The Conical Glass: If it's Sunday, it must be Belgium

Sunday, February 10, 2008

If it's Sunday, it must be Belgium

My pal Rog writes: "I find I'm less interested in reading (music, movie, theater) reviews and things like that than in reading about the blogger's personal life and their experiences/observations (including humorous observations about daily life)." Unfortunately, my day-to-day life is, quite frankly, dull, and I don't have a lifetime's worth of hilarious David Sedaris-like anecdotes to fall back on (though I've often wondered how much of what Sedaris writes is actually true, or at the very least greatly embellished). So... reviews!

Despite constantly saying that I'm going to cut down on outside entertainment so I can spend more time over the weekends working around the house & yard, there's always something going on that's hard to resist. This weekend, Joe and I finally caught up with "Charlie Wilson's War" (mediocre) and visited the Lucky Ju Ju Pinball Gallery, which is the kind of place I wish had existed when I was a teenager. You pay a $10 admission fee and then you have access to three rooms full of vintage pinball machines, all set for free play. I hadn't played pinball in a long time and wasn't particularly good at it, but if you lose all your balls in the first two minutes, who cares? Hit replay! I played so much pinball that my shoulders started aching. Kids can get in for a mere $5, and I was pleased to see that one dad had brought a few small boys to introduce them to the noble pastime.

Today, we headed over to San Francisco, and it was practically a storybook experience: no aggressive panhandlers, and we only witnessed one act of public urination! Yes, Mayor Newsom really is cleaning up the city! Last summer, I was disappointed to have missed (due to our Jamaica trip) the debut run of Richard Louis James' one-man show "Tea 'n Crisp," in which the extremely gifted Bay Area actor portrays the late gay icon Quentin Crisp. Luckily, the show is now running at the SF Playhouse in honor of the centennial of Crisp's birth, and it's well worth checking out, even if you're not a Crisp devotee (as many in the audience obviously were -- the woman next to me was carrying a hardcover copy of Crisp's autobiography, The Naked Civil Servant.) I first heard about Crisp when I was a teenager, and the British pop label Cherry Red Records released An Evening with Quentin Crisp. He was very funny, and a true English eccentric, but for many gays & straights alike, his message of taking pride in being yourself continues to resonate a decade after his passing. To create the show, James has obviously internalized Crisp's writings & performances to the point where he can, in the second act, take questions from the audience -- even on contemporary issues like cell phones, global warming and gay marriage -- and answer them in a way that seems perfectly Crisp-like.

After "Tea 'n Crisp," we saw the new film "In Bruges." Hearing the initial description of "In Bruges" -- dark comedy about hit men -- I was completely uninterested, since that topic has been done to death ("Grosse Pointe Blank," "Prizzi's Honor," "The Matador," etc.). But then I heard that it was directed and written by Martin McDonagh, the Irish playwright who wrote "The Pillowman." After multiple theatrical successes, McDonagh renounced writing for the stage and declared his intention to focus on film. Surely someone as gifted as McDonagh would bring something new to the subject, right? And indeed he does; "In Bruges" isn't a masterpiece on the level of "The Pillowman," but it is quirky, surreal, profane, offensive, and often uproariously funny. McDonagh's two Irish hit men, played by Colin Farrell and Brendan Gleeson, have been sent to the medieval city of Bruges, Belgium, for some unknown reason by their boss (Ralph Fiennes), and told to await further instructions. Gleeson's Ken delights in the scenery, visiting museums and historic churches, while Farrell's Ray takes an instant dislike to the town until he meets a beautiful young woman on a film set. My first thought was that obviously one of the two hit men would be assigned to kill the other -- isn't that always the case in any film involving a pair of hit men? -- but the script goes off in a lot of weird and random directions and is far from predictable. I particularly enjoyed the setting of Bruges, the kind of place most viewers aren't likely to have visited but will probably be intrigued by after seeing this film. Just watch out for flying bullets.

posted by 125records @ 8:44 PM

1 Comments:

At 5:42 PM, 2fs said…

You wrot: "Today, we headed over to San Francisco, and it was practically a storybook experience: no aggressive panhandlers, and we only witnessed one act of public urination! Yes, Mayor Newsom really is..." - and sure enough, I began reading the second sentence by imagining you were making a joke that it was Mayor Newsom doing the public urinating. Thankfully, you have better taste than that. Unlike myself, it seems.