Wednesday, March 19, 2008

What's Up Wednesday - March 19, 2008

Amidst the preparation for crazy choral jazziness, I have had some time to ingest a few choice items of pop culture, most of them great, some of them just okay. Can you figure out which is which?

The DVD: I cannot think of anything bad to say about The Umbrellas of Cherbourg. This movie is enchanting: the music, the colours, the beautiful beautiful actors, the gorgeous fluid shots. A French musical from the 60s that puts makes the Hollywood musicals from the era look like they were slapped together with sawdust and plywood, and that goes for the actors as well as the sets. I wanted to watch it again immediately after it was over, but unfortunately I couldn't. But I am keeping it out a few more days to watch over the long weekend. Astounding.

The Album: I love Horace Andy's work with Massive Attack, so I decided to check out one of his better-reviewed albums, Dance Hall Style. It's a really good album, but I don't know enough about reggae to say much more than that. Andy's got a great and distinctive voice that adds a lot of great colours the lyrics, and the tunes are slow, groovy, and perfect as background music or for when you need a bit of spring in your step.

The Comics: Re-reading some of my old stuff in a nearly-impossible attempt at culling the heard. Some were surprisingly as good as I remembered (Warlock & The Infinity Watch), some were first-reads of things that I'd picked up over the past few years (Suicide Squad, which is amazing), and some were just awful (the 1993 Metal Men miniseries; I love the Metal Men but this series is TERRIBLE). A mixed bag, and there are SO many more to get through. I'm going to have to lay off the superheroes, though: start in on my stash of Ape Entertainment books and see what they're all about.

The Video Game: Noah's Ark is a great little break-creator for studying. I liked the free version you can play through PopCap's site, but the official expanded edition is even better. I'm Noah's Wife right now!

The Real-Life:
I've already talked about ChoralFest, and between that and work it's hard to get some time in for studying, but I'm getting through it. I just finished up re-reading an article about male-to-female transsexual voice therapy and surgical options; I don't know if that'll be on the test but it was fascinating! If it does come up on the test I'll have all the answers.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Holy cow, you are on a Popcap tour! ;)

I love Noah's ark, was a good game. Loved Zuma, but my favorite (absolute favorite) was Insaniquarium or whichever one involved fish feeding. So fun!!

Foofa said...

I've been interested in that movie since Canadian Ice Dancers Virtue and Moir have been using the music from it for thier free dance.

The Doc said...

Justice~!, yeah, Insaniquarium was my second favourite, but I always loved Noah's Ark. I'm terrible at Big Money, though. It's embarassing.

Natalie, if that's all you need as impetus to watch it, you should. Glorious. (Also, the song from the end of the Futurama episode that dealt with Fry's dog also uses music from that movie. In case you like things like that.)