The 2010 Penguin Guide to Recorded Classical Music

...is here. Thought you'd like to know. I was just in the Columbia branch of Borders and bought a copy. $40 this year. Well, that's still cheaper than a subscription to some music recording magazines, and the book takes up less space than a year of such a magazine. (I will, however, keep my subscription to "Opera News".)

Guitar Duo at An die Musik this Friday

Checking the calendars in my links for what's going on concert-wise on the weekend after Thanksgiving, I found Duo Amaral this Friday night at An die Musik in Baltimore. Program includes a piece by Fernando Sor which I believe I have not heard before. (Sor has been called the Beethoven of the guitar. Or was it the Mozart of the guitar?)

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A nice policy at An die Musik: Rather than a flat no-refund-no-exchange policy for missed concerts, they will give you a credit towards cost of a future CD purchase or ticket in the store. I was reminded of this last Sunday when I decided to call and let them know they could re-sell my ticket for that day's event. The Trio usually gets a full house, so it's nice to let the store know if you won't be using a ticket.

Ollie Sings the Blues ~~ Sundry Items

Leg better, maybe ~~ Sita revisited ~~ Judi Dench and Cate Blanchett's thriller ~~ J. G. Ballard's singing flowers

Honestly, I was all dressed up and ready to go into Baltimore for the day last Saturday when that leg or knee pain flared up. Luckily, perhaps, I ran an errand first and stopped at home again. That's when the pain started, and it kept recurring for the rest of the afternoon and into the evening. I'm afraid the cause might be something as simple as certain pairs of shoes that maybe I shouldn't be wearing any more. I've addressed this in the last couple of days, and there's been no problem except for a couple of twinges while standing around in Daedalus Books just now. If it starts up again like Saturday, I'm definitely looking for a good leg-pain-ologist. But enough about my leg. Tell me about yours.

Marooned at home last Saturday -- I had intended to go hear the auditions at Opera Vivente before going to "Cosi fan tutte" at Peabody -- I watched "Sita Sings the Blues" for a second time. This movie is making up for missing recent performances. The creative and even witty animation and the artful alternation between jazz singer Annette Hanshaw and the Indian-style music captivates me. Second time around, and with a little help from the extra features, I did understand that director-animator-writer Nina Paley was imprinting her own take on the Hindu Ramayana epic. Yes, I agree that Sita got some rather shoddy treatment from Rama. (I also caught on that Ramayana is stressed "ra-MA-ya-na", not "ra-ma-YA-na".)

If you get the DVD of Sita, have a look at an earlier short animated feature by Paley included in the extras. It's called "Fetch". See if you get the same message out of it that I do. (There might be another movie party at my place in the offing.)

A small stack of other movies has rotated through my DVD player. One that really bears mentioning, if I had to pick one, is "Notes on a Scandal" (2006). This is deft treatment of some prickly subject matter. Judi Dench is always great to watch, but I think I'm on a roll with Cate Blanchett movies since seeing her portrayal of Elizabeth I. (I'm curious about "The Missing" in which Blanchett stars with Tommy Lee Jones, but just how brutal does that movie get?) "Notes" is a psychological thriller, and I was thrilled by one particular scene in which Sheba (Blanchett's character) is almost literally torn between accompanying her family to their mentally handicapped son's play and supporting Barbara Covett (Dench) in her grief over the loss of a beloved cat. There's much more going on between the lines in this scene which I won't go into, but the way it's staged builds up the same kind of tortuous tension that you would get in a more action-oriented cliffhanger thriller. Phillip Glass's score helps build the tension. End titles reveal that Nico Muhly had a hand in the musical proceedings, too.

I'm not very familiar with the writings of J. G. Ballard, but my interest in him increased after the movie based on his semi-autobiographical "Empire of the Sun". I've met two of his works in science fiction anthologies: "Prima Belladonna" and "Cage of Sand". I would call the first one of those must-reading for anyone with a strong musical bent: You might be fascinated by the cultivation of plants that sing. Ballard writes about it as if it were so natural, that the reader need not question how it can be possible. Well, the news wasn't exactly splashed on front pages, but "The Complete Stories of J. G. Ballard" has been published recently, and I only found out from browsing in Borders. I have my copy now and hope to know Ballard better. He's controversial, I understand, and there are a couple of titles involving U.S. presidents that will raise eyebrows that haven't been raised by reading Ballard before.

