I am not a big movie goer, but this week I've been to the cinema twice. (Which makes it four times this year, I think.)

On Thursday, we went to see Stardust. It is, as you hopefully know, an adaptation of the excellent book by Neil Gaiman, which is a kind of fairy tale for adults. It has received very mixed reviews in Swedish papers, but it seems as if a lot of the reviewers had no idea it was a book to begin with, and it's obvious they hadn't read it. Big surprise there. Not that I don't thin a movie should be able to stand on its own and be enjoyable to people who haven't read the book (which is one reason why I think most books shouldn't be adapted), but if you are going to get paid for reviewing a movie in a newspaper, it should be part of your job to find out the basic facts about it.

In any case, I love the book, and I also loved the movie. It was fun, and beautiful, and although they had changed the story around a lot I didn't feel they had ruined it; the actors were good, and as usual I didn't recognise any of them, even the ones I've probably seen in other movies. An added bonus - for all of us in the theatre if not for anybody else - was the fact that the cinema was virtually empty. There were very few people there, and no children, which meant no loud talking or running around or kicking my seat from behind or any of the other things that tend to make movie going an annoying rather than an enjoyable experience. This experience was very enjoyable indeed.

Yesterday, we went to an afternoon showing of Bergman's The Magic Flute. I have always loved the adaptation - we had it on four or five LP records in a large, square box when I grew up, and I read and re-read the libretto and listened to the records over and over. I thnk I'd seen the adaptation three times before, never on the big screen, and it's been any number of years. So it was a good reunion, with equal parts nostalgia and re-discovery. The story of the opera is a bit thin and silly, but the film is much more than that; I hadn't appreciated the meta parts of it before as much as I did this time. The film is about The Magic Flute being produced as an opera, with glimpses of the audience, the props and scenery very much belonging tto a theatre, and between the acts, we see the Queen of Night smoking a cigarette, Pamina and Tamino playing chess and one of Monostatos' slave boys reading Donald Duck. And of course I love the music. There is nothing difficult or challenging about it, a child can appreciate it (as indeed I did as a child), but I'm not afraid of saying I like it all the same. A few of the arias, such as Sarastro's In Diesen Heil'gen Hallen (I dessa helga salar) almost bring tears to my eyes, they are so beautiful (and Ulrik Cold's voice is just wonderful). The copy of the movie was old and rather scratched in places, occasionally, between scenes I even think there were a few seconds missing. Which made me wonder if I'm ever going to be able to see it again. I should get it on DVD before it's too late, perhaps.

Labels: movies, music

 
We spent last weekend in Helsinki, celebrating the wedding of Eemeli and Saijaa, two friends of ours from the Finnish science fiction fandom. Wedding parties are always fun; this one included the opportunity to come up with names for the twins who are expected in May, as well as the Finnish tradition (which I didn't know before) of the bride being abducted and the groom having to perform and do various tricks until he has collected enough money from the wedding guests to buy his new wife back. (Eemeli can juggle pretty well, even with eggs. He cannot sing, however.)

One of the best parts was the performance by three of the four members of the folk music group Inehmo. They sang six or seven songs during the evening, and wow, are they ever good! Their site is mostly in Finnish, but the link "Ohjelmisto" leads to a page with a few sound clips. Here is a YouTube video of them, again only a short clip of about 30 seconds. I really like Finnish folk music, and I like that type of singing, strong voices without much vibrato. If I understood Tero correctly, one of the members of the group is an old friend of Eemeli's mother, which is why they were hired for the evening. Their first CD (I assume -- the site says "recording") will be out in April. I think I'll try to get hold of that.

Labels: friends, music, personal, singing, weddings

 
The Open Directory Project, where I am a meta editor, was down and out (for the editors if not for the public) from the end of October to the end of December last year. We couldn't log in and edit at all, which led to a terrible abstinence; in fact, I went so far as to start editing intermittently in Wikipedia. I even discovered that I kind of liked it (although I was very happy when the ODP returned) and so I've continued to edit a bit there as well. This morning I wrote a short article about the fiddler Gås-Anders. It was nominated for the "Did you know..." section of Wikipedia's front page, where interesting facts from articles written over the last five days or so are displayed -- I am sure it won't actually be listed in that section but all the same I feel quite pleased.

Writing that article and looking up facts for it also caused me to pick up my violin and play folk music for a good 45 minutes or so. I don't know how many years it has been since I last touched the fiddle; the bow was in a poor state (and I don't have a rosin), my fingers were unused to it and my fingernails are too long, and it did squeak rather a lot. But it was fun, and it sounded much much better than I had thought it would. Johan got home from his shopping trip while I was playing; when I went out into the kitchen and saw him he commented that I probably hadn't heard him return because I had music on -- that is, he'd thought it was a record playing! :-) Of course I haven't played the violin since we married and possibly not even for as long as we've lived together, so hearing music playing he would naturally assume that it was a recording. But still, and anyway.

Labels: Internets, music

 
I read in DN that the hottest single record of 2006 in Sweden, the one most sold in shops and most downloaded from the net, is Who's da Man with 7-year-old Frans. OK, so I know I am not exactly with it when it comes to music, but usually I've at least heard the names of groups or artists. Not so in this case.

I am old.

(Looking it up I discover that it was apparently the official team song for the Swedish football team in last year's World Cup, so there was good reason for me not to have heard it - but still, not even having heard the artist's name... I am old.)

Labels: music, personal

 
I'll try posting this again, then.... so, I went to the Uppsala Choir School's spring concert yesterday. This autumn, it will be 20 years since the school started; I was one of the original 60 pupils, so naturally I have a special relationship to the school, and to the spring concert which I remember as the highlight of the school year. It is something extra, still, to hear the 300+ kids ages 9-19 singing together, in particular as much of the repertoire is the same today as it was in my day. But the concert has changed a lot, too, from the straight-laced affair of the 1980s -- no dancing or dressing up for us, heaven forfend! It's good to see that there has been development, even though I have only good memories from the spring concert, myself.

I met one old class-mate: Linda, whom I don't think I've seen since we finished grade 9 in 1988. I wouldn't have recognised her if it hadn't been for her smile -- in any event, it was really good to see her. We dared each other to crowd up on stage with the other former pupils for the final encore... it's been a few years too many since I sang the rather peculiar alto part to Sommarpsalm that the UCS uses -- it's one of the songs every choir in this country has on its repertoire, but the UCS version is the only one I've encountered where the alto part is mostly the same as the tenor part! It took us half a verse to get into it again, but it's not as if anybody could have noticed, not in that huge choir.

Labels: music, personal, singing