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EYE WITNESS REPORTS ON HUMAN CULTURE
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MUSIC The MALIBU FRIENDS OF MUSIC hosted their Holiday Soiree last week in honor of Maria Newman's late mother, Martha Montgomery. There were bells and youth singers and trilling sopranos and humorous folky trios and classical chamber music and neighborly holiday interaction. Dale Cole Catering staged a beautiful table with sumptuous cheeses, dips, shrimp and bruschetta. PRP Wines tasted their many offerrings. It was a magical, musical holiday evening! If fresh big band music is your bag, you'll want to seek out the CHRIS WALDEN BIG BAND. They play jazz clubs in the LA area and you can order their excellent CD at the website. Walden is a marvelous composer and arranger and the band traverses familiar terrain as well as innovative new jazz. He also works with the lovely young chanteuse Courtney Fine - who has a CD out, too! It's all good! If you love jazz, you'll find both of them easily. It’s not too late to order music from Naxos for gifts and holiday music. Naxos and it’s various subsidiaries entities never fail to offer eclectic and reasonable priced audio and video entertainment for the listener who appreciates music from smaller orchestras and performers that may be off the radar for the average American music enthusiast.
A Chatman Christmas is lovely collection of choral music by composer Stephen Chatman, performed by the British Columbia Singers with Bruce Pullan conductor. Medieval instruments, piano and Touch of Brass accompany the gentle lilting lullabies and spirited carols – composed over a 20 - year period by Chatman.
In Terra Pax is a compilation of music composed in the 20th century by a variety of composers that include Holst and Ralph Vaughn Williams - but based on centuries-old tunes and carols. Performed by the City of London Choir and Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra, this CD is a pleasure for the holidays! A fascinating history of the difficult path that carols suffered through the centuries in England is included in the liner notes. For the avant-garde music lover on your list, check out Spirit of Chimes, featuring the chamber music of Chinese composer Zhou Long. Long’s music weaves traditional Chinese music with brilliant, unpredictable melodies that are intriguing and exciting. Also recommended: Guitar Music by Francisco Tárrega, the most influential and charismatic virtuoso performer of the 19th century as performed by Mats Bergstrom, Musica Hispanica – Music from Spain’s Golden Age, performed by the recorder ensemble Flautando Kӧhn, Debussy Complete Works for Piano Volume 5, three pieces composed for ballet, and Kaleidoscope, a delicious collection of music by Debussy, Poulenc, Beaulieu and others as performed by guitarists Raymond Burley and Gregg Nestor.
If you missed the PBS showing of Twin Spirits, a Royal Albert Hall performance based on the letters written between Robert and Clara Shumann, Naxos hasa DVD of that incredible evening. Featuring Sting and Trudie Styler as the Schumanns and Derek Jacobi as narrator, the performance is a beautiful telling of the intense and passionate love between Robert and Clara that lasted beyond Robert’s mental decline and eventual demise at the age of 39. One cannot help but notice that the love, as played by Sting and Trudie, did not appear to be just a great acting job, but rather a look into the famous couples’ own deep and enduring marriage Order these and other fine recordings and DVDS at http://naxosusa.com . |
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RECOMMENDED: PIRATE RADIO - Funny, funny, funny! Recalls a time when people actually rebelled against the status quo. All performances rock - with Bill Nye and Rhys Ivans stealing the show. Emma Thomson is Absoloutely Fabulous, darling! Having worked in rock radio myself I can testify to the fact that radio DJ's (not the boring club DJ's), are a dying breed of irascibility, fierce dedication to the music, and just plain insanity. Sigh*, I for one, miss the underground... THE YOUNG VICTORIA - Emily Blunt gives us an Oscar-worthy turn as Queen Victoria in this lavish costume drama. As her beloved Prince Albert, Rupert Friend shows a more accessible man than history has portrayed. We see his charm and love for the young monarch - which only later in their relationship develops into a controlling man who needs to establish his authority in a female-dominated household. Blunt's Victoria is fierce and determined and much more libidinous than the older queen - whose standards of the time have become associated with rigid morality. Miranda Richardson's return to the screen as Victoria's mother is a brilliant character study and I hope for an Oscar nod for her, too. History buffs will notice fact-gaffs in the story, but it must be noted that Sarah Ferguson is executive producer.....hmmmm...... CREATION - Paul Bettany is not only wonderful as the Prime Minister in THE YOUNG VICTORIA, but shines as Charles Darwin in CREATION. The cinematography almost steals the film from Bettany and his real-life wife, Jennifer Connelly who plays Mrs. Darwin in this film. Haunting, scary, dark imagery is a pervasive expression of the mental trials of the scientist Darwin as he struggles to reconcile his emerging scientific belief in evolution with his wife's uber-religious stances and the death of their bright daughter. Adults who balk at films dealing with history or serious issues will be seduced by the almost sinister shots and everyone else will enjoy the film because, well...they have brains. THE EIGHT SAMURAI - Yes, that's right. Justin Ambrosino has directed a delightful short film that is quite an homage to the great director, Akira Kurasawa. Imagine a failed Japanese actor who finally gets his big role - as one of eight samurai in Kurasawa's film. What happens when Kurasawa decides to eliminate that role in his film is touching and beautiful. Ambrosino shot around LA for Japan and the cinematography is so Kurasawa-esque that the viewer is totally drwn into the story. AFI is releasing the film and I think the lead character, played by Eijiro Ozaki, is so engaging that the material should be developed into a full length feature! THE PRIVATE LIVES OF PIPPA LEE - There is so much to like in this film I don't know where to start. Robin Wright Penn stars as a women settled into a marriage that she feels saved her from a life of misguided debauchery. She is taken for granted by her older husband (another star turn for Alan Arkin), despised by her war-correspondant daughter, and feels out of place in the new neighborhood where the family has relocated. Penn's Lee is just going through the moves of her life when she begins to sleep walk - a disturbing and dangerous situation that belies a deep dissatisfaction with her current arrangement. The viewer slowly becomes aware of her troubled past life with her bizarre family (Maria Bello as her constantly drugged mother is an acting tour-de-force), her wild hippy days, and the circumstances surrounding her marriage to Arkin. I thought the ending of the film was too pat, but for the most part, I think there will be a lot of Oscar noms for PIPPA LEE. An intriguig story, a stellar cast (including the often predictable Keanu Reeves), and a connection for viewers who may recognize parts of their own lives in the tale, make this a must-see film of the season.
