I Have Been Processing My Thoughts on Dear Evan Hansen Since 2017

Dear Evan Hansen is closing on Broadway and it's got me really starting to formulate my thoughts on this show fully in a really long time. I was one of the fortunate who got to see the original cast (Mike Faist!). I say fortunate just because to be able to get tickets to a blockbuster musical during the original cast's, especially with someone giving a performance like Ben Platt, is fortunate. Honestly, a lot of his problems of being wrong when it came time to the movie was that awful hair. Not to knock the understudies or new casts, because some of the performers we discover or come in for a run are phenomenal, and in this show specifically I would've loved to witness Jordan Fisher perform "Waving Through a Window". But to be able to get a ticket to the original run of a production is always a special thing. So I'm glad I was able to see it while it was a hard ticket to get. All that being said, now onto my issues with it. 

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cinema, the theatre, thoughts

A Night at Harry's House

I was one of the lucky ones that ventured into Harry's House at Madison Square Garden. 

I'm not somebody who goes to concerts a lot. I don't really like being in big crowds, especially screaming crowds. And if the bass settings are too high, I start getting a migraine like halfway through the night. But I have been to some shows over the years, including to One Direction's first two US tours. At those One Direction shows, people lost their damn minds. At the Up All Night tour, someone had spotted Niall behind the amphitheater, it was a stampede to get a peek at him.

I was scared that that would be the vibe at a Harry show. It wasn’t thankfully. I mean, girls still screamed their faces off, but there was moire actually singing along and dancing than there was at those One Direction shows. And Harry didn’t really stop and chat that much. He kept the show moving along, which I think ultimately kept the crowd under control. The one time he did stop though, he found someone in the crowd who was celebrating here 21st birthday and got all of Madison Square Garden to sing “Happy Birthday” to her.

The actual music was amazing to hear live, especially when he brought out the horn section. The set list was structured great, where each sing really flowed into the next and there weren’t drastic energy changes. For his encore, he did “Sign of the Times”, “As It Was”, and “Kiwi”, and judging by the audience reaction to that last song, it’s not a common occurrence.

Just. a great show and a great night of music. 

journal

Finally Saw Jaws For the First Time (and on the Big Screen)

Saturday was National Cinema Day, and to celebrate it, all movie tickets were sold for $3. Normally, I hear about things like this the next day and wish I'd heard about it earlier. Not this time. This time I heard about this deal two days before managed to get a ticket. And the movie I chose was Jaws.

This was doubly good, because I had never seen it before. I’m scared of sharks, so a monster movie where the monster is a shark is not something that would interest me. And I knew that the shark wasn’t in it that much, but still. Shark bad.

But it’s been one of the major gaps in my film watching for so long, this was the perfect opportunity to cross it off my list. And it was great! Finally got to see the USS Indianapolis monologue in its full context. The shark is still scary, and with almost 50 years of jump scares between then and now, it still makes you jump. And thanks to Roy Scheider, I want to watch All That Jazz again, and for Richard Dreyfus’s, maybe check out Close Encounters of the Third Kind, another Spielberg classic I haven’t seen yet.

Thanks to this experience, it also makes me want to see more classic films on the big screen, whether it be an epic, a film noir, a musical, or a classic comedy or drama. Movies in the big screen improving the viewing experience, who’d a thunk it?

cinema, journal