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Tuesday, December 29, 2015
Bryan Cranston in TRUMBO
Most people my age, myself included, did not know anything about him. I was fascinated by the name I saw in my friend's book (which had a picture of a soldier running against a hand doing a victory sign -- which to us in the 1970s was a peace sign). I did not know anybody called Dalton or Trumbo, for that matter. I'm sure my classmate, a tall, lanky boy with buck teeth named John O'Toole, was reading the book because it had been reissued in paperback as a result of a film having been released in 1971 (with a screenplay by Trumbo himself). And I'm sure he was curious about its lurid content. In the early 70s, the story of an American soldier, horribly deformed as a result of a mortar shell explosion in World War I was a thinly veiled anti-war comment on our involvement in Southeast Asia.
The film Trumbo feels as if its creators also had little knowledge of the man and the period. The film doesn't really feel like it was written, but more like it was cut and pasted from Wikipedia articles. Somehow, this biopic should have been told as a theater piece, and not as a movie. Film is too inquisitive and too exacting. Actors can bring to life such luminaries from the silver screen as John Wayne and Edward G. Robinson onstage, aided by the magic of theater. However, film puts up a roadblock whenever well-known icons have to be represented. As a result the attempt to recreate Hollywood in the late 1940s and 50s fails to persuade us. It feels like a sendup of Hollywood and not a loving recreation. Bryan Cranston's performance as Trumbo has its moments, but often he opts for an over-the-top approach. And unfortunately, it is also very clear that there are scenes that have been included only to make sure that he has a chance to garner a Best Actor nomination.
Only John Goodman as scumbag producer Frank King, and Helen Mirren as Hollywood's power broker Hedda Hopper survive the superficial approach this film takes. Christian Berkel as Otto Preminger and David James Elliott as John Wayne create minor caricatures, while Diane Lane, playing Cleo, Trumbo's wife, is just another person that we want to get to know better, but the film does not allow us to do so.
I learned a few facts about Mr. Trumbo but the film does not get under the man's skin, which is what any successful biopic must do. In many ways I was reminded of myself back in grammar school, a boy who did not know who this Dalton Trumbo was even though I had just been with the man for over two hours.
Sunday, November 15, 2015
Lulu at the Metropolitan Opera
The complete Lulu was first presented at the MET in 1980 with Teresa Stratas taking on the challenging title role and James Levine conducting the angular, expressionistic, taxing score: a musical revelation for those of us that were lucky enough to be present at those performances. In this go-around, Mr. Levine was supposed to take up the challenge of conducting once more, but unfortunately it seems that his failing health has not allowed him to do so. I'm not sure if given his current health issues he would be able to take up the challenge of conducting this complex work. Last month I noticed that his Tannhäuser was lackluster. Some might argue that Mr. Levine is mellowing with age; that might be true, but what I heard coming from the pit was a lack of energy, not a deepening of musical ideas. His choice to step down for this production was a wise one, since German conductor Lothar Koenigs, who is a specialist in 20th century music, led a vibrant reading of Berg's score. His conducting was sinuous and sultry at times, and he trusted the forces of the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra enough to let go of their reins and allow them to make some earth-shaking sounds during the dramatic moments of the score.
Taking on the title role in this production is German soprano Marlis Petersen, who has made a career playing this role (and who will put the role to rest after this production). She has no problem bringing this heroine to life: her strong soprano is able to sail the high tessitura that the role demands, and her sexy body conveys the erotic side of the character (is there another side?) beautifully. On a personal level, I am glad that she is putting this role to sleep. Too much twelve-tone singing and pretty soon you will find yourself without any legato! She will play Rosalinde in Die Fledermaus at Munich's Bavarian State Opera. I'm sure that will be a much more "pleasant to the ear" and it will sit in her voice beautifully.
Johan Reuter playing the dual role of Dr. Schön/Jack the Ripper was strong of voice and proved to be a gifted actor. Susan Graham made deep impressions as Countess Geschwitz (perhaps the only decent character in this story) and Paul Groves as the painter and the African Prince was vocally memorable.
Although it might not be for everybody (I saw a lot of young kids with their parents last night -- I hope their parents tried to explain something about the music to them!) this production of Lulu is not to be missed. Just go in there with an open mind, and chances are that your perception of what music can be, and what it can be achieved will be challenged. After all, that's what good opera should be doing through every performance.
Saturday, November 07, 2015
Spotlight: the Best Film of the Year
When Martin Baron (Liev Schreiber), a Jewish newspaper editor arrives in Irish Catholic Boston from the Miami Herald he encourages a small group of reporters to dig into the labyrinthine world of the Boston archdiocese, which at that time was headed by Cardinal Bernard Law. As New York Times critic A.O. Scott noted in his fine review of this film, Cardinal Law's opinion that "the city flourishes when the great institutions work together," is the major reason why the sexual molestation of thousands of children was covered up by the powers that be. Mr. Scott added that "when institutions convinced of their own greatness work together, what usually happens is that the truth is buried and the innocent suffer." Truer words were never spoken.
The incredible cast is headed by Michael Keaton and John Slattery as Boston Globe editors, and it features Mark Ruffalo, Rachel McAdams, and Brian d'Arcy James as Globe reporters. Stanley Tucci and Billy Crudup give memorable performances as attorneys, and Len Cariou is chilling as Cardinal Law. To watch this amazing cast at work is to marvel at the power of great filmmaking. The script by Josh Singer and director Tom McCarthy is a marvel of economy, deserving of all the praise that it will receive come award season.
Is it possible that Hollywood has awaken from its horrid summer slumber and is once again producing films for adults featuring three dimensional characters and issues of real importance? I hope that Spotlight serves as the game changer, and that it heralds a new generation of smart, thought-provoking cinema.
Sunday, October 04, 2015
NYFF: Steve Jobs
As usual, Michael Fassbender morphs effortlessly into the title character, giving a subdued performance where he balances the Zen-like public Jobs with a private man who is acquainted with personal demons. Kate Winslet is also brilliant in her role of an Apple executive who is part lion tamer to Steve Job's beast, and part unfulfilled love interest. Jeff Daniels as Apple's CEO, Michael Stuhlbarg as a member of the original Macintosh team, and Seth Rogen as Apple co-creator Steve Wozniak give memorable performances.
At the heart of this film is Steve Job's rocky relation to Chrisann Brennan (played by Katherine Waterstone), Jobs's high school girlfriend, and his daughter Lisa, who throughout the film grows to a college-age student, and is memorably played by Brazilian newcomer Perla Haney-Jardine.
Behind the scenes, Alwin Küchler's cinematography runs the gamut from grainy filmstock for the 1980's scenes, and switches to digital as the story progresses, and Daniel Pemberton's score has a driving, subliminal beat. Danny Boyle's direction is surprisingly subdued, as is required by this very subtle script.
Sunday, September 27, 2015
NYFF: The Walk
In his latest film, The Walk, he takes us to the gritty, graffiti-filled New York 1970s, when the buildings of the World Trade Center were just the tallest structures in the world, far from the symbols of nostalgia and grief that they would become. The plot of the movie tells how an obsessed French aerialist came to be absorbed by the structures. Philippe Pettit could not help himself when it came to setting a high tension wire between the two buildings so he could walk across them, and although the film might glorify his soft-shoe 1974 routine high above the skyline of New York City, the film is really a paean to the lost Twin Towers, which Mr. Zemeckis recreates with a loving touch.
When a movie focuses on such a mythic, colossal structure, it's hard to squeeze in memorable performances. Joseph Gordon-Levitt manages to bring Mr. Pettit to life, but just barely, by donning an outrageous accent along with an equal histrionic manner. Subtle acting, it is not. In many ways, his performance mirrors Mr. Zemeckis's approach to the whole story. At the outset, for example, the director portrays Paris in a busy half black-and-white which tries to remind us of the French New Wave. Here Mr. Pettit runs into street musician Annie (Charlotte Le Bon), and it's love at first sight. But their boy-meets-girl fairy-tale story has no middle or depth as it leads to its nostalgic, predestined separation conclusion. Ben Kingsley, as Papa Rudy, a mentor figure, is a memorable Yoda character, but his wild eastern European accent (it's suppose to be Czech) is reminiscent of some of the foreign accents heard from Laurence Olivier towards the end of his career. I guess when the movie is all about recreating a building something's gotta give.
Still, the movie is worth seeing from the technical point of view. Not Since Martin Scorsese's Hugo have we seen a better use of 3D. Mr. Zemeckis is a born showman, and he is not afraid to pull all the stops when it comes to using this technology. He knows that the audience likes to have objects come flying at them when they go to see a 3D movie, and of course he's not shy in giving it to us. But beyond the stereotypical effects, it is in the creation of a marvelous sense of depth and dizzying sense of vertigo that The Walk excels. And although a homage to bygone days is primarily at the heart of this film, it is the brilliant use of technology that at the end leaves us with the most satisfying cinematic moments.
