Film Fest - Rome n' Spiders

Two recent movie viewings here: Woody Allen's latest To Rome with Love and The Amazing Spiderman.

About as different a pair of movies as you could imagine.  I enjoyed both.

To Rome is Woody Allen Lite.  It won't be one of his most beloved, but it's not one of his worst either: it has its pleasures, which include terrific actors and scenery.  Plus I think the singing in the shower gag is funny.

Damned with faint praise, I know, I know.  But here's my stand on late career Woody Allen: his work is erratic nowadays, but his worst films are watchable and his sweet-spot films are... uniquely wonderful.  For the viewer it's a box-of-chocolates problem: sometimes you bite into delicious hazelnut creme, sometimes that hard stuff that sticks to your teeth, but give up chocolates?  Never!

Likewise, one Vicky Cristina Barcelona or Matchpoint is worth a few Scoops.  Even the awful dregs of Melinda and Melinda (which I took as a personal betrayal) is redeemed by Midnight in Paris.  If Mr. Allen was my buddy Woody, I'd suggest he slow down, that maybe he needs more time to recharge between films.  Sadly, we're not speaking.  (I'm free for lunch any day, Mr. Allen!)  Then again, I'm not sure this dedicated filmmaker would know what to do if he wasn't making a film.  So... his fans watch some not as good films, waiting for the next really really good one.  


Time - that great editor - will sort 'em out for posterity.


What posterity will think of The Amazing Spiderman I don't know.  I remember the Toby Maguire versions well enough not to need a reboot yet, but I did like this new take on Peter Parker and Spidey by actor Andrew Garfield.  Great romance this time and a very good villain.  I am sure though that our day will be considered a Golden Age of Super Hero Movies.  


(As I write this post, outside my studio window, bright in a shaft of sunlight in the garden, there's the Biggest Spider Web Ever.  I'm feeling kinda nervous about spider bites right now.  Maybe I'll leave it, huh?)

Spider web - from Publicdomainimage.com

Fire Station # 4

I got to go to the ribbon cutting for the city of Richardson Texas' new Fire Station # 4.

A Boy Scout flag-raising; a bag piper; lots of hot dogs and popcorn; city council folk ceremonially pushing a ladder truck into the new app. bay; the ribbon cutting (of a "Fire Line Do Not Cross" tape, of course); lots of families with little kids, wide-eyed at the fire trucks; and a fire-safety clown in baggy pants and fireman's rubber boots... a lovely Americana moment.

A really beautiful new fire station.

Not just a functionally beautiful building - though it is that and that's essential - but also beautiful as a composition of stone and shading roofs.  

Fire Station # v4, Richardson, TX - photo courtesy of BRW Architects

I found a nice blog post by its designer HERE.


(Full disclosure, I know the folks at BRW Architects.)

Musicians On Tour - Dukes of September

After hearing Boz Skaggs, Donald Fagen (of Steely Dan), and Michael McDonald (of the Doobie Brothers) Saturday night I have to recommend, if their Dukes of September Rhythm Revue tour comes through your town, that you rush out to buy tickets!

The music was a mix of covers of great songs by others and, as Mr. Fagen put it, "works of our own composition."  Terrific stuff!  Plenty of favorites for fans, while mixing in songs like "I heard it through the grapevine" and "Break another little piece of my heart" kept the song list unpredictable.  The musicianship was amazing: terrific instrumentals (I tend to dread drum solos, let me confess) while the backup singers (Carolyn Escoffery and Catherine Russell) sang highlights of the evening.  Everyone got the spotlight, but the headliners were in very fine form.  A wonderful concert!  (Dallas Morning News review HERE.)


Go hear 'em.

And - a side-note from the set designer viewpoint - they also had a great lighting designer and board op.  But the Verizon theater venue needs to replace a few light bulbs at the house left wall for the pre-show look; try to live up to the performance, huh?

A Quiet Place

Yesterday one show Opened.  Tomorrow another one Techs.

But today is quiet.

Ssssshhhh....

Le Hamoc by Gustave Courbet - believed public domain image

Enjoy a summer Saturday.

First Peek at The Divine Sister

Here's the first photo I've seen of my newly-completed-paint-barely-dry set for The Divine Sister at Uptown Players.

Photo courtesy of Uptown Players

Notice my St. Francis church window?  With his traditional giraffe of course...  

Dressing a Boar

Well, Set dressing with a Boar's head.

A fake one.

