What's an "art song"?
Uh, don't see
Pain & Gain.
If you thought you liked anyone appearing in it, I'm pretty sure it's not enough. It's a remarkably unengaging movie. Movies about stupid people should feel more intelligent than their subjects, but this was a bit of "wow, aren't they dumb??" and "can you
believe
this really happened?" without...without anything else. Johnson and Mackie and Harris and Shalhoub--pretty much everyone turns in a good performance, but it doesn't actually make the comedy work sustainably.
I have not been that bored (I debated leaving, but decided to close my eyes instead) in a theatre in a long time. SADFACE. All the comedy in the trailers.
Oh, and it's also remarkably gross. Dwayne Johnson feeds his
amputated toe to a chihuahua.
Which turns out to be one of the reasons
they get caught.
It was too big for the poor thing to eat.
Gilbert & Sullivan is good times.
I'm not really familiar with art songs, but AFAIK they're standalone songs about love and nature and God and uplifting things like that. Anna Russell was a MidCentury performer who trained for opera and made her living doing comedic send-ups of opera and classical singers and Gilbert & Sullivan, and she talked about German and French art songs. I can't remember which is which, but one has glorious music and insipid lyrics, and the other has wonderful lyrics and boring music.
Anna Russels interpretation of Wagner's Ring Cycle is hilarious and quite informative.
edit: as is her "How to Create a Gilbert & Sullivan Operetta" piece.
I'm not a big fan of opera either.
Oh yeah, I like art songs. When I was studying singing in high school, I did a bunch of them. Some German love songs that of course now I can't remember, but my favorite was this Scarlatti.
I always liked working on opera as a wardrobe person, but didn't care for listening to it. And I find the acting to be appallingly bad. I mean, I worked on student productions, but the school is ranked 2nd in the country for opera/vocal performance, so I am thinking they are actually pretty good!
The worst thing I can imagine in Staples just happened--I tested our corporate discount, and it's not consistent, but was more than 20% in this go round.
Wow, Grey's Anatomy feels like it's pulling further and further away. The big decisions they made with this season are blah.
Puppies are rarely not Yay-worthy.
I really liked Ingmar Bergman's
The Magic Flute
if you're looking for a good film adaptation of an opera. Sometimes it seems like it's just a filmed stage production except when you seamlessly realize that it's not.
Mostly though with opera I'm in the "too many notes" camp -- I can for sure see (and HEAR) that it's highly trained musicians performing flawlessly complicated music, but I just can't keep up.