Saturday, September 19, 2015
Pope Francis is finally in the Americas
Monday, August 24, 2015
New Documentary About Jackson Heights
"In Jackson Heights"
Frederick Wiseman, USA, 2015, DCP, 190m
Fred Wiseman's 40th feature documentary is about Jackson Heights, Queens, one of New York City's liveliest and most culturally diverse neighborhoods, a thriving and endlessly changing crossroad of styles, cuisines, and languages, and now—like vast portions of our city—caught in the gears of economic "development." Wiseman's mastery is as total as it is transparent: his film moves without apparent effort from an LGBT support meeting to a musical street performance to a gathering of Holocaust survivors to a hilarious training class for aspiring taxi drivers to an ace eyebrow-removal specialist at work to the annual Gay Pride parade to a meeting of local businessmen in a beauty parlor to discuss the oncoming economic threat to open-air merchants selling their wares to a meeting of undocumented individuals facing deportation. Wiseman catches the textures of New York life in 2015, the music of our speech, and a vast, emotionally complex, dynamic tapestry is woven before our eyes. A Zipporah Films release.
Wednesday, August 19, 2015
A Sneak Peek at the MET's New OTELLO
Željko Lučić (Iago) are scheduled to sing on opening night. The principal conductor of the Philadelphia Orchestra, Yannick Nézet-Séguin will conduct this new production.
As these pictures reveal, this new staging will feature stunning projections, and while the costumes seem to be somewhat in period, (from the sketches the MET has published) the settings offer no specific time frame. Undoubtedly, it is a production that fits the current modernistic trends of the opera house under the leadership of Peter Gelb.
Lately, director Bartlett Sher has had an impressive number of successes: from the original Lincoln Center production of The Light in the Piazza in 2005, to his stunning revival in 2008 of South Pacific, and this year's megahit production of The King and I. His opera productions at the MET, ranging from The Barber of Seville to The Tales of Hoffmann have rapidly become audience favorites. I am sure that Verdi's supreme Shakespearean tragedy is in good hands, and I am looking forward to being there on opening night.
As these pictures reveal, this new staging will feature stunning projections, and while the costumes seem to be somewhat in period, (from the sketches the MET has published) the settings offer no specific time frame. Undoubtedly, it is a production that fits the current modernistic trends of the opera house under the leadership of Peter Gelb.
Lately, director Bartlett Sher has had an impressive number of successes: from the original Lincoln Center production of The Light in the Piazza in 2005, to his stunning revival in 2008 of South Pacific, and this year's megahit production of The King and I. His opera productions at the MET, ranging from The Barber of Seville to The Tales of Hoffmann have rapidly become audience favorites. I am sure that Verdi's supreme Shakespearean tragedy is in good hands, and I am looking forward to being there on opening night.
Friday, August 14, 2015
Mary Jo Heath: The New Voice of the MET Broadcasts
Wednesday, August 12, 2015
Written on Skin at the Mostly Mozart Festival
The libretto of Written on Skin, by playwright Martin Crimp, takes us back to medieval days to recount an episode in the life of the legendary Catalan troubadour Guillem de Cabestaing. As the story goes, he falls in love with his patron's wife, and when the husband finds out about their infidelity, he kills the troubadour, rips out his heart and cooks it. That evening at dinner the husband forces his wife to eat her lover's remains. After she realizes what she has done (and wanting to preserve the taste of her beloved on her lips forever) she commits suicide by throwing herself from a balcony. In the opera the troubadour is turned into an itinerant artist whose specialty is illuminated manuscripts. Weaving in and out of the medieval story, characters in modern dress called angels reenact the story, entering into the medieval part of the set from their fluorescence lit contemporary space which resembles a laboratory, a place where perhaps illuminated manuscript might be in the process of being restored.
Both the libretto and the music travel back and forth in time and space. Mr. Benjamin's score freely mixes twentieth century thunderous dissonance with elements of contemporary tonality. His use of instruments such as a glass harmonica (a Benjamin Franklin invention favored by both Mozart and Gaetano Donizetti) as well as claves, pebbles, sleigh bells, and sandpaper offer a history of what is accepted as musical. The sounds coming out of that pit last night were exciting and mysterious. The audience is kept guessing as to the nature of those cryptic sounds. At the same time, the music is dictated by the dramatic events onstage. It never feels like the musical inventions are overwhelming the drama. Meanwhile, the libretto offers lines like "Strip the cities of brick . . . strip out the wires and cover the land with grass" which transcends the notion of time and space.
Most of the principal singers, as well as the musicians (The Mahler Chamber Orchestra) performed this work at its world premiere at the Aix-en-Provence Festival in 2012. The new kids on the block were countertenor Tim Mead, and conductor Alan Gilbert. Reprising the roles they created were baritone Christopher Purves and soprano Barbara Hannigan. All of them deserve much praise for their incredible work.
Written on Skin is a landmark work. I have no doubt that its score will be on the reading, and future performing lists of many conservatories. I am also sure that audience raconteurs will delight (or bore) later generations with tall tales about how they were present at the premiere. Consider yourself lucky if you were able to snatch up a ticket to the three performances being presented in this year's Mostly Mozart Festival.
Friday, August 07, 2015
Fun Home and Hamilton
This week, a new musical opened on Broadway: Hamilton. Like Fun Home this show, a musical tribute to our nation's Founding Fathers, also started humbly at the Public Theater where it soon became the hot ticket in town. It has moved to the Richard Rodgers Theater and it continues to be the show that you just have to see. Lin-Manuel Miranda who wrote the memorable Tony Award winner In the Heights (which also played at the Richard Rodgers Theater) is the author and star of this new work which takes the story of political figures (who have been immortalized in marble statues, and whose likeness adorns our money) and brings it back to the realm of mortality. History might have immortalized them, but this show remind us that they were just angry young men with a driven political purpose. To this end, the score, a mixture of hip-hop, rap and pop, is the perfect musical idiom to tell the story of these youthful trailblazers. The fact that they are largely played by black and Hispanic performers makes this work groundbreaking on many different levels.
Thursday, August 06, 2015
Just Stick to Singing, Juan Diego!
At the Salzburg Festival this week he offered a recital of Italian and French art songs that clearly displayed his astounding vocal technique. Accompanied by Vincenzo Scalera, Flórez was in splendid voice, and the audience was enormously receptive of his choice of repertory. He offered as an encore "Fra poco a me ricovero" from Donizetti's Lucia di Lammermoor, which was heartbreaking, and wonderfully received.
Then he returned to the stage with a guitar. This is when things started getting a little weird. He took off his bow tie and hurled it away (it landed inside the piano), and went on to sing "Besame mucho." Mr. Scalera returned to the piano, and accompanied him in a rousing rendition of Agustin Lara's "Granada." By this time Mr. Flórez had gotten way too playful with his audience. He started comically reaching for his throat, as if telling the audience that he was running out of gas. Nothing doing, though: as a final encore he launched into the nine C's of the aforementioned "A mes amis" each high note beautifully placed. However, by the end of the aria once again he started mugging for the audience, making a joke of the vocal gymnastics required to sing this piece. Let us just say that comedy is not Mr. Flórez's forte. I often feel that his comic timing lags behind the beat, and this was clearly evident at the stage of the Großes Festspielhaus this week. He just wasn't as funny as he thought he was, and it took away from the beauty of his remarkable singing. Just stick to singing, Juan Diego!
Below is the concert in its entirety.
Wednesday, August 05, 2015
The NY Film Festival welcomes Laurie Anderson
Ms. Anderson is one of the most daring and creative personalities in the arts. She is best known for her gigantic multimedia presentations as well as her cutting-edge use of technology. She has been a director, writer and composer of works that span theater, performance art and experimental music. Her upcoming installation called Habeas Corpus will be at the Park Avenue Armory from October 2-4.
Below is the poster that Ms. Anderson has created for this year's New York Film Festival.
Sunday, August 02, 2015
Benedict Cumberbatch's HAMLET
Now it's time for us to be given the chance to experience how Mr. Cumberbatch will shape Shakespeare's greatest role.
Friday, July 31, 2015
Pope's Visit Forces Change for the NYFF
New York, NY (July 29, 2015) – The Film Society of Lincoln Center announced today that the World Premiere of Robert Zemeckis's The Walk will take place on Saturday, September 26 instead of Friday, September 25 due to Pope Francis's upcoming visit to New York. The date change was made for logistical and security reasons. The film, which remains the Opening Night selection of the 53rd New York Film Festival (September 25 – October 11), will screen at Alice Tully Hall. Festival dates stay the same, with free NYFF programming to take place on Friday, September 25, prior to the Opening Night screening on Saturday, September 26.
Sunday, July 26, 2015
NY Times Review of the new Bayreuth "Tristan"
The following review appeared today in the New York Times.
BAYREUTH, Germany — It's the season of re-evaluating well-loved characters we thought we knew. First Atticus Finch, a saintly warrior for racial justice in Harper Lee's "To Kill a Mockingbird," was revealed as a patronizing bigot in Ms. Lee's newly published companion novel, "Go Set a Watchman."
Now there visionists have come for King Marke. In a new production of Wagner's "Tristan und Isolde" that opened the Bayreuth Festival on Saturday evening, the thoughtful, melancholy king of the opera's libretto, shocked and saddened by Tristan's betrayal, is depicted as a brutal, unfeeling tyrant. At the end, rather than blessing the dead bodies of Tristan and Isolde, as Wagner indicated, Marke drags Isolde — here very much alive — away, still insisting on claiming the bride Tristan stole from him.
