headline in Elle online:
Actress Jeanna de Waal Thinks Princess Diana Would've Loved 'Diana: The Musical'
I agree! I agree!
Ms. de Waal does an excellent job, imo -- she has to talk part of it and sing part of it. And while she and the rest of the terrific cast only had to do it once for the Netflix film, they're going to have to do it over and over once they start up on Broadway.
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I read a list of Britney Spears songs in The Guardian, and typed some of them out onto a list for myself to dig into her music a little more.
Listening to something from the list, over the Internet, I noticed the phrase "can I get a witness" was in there. The song was not "Can I Get A Witness" but the line was incorporated in.
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Then today I was watching something new on Netflix and ran into same problem I've encountered before.
Boredom.
And that's saying something because of two reasons:
1 is that the show was supposed to be suspenseful, with tension and action and mystery and detection; and the
2nd is the fact of personal taste -- my favorite movies and plays and TV shows might be deemed "boring" by some people who have different tastes. Like Joey Tribbiani on Friends when he says, "Hey, Shakespeare is great, but how 'bout a car chase once in a while...?"
It's sort of -- if I think it's boring, then -- Man -- it's boring...!
The one I started watching (listening to) today, it was just -- you started to get riveted by it, but then it kept repeating, going over the same "gripping moment" over and over again. With different words. But it was as if it was stuck, sort of. You wanted to get some chains, hook to the bumper, and pull it out....
It made you wonder: does the producer write two minutes of material, then put it on a table in the Writers' Room and direct them to, "Make this into a 30-minute episode" -- ?
It reminds me of "The Mary Tyler Moore Show" when Lou Grant calls a meeting to figure out how to make their news show better. Someone suggests making it longer. Lou says, "It's not doing too great, now. That would just make it not doing too great -- stretched out."
Netflix producer to writers:
"Take this thin premise and -- stretch it to cover an hour...."
_______________________________
I remember reading a Comment under a You Tube video where the person said,
"I work in television, and in truth it's just like any other job.
People don't care, and they just want to get done and go home."
That was a little disillusioning to me!
I always want every show to be great.
__________________________________
♪♪ ♪♪♪♪ ♪
When I think back on all the crap I learned in high school
It's a wonder I can think at all
And though my lack of education hasn't hurt me none
I can read the writing on the wall
Kodachrome
They give us those nice bright colors
Give us the greens of summers
Makes you think all the world's a sunny day, oh yeah
I got a Nikon camera
I love to take a photograph
So mama, don't take my Kodachrome away
If you took all the girls I knew when I was single
And brought 'em all together for one night
I know they'd never match my sweet imagination
Everything looks worse in black and white
Kodachrome
They give us those nice bright colors
They give us the greens of summers
Makes you think all the world's a sunny day, oh yeah
I got a Nikon camera
I love to take a photograph
So mama, don't take my Kodachrome away
Mama don't take my Kodachrome away
Mama, don't take my Kodachrome away
Mama don't take my Kodachrome away
Mama don't take my Kodachrome
Mama don't take my Kodachrome
Mama don't take my Kodachrome away
Mama don't take my Kodachrome
Leave your boy so far from home
Mama don't take my Kodachrome away
Mama don't take my Kodachrome, mmmh
Mama don't take my Kodachrome away
Okay
________________________________
{"Kodachrome" - by Paul Simon}
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In Diana: The Musical, Prince Charles tells Camilla in bemused tones that young Diana's favorite music group is
Duran Duran Duran.
Camilla has to help him with the correct name....
-------------------------------------------------------------
Also on Netflix now is Britney vs. Spears, a documentary chronicling the infamous conservatorship whose most recently revealed feature was a listening device in her bedroom.
Asked why people were going along with this crazy s--t, one of the music-business people said, Well, Mr. Spears is "very intimidating."
Sounds like he just bulled his way through to basically enslave and traffic his daughter and cut himself in on her money. Why do people allow this stuff? Well -- it isn't hurting them, and they think it will hurt worse to fight it. But somewhere you gotta have some ethics, and a conscience. Jesus.
One lawyer they have on there, sitting in a chair, his blue eyes confident in the sunlight, making a little word-salad -- what a prevaricator! I thought my android tablet was going to explode into flames.
