"Once again, Harry, we must ask too much of the audience..."

I saw Harry Potter and the Halfblood Prince. I had a good time, though the movie itself was subpar. I guess this is going to be a movie review, so I'll begin with the negative and end with the positive in hopes that you will still go out and support the entertainment industry with your ten dollars of ticket-fare.

Michael Gambon may be a talented actor in other roles, but he is completely wrong for the part of Dumbledore. His interpretation was completely off. I've never found him likeable as Dumbledore, especially not in this movie. If anything I was happy that Dumbledore died so that I wouldn't have to see Michael Gambon butcher the role any more.

There were many slow sections. It's Harry Potter. The movie oughtn't to bore me even once, much less several times.

The romantic tension was totally unresolved. The book was full of kissing. There was barely any in the movie.

But now to look at the positive side, the romantic tension itself was amazing. There were so many awkward moments, it was delicious. Every scene with the Ron/Hermione/Lavendar or Ginny/Harry/Dean triangle drama had me in stitches and there was a really touching Harry/Hermione scene where they comforted and helped each other through the hardships of unrequited love.

The effects/camera work are amazing. This movie is one of the most visually pleasing Harry Potter movies yet, which is quite a feat because they are all beautiful. They must have used a special filter on the lens because every image is dusted with this fantastical layer that adds magic to everything (as if there weren't enough magic already... :-) ).

Helena Bonham Carter. Enough said. But I'll say more anyway. Her part is tiny and yet she's incredible. Every time I see her on screen or hear her voice as Bellatrix LeStrange, chills of fear run down my spine. In the post-Dumbledore's-death sequence, she puts herself into this creepily ecstatic dance--guess which of her past characters came to my mind while watching (and really, guess--the comment box isn't there for nothing :-P ). The moral of the story is, she's a very gifted actress.

Finally, I loved the the energy coming from the audience. The theater was fairly empty for a Harry Potter opening night, but the audience was abuzz with excitement for the movie, which made it so much fun to watch. The vocal reactions to various moments on screen were very funny and there's such a sense of community about a room full of people who have all addictively read the same books over the last decade or so.

So see it. It's not a movie I'll be watching a lot on DVD when it comes out, but it's worth a trip down to the theaters. So see it.

I don't quite know what else to talk about.

This video is pretty funny:



Love,
Christian

Back to Reality

Dear Everyone,

Snaps for anyone who can identify the rap artist (I hope I haven't offended anyone by calling a rapper and artist) who featured the words that make up this post's title in one of his or her hit songs.

Well, camp officially ended early Saturday morning, but I was just too tired to blog Saturday, and I started but didn't finish this post yesterday. But I'm back. Camp was an incredible experience as always. I feel very comfortable saying it's the best camp at BYU. Almost everyone who has gone both to EFY and YASE claims that YASE is much more fulfilling and rewarding, and I don't know if other performing arts camps achieve the same level of spirituality or teach the same life lessons.

Sometime when I get back home I'll do a full report on YASE, but I've got things to do today and tomorrow, so here's a short summary:

I sang the part of Bert in "Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious", I sang the song "At Last" (made famous by Etta James) in the showcase, and was voted into the final show, I shed tears every day of camp, and (sorry to break parallel structure, all you English majors) the fireside on Thursday was one of the best firesides I've ever been to.
I'm immensely happy right now and I'm so excited for college and the rest of my life!

Well, I must be going, so I'll leave a video for your enjoyment.



This is the West End/Broadway version of "Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious" after which the Young Ambassadors' version was modeled. It's fun. And difficult :-)

Love,
Christian

P.S. I'm sorry that I never finished posting the videos I said I would.
P.P.S. I really like comments on my posts...
P.P.P.S. I'm sorry that the quality and synchronization of the video is so poor, but I'm sure you can get the idea.

Leavin' on a Jetblue-Plane...

This evening at seven twenty-six of the clock, post meridian, I will be flying to Utah to enjoy my last true pre-college experience--my third and final year of the Young Ambassadors Singing Entertainer Workshop (YASE camp). There is precious little free time during this camp, so it is unlikely that I'll be able to post for the next few days. I may be able to post tomorrow, if Ben can spare the use of his laptop for a while. Anyway, once I return from camp, you can expect a full and (hopefully) exciting report of the week.

Packing is calling me, so I will leave you with a handful of videos. You can spread them out over the days that I'll be absent from the blog and maybe you won't miss me as much. Enjoy

Love,
Christian

These two videos (here's the first and here's the second) were the songs for the opening number of the YASE show in 2007 (that's obviously not us li'l campers in the videos). A little trivia: the boy singing lead in the videos was in Hannah Frandsen's graduating class at SFHS and the girl singing lead is the niece of the star of every EFY album, the mormon pop-star Jenny Jordan Frogley.





These two songs made up the finale for 2008. The choir doesn't sound amazing in the first, but I think Taylor (my prom date) does a great job of the solo. The second video is the Young Ambassadors cast of 2008-2009.



This is Becca Schwartz, a good friend of mine, from the YA cast 2007-2008. In my humble opinion, this is one of the best renditions of defying gravity on YouTube. She's a star.

I don't know if y'all can access this video, but this is my best friend Julia singing "Diva's Lament" from Spamalot at the YASE showcase last summer.

And here's ME singing "Who Can I Turn To" from The Roar of the Greasepaint - The Smell of the Crowd at the same showcase. Another bit of trivia: the Michael Buble/Muse/Adam Lambert hit "Feelin' Good" comes from the same show.



