Movie: Superman Returns

Ok it isn't a photo of mine, but there has been a bit of chatter on cyberspace about the rather phallic looking Florida peninsula that is prominently on display. I'm not so sure about that, but the religious overtones of the poster as well give you an idea about the film as well (which has also been dubbed as "the Passion of the Clark").

But anyway is Superman Returns a good film? Well after seeing an IMAX presentation of it, I thought it was great fun and had an interesting story to kickstart a new series of films. Of course seeing it in IMAX means that you feel like you are in the film at points, and it is loud, very loud at times. The latter is a good thing as it drowned out my exclamations of "Jezusfuckingchrist!" when it was all getting a bit too much (so the family audiences around me were none the wiser).

Being a bit of a devotee to the first two Superman films I could appreciate many of the in-jokes to the film, such as when Lex Luthor steals Kryptonite it was labelled as being found in Addis Ababa in 1978 (the year of the first film and a direct reference within it). The first two films were such great fun in the post-Watergate era. This movie with its relentless religious overtones must suggest something about the era we are living in now. Of course with Brandon Routh in a rather spiffy new costume, some pretty impressive effects and that familiar rousing score, there were plenty of distractions to avoid the religious analogies, even for a Sunday… Comic book stories seem to take themselves a bit too seriously for pop culture anyway so I guess you have to put up with this with your summer escapism...

There was an additional feature of the IMAX presentation that I was unaware of and that was four sequences were in 3D. 3D IMAX is a really dumb thing and you have to put glasses on which suck outs the colour and gives a false depth of field to everything. I don't quite understand the point of this but it no doubt contributed to the reason why the punters were flocking to see it in IMAX, given the screenings today were all sold out. As there were only four scenes you had to rummage for your specs when the icon of Clark's glasses flashed green at the bottom of the screen and then take them off when they flashed red. Oh well, I guess even blockbuster summer films have gotta have a gimmick…

Cabaret: Topping and Butch

I caught Topping and Butch Friday night at Central Station which is in N1 and a long way from SW4 (as I found out catching the night bus home). Still, it is good to get out and see the city, even if it is at 2am...

But back to Topping and Butch. They have been getting better (and ruder) since I last saw them at the Soho Theatre and Comedy Camp two years ago. They were also trying out bits of their new show they are taking to Edinburgh Fringe next month. Their show is basically a mix of jokes about current affairs, other topical issues and smut. Naturally at a gay bar this goes down like a treat.

As I was sitting in a comfortable leather lounge suite watching the show I was also a target for their banter, but fortunately for me they were gentle (my name was only referred to a few times during the show).  This was far less confronting than when I arrived at the venue and was greeted at the door by a lady who asked me if I was there for Club Fukk. That caused me to pause for a moment. "I might be," I told her. As she went through a list of email addresses that she had on a sheet of paper I then realised I had been instructed to walk through to the main bar and not go to some basement. This was rather fortunate my memory came back to me at this point as I was later informed the club was for ladies who like to wear strap on devices for fun. Apparently men go down there as well, but I had a sneaking suspicion it wasn't going to be my cup of tea…

Idle bar chatter... Friday

Paul: Do you think those two are together?
J: Who?
Paul: That old guy and that young boy over there…
J: Yes they are.
Paul: Because…?
J: Because they are wearing the same sort of shirts and the older one is being protective of the younger one…
Paul: Like by giving you those death stares he is doing right now because he knows that you are talking about them…
J: Exactly!
Paul: I don't know what he is worried about… They both look shocking who would want 'em??

Scenes from Brompton Cemetery Saturday 14:42

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Originally uploaded by Pauly_.

There's nothing more refreshing than soaking up the sun lying on a couple of gravestones. Londoner's can't get enough of it...

Scenes from Leicester Square Thursday 20:05

Scenes from Leicester Square Thursday 20:05
Originally uploaded by Pauly_.

The square post premiere of the new Superman movie... Not as popular as a Tom Cruise flick...

Scenes from Kennington Tube Tuesday 23:57

Scenes from Kennington Tube Tuesday 23:57
Originally uploaded by Pauly_.

After having a few sensible vodkas catching up with J fromAustralia, snapping photos of nice looking people was one way to pass the time waiting for the next southbound tube...

Oh and the gentlemen centre was inspecting his abdominals. He must work out. The 6-pack is popular in London for those who don't eat chocolate, drink beer, eat pizza and spend most of their free time in the gym perched atop a swiss ball. I don't have one. I still eat a little bit of chocolate...