That is not the only intervention by the production's director, Katharina Wagner, who has led the festival since 2008 with another of the composer's great-granddaughters, her half sister Eva Wagner-Pasquier. This "Tristan" abjures magic: The title characters, in an agonized mixture of lust and guilt from the start, ecstatically pour out the famous love potion rather than drinking it, taking radical responsibility for their actions.
The second act is not the lovers' secluded summer idyll but a fleeting union in a dystopian prison yard where Marke's thugs have thrown them to be watched over by guards and pursued by harsh floodlights. This is a post-Stasi, post-Snowden "Tristan," or perhaps it shows that the composer anticipated what we have tended to consider a recent phenomenon: the death of privacy — even, in this production, in death.
Ms. Wagner has made the opera a veritable taxonomy of gray, gloomy nightmares. The first act, set aboard Tristan's ship, is here a labyrinth of shadowy staircases to nowhere, a combination of M. C. Escher and Piranesi. The looming walls and retracting cylindrical cages of the second act lead to a third act permeated by fog and dotted with a hall-of-mirrors profusion of Isoldes — some living, some collapsing mannequins — conjured by Tristan in his madness.
At this point, it is news when a production at Bayreuth, known for its cadre of fierce traditionalists, does not get booed, and on Saturday, Ms. Wagner and her design team seemed to receive only cheers at their curtain call. That speaks to the sobriety of the staging, and perhaps to some relief that this director has not offered a repeat of her idea-filled but messy, much-reviled "Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg," first performed here in 2007.
With anonymously contemporary décor (by Frank Philipp Schlössmann and Matthias Lippert) and timeless costumes (by Thomas Kaiser) that are simultaneously medieval and futuristic, this "Tristan" is cleaner than "Die Meistersinger," its divergences from the original text carefully considered. No, there is not the "tent-like cabin" that the libretto gives Isolde aboard Tristan's ship, but that tent does find its way into Ms. Wagner's second act, when the lovers cobble together a makeshift shelter out of some fabric to hide from the glare of the prison-yard lights.
Any restive fundamentalists in the audience might also have been calmed by seeming homages to the festival's past, in a summer when Wagner's home here, the Villa Wahnfried, is having its long-awaited reopening as an expanded museum. The third act of "Tristan," its playing spaces defined by soft fields of light (designed by Reinhard Traub) and punctuated by floating pyramids that keep appearing and vanishing, evokes the abstract "New Bayreuth" aesthetic of the 1950s and '60s.
Despite its stage-filling sets and its willingness to tinker with details of plot and character, the production's overall impact on Saturday was modest. It makes few ideological claims, but also, more problematic, few emotional ones. Despite the terrors implied by its settings, its mood is never persuasively disconcerting or, indeed, persuasively much of anything. It is fluent and sensible, but that may not be enough when approaching one of the most disorienting works in operatic history.
In that sense, one of the production's greatest strengths may also be a weakness: Christian Thielemann's conducting was perhaps too subtly colored, too easily flowing, too effortlessly responsive for its own good, bolstering the impression that tension was all but missing from the performance.
Mr. Thielemann's approach to Wagner has unique naturalness. In the first act, which frequently takes the form of a kind of call-and-response between singers and orchestra, his answers always arrived with alert immediacy. But like his oddly unanxious "Parsifal" at the Salzburg Easter Festival two years ago, his "Tristan" smooths over the work's strangeness, its emotional extremes, its revolutionary harmonies.
Recently given the essentially new title of music director at the festival, Mr. Thielemann, rather than Ms. Wagner, was the one to bear some scattered boos at his bow. Perhaps that was a response to his musical choices, or perhaps to his controversially conservative politics or his seemingly ever-growing power here at Bayreuth.
It was clearer why the soprano Evelyn Herlitzius, announced last month as a replacement for Anja Kampe as Isolde, got her own catcalls: Her voice is angular rather than luxuriant, though her sound has clarity, and she acts with febrile focus. She was the odd woman out in a cast with considerable vocal glamour. The bass-baritone Iain Paterson was a hearty Kurwenal, and the mezzo-soprano Christa Mayer floated Brangäne's offstage warnings to the lovers in Act 2 with haunting poise.
Stephen Gould actually sang Tristan — no mean feat — with a tone mellower and more lyrical than the pressured bellowing of many other tenors in this impossible role. Best of all was Georg Zeppenfeld as King Marke, his bass rich and pitch black, his malignancy potently underplayed. He made the production's most surprising revision entirely convincing.
Friday, July 24, 2015
More Green Hill Shenanigans
The following article appeared on The Guardian:
It's that time of year again: the balmy nights of late spring are the augurs of the annual ritual of blood-letting in northern Bavaria, when the remaining Wagners do their best to tear each other apart in public on the eve of the Bayreuth Festival.
This week's fun on the Green Hill concerns the following: it was announced over a year ago that Eva Wagner-Pasquier would be leaving her co-managerial duties with her half-sister Katharina at the end of this season. But that's not enough, it seems. Malevolent forces somewhere within the poisonous, Nibelheimisch politics of Wagner's Bayreuth mean, apparently, that Eva isn't even allowed to be seen anywhere in the environs of the festival theatre, otherwise their star conductor Christian Thielemann will apparently humph off in a massive schtropp and not conduct Tristan und Isolde in the production that Katharina is directing to open the festival on 25 July.
Allegedly, that is: Thielemann denies it, as do key partners in the festival organization, but Wagner-Pasquier's lawyer seems to confirm the rumours. And, in a personal statement, Daniel Barenboim has called the treatment she is being subjected to as "inhumane." "I thought you couldn't take away people's freedom of movement – unless they were criminals," he added.
And all of this comes on top of Kirill Petrenko, the Ring's conductor and the sole unsullied hero of Bayreuth's current production of the tetralogy, voicing his disapproval at the late, late replacement of his Siegfried, Lance Ryan, with Stefan Vinke describing the treatment of Ryan – and Wagner-Pasquier – as "unprofessional and wholly undignified", and saying that only his responsibility to and respect for his colleagues have stopped him from cancelling altogether.
So, are Bayreuth and the Wagner clan in crisis? Far from it: Bayreuth just wouldn't be Bayreuth without its annual curtain-raiser of gossip and scandal. Let's instead be grateful to everyone at the Green Hill for the drama that makes it an on- and offstage saga that just keep on giving, year after year.
Thursday, July 23, 2015
Shenanigans on the Green Hill
There are also reports that the rehearsal period for this festival has not gone smoothly. Already two sopranos have bowed out of this new production, and now the latest news is that there is growing animosity between Kirill Petrenko and Christian Thielemann. The root of this animosity might stem from the fact that Mr. Petrenko has just been named chief conductor of the Berlin Philharmonic, a position that Mr. Thielemann coveted as a result of being a disciple of Herbert von Karajan who was appointed music director for life of this orchestra in 1955.
Currently Evelyn Herlitzius is singing the role of Isolde. She replaced Anja Kampe a few weeks ago. However, the singer has not stormed out of Bayreuth and will honor her contract to sing the role of Sieglinde in this year's revival of Frank Castorf's dreadful Ring production. It is interesting to note that Ms. Kampe is Mr. Petrenko's companion, and Mr. Thielemann is conducting the new production of Tristan. You do the math!
Further news about Katharina's Tristan reveals some early pictures of this new production.
This beautiful stage image bears more than a passing resemblance to the "New Bayreuth" style of Wieland Wagner, Katharina's uncle, who revolutionized the festival when he took over the reins in 1951. In an effort to get rid of all vestiges of Nazism that the festival had acquired, thanks to the many times that Adolf Hitler attended during the 1930s, Wieland Wagner employed light and darkness to re-invent the Wagnerian world. It became a style much imitated around the world.
An interesting image from what can only be Act II of the opera. Though the centerpiece of this work is the glorious love duet between the title characters, it seems that Katharina is underlining the impossibility and the danger of this elicit love affair by placing the two characters on opposite sides of a turnstile, while Tristan seems to be choking his beloved.
Georg Zeppenfeld as King Marke looks more like a pimp from a 1970s blaxploitation film.
As always, opening night of the Bayreuth Festival is an event, and this production will, I'm sure, divide audiences and further the debate over the kind of productions that are being presented at the Green Hill these days.
Sunday, July 12, 2015
The Great Jon Vickers is Dead
Below is video of Jon Vickers performing Otello, from 1978, from the stage of the Metropolitan Opera. This was one of the first "Live from the Met" telecasts. Here we have the duet "Dio ti giocondi" from the beginning of Act III. Renata Scotto sings the role of Desdemona, and the memorable production was designed by Franco Zeffirelli. The young James Levine conducted.
