Movie Marathon

Hallo everybody! It’s been a while since my last post, I do apologize. Today is a very sad day for the whole musical community, the renowned Italian conductor Claudio Abbado has passed away. And I got rather upset when I heard the news, we get so emotionally attached to these people because of the beautiful work they do it feels as if it was someone I knew. 

But I’m here to talk about good things. Like the fact that The Hartt School called me to audition for their Graduate Voice Program. YAY! This means I will be going to the US once again and staying in NYC for a while longer! YAY! I’m really happy because so many of my friends are going to actually be there, some I’ve already met in person and others not. Plus I’m going to get to go to the Met and see some pretty freaking awesome opera! If any of you are going to be around here are my dates;

13^th of February - Gerald Finley Recital in Carnegie Hall

15^th of February - Rusalka at the Met

17^th of February - Prince Igor at the Met

18^th of February - Werther at the Met

20^th of February - Jonas Kaufmann Recital in Carnegie Hall

22^nd of February - Werther and Die Fledermaus at the Met

I might go to Prince Igor on the 21^st as well, but I will probably decide then. And I will most certainly be seeing some Broadway musicals.

This is a different kind of post, I’m not really going to talk about opera in this one. I did a rather fun thing last week that I wanted to share with you guys. I barely went to the movies last year because of all the college stress and there were SO MANY movies I really wanted to see that passed me by. So I did a all week cinema project, last week I went to the movies 5 days in a row. You might be socked as to what is playing now since some of these movies premiered last year in the US and have only just come out here.

Monday - Last Vegas

I’ll do a quick recap of the movie. It’s about these four guys who have been friends since they were 6 or something but now they are almost 80. One of them, Michael Douglas, is getting married to a 30 year old beauty and decides he wants to have his bachelor party in Vegas. As the other friends we have Robert De Niro, who lost his wife and is in a depressing mourning mojo, Kevin Klein, whose wife gives him a free pass and a Viagra pill for Vegas (his wife is played by Joanna Gleason, the original Baker’s Wife of Into the Woods, I’m a musical theater geek!) and Morgan Freeman, who had a light heart attack and now whose son is fussing about him and not letting him do anything. In this cast we also have the actress I love to call “Percy’s Mum”, she plays Percy Jackson’s mum and she’s just what I pictured for that character so I like calling her that, but I think she’s a fantastic actress. And to my absolute delight we also have one of my favorite Broadway performers all in drag Roger Bart, he did a lot of Broadway and some movies, he’s freaking awesome.

But on to the movie, really funny, but I’m a person who is easily amused. I went to this one with my mother and she is definitely not someone who laughs at just anything and she laughed a lot. But the laugh champion was the old lady sitting next to me, I guess I actually knew all that medication they were talking about. The movie is fun and light and has some minor drama that is resolved before you can say bazinga. It’s a feel good movie, fun but maybe not for the whole family, don’t take the kids.

Tuesday - August: Osage County

This one blew off the roof! The basic story is that the patriarch of the family goes missing and then is found dead and the whole family comes together to mourn. And we have an astounding cast, starting off with the woman who could even pull off playing Batman, the one and only Meryl Streep. She plays the mother who has mouth cancer and is so utterly addicted to pills, she’s got no filter, she says whatever she wants to say and don’t care about the consequences. As her daughters we have Julia Roberts, sort of separated from her husband with a teenage daughter, the youngest Julianne Nicholson , who has a bit of a lesbo vibe but really isn’t and the middle daughter Juliette Lewis who is kind of ignored and mistreated by her mother. To add to the cast we have Ewan McGregor as Julia Robert’s sort of husband, he had/ has been having an affair with a much younger lady, and their daughter is played by Abigail Breslin, rebel, smokes pot, the perfect dysfunctional family. To add to the mix we have Meryl Streep’s sister who is sort of a bitch and her nice husband and their son, played by none other than Benedict Cumberbatch (yes Sherlock!). I loved Benedick in this because he shows he’s really such a flexible actor, this character, Little Charles has next to zero similarities to Sherlock. Awkward, insecure, kind of daft, very pure of heart and sporting a thick American accent. Gotta love Cumberbatch, he can go from Dragon to this to Sherlock freaking Holmes!

This was definitely one of my favorites of the week, of the year. The story starts out kind of warm, the only high points being when Meryl Streep has a scene. But then it gets dark and profound and like a bomb is about to explode as the family secrets start coming out and everyone’s lives change forever. This movie is rather heavy, also not for all audiences, no kids or overly emotional people or people who think it’s comedy. Seriously, the daft girls sitting next to me, apart from not stop talking, thought it was a freaking comedy! I mean, have you seen the poster? It’s a great movie but it’s not for the faint of heart.