Overheard in Covent Garden Monday 21:48

American woman: Yeah it was like… It was like… It was like… It was like… It was like… Ffffuck!
Man: Yeah?

Scenes from outside Costa...

Scenes from outside Costa...
Originally uploaded by Pauly_.

Some people chose to listen to the match rather than watch it (that way they could photograph everyone from their rather good seats outside Costa coffee...)

Oh and hopefully this answers the request for more photos of Paul in London locations... Well... It's a start...

Scenes from Old Compton St Soho Sunday 19:56

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Originally uploaded by Pauly_.

Old Compton Street becomes and extended viewing area outside Pulcinella where there is a tv facing out on the street...

Scenes from Soho Sunday 18:25

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Originally uploaded by Pauly_.

The World Cup final still had over half an hour before it started but it was ground zero for fans who were shouting EEE-TAL-YA, EEE-TAL-YA, EEE-TAL-YA... Having a three syllable name for a country makes it all the more exciting really...

Scenes from Bedford Square Sunday 18:09

Scenes from Bedford Square Sunday 18:09
Originally uploaded by Pauly_.

WC1 is home to many beautiful squares. This one - Bedford Square - is famous for its historic homes and crack dealers. The square has just been tarted up a little as well...

Scenes from Piccadilly Circus Saturday 23:56

Scenes from Piccadilly Circus Saturday 23:56
Originally uploaded by Pauly_.

Piccadilly Circus is popular around midnight if you are lost, drunk, trying to get a mouldy hamburger from Burger King or all of the above.

Speaking of mouldy food (or perhaps food with a bit of tarmac on it), I nearly got knocked down at Cambridge Circus by a flying hotdog stand. Two men obviously desperate to avoid Westminster Health Inspectors, raced across the road with cart of sizzling sausages and nearly crashed into me. In their haste they also let a tray of hot dog buns fly across the road. Somehow before the lights changed they managed run back and pick the buns off the road before the traffic could mow them down... They were last seen heading east on Shaftsbury Avenue with buns back on cart ready for unsuspecting diners towards Holborn...

7/7 One year on

7/7 One year on
Originally uploaded by finkangel.

Kings Cross at noon today. Taken by a Flickr user (click the link above to see more images) or see the BBC coverage...

Opera: Tosca

Monday night I caught the new production of Tosca at Covent Garden. There are two casts so I did not see the now infamous (non)star turn by Angela Gheorghiu but a fantastic performance by Catherine Naglestad who could act and had the voice for such a dramatic role. I got the ticket as A decided to swap his tickets for tonight with Saturday's final performance with Gheorghiu (and thankfully ignoring the advice from the opera house staff that he already had tickets to the better performance).

The opera sinks or swims on the strength of the soloist in playing the title role. Thankfully Naglestad was a tiger and not a Romanian kitten. Perhaps she turned up to rehearsals so she knew what to do with the heavy dress she was burdened with for the second and third act. She also was never drowned out by the orchestra. These were things you would think you would take for granted when going to see something at Covent Garden, but apparently they were missing at Saturday evening's performance …

As for the opera itself, Tosca has everything I look for when I want opera – high drama and great music – and this new production looked great and sounded great.

The biggest applause was saved for Fabio Armiliato in the role of Cavaradossi – who stepped in to replace for the remaining season Nicola Rossi Giordiano, who has had to withdraw due to illness. The production finishes this week.

Scenes from Soho Saturday 19:50

More images by clicking on the photo. So another year another pride, although this year was bigger given it was Europride swelling the numbers to somewhere around half a million people...

Marching down Oxford Street was fun. Mind you the group I was walking with (not under any banner just the assortment at the end) were tempted to ditch the parade as we passed John Lewis thinking of all the bargains we were missing out on in the half-yearly sale. I went back on Sunday however...

Scenes from Soho Saturday 16:47

Old Compton Street. England may have crashed out of the world cup, but at least there still was a party going on...

Scenes from Selfridges Saturday 14:06

Outside Selfridges young gentlemen wearing Aussiebum cosis were giving out sweets on sticks... Who could resist such an offer? And yes that is "What a gay day" written on the Selfridges window...

Scenes from outside Selfridges Saturday 13:56

Just another day on Oxford Street really... Sales have started... Oh and there was Europride... Not all the bargain hunters were expecting that (judging by the startled looks on their faces - particularly when horns and whistles started going off all over the place)...

Scenes from Soho Friday 23:42

Scenes from Soho Friday 23:42
Originally uploaded by Pauly_.

A man in a bear suit on a bike (with a bear). It is going to be one of those weekends...

You can be as bland as you want when you're a West End show...

