Patti O'Shea's Blog, page 114

Review: Into the Woods - The Movie

WARNING: THERE WILL BE SPOILERS! TURN BACK NOW IF YOU WANT TO WATCH THE MOVIE AND BE SURPRISED!  Before I even begin this review, I'll admit that I'm a fan of the theatrical version of Into the Woods. Of all the musicals I've seen, I'd probably put this in my top 5, so I'm coming at the movie with a biased point of view.

Into the Woods has this super premise. It takes a few fairy tales and twists them together. The first half is the stories were accustomed to and the second half is what happens after happily ever after. The last half of the play is very dark and somewhat grim, but not without it's moments.

My understanding is that the story that anchors the others, the baker and his wife, was created for the play, but the fairy tales that everyone knows are Little Red Riding Hood, Jack and the Beanstalk, Rapunzel, and Cinderella. Since I loved the premise, I bought tickets to see the touring company when it came to Minnesota--all the original Broadway cast members were there with the exception of the girl who played Red Riding Hood and Bernadette Peters who played the witch.

When I first heard they were making a movie of the play, I was excited. Until I learned that there were going to be changes. The reviews I saw when the movie was released were mixed, and I waited for it to come on cable. So what did I think?

It wasn't bad, but it didn't have the same magic as the play.

Things I loved: Chris Pine can sing! And he made a terrific Prince Charming. His duet of Agony was one of my favorite scenes in the movie. I liked all the special effects that made the movie come to life in a way it couldn't in the theater. Beanstalks to the sky, getting to see the giant that was causing all the trouble in the second half, and I actually liked how they managed to eliminate the narrator's role, which was prominent in the play.

But there were things I definitely missed. In the play there's a reprise of Agony by the two princes. I loved it! It's one of the few truly funny moments in the second act and it was badly needed amid the grimness. I definitely missed it in the movie.

Meryl Streep is a brilliant actress, but Bernadette Peters owns the role of the witch and I would have preferred to see her recreate the role. Since she and Streep are nearly the same age, I don't see why she couldn't have played the part in the movie as well. As much as I enjoy Meryl Streep, she couldn't live up to Peters portrayal of the witch, IMO.

In the play, Rapunzel is killed by the giant leading to one of the most poignant songs in the second act when the witch mourns the loss of he daughter. In the movie, Rapunzel leaves with her prince, abandoning the only mother she knew. This severely undermined the emotion of the song/scene IMO and lacked the sense of desolation from the play.

The other thing that kind of bugged me as I watched the movie was how dark all the scenes were. Not as far as tone, I mean the lighting. There were some parts that were difficult to see because it was too dark. Yes, I get that most of the story takes place at night in the woods, but couldn't they have managed just one more amplitude of light?

As you can see, most of my ticks against the movie are all in comparison to the play. If I didn't know the play, what would I think of the movie? I think I would have liked it a lot, but not loved it. Which is kind of a step above where I am now.

But I do know the play and so while I liked the movie version well enough that I'll probably buy it, it didn't leave me enthused. It was, however, a beautiful production and I enjoyed the richness of the scenery and the costumes. I just wish it had been a little more like the play.

My rating 3 stars out of 5.
Bottom line: If you like fairy tales and musicals and if you haven't seen the theatrical version, it's an enjoyable way to spend a couple of hours.

Does Your Birth Month Affect Your Health?

Some of this is interesting.

Real Life Ruins a Favorite Movie

There aren't many movies that I enjoy watching over and over, but two of them are The Mummy and The Mummy Returns with Brendan Frasier and Rachel Weisz. The first is better than the second, but that's pretty much always the case with sequels.

Living in Georgia, though, has pretty much ruined my enjoyment of the second movie, The Mummy Returns. To refresh your memory, that's the one with The Rock as the Scorpion King.

Yeah. You see, I get scorpions in my house and they totally freak me out. They're prehistoric, monstrous things and it creeps me out every time I see one, no matter how small it is. In fact, I recently had two scorpions in my house. One was in my office and I thought he was dead so I didn't smoosh him, only to have him disappear when I went back to sweep up what I thought was his dead body. A week and half later, I did find his dried out carcass.Then there was the one I found in my bedroom. I think he was dead, but this time I didn't take any chances. I crunched him first and then went for the broom.

I never liked scorpions, but when I lived in Minnesota, I could watch Mummy 2 without getting all creeped out. After all, scorpions were far away and abstract. Then I moved into my house in Georgia. Sigh.

There are worse things, I guess. Scorpions are slow and easy to catch, not like some of the bugs I had to deal with when I was living temporarily in the condo down here. I used to leave the canister vacuum plugged in so I could chase them with it and suck them up. I also grew to really hate centipedes and they are fast.

At least I still have the original Mummy movie that I can watch.