Wednesday - Até que a sorte nos separe 2

This is a Brazilian movie, a sequel to “Até que a sorte nos separe”. Brazil produces REAL funny comedy movies, it’s so funny that you can’t hear all the jokes because everyone is laughing so hard at the previous ones. The story is the following, a young couple wins 100 million bucks in the lottery and after 15 years they have managed to spend EVERYTHING and are broke and in debt. They go through some pretty hard times and at the end the wife’s uncle takes pity on them and gives them some money and jobs and that’s how the first movie ends. In the second one the uncle dies leaving 50 million bucks in his will to his niece with a request that his ashes are to be thrown at the Grand Cannion by someone who loves him. So the family goes out to Las Vegas to throw the ashes, dad, mum and their two kids. But as the father is a complete idiot he manages to gamble away all his wife’s heritage and gets into a 10 million dollar debt with the leader of the Mexican Mafia. How stupid is that? The film is really funny, REALLY FUNNY. But at the end of the day I didn’t like it. It sends out the most absurd message. After being pursued by the mafia and kidnapped the cops arrest the mafia people. The guy’s wife actually forgives him for gambling away all her money (I mean, WHAT?) and an old rich man gives him a dollar which he gambles in the roulette and makes 2 freaking million dollars and they live happily ever after. So it’s ok to be totally irresponsible and inconsequential with someone else’s money because you are such a funny and well meaning guy? Ah! It seems like everything in this country is just wrong!

Thrusday - Frozen

Now I’ve come to the conclusion that the older I get the more I cry watching Disney movies. I had heard just that day that there are plans to making a musical out of this movie and just today that there’s gonna be a sequel. For me it’s one of the best Disney movies I’ve seen so far. Ah I started crying at the Disney logo, I mean, what’s wrong with me?

Frozen tells the story of two sisters who are princesses, Elsa and Anna. But Elsa has a secret she has a freaky ice touch thing and she can basically turn stuff into ice and make ice stuff and snow. When they are little Elsa and Anna are best buddies and Anna knows about Elsa’s powers and they play in Elsa’s snow all the time. UNTIL the day Elsa’s magic accidentally hits Anna and she get weirdly sick and a strand of her hair turns white, like Elsa’s. The queen and king take Anna to the trolls, who are very cute, and the master troll cures Anna but the parents decide to make Anna forget about Elsa’s powers and to separate them and close up the gates of the castle for what they think is the best. Elsa feels super guilty and shuts herself away inside her room and almost never comes out. They grow and their parents end up dying in a ship wreck and after 3 years Elsa is to be crowned queen. The day of the coronation they open up the gates and hundreds of people come in (including Rapunzel and Flyn Ryder, yeah, cool). Anna meets a dreamy prince and they fall for each other almost instantly and he asks her to marry him and she says yes. At the party Anna asks Elsa for her blessing and as a responsible adult and queen she says “No, you can’t marry someone you’ve just met!” they argue and Elsa lets out her freaky powers by mistake and freaks everyone out and runs away. But in letting out her inner kraken she brings into the town an eternal winter feel. Now Anna goes after her so she can come back and unfreeze everything. On her way she meets a cutie named Christopher and his reindeer Swen who agree to help her and also Olaf the most adorable snow man ever!

It’s a great movie with many plot twists and surprises. The music is beautiful, it seems as if it’s adaptaded already from a musical or maybe I dream too much. But it is very really good. The “theme” song “Let it go” sung by Elsa aka Idina Menzel aka Elphaba the wicked witch of the west is beautiful. Although I do think Idina’s singing is screamy at times and that bothers me a lot, I want Joyce singing this song! Pretty please! It’s a great movie for everyone in the family to watch, absolutely loved it!

Friday - Delivery Man

When I saw this movie’s trailer I was like, man I need to see this movie! And I wasn’t disappointed. This movie tells a story of a guy, Vince Vaugh, who isn’t really good at doing anything in particular and every project he tries to start just blows up in his face. Plus he owes money to the mafia or something. He has this girlfriend who has just told him she is pregnant but wants to raise the kid on her own because he’s such an irresponsible douche bag. But one day a man comes to his apartment and tells him that there’s a big ass law suit on his back. When he was twenty something he donated his sperm 6 hundred and something times to the same fertility clinic. But the thing was, his sperm was rather good so the clinic used it a lot, I mean, A LOT. A lot like now he has 533 kids. And about a hundred of them want to know who he is and are filling a law suit for that information. The guy is completely stunned. His sons and daughters who want to meet him have all sent him a profile of their selves to see if he gets interested in coming out. Even though his lawyer told him not to read them he does and decides that he can’t be their father but he can be a guardian angel so he starts helping them out as best he can without revealing his identity.

It’s a lovely movie, it’s funny, it has some drama, and it’s set in NYC.  Think it’s fit for the whole family, it’s guarantee of a good time.

Ok so that’s it. I’m not a very good movie reviewer but I tried! I’ll be posting a lot next month so I’m getting back to my solfegio books now!

Peace everyone!