Thursday, July 02, 2015
Jurassic World: More of the Same
If you remember Jeff Goldblum's line in The Lost World, the uneven sequel to the first film, then you're already pretty familiar with the main plot of this new film. Back in 1997, reprising the role of Dr. Ian Malcolm, the character quipped as he once again stared at the ferocious biological dinosaurs that DNA cloning had brought back to life, and the initial sense of wonder that it produced on people: "Oh, yeah, Oooh, Aaah, that's how it always starts. Then later there's running and um, screaming." In Jurassic World there is plenty to Oooh and Aaah. We are back in Isla Nublar, a remote island near Costa Rica, where the original Jurassic Park was built. Now an amazing resort, a la Disney World, has emerged from the ruins of that failed enterprise where the tourists can indulge in the fantasy of having a close encounter with a host of extinct creatures. There's even a petting zoo where the kiddies can ride the mild baby herbivores. But to satisfy the spectators blood lust there is also a show where the carcass of a dead shark is eaten whole by a gigantic Mosasaurus, an aquatic carnivore, who jumps out of his pool, like a killer whale, splashing those in the stands. The scene is one of the early highlights of the film, and it is a magnificent example of cgi at its best.
The plot is pretty basic. Two brothers are sent on a dream vacation to Jurassic World where their aunt (Bryce Dallas Howard) is the operations manager of the place. Even though she is supposed to personally give the kids the VIP tour of the park, she is too busy recruiting corporate sponsors for a new attraction called Indominus Rex, a genetically modified Frankenstein of a dinosaur made from the DNA of several dangerous predatory creatures. Meanwhile, Owen Grady (Chris Pratt), a Velociraptor trainer, and Great White Hunter type, warns the powers-that-be that Indominus Rex poses a real threat because it has lived in isolation all its life. Further, Vic Hoskins (Vincent D'Onofrio) believes that the raptors can be trained for military use. This is the "Oooh and Aaah" section of the film.
But what would the Jurassic Park franchise be without the running and the screaming?!
And there's plenty of that as Indominus Rex, tired of his isolated existence, escapes from his walled enclosure in search of freedom and a viable second act to this film. Its escape is followed by four Velociraptors busting out, and most thrilling of all the spectacular flight of escapee winged Pterosaurs, who descend on the park's visitors, like a squadron of fighting planes, and attack them like the Avialae descendants of dinosaurs in Alfred Hitchcock's The Birds. There's running for ya! Also, there's the sight of Ms. Howard racing through the island's thicket in her business suit and 4 inch heels. Soon to become a camp classic! And speaking of classics, the film manages to channel the spirit of King Kong as well as the original Jurassic films.
In the Judeo-Christian tradition trying to be a creator is bad enough, and it has to be punished, but the producers of Jurassic World also know that we live in a secular society. Therefore, the bad guys in this film are not the scientists who originally cloned these creatures, but the shady men who represent the corporate greed that leads to the destruction of the enterprise. It's the one interesting take on the Frankenstein myth that the Jurassic franchise has added, and it is a formula that adds some interest to an otherwise predictable journey to a man-made segment of the Mesozoic Era.
Wednesday, July 01, 2015
Booing at the Royal Opera House
The Opera House issued a statement after the performance... apologizing for any distress caused. Director of opera Kasper Holten said: "The production intends to make it an uncomfortable scene, just as there are several upsetting and violent scenes in Rossini's score. We are sorry if some people have found this distressing."
Holten said the scene "puts the spotlight on the brutal reality of women being abused during war time, and sexual violence being a tragic fact of war." Rossini's opera of the Swiss patriot, William Tell, who shoots an arrow that splits an apple atop his son's head, has been directed by Damiano Michieletto and stars Canadian baritone Gerald Finley as Tell and American tenor John Osborn.
Osborn told Reuters after the performance that the scene "maybe ... went a little longer than it should have. But it happened and I think it's an element you can use to show just how horrible these people were that were occupying this town," he said. "If you don't feel the brutality, the suffering these people have had to face, if you want to hide it, it becomes soft, it becomes for children."
The Stage gave the production one star. George Hall called it a "dire evening" in which the "gratuitous gang-rape" scene provoked "the noisiest and most sustained booing I can ever recall during any performance at this address. Intellectually poverty-stricken, emotionally crass and with indifferent stagecraft, the result is nowhere near the standard an international company should be aiming at", he said.
Mark Valencia writing for What's on Stage pointed out that first night booing is "a fast-growing problem at Covent Garden that doesn't happen at other opera houses. It's become standard practice for the director of practically every new production to be jeered by practiced factions in the audience who object to ideas that go beyond the literal reading of an opera," he said.
But at last night's first night "the perpetrators did something unheard of: they booed during the music. And they did so loudly and long." They also booed at the end of the performance when the production team came on stage for the curtain call.
The opera is Italian director Damiano Michieletto's debut at the Royal Opera House.
Friday, June 26, 2015
Dmitri Hvorostovsky Diagnosed with Brain Tumor
The following appeared in the New York Times a few days ago:
The celebrated Russian baritone Dmitri Hvorostovsky has a brain tumor and has canceled all engagements through the end of August, according to an announcement posted Wednesday on his website.
"He has recently been suffering from serious health issues, and a brain tumor has just been diagnosed," the statement said. "Although his voice and vocal condition are normal, his sense of balance has been severely affected."
The site said that he would begin treatment this week and that he remains "very optimistic for the future."
Mr. Hvorostovsky, one of the best-loved baritones in the world, is still scheduled to appear in September at the Metropolitan Opera in a star-filled production of Verdi's "Il Trovatore," featuring Anna Netrebko as Leonora.
Wednesday, June 24, 2015
Mad Max: Fury Road
Once again we are in a post-Apocalyptic world (devoid of any visible zombies, although I'm sure they are out there in the vast empty wasteland that Earth has become) where gasoline and water are scarce commodities, and where the dignity of what's left of mankind has been trampled by ruthless chieftains like Immortan Joe (Hugh Keays-Byrne) who keeps a harem of women, and whose army of War Boys capture Max (Tom Hardy). Our eponymous hero is a loner who can easily be an American hero right out of the pages of James Fenimore Cooper. He is taken prisoner by Immortan Joe's men and turned into a "blood bag" for a sick War Boy named Nux (Nicholas Hoult). When Imperator Furiosa (Charlize Theron) drives off-course in her mission to find gasoline, Immortan Joe realizes that she has betrayed him by stealing some of his women, one of whom is pregnant. And the chase is on! This is when the movie gets loud, down and dirty: but you wouldn't have it otherwise. It is, after all, a Mad Max movie!
But this film goes beyond the twisted metal and explosions that are the bread and butter of the summer cinematic season. At the heart of Fury Road is a tale of vengeance and redemption, all major themes of the American western, a genre that this film often pays tribute to, especially in its photographic wide open vistas and in the depiction of its laconic hero. Or heroine, for that matter. This film is very much about Ms. Theron's character: a damaged, but strong-willed, valiant woman with a prosthetic arm. She belongs to the same breed as Julie Christie in Robert Altman's McCabe and Mrs. Miller or Claudia Cardinale in Sergio Leone's Once Upon a Time in the West. By far, it is the feminist film of the year.
The film is also impressive when it comes to the amount of images that linger in one's mind. George Miller knows how to set up a scene and how much to hold a shot so that it becomes indelible. The opening sequence of Max chomping down on a live two-headed gecko, and a truly surreal nighttime shot of people on stilts walking through a poisonous bog are two memorable moments from this film.
Finally a winner in a summer season of many forgettable films.
Sunday, June 21, 2015
Julie Kent Bids Farewell to ABT
It was a sold-out audience that was there to celebrate Ms. Kent's career, and her entrance in the second scene of Act I caused such a deafening roar that it must have been difficult for the performers to hear the music. As the evening went on, her flawless performance turned into a love fest for the audience. It was truly a perfect evening for her, and for the rest of the company, and one of the highlights of this year's ABT season.
The ovation at the end of the evening went on for close to twenty minutes. The great curtain of the Metropolitan Opera parted and the assembled cast, each with a flower in hand, tossed them in her direction, while petals rained down from the rafters. Meanwhile in the audience not a single soul left the place, and everyone remained on their feet. Then, there was the parade of colleagues onstage, all bearing flowers, positioning them in the middle of the stage, creating a mountain of flora. These included Xiomara Reyes and Paloma Herrera, who earlier in the season had their very own memorable ABT farewells. One of the last to pay her tribute was ABT's Associate Artistic Director Victor Barbee, a former dancer with ABT, and Ms. Kent's husband. There were some tender ovation moments as her children William and Josephine shared the stage with their mom.
It was an evening that few will forget, but as ABT finishes the last two weeks of the season, I'm sure that on everybody's mind is the question of who will fill the spots of these three artists who were so much an integral part of the company. It promises to be a very interesting 2016 season.
Thursday, June 04, 2015
The Walk will open the 53rd NY Film Festival
I received the following announcement from the Film Society of Lincoln Center:
The Film Society of Lincoln Center announced today that Robert Zemeckis's The Walk will make its World Premiere as the Opening Night selection of the upcoming 53rd New York Film Festival (September 25 – October 11), which will kick off at Alice Tully Hall. A true story, the film is based on Philippe Petit's memoir To Reach the Clouds and stars Golden Globe nominee Joseph Gordon-Levitt as Petit, the French high-wire artist who achieved the feat of walking between the Twin Towers in 1974. The Walk will be the second 3D feature selected for the Opening Night Gala since Ang Lee's Life of Pi in 2012 and also marks Zemeckis's return to the Festival after Flight, the 2012 Closing Night Gala selection. The film will be released in 3D and IMAX 3D on October 2, 2015.
