The epic adventures of Cat's visit, or, It's nice to get to see far-away friends

[bironic]

My magnificent friend catilinarian was visiting from Friday until this morning, with a bonus cameo by the illustrious maddy_harrigan on Sunday, so it has been a busy and wonderful week. Movies and TV were watched (X-Men: The Last Stand and Longing [Saudade], DS9's "Improbable Cause"/"The Die is Cast" and SGA's "Grace Under Pressure"), food eaten ("sunny" and volcano rolls at local sushi restaurant = divine, as are sidewalk-cart Firecracker Popsicles at 2 p.m. on 90-degree days in the city), plays seen (Frost/Nixon with Michael Sheen, Frank Langella and Remy Auberjonois [René Jr.]), museums visited (gorgeous new classical wing at the Met), books ogled (Men of WWII: Fighting Men at Ease), fanfics celebrated and mocked (rec and possible MST forthcoming), conversations had (innumerable), work attended (ah, you can't have it all), etc. They both live in London now, so our time together must be savored more than ever.

The only downside was that, though I have been starving for a decent thunderstorm this season, the traffic caused by flooding rains and lightning in our area this morning meant that it took an obscenely long time to get C. to the airport for her flight to Chicago. The good news is, we made it on time after much figurative nail-biting, and I subsequently made it to work without collision or submersion, if a few hours later than I'd hoped.

Also, my awesome cousin is going to be in town soon, and my dad will be away this weekend, and so for the next few days I can do whatever I want (e.g. write and read) without grief or guilt from anyone.

And that's good, because fandom-wise there's that fic I really want to MST (haven't tried that before) and there are movie writeups to do and SGA Big Bang novellas to read and the dvd_commentary challenge to consider and two fics to work on and a non-LJ fic index to construct and...

That aside, a moment of well-wishing in all seriousness for the swift recovery of scribblinlenore, who fell gravely ill and has been hospitalized since last week, though rumor has it she's going to be released soon, with a long recuperation ahead. Healing in the guise of shameless porn is welcome at allvoodooanyway.

Comments

[zulu.livejournal.com]

Ooh, sounds like tons of fun. I didn't know Rene Auberjonois had a son! Or that he was descended from Swiss artists etc. IMDB, you educate me.

Also, yay for time to write fic!

[mer-duff.livejournal.com]

Oh, so jealous! Our AD just came back from a NYC/Shaw/Stratford trip and she was raving about Frost/Nixon. She's got me putting together a precis for our Artistic Liaison committee - any feedback from your perspective as an audience member?

I was planning on tacking New York on at the end of my holiday this fall, but I'm extraordinarily bitter that I would just miss Rock & Roll (poor RSL, another Stoppard opportunity missed). My sister just got a grant to study/train in New York for six months, though, so I may time the trip to coincide with her residence instead.

[bironic.livejournal.com]

Oh, Rene Auberjonois. How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.

Hee -- d'you want to get me started on this? He has a daughter, too, Tessa, who's done some theater and TV work. And a grandchild or two at this point. Remy was good; they have similar faces and occasionally similar movements, but you can tell he's an actor in his own right, just getting started on Broadway.

Yay fic! I've bookmarked your commentary to read, too. *old man voice* I remember when I first read that story and because it was so well-written and -measured and because you came out of the blue, I thought you were one of those middle-aged panfandom semi-BNF types who was dipping into House. It wasn't a bad thing at all -- just not who you turned out to be. :)

[zulu.livejournal.com]

You can get started on Rene Auberjonois any time you like. Odo was my favourite character on DS9, so I have the love!

That commentary was fun to write. I'll have to do another one of these days. But fic first! Got some that need finishing. Um, or starting. Ahem.

[maddy-harrigan.livejournal.com]

Longing [Saudade] = WORST. FILM. EVER. The shirts! The haircuts! The horrible music! The random religious references! The utter lack of character development/realistic dialogue! The badly-shot nipples! The plot holes you could fit an elephant into! ... it hurts ... it hurts ...

