Wednesday, March 21, 2007

of composers and colonists...

Tuesday night TV is DULLSVILLE these days, maaaan. So it follows that I couldn't find anything satisfactory on the telly last night. And so I wound up watching Terence Malick's "The New World". I definitely liked it, although I suspect you shouldn't take my word for it. Christian Bale played John Rolfe, so right there that makes me wildly biased. I'm trying to hypothesize-- in an alternate universe..."The New World" as a totally Christian Bale free flick.... would I have said I liked it? I really am not sure.

What I do know is that Q'Orianka Kilcher (who played Pocahontas/Rebecca) is definitely in the running for the title "Luckiest 14 Yr old Girl of all Time". Not that she's 14 anymore, but she was when she filmed this and on this shoot, her first really notable acting gig, she got to kiss Colin Farrell and CHRISTIAN BALE. Q'Orianka must be Esperanto for "INSANELY good karma" or something along those lines. I'm not usually much of a Colin Farrell fan either, but he looked pretty damn good in The New World. He should play Capt John Smith in EVERY movie....as opposed to like, doing more movies where he's shut up in a phone booth with greasy hair.

March 21st I noticed today, is the birthdate of quite a lot of composers--

Hermann Finck-- German composer-- born 3/21/1527: I confess--never heard of him & I've no idea what he's composed. That said, I have great respect for the guy just the same. I mean, he was a composer in 1527-- immediately that makes him a sort of pioneer in my mind. It couldn't have been easy to pursue creative endeavors in the 16th century, there were lots of chamber pots to empty, and you know, mundane duties like that and certainly people had to be focused on not coming down with a fatal plague or something like that. Life spans were about 50% shorter than today's, so that puts some pretty sucky time constraints on your genius right there.

Johann Sebastian Bach - German composer-- born 3/21/1685: One of the big names... of course I've heard of him. I'd like to think he owes part of his success to Mr. Finck's pioneering in Germanic musicology over a century prior (I don't know what the hell I'm talking about. You know this by now, right??)

Modest Petrovich Mussorgsky--Russian composer--born 3/21/1839: In homage to Mussorgsky, I downloaded his terrific Night on Bald Mountain today. You can too, if you go here (it's free!)

Kevin Federline-- American "composer", world renowned skeez, mooch extraordinaire--born 3/21/1978: I realize it seems absurd to class K-Fed with these great men, with a man, for instance, "whose sacred and secular works for choir, orchestra and solo instruments drew together the strands of the Baroque period and brought it to its ultimate maturity" (wikipedia's take on Bach, there). But let us give credit where credit is due, okay? If it weren't for Federline, then I wouldn't know any Portugese....

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