Escaping to the movie theatre

I've been trying to sell my condo, which means there are long stretches of time over the weekend when I'm instructed to clear out of my home. So, on those weekends, when I'm not booked up, movie theatres are the idea place to kill a few hours without feeling like you're wasting your time.

This weekend's picks were Looper and Seven Psychopaths. Both were selected due to the convenience of their starting time, but I also got a recommendation for the second one. I enjoyed both. Looper is a time travel movie and it's best to see it without knowing too much about it. Everyone already knows that Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Bruce Willis play the same character, 30 years apart. I found the makeup effects on JGL a  little disconcerting (particularly the eyebrows), but there were moments when he did BW so well it was eerie. The city that JGL lives in is 30 years or so in our future and you can see from the visuals how things are going to go for us. And it's not good. The time travel aspects would make for very interesting post movie discussions over drinks, and I think there are some holes in the reasoning that won't stand up to much scrutiny. However I thoroughly enjoyed the movie despite them. It's quite a violent movie, and a little gory in parts, but there are quiet moments as well and JGL is such an excellent actor that despite his character being really not a nice person, you start to hope for him to figure out how to get out of his dilemma.

Seven Psychopaths is even MORE violent than Looper and gorier. It's also really funny. I'm not sure there's much substance beneath the humour and violence, although I think the writer/director wants us to find some. Martin McDonagh is a playwright who has made quite a splash in the theatre world. His script is intelligent and twisty and a lot of fun. Colin Farrell plays the straight man who we observe the action through. Sam Rockwell and Christopher Walken are incredible. I don't want to give too much away since this is one of those layered movies where you learn how things interconnect as it goes along. Don't get up right away when you see the credits. It's not quite over yet.

Alice's Adventures

The National Ballet of Canada brought this spectacular production to Los Angeles, and I couldn't have been more excited. This is a brand new ballet, created in 2010/2011 by the Royal Ballet and NBOC. I followed the run up to each company's premier via various twitter feeds and desperately wanted to see it, but the chances of a show like this coming to LA are slim to none. So what a wonderful surprise it was to see this listed on the season's offerings at the Music Center!

The creators of this show are Christopher Wheeldon on choreography, Joby Talbott on music and Nicholas Wright on story. The scene starts in Victorian England at a tea party where Lewis Carroll is entertaining the Liddell sisters with stories. The action takes a turn for the surreal when Carroll turns into a rabbit and takes Alice Liddell down into the cake and an alternate world. The design of the sets, creating the sensations of Alice in this topsy-turvy world, really capture the various adventures she runs into and the characters are ingeniously created. All the costumes were wonderful, contributing to turning beautiful ballet dancers into rabbits, caterpillars and all of the other familiar creatures. Sonia Rodriguez danced Alice and she was on stage almost the entire show. She had some wonderful pas de deux with Guillaume Cote as the Knave and conveyed the gangliness of a teenager beautifully. Greta Hodginkinson as the Queen of Hearts had a hilarious variation that was a parody of the famous Rose Adagio from Sleeping Beauty.  The music was perfectly evocative of each new twist and turn. The audience was clearly thrilled as they applauded each new scene and effect (the Cheshire Cat was particularly appreciated). A lot of kids were at the show and it was fun to see them at intermission jumping and dancing around, imitating their favourite scenes.

NBOC brought a huge cast, and I can't imagine how long it took to put these sets up. Bravo to the Music Center for bringing this to LA.

Endeavour's slow roll down the streets of LA

Today is the day the shuttle starts its very slow roll through LA from the airport to the California Science Center. Twelve miles, 2 mph, through streets, over a freeway, past all manner of homes and small businesses. The shuttle was driven out of the airport and spent the morning parked at a mini mall parking lot while the transport wheels were widened and crews took care of power lines further up the road. I walked to the parking spot from my home (about 2 miles) with a friend to take it all in. There was already a small crowd when we got there at around 9:30a or so. Whole groups of school kids, people in wheelchairs and walkers, people of all ages gathered. People brought their dogs and one woman brought her macaw. I ran into my friend Yuki's boyfriend in the crowd! Everyone was super friendly, helping each other take pictures, getting out of each other's way, letting smaller kids up front for a better view. The only unhappy person in the bunch was a woman whose hair salon was on a balcony where everyone was going to get a view of the shuttle's backside. She was not happy. Everyone else was having a blast. The Science Center sent out a bunch of volunteers to answer people's questions. We chatted with police officers on bicycles. The police were all fairly relaxed about the whole thing, only getting more vigilant about keeping people back once the shuttle was actually approaching. The wing of the shuttle went right over our heads! The clearance was quite tight over tops of trees that had been lopped off and next to street lights. We watched as the shuttle made its first turn onto Manchester. It's currently sitting just before the 405 waiting for the complicated maneuvering to get it over the freeway. The helicopters are overhead and its close enough that I can hear them from my home.

Here are some pics I took, plus a couple of videos.

Update: I had been spelling the shuttle's name without the 'u', then I realized I was spelling it wrong. I thought it was odd, since the 'u' is stripped out of other words. Apparently the shuttle is named after Captain Cook's ship, which of course was an English ship.