Thierry Fischer Conducts Jessie Montgomery, Mozart, Schoenberg & Copland

Last night I attended the final Utah Symphony concert of the unusual but highly memorable 2020-2021 season.  I sincerely appreciate the extraordinary lengths to which the Utah Symphony organization has gone in order to perform beautiful music for the community this season and, in my opinion, they definitely ended on a good note!  The concert began with a piece called Strum by Jessie Montgomery, a contemporary composer who was also featured earlier in the season.  I really loved this piece, so much so that I downloaded it from iTunes as soon as I got home!  It is incredibly dynamic and I especially enjoyed it whenever the musicians would pluck their strings.  Next the orchestra played my favorite piece by my favorite composer: Eine kleine Nachtmusik by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.  My heart just about burst when I heard the instantly recognizable opening notes (you can probably hear them in your head right now) and my delight only increased as every movement was performed.  It is so light, airy, and filled with joy and I always love hearing it (I played my vinyl recording of it over and over when I was in high school), especially performed live!  Next came Chamber Symphony No. 2 by Arnold Schoenberg and, in my opinion, this piece is very atmospheric and brooding and I particularly enjoyed the second movement.  The concert concluded with the Orchestral Suite from Appalachian Spring by Aaron Copland.  This is another piece that I always love hearing performed live but it seemed particularly poignant last night.  I really enjoyed the variations on the Quaker hymn "Simple Gifts," which is first developed by a solo clarinet and then repeated by various instruments, because the pandemic has really helped me to appreciate the simple things in life.  The audience, which was the largest that I have seen at Abravanel Hall since the pandemic began, gave the orchestra a well deserved standing ovation for a beautiful concert last night and, I suspect, for persevering through all of the challenges this season!

Note:  Although the regular season is over, the Utah Symphony will be performing at the Deer Valley Music Festival (go here for updates on the availability of tickets) and at a variety of outdoor venues for the recently announced Forever Mighty Tour (go here for more information and free tickets) this summer.

A Quiet Place Part II

I really loved A Quiet Place so, when I heard that a sequel was in the works, I was quite apprehensive because I didn't think it could possibly compare to the original.  I saw the long-awaited Part II last night and all of my fears were allayed because it is brilliant.  The movie begins with a flashback to the day the aliens arrived and then the narrative shifts to the immediate aftermath of the alien attack on the Abbott family.  Evelyn (Emily Blunt), Regan (Millicent Simmonds), and Marcus (Noah Jupe) decide to leave with their newborn baby because their house and barn have been destroyed.  They hope to find other people who have survived and immediately encounter their neighbor Emmett (Cillian Murphy) who is distraught over the fact that he didn't do more to save his wife and son.  They hear a radio broadcast from a nearby island and Regan wants to go to them to tell them that the aliens can be defeated by the feedback from her cochlear implants.  Emmett begrudgingly goes after her while Evelyn stays behind in a makeshift bunker to care for Marcus who was injured in a bear trap.  Both groups must contend with the aliens but Regan and Emmett must also face groups of survivors who may or may not be sympathetic.  I found this story to be even more compelling than the first because it is an exploration of the toll that survival has taken on all of the characters and it is very affecting, particularly Emmett's character arc.  The action sequences are intense, to say the least, and there were several times when I literally jumped out of my seat.  I loved all of the parallels between Emmett and Regan's narrative and that of Evelyn and Marcus and the editing is particularly effective in creating suspense.  The sound design and the atmospheric score add tremendously to the almost unbearable tension.  Blunt and Murphy are outstanding in their roles but, in my opinion, Simmonds gives an incredibly powerful performance as her character tries to live up to her father's memory.  I do think the aliens are more menacing in the original because they are mostly left to the imagination rather than shown as they are in this movie but that is a small criticism.  This is a worthy successor to the original and it is definitely worth the wait necessitated by the pandemic.  I recommend seeing it in a theater!

Note:  Crowds usually give me anxiety but being in a packed IMAX theater at the beginning of a holiday weekend made me very happy because it seemed so normal!  A man stood up just as the movie was about to start and shouted, "Three cheers because we are all at a movie on a Friday night!"  Three cheers, indeed!

