If anyone happens by this and knows more than I about what is taking place (if anything) in the course this term, would you mind elaborating?
Hope everyone is enjoying exam-freedom.
Category: RHUL
Deepest apologies for my lack of posts. Be assured that I have saved many stimulating articles in my blog favourites to illuminate your lives. I am at present engaged in writing my dissertation, which must be handed in (nicely presented) in 10 days. 10 days! I terrify myself into working.
As soon as that hurdle is leaped, however, I’ll be back to my old ebullient self. Expect Astro-Cows, sporks and cheese moons. Here’s to hoping my intellectual faculties won’t be too depleted.
Just because I spent all afternoon working on it, doesn’t mean we have to use it. I don’t want to steal the limelight from Jenni and her poster, which you can find here.
This is meant to be an A5 size leaflet, for shoving into people’s hands, displaying in a pile etc. The poster has more information on it and looks more professional. I’m sorry ‘interview’ is messy and that the Gothic Ws look like Ms. Do you think it needs ‘Presented by Creative Industries Class 07′ on the ink pot, or would that make everything look too crowded?
In relation to our CI class today about advertising, I found that the Guardian Unlimited Arts Blog has some rather interesting literary tit-bits. Incidentally, for those Jeanette Winterson fans (thank you for my introduction), there is a Guardian Books pod-cast of an interview, where she talks about writing her own version of the Bible:
The article I considered relevant is about shameless self-publicising on Facebook.
Which reminds me: Check out the FB group ‘An Interview with Ben Markovits’. I thought we needed a place to convene and plot dastardly schemes.
Over and Out.
Let me begin by saying how much I enjoy musicals. Billy Eliot, Wicked, Les Miserables, The Phantom of the Opera, Chicago, Guys & Dolls: these are just some of the big names presently playing in the West End.
I have seen them all.
This is not a boast. Well it is, as it shows how cultured a student I am. But even without a background in professional theatre, I am only as qualified as the next person to judge what constitutes bad.
Lord of the Rings: The Musical.
Let’s go back a year or so. When I heard that LOTR (the popular abbreviation), had been ‘made into a musical’, my response was similar to the one I’d expressed at the news that Warner Brothers (we curse them, precious) planned a movie of Paradise Lost featuring Daniel Craig as Satan.
Not only at Hollywood’s grubby mitts on Milton’s work, but at tiny-head-on-large-body blond Bond playing my beloved Satan, who is universally acknowledged as the best, most believable character.
Do I hear the sound of grave-turning? Milton and Tolkien on perpetual revolve.
My admiration for Tolkien is evident. I have read The Silmarillion, The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings and his most recent posthumous publication The Children of Hurin. I loved Peter Jackson’s trilogy. This is where to look for a subtle and intelligent adaptation of a literary bestseller. Harry Potter and the philosophically diminished Sorcerer’s Stone is not.
I will attempt to keep my novel/film comparisons down to a minimum, but the great majority of this musical’s audience will probably have made contact with the film, if not the book.
On the evening of Halloween, as the train rushed me ever closer to Waterloo, I took it as a good sign that my initial hostility had calmed. For weeks I had unwillingly entertained visions of dancing Orcs and singing Ring-wraiths – “masquerade! the Dark Lord’s henchmen on parade, masquerade” – and shuddered at the posters lining the Underground. But one day my ex-housemate, who works at Drury Lane, turned up with a full colour brochure.
It was impressive.
That’s what I privately thought. So when the chance for a night out in the £60 Dress Circle for only £15 came up, why not? If nothing else, the special effects warranted it.
My opinion hasn’t changed. As oxygenchameleon and I pelted each other with objections, my overwhelming feeling was that the producers had substituted good acting for snazz.
Don’t get me wrong – it was quality snazz. The hydraulics were brilliantly complicated: Our eyes witnessed an indoor reproduction of New Zealand’s Middle Earth. The stage performed seamless transitions from plain to peat, valley to volcano, contorting itself into a believable Mount Doom. Red lighting and an improvement on the good ol’ trapdoor provided an opportunity for greatness, which the director took full advantage of: Gollum falls into the Crack and seconds later appears above us, continuing his fall from the flies, a tumble in slow motion.
There are several moments like this, which elicit a shiver from the audience, as well as the usual gasp. To those who have seen Wicked, the musical closest in genre to LOTR, the song ‘Defying Gravity’ marks the end of Act One. Elphaba’s rise above the audience and the blinding light is especially inspiring.