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DOCUMENTARIES It's being bandied about that documentaries are the indie films of the decade. As independent films struggle to find outlets, documentaries from all over the world are finding wide audiences. At the German Currents film festival in LA September, I found the doc, NOBODY'S PERFECT to be an uplifting and often humorous telling of the current lives of German birth defect victims of the drug Thalidomide (that was administered to pregnant women in the 1950's as a sleep aid). The filmmaker, Niko von Glasow, whose tiny short arms are no deterrent to his filmmaking ability, gathered together others like himself in order to mount a photo exhibition of the subjects in the nude. All of the participants are engaging working professionals who confronted their own feelings about their birth defects during the process. Living their lives to the fullest, they express few regrets about their individual fates and have found love and happiness that is enviable. During the filming the filmaker tried unsuccessfully to get the chemical company to admit guilt - although the company KNEW about the dangers when the drug was first introduced. I learned that, after the film was complete, the company finally gave monetary awards to the German victims. Von Glasow, as a further example of his compassionate nature, used his money to start a school in Nepal. This is a feel good movie and should be nominated for an OSCAR! HOLLYWOOD SUL TEVERE (Hollywood on the Tibor) is a riot of a doc. Written and directed by Marco Spagnoli, this fast-moving flick reminds us that Rome was a hot spot for US film production in the 1960's and a frequent destination for Hollywood stars. Who can forget, Love, Italian Style, Ben Hur, Cleopatra, Three Coins in a Fountain, Roman Holiday and scores of fims shot in the sunny streets of Rome? The film is a compendium of Italian newsreel footage and a textbook example of how the papparazzo got started. Liz and Dick! Bergman and Rossilini! Charleton Heston! Audrey Hepburn! The list of big and not so big stars is amazing. It is frustrating for film buffs to see the previously unseen (in the US) clips of celebrities fly by so quickly and I wish the filmmaker had used more slo-mo to vary the pace and give us a chance to linger on the faces of stars at the crossroads of media obsession. The footage of big-haired Rachel Welch during the credits is priceless. THE YES MEN FIX THE WORLD has come and gone in LA, but you can still order the DVD at the website. The Yes Men are two perfomance artists and their band of co-conspirators who set up fake IDs of corporate entites so they can infiltrate conventions and make outlandish pronouncements on behalf of big wig groups such as FEMA, Dow Chemical and their ilk. Wonderfully, the media so often published and broadcast these "announcements" and stunts before discovering the hoaxes. For example, as Dow Chemical company "execs" they announced at a convention that Dow was going to make amends for the catastrophic accident at a US nuke plant in Bohpal, India by giving each of the victims $100,000 each. Well, of course, the media went crazy and DOW was forced to admit eventually that they WERE NOT making amends. Sad but funny, this film is brave, bright and possibly more adept at making a point than Michael Moore's films. http://yesmen.org
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Just in time for the holidays: Maggie Taylor's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. Maggie's inventive photo/art images accompany Lewis Carroll's text and the result makesw for a great gift for kids and adults alike. Check out Modern Books' other titles at http://modernbooks.com . This Palo Alto gallery/publishing company offers an array of incredible photography books that are visually stunning.
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Life got ya down, bunky? Wearly of disastor flicks, horror flicks and adolescent love tales? You need to lighten up! Maybe you thought that THE FANTASTIC MR. FOX was just for kids. Maybe you think the upcoming A TOWN CALLED PANIC is too Gumby-esque for your tastes! Well, think again. There are no better mood lifters around than the above flicks. The dialogue in both is sharp, witty, but very accessible to kids too. A TOWN CALLED PANIC is particularly funny, especially because it is in sub-titled French (good reading lesson for your elementary school-aged wee ones), but little French asides and quiet comments are rarely translated and we get them anyway! Both films star animals who manage to act like both animals and humans and the end result is knee slapping funny - like Bugs Bunny, only more smart than wise-cracking. You'll never look at your pet the same way again!
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