12 Years a Slave

12 Years a Slave won the Academy Award for Best Picture.  I don't think I ever wrote about it, but I did actually see this movie.  I didn't like it much.  Maybe that's why I didn't write about it.

I do like to say the name Chiwetel Ejiofor though, so maybe I should write.

The aforementioned Chiwetel Ejiofor plays Solomon Northup, a free black man who is captured and sold into slavery for -- you guessed it -- 12 years.  Clever title, eh?  He wants to get home.  The whole thing is unjust.

Okay, we get that.  It's not that it wasn't unjust.  It's not that this didn't really happen (actually based on a true story).  It's just that I'm sort of tired of these movies.  That's all.

Bottom line: too much introspection for a story you've heard a hundred times.  There were better options to win the Oscar.  Like, probably, any of them.

Ginastera and Rachmaninoff and Elgar, Oh My!

Grandpa shared a set of symphony tickets with me last weekend.  A solid show all the way through, and fairly contemporary, as classical music goes.

Let's start at the beginning.  First was Ginastera's Variaciones Concertantes.  The music wasn't my favorite, but what was awesome about it was that each movement highlighted a different instrument.  It didn't hurt a bit that it opened with a cello solo, and the first cello is probably my favorite musician in the whole place.  Each section of the music moved on to a new section of the orchestra: flute, clarinet, oboe, contrabassoon, and on and on.  It was neat.

Then came the Rachmaninoff, Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini.  It was amazing to watch the pianist's hands fly over the keys.  Very impressive.

We finished with the title piece, Elgar's Enigma Variations.  I was good and read the blurb in the program about this piece before it started (it was entertaining!), and I found out that he patterned and named each movement after a friend of his, except the last, which he named after himself.  (Humble guy.)  Nimrod, Variation IX, is the most famous.

The piece starts.  We travel from movement to movement.  I'm really not counting.  Then I hear it, and I know this has to be Variation IX -- probably because it sounded familiar and IX was the one I was most likely to have heard before.  Sure enough, I count the rest of the movements and we hit the finale, the trombones play, and Variation XIV, E.D.U., wraps up the show.

It only could have been better if one of my favorite conductors had been there.

Art in Bloom

Rather than venture into the Mardi Gras craziness, T and I set out for the St. Louis Art Museum on Saturday night for their Art in Bloom event.

We started the evening with a lecture by Judith Farr, set designer for Downton Abbey as well as a number of well-known movies.  She talked about the work she does generally, and specifically about working in the castle they use to shoot the TV show, what's shot there and elsewhere, how they get everything set up, continuity between scenes, and so on, with a specific focus on the floral arrangements because of the particular event that was going on.  She is quite a gardener herself, and had a few pictures of her own house; they used flowers from her garden for a number of shots, including several of the wedding posies!  (British people are awesome.  Just FYI.)

From there we wandered the museum to see the works of art in bloom, which is exactly what they were - and quite impressive! Floral designers took inspiration from a work in the museum and created a floral piece which mirrored or interpreted it.  The floral pieces were placed in the galleries close to the originals, which made it easy to see where the design came from.

One of my favorites, though I don't think it won any awards was inspired by Sadak in Search of the Waters of Oblivion.  Want to see the works yourself?  Put it on the calendar for next year.

Goal #9

Goal #9: yoga!

This is a simple goal.  I just need to go once this week.  Good?  Good.  Okay.

Recap of goal #8: I actually got a lot of errands done!  Post office, REI, grocery store, Home Depot, tailor, the haircut (!).  All sorts of things.  I meant to stop at Goodwill, but started daydreaming and drove right past the drop-off location.  T was going by the same spot the next day and offered to take my stuff for me.  So I count that as a total win, but only half mine.  Thanks T!

A Big Change

Hello blogosphere! Just thought you should know I chopped off all my hair.

Actually, that's a lie. I had someone else chop off all my hair.

You'll see it soon enough.

Tenacious Eats

Let's return to that crazy fun week that I'm still not finished telling you about!

It's E's birthday (sorry I forgot to post on my blog!  Here's a belated post for you!)...

...and I had just found out about the strangest thing I've done in a long time.  It's a movie-and-dining program called Tenacious Eats, and it's a little hard to explain coherently. It's described on the website as "full contact eating," but that's not quite right.

This is my clearest and most cogent explanation of it: it's a five-course tasting menu with cocktails, and those are themed around the movie of choice for the evening.  That evening, it was The Princess Bride (no, that website is not a joke).  Seating began at 7:00, but upon my arrival about an hour earlier (at Meyer's Grove in the Grove, just so you're prepared if you choose to go), imagine my surprise to find two people dressed as Wesley and Buttercup rubbing elbows with the early-arriving patrons in the bar.  And there were wooden swords if you felt the need to pseudo-stab someone.  And also medieval dancing.

Eventually we were seated, and boy was it cozy.  They really could use a larger venue.  Or better yet, sell fewer tickets.  You'll keep demand high, and your guests will be much more comfortable.  Oh, another thing to be prepared for: there's a good chance you'll be at a table with people you don't know, so come prepared to chat.

Before the movie started, we met our emcee.  Actually, he was the guy in charge of the seating, so we had met him before, but not in that capacity.  He was certainly amusing, but you have to be able to laugh at a gay guy making mostly inappropriate jokes or you'll want to hide under your very small table.

