Christmas is Coming

"Farces are express trains; musicals are locals."--Stephen Sondheim, on writing lyrics for A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum

Just read a review of a new book on songwriting, which I seriously want for Christmas. The review in today's NYTimes is glowing but not adulatory, and makes Finishing the Hat, by Sondheim, sound damned near irresistible. I am generally leery of books about writing--one man's process is another man's barred cell--but this… oh, hell, I'm just a Sondheim junkie.

Spouse? You listening out there? My birthday and Christmas are both conveniently located in the months ahead!

World Fantasy

Aside from the SFWA meeting and the author's sign in, I have one panel:

What Is Left to the Imagination. Lawrence Connolly, Madeleine Robins, Delia Sherman, Martha Wells (m), Gregory Wilson

It's the one I wanted most to be on, which is good. They mis-spelled my name on the PDF, which is less so but predictable. And: Sunday at 11am, which is not as bad as Sunday at 9am, I suppose.

And I may bring some of the new Sarah with me, just in case anyone wants to sit in the bar and hear it.

Who will I see in Columbus?

Say What? Come Again?

I think that Stephen Holden of the NYTimes may live in a different world than I do. Or maybe the drizzle has my brains soggy. Cause my experience of the world makes it difficult to parse the following, quoted from his review of a new indie thriller called Kalamity.

“Kalamity,” to its credit, is an emotionally unflinching portrait of insecure young men adrift in a society where the sexual balance has shifted to give women a power and autonomy not available to earlier generations from similar backgrounds. In the not-so-distant past Stanley and Billy might have married their girlfriends and lived unhappily. But in the brave new world of equal-opportunity sex, social mobility and proliferating strip clubs, women like Ashley and Alice (Beau Garrett) don’t feel pressured to settle for less.

What on earth do proliferating strip clubs have to do with pressure to settle for less? What am I missing here? Help a girl out, wouldja?

RED

Okay, I'm a sucker for Helen Mirren, and Helen Mirren with high-powered weaponry is nigh irresistible. And Bruce Willis in action mode is, for me, a sturdy perennial. And Morgan Freeman and John Malkovich and Richard Dryfuss and Brian Cox (the world's most underappreciated actor, I swear). And Mary Louise Parker, the comparative baby of the cast, playing a nice middle-aged woman who gets swept up into the sort of over-the-top thriller territory she'd only read about in category romances. Oh, and Karl Urban, being all intense and dangerous, but a family man to boot. And, and, and...

This is the perfect Dumb Movie: fast, furious, funny and witty. It doesn't slow down enough to rub your nose in the preposterousness of it all. I chortled all the way through it. There is not an ounce of improvement in it; it's not meaningful, unless to say that persons of retirement age may still have something to contribute (even if it's only sudden death) is improving.

Oh. And there's a stuffed pig. It's a lot of fun.

ETA I've been trying to remember if the film passes the Bechdel test. Probably not (the only conversation between Parker's character and Mirren's does revolve around men and love). But: Helen Mirren! With high-powered weaponry! Admitting that while she loves her Martha Stewart-like existence she still takes the odd contract to stave off boredom...