This is Taylor again performing "So Much Better" from Legally Blonde: The Musical, again at the same showcase.

Well I really do need to pack right now, so I will post more videos for your enjoyment tomorrow.

Independence Day

This post is just going to be awful. I'm sorry guys. I guess that's how it goes after a full day of working in allergy-inducing dust (the process of sorting through everything in my room). So what do I have to say about the Fourth of July? Not much. Is it horribly unpatriotic that I'd rather be living in Norway or the like right now? Not that I actually want to live there this moment, but I thought about what a beautiful home Norway would make several times today.

I suppose I should say something nice about liberty and other positively-connoted abstract ideas in honor of the Fourth. Well, in the process of cleaning my room I have liberated myself in a way. I have freed myself from the weight of lots of stuff. Though my lesser nature brings out pack-rat behaviors, I do truly believe that the less baggage (emotional AND physical) you have, the freer you are. In this same process I have also worked towards freeing myself of obsessive-compulsive tendencies. I have forced myself to break stupid traditions like saving the cellophane wrappers of CD's. Though it is difficult, it feels good.

On a different note, I just watched Singin' in the Rain in honor of the fourth (that's a good old-fashioned American movie, right?) and was floored. I hadn't watched it all the way through in more than a year and I noticed so many more details this time around. Sure the dialogue is occasionally hokey and the deliveries are corny, but that cast is talented. Even the lowliest of ensemble girls was constantly in character. For an observant watcher who knows the film well, there are countless funny moments to be observed here and there--little bits that are brilliant but hidden. And the leads--they are incredible. Gene Kelly may have been a jerk, but he was an extraordinarily talented jerk; Debbie Reynolds is so likeable; Donald O'Connor is masterful and genius; and Cyd Charisse will always have my heart.

Here are two of my favorite clips from the movie:





--Christian

P.S. I removed the grey frame from the clip this time around. Compare it to the embedments from the previous post and let me know which you prefer. Thanks!

Don't Rain On My Parody!

I just love parodies. If a piece of comedy can effectively and simultaneously make fun of and pay homage to original and well-beloved source material, then I'm a happy camper. Sorry if that sentence was funky, it's late. Here is a great parody that I recently discovered. Yes, I've watched it multiple times :-)

See more funny videos and funny pictures at CollegeHumor.

I also really love spoofs, especially when the spoof is expressed in a
medium different from the original source material. Here's the first
part of a spoof that the Musical Theatre kids at the University of
Michigan put together. I've only watched about the first seven parts. I'll
finish the entire thing at some point. My favorite moment is one

particular character's entrance at the beginning of Act I, Part ii.

And now, just to honor the title of my post, here's the incomparable

Barbra Streisand at her finest (I apologize for the commentary, but the

behind the scenes footage is kind of interesting--click here for a

cleaner version):

Enjoy!

--Christian

P.S. I'm just learning how to embed videos, and I don't know how to
shrink the dimensions of the Web Site Story video to fit the width of my
blog. You can see it more clearly here. I hope you like it!

Beauty

I spent the last couple hours at the Johnson's house. The intent was to play ping pong--Jeff, Ryan, and Chantal did--but I (not surprisingly) spent the entire time talking to Jeralee, first about her upcoming mission in Finland (I'm so jealous of her but I showed her the Helsinki Complaints Choir and the Sauna Championships on YouTube), then about Disney songs (with Jeralee, Jeff, and Ryan all leaving on missions in the next few months, we YouTubed classic Disney songs in Finnish and Portuguese--so funny), and then to music in general, of course.

The conversation on music stemmed from the Broadway version of "Under the Sea" from The Little Mermaid. Tituss Burgess, who plays Sebastian, (he was also Nicely Nicely Johnson in this season's revival of Guys and Dolls and he totally rocked the boat :-) ) wails on an amazing high G on the key change at the end of the dance break (round about three minutes--maybe a little after). I was so excited to show Jeralee because I thought she'd be just as wowed as I was. Surprisingly she hated it. While she was impressed with the technique and the range, she did not find it beautiful. As much as I tried to explain why it was so great, she would not agree. She explained that as a performance major, she was all about the product, not the process. She didn't want to be explained into enjoying something, she just wanted to enjoy it. That made me wonder if I truly found it beautiful. It was a strange thought, and it has come to me once before, backstage of a performance when a friend of mine was belting a money note. I asked myself if I enjoyed such vocal fireworks because of the difficulty and technique, or because I truly found the sound beautiful?

I realized immediately that I really do find the sound beautiful, but we talked for a while more about analysis itself, among other things. Jeralee's favorite type of music is music that can be enjoyed at any level of thought. If you just need some sound in your ears, then it's nice to listen to. If you really want to delve, then it's complexity is equally rewarding. But she doesn't want to be forced to analyze something just to enjoy it. I realized that analysis is second nature to me. I can't listen to something without analyzing it. I can't read something without analyzing it. I can't see something without analyzing it. I have to find meaning in everything.

Anyway, I've totally lost my train of thought. The point is, it was a great conversation--much more complex than I've communicated here. It was riddled with examples on YouTube, some good-natured vocalist-versus-instrumentalist jabs, and lots of philosophising about the respective values of complexity and accessibility and other fun topics.

I don't know if anything is important is in all those words I just wrote, except for the youtube videos. I hope it was enjoyable to read. I hope, but it's late so I don't trust myself.

Love,
Christian

Here's a cute and clever song from [title of show] called "Secondary Characters" so enjoy it :-)