Mannheim Steamroller Christmas at the Eccles

I have had a lot of fun seeing Christmas performances this holiday season!  I had one more last night featuring Mannheim Steamroller at the Eccles Theater and, as always, it was a wonderful show.  Mannheim Steamroller is known for incorporating authentic period instruments, such as harpsichords, lutes, and recorders, with synthesizers so their sound is a mash-up of Renaissance music and rock and roll and I love it.  They performed their arrangements of "Joy to the World," "Hark! The Herald Angels Sing," "Greensleeves," "Good King Wenceslas," "O Little Town of Bethlehem," and "Angels We Have Heard on High."  I really enjoyed "Catching Snowflakes on Your Tongue," which Chip Davis wrote as a lullaby for his three children, because the theme played by the recorder made me imagine a snowflake floating in the air.  I also enjoyed "Fairies" because it is a rock and roll version of "Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy" from the Nutcracker Suite by Tchaikovsky.  They ended their first set with "Cantique de Noel (O Holy Night)" and this was the fifth time that I was able to hear my favorite Christmas song live.  It was an incredibly beautiful version!  After the intermission, they performed their well-known arrangements of "Deck the Halls," "We Three Kings," "Gagliarda," "Christmas Lullaby," "God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen," and my favorite Mannheim Steamroller song, "Pat-A-Pan."  In addition to their Christmas music they also performed "Morning," which was written after the devastating fires in Yellowstone, and the songs "Come Home to the Sea" and "Dancing Flames."  They ended the concert with "Carol of the Bells," which is one of their best known songs.  For the encore, they performed "Stille Nacht, Heilige Nacht" and "Hallelujah," which is another favorite.  This concert was a great way to end the holiday season!  I almost didn't get a ticket because I've seen them so many times but I'm glad I changed my mind!  There is a matinee and evening show today and I highly recommend getting a ticket (go here) for one last dose of holiday cheer!

Christmas 2022

Last year Christmas was a blur.  My sisters and I had just lost our father and we were the sole caregivers for our mother who was deteriorating rapidly from dementia.  We opened the few presents we were able to buy and ordered dinner from Olive Garden for the sake of Sean and Tashena but our hearts were not in it.

This year things were much different!  We miss our parents but we know that they would be so happy that we have spent so much time together this holiday season.  Christmas Eve we played cards and ate way too many treats and then we had a lot of fun opening presents Christmas morning.  I got a few movies, another Colorado Avalanche jersey, and some new snowshoes (I am very excited about this because I wore my old pair out and have missed my excursions).

We had a wonderful dinner consisting of Trent's famous spare ribs, potato casserole, stuffing, asparagus, rolls, vegetables and dip, pomegranate salad, and pie for dessert.  In the evening we played Shanghai rummy and it descended into madness (but was so much fun).  I have really enjoyed this holiday season and I am looking forward to spending more time relaxing with my family this week!

Babylon

Yesterday Sean and I went to the Broadway to see Babylon and it was certainly entertaining!  Manuel "Manny" Torres (Diego Calva), an aspiring filmmaker working various jobs on the periphery of the silent film industry during the Roaring Twenties, observes the rise and fall of several people, including the oft-divorced matinee idol Jack Conrad (Brad Pitt), the self-destructive starlet Nellie LaRoy (Margot Robbie), the gossip columnist Elinor St. John (Jean Smart), the Jazz musician Sidney Palmer (Jovan Adepo), and the exotic cabaret singer Lady Fay Zhu (Li Jun Li), during the transition to "talkies."  When Manny returns to Hollywood years later and watches a screening of Singin' in the Rain (there are so many fun references to this movie), he is reminded of his past and realizes that he and everyone else making movies during the silent era had an impact.  Even though some of them go on much longer than they need to, I really loved all of the chaotic energy in the scenes showing the decadence and debauchery of the time (it was, however, a bit embarrassing to watch some of these scenes with my nephew).  There are also some absolutely brilliant sequences, such as the filming of an elaborate action shot involving hundreds of extras on location as well as a director trying to get the sound just right in take after take, and a profound monologue delivered by Smart about the fleeting nature but lasting legacy of fame.  Pitt gives one of the best performances of his career, Robbie is absolutely dazzling, Tobey Maguire is unsettling as a gangster, and Calva is definitely a compelling presence.  The images on the screen are alternately gorgeous and grotesque (an elephant defecating and some projectile vomiting) but never boring and the score by Justin Hurwitz is fantastic.  It is too long and the subject matter will not be for everyone but I enjoyed it (so did Sean) and recommend it to cinephiles.

