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Everything I have watched this weekend was AWESOME. I did finally get hold of both parts of The Sarah Jane Adventures, and watched that, and it was awesome. I figured out how to watch the ready-to-burn-to-DVD conversion of the 2006 revival of Evita bootleg I've had for a while (turns out you don't need to do the actual burning to watch it with the DVD Player program, as long as you've got all the right files, which . . . duh, oops), and it was awesome. And I just watched 3x02 of The Thick of It, and it was FUCKING AWESOME.
And I have to read a huge chunk of Jude the Obscure today (I have a movie I am also going to watch, with Christopher Eccleston and Kate Winslet; it and Sparknotes are Plan B if I run out of time/brain/will to live), so it is obvsly very important that I tell you in detail about how awesome each awesome thing was.
I loved this story. It was easily the best the show has been since series one, and would have been even if it hadn't also been a Major Crossover Event. I'm not much for romance stories, but seeing Sarah Jane so happy over the realization that she could, indeed, have some romance in her life made me glee. Happy Sarah Jane is a good thing. Also a good thing was seeing the kids happy for her - even Clyde, for all his disgust over senior citizen PDA, was the first to ask, "So who's the lucky fella?" And Luke and Sarah Jane having a bit of banter over finding the right way to tell Peter about the whole "aliens and saving the world" thing was funny and adorable. Luke's sense of humor has really come a long way.
So, yeah, it was obvious from the start that Peter Dalton was bad news, even before the hypnotic engagement ring of doom, but all the happiness stemming from the relationship had me hoping really, really hard that he would turn out to be some kind of pawn and not be evil at all. Maybe he and Sarah Jane would be able to stay together! Maybe he'd be a part time guest star and end up helping save the world too! Or maybe he'd just be an off-screen character who'd get referred to now and then, that's okay, as long as he doesn't -
- have to sacrifice his own life to save Sarah Jane, the kids, and the world, leaving her to exit her own wedding alone, in that beautiful dress, her eyes brimming with tears as she apologized and explained that the wedding had been cancelled.
FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUCK.
At least he wasn't evil. But JESUS. Way to rub it in with all that stuff about how he and Sarah Jane were made for each other, and they fell in love on their own without the Trickster's influence, and her love gives him the strength to do the right thing that he had lacked on his own. GODDAMMIT SHOW. YOU ARE NOT SUPPOSED TO BREAK MY FUCKING HEART LIKE THAT. THAT IS DOCTOR WHO'S JOB.
Well, the Doctor's presence does explain that, I suppose. Ten cannot help but spread the tragedy and emo wherever he shall go. Which is too bad, because I really enjoyed seeing him again. It has been TOO LONG since the last special. And that one was not, as I recall, very good.
He was so great interacting with the kids, though - I almost don't want to talk about it too much, since it's been a couple days since I watched the ep so it's not as clear in my head as it usually is when I do these, so I know I'll miss like all my favorite stuff. So let's skip past that, 'cause I can always come back to it after I watch the ep again, and focus a little on the wonderment that is Clyde Langer. Again, some more.
Clyde has really developed wonderfully from primarily being comic relief to being a brave kid who's smarter than he thinks he is, and is still the comic relief. Clowning around and taking it too far is part of Clyde's character; he wouldn't be Clyde if he lost that, and the writers know it. But his complete lack of hesitation in realizing that he had become the key to defeating, or at least distracting, the Trickster was lovely. And yeah, I think part of it is the adolescent belief in his own immortality (and SJA's low body count doesn't hurt that conviction either), but he still knew it was dangerous. That's a quality the kids all share - Luke, Rani, or Maria would have done the same in a heartbeat - but for a character who started off as almost an afterthought (he was a replacement for Kelsey to even out the boy-girl character count on the show, and also I suspect because she was fucking annoying and everyone hated her anyway) it's especially great to see.