The theatre reviews for Avenue Q have been surprisingly tepid. Basically the papers seem to be saying that the show lacks balls and compare it unfavourably to Jerry Springer The Opera. I thought this was interesting as after seeing the show a few weeks back I found myself discussing the merits of Jerry Springer The Opera with one of the creators. He was under the impression that the show was shit. I did suggest he take a look at the show (which is on DVD) and see for himself...

Theatre: Fool For Love

Tonight I caught Fool For Love which is a play Sam Shepard wrote in the 1980s. It is a very compact play that lasted less than ninety minutes and where the main characters – played by Juliette Lewis and Martin Henderson - air some family issues. Shepard's themes are always the same but the way they are written are so entertaining and engaging.

Juliette Lewis, known more for her rock singing than her movie roles nowadays, seemed to be a little off tonight. Maybe there have been too much throaty singing of late which was a pity as you got the impression she thought she was projecting.

The Apollo Theatre isn't the most pleasant of theatres to be in on a warm evening. The seats are too small and the air conditioning is non-existent. There was also a series of unnecessary delays to pick up tickets and curtain-up was fifteen minutes late. Part of the problem I observed was that the agent to one of the cast members was trying to pick up a comp seat and figured that he was important enough to make twenty other people wait, particularly as he started to engage in theatre banter with the house manager and blocked access to the box office windows. As I was next in line a gentle shove was required from me to move the asshole on…

Scenes from Covent Garden Tuesday 19:50

Scenes from Covent Garden Tuesday 19:50
Originally uploaded by Pauly_.

Despite the overwhelming popularity of mobile phones, phone boxes persist in London as a place where you can smoke your crack pipe in peace or where purveyors of erotic women can advertise their wares...

Lexicography - word of the day

A book is now being kept about words that I use. Apparently they are not used by everybody so I thought I might add some of these to the blog on a regular basis. One that I heard on television tonight was:

Furkid – a pet that is a substitute for a child. Usually furry with four legs. Hmm I know a few people with furkids…

Scenes from Soho Saturday 23:58

Late Night Soho
Originally uploaded by Pauly_.

What London nightlife is really about... Waiting in a very long line to get in anywhere...

Exhibition: Michelangelo Drawings

British Museum
Originally uploaded by Pauly_.

I found myself at the British Museum at 10pm Saturday evening (finally) catching the phenomenally successful exhibition of 90 or so of the drawings Michelangelo made in his lifetime. Studies for his painting of the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel were a significant part of the exhibition. The exhibition brought together three separate collections and provided a rare insight into the great artist.

To cope with demand the Museum remained open until midnight every Saturday in June. It was great idea to see it late as there weren't the tourists or the pushy pensioners who must have all been in bed by then. Pushy pensioners are a problem at every exhibition. I guess they figure they survived the war so they are not going to let some thirty-something block their view so they prod you and push you until you get out of their way. It was still crowded but it was a much more considerate crowd. Here's hoping they continue to do this for future blockbuster shows.

The exhibition finishes today and was completely sold out. The book accompanying the exhibition however is excellent and an electronic version is on the site.

Scenes from SW4 Saturday 21:10

SW4 Dusk
Originally uploaded by Pauly_.

Dusk over the neighbourhood...

Scenes from SW4: Abbeville Road Fete Saturday 13:10

The annual summer fete was a time for people to enjoy the sun and meet the neighbours. The streets were closed around Abbeville Road and there were the usual stalls and family events.

And speaking of neighbours, a conversation I overheard went something like this:
Lady with children (to two scruffy-looking men with beers): Excuse me do you live in the flat upstairs from us?
Scruffy Man #1: Uh yeah...
Lady with children: Um you were a bit noisy last night, is it possible to keep the noise down?
Scruffy Man #2: Uh sorry yeah there were all these people that just came over for like a party and it sorta got outta hand...

And there is an insight into part of the demographic make up of the little part of Clapham that I live in: Bugaboo parents and scruffy types... Incidentally I only knew what a Bugaboo was after my sister got one. Only then did I realise that all these parents in my street with these prams bearing the same distinctive logo on them were not part of a cult... Or maybe they are??

Theatre: Evita

There is something about the audience at Evita, the new version of Andrew Lloyd Webber's musical hit from 30 years ago which reminded me of the audience at a dreadful Elaine Paige concert I happened to see in 2004. There was a certain age and a certain style about the people. They didn't look like they were regular theatre goers but they would go to this. I wondered where the hell they bussed this audience in from. I am not exactly a fan of Andrew Lloyd Webber's musicals (nor Elaine Paige) so it did dawn on me what the hell I was doing at this show. Well it probably was the promise that it was to be a new look at a (tired, dated, sanctimonious) old show.

