Moments in ideal casting.

Johnny Depp as 17th century rake and poet John Wilmot in The Libertine.

Edmund Blackadder: Mrs. Miggins, there's nothing intellectual about wandering around Italy in a big shirt trying to get laid.

Well, sure, I can see that.

Via Rodya Guevara at Farm Accident Digest:

What Famous Leader Are You?

Yes, I will invent the future of mankind. As long as I can do it from my couch while watching the fight scenes in the Rings movies on slo-mo.

Even better.

What Classic Movie Are You?

Wandering rogue on the...river...shadow...what?

The sequel without equal.

Bubba Nosferatu: Curse of the She-Vampires.

God bless Bruce Campbell and the B-Movie.

Proper weather at last.

Stopping By Woods On A Snowy Evening - Robert Frost

Whose woods these are I think I know.
His house is in the village though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.

My little horse must think it queer
To stop without a farmhouse near
Between the woods and frozen lake
The darkest evening of the year.

He gives his harness bells a shake
To ask if there is some mistake.
The only other sound's the sweep
Of easy wind and downy flake.

The woods are lovely, dark and deep.
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.

What price culture.

The Dayton Opera association puts on 4 shows a season; next season we get Le Nozze de Figaro (good), Tosca (less good; I've seen it five times already. Get a new workhorse.), Little Women (hah?), and Opera Goes to the Movies.

Now, I never get tired of Mozart, and I'm willing to put up with yet another staging of Tosca, even at $62 a ticket, if the rest of the season is worth it, but the other two items have me worried. This is the Little Women writeup in the newsletter:

The New York Times has hailed it as a "masterpiece", our third production is a stunning and moving adaptation of Louisa May Alcott's masterpiece novel, Mark Adamo's Little Women.

(Sic, sic, sic. Just wanted to emphasize that the mangled grammar is theirs, not mine.)

Premiered in 1998 at the Houston Grand Opera, Little Women is already being heralded as one of the most beloved American operas.

My conservative instincts are balking. I hate modern classical music with a passion; just about anything post Stravinsky makes my skin crawl. If that makes me a troglodyte, so be it.

Then we come to the item that makes me scowl: Opera Goes to the Movies. This is apparently the orchestra and a series of neophyte opera singers performing selections from operas featured in movies. I don't mind a revue, and the selections are potentially interesting, but for $62 I could rent all the movies involved and still have plenty left for a pizza. Deluxe, even. The hell of it is, if I balk at renewing because I'm tired of Tosca, suspicious of Little Women, and not interested in the free-floating ariafest, I lose my seat--and my seat is prime. So knowing my tendency to just not go if I think I'm not going to enjoy what's ahead of me, I'm potentially going to eat 3 of the 4 tickets. Gad.

[No, there's no point to this. Just pointless bitchery.]

Now there's a useful campaign guide.

Greg pointed me to Ace of Spade's D&D guide to the Democratic candidates (which was apparently linked on The Corner as well.)

Movie Hell.

Time to catch up on stuff I bypassed at the theater:

The Order: Bad theology, albeit a moderately interesting premise. Heath Ledger confirms the fact that he can't act.

28 Days Later: Remind me not to be in England when the Apocalypse comes. Those guys apparently intend to act like fuckers when it's nut-crunching time. Pretty standard zombie fare, imo; I don't see what all the excitement was about.

Bad Boys II: Bang. Screech. BOOM. Crash. One funny bit where a boy comes to pick up Martin Lawrence's teenage daughter.

Barbershop: Fully as funny as I was told, and that's saying something. The ATM subplot is hilariously stupid, and each of the barbers has a fully realized character. Loved it.