To get back to the Doctor: I think one of my very favorite things about his visit was how much he talked up the importance of Sarah Jane and the kids and her attic. They are vital to the survival of the Earth, and he knows it. And you know who he didn't mention once, not even in passing, not even a "sure, there's some back-up, but"? TORCHWOOD. Because SJA and Co are awesome at everything Torchwood sucks at. Even the Doctor knows it. Since I have long wondered about how these shows are all meant to mesh together, and where the fuck the trained professionals were during little incidents like THE MOON HURTLING TOWARD THE EARTH, this cracked me right up. Here's the real reason why the Doctor didn't show up for the 456: he assumed Sarah Jane and the kids had it under control! I bet they did, too. Probably if Jack had just waited another five minutes, Stephen would still be alive today.
*
Evita was really fun to watch. The only production of it I've ever seen is the movie, which, my issues with that are a whole post all by itself. A while back, I wrote a post comparing performances on the four production soundtracks I had listened to so far, and this was one of them. Having the visuals, AND the complete performances (curse you, soundtrack, for being highlights only! CURSE YOU!), made as big a difference some ways as I thought it would, and not as much in others.
For starters, the apparent appeal of Elena Rogers (as I recall from reading reviews, the reviewers really seemed to like her) has become clearer. Her singing is better on the stage, which doesn't surprise me much, and her presence is much more solid. She's a great dancer, has good chemistry with Rawle and Quast, and one of the parts that got cut from the album really shows where her strengths lie. It's the spoken speech Eva gives after "Don't Cry For Me, Argentina," which Rogers delivers with this huge, unlovely bellow that really carries and grabs the attention and sounds like a commanding woman wanting to make herself heard to a crowd under a balcony. It works so much better than when she attempts to sing the bits in, for example "A New Argentina" that operate on roughly the same principle, and it all makes me think that she'd be much, much better in the role if it were a speaking part instead.
Matt Rawle: Still my favorite Ché forevers. Watching him in the role did nothing but confirm that, at least as far as his performance went. What it did do was to make Ché crystallize for me, for the first time, as a representation of Evita's conscience. He isn't just an embittered decamisado, empowered by the narrative to speak his mind without fear of repercussion. He is part of Eva, too, the part of her who watches and hates what she became to get what she wanted. This has been pointed out to me before, but it hasn't clicked until now, and it does - oddly enough for the most openly cynical character in the play - soften the cynicism of the story by giving Eva a voice that doesn't support and champion all the things she and Perón do in the name of power. Which, since the real Evita was not in fact an evil harpy who did nothing but oppress EVERYONE omg, makes me happy, and it also deepens and ties together the story and Eva's character in a way that makes it all work better for me than it did before.
I already knew, from the completeness of the Broadway soundtrack, that the part that suffered the most from all the cuts on the album was Perón's. Since I searched the thing out in the first place largely because of Philip Quast, this made me cranky because I suspected that the stuff that got cut, like Perón's benefit speeches and his moments of doubt during "A New Argentina," was really really good. Now I am even crankier, because I was absolutely correct and the soundtrack will never quite do it for me ever again.
*sulk*
Need I even tell you that Quast's performance is brilliant? I mean, I am as biased as they come since he is automatically my favorite in every role he ever performs anyway, but - so good. So, so good. His Perón is slick and duplicitous, but finds himself relying a good deal on Eva's strength and determination. His intro number, "The Lady Has Potential," which I raved about before, is a billion times better watched than listened to. (Note: I am not in any way using cute little euphemisms in the following description of the choreography. This is what actually happens.) The way Perón dances with and seduces the various men who sing the song with him, only to knee them in the balls in the last second, just before the embrace (or the kiss) is achieved, is several things at once: an effective portrayal of the idea of political bedfellows; a neatly done parallel to Eva's own more literal seduction and discarding of her partners in "Goodnight and Thank You a few moments prior; a very funny bit of meta for those of us who know how the real Perón felt about being kissed by men (the phrase "it disgusts me" was used in his autobiography, and yes, there's a good reason why it came up); and really fucking hot. Okay, that last might be because, nine times out of ten, I think the sexiest kiss is the kiss that doesn't quite happen. It also probably has something to do with the fact that, as![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
bethan_b_bad astutely pointed out in her recent La Cage aux Folles picspam (WARNING: huge picspam is HUGE), Philip Quast could have chemistry with a brick wall.
All of this has come together to leave me with one important conclusion: I want some Perón/Ché like burning. It would technically be Perón/Eva, after all, right?