Someone quotes Britney as saying in the early years of her stardom, that she's afraid "any minute, her family is going to burst in and take everything."
It seems like her worries were prescient.
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When I watch / listen to the Prince Charles-Princess Diana relationship, in The Crown and in Diana: The Musical (both on Netflix) I involuntarily arrive at a theory that the best way to exist in a marriage to someone like Charles would be to never show true feelings.
...Which is what they say they're supposed to do anyway, as royalty, according to The Crown and Tina Brown's The Diana Chronicles and other reading. Don't show true feelings. Don't express them in words. Don't show your true self, don't be "individualistic" -- (Winston Churchill's favorite word with which to bombard his various and sundry targets in The Crown).
Inexplicable side note: somehow the actress portraying Camilla in the Diana-musical kind of resembles Tina Brown....
___________________________________
When I was re-watching The French Lieutenant's Woman recently, it kept comparing to The Crown -- the traditional and beautiful interior décor. The tea.
The décor being so similar is interesting, because French Lieutenant's Woman is set in the mid-1800s; The Crown is set in the mid-1900s.
One hundred years apart, and yet the furnishings and decorations in homes and offices are the same, at least to my eye....
This is partly because in The Crown we're seeing where royalty lives, and they keep tradition. Tina Brown wrote in The Diana Chronicles that royalty are the last bastion of tradition. While society changes around them, they are the last to change.
Also -- the tea. Charles Smithson in The French Lieutenant wakes up in the morning and asks his servant to bring him tea. In The Crown they are often having tea.
They press a button and ring for tea.
___________________________
___________________________
------------------------- I've noticed that the word "tea" can mean different things...
In The Crown it's a beverage.
On You Tube, young people type in, "Spill the tea!" and what they mean is, 'give us the gossip' -- 'tell us the lowdown'....
In Raymond Chandler novels of the 1940s, tea is a word for marijuana.
__________________________________
All reviews of Diana: The Musical are -- like -- just attacking it like mad!
I watch it and see a very good musical play.
Then I look at reviews and it's this ubiquitous and savage wall of hate.
(Am beginning to wonder if Buckingham Palace has planted all this hectically negative verbiage....)
-------------- You know, my courtiers, if you didn't want to see Prince Charles being a jerk in the Musical and an ass in The Crown, then maybe Charles shouldn't have been so
false
and jealous
and mean
in the first place.
(On the other hand, Charles is shown, in more than fair fashion in my view, to have his own humanity and exotic pressures placed on him, in both Crown and Diana-Musical. The audience can see his stress and no-win situations, too.)
And I had to say, Diana: The Musical is great because it even had me sympathizing somewhat with Camilla Parker Bowles, and I've always seen her as a villain.
"I Miss You Most on Sundays"...
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Diana: The Musical -- while critics in every media are virtually competing with each other to see who can have the most negative headlines on their reviews and who can spit the most poisonous-yet-witty invective about this musical play, I --
loved it.
Songs --
"The Worst Job In England"
"Whatever Love Means Anyway"
"Snap, Click"
"Underestimated"
"I Miss You Most On Sundays"
"The Words Came Pouring Out"
It's fun, and good, and even though it's a kind of modern tragedy, it still makes you laugh. (...Which Diana Princess of Wales would have wanted, I think. She loved to laugh, and she loved the people.)
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The Crown
The French Lieutenant's Woman
Diana: The Musical
Training Day
Designing Women
Then sometimes I like to go onto You Tube and type in the title and read comments under videos to find out what other people think of it.
More importantly, perhaps, than what they think of it is what they see in it: I watched Training Day (2001 film with Denzel Washington and Ethan Hawke) and when I went to You Tube and read comments, people were highlighting and exclaiming over moments in the film that I didn't even notice.
Different frames of reference.
There's a moment when they get into Denzel Washington's (Alonso's) car, the trainee asks where's the office and Alonso answers, "This is the office!" and he presses a button and the car "lifts" up above the tires so it's riding high, & music starts as he drives away.
The first time I watched it through, I didn't even notice that the car went up and I heard the music but I didn't know it.
The kids in the comments are all enthused: when the car goes up and Dr. Dre starts playing...!!!!!
(Me: Oh-oooohhhh. Got to watch that little scene again so I can see what the younger generation related to so strongly that I had only taken as basic movie atmosphere the first time around....)
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