La La Land in Concert

Saturday night I went to see the movie La La Land on the big screen at the Usana Amphitheatre with the Academy Award winning score by Justin Hurwitz performed live on stage by the Utah Symphony.  It was so much fun!  I love seeing performances outside during the summer (Saturday was an absolutely perfect night) and I am a huge fan of showing movies with the score played live by an orchestra (I certainly enjoyed Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone last December).  La La Land was one of my favorite movies last year (I forget how many times I saw it in the theater) and I loved it just as much seeing it again on the big screen.  It feels like such an old-fashioned Hollywood musical to me and I was even more impressed with Ryan Gosling (I go back and forth on how I feel about Stone's singing).  I also had a different take on the ending this time around.  Mia and Sebastian choose their dreams rather than their relationship but there is a montage which shows what their lives would have been like if they had chosen each other instead.  I've always thought that they would have been much happier if they had chosen their relationship but, after this viewing, I realized that many of their dreams would have been fulfilled as well.  It is such a great movie!  The score is absolutely magical and, of course, I enjoyed the piano solos (Sebastian is a jazz pianist) but I was also impressed by the themes played by the clarinet and flute and there was a fabulous trumpet solo.  The Utah Symphony played it beautifully under the baton of guest conductor Emil de Cou.  I had a huge smile on my face the whole time and I may or may not have sung along with "City of Stars."  I would highly recommend seeing a movie performed with a live orchestra if you have the chance.  I will be seeing Raiders of the Lost Ark in September, The Nightmare Before Christmas in October, and Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets in December, all with the Utah Symphony, and I am very excited about all of them.  Go here for more information about these concerts.

Note:  Utah Symphony patrons comport themselves very differently than the usual crowd at the Usana Amphitheatre!

End of the Season

Saturday's rugby games were Sean's last of the season.  I have had so much fun watching him play and I am so proud of how much he has improved.  The whole team has improved so much and they played so well on Saturday.  Their first game was against Herriman and they got a huge victory against them, including a dramatic try (point) scored by Sean (pictured above).  That win allowed them to advance to the next game which was against Tooele.  Bountiful got a very hard-won victory against them and they advanced to the championship game against West Lake.  I think this game was their best of the season and they scored five tries (including one from Sean).  Unfortunately, West Lake scored eight to beat them which was disappointing to the boys but their coach was so proud of them!

I am a little bit sad that the season is over because rugby is really fun to watch (I still find it to be incomprehensible) but football will start again in the fall.

47 Meters Down

I have made some great new friends who really love movies.  Last Friday night I met one of them for dinner and a movie.  We had Indian food and then saw 47 Meters Down and it was such a fun night.  Two sisters, Lisa (Mandy Moore) and Kate (Claire Holt), are on vacation in Mexico when they decide to dive in a shark cage.  Lisa is extremely apprehensive because she doesn't have any diving experience, the boat is old and rusty, and the captain (Mathew Modine) illegally chums the water to attract the sharks but she ultimately decides to go because her ex-boyfriend accused her of being boring.  After a great experience interacting with the sharks, the winch on the boat holding the cage breaks and the girls plummet, you guessed it, 47 meters down.  They only have an hour's worth of air in their tanks, they are surrounded by sharks, and they can't ascend quickly or they will get the bends.  Will they survive?  It is a taut thriller filled with suspense and I think I jumped ten feet every time a shark appeared.  My friend had seen it before and even she jumped during certain scenes.  The sharks are all CGI but I, obviously, thought they were extremely realistic.  Mandy Moore and Claire Holt won't win any acting awards and some of the dialogue is a bit cringe-worthy ("Oh my God!  The shark almost got me!") but I think this movie is a lot of fun.  It is the perfect summer movie to see with friends on a Friday night!

Dirty Dancing at the Eccles

On Thursday night I saw the Broadway touring company production of Dirty Dancing and, for the second time this week, I was pleasantly surprised by my reaction to it.  I am not a big fan of turning popular movies into stage musicals but this production was a lot of fun and I really enjoyed it.  In my opinion Dirty Dancing is not really a traditional musical because it is more like watching the 1987 movie performed live on stage.  It follows the movie very closely, almost scene for scene, and includes many of the songs from the early 1960s that are included in the movie, such as "This Magic Moment," "Do You Love Me?," "Love Is Strange," "In the Still of the Night," and "You Don't Own Me," most of which are performed by ensemble cast members rather than the leads.  What makes this show so much fun to watch are the dance numbers.  It is the summer of 1963 and Baby Houseman (Bronwyn Reed) and her family have come to Kellerman's Resort for a vacation.  She meets Johnny (Christopher Tierney) and Penny (Jennifer Mealani Jones), two of the dance instructors at the resort, and tries to help out when Penny gets in trouble.  The scenes where the dancers perform for the guests are quite thrilling and I was especially impressed by Jones.  The scenes where Johnny tries to teach Baby the routine so she can stand in for Penny to keep their jobs at another resort are hilarious.  I especially loved how they staged the scenes of them practicing the lift in the water.  That elicited much laughter from the audience.  The final scene where Baby and Johnny dance to "(I've Had) The Time of My Life" was definitely a crowd-pleaser and the audience cheered when Johnny said, "No one puts Baby in a corner."  They also cheered when they did the lift!  Reed is so endearing as Baby and, as I mentioned, I loved her awkward attempts to dance at the beginning (I think it must be even more difficult to dance incorrectly than to get the steps right).  Tierney is a great dancer who is extremely charismatic as Johnny and it is easy to see why Baby is drawn to him (very easy on the eyes!).  I found this show to be wildly entertaining and, if you are a fan of the movie, you will definitely enjoy this production.  It continues at the Eccles Theatre until June 25 (tickets may be purchased here).

Note:  This musical might not be appropriate for young audience members.  The dancing is very sensual and one of the main characters has an abortion.  The woman sitting next to me left with her three young daughters at intermission.

Summer Reading: The Nest

The next selection on my summer reading list was The Nest, the debut novel by Cynthia D'Aprix Sweeney. Four adult siblings have been looking forward to inheriting a large sum of money, nicknamed "The Nest," set aside by their father to be dispersed when the youngest sibling turns 40, which will be soon. However, Leo, the eldest, is involved in a devastating car crash involving a Porsche, cocaine, and a young woman (not his wife) who is severely injured. His mother depletes "The Nest" to cover expenses and to pay off the young woman to avoid a scandal.  This sends the other siblings, Jack, Beatrice, and Melody, into a tailspin because they are in financial difficulties and have been counting on receiving their inheritance to bail them out. I found all of these characters to be self-absorbed, selfish, and unlikable and they spend the entire novel whining about losing some unearned and undeserved money. By the end of the novel I didn't even care about what happened to any of them but I was infuriated that Leo seemed to get away with it without any consequences. Even though the three younger siblings deal with the loss of their inheritance, there is absolutely no character development from the beginning of the novel to the end. I was actually more interested in some of the minor characters (there are a lot of them) but the resolution of their stories seemed very rushed to me. I think the story is very mediocre and, as I mentioned, I lost interest very quickly. Like other novels which seem to be lauded by the critics, I wonder if I've read the same thing.

Have you read The Nest?  What did you think?