New York Film Festival Director and Selection Committee Chair Kent Jones said: "The Walk is surprising in so many ways. First of all, it plays like a classic heist movie in the tradition of The Asphalt Jungle or Bob le flambeur—the planning, the rehearsing, the execution, the last-minute problems—but here it's not money that's stolen but access to the world's tallest buildings. It's also an astonishing re-creation of Lower Manhattan in the '70s. And then, it becomes something quite rare, rich, mysterious… and throughout it all, you're on the edge of your seat."
Robert Zemeckis added: "I am extremely honored and grateful that our film has been selected to open the 53rd New York Film Festival. The Walk is a New York story, so I am delighted to be presenting the film to New York audiences first. My hope is that Festival audiences will be immersed in the spectacle, but also to be enraptured by the celebration of a passionate artist who helped give the wonderful towers a soul."
New York Film Festival Director and Selection Committee Chair Kent Jones said: "The Walk is surprising in so many ways. First of all, it plays like a classic heist movie in the tradition of The Asphalt Jungle or Bob le flambeur—the planning, the rehearsing, the execution, the last-minute problems—but here it's not money that's stolen but access to the world's tallest buildings. It's also an astonishing re-creation of Lower Manhattan in the '70s. And then, it becomes something quite rare, rich, mysterious… and throughout it all, you're on the edge of your seat."
Robert Zemeckis added: "I am extremely honored and grateful that our film has been selected to open the 53rd New York Film Festival. The Walk is a New York story, so I am delighted to be presenting the film to New York audiences first. My hope is that Festival audiences will be immersed in the spectacle, but also to be enraptured by the celebration of a passionate artist who helped give the wonderful towers a soul."
Wednesday, June 03, 2015
Margaret Juntwait is dead at 58
Sunday, May 24, 2015
Tomorrowland is Pure and Preachy Disney
The story begins in 1965 with the young Frank Walker (who will grow up to be George Clooney) who attends the New York World's Fair and brings with him a half-baked jetpack gizmo that he has invented. While being rejected by Hugh Laurie (who turns out to be the villain in the piece, a fact that you know right from his first appearance) he meets the mysterious child Athena (Raffey Cassidy) who introduces him, via a magical pin, to the world of tomorrow: a remarkable skyscraper city, half Fritz Lang's Metropolis, half modern-day Dubai, which ultimately is reminiscent of a 1950's conception of the future. In other words, it reminds one of the sleek "Tomorrowland," one of the theme lands of Disneyland/Disney World.
The future, according to the gospel of Disney, is a clean-cut place with the kind of architecture that brings to mind the futuristic designs of the theme parks as well as the memorable structures of Spanish architect Santiago Calatrava. His amazing City of Arts and Sciences in Valencia, Spain, for instance, seems to be the blueprint for Scott Chambliss's production designs.
But the land of tomorrow is rotten from within: it is crumbling and heading into dystopic destruction. To set things right, Athena summons Casey Newton (Britt Robinson), a teenager who has been sabotaging the dismantling of a NASA launch pad near Cape Canaveral where she lives. Obviously this is a teen who cares about space travel, and in the logic of this film one of the good guys. Her meeting with Athena, who gives her one of the magical pins, is the call to adventure that sets her on a journey where she meets the older Frank Walker, now a grizzled, discontented George Clooney living in the sticks, in a run-down house filled with interesting futuristic gadgets. The meeting of Casey and Frank, the catalyst that will bring the narrative to a climax, unfortunately takes way too long to happen. At 130 minutes the entire movie feels too overproduced and definitely too long.
Watching Tomorrowland is very much like attending the future section of EPCOT. The sense of optimism overwhelms you. Nothing wrong with that. Frank Capra built a career based on it, and so did Walt Disney! What I find a bit troubling are the constant self-references. The entire film is a Disney infomercial. The Pirates of the Caribbean franchise was based on a park ride, but the films, especially the first of the series, was so successful artistically that you forgot the shameless plug and you concentrated on the new myth the film was developing. No such luck with Tomorrowland, which looks to the future, but deep down is just interested in first week earnings.
Saturday, May 23, 2015
Mad Men ends by Big Sur
In his own words, Mad Men creator Matt Wiener could not believe that 150 people kept the ending to the show a secret. Well, make that 151. It was hard, but somehow I did it. It amazes me that this ending was in place in Matt's head right from the start of the series, and it managed to remain intact all the way to the end. It shows total knowledge of the character and the situations surrounding him in the drama. And by the way, keeping such a big secret, knowing me, takes amazing determination and will power! Never mind that I had to keep it for about five years.
But seriously, it was the best ending, the only ending possible to the series. It dashed away any gory hopes that Don Draper would end up a suicide, falling out of a building, his body descending in slow-motion, like the Vertigo inspired logo to the show. Don has been falling now for many seasons, there was no need to belabor the point. The series ended with us inside Don's mind, as he dreams up what is arguably the greatest ad campaign for a product ever to come out of Madison Avenue. Bravo!
Sunday, May 17, 2015
Helen Mirren as Queen Elizabeth II in The Interview
The author (who also wrote Frost/Nixon and the screenplay for The Queen, an Oscar winning performance for Dame Helen) imagines what occurs during the weekly private meetings that the monarch has had with a queue of Prime Ministers, starting with a crotchety, self-serving Sir Winston Churchill, through the controversial Sir Anthony Eden, the down-to-earth Labour PM Harold Wilson, with whom Queen Elizabeth had a very close rapport, and the mighty Margaret Thatcher, whom the Queen saw as a fellow traveler as well as a very real rival for power. The play also includes a couple of scenes with John Major, whom we learn was not wholly prepared to lead a nation when it was his turn at the dispatch box, the very angry, and very Scottish Gordon Brown, and David Cameron, the UK's current Prime Minister. There is also a very small cameo by Tony Blair, but surprisingly the author does not imagine a one-to-one interview with the well-known leader of "New Labour."
When Dame Helen is on stage she rules. Our eyes are glued to her. This is part stagecraft, part stage presence. When Churchill appears center stage for his interview, puffing on a cigar, as portrayed by the physically imposing Dakin Matthews, he is a great dinosaur of a politician. The scene has been staged by director Stephen Daldry so perfectly that our eyes cannot help but shift momentarily to him. This gives Dame Helen (and her dressers) enough time to perform one of her many lightning fast costume changes right on stage. Suddenly she is transformed into the young, uncrowned queen welcoming her first Prime Minister who carries an agenda as big as his girth. It is early magic in a production that is filled with such delightful moments.
Among the visitors to Buckingham Palace two Prime Ministers stand out: John Major (Dylan Baker), and Harold Wilson (Richard McCabe). Each of these scenes plays beautifully in contrast to the other. Mr. Baker portrays a weak, but very human John Major, a politician unable to escape from the shadow of his "Iron Lady" predecessor. Likewise, Mr. McCabe plays the droll Mr. Wilson who knows that politically he has to push his socialist agenda to a woman who was born with a silver spoon in her mouth. Despite their social class differences, the play portrays their relationship in the warmest of ways. It is the most satisfying interview of the evening, and Mr. Morgan even dramatizes a trip by Mr. Wilson to Balmoral Castle for a rainy weekend in Scotland with the Royal Family.
This is an evening of sheer artistry on Broadway. A unique play where even the interval (or intermission, as we say in the States) has a very British atmosphere. It is a not to be missed production, and one of the big contenders for this year's Tony Awards.
Saturday, May 16, 2015
Balanchine and Stravinsky at the NYC Ballet
Apollo is the oldest of these ballets. Stravinsky composed the music in 1927, and the twenty-four-year-old Balanchine choreographed it a year later. A host of great dancers have passed through this iconic role throughout the decades. It is the only Balanchine creation that puts the male dancer on the forefront. The short video below features Chase Finlay, a NYC Ballet principal dancer, explaining his approach to dancing this role.
Duo Concertant is a unique creation that features two dancers as well as a pianist and a violinist, all on stage. The short work examines the equal relationship that exist (or ought to exist) between music and dance. The piece takes the musicians out of the pit and places them side by side with the dancers. Saturday's results also included an interesting juxtaposition between the seasoned age of the musicians versus the youthful quality of the dancers. I'm not sure if this was an original intention of Mr. Balanchine.
The performance concluded with the amazing Symphony in Three Movements, a hyper-kinetic Stravinsky composition from 1945 that on the one hand looks back to his atonal beginnings back with Sergei Diaghilev and The Ballets Russes and dares to look forward toward the future of music. Listen closely with your eyes closed, and you will hear the nervous minimalism of a John Adams. However most ballet goers will not close their eyes especially when a dancer of the caliber of Amar Ramasar is dancing in it. Mr. Ramasar has been a soloist since 2006, and he was a principal dancer in Chichester Psalms, the Leonard Bernstein, Peter Martins ballet that I performed with the NYC Ballet when I was a member of the Juilliard Choral Union.
