Brown Eyed Girl

My niece Tashena is eighteen today!  It has been so much fun watching her grow and develop into the amazing person that she is!  I love her so much and I can't wait to see what life has in store for her because she can do anything!

Tchaikovsky's 4th & The Red Violin

It seems like it has been quite a while since I've been at Abravanel Hall for a Utah Symphony concert!  It has been a very long week (it was the end of the term with lots of grading to do) so last night's concert was very much needed and I enjoyed it immensely!  The orchestra began with a suite of symphonic dances from Fancy Free by Leonard Bernstein.  I really enjoyed all three of them but I particularly loved the second one because it is so exuberant with a theme played by the timpani which is echoed by the brass.  Next, the orchestra was joined by Philippe Quint to perform John Corigliano's Concerto for Violin and Orchestra from The Red Violin.  The film tells the story of a mysterious violin and its many owners over the centuries.  The score, for which Corigliano won an Academy Award, is incredibly intense because the violin is almost like one of the characters.  Quint performed it magnificently with his bow flying across the violin in some of the more dramatic themes.  He received a well deserved thunderous standing ovation!  After the intermission, the orchestra played the piece I was most looking forward to:  Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky's Symphony No. 4.  I love Tchaikovsky because I think his music is so emotional and I love everything about Symphony No. 4, from the dramatic opening fanfare played by the horns to the final tumultuous crash of the cymbals!  I especially loved the theme played by the woodwinds in the second movement (which I think is quite melancholy) and the theme played by the strings in the third movement (which, in my opinion, is filled with such longing).  It was an incredible performance!  The orchestra was under the baton of guest conductor Andrew Litton and I thought his interactions with the musicians were adorable, especially when he blew kisses to the concertmaster!  I highly recommend getting a ticket (go here) to tonight's performance of the same program.

The Sisters Brothers

The second film in my indie double feature was The Sisters Brothers.  John C. Reilly and Joaquin Phoenix play Eli and Charlie Sisters, two bickering brothers who are ruthless paid assassins for the enigmatic Commodore (Rutger Hauer).  They have a series of misadventures as they travel from Oregon City to San Francisco in pursuit of a mark (Riz Ahmed) who has teamed up with one of their former associates (Jake Gyllenhaal) but it ends up being a journey of redemption for the brothers.  I have to admit that this film is very different from what I was expecting.  It is a slow-burning character study, punctuated by incredibly brutal gun fights, with a somewhat anticlimactic resolution.  It felt much longer than it really is and I struggled to understand the point of what was going on much of the time.  Both Reilly and Phoenix give fantastic performances (although I feel like we've seen Phoenix play a charming psychopath many times before) that end up being very sympathetic and they have great on-screen chemistry, especially when they are bickering with each other.  There are some beautiful visuals (it was filmed in Spain and Romania) with wide shots of mountains, plains, and rivers as the brothers travel through the Pacific Northwest.  However, the performances and scenery do not really compensate for the ponderous pacing and meandering story.  I recommend giving it a miss.