ALEXXX&RA

hi babiez

I saw... sometime last week, I think, I saw Farinelli: Il Castrato, but it was an old VHS tape that didn't have subtitles. I didn't know what anyone was saying. That didn't matter, really, because it was really all about the singing for me. From what I could gather, the story was really inaccurate, and Farinelli's voice was probably not very accurate as well, but that is forgivable because there are no castrati living so it's not like they could get one to do the singing for the movie. Apparently, the filmmakers mixed together the voices of a soprano and a countertenor to make Farinelli's voice, and the result was quite beautiful.


It is sad that the only recordings of a castrato (his name was Alessandro Moreschi) that we have are of a guy who was a bad singer. You can hear one of these recordings here; it is still interesting to me because, although he was not a good singer, it at least gives us a general idea of what a castrato would have sounded like.

I am glad that people are not practicing this anymore because it was a very inhumane thing to do, although I kind of wish that they were so that we could still have nice castratos around. Sopranos aren't the same!

last night i had a dream that i was clothes shopping with jack nicholson and he was being really mean to me.

and THEN

today in my film class we watched chinatown :O :O :O

truly, i can predict the future

if you have anything you want me to predict for you i will do it, free of charge, limited time offer.

today i composed my first composition. i have started my career as an artist.

http://myspace.com/amichelhopkins

( dracula )

WHAT DO I DO WITH THIS LIVE JOURNAL

IT'S NOTHING

It's a MacBook. It's white, so it gets dirty very easily. It has a built-in camera, and also a built-in microphone. The place to connect the ac adapter is magnetic instead of a plug, which is good because I tend to break the ac adapter plugs a lot. The keyboard is really cool. It came with a remote control, which is very cool but it is also very small and I am scared that I will lose it. It came with software so that I can compose music and edit videos on it. I still am not used to OS X, it is very weird. I will get used to it though, I guess.

I set my computer so that the desktop picture changes every five seconds. Give me some pictures to add to the rotation.

Here is what I got for my birthday (which was the seventeenth btw) (I am twenty now, that is so old):

1. The Red Shoes
2. Inagaki's Samurai Trilogy box set
3. Roger Ebert's Great Movies
4. A bunch of silly movies that they sell at Wal*Mart for really cheap, the ones in the skinny dvd cases, you know? I have not seen any of them, but I am most excited about an animated version of The Wind in the Willows, and one about James Earl Jones awakening a virgin-eating monster. Cool things.

I watched a bit of Heavenly Creatures today, the part in which the girls are running away from Orson Welles. I'd forgotten about that part. I, too, find Orson Welles to be terrifying and revolting.


What a creep.
I'm pretty sure that I once had a dream about him raping me or something. That's really the only explanation for it. It sucks because I love watching his movies (the ones that don't suck), but I can't really stand looking at him. It is a classic love-hate relationship.

I bought this movie a few years ago at a flea market in Florida, because it was like $5 and so I bought it. My expectations for it were not that high, because of its cover:

Which is stupid, and makes it look like a slasher movie with big scissors and stuff. Here's the synopsis from the back of the dvd case:

"An anxious young tailor dominated by his father, a master of the craft, is eager to do well with his clients; but his inadequacy in measuring leaves him frustrated and humiliated. His younger sister--an expert seamstress--arrives back in town, discovers his measuring weakness and begins a cruel reign of terror over him, humiliating him endlessly in front of customers. Pushed to the edge, the young tailor heads down the nightmarish road to insanity and murder."

From the reviews I've read for it, it seems to be that people either love it or hate it, although, you know, 99% of customer reviews are either "ONE STAR WORST MOVIE EVER" or "FIVE STAR THIS MOVIE ROCKS", you know. The reviews for it on imdb.com are mostly good, and the reviews for it on amazon.com are really mixed. The most common complaint against it is that it is slow moving, which it is, but I don't think that this is a bad thing, if it is done well. About 90% of the movie is dialogue-free, but this didn't really register with me while I was watching it. The first time I watched it, I realized that no one had said anything for about thirty minutes, but that I wasn't really paying attention to it, if that makes sense.