My set for Uptown Player's The Divine Sister consists of two sets, really, splitting the revolve at the Kalita Humphreys theater.  The big half represents St. Veronica's convent school; the small half is the living room of a mansion.  It seems that the late husband of this rich widow was a naturalist and traveler, so naturally we looked for "naturalist" sorta stuff to use as set dressing for the it-could-otherwise-be-generic rich lady's salon.  I borrowed African masks, framed copies of Audubon's bird paintings, and even framed my own home-made (paper) butterfly collection, then...

One of the interns has a connection to SMU's theater department.  Several of us remembered the handsome faux animal heads that hang in SMU's shop and... well, there was this gorgeous Boar's Head.  And we could borrow it!

It's about the size of a small car - a Smart Car, maybe.

A HUGE black Boars's head!

A Boar's Head - public domain image from Wikipedia Commons

Cool.

Years ago I watched SMU's wizard of a prop designer build this surprisingly light-weight fake taxidermy specimen hair by hair.  Incredible!  I've always admired it.  Was thrilled at this chance to use it.  So now, over my large faux marble fireplace in this elegant, rather dainty, lady's sitting room there hangs this monstrously over-sized pig head.

This creates a few decorative problems.  For one thing, although the fireplace mantel is tall and the set wall is tall and the fireplace-breast even taller, the director needed the piggy hung very very low so the dainty-sized actress can touch it.

This looks kinda like...
                                 the boar's head is so heavy it...
                                                                      slid down the wall.

But I fixed that.  Some.  I added a temple-front "cap" to the wall (to make it look shorter) and then added a faux stone heraldic shield between that cap and the Head to help fill the upper part of the wall (a shield left over from Shakespeare's Richard III, most recently reused over the fireplace for Boeing, Boeing).  Then I dressed the mantel top with over-sized candlesticks and photo frames.

Now it looks rather as if the Boar is pushing his Head through the wall to look at snaps of the late husband.  (I found great man-with-mustache-in-pith-helmet photos!)

Funny.

Then I dragged in the biggest, blackest classical urn I could find to hold the decorative palm tree off in the set's corner... so The Boar's Head isn't the only big, black thing on set.

ADDENDUM: a link to an earlier post on using art as set dressing HERE.

Towards Opening...

At Uptown Players (in that famous Frank Lloyd Wright theater the Kalita Humphries), the set for the Divine Sister is inching closer to completion.

It takes a Ton of Work by many, many people to get it there.

Oh, and at the same time - and often on the same square foot of stage with the clashing of ladders, lifts, buckets and whatnot - the actors, director, producers, light and sound and costume and prop designers, techs and stage hands, stage manager, interns, and volunteers are all equally busy.  Not on the set alone, but on the Whole Show.

Tons o' Work!  By Tons o' People!

The Crowd- believed public domain photo

I've working in and out of the theater every day for a week and will be there for the next several days too.

Art as set Dressing

Apologies for the scarce posts lately - the combination of work and summer holidays makes it more difficult than ever to find blogging time.

Today, however, I'll give you a peek at what's happening off stage before it appears onstage:

Art.

My up-coming set for Uptown Players' next show, The Divine Sister, has two locations that share a turntable - St. Veronica's Catholic School (and convent) and a rich woman's living room.  And for that living room, I need art on the walls.

Not just art though.  The story is that her late husband was a naturalist and traveler, so some of what goes up on the wall will be dead animal heads etc.  So far I've borrowed a sad collection of taxidermy: a one-eyed deer head, a set of antlers, a stuffed fish, and a molting duck.  (There are duck feathers in my car now.  All over my car.)  I need to make a couple picture frames filled with a butterfly collection... once I find suitable frames.  But I do already have a collection of matching gold frames (incredibly cheap dollar store ones), which I will fill with reproductions of Audubon bird paintings.

Many shows require art chosen to illustrate a character's biography or interests.

I've been creating a ton of set art lately, including a whole collection of faux Picasso and Miro prints for the rich playboy's apartment in Boeing, Boeing, creating faux Broadway show posters for the theater producer's office in Mistakes Were Made, and framing a family gallery of photos for Crimes of the Heart.

A set designer (and/or set dresser if lucky enough to have one) spends a lot of time thinking about what this art should be... and an even longer time finding and then buying or copying images, photo-copying these into usable sizes, finding frames, and then framing and hanging it all.  As anyone who has framed even a diploma lately knows, framing art can be hugely expensive.  Remember that theater has no real budget for that!  The designer has to borrow, thrift shop, and fake that pricey framing.  And, obviously, public domain images are the way to go, for all sorts of legal reasons.

It gets tricky.

Audubon flamingo - public domain image.