Quote of the Day

From Man with No Personality's review of The Magic Flute (yes, the opera), at the Stomp Tokyo boards:

And then there's the Freemasonry.

Of course nowadays, Freemasons are a bunch of harmless old coots who wear funny hats, and the only people who are afraid of them are paranoid freaks, Alan Moore and... I just repeated myself. But in 1789, Freemasonry was the place where all the hepcats were swinging. Loads of powerful, influential people were joining the Freemasons, holding "Egyptian" rites, planning to cause the spirtual regneration of everything, and basically making fools of themselves. And Mozart was one of them. And so was Emanuel Schikanedar, impresario, and librettist. And they made this opera a love letter to Freemasonry. And if you can't quite grasp what that means, I'll spell it out for you...

Imagine if Battlefield Earth had been a musical. And had been popular. And had even been a bit of an influence of Star Wars.

Nervous now? You should be.

And now on with the show!

(Also allow me to state this is the longest introduction I ever did. Thank you history! In your wending ways, and endless eccentricity I have a plentiforus padding!)

Behind-the-scenes movie glimpses

Have finally finished the 10/11 New Yorker ("Making Movies". neato), and one of the more interesting features of this issue was several short columns giving a peek at the jobs of some of the behind-the-scenes folks of movie-making, such as the best boy and the costume designer. Since none of these columns were part of the New Yorker's online content, and since some of you guys might be interested and not have seen them, I typed up the two columns pertaining to films that are interesting to me (yeah, selfish, sorry): Master and Commander (the sound designer, Richard King) and Return of the King (Howard Shore, the composer). No real spoilers in either (well, none from RotK unless you've never read the book, know nothing about it, are completely spoiler-virginal and have been living in a cave. But then you probably aren't reading this anyway, are you.)

( Arts and Crafts: Sound Designer- 'Wicked Wind' by Ben McGrath )

( Arts and Crafts: Composer- 'Symphony in See' by Giles Smith )