Bradley Cooper, Jennifer Lawrence. Pat Solatano leaves the mental hospital he entered on a plea bargain with a determination to rebuild his life with his wife. The slightly unstable Tiffany offers to help, if he’ll do something for her.
She says:This movie works by putting a new spin on the romantic comedy. With both lead characters dealing with some degree of mental illness, and one still married, the barriers are real. The movie also feels more real than your average rom-com: The mental illness, the family dynamics, are not always pretty, not always comfortable.
Both Bradley Cooper and Jennifer Lawrence are very good in their roles, and they’re surrounded by quite the cast, including Robert DeNiro and Julia Stiles. The dark moments are effectively balanced with humorous, and I love movies that include great scenes about learning to dance! I went in not knowing too much about this one, despite its acclaim, and came out quite the fan.
[I have to preface this part by saying that I gave Jean a very poor (and not so accurate) synopsis of what this movie was about. And he hadn’t heard anything else about it.]
He says:God, I liked that so much more than I was expecting! It was kind of sexy, in a weird way (for a movie with no sex), and had good acting, with an interesting relationship and story. It was actually a really good movie!
Since ’tis the season, I’ll share this recipe. It’s very easy (most tedious part is stirring until it thickens), and it’s delicious. Not overly sweet, it comes across as very light but with distinct maple flavour.
1/4 cup maple syrup
1 Tbsp brown sugar
1 Tbsp cornstarch
1 egg
2 cups skim milk
1 tsp vanilla
1 Tbsp maple sugar
In a saucepan, beat all ingredients together except vanilla and maple sugar. Cook over medium heat, stirring constantly, until the mixture boils and begins to thicken. Cook one minute more. Remove from heat and add vanilla. Spoon into 4 dessert dishes. While still warm, sprinkle with maple sugar. Serve warm or chill before serving.
(If you don’t have maple sugar, brown sugar works.)
I got tickets for this concert on a bit of whim, and then had trouble finding anyone to go with; seems a busy time of year for work, travel, work travel, and other. But though I could have exchanged for another, I had ended up intrigued by this guy, Cameron Carpenter.
He looks like a rock star. He’s young, good-looking, fit, has a mohawk, dresses in sparkly / paisly tights pants and shirts, and wear outlandish, heeled shoes.
And he plays classical music. On the organ.
Naturally, he doesn’t approach it in a traditional way. Notably, he prefers digital organs to traditional pipe organs. And he improvises on the classics. And composes his own arrangements, and entire concertos.
Saturday night’s KW Symphony concert gave us a taste of what this guy can do. I went to the Prelude before the concert (which I don’t always bother with) because it was a conversation between Carpenter and a musicologist. He’s a really interesting guy, and I learned a lot about organ (not that I knew much to start with), including the fact that every organ in the world is different, And not subtly different—so different that the extremes might as well be different instruments. And since organists do not travel with their own instruments, they have to arrive early and get acquainted with the particularities of whatever they will be given to play in that town.
I also found out that, somewhat to my disappointment, that Carpenter was only playing on two of the numbers in the program.
The first half was all Bach. The first was a short piece, Ricercare No 2, arranged by Anton Webern. The third was the longer Suite No 3 in D major, whose second movement is very well-known (I think I play it on the piano), but which ends with lively movements with dance rhythms.
Those were both nice. But there’s no doubt they were overshadowed by the middle bit, of Cameron Carpenter riffing on Bach’s most famous composition, Toccata and Fugue in B minor. My sixth row center seats couldn’t have been better for watching hands, and my goodness, could those move. And did you know organists also have a keyboard for their feet? The whole thing was just mesmerizing.
(A taste from YouTube, though I think what he did Saturday was even better.)
In the second half, we jumped from the 1700s to current-day. First up was just the symphony on Arron Copland’s five-movement Music for the Theatre. This was a very fun, jazz-inspired composition, with humorous bits to it.
And then Cameron Carpenter presented his composition for organ and symphony, The Scandal. Based on what he’d done in the first half, I thought this would be all about the symphony adding colour around his own demonstration of proficiency, but it wasn’t that at all. It was a true integration of organ and symphony in a beautiful and lively piece of music. The cello got a big solo moment, and until maybe the last three minutes, the organ wasn’t necessarily the major focus. I was impressed.
So was the audience, as the standing ovation felt more sincere than it sometimes does. And in an extreme rarity at classical music concerts, we got encores! I don’t know what the first was (I’m not that good at classical music edition), but the second was a wonky but awesome version of Oh Canada! Not bad for an American who now lives in Germany.
Coralie Revel, Sabrina Seyvecou. Two young women band together to use their powers of seduction to take advantage of a wealthy, powerful man. Only to find the tables turn…
She says: By the time zip.ca sent this to me, I had no recollection of why I’d added it to my zip list, except for a fuzzy idea that Roger Ebert might have covered it. Reading the description on the envelope, I was expecting it to be kind of trashy, and kind of bad. But hopefully in a fun way.
And it did open on a big, erotic strip tease. But overall, it really wasn’t that trashy. It was definitely aspiring to be kind of arty, with all this religious and other symbolism. And despite all the nudity (attractive people of both sexes), it wasn’t all that sexy, either.
Also, it was French (with subtitles, though the translations weren’t always quite spot on). Another thing I wasn’t expecting.
But overall, I found it pretty interesting. A story of people using each other in often cruel ways, it wouldn’t be everyone’s cup of tea. But I didn’t mind it at all, despite it being nothing like what I was expecting.
He says: Definitely more arty than trashy. Pretty girls, but not a very sexy movie. But yeah, it held my interest. Not a bad movie at all.
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