A MATTER OF LIFE AND DEATH

"This is the universe.  Big, isn't it?"--opening lines of A Matter of Life and Death

Last night I saw Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger's A Matter of Life and Death (A.K.A. Stairway to Heaven--I think I prefer that title!) for the second time at the Yonge & Dundas with the Classic Movie Meetup. (Mark the organizer, I couldn't help noticing, looks a bit like Edward Scissorhands.) That's the one where R.A.F. pilot David Niven should have died but there was a mistake and he's fallen in love so he appeals to an afterlife tribunal.  It's a bit like the American movie Here Comes Mr. Jordan.  Very original.  The stairway in it would make for some great mattress surfing!

I finished the book about the Middle Ages and started a new one about Vietnam for the following History Meetup. (Ho Chi Minh and Ngo Dinh Diem went to the same academy in Hue!)

Something happened at the Bickford Centre so this week we had to rehearse the opera at the Anglican Church near Sherbourne station.  The Bickford Centre stage faces east but here the "stage" faced south, yet I unconsciously changed my bearings so it was like I was still looking east!

We've blocked all the Fidelio choruses except the finale.  For the scene where the prisoners have to come back in from the courtyard, the director said we should have the look of a little kid experiencing unfair treatment for the first time.  I thought of Isabella's sad expression in Weeds when her serious grandmother (like Linus' grandmother who disapproved of his blanket) wordlessly grabbed her can of Coke and poured it down the sink.

I'm now imagining my Fidelio character. I see him as a longtime prisoner who's rather lame--then I thought of the paralyzed Mexican in Breaking Bad who could only communicate through a button, but with Walter's help ultimately killed Gustavo!