Post by ernesto thaddeus m. solmerano on Jun 13, 2007 20:03:02 GMT -5
FANTASIA 2000
::)Walt Disney's dream of creating a "concert film" with a perpetually changing musical repertoire is at last realized with the debut of the animated extravaganza, "Fantasia 2000." The film introduces seven spectacular new animated sequences set to the music of the masters and spotlights the return of "The Sorcerer's Apprentice," a milestone piece of animation which was the genesis of the 1940 feature. Created over a nine-year period and utilizing the talents of a new generation of top animation talents, "Fantasia 2000" takes viewers on a journey into the imagination using incredible animated imagery, exquisite classical music and state-of-art technology.
Actors
Roy Disney
Steve Martin
Itzhak Perlman
Quincy Jones
Bette Midler
James Earl Jones
James Levine
Angela Lansbury
Donald Duck
Mickey Mouse
Chicago Symphony Orchestra
Themes, Issues, Conflicts in FANTASIA 2000
Ludwig van Beethoven, “Symphony No. 5”
• The myth of creation
• The fleeting nature of beauty: nothing lasts forever.
• Battle between good and evil
• Can evil triumph over good?
• Good will ultimately win in the end.
Ottorino Respighi, “Pines of Rome”
• Can whales fly? Everything is possible in the realm of the imagination.
• The need for the young to be independent
• Your parents will help and guide you in times of trouble.
• Learn to be independent. Develop the ability to solve problems.
• In difficult moments, visualize a favorite place.
• The solution to your problems lies within you.
• If there’s a will, there’s a way.
• Remember where you came from. Know your roots.
• The importance of the family to stay together
• In unity, there is strength.
• Nothing is impossible if only we unite as a nation.
George Gershwin, “Rhapsody in Blue”
• What is happiness to you?
• Understand the difference between being at work and working.
• Do not live a monotonous life.
• Observe proportion and moderation.
• All work and no play make a dull person.
• Resist temptation.
• If you want something badly enough, you have to make an effort to get it.
• Happiness is having your heart’s desire.
• Life is a balancing act.
• Don’t be a bum. Get a decent job.
• Spend quality time with your kids.
• Enjoy life.
Dmitri Shostakovich, “Piano Concerto No 2 Allegro Opus 102”
• Selfless love vs. selfish love
• Learn to overcome difficulties. Never doubt yourself.
• Love adds purpose to life.
• Love knows no defect.
• Don’t conceal love.
• Learn to fight for your true love.
• The course of true love never did run smooth.
• Stay true and be faithful to your beloved.
• If you find true love once, you are lucky. If you find it twice, you are blessed.
• Love will always find a way.
• Love conquers all.
Camille Saint-Saens, “Carnival of the Animals Finale”
• Individuality vs. conformity
• Any man more right than his neighbors constitute a majority of one.
• Be yourself. Stay faithful to yourself.
Paul Dukas, “The Sorcerer’s Apprentice”
• Obey your superior.
• Obey first before you complain.
• Duty first before pleasure.
• Do not get things if it is not yours.
• It is not fair to ask of others what you are not willing to do.
• Do not delegate your duty to others.
• If you want something to be done right, do it yourself.
• Know how to supervise.
• With great power comes great responsibility.
• Solve problems instead of making them worse.
• Learn from your mistake.
Edward Elgar, "Pomp & Circumstance – Marches 1, 2, 3 & 4"
• Don’t be a pasaway.
• Learn the art of communication.
• Give your best to your employer.
• Absence makes the heart grow ponder.
• Believe in destiny.
Igor Stravinsky, “The Firebird Suite”
• Let us all help protect and conserve Mother Earth.
RENT
· Based on Giaccomo Puccini's opera
La Bohème
· Book, Music & Lyrics by Jonathan Larson
· Screenplay by Stephen Chbosky
· Directed by Chris Columbus
· Tony Awards for Best Musical, Best Book of a Musical and Best Original Score in 1996
· Pulitzer Prize in Drama in 1996
Cast
Taye Diggs - Benjamin "Benny" Coffin III
Wilson Jermaine Heredia – Angel Dumott Schunard
Jesse L. Martin - Tom Collins
Idina Menzel - Maureen Johnson
Adam Pascal - Roger Davis
Anthony Rapp - Mark Cohen
Rosario Dawson - Mimi Marquez
Tracie Thoms - Joanne Jefferson
Gilles Chiasson - Steve
Rodney Hicks - Paul
Kristen Lee Kelly - Mark's mom
Aiko Nakasone - Alexi Darling
Timothy Britten Parker - Gordon
Gwen Stewart - Mrs. Jefferson
Byron Utley - Mr. Jefferson
Musical Numbers
SEASONS OF LOVE
· Fill your life with love.
· In all that we do let us do it for love.
RENT
· Everything in life is rent.
YOU'LL SEE
· Idealism alone doesn't put food on the table. The idealism is there, but so is the practicality.
ONE SONG GLORY
· Create a worthwhile purpose in life.
· You only live once but if you work it right, once is enough.
LIGHT MY CANDLE
· Do not delay what your heart says.
· When you love someone, say it or else the moment will pass.
· If we don’t change, we don’t grow.
TODAY 4 U
· No act of kindness, no matter how small, is ever wasted.
TANGO: MAUREEN
· Our heart is a treasury. If you spend all its wealth at once, you are ruined.
