Bartók on the Mind

I have no idea why Bela Bartók’s Concerto for Orchestra is running through my head right now since it has been a zillion years since I’ve heard the piece, but there you have it. I think I have a tape of it around someplace—will have to dredge it up.

Baraka

I somehow managed to miss Baraka when it first came out, though it undoubtedly played in Cambridge when I was there.

One of the Wildlife Health Center students—the same one who taught us all how to dance salsa back in August—thinks everyone should see this film, so she organized a party around it this evening.

Not unlike Koyanisqaatsi for the developing world, minus the Philip Glass. I’m still reeling from the images: snow monkeys in their bath, monks, temples, clouds, rush hour in Tokyo, baby chickens getting their beaks burned.

Kuwait oil fields on fire.

I think Tamara’s right: everyone should see this.

Look Out For Your Vegetables

The full moon will be here in a week, and there might be garden-ravaging beasties about. That is to say, we went to “The Curse of the Wererabbit”, the new Wallace & Gromit movie, this evening. It’s an excellent movie. Poor Gromit! He is such a long-suffering companion.

Sadly, Aardman Animation just suffered a terrible fire, losing the warehouse where sets and props from the first three Wallace & Gromit films were stored.

L'empereur

Waddle or toboggon if you have to, but do make it to see March of the Penguins, now playing on the independent movie theatre circuit. We went to see this documentary today about the breeding cycle of Emperor Penguins and thought it was fantastic.

One question I’m left with though is how did these penguins ever evolve to be laying their single eggs in the dead of the Antarctic winter?

Cheese, Gromit?

After this horrible past year in movies, there’s finally a film to look forward to. The new Wallace & Gromit movie, The Curse of the Were-Rabbit, is coming out October 14!

(From LibrarianInBlack).

Before Baseball Starts Again

I’ve missed most of the movies that were nominated for tonight’s academy awards. We don’t have a TV. I got a sudden hankering to watch them, though, and persuaded the Spirit Sisters to let me come over with a pot of soup and watched the taped-on-Tivo version so we could skip the commercials.

Oscars are general silliness and sometimes that works. After the somewhat traumatic experience of taking Charlie in for his rabies shot this morning, it fit the bill for me. Numenius stayed home and did his Spanish homework; his prediction that Russell Crow wouldn’t win anything this year proved to be astonishingly correct.

Feliz Cumpleaos!

My Spanish class ended yesterday with a set of skits all about where should we go on vacation. My group portrayed a family: let’s go to Hawaii! No, I want to go to Alaska. No, Alaska is cold and boring, I want to go to Disneyland. Then Mom said, no, that’s no fun for the adults, instead let’s go to Iguazu Falls, it will be very educational. After crunching out his finances on his calculator Dad concluded: why I know someplace that’s much cheaper and just as fun, and we can drive to in our car. Let’s go to San Jose! We can stay at the grandparents, we’ll go to interesting places like the Center for Beethoven Studies, we’ll eat at fine restaurants like Appleby’s and Olive Garden, and we’ll go shopping at Border’s and Pottery Barn. Vamos a divertirnos!

All of which reminds me: tomorrow is Beethoven’s birthday. He is turning 234 so wish him a good one!

Twang!

About twenty years ago I was walking through the streets of Cambridge (England) with my mother. We wandered past a music shop. There was a mandolin next to a banjo in the window. It was my birthday coming up and, well, we walked out of there with a mandolin, a beautiful instrument I never really took to. When I moved to Boston, the mandolin stayed behind.

I’m wondering whether I just made the wrong choice. This evening I picked up a clawhammer banjo from a friend’s house across the way. Jim plays bluegrass guitar AND mandolin and won’t be needing his banjo for a while, so he’s generously lending it to me.

I’ve learned three chords so far; I am mystified by the upper register fifth string and how to play it (backwards from a guitar, it turns out); and I have the kittens totally intrigued. More anon.

The Ecotone wiki discusses Courage and Place today. That seems to be more than I’m up for just now but please scoot on over to take a look.

Evening With The Dementors

We just went with a group of 11 to see the new Harry Potter movie. I think it’s better than the first two movies; there’s a different director who’s less inclined towards a saccharine by-the-book portrayal of life at Hogwarts. Buckbeak the hippogriff is suitably sympathetic, but Crookshanks is not the scrappy feline we’d wish for. And the werewolf…Sergeant Angua is much more pleasing.

Lunchtime Interlude

It’s nice to find familiar music in unexpected places. I went into the eatery at the Memorial Union on campus at noon today, my usual lunch stop, and heard somebody playing Beethoven on the old and usually ignored upright piano there. This was the Waldstein sonata (Op. 53, in C major) — my brother used to practice it when I was growing up. The pianist was a good bit better than the piano he was playing on: perhaps in his life as UCD student he doesn’t have much access to an instrument to practice on, but still needed his fix of Beethoven. He didn’t stay too long, picking up his score and leaving after the first movement.