If you missed the black and white Stravinsky, Balanchine ballets this season, I would not worry. I am certain that they will be performed again next year to the delight of young and old.
Thursday, April 23, 2015
Calixto Bieito comes to the MET
His productions have been called offensive by some, and brilliant by others. His Parsifal, which has been featured on this website, takes place in a post-apocalyptic world, where the old knight Gurnemanz is a defrocked priest turned drug pusher, and, at the conclusion of the production, the character of Parsifal undresses and is carted away to be cannibalized by the rest of the opera's survivors. Another of his productions, Verdi's Un Ballo in Maschera, staged for the Gran Teatre del Liceu in Barcelona, featured a scene in a public bathroom.
Peter Gelb said that he expected that the new production of Forza "would stimulate audiences, not shock them." He also added that the production would be set during the period of the Spanish Civil War.
Wednesday, April 08, 2015
Verdi's Don Carlo at the MET
The current Nicholas Hytner production (a co-production of the Royal Opera, Covent Garden) is pretty tame when it comes to the direction and costumes by Bob Crowley. However, the sets, also by Mr. Crowley, tend towards the minimalist in a geometric sort of way in some scenes, while in others, shafts of light, coming through windows, lend an air of expressionism. It is a production that does not offend the sensibilities of the conservative New York opera crowd, but neither does it propel the drama into an epic level.
This opera lives or dies by its principal singers, and the MET has assembled a cast of impressive soloists headed by the amazing Ferruccio Furlanetto, who these days owns the role of Philip II. His deep bass has matured into the kind of instrument that is able to express the anguish of a character who has married a woman who has never loved him, and raised a son who threatens his power. His failure as a husband is now compounded with the thought that in order to save his kingdom he might have to sacrifice his son. Mr. Furlanetto beautifully conveys the character's agony as he realizes the church might not be able to absolve him of the murder of his first born. His is one of the great opera characterizations of our times.
Rounding out the cast is a splendid Yonghoon Lee in the title role. The young Korean tenor was in amazing voice on Monday night, and delivered a memorable performance. Dmitri Hvorostovsky was also in good voice as the faithful Rodrigo, although I have always found his intake of air before launching into a phrase to be, at times, as loud as his singing. On Monday night it was louder than I can remember in a while. Ekaterina Gubanova was a sonorous, memorable Eboli, while Barbara Frittoli took longer than I wanted for her to settle into the role of Elisabeth. Finally, it's great to see James Morris still singing these days. In the autumn of his years the bass-baritone has settled into the comprimario world effortlessly. But I don't think that the Grand Inquisitor is the role for him. His voice always had a light timbre and this character requires a threatening cavernous voice. When the Philip is darker than the Inquisitor then there's something wrong.
But that might be a little too much to protest about. The orchestra, under the direction of the great Yannick Nézet-Séguin, played beautifully, offering a sonorous cushion for the cast. It is great to have him as the music director of the Philadelphia Orchestra, which means that he is only two hours away from New York City. In the unlikely event that he were to become the new music director of the New York Philharmonic in 2017, after Alan Gilbert leaves, he would only be steps away. But that just might be way too much to ask.
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When Fitzroy Boutique last landed at BYOB on Queen West, showcasing independent brands that aren't usually available in the 416, we instantly fell in love with their unique selection of hard-to-find pieces. Thankfully, the seasonal boutique is back for Spring. There's a 70s vibe to the preview pieces they've been posting on their blog and Facebook page. We can't wait to see the rest! The pop up will run until April 15th at the back of BYOB (972 Queen St. W.) so you can match your Spring separates to your cocktail accessories. Ah, the good life.
~ Haley Cullingham

subset: commoncrawl


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Regular Expression Tutorial
A Max/MSP tutorial and reference patch that explains a few of the basic techniques you need to create regular expressions for string parsing and pattern matching using the [regexp] and [jit.str.regexp] objects. It contains working examples of the most important and widely used features of regular expressions so that you can explore and learn from them in the Max environment.
The topics covered include:
- Character Types
- Anchors
- The Dot
- Alternation
- Repetition
- References
More Links


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Office Relocation Costs
Online Office Relocation Budget Planner
You don't necessarily have to be good with numbers to plan a budget for your office relocation. It's essential to plan a realistic budget when you move office, and tightly manage your office relocation costs accordingly so you don't overspend and you have enough money to relocate your business successfully.
The Office Relocation Budget Planner is a free template that provides a framework for making decisions about your office move; the building you choose, the rent, office lease terms, and even which office removals company you hire. Before planning a relocation budget, you need to set your company's desired goals and decide what you would like to achieve from moving office. This will then help to formulate a prioritised budget.
The Office Relocation Budget Planner has been created in Excel, allowing you to customise it to suit your own relocation project. It lists all the costs common with most office moves, so once you have set your relocation goals, you can begin to get estimates for all the office relocation costs listed on the spreadsheet.
To manage your office relocation costs effectively, you should aim to update your budget planner on a weekly basis throughout the project so you know what has already been spent, and how much money you have left in the budget.
Download the FREE Budget Planner here to work out your overall office relocation costs.
Planning an office move? Go the office relocation planning resource centre
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Looking for the right companies for your office move? Connect with independently sourced and pre-qualified companies that are experts in your local market.The Directory
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Plan your entire office move with this easy-to-follow step by step guide.Read Article


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Monday, December 10, 2018
Wreaths for the Season
This year I was lucky to be part of a small group of folks who gathered at Rancho Cistus (the home of Sean Hogan and Preston Pew) to make wreaths with cuttings from the Cistus Nursery display gardens. Folks, it just doesn't get any better than that.
The front door wreath is made up of Cupressus arizonica var. glabra 'Blue Ice' with Cryptomeria bits and Rose hips.
The fragrance is faint, but lovely.
And the mix of colors is perfection, to my eye.
Inside there's a small wreath hanging at the edge of the mantle, it's made of Cryptomeria japonica 'Elegans Compacta'...
With berries from Berberis thunbergii, probably 'Royal Cloak'...
Andrew declared this one his favorite.
The final creation, hanging above the mantle, has a base of Eucalyptus...
With variegated holly accents...
And of course a SPIKY purple Dyckia just for fun.
The wreaths were the first to go up, and the rest of the holiday decor soon followed.
More on that next week...
Weather Diary, Dec 9: Hi 42, Low 37/ Precip .52"
All material © 2009-2018 by Loree Bohl for danger garden. Unauthorized reproduction prohibited and just plain rude.
24 comments:
Goodness, what a fun activity. Going home with 3 fantastic wreaths is merely the cherry on the cake. The Blue Ice Cypress adds great color to the outside display. I happen to notice and love the embellished key hole and handle: very cool. My favorite is the eucalyptus wreath, with it's most unusual and stunning color scheme.ReplyDeleteReplies
The style of our front door, along with the hardware (there's fancy little peep hole window with a door too), has always seemed a little "craftsman fancy" for our simple little house. I love it, but wonder why it was chosen. Oh and it's original too because the house next door used to have the same.Delete
- AnonymousDecember 10, 2018
They're both gorgeous and yes, I'm envious!ReplyDelete
I am beyond jealous! It would be enough to have such beautiful wreaths but the fact that you did them yourself makes them twice as nice. And who is going to have those kind of materials but a nursery? What a wealth of things you got to use.ReplyDeleteReplies
Indeed, Sean was so generous to share the goods!Delete
- AnonymousDecember 10, 2018
Love them all but the Eucalyptus gets my vote.ReplyDelete
It's gone all curly now that it's dried too, adding another layer of fabulous.Delete
Have a wonderful Christmas ! :)ReplyDeleteReplies
Thank you! You do the same...Delete
As always, your wreaths are extremely well done! Love all three but the best part is the fun you had making them with others in such a splendid garden.ReplyDeleteReplies
Indeed, it was a very fun day.Delete
All three are gorgeous, Loree. You have such skills, I am jealous! If you ever needed another source of income, floral designer comes to mind. What a fun activity!ReplyDeleteReplies
You're too kind Tamara, but thank you. I bet you could come up with quite the fabulous selection of wreath materials around your place, have you made one?Delete
What a great opportunity, and of course you made the most of it. Roger's is offering a wreath workshop - for $130. And I'm sure they don't provide Dyckias.ReplyDeleteReplies
I wish I would have captured a photo as Sean came walking back from one of the greenhouses with an armful of decapitated Dyckia, it was priceless!Delete
LOVE these, Loree. You had some really unusual material to work with. Bellissimo!ReplyDeleteReplies
A ridiculous wealth of material!Delete
Excellent Loree !ReplyDelete
- AnonymousDecember 11, 2018
Those are so cool! Festive and creative!ReplyDeleteReplies
I do love bringing nature indoors.Delete
Thank you for taking the time to comment. Comment moderation is on (because you know: spam), I will approve and post your comment as soon as possible!


