Paradise Lost: Shadows and Wings

I'm not a huge fan of techno music.  Or of opera. But Eric Whitacre, one of my favorite composers, mashed them together with the traditional musical theatre tradition to create Paradise Lost: Shadows and Wings.

The story is not based on Milton's Paradise Lost, but is actually about a tribe of angels whose parents hid them away and took their wings as children. An odd concept, true, but so is the music. It's a really beautiful and unexpected fit--like bacon in ice cream, or Bollywood and Jane Austen.

You can hear excerpts of the music by clicking here. I strongly suggest that you do.  I'm slightly addicted to "What If," "Sleep My Child," "Forgotten" and "All Alone."

Five Words.

Lyndsey and I watched the movie in preparation for this Tuesday. We loved it. The trick is to just take it for what it is--campy and fabulous.

Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog

The other day, the family watched a movie on Netflix on Demand about an evil genius.

It has clever and catchy music. It has Neil Patrick Harris. It has Nathan Fillion. What more could you want? I squealed aloud when I found it in the Bosses' DVD collection. I bought the soundtrack and listen to it ALL the time. I'm not the kind of gal who will watch a movie or listen to a song or read a book and start it over when it's finished. At all. But I can watch this movie over and over again. (I actually got through it 3 1/2 times on Friday.) It actually was an internet miniseries by Joss Whedon. There's the first part of it below.

watch it.

Rainbow High

I made my family watch Evita with me last night. There were awesome songs that weren't on the soundtrack my family's had since the movie first came out...so I did some research on iTunes and found the COMPLETE soundtrack. Right down to people yelling in the movie theater at the beginning. When there's almost no spoken dialogue in a movie, you might as well put the whole thing on the soundtrack, right? Right. Madonna was a great casting choice.

So besides the incredible music, I love Evita because Eva Perón was a fascinating person. She's not an ordinary Cinderella story at all. You can't put her into just one category. In Evita, her husband Juan is given the line "she is a diamond."  She was more than just an actress, a philanthropist, a politician, a woman of questionable chastity. She's certainly not the saint Argentina believed her to be. She was tough as diamonds, but not as durable. I agree with her own description of herself: "I am a rainbow." She was colorful, larger than life, not what she seemed, and fleeting. (She only lived to be 33.) I'm going to do a little more research to find out more about who she really was. I told a friend a condensed version of my quest: I'm trying to figure out whether she was a dumb gold digger who was brainwashed into being her husband's puppet or a brilliant gold digger who knew exactly how to get into power.

Seasons are a Relatively New Concept.

 

image found here

It got up to something like 40º F today.

I went about my day with bare legs, and only my hands got cold. (Tuesday devotional=wore a dress)

The icicles outside my window are starting to melt away.

I can see (albeit dead) grass outside my apartment.

Spring is on its way...just as I'm getting ready to leave. Great. But then it'll be Summer in California! (We only have two seasons there...Summer is from April to mid-November and the rest is Lesser Summer/Sort of Spring.)

But I'm so ready for Springtime. ANY kind of Springtime. Maybe even this one*.


*Don't click the link if you are easily offended by musical comedy involving Hitler. Also, I don't really want this kind of Springtime.