Well, dear readers, I came home to a frozen computer, the ubiquitous every two week freeze and while everything is back up, it’s working very slowly which is not good when you have to write notes in a hurry because she of the Evil Eye will be here all too soon. So, Music, formerly iTunes has finally loaded itself so I can listen to Music and since it’s on the A’s I chose Andre Previn’s album Andre Previn in Hollywood. Movie themes with Previn playing piano to his gorgeous orchestrations. And may I say that no one wrote French horn parts like Mr. Previn. Right now, it’s Gigi, the film for which Previn one an Oscar for scoring. And let me just jump to the movie I watched prior to leaving for our evening rehearsal, Patriot Games, which was the follow-up film to The Hunt for Red October, which I don’t think I’ve ever seen all the way through. That one starred Alec Baldwin as Jack Ryan, but Harrison Ford played the role in Patriot Games and Clear and Present Danger. Patriot Games is well directed by Philip Noyce, who also directed Clear and Present Danger. This one’s about a dangerous bunch of Irish terrorists who act outside of the IRA. They blow up a bunch of stuff at the beginning of the film, shooting a lot of innocent bystanders in the process – they just don’t care. Jack Ryan happens to be there in London, with wife and young daughter and they are caught in the fray. He keeps them safe, but watching all the innocent people getting shot up is too much for him and he jumps into the fray, is shot by one of the idiot terrorists and he shoots that terrorist dead. Unfortunately, it’s the brother of one of the other terrorists and he vows revenge on Jack Ryan and family. And I guess there are people delusional enough not to understand that his idiot brother shot Mr. Ryan first and that Mr. Ryan was defending himself. So, a revenge film and a fairly hackneyed plot. The brother who vows revenge is played by Sean Bean, an actor I just don’t care for, and cared for less and less as he became the villain du jour in any number of films over the years. There’s a silly chase at the end on a boat (a re-shot ending, when audiences at test screenings didn’t like the original ending and wanted more action. Ford is always good, Anne Archer is fine, James Earl Jones doesn’t have too much to do, and Richard Harris has a couple of scenes. James Horner’s score makes with the Khachaturian (AGAIN), and other ‘homages’ and I just don’t like his scores for this type of film. I do like quite a few of his scores, though.
Yesterday was okay. Zelle payment two came through, no one really bugged me, I did some more Sami stuff, went to the ATM and made a deposit, went to Gelson’s and got a chicken Caesar salad and a small amount of mac-and-cheese as a side dish. I came home and ate all that, then watched the movie. At six-fifteen, I moseyed on over to the theater and we had a good rehearsal, with me speeding along trying to get everything blocked. We got through the rest of act one and I did some really fun staging for one number, then got through quite a bit of act two, also staging numbers as they came up. The blocking I’m keeping as simple as I can and I’m making sure everyone writes it down in their scripts. So, about ten more pages to do tonight and then we can begin putting it all together. I should have our full cast from here on in. Of course, Doug Haverty will now have to give our missing actor all his blocking and it’s a lot, especially in some of the numbers. He’s done every reading of the show, so hopefully he’ll get with it quickly and some of it remains close to what we did the first time. Then I came home and it was already time to write the notes, but it took about fifteen minutes to even get to the point where I could open the Word document, so they’ll be up about five minutes late. Oh, and Zelle payment three already hit, so that’s done now.
Today, I’ll be up by eight-thirty and out the door by nine, I’ll go have breakfast somewhere – haven’t been to Art’s in quite some time, so maybe that. I’ll do some errands and whatnot, then come home, relax, do stuff on the computer, then I’ll mosey on over to the theater around five-fifteen and we begin our rehearsal at six. If I can get the rest of the act done by seven, we’ll have three hours to assemble everything and then drill some stuff and get our missing actor up to speed on the blocking and staging. Then I’ll come home and write some notes.
Tomorrow, I just need to relax during the day, and then we have another six o’clock rehearsal – hoping for two run-throughs. Monday is more of the same and we’ll try to get two run-throughs in, the Tuesday we’ll do a quick walk-through, mostly for the songs, and then we do performance one at eight. Performance two on Wednesday.
Well, dear readers, I must take the day, I must do the things I do, I must, for example, be up by eight-thirty and out the door by nine, breakfast, do errands and whatnot, come home, relax, then mosey on over to the theater for rehearsal. Today’s topic of discussion: What film franchises do you enjoy and which do you not like? I’m not a franchise kind of guy so I have no response. Your turn. Let’s have loads of lovely postings, shall we, whilst I hit the road to dreamland, happy that the cast is doing really well with our speedy rehearsals, the Evelyn Wood Speed-rehearsing Program.