Are there any songs of note in LOTR? Well no. I cannot recall one. No lyrics echoed in my head as the Interval unfolded around me; no tune beat itself out on the dark train window home. Perhaps this is a good thing. At least my prior fears of Orcish baritones were unfounded. The music of the ‘musical’ consisted mostly of drinking tunes, Elven warbling and sweeping pseudo-Shore orchestral vistas. I was frequently visited with the impression that the composer had paid a bit too much attention to the DVD: transposed the good bits, crescendoed the bad bits and flung in as many flutes as orchestrally possible. The result was – in the words of a fellow audience member – “very Celtic”. Very melodramatic, if you ask me.
To say ‘the acting was wooden’ would be a cliche. But the phrase is as valid as ever. No other word so accurately describes the painfully unemotional Frodo or the embarrassingly unmanly Aragorn. We were unfortunate enough to have two understudies: Frodo and Pippin. But this is West End theatre, people. West End. This is the Broadway of the UK, the big time. If you hit the West End, you can say you’re a pro. If the principal characters told me they were West End actors, I’d laugh and point them in the direction of the nearest am-dram society to learn the basics.
I had the biggest problems with Frodo, Aragorn and Gandalf. Worrying, since those three are LOTR’s plotline pillars. Frodo was old; he possessed none of the innocence at the heart of Tolkien’s – even Elijah Wood’s – character. There was no change, no development.When he stood at the Grey Havens, poised to take the great journey across the sea, Frodo appeared to be queuing up for a pleasure cruise.
Aragorn – that bastion of masculinity – garbled out the over-long sentences that give fantasy a bad name and failed to manifest an ounce of the nobility of the human spirit. Did I mention he was more effeminate than Legolas? Now, I have nothing against the French, but the next time they send someone over to play a principal part in a West End production, could they please send someone with a spot of talent and a credible grasp of the language?
Gandalf chatting with Frodo. Close your eyes. Who just spoke? If I didn’t know the script (not that it bore much resemblance to the original), I would never have placed the voices. Problem: Gandalf too young. If not too young, acted too young. He also had an irritating tendency to shout at inappropriate moments. This poor use of emphasis was shared by most of the cast.
“I broke my fast at dawn.”
Oh, sorry. Just thinking of Elrond.
Not everyone was bad. Galadriel was as rich as Arwen was poor, particularly voice-wise. In this adaptation, she became a central character: stitching that held together the patchwork exposition. Gollum was also a holder. The actor’s portrayal of the creeping Smeagol and his schizophrenic personality boosted the energy that Frodo sucked out of his scenes with Sam (who was pretty good).
I shall put my proverbial finger on the problem: A full telling of LOTR in three hours is simply too ambitious. In the actors’ defence, I doubt they were given a lot of time in which to create believable emotion. Their lines were hurtled out at an average speed of one a second; there was little time in which to dwell on significance. And if you’re Gandalf (completely lacking in authority), you shatter your potential moment of wizardly rapport with the audience by uttering a yobbish shout: ‘Many that live deserve death. And some that die deserve life. CAN YOU GIVE IT TO THEM, FRODO?’
Have I been ‘too eager to deal out death in judgement?’ Perhaps. I was, after all, saddened by the lack of Eowyn, Eomer and Faramir. And confusion turned to irritation at the merging of Denethor and Theoden, who hold completely different attitudes to Aragorn becoming King. I am not alone, I think, in feeling aggrieved by the attribution of the famous line ‘dark have been my dreams of late’ to a man who informs Aragorn, arm around shoulder, that his beloved son Boromir has been killed.
Perhaps a musical of The Hobbit would be better next time.
As a thank you for reading this far, here is a link to a site that generates Elf and Hobbit names: The Hobbit Name Generator
It is late, but look for my coming on the third day; at dawn, look to the Annex…
I leave you,
Enelya Palantír, also known as Pearl Bramble of Willowbottom
Notice that it’s Boromir on the poster, not Aragorn. Bear my comments in mind.
Neapolitani
“‘Well who is this and what is here?’”
His voice was still as high and clear as I remembered. I had tried to forget it.
Neapolitani.
I twisted in the air and heard the telltale creak. The Stench bristled at the sound. I winced at another burst of flatulence. Jack was down there.
“Licking its lips, it is.”
He stood on the bank, still dressed in the motley my parents had forced upon him. Three years… So neither of us had changed.
“Ah!”
I couldn’t help the gasp. The tree lurched. My useless arms hung inches above the spot where Jack had vanished.
His smile looked the same upside-down. Maybe it wasn’t a smile. “You know, Mistress,” he said quietly, “I would not let you fall.”
“I am no mistress now!” I croaked at him. “Not even yours.”
