I appreciate that there is no good time for NStar to do its routine maintenance, but do they always have to do it in Brookline overnight on weekdays?
I mean, how many people have alarm clocks that are plugged into the wall? Doesn’t NStar realize that if they shut off the power overnight, however briefly, that all those alarm clocks are going to need to be reset, and hundreds of people may oversleep for work the next day? Continue reading
If you’re at all interested, just wanted to point out that my profile of Jennifer Hudson, which appears in the new issue of Continental, is now online. Jennifer, you may recall, was a finalist on American Idol a few years ago (the year Fantasia won), and she’s likely to be an Oscar-winner for her role in the new movie, Dreamgirls. I got to chat with her on the way up, which I thought was pretty cool.
Also in this issue is a story about the new show High Fidelity, which opens on Broadway this week (it’s based on the movie and book). You may recall I saw the show when it was in Boston a couple months back, and while I didn’t love it, I did think the music was good. Anyway, I hope the show does well regardless.
As much as I knew one day my grandmother would die, when it happened this morning I still wasn’t ready.
To say we were tight would be an understatement. But then again, I’m sure all my cousins would say the same thing. We were lucky in that our grandmother treated us all like we were each the most important person in the world to her.
Likewise, that’s how I’d like to think I treated her. And it was true; she did mean that much to me. Continue reading
Thanksgiving: a weekend that is simultaneously too short and too long. How is that possible?
But anyway, now that we’re over that hump, we can start the countdown to Christmas. I’ve begun the season by finding an MP3 of Jamie Cullum singing “Let It Snow” (thanks to Cullumography.com). You can bet that it will be on A Very Marty Xmas 2006. And this past weekend I purchased both Sufjan Stevens’ Songs for Christmas and Aimee Mann’s One More Drifter in the Snow. Songs from both albums will definitely make it onto my CD as well. I know I have a hard act to follow after last year’s mix, but I’m feeling up to the challenge, and looking forward to choosing songs.
Got any suggestions, or know of songs I’ve missed in year’s past? You can assume my mixes have already dipped into the classics; last year I wrote about a “best of the box” mix that would probably include most of the obvious candidates. So what else should I know about? I’m open to ideas.
And for the record, I will not be changing the name of my mix to A Very Marty Holiday. Unlike the city of Boston, I know what should be called a “Christmas” symbol and what should be a more generic “holiday” symbol. I can’t believe that after last year’s brouhaha, it seems the whole thing is about to start up all over again. It’s just silly, if you ask me.
The show Company begins with Bobby’s friends all calling his name. “Bobby,” the various couples say, “come on over for dinner.”
And here’s how they sweeten the offer: it’ll “just be the three of us.”
Bobby is 35 years old and single. All his friends are married, and seem capable of only discussing the state of being married, their wedding, their kids, or worse, why Bobby isn’t married yet.
He is a perpetual third wheel or odd man out, and it’s not so much fun anymore for him.
Not surprisingly, his friends just don’t get it. They think that if Bobby isn’t married yet, and doesn’t seem to want to get married, there must be something wrong with him.
God forbid he just hasn’t met the right person yet, or maybe he’s just not ready. Continue reading
When I went to see Happy Feet the other day, it reminded me of my idea that movie theaters should reserve one screening each day of new animated movies for adults only.