Well, Ollie, my cat, has been singing the blues as I type, so I must go. (Cat lovers will appreciate Nina Paley's movie, too.) That's all.

out of action; missed events; a book about young singers

All excited about this weekend's series of planned events, I had to abort mission and stay in Columbia yesterday. For the past couple of years I've had an ongoing issue with a random but severe stabbing pain in my leg, right in one spot in the tendon or muscle just above the knee on the inner side of the leg. Two doctors have been unable to determine what's causing it and how to treat it. It's a very random thing that comes on without any warning, and it's been happening more frequently over the past week. It would be too disruptive if it happened while I was sitting in the audience at a performance. Sometimes the extra Advil seems to be helping, sometimes it makes no difference. Any way, I'll be looking for another doctor, and I hope I can make it to anticipated performances in December.

Not totally immobile -- I'm going to try a walk over to my "other computer" at the library today.

So I missed attending Opera Vivente's auditions yesterday. I was planning to write about the experience in general without presuming to assess any of the individual singers -- OK if they're on stage at a public performance; not OK in the audition situation when company directors are making private decisions and singers are going through what is essentially the job interview of the opera world.

The opportunity, even though missed, to hear auditions during National Opera Week reminded me of a book that I read a couple of years ago: William Murray's "Fortissimo: Backstage at the Opera with Sacred Monsters and Young Singers" (Crown Publishers, 2005). Murray tracked the progress of a group of young singers in the Lyric Opera of Chicago's training program. Reading about the aspiring stars' ordeals and triumphs gave me new respect for anyone entering the field, whether they are successful or eventually turn to other professions. Murray himself started out as a singer and made some interesting contacts on the way, so his book is filled with insights and anecdotes. Another reward for the reader of his book is seeing some of the considered singers appearing on various opera stages recently -- at least two or three here in the Baltimore-Washington area.

Peabody Consort on NPR; A Harp and Saxophone Duo; Events

Back to local musical developments, here's a message from Mark Cudek, director of early music at the Peabody Institute:

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I have great news: The Peabody Consort will be broadcast on NPR on the nationally-syndicated program Harmonia the week of December 7-13. The program is carried on one hundred stations in the U.S. and in the Philippines and will be available the following week world-wide on streaming audio file! The show will feature excerpts of the July 19, 2009 performance at the Indianapolis Early Music Festival. The program "If Music be the Food of Love" was a collaboration between the Peabody Consort and actors from the Indiana Repertory Theatre and was given the following mention by the Indianapolis newspaper Nuvo: "Soprano Elizabeth Hungerford proved outstanding among the four singers, while recorder player Andrew Broadwater also greatly impressed. The program showed careful preparation, delighting from start to finish."

For more info on Harmonia please go to this link provided by Cudek or copy this URL: http://indianapublicmedia.org/harmonia/
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Going from early music to what I like to call late music, harpist Jacqueline Pollauf sent a link for a new harp and saxophone duo: Pictures on Silence. There were two concerts this week which I couldn't attend, and sorry I missed posting about them. Pollauf also plays for the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra and had a previous harp and saxophone duo called Duo Apres.

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Here's my previous post about events I'm anticipating today, tomorrow and in coming weeks with related links.

"If you want the rainbow, you must have the rain."

That title from American jazz and blues singer, Annette Hanshaw, could have come from the mouth of a Hindu sage. My copy of Nina Paley's Sita Sings the Blues arrived in the mail yesterday (along with the gorgeous print I also ordered). For about an hour and a half last night I was under the spell of Paley's genius and the story of the Ramayana. A clue in the end titles reveals the juxtaposed modern story as autobiographical. Something about archetypes -- themes common to every culture -- is here, but maybe someone else can tell me more about that.

Apparently, you can watch the movie for free on the site linked above, if you have the bandwidth, or you can order a DVD, as I did. It's also available on Amazon.com, which leads to an observation on the copyright controversy over Paley's use of the Hanshaw recordings: When I searched for the movie on Amazon, the search-tracking bots showed that customers who bought Paley's movie also bought Hanshaw recordings. Everybody wins.

The soundtrack also includes recent or newly composed Indian music, another delight for me.

Prokofiev's "War and Peace" Next March

In the middle of all the opera going on now, I must make a note of the Mariinsky Opera's next visit to the Kennedy Center. Prokofiev's "Voyna i mir" will be fully staged, plus there will be concert performances of other Russian operas. The card that came in the mail this week (for WNO subscribers) indicates that this is the same War and Peace production design which the Mariinsky (formerly the Kirov) used at the Met a few years ago.