text: by Discovery. This opener (1 of 3 to do with Facebook) actually was field tested in Starbucks, West Hollywood when I was out visiting Mystery and the gang. Now guys if like me you are from the Uk and not used to seeing super hot women, man this starbucks had more hotties than I see in…Read more


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Health authorities in Malawi say a 3-year-old girl is paralyzed after contracting polio, the first known case in Africa in more than five years and the first in Malawi in three decades. Authorities say the child was infected by a strain of poliovirus that matches a strain found in Pakistan.
Until this week, Malawi had last reported a polio case in 1992. The southern African country was declared polio-free in 2005 — 15 years before the whole continent achieved the same status.
Dr. Charles Mwansambo, secretary for health in Malawi, told local radio Friday that the poliovirus strain detected in Malawi came from abroad.
"This patient is Malawian but the strain of poliovirus she has is not Malawian. It was first identified in Pakistan. So, this is an imported strain."
So far, the girl, who lives in the capital, Lilongwe, is the only identified case of polio in the country. Mwansambo said all those who came into contact with the girl have tested negative for the poliovirus.
However, the Ministry of Health said in a statement Thursday evening that it has intensified surveillance for the disease, especially among children up to fifteen years of age. President Lazarus Chakwera has declared a national health emergency.
Polio is a contagious and life-threatening disease. The poliovirus can infect a person's spinal cord, leaving them partially or fully paralyzed.
Dr. Janet Kayita, the country representative for the World Health Organization in Malawi, says the alarm is justified.
"Because as long as there is polio in Lilongwe, it is a threat not just in Malawi, it's a threat in the region and it's a public health event of international concern."
She says the WHO is deploying a team to Malawi to enhance disease surveillance, detect and identify cases and strengthen routine immunization.
"The nature of having identified a child with polio, highlights the need to make sure that vaccination campaign is mounted, making that every last child under five years of age is reached with polio vaccine," Kavita said.
Malawi health expert Maziko Matemba says the government should consider increasing budget allocations of the health sector.
"So that some of these shocks are minimized or they are contained before they occur because they also have an effect on the economy of the country, as we have seen with COVID," Matemba said.
President Chakwera said in a statement Thursday that after experiencing various natural disasters like Cyclone Idai, COVID-19 and Tropical Storm Ana early this year, a polio outbreak is the last thing any Malawian would want to hit the country.


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When it comes to gaming, we still look up to those tried and tested names like Nintendo and Sony. The latter is about to get a direct competitor as Wonder enters the scene with the goal of coming up with a new gaming phone that will rival the Nintendo Switch. Gaming devices are nothing new but real gaming phones are not as common. We know about the Xiaomi Black Shark and the ZTE Nubia Red Magic. The plans seem ambitious but we all know how startups think.
Wonder is a new gaming startup that aims to develop an Android phone focused on gaming. It will be more similar to the Nintendo Switch and will be sold with a controller, dock, and a phone. You can broadcast your game to a TV and play using a controller.
The Wonder team believes the gaming industry may be ready for hybrid hardware or move to a software-based system. The idea is to make a gaming device that works with most premium Android phones. We're saying premium because it is meant for devices with higher specs.
There's no information on pricing, specs, or release date but the release has been moved to next year. Hopefully, Wonder will be ready and there will be third-party groups ready for their products and services.
VIA: The Verge


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|Stock image of a teacher reading to her students
The need to support preservice teachers in building rich and deep knowledge of culturally relevant children's and young adult (YA) literature is something that has gained traction in Puerto Rico's university teacher preparation and library studies programs. Inspired by mounting calls for books that reflect Puerto Rican children's lives in the primary and secondary school English language arts curriculum, a new generation of English teachers, youth librarians and teacher educators across the Puerto Rican archipelago are examining their reading habits. They are also investing in their own continued growth, learning, and development as advocates of Puerto Rican children's and YA literature, and youth literature more generally.
We are delighted to exclusively publish the below conversation between Yazmín Méndez Bonet and Dr. Melissa Lee García Vega, a middle school English teacher and a university English professor respectively, both of whom teach in the Aguadilla-Isabela-San Sebastián metropolitan area in northwestern Puerto Rico.
I also remember that in sixth grade, my dad saw my interest in reading and gifted me a copy of L. M. Montgomery's Anne of Avonlea. Because my family did not have a lot of money (my self-sacrificing parents could just barely afford to send me to Catholic school), receiving a book as a gift was a big deal, however my younger self couldn't completely identify with Anne's life, or with the red-headed girl illustrated on the book's cover. I began searching for books that spoke more directly to my experience as a young Puerto Rican girl living in a big city.
Today, I teach in the English Department at the University of Puerto Rico, Aguadilla Campus, where I also research Caribbean children's literature. Shortly after my arrival on campus, I began teaching courses in children's literature and was excited to share my teaching and reading experiences. During the first weeks of class, I always ask my undergraduate students to share their memories and experiences with children's literature. These conversations have led to an ever-broadening understanding of how children's stories support the development and shape the lives of individual readers.
Yazmin: I grew up in Rincón, a small town located on the west coast of Puerto Rico. From Kindergarten through twelfth grade, I went to public schools, and like my current students, I took classes in Spanish and was enrolled in an English as a Second Language (ESL) class. Reading was not something I used to do at home and my father only read the newspaper. I was introduced to books in my Kindergarten classroom where we read European fairy tales like The Ugly Duckling and Little Red Riding Hood. I don't recall reading books in which I could see my Puerto Rican self and heritage reflected, at least not in English class. But I do remember María Chuzema, a Puerto Rican TV show that featured María Chuzema reading different stories to children.
Visiting a library wasn't something I was
|A shelf of children's books at the public library
in San Antonio, Aguadilla, Puerto Rico
encouraged to do as a child. There was a public library in my hometown, but I mainly used it to look up information for a school project or homework assignment. In middle school, I stopped by the school library several times and even participated in oratory events where I spoke about the importance of reading and the magic of books. Thinking back, I don't recall seeing a story time session at the library or a children's book display.
It wasn't until I enrolled as an undergraduate student in the English program at the University of Puerto Rico, Aguadilla Campus that I had the opportunity to learn more about children's and young adult literature. However, even in the Young Adult (YA) Literature course, only a few YA books that portrayed Puerto Ricans were assigned, and they were mainly about the Puerto Rican experience in the United States. I decided to focus my master's thesis on the use of Caribbean children's literature in the English classroom in Puerto Rican schools. I am now an English teacher at the Profesora Juana Rosario Carrero Middle School.
Melissa: For many of my students in the Children's Literature course, it was their first experience holding a picture book. In creating the course, my approach was to outline markers of quality in children's literature. I tried to expand beyond Scholastic books and Disney's picture books. I often got pushback from students since Disney stories were a big part of their childhood reading experiences.
One of the purposes of the course was to explore the intersection of learning, pleasure and language development in the reading of children's books. In these respects, Yazmin, your experiences are very similar to my students' experiences. You said that in middle school you participated in oratory events where you spoke about the magic and importance of reading. What were those experiences like for your younger self? What books or poems do you remember reciting? Do you remember choosing a story to read or did your teachers always assign them?
Yazmin: As a young student, I was eager to participate in speech contests, and my teachers noticed this. I remember how my history teacher motivated me to participate in an oratory event organized by the school librarian. I wrote my own speeches on those old square papers everyone used in school back in those days. I memorized the words all afternoon and all night. I thought about my life experiences, how I had never had the chance to travel, but how books transported me to other places, allowed me to learn about other people's lives, and sparked my imagination. I placed first in that oratory competition!
Melissa: What you just said makes me think of the picture book The Day You Begin written by Jacqueline Woodson and illustrated by Rafael López. The main character feels different because she spent the summer at home while her classmates were off "flying and sailing." Yet, she realizes that through books she had also traveled to many places. As a child, you also experienced that sense of empowerment through reading.
It is our responsibility as educators to share children's literature that is provoking, that reflects our children's lives, and that motivates them to read independently. This is the way to build lifelong readers.
Yazmin: Absolutely. To answer your question about whether the stories were assigned reading or not, my teachers chose most of the books and stories we read in class. I remember how in seventh grade my Spanish teacher took us to the computer lab and told one of my friends and I that he thought we would like El polizón del Ulises by the Spanish writer Ana María Matute. He gave us a copy and we read it and discussed it together. It was meaningful because the book exposed us to a different vocabulary and experiences outside of our own. I would also go through books at the school library by myself, even if I didn't consider myself an avid reader. I liked reading both fiction and non-fiction, especially picture books.
Melissa: Now as a high school English teacher, how do your personal experiences guide or influence you when you are matching books to students? What are you doing to ensure that your students don't view the public library as just a homework resource, and have access to story time, children's book displays, and other things your younger self didn't get to experience?
Yazmin: As teachers we often feel trapped by having to follow a curriculum and emphasize teaching practices that are "accountable". Technology and media can be distractions that hamper students from reading books for pleasure; on the other hand, technology does allow more access to books, and I am able to present stories to my students in video format. However, the reality of Puerto Rican schools is that many lack the resources and support to integrate technology and digital media in the classroom. Often, we can't put what we learn in professional development trainings into practice. But we always look for different ways to expose students to books. Recently, for International Day of Reading, I brought some of my own children's books to the classroom so students could read them in small groups. It was an enriching activity for them, and for some, a new experience.
