Last night, some friends and I went to see Rumor Has It. Unlike Allison who had low expectations for the film, I expected that I would like it. I generally enjoy romantic comedies, and I like a lot of the actors that are in this one. I really wanted to like the movie. But I didn't. In fact, I thought it was pretty terrible. The actors seemed jumbled together, thrown into the same scene like a tossed salad with no real continuity between the parts. It seemed as if they rehersed once and then filmed straight through with no breaks. The actors did not bond off the set and so there was no chemistry between any of them on the set. They seemed like strangers who had to pretend to have a relational history with each other but couldn't pull off the facade. It wasn't that any of the acting was bad, it was more like the actors themselves just didn't fit together. They certainly did not seem like a family. Beyond the lack of believability about the connection between the characters, the story was so predictible it almost defeated the purpose of watching the movie at all. Someday, I want to see a movie, even a romantic comedy, that doesn't tie neatly together and end on a high note. Not that "high note" really describes how this particular story ended. This movie was flat. So flat that I wouldn't advise even waiting for it to come out on DVD. Don't bother seeing it at all. Anything worth seeing in the movie was shown in the previews, so if you've seen the previews, you've seen all you need to see.
Yesterday, my darling husband told me that we were going to DC to look at the National Christmas tree. I had no reason not to believe him. We went last year. We took the metro to Chinatown to eat dinner before we were going to see the tree. After dinner, we started walking. I suspected something was up when we came to Ann Taylor Loft and John suggested that we go inside. He has never before volunteered to go into the store that I love so much. But I didn't question him since I was afraid doing so would cause him to come to his senses. After we left the store, we came to the MCI center. John then looked at me and said, "I lied to you, we're going to a basketball game." He later laughed about the look of disappointment on my face. I may be many things, but a fan of professional basketball is not one of them. He handed me my ticket. I looked at it only to see the magical name that makes all the bad things in the world disappear--Bon Jovi. I had forgotten they were in DC this weekend for their Have a Nice Day tour since a couple months ago when tickets first went on sale and John said that we would not be going because of finances. Apparently, John decided finances were not as important as my happiness. He's so good to me!
The show was sponsored by in part by Sprint, and before Bon Jovi came out, they had a big screen up where audience members could text message to a 5 digit number and have their messages displayed on the screen. Because I am a dork, I got very excited at the possibility of having a message on the screen for me. So I dictated a message to John since my cell phone was sitting on our dining room table at home. I told him it would be nice for him to tex, "Kim, you were born to be my baby," since that would incorporate a famous Bon Jovi lyric into the message. He did so, and when our message scrolled across the screen, I giggled like a middle school girl. John just smiled to himself thinking how easy I am to please.
Apparently, on this tour Bon Jovi will be having all local acts opening up the show. Last night, it was DC band Honor By August. I have to say, I was very impressed with them. I may even have to pick up a copy of their EP as a Christmas present to myself. They reminded me somewhat of Nickelback in terms of their sound. Almost like a cross between Nickelback and Yellow Card. Definitely my style. I always like going to a concert when the opening act does not suck. It's like an added bonus, especially on a night like last night when we didn't even know who would be opening until we got there.
I've seen Bon Jovi in concert once before, and I think they are amazing. I think the last time I saw them, I wrote on this site that Jon Bon Jovi is sex personified. Two years later, I stand by that claim. While I was disappointed that he was wearing baggy cargo pants this time (last time, he was in tight velvety pants), he is still quite the hottie for an old guy. He has aged quite gracefully, and I still do not undersatnd how People magazine ever picks someone other than Jon Bon Jovi for the sexiest man alive. He's far more attractive than the effeminate Johnny Depp or Brad Pitt. For old men, the whole band exhibits great amounts of energy. Jon moves all over the stage, Ritchie sweated through three shirts, and Tico pounded on the drums, even with a cigarette hanging out of his mouth by the end of the show. They even threw in their rendition of Run Run Rudolph to get us in the holiday mood. They all seem to have so much fun up there, which could be part of why they've lasted over twenty years. They were one of the only hair bands of the 80's who survived haircuts and kept chugging along. They sold out last night's show so fast that they added another DC date for February. Last I checked, there were still tickets available. By the time we left last ight, my ears were ringing and my voice was half-gone after all of my singing along and screaming with glee. Definitely worth the price of the tickets. And I've even forgiven John for lying to me.
I just read a brillant, albeit irreverant, novel, The Mercy of Thin Air by Ronlyn Domingue. This is her debut novel, and I picked it up at the bookstore because the title intrigued me. The book is narrated by a ghost, but it is not so much a ghost story as it is a love story. Unlike the last book I read, this book was eloquently written enough that it jolted me back to the reality that my own talent is far too meager to ever produce a work of literary merit. I'd be more likely to write a story like the last one I read rather than one like The Mercy of Thin Air. I lack both the imagination and the mastery of the English language, not to mention the mastery of the human heart or soul. Also unlike the last book that I read, this story was more emotionally tense for me and left my in tears in my husband's arms with him asking if someone got engaged in the book since that seems to make me cry more than death. I told him not exactly, but that the book was about love. I don't know why reading about or watching other people in love breaks my heart so much. I am sure there are many ways to psychoanalyze my tears, but these tears over love were not there before I got married myself. In Domingue's story, love transcends human form. In her world, love is more powerful than life and more powerful than death. The transcendent power of love that Domingue captures in her unique way is what moved me to tears after reading this book. What moved me to tears when I watched the Friends rerun of Monica and Chandler getting engaged was something less brilliantly composed but similarly addressing the kind of love that binds people together, at least for life. Love that even if I have experienced, I will never fully grasp because love, I believe, is beyond our grasp. It is a force that simply is; it can be explored but not understood, touched but not contained. And, in simplest terms, that overwhelming love is what this book is about, and the exploration of that love is what makes this novel a worthwhile read. Which is another way this book is different from the last one I read, I am not ashamed to recommend it or say that I read it myself.
