goodbye, dolly

i love musicals. i grew up watching them over and over. memorizing lyrics and singing along. dancing along to the choreography in our family room downstairs as i pretended that i was dorcas from seven brides from seven brothers (she didn't have to dance too much). my siblings and i have some really fond memories surrounding the culture of watching musicals that we grew up in. you can sing the first couple words of a song and we will all join in together and maybe even start dancing for you. we can't help ourselves. kind of like the people in musicals.

i still love musicals, but rarely watch them any more. i don't have a whole lots of spare time and when randy and i do get a moment to settle down and watch something, the sound of music is not on the top of randy's list (but it is on the top of mine!).

i can't remember what triggered it, but for the last couple weeks i've been thinking a lot about musicals and wondering if my girls are ready for/would enjoy some of the musicals that i loved so much as a kid. maybe maria von trapp could somehow kill that inane, constant desire to watch dora that i am constantly trying to stamp out, yet burns brightly in madeleine's bosom.

yesterday, on a rare, quiet sunday afternoon, and with all of this musical nostalgia brewing inside of me, i decided to sit down and watch hello, dolly. definitely one of my favorites. madeleine came out of her nap about fifteen minutes into the movie, so decided to see if she was ready to enjoy a good musical and i let her join me.

no more than ten seconds had passed when she said, "why are they all singing and dancing?" i explained that it was a musical and the actors do that a lot during the movie. it's a fun way to showcase their talents while still progressing the plot (i think that part was over her head). apparently this was not a satisfactory answer because she asked me this question repeatedly throughout the rest of the movie. not just at the beginning of each song, but several times throughout each song. each time i tried a different response, but she was not appeased.

and so, what i thought would be a bonding, enjoyable experience for my daughter and me, turned into a disappointing deconstruction of one of my favorite musicals. it really takes the magic out of the movie when you constantly have to explain dolly levi's motives in a three year old's vernacular. try as i might, she just couldn't understand how the parade was a metaphor for life and its experiences.

maybe i'll have to watch them on my own for a while.  

and let me just say that she has never asked why the little mermaid bursts into song randomly or why she is so infatuated with eric and being a human.

vitus

randy and i watched the german film, "vitus," this weekend and loved it. it is a film about a young child who is a piano prodigy and his quest to balance his talent with normalcy. i know that we probably enjoyed it a little bit more because of our musical interests, but i think that it is a film that anyone would really enjoy. randy and i keep bringing it up and talking about it, so i think that is a good sign for how good the film was. we got it through netflix, so i'm not sure how readily available it is elsewhere, but i think that it's worth finding a copy and watching it.

note by note

randy and i watched this last night and loved it. it's a documentary about the making of a steinway piano. they followed one piano (a nine foot concert grand - L1037) from cutting down the wood in the forest to rolling it out onto the showroom floor.

it was fascinating to watch. i've already been heavily indoctrinated by randy that steinways are the best pianos out there, but we were both even more convinced of the fact after watching this documentary. almost the entire process is done with hand tools. the technicians that make each part have been trained extensively and each part is carefully inspected throughout the process. i loved all the shots of the factory. it feels like you've been transported back one hundred years, with hand tools like planes and chisels hanging all over the place.

i think that my favorite part about the whole movie was seeing the men and women who make steinways. i had imagined a bunch of musicians working at the steinway factory, but really, it is a bunch of burly craftsmen from the bronx and queens, most of who have been working there for years. they have a lot of immigrants with thick eastern bloc accents. one guy was hand planing part of the piano and said that he had brought the plane with him from (insert name of eastern bloc country that i can't remember here) in 1969. awesome. these guys were true artisans.

last night i dreamt about randy and i going to the steinway basement in new york and picking out a nine foot concert grand. some day.

charade

randy and i watched "charade" this weekend. i thought that i hadn't seen it, but as the movie went on, certain scenes seemed vaguely familiar. fortunately, i didn't remember much and was able to enjoy the mystery and plot twists of the movie. fantastic movie. made me want to own audrey hepburn's wardrobe (all of her movies do, of course). highly recommend it.

man on wire

loved this. beautiful. no wonder it won. great combination of spoken interview with imagery and the careful weaving of an overarching event with subplots. they had the benefit of starting with a great amount of quality footage and photography, but regardless, they did an amazing job with it.

the curious case of benjamin button

randy and i saw this movie yesterday (thanks to jeanie for watching madeleine!). randy loved it and i came out of the theatre feeling pretty lukewarm about it. it was pretty slow and long for me, but it was very well done for what it was supposed to be. the makeup and use of computer graphics for the aging was really impressive and the film really was beautiful. it's one of those movies where the more i think about it in retrospect, the fonder i become of it and the more it makes me think. i would recommend at least trying it out once.

sink me!

for years, i have had people tell me that i need to see the movie, "the scarlet pimpernel," with anthony andrews, ian mckellen, and jane seymour. i finally saw it this week and loved it. such a good story, and such great characters. i think i will need to watch it more often now that i know about it.