Beethoven Day

 

Though there is no hard historical evidence proving that today is Ludwig van Beethoven’s birthday… ye old fount of knowledge, wikipedia, informs me that it is the 16 that is typically celebrated as his date of birth. It’s been quite a Beethoven couple of months for me, actually:  I went to a performance of his 9th Symphony in September with my friend Rachel, and Jennifer and I recently saw Houston Grand Opera’s performance of Beethoven’s only opera, Fidelio— a first for me!

SO!!! In much the same vein as my previous Bach birthday post here are a couple of my favorite usages  and machinations of Beethoven’s music:

 

The opening titles to one of my top favorite movies, The Fall (Symphony No. 7, 2nd Mvt.)

 

 

In my ongoing series to eventually post all clips from both Fantasia and Fantasia 2000 (Symphony No. 5, 1st Mvt.)

 

And finally, since we haven’t heard from La Voce herself (Mizzzzz Renee Fleming), I figure now is as appropriate a time as any for a video of her singing an arrangement of “My Funny Valentine” set to Beethoven’s “Moonlight” sonata.

 

 

Artist: Andrew Lippa / Album: You’re a Good Man Charlie Brown

Color and Light

 

In honor of this, my 200th post, I thought I would kill a couple of birds (and redeem myself as a good Texan) with one post.

It’s new header time!!!

In honor of Texas Independence Day, which I missed on March 2, we are looking at the work of Austin resident Trey Ratcliff, specialist in High Dynamic range (HDR) photography and creator of Stuck in Customs, a blog devoted to his pictures and the process he uses to make them.  What is HDR photography exactly?  A dry definition, courtesy of wikipedia, explains it thusly:

[…] set of techniques that allow a greater dynamic range of luminance between the lightest and darkest areas of an image than current standard digital imaging techniques or photographic methods. This wide dynamic range allows HDR images to more accurately represent the range of intensity levels found in real scenes, ranging from direct sunlight to faint starlight.

It’s a bit easier to see the difference, however:

According to the photographer “… it was shot about two hours outside of Austin in a little town called Brady.  You’d like it.  They have a Sonic there.”  Omg I WOULD like it!

 

In fact, Trey’s picture of Fourth of July fireworks over Lake Austin was the first ever HDR image to be shown in the Smithsonian Institution.  Not too shabby, eh?

 

A shout out to my Savannah relatives!

 

“I found this beauty salon one evening when driving between Houston and Austin. It was just sitting there, all neglected…. and I felt like someone needed to pay attention to it, so I did for a short while.”  By the way, I’d totally get my hair did there.

 

“A Sea of Glass- The Chihuly Exhibit at the Belagio” God, I could go for some Skittles about now

 

In a weird way, this is kind of how I see the world… or at least how I try to see it.  If it’s gonna be in color, then why not Technicolor, right!? It’s certainly no wonder that some of the movies I have recommended previously (Amelie, The Fall) are skewed through a similar lens.  Even before I saw some of Trey’s work I would photoshop my pictures trying to evoke not necessarily what the camera saw, but the image I remembered, ambiance and all.  Two examples from my D.C. trip:

 

Before           and                       After

 

Don’t get me wrong… I’m not even beginning to try and compare myself to the above. For one, my camera consists of, well, my phone. While they may turn out relatively well for small proportioned blog usage, their nowhere NEAR Smithsonian standards. Photography is the one medium of visual art that I think I might even have the capability of doing well, and this style has certainly intrigued me.  So forget that watch (because I’m sure some of you were juuuuust about to buy it for me)… daddy wants a CAMERA!!!

Oh, and speeeaaaaaking of photography, I thought this would be the perfect time to announce that tomorrow I am starting my new job as Assistant Director at the John Cleary Gallery!!!!!  (You may recall I have posted about it ummmm here and here and here and here ad infinitum… … …) I’ll actually be the one to read about this in a GoogleAlert email tomorrow at work :)

That’s right, baby, I can now check something off of my list of life “to-do’s”!!!  It’s not ever really been something I’ve talked about, but I’ve always thought it would be the most glamorous thing to work in a gallery.  Which just goes to show—blog about something enough and who knows where it’ll lead!!! (It maybe also helps to know the owner?)  It’s just a three month stint until I head away to Europe again this summer, but I am going to revel every. single. day of it!

PLEASE DON’T FIRE ME!!!

Artist: Stephen Sondheim/ Album: Sunday in the Park with George

A Falling Through

After Clue, the next movie I usually force invite my friends to watch comes in the form of a wildly visually stunning fairy tale of sorts: The Fall. Just LOOK at these amazing stills, and the first three minutes alone (with a little help from the second movement of Beethoven's 7th) are, in my opinion, completely worth the rental fee.

I was going to try and write a synopsis of it, but just watch the trailer instead:


The director, Tarsem Singh, is mostly known for his television commercials but some of you might know his earlier forey to the silver screen, the 2000 Jennifer Lopez movie The Cell. Actually, it is exactly because of his abundant work on TV commercials that The Fall was even able to be made. Due to an extremely small budget (he financed the film himself in order to maintain his vision throughout) he managed to piggybacked on his other corporate jobs and carted the cast along with him to a total of some twenty different countries over a period of four years. Amazingly, the entire film is made without the use of computer generated effects-- a fact made even more astonishing when you see the final product!

The only mildly recognizable actor in the film is Lee Pace, whom you might remember from the sadly yet not surprisingly cancelled Pushing Daisies and the even lesser known gem Wonderfalls.  I'll refrain from getting on my high horse about how wonderful that show was... instead I'll let my sister-in-law do it here.

The standout of the film, however, is Cantica Untaru.  You will literally want to pull a Christian missionary in Haiti and steal this child from her home country of Romania. I wouldn't recommend it though because, you know, it's illegal and all. A complete unknown, Cantica's performance was a mixture of loosely scripted material mixed with improvised dialogue with the other actors. In fact, the entire cast and crew spent the whole shoot having her belive Lee Pace was actually wheel chair bound in order to get an untaintedly genuine performance. Welllllllllllll it worked.

Next up for Tarsem is Immortals, set during the time of Greek mythology.  Basically I couldn't be more excited because I went through a phase when I was younger where all I was interested in was mythology.  God bless Edith Hamilton!

So anyway... GO WATCH THE FALL!!

                                              "Tarsem... has made a movie that you might want to see for no other reason than because it exists. There will never be another like it."

Roger Ebert