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September 1981, the Kremlin Palace of Congresses in Moscow: A group of us from my class went to see a Bolshoy Opera performance of "War and Peace". I can still see Aleksandr Vedernikov as General Kutuzov in his eye patch and making a stately Orthodox sign of the cross during Kutuzov's aria.

Dragon's Blood Wearing Off; Anticipated Events

Music from Wagner's "Gotterdammerung" last Sunday at the Kennedy Center still rings in my mind. Gidon Saks' Hagen summoning his vassals...Irene Theorin as Brunnhilde holding the stage alone for the Immolation (and in that other-worldly sparkling black gown)...What was Jon Fredric West's clowning Siegfried up to? Making up for the lack of scenery? He sounded good, though, and he was serious when he had to be.

...and throat lozenge wrappers.

Excuse, please, if I don't post links here, but these events can be found in the links in the blog margin.... I'm going to the Peabody Opera's "Cosi fan tutte" this Saturday night (it opens on Thursday) and hope to make it to part of an audition session at Opera Vivente that afternoon. (OV's director, John Bowen, has invited the public to come and hear OV auditions during National Opera Week this week.).... Then I have a ticket to the Monument Piano Trio at An die Musik on Sunday afternoon.... Baritone Ryan de Ryke and pianist Daniel Schlosberg also return to AdM on Monday for a recital of Schubert songs. (I'll try to make it to that, but it comes right after a weekend of opera and monumental chamber music.) A note from Schlosberg says that they'll perform the same program at the Phillips Collection in DC on Sunday afternoon (Nov. 22).... Wish, also, I could make it to Baltimore Concert Opera's "Don Pasquale" at the Engineer's Club this week.

I'm keen on klezmer, so I have my eye on Charm City Klezmer at An die Musik on December 12 (the day before the Monument Piano Trio's December recital).

I'm excited that the Baltimore Consort is coming back to Baltimore for a Christmas concert at the Basilica, another An die Musik event, on December 21.

Here are some important links after all:

BaltimoreOpera.com for a calendar of operatic events
An die Musik's calendar
hearing auditions at Opera Vivente

link: Wellsung on Gotterdammerung

Here is Wellsung's post about Washington National Opera's Twilight of the Gods.

I had dropped most of "Die Meisterblogger von New York" from my blog roll for various reasons, but I'll get Wellsung back in there. It's a team blog by Alex and Jonathan that centered on opera in NYC, but it seems that Alex has moved to the DC area. I only found out about this through Ionarts yesterday. My Google blog searches on WNO's Gotter have not been turning up Wellsung (at least not in the first few pages of results, which is still a surprise).

Mission Gotterdammerung

I'm just back from the Kennedy Center after seeing Washington National Opera's concert performance of Wagner's "Gotterdammerung". ("Goetterdaemmerung", if I must account for the German umlauts without the proper symbols.) My mission wasn't all about seeing if I could make it through the five hours (which included two generous intermissions) of the performing time so I could call myself a Wagnerian -- any way, it probably takes more than that to be considered a Wagnerian. No, instead I wanted to experience for myself how great the WNO orchestra can be and how a cast of singers restricted to the concert format can come so close to the excitement of a full staging. Maybe some day I'll get to see how they can make a conflagration that consumes the abode of the gods and then make a river burst its banks and wash everything away on the opera stage. Until then, today's cast and orchestra under the baton of guest and star conductor Philippe Auguin made it all happen with some powerful singing and music.

I think the audience had a taste of the dragon's blood, like Siegfried, and for about five hours today we understood what the birds were singing. After I recover, I might post something more about today's WNO performance.

links: a guitarist's hot new site

Benjamin Beirs, one half of the Duo Transatlantique classical guitar duo, has a new personal site. It's so hot, it crashes my outdated browser, but not so quickly that I can't at least get a look at the home page. (I've added it to the music links on one of my extra pages.)

Here is Maud Laforest, the other half of Duo Transatlantique. Ah! Laforest's site does not crash my browser. (And I'll have to add it to the links, too.) I've heard Transatlantique at An die Musik in Baltimore a couple of times, but I haven't hear these two guitarists individually. (It so happens that I'll have to miss a recital which Beirs is giving at the Light Street Presbyterian Church in Baltimore tomorrow, Sunday, November 15. Just saw that on Facebook. It might be on his site's calendar, too.)

