A play, an exhibition and a film
Jan. 24th, 2016 06:28 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
alobearTuesday took us to the lovely Hampstead Theatre near Swiss Cottage, for Tom Stoppard's Hapgood. The theatre was quite modern, and very well laid out. The balcony was very steep, so there was no problem with sitting behind tall people, and each row had its own rail to lean on. Around the sides, the seats started facing away from the balcony edge, so there were a few rows of a single seat at the very edges, but which still had a front-on view to the stage. I'm not sure the play entirely worked, but bits of it were very good. It was about people in the security services trying to flush out a traitor in their midst. It was quite convoluted, but funny in places and clever in places, and it was a good night out overall.
The Cosmonauts exhibition at the Science Museum on Friday turned out to be more interesting than I had thought it would be. It was well-put-together, and not too big, and I was quite happy to go around with Dave and read all the various bits, and talk to him about it as we went. So, it turned out to be a good birthday present for him, and a perfectly pleasant evening for me.
Then, yesterday, I went to see The Big Short, which was excellent. It took a little while to get going, and some of the gimmicks it used were a bit weird, but I thought the way it portrayed the characters was very effective in getting me to like (most of) them, and the construction of the story was very clever. It was also funny, and very entertaining - which felt a bit odd for the subject matter, but worked really well. What got me most, though, was that it contained three of (arguably) the best looking men on the planet (Christian Bale, Ryan Gosling and Brad Pitt), all of whom gave fantastic performances, whilst looking entirely ordinary. The film certainly didn't pass the Bechdel test (I don't think there were ever two female speaking parts even on screen at the same time), but it demonstrated both the absurdity and the horror of the 2008 financial collapse very effectively.
The Cosmonauts exhibition at the Science Museum on Friday turned out to be more interesting than I had thought it would be. It was well-put-together, and not too big, and I was quite happy to go around with Dave and read all the various bits, and talk to him about it as we went. So, it turned out to be a good birthday present for him, and a perfectly pleasant evening for me.
Then, yesterday, I went to see The Big Short, which was excellent. It took a little while to get going, and some of the gimmicks it used were a bit weird, but I thought the way it portrayed the characters was very effective in getting me to like (most of) them, and the construction of the story was very clever. It was also funny, and very entertaining - which felt a bit odd for the subject matter, but worked really well. What got me most, though, was that it contained three of (arguably) the best looking men on the planet (Christian Bale, Ryan Gosling and Brad Pitt), all of whom gave fantastic performances, whilst looking entirely ordinary. The film certainly didn't pass the Bechdel test (I don't think there were ever two female speaking parts even on screen at the same time), but it demonstrated both the absurdity and the horror of the 2008 financial collapse very effectively.
