Let There Be Music

I'm sorry I haven't been keeping up very well. I've been taking a long vacation, at home, watching lots of movies. But there won't be a lot of blogging. A lot of my viewing has been rewatches. But I've also been watching some musical performances. For example, I watched Glass: The Perfect American (2013), the Philip Glass opera about Walt and Roy Disney.

I watched this on YouTube, but I was actually trying to watch another Glass opera, Satyagraha. When I couldn't get it, I gave this a try. It was inventively staged, with projected animations and sometimes ranks of animators in the background. There was an animator who complained about never being recognized by the brothers. The timeline was flexible, and in many scenes, Walt is delirious, dreaming or dead. This was all great. The music, however, did not really strike me. It was not deeply minimalist, more classical modern with a touch of minimalism and a few blues/jazz passages. Fun to watch, less to listen to.

A friend recommended Becoming Led Zeppelin (2025), a documentary made with input from the surviving members and some past interviews with Bonham. It was interesting to hear about the old days before they formed up, since they all had musical careers already. I was interested in Page's desire for Zep to never have a hit single - he made too many of those as a studio guy. He wanted Zep to be an album band! But because the doc was based on their interviews, I felt like it presented a cleaned up version, without as much personality as I could have hoped for. Maybe I'm spoiled by listening to THe History of Rock and Roll in 500 Songs, which tends to go pretty deep. Still fun.

I also watched a lot of YouTube world music type concerts. I loved  Ben Aylon, who plays the Senegalese xalam, a lute with a skin soundboard. I also like Constantinople, a trio of kora, setar and percussion. YouTube's algorithm is very good about feeding these to me.  

And I hope to continue this, even as my vacation draws to a close. 

Naked with a Bullet

Ms. Spenser was pretty skeptical about The Naked Gun (2025), but I'd heard good things, so I threw it on while she was working. She ended up liking it more than me. 

It starts with a bank robbery. A little schoolgirl trapped among the hostages turns out to be... Frank Drebbin Jr., Liam Neeson. So he defeats the robbers wearing a plaid skirt. But he doesn't notice the head robber, Danny Huston, getting away with the contents of one safe deposit box, which turns out to be the P.L.O.T Device.

Because Neeson was a little bit over-zealous in the bank case, he is busted down to traffic. He arrives at the scene of a seeming suicide - someone drove their electric car right into the water. But back at the office, Neeson meets the man's sister, Pamela Anderson, who doesn't believe it was suicide. But she's a crime novelist, so she would. 

But you didn't come for the plot. You came for the jokes. And there are a lot of them. A cute runner is Neeson and the other cops getting handed a coffee every few minutes. Less cute is the long scene with Neeson suffering diarrhea from his disordered eating, then berating himself, then pigging out again. This wasn't so cute. I think percentage of tasteless jokes has risen a bit from the original trilogy. But this one has very little O.J. Simpson, so I guess it's a wash.

Also, a lot of the gags are straight up stolen from other movies - sometimes as homage, sometimes just a lift. That doesn't bother me, especially if the jokes are any good. But I did feel like there were fewer than there should be. The jokes in the background were still there, but I felt that the density wasn't. Maybe I'm idealizing the originals. though. I should rewatch, maybe (hard to sit through the O.J., though).

Neeson did a very respectable Drebbin - he has no trouble playing it straight and stone-faced. Pam Anderson was great as the dame, looking and acting the part. Of course, she's competing with Priscilla Presley and Anna Nicole Smith, so she doesn't have to stretch much. But it is nice to see her getting a middle-age return, looking lovely and a little more natural. 

So I laughed but felt a little let down. Ms. Spenser laughed (when she looked up from her work), and was pleasantly surprised. Maybe it's a question of expectations.