An Excess of Entertainment

An excess in a good way.

.

Last night Eddie and I went to see "The New Century". It was a comedy at the Lincoln Center written by Paul Rudnick.

.

Paul R is a very very funny man. He has written a lot of plays (including "Jeffery") and punched up a number of movies. He wrote "Adams Family Values" (with Joan Cuzack) and "In and Out" (With Kevin Kline, Tom Selleck and Joan Cuzack).

.

Anywho, The New Century is a series of 3 monologues about gay people. One by Linda Lavin (pictured - she was "Alice" in the TV show for years) as the mother of some odd children. One by a gay who was a flaming over the top gay kicked out of New York for being too fey in the age of "normality". And one by a mid-west mother coming to terms with the death of her son. It doesn't sound funny, but it both cracked me up and made me cry.

.

In the last scene the three of them (and Shane - you have to see it) come together in a maternity ward (where Linda Lavin's daughter is having a little girl) to celebrate life as it is.

.

Turn away... I'm tearing....

.

Loved. It.
-----
I also recently saw the movie "The Fall".
.

Very hard to describe. It is a superbly visually rich movie. The scenes, the mood, the splendor are impossible to capture with words - it is a dialog of visual images.

.

And probably impossible to film for the most part. The director / writer is a music video and commercial director who piggy backed the shot locations with his locations for music videos or commercials, which is how you can afford to shoot a small budget movie at the Pyramids, The Great Wall of China, the Sarah, Tibet, Persia, Spain and the Dead Sea.

.

I say this knowing full well it sounds cliche, but it is a feast for the eyes.
.
The story itself, well it is going to hit people well or poorly. It was horribly reviewed, but I like it.
.
It is the story of a injured stuntman (Lee Pace) and a very young Hungarian? girl with a broken arm together in a hospital. The stuntman tells tales to the girl to keep her involved and to help him steal drugs. See - weird.

.
The tale he tells is seen through her lens - so the Indian (which to the teller is a American Indian) is, in her mind's eye, a turban swathed sheik. The picture below is her idea of what a cowboy- with a vest, cowboy hat and chaps - would look like.
.
The movie also relies on your ability to empathize sometimes with a 5 year old girl with poor English. It worked for me, and you know I am not a fan of kids in movies.
.

So there, I loved it. And Lee Pace (the pie maker) was simply stunning in his acting.