The Nightmare Before Christmas in Concert

Last night I got to see the movie The Nightmare Before Christmas while the Utah Symphony played the score by Danny Elfman live and it was so much fun!  I usually think of this as a Halloween movie (it is one of my favorites and I watch it at Halloween every year) but it also works really well for Christmas and this concert was a great way to start the holiday weekend!  Jack Skellington, the Pumpkin King and leader of Halloween Town, is getting bored with scaring everyone with the same old tricks every year so, when he accidentally discovers Christmas Town while wandering through the woods, he decides that Christmas is a more appealing holiday and that he should take it over this year.  He has the best trick-or-treaters in Halloween Town, Lock, Shock, and Barrel, kidnap Santa Claus, assigns the rest of the residents the job of making toys, which are terrifying, and delivers them with a disastrous result.  Will Santa Claus be able to escape from the Oogie Boogie and save Christmas in time?  Only Tim Burton could dream up such a macabre, yet strangely enchanting, world filled with quirky characters brought to life with brilliant stop-motion animation.  The sold-out crowd at Abravanel Hall was in a really festive mood and there were cheers and applause when each character first appeared on the screen (the Mayor of Halloween Town got the loudest applause), when Jack first visits Christmas Town, when Sally escapes from Dr. Finkelstein, and when Jack rescues Santa and Sally from Oogie!  Hearing the Utah Symphony play Danny Elfman's iconic score was such an immersive experience!  I especially enjoyed the chimes in "This is Halloween" (the people around me sang this song out loud), the themes played by the brass in "What's This?" and "Kidnap the Sandy Claws," the themes played by the woodwinds in "Making Christmas" and "Oogie Boogie's Song," and the plaintive melody played by the strings in "Sally's Song."  I thoroughly enjoyed all of it!  I don't think I will ever tire of Utah Symphony's Films in Concert series because attending these performances has become one of my favorite things to do!  The next Film in Concert will be An American in Paris (go here for tickets) and I can't wait!

The Whale

There are a few movies left to catch up on before I make my end of year list of favorites so I went to see The Whale at the Broadway last night and, while I was very impressed with Brendan Fraser's performance, I did not like it at all.  Charlie (Fraser) is a morbidly obese and reclusive English professor who teaches writing courses online without enabling the camera on his computer.  When he has a health scare involving his heart he finds solace in reading a student's essay on the novel Moby Dick by Herman Melville and draws a comparison between himself and the whale.  His caregiver Liz (Hong Chau) fears that he is in congestive heart failure and that he doesn't have long to live but he refuses to go to the hospital.  Knowing that he could die at any moment, he attempts a reconciliation with his estranged teenage daughter Ellie (Sadie Sink) who is angry and bitter over his abandonment of her and her mother Mary (Samantha Morton) nine years earlier to have a relationship with one of his male students.  Ellie lashes out at her father but, despite her cruelty, he only sees the good in her.  This is reinforced by a sub-plot involving Ellie's relationship with an evangelical missionary named Thomas (Ty Simkins) because her betrayal ends well for him.  Many have had a very positive reaction to this movie but it was extremely difficult for me to watch because I found Aronofsky's portrayal of Charlie to be steeped in humiliation rather than empathy.  It is almost voyeuristic because every scene involving Charlie's body seems designed to shock the audience (particularly the scene where we actually see him for the first because he is awkwardly masturbating to gay pornography).  It was also upsetting to me that, with the possible exception of Liz, every character responds to him with disgust (even the pizza delivery boy with whom he has had a sort of friendship until he sees him).  Finally, Fraser does what he can with the material (his eyes and voice are incredibly expressive) but, ultimately, Charlie is a static character because everyone reacts to him instead of interacting with him and it is their redemption that he seeks rather than his own.  The symbolism is excessive, most of the performances are overwrought (I am definitely in the minority but I disliked Sink's performance because there is no nuance at all), the score is manipulative, and the one location (Charlie's dark and dingy apartment) makes this feel like a showy stage performance.  Not only do I not recommend this, I regret seeing it myself.