Another Extended Absence

Well, yet another extended absence on my part from my blog. What can I say? It will happen again, but I write when I can.

I'll kick it back off with a look at some films I've seen recently.

First, my wife and I recently saw The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou. Like Wes Anderson's previous work of The Royal Tenenbaums, this film was a dry comedy that somehow expertly combined biting wit with deep and evocative emotional introspection. I spent a day afterwards just mulling the film over in my mind to try and discern what the film tells me. The story centres around Steve Zissou's (played by Bill Murray) quest for revenge over the death of his friend to a jaguar shark. However, we soon see that the film is really about Zissou's personal quest for redemption. Along the way, his journey becomes the stage for each of the secondary characters' own quests for personal redemption (including another brilliant performance by Willem DaFoe as the coxswain Klaus).

Much of the film consists of silly and seemingly nihilistic dialogue; yet somehow, the film's final moment, when Zissou finds the jaguar shark, still carries quite a good dramatic punch as each of the characters somehow make peace with who they are.

To make a long story short, I recommend this one.

Second, we saw Joel Schumacher's adaptation of The Phantom of The Opera. This was set to be an important personal viewing for Michele and I since we went to see the Pantages Theatre Toronto production together all the way back in 1992. I think that I enjoyed much of the film. Emmy Rossum and Patrick Wilson were both good as Christine Daae and Raoul. The cinematography and set production were also fairly true to Maria Bjornson's original stage design. The only real disappointment was the average vocals and performance of Gerard Butler as The Phantom. Butler is a good actor, but his singing, lip synching (did the editor really let this stuff get by?), and performance were either stilted or very out of place. You could see the moments where Butler was using his good acting talents, but they just never gelled with his awkward vocal enunciations and again, the bad lip synching.

Overall, it was an adequate production, and I would still show it to my daughter as a visual example of what Andrew Lloyd Webber did with the original musical. I would; however, temper it with a listen to Colm Wilkinson's eternally powerful and moving rendition of The Phantom in the Toronto production. Just to hear how The Phantom will always sound in my mind...