Cruella

I had an absolute blast watching a Thursday preview of Cruella with a large and appreciative crowd last night!  Estella (Tipper Seifert-Cleveland) is a brilliant and creative little girl who was born with black and white hair.  She is also rebellious and has a habit of lashing out when anyone crosses her which earns her the nickname "Cruella" from her mother Catherine (Emily Beecham).  After the death of her mother she ends up on her own in London but soon meets up with two street urchins who reluctantly take her under their wing.  Ten years later Estella (Emma Stone), Jasper (Joel Fry), and Horace (Paul Walter Hauser) are accomplished pickpockets with Estella designing and creating elaborate costumes to aid in their deceptions.  She finally gets what she thinks is her dream job at the Liberty department store but she is actually relegated to working as a janitor.  She idolizes the designer Baroness von Hellman (Emma Thompson) and is thrilled when a window display she designs in secret one night at Liberty gets noticed by the Baroness.  She is asked to join her prestigious fashion house as a designer and does everything she can to impress her.  However, disturbing revelations about the Baroness soon prompt Estella to adopt the persona of "Cruella" and enlist the help of Jasper, Horace, a vintage clothing store owner named Artie (John McCrea), and her childhood friend Anita (Kirby Howell-Baptiste) to help her compete with the Baroness to exact her revenge.  This movie is so much fun and it is easily one of the best Disney live-action remakes yet but, honestly, I think I enjoyed it more when I didn't think about the fact that it is a prequel to One Hundred and One Dalmatians and just appreciated it as a revenge-heist thriller.  The images on the screen look fantastic and I loved the edgy 1970s London punk aesthetic.  Stone and Thompson give really fun over-the-top performances that are wildly entertaining and I also found Hauser to be very amusing.  The costumes are absolutely spectacular, particularly the gowns worn to the Black and White Ball and Cruella's gowns in her pop-up shows.  Finally, I loved the 1970s pop music featured in the soundtrack, especially "Bloody Well Right" by Supertramp, "She's a Rainbow" by the Rolling Stones, "Livin' Thing" by Electric Light Orchestra, "One Way Or Another" by Blondie, "Should I Stay Or Should I Go" by The Clash, and, of course, "Sympathy for the Devil" by the Rolling Stones.  I enjoyed watching this movie so much and the crowd at my screening seemed to enjoy it as well because they laughed and cheered throughout the whole thing (although the kids seemed a bit subdued).  I highly recommend it!

Note:  The mid-credits scene featuring Anita, Roger (Kayvan Novak), Pongo, and Perdita got the biggest reaction from the crowd!

The Dry

The movie The Dry is based on the novel of the same name by Jane Harper and, since I loved her latest release The Survivors, I decided to see it last night.  Harper is known for moody and atmospheric murder mysteries in small towns with secrets and this movie definitely delivers on that vibe.  Aaron Falk (Eric Bana) returns home to Kiewarra, a small farming community in Australia suffering from a severe drought, after a twenty year absence to attend the funeral of his childhood best friend Luke Hadler (Martin Dingle-Wall).  Hadler is accused of killing his wife and young son before taking his own life but his parents refuse to believe he is guilty and ask Falk, who is a federal police officer in Melbourne, to investigate.  He teams up with the local police sergeant Greg Raco (Keir O'Donnell), a rookie who is still traumatized after finding the bodies, to review all of the evidence.  However, Falk's return stirs up memories of another mysterious death that happened twenty years ago of which he and Hadler were the prime suspects.  Tensions are high as Falk tries to solve the present crime because it seems that everyone involved has a secret.  Interspersed between Falk's activities in the present are flashbacks to the earlier incident involving the young Falk (Joe Klocek), the young Hadler (Sam Corlett), Gretchen Schoner (Claude Scott-Mitchell), and Ellie Deacon (BeBe Bettencourt), the young woman who drowned, and it seems that even Falk has his secrets as the details of both cases are slowly revealed.  It is definitely a slow burn (pun intended) but I found it very suspenseful.  I loved the juxtaposition of all of the wide shots of the parched ground with vegetation ready to go up in flames with the close-up shots of the suspects who also seem ready to combust from the tension.  Bana gives an incredibly nuanced and restrained performance as a man haunted by his past and the rest of the cast is also excellent, especially Genevieve O'Reilly as Gretchen in the present-day and William Zappa as Ellie's father.  This movie is a bit under the radar because of the big blockbusters scheduled for release this weekend but it is absolutely worth seeking out.

Dream Horse

I had the chance to see Dream Horse with a group of my students (and Sean) last year at the Sundance Film Festival and we all loved this inspiring true story!  I saw it again last night now that it is in wide release and I had just as many goosebumps as I did during my first viewing.  Jan Vokes (Toni Collette) lives in an economically depressed mining village in Wales with her unemployed and unmotivated husband Brian (Owen Teale).  She works as a checker at a co-op during the day and as a barmaid at the local pub in the evening as well as caring for her aging parents.  She feels that her life has become stagnant and yearns for a reason to get out of bed in the morning.  One night at the pub she overhears Howard Davies (Damian Lewis) brag about owning a winning racehorse with a syndicate of investors (he fails to mention that this venture nearly bankrupted him) and decides that she wants to own a racehorse.  She uses her savings to buy a bad-tempered mare who came in last in every race she ran and enlists Howard's help in recruiting a group of friends, including the town drunk (Karl Johnson) and a lonely widow (Sian Phillips), to form her own syndicate to pay the stud fee of a champion.  They name the resulting foal Dream Alliance and raise him on their small allotment in the village.  Philip Hobbs (Nicholas Farrell), a well-known trainer in England, decides to work with Dream because he thinks the horse has spirit but he doesn't have much hope for his prospects.  Nonetheless, Hobbs enters Dream in a local race and the syndicate is elated when he comes from behind to win.  As Dream wins more and more races against all odds, he becomes a symbol of hope for Jan, Brian, Howard, and the entire village.  This is a stand-up-and-cheer movie about doing whatever it takes to achieve a dream and I found it to be incredibly moving even though I knew the outcome!  The racing sequences are exhilarating but my favorite moments are when the ragtag group of misfits in the syndicate watch Dream's first race in the owners' box with the other wealthy and aristocratic owners (it is hilarious) and when the entire village welcomes the syndicate home with a victory parade.  I highly recommend this feel-good movie (stay through the credits to see the actors and their real-life counterparts singing in the pub).

Note:  This story is also the subject of fabulous documentary called Dark Horse.  I recommend it as well.