M-m-m-m-m-m-My Menorah!

Shakespeare in the Park

Went to see the San Francisco Shakespeare Festival on Labor Day in the Presidio. They're doing Pericles, which no one ever does. Wonderful production, done as if it were a Western movie, complete with twangy accents and Western-style music and dance. Great costumes that could easily have been on a Broadway stage.

Just went to their website to see if they had any pictures I could post, and saw that they had a YouTube video. The wonders of modern technology!

Oscar notes

I did predict one of the short film winners -- "Peter and the Wolf." I loved that when the filmmaker went on stage to get his Oscar, he brought a little statue of Peter and his pet duck.

It will be on Great Performances on PBS -- on March 26 in NYC, but check the link for the dates elsewhere.

I didn't expect the other winner, "The Mozart of Pickpockets." If I had ranked all five of the live-action shorts in order of probability of winning, I would have put "Pickpockets" last.

As for the feature-length films, the only ones I've seen so far among the winners are "Atonement" and "There Will Be Blood."

I'm glad that "Atonement" won for its music, which was an important part of the experience of the film. Too bad there wasn't an award for Best Sounds of a Manual Typewriter Clacking. And I wish "Atonement" had won for Best Costume Design, solely on the basis of the green dress that Keira Knightley wore, which is one of the most beautiful dresses I've ever seen.

While I was looking on the web for a picture of the dress, I found out that it's actually for sale. It's being auctioned off for charity -- the high bid right now is (gulp) $10,000, with 4 days left to go. (Update: the dress sold for $46,000!)

I haven't seen "No Country for Old Men," and I'm not sure I want to, given the subject matter. I loved "Raising Arizona" and "Fargo" -- but "The Man Who Wasn't There" and "O Brother Where Art There," not so much.

I read this morning that the Coen brothers are going to be making a movie of Michael Chabon's book "The Yiddish Policemen's Union." Interesting. The last third of the book is already quite cinematic as written and should be easy to film. It even has chase scenes! But what about the beginning, which is slower and takes place a lot more inside someone's head? And the language? Will they trim down the Yiddish slang? Will they use subtitles? Can this book really be turned into a mass-market film? I'm looking forward to seeing it, but with fingers crossed.

Oscar-nominated animated shorts

I went to see the animated shorts this time. There were five films, all using inventive and interesting animation techniques, including 3-D animation, watercolor, and puppets. But three of them had storylines I wasn't that crazy about.

The two films I liked the best were "I Met the Walrus," which had witty line drawings illustrating, extending, and sometimes punning on the words of a 1969 interview with John Lennon, and "Peter and the Wolf," which was set to Prokofiev's music and had wonderful portrayals of several animals, including a charming pet duck, which unfortunately got eaten by the wolf. "I Met the Walrus" was very short, so I don't think it will win. "Peter and the Wolf" might. The other film I think might win would be "Madame Tutli-Putli," which was visually quite interesting, but left me saying "Huh?" at the end.

Both programs of shorts will be playing in S.F.'s Embarcadero theater at least through Thursday (the runs may be extended if there is still demand). A list of other theaters where they are, or will be, playing around the country is here, and a list of all the films in both the animated and live action programs, along with brief descriptions, is here. A DVD will also be released at some point.

Recommended. Although I liked some of the selections more than others, I enjoyed both the live-action and the animated shorts programs, overall, more than any regular-length feature I've seen recently.

Went to see a program containing all the Oscar-nominated live action shorts yesterday.

What I would like to see win: the hilarious Il Supplente (The Substitute). What I think will win: At Night, a memorable and well-made, but extremely depressing story about three young women who are dying of cancer.