. . . yeah, I got kinda sidetracked there for a second. Well, I've been writing this for about an hour and a half now, I'm getting a little loopy. ANYWAY. Speaking of Perón/Eva, Quast does some wonderful work with both the spoken/sung and silent parts of Perón's relationship with his wife, both political and personal. The songs don't do much of anything with Perón's initial realization that Evita's popularity has eclipsed his own, so it's up to Quast to show that. His reactions to the crowd calling for Evita during his inauguration, and his underlings pointing out during "Rainbow Tour" that "the wife's a phenomenal asset/Your trump card" are understated but strong - Perón is surprised, and his ego is stung, but he is a politician and he knows that Eva's popularity is his strength, too, so he accepts it as it is and never tries to fight it. I wish Quast had had a little more room to work with that, because what he gives us is interesting.
And what he does with Perón's grief and despair over Eva's illness and impending death . . . this is a Perón who loves his wife, not just what she does for his career, but her, and his terror when she collapses soon after he has blurted out that she is dying ("This talk of death is chilling. Of course you are not going to die." Oh, Juan) and he thinks for a heartstopping moment that she might be dead - let's just say that I think I finally ship it and leave it at that.
Man, I think I just depressed myself right out of an adequate discussion of The Thick of It. To say nothing of how long it's taken to write this so far, man, my brain hurts. (I refuse to proofread.) I'm not sure I'm up to it in general, anyway - the show has changed in really interesting ways with a new Minister, and a woman at that, and what seems to be a subtle difference in Malcolm Tucker's explosions. He's still funny as hell, but there's been a moment or two where Peter Capaldi's performance is more rawly furious than I recall it being before; it's much easier to see that Malcolm is going to give himself a stroke long before he has a chance to retire. I think I want to see how the show progresses for a couple more episodes, how the dynamic in the office firms up with the new member, and maybe rewatch the previous episodes before I go in depth. I do think that, so far, the show has only gotten better, and I will leave you with a Malcolmism that I choose to interpret as a subtle shout-out to Children of Earth (paraphrased a bit):
"Do you know, Malcolm? How to best clear up a paper jam?"
". . . do I know how to best clear up a paper jam? How about you try killing a kid an hour until it sorts itself out?"
(. . . I so badly crave a fusion crackfic with Malcolm replacing John Frobisher for the events of CoE. I cannot even.)
And I have to read a huge chunk of Jude the Obscure today (I have a movie I am also going to watch, with Christopher Eccleston and Kate Winslet; it and Sparknotes are Plan B if I run out of time/brain/will to live), so it is obvsly very important that I tell you in detail about how awesome each awesome thing was.
I loved this story. It was easily the best the show has been since series one, and would have been even if it hadn't also been a Major Crossover Event. I'm not much for romance stories, but seeing Sarah Jane so happy over the realization that she could, indeed, have some romance in her life made me glee. Happy Sarah Jane is a good thing. Also a good thing was seeing the kids happy for her - even Clyde, for all his disgust over senior citizen PDA, was the first to ask, "So who's the lucky fella?" And Luke and Sarah Jane having a bit of banter over finding the right way to tell Peter about the whole "aliens and saving the world" thing was funny and adorable. Luke's sense of humor has really come a long way.
So, yeah, it was obvious from the start that Peter Dalton was bad news, even before the hypnotic engagement ring of doom, but all the happiness stemming from the relationship had me hoping really, really hard that he would turn out to be some kind of pawn and not be evil at all. Maybe he and Sarah Jane would be able to stay together! Maybe he'd be a part time guest star and end up helping save the world too! Or maybe he'd just be an off-screen character who'd get referred to now and then, that's okay, as long as he doesn't -
- have to sacrifice his own life to save Sarah Jane, the kids, and the world, leaving her to exit her own wedding alone, in that beautiful dress, her eyes brimming with tears as she apologized and explained that the wedding had been cancelled.
FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUCK.
At least he wasn't evil. But JESUS. Way to rub it in with all that stuff about how he and Sarah Jane were made for each other, and they fell in love on their own without the Trickster's influence, and her love gives him the strength to do the right thing that he had lacked on his own. GODDAMMIT SHOW. YOU ARE NOT SUPPOSED TO BREAK MY FUCKING HEART LIKE THAT. THAT IS DOCTOR WHO'S JOB.