It feels very much like a David Lynch movie to me, except that I like it (I am mostly not a fan of David Lynch). Its look is sort of... surreal? Fairy tale-ish is probably the best way to describe it. There whole thing seems sort of off -- the way people look and the costume and set designs make the movie seem like it's set sometime in the past, but outside there are modern cars and street signs around. The surreal atmosphere is best used in the tailor's ball scene near the end of the movie, which is wonderful.

I don't know. I love this movie. The rewatchablity factor for me is really high. I highly recommend it.

( Screencaps )

Christmas this year was really awesome. I got a lot of things to read, which is nice:

The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay by Michael Chabon
Ego & Hubris: The Michael Malice Story by Harvey Pekar
House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski
Hunger by Knut Hamsun
Journey to the End of the Night by Louis-Ferdinand Céline
The Jungle by Upton Sinclair
The Ticking by Renee French
The Complete Early Recordings of Skip James (-1930)
The Passion of Joan of Arc

Yay books. :)

I watched The Passion of Joan of Arc today -- previously I had only seen it completely silent, but on the Criterion edition there is an option to watch it with an opera soundtrack, and it is so nice. So, so nice.

( The Red Violin )

Here are my classes for the spring semester:

T/R 8:00-9:25 MAT 110 (College Algebra)
T/R 10:30-12:55 ART 105 (Film as Art)
T/R 1:15-2:40 ENG 209 (World Literature II)
T/R 3:00-4:21 THE 101 (Intro to Theater)

I like how I am taking a high level (for my school) literature class and a really, um, beginner math class. I took all of my humanities credits first, so after this semester I will pretty much just be taking math and science classes. I am looking forward to it so much! I don't really need the literature course, but it was the only one I was interested in that was meeting in that particular time slot. It will count towards my elective credits, though.

I hate registering for classes because I do it online, and the system that my school has for doing this SUCKS. It is really slow, and not efficient, and it is just really bad. It's also really difficult to find four (or five or however many) classes that:

1. I need
2. I want to take
3. Are not overlapping each other
4. Are not five hours apart
5. Meet on the same days

I succeeded this semester, though. I think it's a pretty good schedule.

Sundance played Jesus Christ Superstar over the weekend. I hadn't seen it in a while, and I had forgotten how much I enjoy it! I saw a new version of it, I think from 2000, a while ago, and it sucked. The version from the '70s is infinitely better. My favorite song from it:
O Judas :(

Last night my family and I drove to the Colonial Center in Columbia to see the Trans-Siberian Orchestra. It was exciting because every year my mother and I say "oh, we are going to go see the Trans-Siberian Orchestra!!!" and then we forget and then by the time we remember it is too late to get good seats. We remembered this year, though, and our seats were pretty good. I was sitting right in front of two drunk housewives who kept talking and I was sitting behind a man who had bathed in cologne and I was sitting a few rows behind a girl who would throw up \m/ metal horns \m/ every time someone touched a guitar.

The show was really good, though. They used less orchestra and more guitars compared to their recorded stuff, which was awesome. The first half of the show was Christmas stuff, and it seemed to be a modified version of "Christmas Eve & Other Stories". That was nice, but the second half was infinitely more rocking. They did Clapton's "Layla" (I am a sucker for that song) and there was a nice drum solo and a keyboard duel and they did a few more Christmas songs, but the good ones ("Christmas Eve Sarajevo" and "Wizards in Winter") and then they played some stuff from "Beethoven's Last Night". They also played a song from their upcoming album, which was AWESOME and I cannot wait for it to come out. Basically the experience can be summed up as thus:

1. '80s hair metal dudes
2. Lasers
3. Fire

That's it. A video of them live, for reference (the picture quality is pretty bad but it still sounds cool):


Yeah, awesome. I'm definitely going to start seeing them every year.