I’m back!! I disappeared for a bit there. Work was busy, and then I became subsumed by a novel I’m writing. Finally got my stuff back from my ex. Am being slow boiled into Christmas hell. So let’s do a rapid fire review/write up.
The Good: I finally watched Phantom Of The Paradise. I only regret not doing it earlier. I have a thing wrong with my brain where it takes me several years to watch something I know very well that I’ll love and enjoy. Anyways! Of course I liked it! It was a bright, colorful rock opera! Paul Williams is there, being a really delicious devil man. There’s a gay rock star named Beef. The whole thing is a tragedy soaked in pure delight. There’s more to be written about here, sure, but we must move on to:
The Bad: My sister made me to to Wicked. And a couple disclaimers. First: I haven’t thought about this musical since I was twelve. And second: I like Oz stuff a normal amount. Read a couple of the books as a kid, watch the movie once a year. My sister has dedicated her life to collecting Oz memorabilia. So maybe she’s right and it’s just not For Me. But my god it was so bad it made me realize Wicked, like, as a musical, is kind of dumb and bad. Which is the worst thing your adaptation can do I think! I have never seen anyone as miscast as Ariana Grande. Glinda works when the actress playing her has enough charm to carry the obnoxiousness with a sweet edge, and Grande is completely devoid of personality. I don’t know if someone told Cynthia Ervio to only make one facial expression the whole time or if that’s a choice she made (she can clearly make others, we’ve all seen the endless deluge of press footage) but it was a bad move, making her acting feel wooden and emotionless. Marissa Bode as Nessarose was a bright spot in a movie that, despite being a big budget adaptation, felt like a cash grab sequel of something better. I’d love to see her cast in something actually good, because I think she could carry something solid all on her own.
Short Story time: A short little write up for a two page story. Georg Heym’s ‘The Dissection’ (our editor’s note assures us that previous translations calling it the Autopsy were in error, and that translator Gio Clairval fixed this and other errors.) is a wonderfully nasty little story, written from the point of view of a corpse getting dissected. With lines like “Around their arms coiled the intestines– green-yellow snakes — and faeces dripped on their coats — a warm putrid fluid (75).” Really push the disgust of the act into your face, deliberately juxtaposed against the corpse’s happy dreams of his lost love. The ‘weird’ comes both from the juxtaposition and the personified corpse, and I think, from the grotesque nature of the dissection itself.
I will be back at this blog, probably! I just got lightning struck with an idea and have been trying to chase it until I get bored with it.
Signing off,
Marlowe
Marlowe Writes 