Violence, Man.

This evening's plan was to go see Ladies of Lavender, but I realized this was the last week Sin City was playing in my town and if I didn't catch it tonight I was going to be assed-out. So I paid my cheap $6 and saw the Frank Miller/Robert Rodriguez/Quentin Tarantino noir-fest at the Academy theatre down the street. The movie was cute. It has loads of style, not a thing to say in the world, an extremely clever score (by Rodriguez, naturally), some very nice performances--Bruce Willis, Clive Owen, Rodriguez perennial Mickey Rourke, and Rosario Dawson who is fucking hot--but damn this movie is dumb. The Tarantino sequence stands out (not unexpectedly). It's the most hip and the most dangerous from a storytelling point of view. The other stuff is mostly just brutality after brutality with unforgivable acts being punished in kind. It looks fabulous, of course: you could tell that from the trailer--shit, you could tell that from the one-sheets--but it's not really much to get too excited over. It's exciting in parts (I guess) and it has a few nice visuals, but no moments that have anything whatever to do with reality in any way and--worse yet--I never really felt satisfied by the carnage the way I did in Kill Bill, or the way I did with Oldboy or even, say Infernal Affairs or Pulp Fiction.

Enough of that...

I saw the Third Annual Alpha Psi Omega production last night (a tradition Allan (and Marcos) and I started our senior year at CSUP.) Last year was Cloud 9. This year it was Matthew Reidy's Growing Up Johnnie and Stosh. It's a fine choice for a play, and I think it's a very nicely-written piece about Midwest ennui, violence and prejudice (something I know next to nothing about, thankfully.) It has an excellent ending at any rate and a very nice setup. Some stuff is not as tight as I would have liked--one of the young people's dads is far too prominent a character for his own good--but it's an interesting piece. I don't want to review the production here, but I wanted to mention it in case any of you were planning on going. It has one performance left: Saturday at 8:00p in Room 110 at CSUP.
Lots of old-timers were there: Ryan Schauer (who lit our first show), Wahima Lino (who bought my ticket: booyah), Caroline Collins, Christina Russo, and Jensen Kong.