Not a Drop to Drink

A couple of weeks ago, I arrived home from work to find the city water department had dug a deep hole between my yard and my neighbor's yard. I stopped and got the mail, which was right near where they were working, but no one said anything to me and I didn't think anything more about it.

It was about an hour later, when I go to get water from the dispenser in my refrigerator and nothing came out. My first thought was that one of the doors wasn't closed all the way. The fridge won't dispense water or ice unless both doors are completely shut. But no, both doors are closed. I try opening and shutting them again. Still no water.

I get a little panicked. I'm worried my refrigerator has developed an issue. I never gave a thought to the guys outside--not yet--because I'd had water within the first half an hour that I was home.

It was while I was panicking about my fridge that I remembered the city's water department. To test out this theory, I tried to run the water in my sink. Nothing. Okay, it's not just the fridge. Now I panicked in earnest because it was late and what if the water guys had left already? I rushed to the front door.

I see a water department guy and I ask if they're still working. Um, yeah, I was so blind in my worry that I missed the guy standing in the hole and the rest of the team doing whatever nearby. No wonder he looked at me like I was nuts. Oops. Well, what can I say? The idea of no water was terrifying and no one had said anything to me about turning off my water when I was just feet away from them.

It was about another hour before one of the guys rang the doorbell and told me I had water again. They'd put in a new line and a new meter, he said. I was so relieved that they weren't going to stop working (it was nearly 7pm by this point) that I forgot to ask why they did the work. Another oops.

I already knew I wouldn't have made a good pioneer, but this reinforces that knowledge. It also underlines the fact that if I ever have a chance to time travel, I'll be going to the future, not the past.

25 Myths About the Middle Ages

that you probably thought were true. (Or not.)

Adventures In Updating

For a while now, my Mac laptop has been suggesting I upgrade my operating system to Yosemite. I've been resisting because I really don't like the flat graphic look of the new system and it's not as if any of the features were things I was dying to use. However, when I found out there was a security hole and it wasn't patched in my current OS, I felt I had no choice. I upgraded.

The download went quickly. This is going to be painless, I thought. And then the installation began.

Apple put a little meter to show how far along the installation was. About 1/3 of the way into the install, the bar seemed stuck. It didn't move for more than an hour. Okay, I thought, maybe it will jump forward by leaps and bounds in a bit. I went and did something else.

The progress meter didn't budge.

I touched the laptop and it was burning hot. The bottom of the laptop was even hotter than the top. I grabbed a chill pad and plugged the Mac into it. That cooled down the underside, but the top remained scary hot.

And still the progress bar didn't move. I begin Googling to find out what's going on. I read about people having issues because of some programs they've loaded, but I don't have any of them. In fact, my Mac pretty much only has the software it came with and the programs I use for writing. Some of the posts had links and I clicked through, but nothing helped.

Hard reboot? I wondered. Some people did it successfully. Other people lost their OS and had to boot in recovery mode. Gah! Okay, no hard reboot.

But after more than five hours without anything happening, I decided I had to try it and hope for the best. I held down the power button until the laptop turned off. With some trepidation, I turned it on again. And it immediately booted into the new operating system.

So apparently while it was sitting there, appearing to do nothing, it had finished doing all the installation. I don't know why the progress bar didn't move, but fortunately everything worked great. This was a huge relief because the last thing I felt like doing was messing around, trying to get my Mac Book to work again.

Cooking Success?

I successfully made chicken in the slow cooker a few weeks ago and I decided to push my luck and see if I could go for two in a row. The dish on the menu was a recipe my mom always made for us. It's seasonal and we always looked forward to the end of August/beginning of September because that meant plums.

Last year, I attempted to make this on my own for the first time. The dough ended up being an epic fail. I didn't even try to cook them. Since I was headed up to visit my parents shortly thereafter, I brought the plums with me and Mom made the recipe. This year, though, I wasn't going home and that meant if I wanted to have this dish, I had to cook it myself. :-/ Last year I used a dough recipe from the internet. This year I got a recipe from my mom.

So the basic recipe is this:
Italian (prune) plums (only available for a brief window around the beginning of September)cut the plums open enough to get the pit outfill the cavity with cinnamon and sugarThis is the easy part. My mom said to do this first and let them sit while I made the dough.

Dough is:
2 cups flour1/2 tsp salt1 egg3/4 cup water
Then it was time to tackle my mountain. Mom makes her dough by hand, but I'm not that patient. I threw everything in the mixer with the dough hook attachment. Instead of being firm and able to be rolled out, it looked like cake batter. This prompted a call to my mom for help.

Add more flour she said. I had to add quite a bit more flour than the recipe called for, but it finally firmed up enough to roll out. This didn't go without a hitch, but it wasn't out of the usual either--dough sticking to the rolling pin, etc.

Then I rolled the dough around the plums.

 
Next, they need to be boiled. I like to do it about 9 minutes give or take. I do know how to do this because when Mom made them, it was my job to actually cook them while she rolled more. 
 