Well, the Doctor's presence does explain that, I suppose. Ten cannot help but spread the tragedy and emo wherever he shall go. Which is too bad, because I really enjoyed seeing him again. It has been TOO LONG since the last special. And that one was not, as I recall, very good.
He was so great interacting with the kids, though - I almost don't want to talk about it too much, since it's been a couple days since I watched the ep so it's not as clear in my head as it usually is when I do these, so I know I'll miss like all my favorite stuff. So let's skip past that, 'cause I can always come back to it after I watch the ep again, and focus a little on the wonderment that is Clyde Langer. Again, some more.
Clyde has really developed wonderfully from primarily being comic relief to being a brave kid who's smarter than he thinks he is, and is still the comic relief. Clowning around and taking it too far is part of Clyde's character; he wouldn't be Clyde if he lost that, and the writers know it. But his complete lack of hesitation in realizing that he had become the key to defeating, or at least distracting, the Trickster was lovely. And yeah, I think part of it is the adolescent belief in his own immortality (and SJA's low body count doesn't hurt that conviction either), but he still knew it was dangerous. That's a quality the kids all share - Luke, Rani, or Maria would have done the same in a heartbeat - but for a character who started off as almost an afterthought (he was a replacement for Kelsey to even out the boy-girl character count on the show, and also I suspect because she was fucking annoying and everyone hated her anyway) it's especially great to see.
To get back to the Doctor: I think one of my very favorite things about his visit was how much he talked up the importance of Sarah Jane and the kids and her attic. They are vital to the survival of the Earth, and he knows it. And you know who he didn't mention once, not even in passing, not even a "sure, there's some back-up, but"? TORCHWOOD. Because SJA and Co are awesome at everything Torchwood sucks at. Even the Doctor knows it. Since I have long wondered about how these shows are all meant to mesh together, and where the fuck the trained professionals were during little incidents like THE MOON HURTLING TOWARD THE EARTH, this cracked me right up. Here's the real reason why the Doctor didn't show up for the 456: he assumed Sarah Jane and the kids had it under control! I bet they did, too. Probably if Jack had just waited another five minutes, Stephen would still be alive today.
*
Evita was really fun to watch. The only production of it I've ever seen is the movie, which, my issues with that are a whole post all by itself. A while back, I wrote a post comparing performances on the four production soundtracks I had listened to so far, and this was one of them. Having the visuals, AND the complete performances (curse you, soundtrack, for being highlights only! CURSE YOU!), made as big a difference some ways as I thought it would, and not as much in others.
For starters, the apparent appeal of Elena Rogers (as I recall from reading reviews, the reviewers really seemed to like her) has become clearer. Her singing is better on the stage, which doesn't surprise me much, and her presence is much more solid. She's a great dancer, has good chemistry with Rawle and Quast, and one of the parts that got cut from the album really shows where her strengths lie. It's the spoken speech Eva gives after "Don't Cry For Me, Argentina," which Rogers delivers with this huge, unlovely bellow that really carries and grabs the attention and sounds like a commanding woman wanting to make herself heard to a crowd under a balcony. It works so much better than when she attempts to sing the bits in, for example "A New Argentina" that operate on roughly the same principle, and it all makes me think that she'd be much, much better in the role if it were a speaking part instead.
Matt Rawle: Still my favorite Ché forevers. Watching him in the role did nothing but confirm that, at least as far as his performance went. What it did do was to make Ché crystallize for me, for the first time, as a representation of Evita's conscience. He isn't just an embittered decamisado, empowered by the narrative to speak his mind without fear of repercussion. He is part of Eva, too, the part of her who watches and hates what she became to get what she wanted. This has been pointed out to me before, but it hasn't clicked until now, and it does - oddly enough for the most openly cynical character in the play - soften the cynicism of the story by giving Eva a voice that doesn't support and champion all the things she and Perón do in the name of power. Which, since the real Evita was not in fact an evil harpy who did nothing but oppress EVERYONE omg, makes me happy, and it also deepens and ties together the story and Eva's character in a way that makes it all work better for me than it did before.
