Author: David Gorsline

Martha, Josie, and the Chinese Elvis

Woolly’s American premiere of Jones’s comedy set in Bolton, in the north of England, may not knock it for six, but the solid production does score a run. The signature Woolly Mammoth theatrical elements are present: a dominatrix mom considering retirement; her two daughters, one of them a bit thick in the head; her shiny-pated client, proprietor of a local dry-cleaning establishment; an Irish cleaning woman with OCD; a neophyte Elvis impersonator from somewhere in the Far East, who has all the singer’s looks but is still learning the words to the songs; and those all-important fur-lined handcuffs. These are enough to keep the punchlines bouncing around the two-level half-timbered set, while themes of reconciliation and costuming and concealment play out.

Sarah Marshall’s natural comic rhythms are sometimes at odds with the dialect called for by her Martha, but she has a lovely, heartfelt second-act monologue that gives her character the opportunity to explain herself.

  • Martha, Josie, and the Chinese Elvis, by Charlotte Jones, directed by John Vreeke, Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company, Washington

Shadow this

Steven Soderbergh recovers 1940s-era moviemaking techniques to film his postwar noir The Good German.

By reproducing the conditions of an actual studio shoot from the late 1940s, he hoped to enter the mind of a filmmaker like [Michael] Curtiz, to explore the strengths and limitations of a classical style that has now largely been lost.

* * *

If there is a single word that sums up the difference between filmmaking at the middle of the 20th century and the filmmaking of today, it is “coverage.” Derived from television, it refers to the increasingly common practice of using multiple cameras for a scene (just as television would cover a football game) and having the actors run through a complete sequence in a few different registers. The lighting tends to be bright and diffused, without shadows, which makes it easier for the different cameras to capture matching images.

* * *

“That kind of staging is a lost art,” Mr. Soderbergh said, “which is too bad. The reason they no longer work that way is because it means making choices, real choices, and sticking to them. It means shooting things in a way that basically only cut together in one order. That’s not what people do now. They want all the options they can get in the editing room.”

Memed: 1

Via Birderblog.com, the The Hawk Owl’s Nest is conducting a survey:

  • What state (or country) do you live in? Virginia
  • How long have you been birding? 13 years or so
  • Are you a “lister”? Yes
  • ABA Life List: 338
  • Overall Life List: 338, which is also my Lower 48 list total.
  • Favorite Birding Spot: Huntley Meadows Park, Fairfax County, Virginia.
  • Favorite birding spot outside your home country: none yet
  • Farthest you’ve traveled to chase a rare bird: about an hour for a Pomarine Jaeger that had wandered far inland into Loudoun County, Virginia.
  • Nemesis bird: Florida Scrub-Jay
  • “Best” bird sighting: A lifer: American Dipper in Eldorado National Forest on Christmas Day, just after the snows had melted sufficiently to make the roads passable.
  • Most wanted trip: Maine and the Maritimes
  • Most wanted bird: Atlantic Puffin
  • What model and brand of bins do you use?: A somewhat beat-up porro prism Celestron 9.5 x 44
  • What model and brand of scope do you use?: Kowa TSN-1
  • What was the last lifer you added to your list?: Piping Plover near Oregon Inlet, North Carolina. I never would have noticed the flock of seven birds on a wind-whipped flat if I hadn’t stumbled upon a pair of field researchers who were tracking them with radio.
  • Where did you see your last lifer?: see above
  • What’s the last bird you saw today?: Alas, I think the last bird I noticed was a Fish Crow at dusk yesterday.
  • Best bird song you’ve heard ever: Wood Thrush, in the backyard of my suburban, habitat-fragmenting townhouse.
  • Favorite birding moments: A visit to the Powdermill banding station in Pennsylvania. My first trip to the Outer Banks of North Carolina (“My god, it’s full of birds!”). Seeing two lifers in my bins at the same time in a park in Sacramento. On a work-related training trip to Orange County, getting up early to drive down to the beach, then patiently keying out a California Gull for #300.
  • Least favorite thing about birding: High winds.
  • Favorite thing about birding: Using it as an excuse to vacation somewhere I’ve never been before.
  • Favorite field guide for the US: Peterson
  • Favorite non-field guide bird book: Proctor and Lynch, “Manual of Ornithology”
  • Who is your birder icon?: Let me get back to you on that one.
  • Do you have a bird feeder(s)? No. I don’t enjoy feeding squirrels.
  • Favorite feeder bird? White-Breasted Nuthatch

We don’t need no stinking categories

I admit it: the category system for this blog is a mess. I started out with clever allusive titles like Ars Longa and Like Life (the title of a comic novel by Lorrie Moore), but I quickly ran out of allusions that were sufficiently descriptive. Every time I tagged something with NOC, Leta would ask me, “what does that stand for?” and I would explain “not otherwise classified.” And my posts refused to distribute themselves at all evenly into a tidy set of seven categories or so. What would George Miller make of the folksonomy movement, I wonder? Anyhow, let this be a warning to the teeming millions (milling onesies, maybe?) that I may scribble all over the category system at some point.

Crooked CA watch

The former chief of what was known as Computer Associates International, Inc., Sanjay Kumar, has been sentenced to twelve years in prison for his role in a massive accounting fraud. Charges were made that

Kumar and other executives instructed salespeople to complete deals after the quarter had closed — a practice known within the company as the ”35-day month”…