[bironic.livejournal.com]

The Fische! The atrociously delivered lines! The UTTER LACK OF ANY CLOSURE WHATSOEVER. Gah.

[bironic.livejournal.com]

I knew very little about the Nixon-Frost interviews going into the play, so I didn't mind that they had a pair of narrators explaining context in the first few scenes, though some of it was pretty clunky. Overall I appreciated having the background filled in. Pacing-wise, the switches from brief scene to brief scene in the beginning did go very quickly -- too quickly, I thought -- so it felt like a whirlwind when it didn't have to; unless they were trying to mirror the swift events surrounding and following Nixon's resignation. It's just that people speaking breathlessly when they don't have to makes me antsy.

What else. They did the staging with a set of 16 TV screens against the backdrop, on which they showed static and brief news program shots between scenes, a reconstruction of the Mike Wallace-David Frost interview, close-ups from the TV cameras' POV during the interview sessions (they dimmed the lights too, and played a buzzing sound, every time a taping session started on stage, to make it even clearer when they were filming and when they weren't), and a freeze-frame of Langella-as-Nixon's face during the big confession at the end, which they kept up there as the narrator discussed what a big deal it was to have captured that look of guilt and exhaustion to plaster all over the media forever.

Anything you're wondering specifically?

Do keep me posted about your trip to NY and any shows you'd like company attending; I'd love to get to meet you. :)

[mer-duff.livejournal.com]

Wow - thanks for the feedback! It's so hard to judge a play just by reviews and show shots. Pacing is such a tricky thing - the show we opened our season with last year could have used a jolt of caffeine in the pacing, but too much and the audience is exhausted. And then I've seen shows where the actors seem to be in completely different plays, pacing-wise :)

I'd love to meet up with you in NY! I gave myself yesterday as a deadline to book my ticket to Argentina, but of course am still waffling. It's so much easier to plan other people's lives.

[bironic.livejournal.com]

Still mem'd. Still haven't read. Sorry for sucking. :)

Rene, O Rene. Odo and Bashir were my biggest teen crushes (and then the Cardassians, but that's another story and another kind of crush), and then I watched him on Boston Legal. A college acquaintance got us backstage at the (abysmal) Dance of the Vampires musical with RA so I got to meet him, which was awesome; and then I took my dad and sister to see Sly Fox and met him again, and confirmed that he is eminently sweet and down-to-earth (and honestly remembers and appreciates his fans!). It's funny; his voice is much higher and thinner than Odo's, and his mannerisms are much more exuberant and occasionally even effeminate. Really makes you appreciate his acting talents when you see how little he's like his characters. He's the only celebrity whose fanclub I've ever joined; they're great people, and do charity collections for his birthday every year.

Hee.

[bironic.livejournal.com]

Argentina! (Have you mentioned that before? Now I feel like you have. I guess, like House in That Story, I'm surprised all over again.) Sounds exciting. I've never been to South America.

And yay potential Mer-meeting in the future.

The actors in Frost/Nixon meshed well together; Michael Sheen stood up to Frank Langella's powerful presence, and the men playing Frost's team all contributed more or less on the same level. Besides the two main characters, it was the narrators who stood out, as you'd imagine, just because they had so many more lines than the others. (It was also very weird to watch someone play Bob Zelnick, who teaches in the journalism school at BU where I got my degree. I remember visiting his office once. And then there "he" was on stage!)

[zulu.livejournal.com]

In retrospect, it was probably Kira that I was lusting after? But I was the most massive Odo/Kira shipper that ever lived who had no clue what the word "shipping" meant. I mean, I wasn't in fandom, but the verb applied anyway. I thought it'd be such a cool idea if some of the wormhole aliens were evil (this was well before any of them were), and I even toyed with writing a spec script (again, not knowing the words 'spec script', or fanfic, at all) where they come to Bajor and it was this whole thing.

I love it when stars are cool in person. (P.S. Marina Sirtis? Hilariously bitchy.)