Because he knew how much I loved the live production, John took me to see Rent. When I saw the musical live, I was in London and it was three years after the initial Broadway release. I found the stage version to be so powerful and moving that I listened to the soundtrack almost nonstop for the next couple months in order to relive it. I was excited to see the movie thinking that with most of the original Broadway cast, the movie would have to be good. For the most part, the movie held to the play, but some of the power was lost in transferring the production from the stage to the screen. Perhaps the power was lost in the increased dialogue. I am not sure why the director felt the need to have the actors talk some of the words that were sung on stage. I suspect it might be to make the transition into song seem more natural, but, let's face it, musicals are not natural. People don't go around singing and dancing in the streets anywhere else but in a musical, and the effectiveness of the art form is lost when the songs are shortened. Beyond the increased talking, some of the scenes looked a little different in the movie than in the play. Admittedly, I saw the stage production over 7 years ago, so it is certainly possible that some of the details have slipped my mind in that time. Or, it is also possible that scenes were adjusted in order to make the story more relevant to life today. Even though the musical may seem to be modern, the fact is that it's somewhat outdated from a medical perspective. For a graduate school project a couple years back, I interviewed an HIV-positive pastor. He had been living with the disease for over ten years, and with the great medicine out there today, he told me that the disease wasn't even detectable in his blood anymore. While this man may not be as impoverished as the bohemian artists of Rent, as a pastor of a tiny (20 people max) independent congregation, he's certainly not wealthy by any stretch of the imagination. Untreated, people may die of AIDS as quickly as in the time of Rent, but most of the characters in the story were being medically treated, as is evinced from their "AZT break" comments. So medicine has changed, GLBT rights and presence in our country have changed, and stories that used to be culturally relevant have become passe as culture has changed. While at its heart, I am sure Rent is still moving when performed live, I walked away from the movie theater less moved than I was when I walked away from the play house in the summer of 1998. I cannot be sure how I would have reacted to the movie if I had not first seen the play, but because of my emotional experience with the play before, I can only give the movie 3 out of 5 stars.
I just got finished reading a book that I literally could not put down. It was not a brilliantly written book by any means. If anything, it was written in a way that made me think, "Hey, maybe I should try writing a book. I could do better than this!" But in spite of its glaringly obvious foreshadowing, I couldn't help but get caught up with the characters. I suppose my inability to separate myself from the story indicates that perhaps it takes a genius to weave together a story with unoriginal metaphors and unmistakable hints that still snares the reader into its web. I was so caught up, in fact, that I was embarrassingly sad when the story ended. I remember reading books like that when I was a child (yes, before I got to college and had to read them en masse, I actually enjoyed reading books)--the kind of stories that I would continue in my head for days after closing the cover on the book simply because I could not let the characters go. Books like that were the reason that I became an English major in college. Of course, my college professors would surely scoff at how moving I found the book I just read. Their influence on me is still strong enough that I'm embarrassed to even name the book here. No matter how blandly written, sometimes there is beauty in a simple story. I remember a discussion in Shakespeare class I took in college when we talked about story lines. Part of why Shakespeare is still read today is because the stories he wrote transcend time, even if the language that he wrote the stories in does not. Love, passion, jealousy, sin, death, new beginnings, betrayal, redemption. These themes cut across cultural barriers and cut to the core of the human experience. That's what makes Shakespeare live on. My latest read was no Shakespearean sonnet, and I am sure it went straight to paperback, but I found myself caught up in the book nevertheless because of those human themes which the author wove into the story in shades of gray. I am a firm believer that life is more interesting when its in the gray and not in the black and white. And, while I'm sure there are plenty who would contradict me, I think that Chrisitianity is about shades of gray, too. The Pharisees saw things in black and white; Jesus looked beyond that. Yes, there is a clear delineation between right and wrong in the Bible, but there is not always a clear delineation between people. Love the sinner, hate the sin, or whatever. Even if characters in this book may have made choices that some would consider morally questionable, I couldn't help but rooting for them anyway. And in the end of the story, the heroine returned to the truth of her God with a deeper understanding of what that truth is and what faith means in her life. I left the story with two things: first, a warm fuzzy feeling that the predicable ending came to fruition even if it was "wrong," and second, that maybe I should, like the heroine, rise above my fears and run my race with more gusto and less anxiety. All that inspiration from a poorly written novel! Perhaps inflated language is nothing more than simply inflated after all. And perhaps, even a untalented writer like myself could address human themes in an unoriginal way and still move and inspire. Or perhaps not. But I find a smug satisifaction in imagining academia proven wrong.