I already knew, from the completeness of the Broadway soundtrack, that the part that suffered the most from all the cuts on the album was Perón's. Since I searched the thing out in the first place largely because of Philip Quast, this made me cranky because I suspected that the stuff that got cut, like Perón's benefit speeches and his moments of doubt during "A New Argentina," was really really good. Now I am even crankier, because I was absolutely correct and the soundtrack will never quite do it for me ever again.
*sulk*
Need I even tell you that Quast's performance is brilliant? I mean, I am as biased as they come since he is automatically my favorite in every role he ever performs anyway, but - so good. So, so good. His Perón is slick and duplicitous, but finds himself relying a good deal on Eva's strength and determination. His intro number, "The Lady Has Potential," which I raved about before, is a billion times better watched than listened to. (Note: I am not in any way using cute little euphemisms in the following description of the choreography. This is what actually happens.) The way Perón dances with and seduces the various men who sing the song with him, only to knee them in the balls in the last second, just before the embrace (or the kiss) is achieved, is several things at once: an effective portrayal of the idea of political bedfellows; a neatly done parallel to Eva's own more literal seduction and discarding of her partners in "Goodnight and Thank You a few moments prior; a very funny bit of meta for those of us who know how the real Perón felt about being kissed by men (the phrase "it disgusts me" was used in his autobiography, and yes, there's a good reason why it came up); and really fucking hot. Okay, that last might be because, nine times out of ten, I think the sexiest kiss is the kiss that doesn't quite happen. It also probably has something to do with the fact that, as
bethan_b_bad astutely pointed out in her recent La Cage aux Folles picspam (WARNING: huge picspam is HUGE), Philip Quast could have chemistry with a brick wall.All of this has come together to leave me with one important conclusion: I want some Perón/Ché like burning. It would technically be Perón/Eva, after all, right?
. . . yeah, I got kinda sidetracked there for a second. Well, I've been writing this for about an hour and a half now, I'm getting a little loopy. ANYWAY. Speaking of Perón/Eva, Quast does some wonderful work with both the spoken/sung and silent parts of Perón's relationship with his wife, both political and personal. The songs don't do much of anything with Perón's initial realization that Evita's popularity has eclipsed his own, so it's up to Quast to show that. His reactions to the crowd calling for Evita during his inauguration, and his underlings pointing out during "Rainbow Tour" that "the wife's a phenomenal asset/Your trump card" are understated but strong - Perón is surprised, and his ego is stung, but he is a politician and he knows that Eva's popularity is his strength, too, so he accepts it as it is and never tries to fight it. I wish Quast had had a little more room to work with that, because what he gives us is interesting.
And what he does with Perón's grief and despair over Eva's illness and impending death . . . this is a Perón who loves his wife, not just what she does for his career, but her, and his terror when she collapses soon after he has blurted out that she is dying ("This talk of death is chilling. Of course you are not going to die." Oh, Juan) and he thinks for a heartstopping moment that she might be dead - let's just say that I think I finally ship it and leave it at that.
Man, I think I just depressed myself right out of an adequate discussion of The Thick of It. To say nothing of how long it's taken to write this so far, man, my brain hurts. (I refuse to proofread.) I'm not sure I'm up to it in general, anyway - the show has changed in really interesting ways with a new Minister, and a woman at that, and what seems to be a subtle difference in Malcolm Tucker's explosions. He's still funny as hell, but there's been a moment or two where Peter Capaldi's performance is more rawly furious than I recall it being before; it's much easier to see that Malcolm is going to give himself a stroke long before he has a chance to retire. I think I want to see how the show progresses for a couple more episodes, how the dynamic in the office firms up with the new member, and maybe rewatch the previous episodes before I go in depth. I do think that, so far, the show has only gotten better, and I will leave you with a Malcolmism that I choose to interpret as a subtle shout-out to Children of Earth (paraphrased a bit):
"Do you know, Malcolm? How to best clear up a paper jam?"
". . . do I know how to best clear up a paper jam? How about you try killing a kid an hour until it sorts itself out?"
(. . . I so badly crave a fusion crackfic with Malcolm replacing John Frobisher for the events of CoE. I cannot even.)