Addendum, August 19, 2010: Blog layout has changed since this post, but Duo Transatlantique is now in the music links in the margin.

More Kurt Weill, Please: American Opera Theater's "Songspiel"

One fact which American Opera Theater's Songspiel demonstrated to me last night at Baltimore's Theatre Project is that I've heard more Kurt Weill before than I thought and I haven't heard enough Kurt Weill yet. Weill's music seems to be employed in various settings or excerpted often enough, but last night's series of excerpts made me hope for a chance to hear a complete work by Weill, either opera or musical theater.

Many thanks to AOT for bringing Weill to this area, and also many thanks to star soprano Sylvia McNair for staying with the project even after the Weill Foundation said nay to the original plan for a complete staged work with reduced orchestration. Director Timothy Nelson saved the project also by putting together a story with excerpts from various works by Weill. Although I couldn't follow the story completely and wasn't entirely impressed by the staging of it [see my addendum below], I would like to express the wish here that a couple of potent essays by Nelson in the program could be made available on line. (Actually, Nelson has written wonderful essays in all the AOT programs.)

The house was packed last night, and certainly the great majority of the audience was very pleased with the show. I liked the individual performances, too. McNair was joined by singers Todd Wieczorek and Rebecca Duren. We've seen soprano Duren in many AOT productions, and as I watched her last night I remembered a description of another young singer we've seen on Baltimore stages -- "fearless baritone". I think we can call Rebecca Duren a fearless soprano! Duren has a lot of physical as well as vocal talent, and I'm so relieved that she didn't take a tumble off the top of that bus shelter during one of her numbers.

So we couldn't have a full orchestra, but we had a fabulous trio: Eileen Cornett on piano (also the music director), Brent Finchbaugh on trumpet and Laura Ruas on double bass. They continued playing for a while as the audience filed out after the show, and I could stand to hear more of them. I like period movies that use music of the early 20th century in their scores, and this little ensemble captured a certain atmosphere for me.

This is going to be a weekend of contrasts and possibly found connections as I plan to go hear Wagner's "Gotterdammerung" in concert at Washington National Opera tomorrow afternoon.

Addendum: Thinking about the staging again. In some ways this was a lot like AOT's earlier "Ground" production, which excerpted various baroque sources. Perhaps, I should take the Songspiel story more as a tableau rather than cohesive story, though it was ostensibly based on current economic hard times. The Hurricane Katrina catastrophe was brought into the plot, and it happens that some outlying remnants of the latest Gulf storm, Ida, were dampening the streets outside the theater last night.

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Woody Allen employed Weill's music in the soundtrack for his underrated movie, "Shadows and Fog". Concerning marginalized people also, part of this movie might be better understood after reading Nelson's notes about his own production and learning about the spirit behind Weill. (Allen's stream of cameos by various actors in "Shadows and Fog" frustrated at least one reviewer who deemed this feature a distraction. Maybe Allen was making a comment about marginalized actors, too.)

Various: Weill und Wagner ~ Movies ~ Clayton has 18 friends...

...on Facebook. I deactivated my Facebook account about a year ago. I was a little annoyed by the perception that it was substituting for real social life, plus I can't really use the site on my home computer. Well, various groups and friends who I support are on Facebook now, so I am, too. I simply logged in from my "other computer" at the library, and everything was there, including my original 16 friends. Thanks to a certain opera director and a music blogger for adding to that number, and a certain soprano who sings for AOT has contacted me via Facebook also. On the chance that she is reading here, I'll confirm you as friend as soon as I can get to my other computer. I can log into Facebook and look at the main pages at home, but I can't edit or use anything that involves a hot button. One day, soon I hope, I'll get around to upgrading my home computer.

My Facebook badge and link are down in the right margin of this blog. Yes, I'm shamelessly exploiting my cat's super-cute visage as my profile picture on Facebook, too.

Weill, Wagner und Strauss: I'm going to get a ticket to this Sunday's concert performance of Wagner's "Gotterdammerung" at Washington National Opera. I listened to some of the classic Solti set on Decca last night and was mesmerized once again by Wagner's music....I wasn't sure about going to American Opera Theater's current Weill show, "Songspiel", but finding Tim Smith's review on Clef Notes has drawn me to going this Friday evening. I was not aware that original plans to stage a complete work by Weill had to be scrapped for a reason beyond the company's control, but Smith explains what happened....I'll have to miss going a second time to WNO's Ariadne as I was tempted after seeing opening night.

