Beauty and the Beast Sing-Along

Since we had so much fun at the Moana Sing-Along, Marilyn and I decided to take our Mom to see the Beauty and the Beast version (because she loves this movie so much).  While Moana definitely had better songs (Lin-Manuel Miranda!), this was just as much fun.  In fact, I think I liked the movie even more!  I definitely liked the new songs a lot more than I did the first time around.  The sing-along version is the original full-length feature but the lyrics of the songs appear at the bottom of the screen with a bouncing icon to tell you when to sing each word.  I loved that each song had a different icon.  "Gaston" featured a beer stein, "Beauty and the Beast" had a rose, and "Kill the Beast" had a flame to name just a few.  It was a lot of fun!   I really enjoyed singing along with "Belle," "Gaston," and "Be Our Guest" because those were the songs I knew the best.  My Mom was belting out the words to every single song and she even included dramatic gestures in "Evermore."  It was worth the price of admission just to see my Mom's reaction to every scene!  She giggled out loud every time LeFou was on the screen and she sighed when Belle was revealed in her yellow dress (she has seen it three times and she is still so enchanted).  As we walked out of the theater she wished that she could see it every day.  I'm so glad that I was able to see this with her and my sister.  I moved closer to my family to be able to participate in spontaneous activities with them but lately I have been so busy at school.  No more!  Last night was just too much fun!  This movie is not without flaws but I recommend it for its sheer entertainment value, especially the sing-along version which can be found in select theaters.

Your Name

I know next to nothing about Japanese anime so I didn't really know what to expect when I went to see Your Name yesterday.  What happened is that I absolutely loved it!  In fact, it is one of the best films I have ever seen!  Mitsuha is a young girl living in a rural and traditional village in the mountains.  She is very dissatisfied with her life and longs for the day when she can graduate and move to the big city.  One day she wakes up in the body of Taki, a high school boy in Tokyo and he wakes up in her body (it is very amusing for them to discover that they are a different sex).  This keeps happening intermittently and it takes them a while to assimilate into each other's world.  When they both realize what is happening they begin leaving each other notes for when they return to their own bodies.  They also begin affecting each other's lives in positive ways, especially when Mitsuha makes a date for Taki with the girl he likes.  Eventually, they stop switching with each other and Taki starts to miss Mitsuha.  He tries to contact her and when that fails he decides to look for her.  Then there is an incredible twist to the story which I didn't expect but found to be very emotionally satisfying.  I cared about these characters so much and it is such a beautiful story about fate and the connections we have with people including people that we haven't even met yet.  I laughed out loud many times and I cried during several scenes.  The animation is beautiful, especially scenes that take place during the golden hour.  It is a lovely film and I can't say enough about it.  I definitely recommend it, particularly to people who have never seen an anime film before.

Note:  I saw this film dubbed in English but I already have plans to see it in Japanese with English subtitles.

Pictures at an Exhibition

Last night's Utah Symphony concert featured one of my very favorite pieces, Pictures at an Exhibition by Modest Mussorgsky.  It seems like the Utah Symphony programmed the 2016-2017 season with me in mind as they have featured so many of my favorites (Tchaikovsky's Piano Concerto No. 1, Mozart's Requiem, and now Pictures at an Exhibition).  The concert began with Military March No. 1 from Pomp and Circumstance by Edward Elgar which is instantly familiar to anyone who has ever been through a commencement ceremony.  I enjoyed hearing it and I am looking forward to hearing it again in seven weeks (but who's counting?) when my seniors are unleashed on the world!  The concert continued with Elgar's Violin Concerto with soloist Fumiaki Miura.  I loved this piece so much, especially the second movement which is almost unbearably beautiful and incredibly emotional.  Miura played brilliantly and received a rousing standing ovation!  After the intermission, the orchestra played Mussorgsky's masterpiece which, as the name implies, was written to commemorate the exhibition of ten paintings by Victor Hartmann after his death.  There are ten pieces which correspond to each of the paintings and these are connected by a Promenade (in several iterations played by different sections of the orchestra) which represents walking through the gallery from picture to picture.  I had goosebumps when I heard the opening fanfare in the first Promenade played by the brass!  It is amazing to me how you can almost visualize each painting as the orchestra plays.  I love each piece but I think my favorite is for the painting Byldo which experts believe is a group of oxen pulling a cart (many of Hartmann's paintings haven't survived).  I loved the theme played by the tenor tuba and the timpani because it is so atmospheric.  I always try to hear this piece whenever it is performed and I certainly enjoyed it last night.  You can hear it when this program is performed again tonight (go here for tickets) and I definitely recommend that you do so!