Melissa: Thinking about Puerto Rican cultural heritage and children's literature, it's tough to think that in the 21st century we still have an undersupply of books that present our heritage. We can make a distinction between children's books that reflect island-based Puerto Rican experiences and those that reflect Puerto Rican experience in the United States. I discuss this with my students and learn from them about how the two perspectives and experiences are distinct, but also similar in some ways. There's so much to explore within the "two branches" of the Puerto Rican experience.
Teaching and supervising pre-service teachers allows me to learn how to effectively incorporate best practices in teaching reading and writing into my course and professional development workshops. We discuss how students read some books over and over, how revisiting a text allows an engaged reader to explore their own path to learning, and how we should celebrate what seems like purposeless repetition because it is building independence. As an educator, I recognize that some challenges are beyond a teacher's control, and yet, the art of teaching is finding space to celebrate learning within complex social realities.
Yazmin: Using Puerto Rican children's literature, and children's literature in general, with my ESL students has helped me to build their enthusiasm for reading, and their ability to analyze and interpret themes portrayed in texts. Children's books provide the opportunity to learn about the world from a child or teenager's perspective. These viewpoints open spaces for conversations, reflection and even roleplay. Sadly, reading and ESL resources, including high-quality children's literature, are not that accessible in Puerto Rico; many of the books my students read are books I have purchased myself. Also, not all public schools have a library, and those that have one often misuse the space for meetings, storage, or as a digital media center. This undermines the school community's perception of the library.
Melissa: I often run into former students, now teachers, working in public and private schools with or without libraries. We inevitably start talking about books they are currently reading, books they are using with students, and difficulties accessing books. I love learning about new titles, and learning from their teaching experiences. Our community of educators keeps growing. We aim to create and develop libraries, story time approaches, and book displays for children. Puerto Rican students should see the library as an empowering space that belongs to them.
Yazmin: It is our responsibility as educators to share children's literature that is provoking, that reflects our children's lives, and that motivates them to read independently. This is the way to build lifelong readers. Children's books inspire readers to reflect on and question their own realities and social responsibilities. Libraries have been a part of educational reforms around the world, and to empower our Puerto Rican communities, we should advocate for fully engaged children's and youth libraries in all our towns, municipalities, and cities. Going to libraries that serve as reading and writing centers, and as technology hubs, should be an essential part of our youth culture. We must begin from an early age to foster an appreciation of the value of literature in Puerto Rican society, and we must be active in the construction of movements that promote community empowerment and growth through reading.


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BigBite trigger and DAQ
From Hall A Wiki
This section's purpose is to compile and organize the documentation on the BigBite trigger and DAQ:
Trigger specific:
- Introduction to the Bigbite trigger logic for the SBS form factors experiments Source
- BigBite PS/SH trigger groups (pdf) XML source file for the new trigger groups scheme
- Bigbite trigger most up-to-date layout (pdf) XML source file for the layout
- cabling maps (pdf) []
The source files should be utilized as follows:
- download the source on your computer
- in your web browser, open https://draw.io
- The page will prompt you to create a new diagram or open an existing file: choose open the file and browse the source you want to read on your computer.
- You can now edit the source and modify the diagrams.
- BB electronic layout Racks 1-4 (will need update) (pdf)
- BB electronic layout Racks 5-8 (will need update) (pdf)
- XML source for BB weldment
- top view of cables path in BB electronic weldment
- BB cables projected path on Hall A floor
- global timing scheme
- SBS Network Devices in Hall A
- SBS TS cabling
- Crate resets
- Starting CODA for shift workers
- Timing shift GMn
- GEnII CODA update


text:
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text:
What is a driver ?
UVM driver is an active entity that has knowledge on how to drive signals to a particular interface of the design. For example, in order to drive a bus protocol like APB, UVM driver defines how the signals should be timed so that the target protocol becomes valid. All driver classes should be extended from
uvm_driver, either directly or indirectly.
Transaction level objects are obtained from the Sequencer and the UVM driver drives them to the design via an interface handle.
Class Hierarchy
Steps to create a UVM driver1. Create custom class inherited from
uvm_driver, register with factory and call
2. Declare virtual interface handle and get them in build phase
// my_driver is user-given name for this class that has been derived from "uvm_driver"
class my_driver extends uvm_driver;
// [Recommended] Makes this driver more re-usable
`uvm_component_utils (my_driver)
// This is standard code for all components
function new (string name = "my_driver", uvm_component parent = null);
super.new (name, parent);
// Code for rest of the steps come here
3. Code the
// Actual interface object is later obtained by doing a get() call on uvm_config_db
virtual if_name vif;
virtual function void build_phase (uvm_phase phase);
super.build_phase (phase);
if (! uvm_config_db #(virtual if_name) :: get (this, "", "vif", vif)) begin
`uvm_fatal (get_type_name (), "Didn't get handle to virtual interface if_name")
// This is the main piece of driver code which decides how it has to translate
// transaction level objects into pin wiggles at the DUT interface
virtual task run_phase (uvm_phase phase);
// Loop the following steps
// 1. Get next item from the sequencer
// 2. Assign data from the received item into DUT interface
// 3. Finish driving transaction
UVM Driver-Sequencer handshake
UVM driver is a parameterized class which can drive a specific type of transaction object. The driver has a TLM port of type
uvm_seq_item_pull_port which can accept the parameterized request object from the
uvm_sequencer. It can also provide a response object back to the sequencer and usually the class type of both request and response items are the same. However, they can be different if explicitly specified.
The UVM driver uses the following methods to interact with the sequencer.
|Method Name
|Blocks until a request item is available from the sequencer. This should be followed by
item_done call to complete the handshake.
|Non-blocking method which will return
null if a request object is not available from the sequencer. Else it returns a pointer to the object.
|Non-blocking method which completes the driver-sequencer handshake. This should be called after
get_next_item or a successful
try_next_item call.
How are driver/sequencer API methods used ?
The idea behind a driver/sequencer handshake mechanism is to allow the driver to get a series of transaction objects from the sequence and respond back to the sequence after it has finished driving the given item so that it can get the next item.1.
get_next_item followed by
This use model allows the driver to get an object from the sequence, drive the item and then finish the handshake with the sequence by calling
item_done(). This is the preferred use model since the driver need to operate only when the sequencer has an object for the driver. Here,
finish_item call in the sequence finishes only after the driver returns
item_done call.
virtual task run_phase (uvm_phase phase);
my_data req_item;
forever begin
// 1. Get next item from the sequencer
seq_item_port.get_next_item (req_item);
// 2. Drive signals to the interface
@(posedge vif.clk);
vif.en <= 1;
// Drive remaining signals, put write data/get read data
// 3. Tell the sequence that driver has finished current item
get followed by
The difference between this model and the previous one is that here, the driver gets the next item and sends back the sequence handshake in one go, before the UVM driver processes the item. Later on the driver uses the
put method to indicate that the item has been finished. So,
finish_item call in the sequence is finished as soon as
get() is done.
virtual task run_phase (uvm_phase phase);
my_data req_item;
forever begin
// 1. finish_item in sequence is unblocked
seq_item_port.get (req_item);
// 2. Drive signals to the interface
@(posedge vif.clk);
vif.en = 1;
// Drive remaining signals
// 3. Finish item
seq_item_port.put (rsp_item);
UVM Driver Example
class my_driver extends uvm_driver #(my_data);
`uvm_component_utils (my_driver)
virtual dut_if vif;
function new (string name, uvm_component parent);
super.new (name, parent);
virtual function void build_phase (uvm_phase phase);
super.build_phase (phase);
if (! uvm_config_db #(virtual dut_if) :: get (this, "", "vif", vif)) begin
`uvm_fatal (get_type_name (), "Didn't get handle to virtual interface dut_if")
task run_phase (uvm_phase phase);
my_data data_obj;
super.run_phase (phase);
forever begin
`uvm_info (get_type_name (), $sformatf ("Waiting for data from sequencer"), UVM_MEDIUM)
seq_item_port.get_next_item (data_obj);
drive_item (data_obj);
seq_item_port.item_done ();
virtual task drive_item (my_data data_obj);
// Drive based on bus protocol
Note the following from example shown above :
- Driver is extended from
- A virtual interface handle vif is declared and assigned later in the build_phase().
- Real interface object is retrieved from the database directly into a local variable using
- Get the next data item from sequencer using
seq_item_port.get_next_item()in run_phase
- Call drive task to send data in accordance with a bus protocol
- Indicate to the sequencer that the data item has been driven using
Other Details
The base driver class contains a
uvm_seq_item_pull_port through which it can request for new transactions from the export connected to it. The ports are typically connected to the exports of a sequencer component in the parent class where the two are instantiated.The RSP port needs connecting only if the driver will use it to write responses to the analysis export in the sequencer.
class uvm_driver #(type REQ = uvm_sequence_item, type RSP = REQ) extends uvm_component;
The driver's port and the sequencer's export are connected during the
connect_phase() of an environment/agent class.
virtual function void connect_phase ();
m_drv0.seq_item_port.connect (m_seqr0.seq_item_export);