Tag Archives: Reviews

Reviews of some of the things I’ve seen and done. Theater, movies, activites, etc.

The Producers

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The ProducersYesterday Ginny and I saw The Producers at the Marriott Lincolnshire theater.

In a word: Fantastic!

The singing was great, dancing incredible, acting wonderful.

Guy Adkins was absolutely hilarious as Leo Bloom (played by Matthew Broderick in the movie).

Oddly enough, we received a letter from the Marriott Theater indicating that some people might find the content of the production offensive. The theater was offering an alternate show if a subscriber wanted to skip The Producers.

To be honest, anyone who might find the content offensive is pretty weird in my view. Even though the play makes reference to the Nazi’s … it’s clearly a parody.   But you probably knew that 🙂

All in all, a highly recommended play.

Prairie Home Companion

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Ginny and I saw “Prairie Home Companion” today … in a word: Yawn

Don’t get me wrong … I enjoy the show on NPR (although I don’t go out of my way to listen to it), but this movie was just plain boring.

Maybe I’m just not sophisticated enough for it … but I could find no point to the movie. The music was pretty lame, with one or two exceptions the humor was absent (the off-color jokes by Dusty & Left [Woody Harrelson and John C. Reilly respectively] were good and Kevin Kline as Guy Noir was pretty funny), and I couldn’t detect a plot at all.

Garrison: stick to radio.

[tags]NPR, Garrison Keillor, Prairie Home Companion, Radio[/tags]

Catchup

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Oh boy … it’s been a while since I did a serious post here. Time to do some catch up.

  1. My blog feed is now handled through Feedburner. This will allow me to get some stats on my readership. I was quite surprised to see that there are 28 people reading my blog through various mechanims.
  2. The people who are promoting intelligent design are total idiots. The idea that they would want to replace science with religion is total bullshit.
  3. Work has been kind of crazy lately … the project I’ve been working on is in full swing and I’m pretty much heads down on it. I’ll be glad when it’s done … not only will it be a load off my mind … but it will be a very very cool feature. Also, I got a raise today!
  4. Last Saturday, Ginny and I went to see “Beauty and the Beast” by the Highland Park Players … a local community theater group. Our friend Earle was playing Monsieur D’Arque. He only had one significant part, but it was prominent. The show was quite good. Didn’t have the polish that the Marriott Theater production did … but it was fun none the less.
  5. Speaking of theater … we went to see “Footloose” at the Marriott two weeks ago … I was not impressed. The singing was so-so and the dancing was ‘eh’. There were a few good numbers, but as a whole it didn’t work for me.
  6. Riley loves the laser pointer. He also likes lower tech toys like a piece of string. He doesn’t seem to go for the cat toys though.

Well, that’s all the news that’s fit to print right now. I’ll try to keep more current in the future.

A Comedy Tonight!

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We went to see “A funny thing happened on the way to the Forum” yesterday at Marriott Lincolnshire Theater.

It was very good. Lots of energy, good singing, and dancing.

The actor who played Pseudolus was hilarious. He played with the audience, mugged with the other players, and was generally fun to watch.

I highly recommend this play.

As a side note … I finally found out where the tune “A Comedy Tonight” came from. The only time I had previously heard it was when I was a kid on WGN Channel 9. They ran commercials for a block of sit-coms that included Hogans Hero’s and the Dick Van Dyke show. “A Comedy Tonight” ran on the commercial as the theme.

[tags]Theater, Comedy, Musicals[/tags]

Half Blood Prince

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I’m about halfway through ::amazon(“0439784549”, “Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince”):: and I must say it’s better than the last book. Much more readable and, at least in my opinion, on par with Ms. Rowling’s previous books.

I recommend it.

[tags]Harry Potter[/tags]

Theater Hike

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We went to see a “As you like it” performed by Theater Hikes at The Morton Arboretum today.

I really wasn’t expecting much, considering the venue and price of the tickets, but I was pleasantly surprised. It was pretty good for a community theater production.

Yes, it was hot… very hot. And humid. But there was a intermittent breeze and we moved around a bit.

The production values weren’t quite on par with Broadway or even Marriott Theatre, but given the situation, it was fun to watch. Somehow I don’t think Bill Shakespeare had jeans in mind when he wrote the play.

I think we’re going to try and see “Sleepy Hollow” in September … it will be cooler then. Not sure how they are going to do the headless horseman.

H2G2

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We went to see Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy last night with Steve and his MENSA moving group.

I never read the books … and when I watched it on PBS, I gave up quickly because the production values were so low (really bad props & special effects and pretty marginal acting, IMHO).

The movie certainly had far better production values … and was pretty funny, but seemed kind of disjointed to me. From what I could tell, they took a bunch of sections of all the book and stuck them together in a bit of a hodge-podge. There were also a lot of important elements that they used but never explained (Towels, in particular … and the “Peril Sensitive Sunglasses” that Ford & Zaphod wore).

I did laugh a lot … but only at the individual gags … the movie lacked a cohesiveness that I would have liked.

Swing!

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We just saw Swing! at the Marriott Lincolnshire Theater.

I highly recommend it … it’s quite enjoyable. No plot, but the dancing and singing are outstanding. It’s a wonderful revue. The band, which was as much a part of the show as the performers, was great also.

I think my favorite part was in the 2nd half where one of the women is singing, and a trombone player is responding with music. The trombone player was very expressive with his music. I was just a ‘little’ disconcerted, however, when I realized that the mute he was using was actually a plunger head. 🙂