Later: Tickets ordered. I'm going to Sunday's performance of Gotterdammerung, and I just bought a ticket for Friday night's Songspiel seconds before AOT Director Timothy Nelson posted his comment here.

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Another ramble about movies: I've heard about a couple of new movies in the theaters now that I might go see. Until then, here are some that I've seen recently at home which I feel compelled to mention. Two German movies from recent years explore aspects of Germany's 20th century history -- THE LIVES OF OTHERS and NOWHERE IN AFRICA. Both are excellent and thought-provoking, but I was enthralled by the epic sprawl of "Nowhere in Africa", based on a true story about a Jewish family that escaped from Nazi Germany just in time and set up a new home in Kenya. What happens when the war ends and they have to debate returning to Germany is as interesting as the main part of the story....I watched ALL THE PRESIDENT'S MEN for my first time. I was about 11 or 12 years old and living on Homestead Air Force Base in Florida when those events took place, and now it's odd to pass by the Watergate every time I go to the Kennedy Center. Why the movie excited me might require a separate essay, but it also alerted me to the work of a singular cinematographer, Gordon Willis, a.k.a. the Prince of Darkness. I immediately sought out a DVD of KLUTE, another movie that had never interested me previously. Well, it has a dark subject, suitably framed by Willis's darksome camera work. In some scenes, almost 90 percent of the screen is blacked out. The pace of the action is deliberately slow, yet "Klute" remains a compelling thriller. Donald Sutherland and Jane Fonda are the stars.

Two more, if I may: Underrated but well worth watching are THE GHOST AND THE DARKNESS and THUNDERHEART. Both coincidentally feature Val Kilmer. In its initial theater release, I found Ghost to be particularly interesting for its cinematography also. The camera work was supervised by Vilmos Zsigmond, a name I recall seeing in the credits of many an old movie. Ghost is a sort of "Jaws in the Jungle", but it's based on a true story and apparently far superior to an older movie on the same subject, "Bwana Devil". And "Thunderheart": I found this one for about 5 or 6 dollars in the bargain bin at the Columbia Borders. I remember watching it soon after its original release, and it definitely deserves wider circulation. A crime thriller, it's also a serious look at events that took place on American Indian reservations in the 1970's. There are several powerful performances here, but I especially love Graham Greene's laid-back tribal cop who so confidently straddles the fence between traditional Sioux culture and modern life.

There -- that's enough from me. I have some reading I want to do in "The Grove Book of Operas", and Ollie the Wonder Cat wants some attention. Thanks for reading!

The Twilight of WNO's Ring Cycle

I skipped getting a ticket for Washington National Opera's concert "Goetterdaemmerung" [Where are the umlauts on this thing?] when I renewed my subscription, but word is getting out that this is a concert performance not to be missed. A friend went last Saturday and recommends it, and Charles Downey's post on Ionarts yesterday also is steering me to the second and final performance this Sunday afternoon.

Oh, it's only 5 hours long (including two intermissions). My sitting-down muscles can handle that easily.

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Name-dropping: The star tenor in WNO's Gotterdammerung ("The Twilight of the Gods") is Jon Fredric West. Back in March 2002, Baltimore Opera Company audiences heard West's Otello opposite Aprile Millo's Desdemona.

Opera Fantastique ~~ One Blogger's "Peter Grimes" Experience in Sydney

When I play opera journalist -- and my posts are admittedly the raves of an enthusiastic fan who has yet to grasp many of the finer points and technical details of the singing and the music -- I'm often bowled over by the huge scale of the art form. This applies whether I'm seeing a large stage or chamber performance. (Both are equally rich experiences for me.) Sometimes, rather than try to capture all the aspects of a performance, I want to describe some moment or individual performance that might capture the essence of the whole production or preserve a special memory. Besides individual productions of particular operas, I've realized that opera is so big that you can make it your life's work or hobby, as some scholars have done, focusing on the operas of one genre, era, nationality or single composer. Indeed, you could spend a lot of time learning the history and following recordings and performances of just one favorite opera.

Here, then, is Sarah Noble, of the "Prima la musica..." blog from Sydney, Australia, enthralled by one Opera Australia production. It's Britten's "Peter Grimes", which we recently had last spring in a different production at Washington National Opera, and I wish I had gone to a second performance of it as Sarah did in Sydney. This is her latest post with a link to a special Grimes scrapbook combining previous posts, comments and links to related articles.

