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Death becomes her: A Brief List Of Everyone Who Died @finborough

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For a natural process, death is not a topic that comes up naturally for people. We ask how people are doing but expect the response to be “I’m great”, not “I’m not dead yet”. And so for the main character in A Brief List of Everyone Who Died, Graciela has a death issue. Starting with when she was five and found out only after the matter that her parents had her beloved dog euthanised. So Graciela decides that nobody she loves will die from then on. And so this piece becomes a fruitless attempt at how she spends her life trying to avoid death while it is all around her. It’s currently having its world premiere  at the Finborough Theatre . As the play title suggests, it is a brief list of life moments where death and life intervene for the main character, from the passing of relatives, cancer, suicides, accidents and the loss of parents. Playwright Jacob Marx Rice plots the critical moments of the lives of these characters through their passing or the passing of those around them. Howeve

DVD: Superman II: The Richard Donner Cut



I have spent the last couple of days watching Superman II: The Richard Donner cut. For reasons that are too involved to explain (but rely a lot on the power of internet nerds) an almost complete (there is one screen test to substitute the film) second version of a sequel to a movie made thirty years ago has been released on DVD. This clip includes previously lost footage of Marlon Brando, Christopher Reeve and Margot Kidder and has some significantly different scenes. The YouTube clip above explains some of the differences. In all almost half this film did not appear in the original theatrical version that was credited to another director...

Alas having seen what is now a rare extended cut on Australian television (which supplemented the original version with footage shot by Donner) neither this version nor the deleted scenes includes the great campy lines such as Ursa played by Sarah Douglas, screaming "MEN! TO KILL!" Perhaps one day all the lost footage can be found... Until then the new four-DVD version of Superman II (incorporating the original and the new cut) is great stuff. There are new special effects as well that give the film a great new look. It may not be a complete film, but it is a great insight into an alternate version of a film that was almost made... And great to see the previously lost footage of Reeve and Brando... And it's not just about a man in blue tights... It is about a classic piece of pop culture...

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