But then the movie starts.  And the food.  Creative and delicious!  Here's what we had:

There's an intermission mid-movie to allow them to reset the tables and give everyone a bathroom break, and on we went with the show.  At the end was the audience participation section.  It was amusing to view, but I would have died if I had been on stage.  I won't even tell you what they had their four contestants competing to do.  We we at a gay bar.  There were wooden swords.  Use your imagination.

All in all, a very strange and memorable experience.  There's a pretty good chance I'll go back for another one.  Anyone interested?

Goal #8

Goal #8: run errands.

I sequestered myself in my apartment for most of the weekend.  I had a lot of stuff that needed to get done.  Some of it did.  The truth is, just looking at it, it's a little disappointing.  I was hoping it would be visibly different, visually shocking, by the end of the weekend.  It's not.

What I did put together was a huge list of errands to run.  I have a whole pile of things that need to be donated, dropped off, repaired, replaced, delivered, etc.  Hopefully this week I can get a lot of that stuff out of my trunk and to its proper destination.

Recap of goal #7: I survived the week mostly uninjured!  A little scrape on the finger when I got a fraction of an inch too close to a concrete wall in the parking garage at my office, but that hardly counts.  There were no more severed fingers, so I count that as a win!

St. Louis's Best Bread Puddings

A while back, on the Tuesday of my week of spectacular fun, I went to dinner with P at Jimmy's.

We had planned on getting together to catch up, and it had to be Jimmy's because of a couple of things that had happened on evenings just prior to that.  Saturday night, after The Other Place, a few members of our crew headed over to Cyrano's for some post-show drinks (a New Fashioned for me) and dessert.  I tasted lots of different desserts, but the one I ordered for myself (actually to share with C) was the caramel brioche bread pudding.  An excellent choice!

The following night, Uncle J was in town and he took G&G, A, and me out to dinner at Harvest. Everything was delicious and I managed to save some room for dessert.  As I was perusing the menu and considering something chocolatey, the waiter said, "you have to try our bread pudding - we're famous for it!"  Okay then.  It was also a caramel bread pudding, and very similar to what I had the night before, and just as delicious.

So, this brings me back to Jimmy's.  The reason I needed to go there was to complete the trifecta of the town's best bread puddings.  Jimmy's wins the award for thinking out of the box.  Their pudding is a croissant bread pudding with chocolate and some type of fruit in it.  And rather than the caramel sauce, they opt for a creme anglaise.  A very different flavor, but I think it might be my favorite.

Try them for yourself and see what you think!

Oscar-Nominated Short Films

Saturday was The Other Place.  Sunday was The Monuments Men.

Monday I went to a screening of all the Oscar-nominated animated and live action short films.  The shortest summary I can give you is that it was a great way to spend an evening, and I definitely got bang for the buck.  For the price of a regular movie ticket, I left feeling like I had seen a half dozen animated movies.  And then I did it again an hour later for the live action shorts.

I'll give you a brief thought or two on each of the films, but I highly recommend checking theaters around where you are to see if there are any screenings coming up!  (Links are to websites and/or trailers.)

Animated

Feral: A well-told tale, but definitely the darkest of the five.

Room on the Broom: A cute adaptation of a children's book, but a bit longer than seemed necessary.

Mr. Hublot: my favorite - a tale of a lonely man and his new pal.  Simply adorable.

Possessions: my friend M, who knows much more about Shitoism than I do, appreciated this one more than I did.  Even without that background knowledge, it was still an enjoyable tale.

Get a Horse!: classic Mickey, re-imagined.

Live Action

That Wasn't Me: the cringe-worthy tale of a child soldier in Africa.  I watched much of this one through one closed eye.  Part of it I could only listen to.

Just Before Losing Everything: I was surprised by how involved I got in the plight of a woman trying to escape her abusive husband. 

Helium: heart-wrenching.  Great.

Do I Have to Take Care of Everything?: an amusing peek into life with kids.

The Voorman Problem: exactly what you want from a short film.  Tells a story, makes you think, ends.

What I Watched -- The Monuments Men

My boyfriend Matt Damon is in a new movie, so of course I had to go pay him a visit!  (You can see his latest wacky bromance publicity stunt with Ben Affleck here.)

The Monuments Men - which is a weird-sounding name, but makes sense when you know what the movie is about - tells the adventurous true tale of a past-their-prime band of artists, architects, professors, and the like, who wade into a war where they kinda don't belong to complete a task that most higher-ups kinda don't care about.

Their job is to track down all the art - paintings, sculptures, and most famously the Ghent Altarpiece - which were stolen by the Nazis as they marched across and raided western Europe.

As a war movie, The Monuments Men leaves a lot to be desired.  It skips over the strategy, the battles, and really most of the stuff that makes a war movie a war movie.  But as a sometimes comedic, almost family-friendly, mostly historically accurate story that happens to have war as a backdrop, it's pretty entertaining.  And it has quite a cast!  My boyfriend Matt is the baby of the group.  He is led by silver-haired George Clooney, and joined by the likes of Bill Murray, Bob Balaban, Hugh Bonneville, John Goodman, and Jean Dujardin (who is actually the baby, 2 years younger than Matt).

Bottom line: don't expect Saving Private Ryan or Glory.  Expect goofy guys chasing art and trying to learn how firearms work.  If you're okay with that, you'll be okay with the movie.