Random Review-ish Thoughts

[niko]

Theater: YAY! Avenue Q proves itself to be the irreverent-little-show-that-could. It scored (no pun intended) all three production-side musical Tony's: Best Book, Best Score, and Best Overall Musical.  My other favorite, Assassins, also took home some big awards, with wins for Best Revival, Best Director, and Best Featured Actor.  I've been thinking about trekking over to Chicago this Labor Day to see Michael Cerveris and Audra McDonald in Sunday in the Park with George...and they BOTH won Tony's last night, so now I really do have to. :)

Reading: Recently finished an older book (Door Into Fire by Diane Duane) that I read once when it was a little too old for me, so I didn't really remember much about it.  It turned out to be pretty good.  Now I gotta hunt up the other volumes, which I think are probably going to be out of print. :P  Currently reading another book that I similarly didn't-quite-get as a kid: Jo Clayton's Changer's Moon.  Too early yet to know if I'll enjoy it.

Anime: Continuing to catch up with Full Metal Panic, Descendants of Darkness, Fruits Basket, and Weiss Kreuz...I'm enjoying all these series very much, although Descendants and Weiss go quite over-the-top with their bad guys. (The eye-candy makes up for it, though.)  I also am very intrigued by Gasaraki. Volume 1 didn't get into things deep enough to be sure, but the political maneuvering going on in the series is very different and surprisingly "real world" for a mecha-show.  I wouldn't hesitate to recommend it to mech-fans, even just based on one volume.  Finally, I'm drop-dead OBSESSED with Wolf's Rain airing on Cartoon Network.  What a fantastic, fantastic, fantastic series.  Nice, steady story development and a mix of characters that keeps me interested in everyone - not just the wolves.

Movies: Oh, forgot that I also went to see ...Azakaban on opening night. Some people have no brains when it comes to bringing children to the theater (If 9-year-old Billy *must* see the movie, find a sitter for 3-year-old Janie, for cryin' out loud!!). Besides those sorts of problems, I loved the movie. The kids have grown into their rolls so nicely, and this adaptation felt so much more *REAL*...the script allowed them to talk and interact like KIDS (entering teen-dom) which, combined with the chemistry they've developed, gave the movie a good core. The Harry/Lupin and Harry/Sirius chemistry were great, too. Looking forward to seeing those two actors again. I hope they find a time-freezing machine to allow them to use Daniel Radcliffe through Order of the Phoenix...he's come a long way since the first movie, and handles Harry's more mature moments in this movie really well.