“I don’t think either of us can change the past, Cinquain.”
The sound of my name on his tongue. I could almost smell the memories. They pushed at me, weighing down the branch. My home. His jests. They were what my parents paid him for.
“Do you have your red flute?”
“Always.”
His eyes were dark. I suddenly noticed how thin he was.
“Why are you here?”
But my branch had betrayed me at last.
Dear Reader, I hope you are well.
Might I trouble you for a couple of minutes?
My poetry project is, to put it bluntly, about death. As a central interest, I am exploring attitudes to death in England today and I’d like as much literary imput as possible! I have here a couple of lines from 1) a famous elegy. 2) A modern poem. What are the first words/feelings they inspire? Remember: This is a modern poetry exercise. It doesn’t have to make sense.
1:
2:
The prospects for the present aren’t too grand
when a swastika with NF (National Front)’s
sprayed on a grave, to which another hand
has added, in a reddish colour, CUNTS.
Which is, I grant, the word that springs to mind,
when going to clear the weeds and rubbish thrown
on the family plot by football fans, I find
UNITED graffitied on my parents’ stone.
How many British graveyards now this May
are strewn with rubbish and choked up with weeds
since families and friends have gone away
for work or fuller lives, like me from Leeds?
When I first came here 40 years ago
with my dad to ‘see my grandma’ I was 7.
I helped dad with the flowers. He let me know
she’d gone to join my grandad up in Heaven.
My dad who came each week to bring fresh flowers
came home with clay stains on his trouser knees.
Since my parents’ deaths I’ve spent 2 hours
made up of odd 10 minutes such as these.
Flying visits once or twice a year,
And though I’m horrified just who’s to blame
that I find instead of flowers cans of beer
and more than one grave sprayed with some skin’s name?
Here are the links if you want to find out who wrote these….but thoughts first!
Matt’s previous entry here.
*Please click link for wav file then read 
*
http://www.sonyclassical.com/sounds/63213_04.wav
Sa’Tanic
I had said, “I’ll never let go, Jack. I’ll never let go.” I’d promised him. I’d meant it.
I had let go.
We couldn’t have stayed forever this way – my ankles strung to a tree, his ankles submerged in the bog. It took all my strength to hold him. I’d dislocated both shoulders. The smell was terrible; he wept onion tears.
“You will go on,” he choked, “no matter the spaces between us.”
“What?”
A moist fart drowned out his words.
I shook a limp fist at the Stench. Never again would I trust a small fox on the back of a Dulux dog. He’d had designs on us from the start.
The story continues here…
Oh you lucky lucky people. When I appropriate Shakespeare’s polysyllabic masterpieces, you know you’re in trouble.
I am sitting here, surrounded by candles…the night wind billowing my muslin drapes….I could be listening to Phantom of the Opera…but I’m not. It is an evening for silence… As the children of Heathrow roar overhead, I break daggers of dark chocolate (infused with spices and a twist of orange)…rather spiky on the tongue, death-by-chocolate is a long-running joke…
There is my mug, all but empty of green tea. It reads ‘Religion is the problem, not the answer’ and is thus one of my favourites. On the other side is Shelley’s Necessity of Atheism… if I lean too far over, it pokes me in the neck; it really ought to be at the centre of a critical appraisal, but that can wait until morning. Both objects are the same shade of blue as my jumper. This is pleasing.
I made up a new word today: critiqueiry, from critique. It is what food critics write. Do you think it’s better than ‘criticism’? Too much poetic license you know.
If WordPress had a ‘mood’ selector, I might be listed under ‘spaced’ or ‘dreamy’ or simply ‘freak’.
A firework just cracked in the distance.
What have I here to share with you? How about we pull something out of the seas?
Ah yes… The Infinite Cookie.
Someone has informed me (you know who you are) that I have no authority to comment on Pink Floyd, or even to be a true fan. What constitutes a true fan? All right, so I wasn’t born when The Wall came out. And I couldn’t go crazy. And I don’t think the band ended when Waters quit. And I think that Division Bell and Dark Side are the best albums.
“Sacrilege!”
Perhaps. So to all those aging people who might read this blog and think, ‘she’s too young to understand’, yes, that’s probably the case.
This is my concession to you all. I am sorry for not fulfilling the comfortable stereotype of the nineties kid, who has abandoned the Spice Girls to flirt with the heavy eardrum-destroying metal of the contemporary music scene.
I am sorry if my taste mocks the tenets of some mysterious and unsavory sect you belong to, as I am also a mysterious and unsavory person. Can I be initiated?
I am sorry for pretending to understand you.