Only one opened in the water. That's a minor victory because it's not always easy to keep the dough sealed around the plum. But that's why you see that pinkish watery juice in the picture.

 
Final review of my work: Moderate success. The dough was a little heavy because of all the flour I had to add, but it was still pretty good.
Kitchen? Total disaster. I cleaned while the plums were cooking and even then, I still had to spend more than a half hour cleaning up after dinner. I filled the dishwasher with everything it took to make this recipe. So on a scale of 1-10 for how much work/total effort is involved, I'd give it about a 7. (The higher end of the scale meaning more effort.) It's time and labor intensive on the front end with the dough, but it's as bad on the back end for cleanup.

Weather Misconceptions

It's never too cold to snow. I know because I'm originally from Minnesota.

And My Head Explodes

I'm not a plotter. Oh, sure, I kind of have a framework, but it's loose enough where I don't feel strangled by it, but it gives me structure. With the Work In Progress (WIP), though, I've tried to do a little more advanced planning. It makes my head hurt. Okay, maybe more like explode.

Asking questions like what's going to happen to push my character to change leaves me foundering. I know what kicks off the story. My heroine arrives in town after more than a decade away to find that everything has changed while she's been away. But is this the incident that forces her to change? I could argue that the incident that forced change was when she decided to return to the town. That happens off screen.

Although, maybe the incident that forces her to change is when she discovers what she loves to do. She doesn't like her job that well, but feels she has no other choice. Yet, in the story, she discovers what she wants to do for a career. To keep that pleasure, she's going to have to make changes and be innovative.

Except, well, none of these things really is enough. I think it's a progression of things that gets the heroine to change and grow. There's the decision to return to town, there's the changes she sees once she's there, there's the discovery of her passion, there's meeting the hero and all these things work together to not only get her to start changing, but to continue changing. It needs to be a journey because people don't like change and will retreat to the familiar any time they can.

Which means it's really hard for me to come up with the inciting incident. There's multiple inciting incidents all working together to foster change. And this is just one question in the plotting book I read. None of the other questions are any easier for me. I feel like a plotting failure.

A Cooking Non-Adventure

When I cook, it's usually time to batten down the hatches. My mom says that I'm not a bad cook, and that's sort of true. My biggest problem is that it bores me and so I tend to wander off. Things get very dry or burnt regularly. I try to stick to simple things that are nearly foolproof like hamburgers or eggs. After I moved to Georgia, I did invest in a slow cooker. Mostly that helped, but even then things don't always turn out awesome.

My biggest challenge is chicken. I love it, but I'm scared to death of cooking it. I'm always worried I'm going to under cook it, and because of this, I cook it too long and it ends up dry and horrible. Not even the slow cooker is a guarantee that it will come out moist.

Despite all this, I bought chicken and kalamata olives at the grocery store, and with a little help from a Twitter friend, had Greek Chicken recipe that sounded good.

First off, I was missing a couple of ingredients. I didn't have any tomatoes or feta cheese. Since I loathe grocery shopping with the fire of a thousands suns, you can bet I wasn't going back to the store for a second time in three days. I knew I had diced tomatoes in a can and lots of other kinds of cheeses and those would have to do.

Four pounds was a lot of chicken and the recipe only called for a half a cup of broth. Hmm, I thought, I think I'll add the whole can. It's not like I have anything else I'm going to use the broth for and I'd just end up throwing it away so I might as well. I also poured the entire can--liquid and all--of diced tomatoes (with oregano and rosemary) into the slow cooker. Oh, I didn't have garlic cloves either, so I used garlic powder. Without measuring any of the spices, I just shook some into the slow cooker. Yes, I like to live dangerously. Also measuring seems like such a waste of time--which is why chemistry class was such a challenge for me.

The recipe said 4-6 hours on low, so I set the slow cooker for 5 hours. That seemed like a good compromise.

By the time the chicken was done, I'd forgotten that the kalamata olives were supposed to be chopped. Oops. I also had a heck of a lot of liquid in the slow cooker. I used a ladle to lower the level although it was still a lot more than the recipe called for.

Okay, so I dumped the pitted olives in whole instead of chopping them. They definitely would have been better chopped. Lesson learned. And my substitute for the feta cheese was sharp cheddar. That actually worked out really well with the chicken and olives. If you don't like feta, this is a good option.

And people, I made rice! PERFECT rice! Rice is like a huge challenge for me. I always seem to end up with dried out fossil rice, so the fact that it came out moist is like a minor miracle.

I actually had an edible dinner! And given the fact that I had four pounds of chicken in that slow cooker, I'll be having a lot more dinners of the same thing.. Luckily it was good.

So circle it in red on your calendars. I actually cooked an edible meal with chicken and rice. Maybe I should have gone to the grocery store so that I could have bought a lottery ticket. It was my lucky day.