Personal Shopper

I really enjoyed The Clouds of Sils Maria so I have been looking forward to Personal Shopper, the latest collaboration between Olivier Assayas and Kristen Stewart.  I saw it last night and my mind was blown.  Maureen (Stewart) has moved to Paris to visit the house where her twin brother died of the same congenital heart condition that she has.  The two of them made a vow that whoever died first would return to give the other a sign that there is an afterlife.  As she waits for this sign, she works as a personal shopper for a celebrity, borrowing couture clothing and designer jewelry for her client to be photographed in.  Maureen is haunted by a spirit in her brother's house (in some of the scariest scenes I've ever seen) and is harassed by an unknown stalker who sends her menacing texts.  The film begins as a typical ghost story, then becomes a murder mystery, and ends as a psychological study of a young woman in an existential crisis.  It is a brilliant juxtaposition of the spiritual and the material.  It is incredibly suspenseful and part of that is due to the fact that I never knew what would happen from one moment to the next.  The atmospheric score only added to my unease.  Stewart gives the best performance of her career, in my opinion, and she is simply riveting.  It is definitely the best performance I've seen this year.  The scenes on the Eurostar where she receives a string of texts are intense, to say the least, and the final scene raised the hairs on the back of my neck.  I know that this film won't appeal to many moviegoers, especially those who don't like ambiguous endings, but I found it to be fascinating and I'm sure that I will be thinking about for many days to come.

T2 Trainspotting

Twenty years ago, in the cult classic movie Trainspotting (which I absolutely loved), Mark Renton (Ewan McGregor) betrayed his three best friends and took the £16,000 that the four of them had stolen all for himself to start a new life.  In the voice-over he told the audience that he was a bad person but that was going to change.  Have you ever wondered if things really did change for him?  I liked Mark Renton as a character but I hoped, rather than believed, that he would overcome his heroin addiction and make something of himself.  I felt the same way when I went to see the sequel, T2 Trainspotting, last night.  I hoped, rather than believed, that it would be a good movie.  Although Renton is going through a divorce and the company he works for is downsizing, he has been clean for the past twenty years so he is doing much better than I expected.  He returns to Edinburgh after the death of his mother and is reunited with Sick Boy (Jonny Lee Miller), who is now running his aunt's pub while engaging in a blackmail scheme with his Bulgarian girlfriend (Anjela Nedyalkova), Spud (Ewen Bremner), who is still addicted to heroin and estranged from Gail (Shirley Henderson) and his son Fergus, and Begbie (Robert Carlyle), who has recently escaped from prison.  The three of them are still bitter about Renton's betrayal and their interactions are highly amusing.  Like the first movie, there is an opportunity and a betrayal but there is also a twist so the story feels fresh but there are many nostalgic nods to the original for hard-core fans, including a new "Choose Life" speech, this time railing against social media rather than consumerism, a scene with a toilet (thankfully not as gross as the first movie), and a cameo by Kelly Macdonald, Renton's underage girlfriend who is now a lawyer.  The first movie explored the existential angst of young men who didn't see a future for themselves while this one centers on the cynicism of middle-aged men who now long for the past.  Once again Danny Boyle employs fast cuts, freeze frames, text on the screen, and pulse pounding music underneath the action and, while this seemed groundbreaking and mind-blowing in the first film, it seems a little tired in this one.  However, this movie, much like the fate of Renton, is a lot better than I expected!