The problem is, there are a lot of movies. I try to watch at least two a week in my continued education as a novice film producer, but my Netflix queue is already over 250 movies, and new pictures are released into theater every weekend. That doesn’t even begin to count the movies I should rewatch, which range from those meriting frequent repeat viewing (such as Ferris Bueller’s Day Off and The Thomas Crown Affair – taken together, my blueprint for life) to those that I watched so long ago I might as well now consider as having never been viewed (including such classics as the entire Indiana Jones series).

Yes, at times I feel like just giving up, unplugging my DVD player and receding into a wasteland of cultural illiteracy. But then it hits me: movie people are vastly better looking than tech people, and if I forsake the movie part of my professional life, I’ll be forced to look at geeks all the time. At which point, I fire up some popcorn and settle in to my seat – it might not be easy, but a serious devotion to the celluloid past more than pays off. Besides, there are many worse ways to spend an evening than bathing in the flickering glow of a truly American art form brought to life.

Went up to Berkeley last night to see Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater perform three short ballets. The first two – both recently written – left a bit to be desired. Repetitious, dull choreography paired with imprecise, passionless dance. At least the second piece, a West Coast premiere of a ballet written for the Winter Olympic’s Cultural Olympiad, featured imaginative new music by Wynton Marsalis. At many points, I found myself paying more attention to the music than the dance.

The third piece, Revelations, the classic that put Alvin Ailey on the map in 1958, was quite an experience. Not so much because of the ballet itself (which I’d seen performed before, more solidly, several times in the past), but rather because of the audience. Certainly, Revelations is extremely strong and has aged well – but so has Swan Lake, and the New York City Ballet doesn’t perform that every single year. Ailey Dance, however, has performed Revelations nearly non-stop since the early 60’s, largely to the exclusion of Ailey’s 78 other ballets. The audience certainly didn’t mind – they were whooping and screaming, ready to jump to standing ovation. And that was before the piece even began.

Still, I got the odd sense that they were applauding almost for themselves. Look at me, they were saying. I’m sooooo cultured, I even know a ballet. I suspect most of the audience had never attended the acclaimed San Francisco Ballet just across the bay, and most probably never would. So perhaps Alvin Ailey’s clinging to Revelations is a good thing. Sort of the ballet equivalent of smooth jazz – easy, safe, accessible, and with just a taste of the real thing.

Amazingly enough, a fairly large number of people read this site. And many of them send me emails. One of the most common questions I receive (Second to: you realize you’re a self-obsessed, pretentious asshole, right? Answer: yes.) is: how do you have the time to do all of the things you do? Mainly, my secret lies in having given up sleeping and going to the bathroom. But I also try to squeeze additional minutes out of the day through sheer effectiveness. Which is why I was thrilled to discover Book-a-minute, the “ultra-condensed” book summary. Sure, we all want to read the classics. But most of us don’t even have time for Cliff’s Notes. Hence these beautiful summaries. Say you want to read Ken Kesey’s modern classic One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. Here’s what Book-a-minute has boiled it down to:

Nurse Ratched: I destroy my patients psychologically so I can have power and control.
Randall P. McMurph: But freedom and happiness are good things.
Nurse Ratched: Lobotomy time for you, buster.
(McMurphy DIES but inspires HOPE so OTHERS may LIVE.)

THE END

Be sure to visit the similarly indispensable Movie-a-minute. With all the time these sites save, you can finally take up macram

With my parents still in town, we met up last night with one of my father’s oldest childhood friends, Fred Miller (with his wife and daughter in tow). The three of them are a fun and exceedingly musical bunch: Fred grew up with my father, playing protest rock together in Washington Square Park (it apparently scarred them both for life, as the two continue to accumulate guitars and play folk music to this day). Fred’s wife Bess is a professional singer and actress, and it appears his daughter Lauren has also unwittingly been dragged into the fray, as she’s performing in a production of Fiddler that goes up this coming weekend.

With such a group, we were naturally gathered for a Broadway musical (in this case, Urinetown). But we joined up first for dinner at Utsav, an upscale Indian restaurant. The food itself was great, but the concept was a bit off. Indian food is usually served family style, but the high prices seemed to dictate more intensive waiter service. Rather than simply leaving plates of food in the center of the table, the waiters circled us with each dish, divvying up everything we had ordered as they saw fit. While we were forced to surreptitiously redistribute food while the waiters weren’t watching, we did manage to leave the restaurant full and on time, which is pretty much all you can ask from pre-theater dining.

For those not following the current Broadway scene, the oddly named Urinetown is the ‘hot’ musical of the moment. Which is a bit odd, considering it’s basically a neo-Brechtian absurdist melodrama unapologetically espousing the political philosophies of Thomas Malthus. On the other hand, the show is exceedingly campy and funny – it’s sort of a meta-musical, a biting and insightful send-up of the hackneyed formulae for creating successful musicals.

The music itself wasn’t terribly memorable, but the writing was great, and several performances were standouts: two-time Tony winner John Cullum as Caldwell Cladwell, the evil, bunny-obsessed CEO of the equally evil Urine Good Company; Jeff McCarthy as the narrator, Officer Lockstock, who has one foot each in the imaginary world on stage and the real world of theater patrons, translating between the two; and Spencer Kayden as Little Sally, who serves as a foil to Officer Lockstock by questioning the absurdities of the show (and musicals in general).

To be honest, the play felt more Off-Broadway than Broadway, but as the first decent musical since The Producers, it’s been hyped up to the height of Broadway success. Still, it’s definitely worth seeing – just think of it as an extremely well executed MFA thesis project and you’ll be thrilled.