As for what was new in this show… Well there were new orchestrations, but for the most part they sounded more like the ring tones on my mobile phone. Unusually for a Lloyd Webber show, the set didn't fly in or out in spectacular fashion or be projected oddly (although there was one exception for Don't Cry For Me Argentina the balcony started to extend out for some sort of dramatic effect that I didn't quite understand the point of). These were all good things.

This new production also got something else right. Amongst some of the most hideous music ever to be inflicted on an audience in a popular musical and some very scary dancing involving soldiers prancing about, there were the three leads. These were Elena Roger (Evita), Philip Quast (Peron) and Matt Rawle (Che), and they could all act, dance and sing.

Actually Roger, a lovely petite Argentine actress couldn't hit the screechy bizarre high notes that the role calls for but she gave such a star performance that it was easy to overlook this. Some of the other audience members were not so forgiving and during the interval were hissing to each other "Oh she's not as good as Elaine!" The chemistry between her and Quast was pretty good as well, even if he was twice her size.

I had been forewarned that Rawle lacked the charisma for such a key role as Che. But I thought he was not bad. Part of the problem with him however was that he was made to look like some Arts undergraduate in between lectures bumming about. Thirty years ago the audiences may have been dull enough not to know who Che Guevara was, but the production could have taken some cues from the V&A exhibition which highlights what a dominating figure Che now is in pop culture, and fashioned him to suit this. But at least Rawle could sing and do it rather well.

So it was a night of great actors in a not-so-great show. A show also written in a time when subtlety was not in fashion. Tim Rice's lyrics seemed to constantly use naughty words such as "bitch" and "slut" and "tarts" just in case you missed the previous song which also underlined that Eva Peron slept her way to the top.

If you do find yourself at the Adelphi over the summer, I would advise that a good stiff drink in the interval will help enjoy the second half of the show. After all Evita will die before the curtain comes down, but it will feel like an awful long time for that to happen. I lost interest after the money rolling in or out song and was just hoping she would DIE! Unfortunately before she does die there are too many prancing soldiers and banal songs to endure it sober. One can only hope that Roger, Quast and Rawle do more work in the West End in future however, just not in Evita. It should be remembered as a Madonna movie, not a revival…

Scenes from the Strand Thursday 21:49

Scenes from the Strand Thursday 21:49
Originally uploaded by Pauly_.

I survived Evita. Did you?

Scenes from Covent Garden Monday 21:44

Scenes from Covent Garden Monday 21:44
Originally uploaded by Pauly_.

Scaffolding amongst the window shopping...

Crap design in London

Crap design in London
Originally uploaded by Pauly_.

The votes are in for the most hated buildings and public spaces in London, but surely the Charing Cross station subways would also have to rank high in the lousy public space stakes? Orange and brown tiles and the smell of piss pervade throughout...

Scenes from Soho Sunday 19:05

Scenes from Soho Sunday 19:05
Originally uploaded by Pauly_.

Some people were rather excited about the outcome of today's World Cup match...

Scenes from Angel Sunday 13:32

Scenes from Angel Sunday 13:32
Originally uploaded by Pauly_.

Smoke 'em...

Scenes from Covent Garden Saturday 21:24

Scenes from Covent Garden Saturday 21:24
Originally uploaded by Pauly_.

A haze across the city from the Royal Opera House balcony with the market below in view...

I Was at the Opera House to see two short operas Duke Bluebeard's Castle and Erwartung (by Bartók and Schoenberg respectively), which as to be expected was a great production beautifully performed and sung.

Bluebeard's Castle struck me as a polygamists opera but there were so many pschchological layers to the opera such as "why this woman would be interested in some grumpy old man with a mouldy castle?" to keep you on the edge of your seat. Erwartung which was nicely linked through set design and costumes was more one woman's battle with her mind. It wasn't really my cup of tea. At 45 minutes however it didn't really matter...

All the opera talk this weekend has been on the Royal Opera's new production of Tosca, which is the first new production they have mounted since Maria Callas was performing in 1960s. It opened this week and was to be the performance people would talk about for years with a star turn by Angela Gheorghiu. It wasn't to be. While Bryn Tyrfel (also appearing) was fabulous the general feeling was that Georghiou's voice is not hefty enough for the role.

Even worse is her acting. The papers were too polite to call it as it is but I gather most of the time she waves her arms about like an old drag queen in a silent movie. I am going on the night she isn't appearing so I wonder if I will be missing anything...