. And for ney-sayers: tread very very VERY softly on your 'friends' dreams or you may wake up as a warthog. Yet someone might just write a Broadway show about you: WARTHOG. Such is life’s ironies. We hear KAFKA-the musical is up for grabs…}

{Great MoMA series on-going at the moment in NY- in Technicolor you really have NEVER seen before. How a movie musical such as Yolanda and the Thief bombed at the box office one shall never know nor understand. Maybe more to write about the fascinating history of Technicolor and how they weren't unlike the Apple computer folk- losing money year after year after year until....}

un petit muse: did Lars von Trier see the beautiful David Lean Dr Zhivago overture sequence before creating an overture (visuals by renowned Danish artist Per Kirkeby) for Dancer in the Dark? And did anyone else see that but the Cannes audience? It was very very special....speakin' of film festivals with ummmm 'issues':

Leo di Caprio is going to wear heels EVERYWHERE next Cannes fest (reported in Martian Melt Daily). And George Clooney is rumored to be taking lessons from the Pippin cast in NY doing hand stands with heels on hands. What un petit négresses vertes can do...;)

Your blogging was digging in his garden and 'excavating' the flowers of another yesteryear owner....well: bet you thought Dave Letterman was about going to come online and sing a happy balllad- ha ha: you obviously missed the deleted YouTube clip of Dave and Christopher Walken singin' and dancin' &(*&%$^% - yeah: YOU missed out! The flowers (no not that bloom in the Spring  tra la...booby prize to whom gets that reference- Mike Leigh's favorite...hint-ha ja)! under years of vines and soil and abuse are strange, difficult and wondrous........

...sorry we wasn't funnier...but maybe we'll work on it..or as 'god'- it keeps refusing free refreshments-'sorry Sunday wasn't a better joke'. Only in New York folks ONLY in New York. Just doesn't quite cut the mustache in Kilburn though.....

although...Springtime for Tony and Germany...when a vine wants to grow there's no....
and there's no way to stop it,no, there's no way to stop it. No, you can't stop it even if you tried. ....prize for guessing which musical.....
[auction in current process for ads in this space for vine removal]

dear world....

Thursday, 23 April 2015

sad lazy spring willow boating...

just happened upon an exquisite mix of Rodgers and Hart's My Funny Valentine and Debussy from Classical Kicks (alas only 1 day left to listen-36.40 min into programme). Lizzie Ball and co. are worth seeking out.


Friday, 20 March 2015

somethings comin' , who knows

In case you thought the author of this blog was crazy and/or was buying up every costume from a Broadway show to mount his own history of Broadway in a back garden with an audience of one: here's a link to keep you, well- possibly pacified.

7th Annual Leon LevyBiography Lecture: Richard Holmes

Mind you: no-one has yet done a West End musical about Coleridge. Not that I am encouraging such;) but I'm sure Mr. Holmes wouldn't be unwelcome to being asked his advice nor indeed unwelcome to the royalties:)




Tuesday, 24 February 2015

make the moments fly

How good does it ever really get?! Lady Gaga singing hits from The Sound of Music at the Oscars thence to be embraced by…oh..yes: that is REALLY Julie Andrews. OK- we could have done with a little more Edelweiss but heck: that’s a man’s song…frickknn equality and all that…but you can’t sing Matthew McConaughey! Bejsssica yes yes you can…freaky how talented everyone is at those awards…

Little quiz: if you put 6 great composers/lyricists ‘whatever’ you know in a room and made them represent the last 6 decades…wouldn’t this guy be one? Or wasn’t my high school math just not so great?


What about CitizenFour and and.. 'they' cry: There's a waiting line please Ms Poitras and Mr Snowden? This is America: it certainly ain't 'just' but arguably it is 'fair'. Oh- sorry it's London. Different 'kettle of micro-fish'.

So Mr Snowden: you were saying about the collusion between the world's greatest banks and the world's greatest democracy...please continue...

Yes: I totally understand that you would rather watch a documentary about a totally unknown nanny who 'snapped' ordinary folk whilst perambulating the 'kinder' whilst surrounding herself with newspapers by dint as opposed to pixels. Or that you'd rather reminisce about the Wim Wenders days {addendum: Mr Wenders stated at a MoMA Q&A that Sebastião Salgado (Curzon Film World-July 3) was his FAVORITE photographer (just tryin' to keep it real...;):.....wait a minute no you wouldn't! We would though! ....You're not 'Ed'! 

For a night upon London town where 1664 meets 2014, the totally immersive theatricality of English National Opera's co-production (with Teatro Real Madrid) of Purcell's unfinished opera The Indian Queen is hard to beat. Director Peter Sellars talks here with the Russian co-producers. And on the BBC Feb 25. Change we can believe in? Forever slow and forever painful. Ever thus.

T.S. ELIOT 
:

Thursday, 19 February 2015

Innocence is a kind of insanity


Advice for the red carpet field of combat: If you’re going to be dressing in civilian clothes, don’t forget pumps. Apparently for Madonna’s after-party you’re not allowed a ‘plus one’. Isn’t that spookily akin to Philip K Dick’s The Adjustment Bureau where our brightest and best are kept from straying left-field lest they meet a love of their life who, just might love them?

Hey: if you missed an Oscar invite there is always The Tony Awards around the corner. (Now I've drawn attention to it, hope some Sergeant-Major doesn't force down that link in the face of little green backed men.) Who knows: you too may go from a Neil Patrick Harris eating sushi onstage to making your own out of an audience. Lots of truth seeking in this year’s Documentary Feature nominations…

Over the decades yours truly has sat (willingly though often restlessly) through enough foreign films to feed a favela for a lifetime. Many, alas, have no retinal flashbacks. Ida (a Foreign Film nominee) isn’t just mellifluously directed (Pawel Pawlikowski) but carved out of onyx by writer Rebecca Lenkiewicz.

He who dares not offend cannot be honest.

Speaking of la Vérité: anyone seen the UK TV series Black Mirror (Robert Downey Jr optioned an episode) produced and mostly written (co or all) by a coruscating TV critic- about well…: you’ll work it all out. 

If that’s not ‘eerie’ enough for you, go back in history and watch The Narcotic Farm. Does the end ever justify the means? 

Everybody's Got The Right

It's just a musical...a cabaret old chum...

Monday, 2 February 2015

time out- it's my show

the dearly departed of Oscar night is always a strange somewhat maudlin affair. So let's just get it put out of the way now:

firstly an advertisement free rendition of last year's swan song The Wind Beneath My Wings:

Old Friend

I Don't Want to Know (YouTube took down this link- it was a great performance, Ms Lansbury- even though not yours;) I shall not replace it. 

as Bernadette Peters once said in a concert: it’s my show so I’ll sing what I like!
So if I want Betty Buckley to sing everything in my post...;) did you know she was in the original stage version of Pippin


a. beginning


Round and round
The burning circle
All the seasons
One, two and three
Autumn leaves
And then the winter
Spring is born
And world is free

 
once upon a...
                                                 

--> we taught the world new ways to dream