I’m not saying kids can’t see the movie. I’m just saying, let there be one screening every day where kids — admittedly, the movies’ target audience — aren’t getting up at inopportune times, aren’t laughing at the “wrong” places, aren’t being restless and aren’t talking, and where the parents don’t show up with their brood right as the movie starts (after the trailers) and aren’t rushing out as soon as the movie is over (before the credits have even started). Continue reading
I have a lot to be thankful for this year — including Sam LaGrassa’s, my new brother-in-law, daily phone calls from L.A. at 4 p.m., movies like The Departed and Borat, a good job that I enjoy more now than I did a year ago, my Bubby, good friends, the blogger who posted MP3s from the upcoming movie Dreamgirls, weekly must-see TV in the form of Grey’s Anatomy and Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip, the Oreo Surprise cookies from Paradise Bakery in the Pru, and so much more — but as it’s Thanksgiving, I just wanted to say thanks to all my readers, because while I’d keep writing this blog even if you weren’t reading, it’s more fun knowing you’re enjoying what I write. So, I hope you’ll keep coming back. Continue reading
Cross March of the Penguins with Moulin Rouge and you get Happy Feet, a movie that’s not as good as either one, but still has its pleasures. The story of Mumbles, a penguin who doesn’t fit in with the other penguins because he can’t sing, and instead of waddling he tap dances. Like in Moulin Rouge, the characters burst out in song anachronistically — they sing everything from Queen’s “Somebody to Love” to Frank Sinatra’s “My Way,” with a Beach Boys tune, a Prince song, and others thrown in for good measure — and for a while, this is kinda fun to watch. Eventually, though, Happy Feet turns from a cute little penguin movie to an environmental call for action and the last 10 minutes or so don’t make much sense (all things considered). Still, even though the movie doesn’t reach the zany heights that the trailer promised, it’s hard to deny that Happy Feet isn’t one of the coolest looking movies of the year. The snowy landscapes, the penguins dancing — it’s all rendered in very life-like fashion, in bright colors and with plenty of sweeping wide shots so you can take it all in. I’ve been looking forward to this movie for quite some time, and while the movie didn’t quite live up to my expectations, it was an enjoyable 90 minutes. So for that, I’ll give Happy Feet a B.
Robert Kennedy was a great man, and likely would have been a great president. Alas, when he was shot on June 5, 1968 at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles, shortly after winning the California primary, the world lost one of its great hopes for leadership. This is the message Bobby is trying to put across (not that I disagree with it), in a film meant to pay tribute to all that was lost on that tragic June day.
I think.
You see, Bobby is instead a rather pointless film about what was happening at the hotel the day Kennedy was shot. And in dramatizing that story, and showing the various people milling around, the film loses sight of its apparent purpose and instead becomes an ensemble piece about all these random, unrelated people, and not the man itself. In fact, perhaps writer/director Emilio Estevez should have called his movie Ambassador because it’s more a tribute to the hotel than the man. But even that’s not very good. Really, he’s made a bit of a mess with so many actors doing ther best to deliver Very Important Speeches and give Very Important Performances. And it’s just too cluttered to have much impact (one need look no further than Ashton Kutcher’s distracting, ill-fitting performance for proof).
Not that some in the ensemble don’t acquit themselves well. Sharon Stone, for one, gives a nice, understated performance. Freddy Rodriguez and Martin Sheen also do good work. And Anthony Hopkins and Laurence Fishburne imbue the film with gravitas, even if their roles are complete cliches. But Kutcher, Lindsay Lohan, Demi Moore, and others make Bobby feel like a very special, very serious, political episode of The Love Boat, or something silly like that.
I wish Bobby was actually about Bobby, and about how much he meant to people and how much we lost when we lost him. There’s evidence in a few scenes that Estevez might have done a nice job on that film if that was the direction he took. But things don’t always go as planned, and that’s why I have to give Bobby a C.
What a let-down.
For Your Consideration had all the makings of a great Hollywood self-parody, but it falls a bit short of that. In fact, it’s safe to say that many of the film’s best laughs can be seen in the trailer.
Granted, the scenes from Home for Purim, the film these characters are working on, are pretty funny. And Fred Willard, Jane Lynch, John Michael Higgins, Parker Posey, and Catherine O’Hara are all really good. But the trademark Christopher Guest, et al hilarity is replaced by sadness and disappointment here (and there’s an actual plot, miniscule though it may be), and that prevents the film from reaching the comic heights of A Mighty Wind and other films they’ve done. Continue reading
Martin's Musings 