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Opera Memory: On a two-week vacation in Sydney in 1997, I had a hotel room with a view of the Opera House and the Harbour. I attended three different operas in that time and witnessed Cheryl Barker as Cio-Cio-San surrounded by what must now be regarded as a legendary set design. On top of that was a symphony concert with conductor Claus Peter Flor and clarinetist Sabine Meyer.

National Opera Week: Attend an Audition and an Opera

For National Opera Week, November 14-21, John Bowen of Opera Vivente in Baltimore has come up with an idea and an invitation that I can't resist. Bowen is inviting people to come and hear audition sessions at OV.

We have a choice of three sessions to attend, but the perfect operatic Saturday on November 21 is lining up for myself: "Cosi fan tutte" at Peabody that evening, and earlier in the afternoon, I can go to the auditions at Vivente. It's a pure, unadulterated, heavenly, blissful, operatic banquet! (A friend plans to go to Cosi with me, so he might be interested in hearing the auditions, too.)

As noted earlier, November is a busy month for opera in Baltimore with American Opera Theater, Baltimore Opera Theatre, Baltimore Concert Opera and Peabody Opera all performing. See BaltimoreOpera.com for a calendar and links. (And thanks for the e-mail reply from Michael the web master!)

link: A Voice Teacher Attacks Audition Fees

Thanks to A Soprano Steps Out (in my blog roll), here's a post on Once More With Feeling, a blog by a voice teacher in NYC. I'm not in the business, but I thought some readers would be interested in the issue of opera companies that charge singers for auditions.

Ollie the Pooh and the Rainy, Dreary Day II

Sunday ramble, thanks in part to the extra hour this weekend, and with Ollie curled up on the cat pad recently placed next to the computer.....

a watercolorist at Lakeside Cafe ~~ a new local classical music blog ~~ "Sita Sings the Blues" (all the way to the bank) ~~ the amazing Malkovich

Bonita Glaser is a favorite watercolor painter at the Artists' Gallery in Columbia's Town Center. The current exhibit at Lakeside Cafe next door to the gallery is of Glaser's work, and I spent lunch time yesterday feeling like I was on one of my museum gazing trips in the city. Glaser paints a lot of local scenery plus more, and I like the look of land, water and sky meeting in many of her scenes. Check out the scene from the Thousand Islands, which features a different style, a little more bold and angular, from the other works on display. On my way to posting a link to Glaser's page on the Gallery site, I stopped at the page which links all of the member artists. There is just so much talent there!

DMV Classical (District, Maryland, Virginia) is a new local blog about classical music by Andrew Lindemann Malone. When I can get to my other computer, I'll include DMV Classical in my blog roll.

You might remember Nina Paley's "Sita Sings the Blues", the animated film of an ancient Hindu epic set to a soundtrack made up of recordings by an American jazz singer. I first found out about it on movie critic Roger Ebert's blog last December when there was some controversy over copyright of the old recordings causing a snag in the movie's release. Well, Sita has probably been in circulation for some time now, and there is even a sitasingstheblues.com site, where you can order DVD's and merchandise and show support for a copyright reform campaign. If you have the bandwidth, apparently you can even watch the movie for free on the site. I put in my order for a DVD and one of those fantastic prints yesterday, and we'll see how this works out. (Soon after, I found that you can order the DVD on Amazon.com.)

John Malkovich is another actor who I love to see on the screen, but this year's "The Great Buck Howard" escaped my notice when it was released. Maybe it wasn't in theaters long, and I can't comment on how well it did at the box office, but I stumbled on the DVD at Borders and brought it home. Reviews that I've found seem to be lukewarm, although they praise Malkovich's portrayal of the title character, based on the TV and show personality and illusionist or mentalist, the Amazing Kreskin. I found the whole movie to be much better than expected, and it was also a treat (and a bit jarring) to watch actor Colin Hanks as Howard's personal assistant. Hanks also appears in a couple of scenes opposite his father, Tom Hanks -- this was the jarring part, just so strange but also touching to see hints of the older Hanks reflected in Colin, who I hope we can see more in other movies. Steve Zahn ("Happy, Texas") also graces this film in a supporting role.

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Ollie is still snoozing on the cat pad. Let me log off now and see if I can make this day a little less dreary.