"The village police chief was surprised when he woke up in the middle of the night to find a man inside his home playing Beethoven on the piano...[the man] was drunk and looking for a friend's house when he mistakenly wandered into the wrong place early Monday. [...]The chief added that [the man] played perfect Beethoven."
Arts & Culture: February 2005 Archives
Charles has an interesting point in the comments below this post.
It emphasizes the unfortunate fact that people like cheese.
Cheese being those tunes that are old-timey sentimental or broadway ballads turned to songs like "Jesus: Buddy, Friend, Pal!" They like being swept away emotionally, not thinking too much about the words and just having a nice time.
It's taken years for me to move my choir from a sizable amount of cheese to bite-sized portions. Every now and then we throw in "We Are Called" at the end of Mass and people in the congregation who aren't half-way to the donut shop sing with some gusto. That's probably the only thing that keeps me from throwing it into the proverbial trashbin like I did "I Believe."
For those of you not familiar with "I Believe" - take some extra time to today thank God. My ears still bleed from this juxtaposition of the Gounod "Ave Maria" and a doofy counter-melody. It turns into a screamfest at the end with half the choir singing at the very top of their range.
This brief tale is a summary of the motion picture called "Vanity Fair," which made its debut last year. First, I should like to set the scene, so that you may know the circumstances under which it was viewed. I should think that other reviews would benefit by providing such knowledge to readers; it does violence to the truth unless a writer reveals, exemplo gratia, that he traveled to the motion picture theatre after a bitter dispute with his wife, or, in Roger Ebert's case, if his gout was acting up that evening.
On the way home from my place of employment last Friday, I had decided to cleanse my soul by participating in the sacrament of reconciliation. One of the parishes near my home, named for Saint Louis of France, distributes God's merciful grace at half-past five in the evening. To my chagrin, when I arrived at thirty-four minutes past the hour, there were already a dozen people ahead of me. My own parish is known for its strict approach to the Holy Faith, but Saint Louis makes it look like Unitarians of the Loose Observance. Judging that I would not be able to return home for another hour, and knowing that my expectant wife would want me home sooner, I prayed before the exposed sacrament, and left the church, resolving to return in the next day or two.
I stopped at a pastry shop down the road from my home, which closes at the hour of six, several minutes before I journey past it in the evenings. The shop is known for its fine sweet confections, and most of the persons behind the counter are young ladies who live in that locality. Its sole detraction is that male youths are attracted to the ladies, like vultures to carrion. I enquired if they had any chocolate desserts, which my wife regards with great delight. The handsome shop-maiden guided me through my selections, which later turned out to be exquisite. As she helped me, the young lady was quite pleasant, and as I completed the transaction she smiled and bade me goodbye in such a way as to suggest that my presence was not entirely disagreeable to her. For a man of my advancing years, this was indeed flattering.
I will not detail the portion of the evening devoted to cajoling and issuing threats unto the Johnson children, at least the three that are not in utero, as those events are unedifying. At last, when the children were in their bedrooms, I piled high the logs and set a gloriously bright, warm fire in our hearth. I poured a cup of fresh coffee for myself, and steeped a cheerful cup of Earl Grey for my wife, and we began to eat and drink and (you were wondering if this was ever going to come) watch "Vanity Fair."
The first difficulty with the motion picture was apparent, for you see, the heroine, Becky Sharp, is played by Mrs. Reese Witherspoon, whose personal charms are apparent, her skills in drama well-honed, but her countenance is that of a twenty-first-century woman, not of one who lived two centuries prior to our day.
Even more seriously, the pace of the drama was like that of an addled sufferer of heart disease. The film is based on the novel by William Makepeace Thackeray, who besides having a name that is most unusual and enjoyable to pronounce (I urge you to try it), wrote works of great complexity and density of plot. I have viewed but one other filmed version of a Thackeray novel, entitled "Barry Lyndon," crafted by the misanthropic genius Stanley Kubrick, and its length is an hour longer than "Vanity Fair." That length seems more suitable to the scope of Thackeray's intent.
The actors made very little impression upon me, save for Romola Garai, whose performance I enjoyed, and whose face suited the time and place of the film, but I cannot in good conscience praise anyone who knowingly agreed to be in "Dirty Dancing: Havana Nights," which I have not, in point of fact, actually seen, but the idea of which is as risible as "Breakin' 2: Electric Boogaloo." The men were mostly nonentities; only Gabriel Byrne elevated himself. Mrs. Witherspoon gave her customary zeal, and the countless hours she doubtless spent with dialogue coaches paid off with her accent, which was plausible at the very least.
I would be remiss if I did not mention the moment when the film, to use a phrase that is foreign to the faux-Victorian idiom that I have adopted for this post, "jumped the shark." Becky organises a dance number for the king of Britain, and persuades aristocratic ladies to participate. The result looks much like a Madonna video, circa 1987, and it was enough to transform my hitherto ambivalent opinion about the film into mild dislike.
