Alice in Wonderland

Short Wicked review and other boring things

Seeing Wicked

My family and I went to see the musical Wicked yesterday.

wicked The bad: Going in, the lady person (at the Landmark Theater in Richmond, VA) handing out the programs wouldn’t give me one. She said “Oh, it’s only one per family! Snicker snicker snoody-doo!” I made that second sentence up, but $55 for way-in-the-back seats and you don’t even give me a program?! You pathetic loser booger-heads! We did end up getting more; who doesn’t like to collect programs of the performances you’ve seen? One per family. Tsk tsk. You should be ashamed of yourselves.

Secondly, the seating at the Landmark Theater in Richmond, VA is just pathetic; at least up in the balcony seats. (I think the place was built in the 1920s or something.) It was like stadium seating, but extremely squished. Not designed for tall people at all.  The seats in front of you dig into your knees. It’s just really poorly designed. I would recommend nobody ever going there again for anything. Pathetic, you fail, Landmark Theater!

The good: The musical itself. After familiarizing myself with the Wicked soundtrack for the past few years, it was great to finally see the entire story behind it, which was a quite engaging story (should make a good movie someday – I doubt much story editing would be needed). I loved the whole fantasy feel to the whole thing, in the set designs and the costumes and the lighting. The big talking Oz head is just awesome. You don’t get that stuff on the soundtrack.

A bit of trivia (that I found online; probably old news to die hard fans): the first seven notes of the tune “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” are hidden in the musical. Stephen Schwartz used them for the “Unlimited” theme. The rhythm and harmonies are different, so you don’t recognize it at all, but it’s awesome that they’re there.

Album art

In other news, here is a preview of what my first album’s cover will probably look like. The manufacturers are estimating they will be done manufacturing the thing by March 31st. That’s, of course, just an estimate, and then it will still require some time to ship. But we’re getting closer and closer! Maybe this whole process becomes more mundane after you do it a few times, but for a first time it’s extremely exciting!

Alice in Wonderland soundtrack

alice Speaking of albums with awesome music (heh), I recently bought Danny Elfman’s score to the newest Tim Burton film, Alice in Wonderland. Even though the movie as a whole was kind of meh, the music is fantastic. It’s some of Danny Elfman’s best work in a while. The first track is kinda like the first track on the Coraline soundtrack, except in Elfman’s score the children’s choir is singing in English (in Coraline it sounds like they’re singing in gibberish). Both utilize children choirs singing hauntingly beautiful melodies with delicious epic orchestration. Ahhh… awesome stuff. So… you should buy it.  At least buy the first track “Alice’s Theme” on iTunes or something.  It’s Hannifin recommended.

Blah blah

It still feels like it should be an hour earlier…

By S P Hannifin, ago

Album’s site is up and Burton’s Alice review

I spent my day off work working.  Enterprising, no?  I created a small site for my vanity label Hannifin Records.  Of course, there’s not much there yet.  But you can see a bit more of my first album’s cover art revealed in the title banner.  And, if you navigate your way through it a bit, there’s a page for the album with previews of all the tracks.  Next I need to experiment with PayPal buttons, since I’m guessing that’s what I’ll use to take orders.

Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland review

Also, I just got home from watching Tim Burton’s version of Alice in Wonderland.  Read no further if you plan on seeing the movie yourself and fear having your opinions tainted by my own.

Still reading?  OK, well, that’s your own fault.

I liked some things, didn’t like others.  Like most movies.

The artistry was great.  Especially the architecture of the castles, in my opinion.  Just awesome stuff, awesome to look at.  I do wish I could live in castles so well designed.  Though how do you get a laptop to go with the surroundings?  The special effects were great; I look forward to seeing them on blu-ray eventually.  (Our movie theaters here still don’t seem to like using digital projection or actually putting the picture in perfect focus.)  The music was also very good.  Danny Elfman’s music does tend to please me.  I’ll probably buy the soundtrack.  Good film music, especially compared to the more-atmospheric-less-melodic music films tend to be using nowadays.  Why don’t they throw us a crumb?  What’s wrong with letting us tap our toes a bit?  I’ll let you know when Stravinski has a hit… oops, sorry.  Helena B. Carter was also very funny.

The bad… just about everything else.  Which I actually won’t blather about because, you know, I like to focus on the good.  OK, actually I’m just lazy.  But I do think I could’ve written a better script.  If I didn’t have to base it on a book.  I mean, with such awesome visual artistry, I think there are more interesting stories to be told.  Why keep telling the same stories?

I did get a few ideas for novels and short stories while watching.  And the ending kind of made me want to invent a bunch of chess variants.

That’s all I have to say.  Guess what I get to do all weekend?  Go to work!  Yeah!!

Bye.

By S P Hannifin, ago