· Once a pregnant dog will always be a pregnant dog.
· Learn to forget your ex-lover. Get your ex-lover out of your system.
NO DAY, BUT TODAY
· There is no past, nor is there any future. Only the present forever.
· Forget regret, or life is yours to miss.
OUT TONIGHT
· If we will insist always on being serious, and never allowed ourselves a bit of fun or relaxation, we would go mad or become unstable without knowing it.
ANOTHER DAY
· Do not be a slave to the past.
· If we deny love that is given to us, if we refuse to give love because we fear pain or loss, then our lives will be empty, our loss greater.
· To fear love is to fear life, and those who fear life are already three parts dead.
WILL I?
· Trouble is part of your life — if you don't share it, you don't give the person who loves you a chance to love you enough.
· Learn to be more understanding and compassionate.
SANTA FE
· Find a place of refuge.
I'LL COVER YOU
· Choose your love and love your choice.
· The love we give is the only love we keep.
· The heart has its reasons which the mind cannot comprehend.
OVER THE MOON
· Never underestimate the power of a woman.
· Stay faithful to yourself.
· Tap into your creativity.
LA VIE BOHEME
· Life without art is possible, but what a boring life it would be.
I SHOULD TELL YOU
· Love means never having to say you’re sorry.
· We came to love not by finding the perfect person, but by learning to see an imperfect person perfectly.
TAKE ME OR LEAVE ME
· Marry only for love.
· Love is not merely saying. It is doing.
· Love should not dominate, it should cultivate.
WITHOUT YOU
· Life without love is like a tree without fruit.
· Death leaves a heartache no one can heal. Love leaves a memory no one can steal.
· Death puts life into perspective.
I’LL COVER YOU REPRISE
· Some people come into our lives and quickly go. Some stay for awhile and leave footprints on our hearts. And we are never, ever the same.
GOODBYE, LOVE
· Can there be a love which does not make demands on its object?
· Love is so short, forgetting is so long.
WHAT YOU OWN
· Recharge if you need to.
YOUR EYES
· Looking back, I have this to regret, that too often when I loved, I did not say so.
· Love can hurt as well as heal.
· Love is the best inspiration for the arts.
FINALE
· Enjoy life. There’s plenty of time to be dead.
· Live life without regrets.
Amelie or Le Fabuleux Destin d'Amélie Poulain (The Fabulous Destiny of Amélie Poulain)
Synopsis
Amélie is the story of Amélie Poulain, a girl who grows up isolated from other children by Raphaël, her taciturn doctor father, due to his mistaken belief that she suffers from a heart condition (a mistake in fact resulting from the increase in her heartbeat caused by the rare thrill of physical contact by her father, who only ever touches her during medical check-ups). Her mother (who is just as neurotic as her father) dies when Amélie is young, victim of a freak accident involving a suicidal woman who throws herself off the top of Notre Dame Cathedral and lands on Amélie's mother, causing her father to withdraw even further (and devote his life to building a rather eccentric shrine to his late wife). Left to amuse herself, Amélie develops an unusually active imagination.
When she grows up, Amélie becomes a waitress in a small Montmartre café, The Two Windmills, run by a former circus performer. The café is staffed and frequented by a gang of eccentrics. By age 22, life for Amélie is simple; having spurned romantic relationships following a few failed efforts, she has devoted herself to simple pleasures, such as cracking crème brûlée with a teaspoon, going for walks in the Paris sunshine, skipping stones across St. Martin's Canal, trying to guess how many couples in Paris are having an orgasm at one moment ("Fifteen!", she informs the camera), and letting her imagination roam free.
Her life changes on the same day that Princess Diana dies. Following a series of circumstances resulting from her shock at the news, behind a loose bathroom tile she finds an old metal box of childhood memorabilia hidden by a boy who lived in her apartment decades ago. Fascinated by the find, she resolves to track down the now grown-up man who put it there and return it to him, making a deal with herself in the process: if she finds him and it makes him happy, she will devote her life to goodness.
She meets her reclusive neighbor Raymond Dufayel, a painter who continually repaints Luncheon of the Boating Party (Le Déjeuner des canotiers) by Pierre-Auguste Renoir. He is known as 'the Glass Man' because of his brittle bone condition. With his help, she tracks the former occupant down, and places the box in a phone booth, ringing the number as he passes to lure him there. Upon opening the box, the man has an epiphany as long-forgotten childhood memories come flooding back. She trails him to a nearby bar and observes him secretly. On seeing the positive effect she had on him, she resolves from that moment on to do good in the lives of others. Amélie becomes something of a secret matchmaker and guardian angel, as she persuades her father to follow his dream of touring the world (with help from his garden gnome and an air-hostess friend), her co-workers and friends (two of whom she sets up), the concierge of her building, and Lucien, the boy who works for the bullying owner of the neighborhood vegetable stand (Mr. Collignon, upon whom Amélie delights in playing pranks).
However, while she is looking after others, no one is looking after Amélie. In helping other people achieve happiness, she is forced to examine her own lonely life - made ever more apparent and painful by her relationship with Nino Quincampoix, a quirky young man who collects the discarded photographs of strangers from passport photo booths, with whom she has fallen in love. Although she intrigues him through her various roundabout methods of attraction (including something like a treasure hunt for one of his forgotten photo albums), she is painfully shy and incapable of actually approaching him. It will take Raymond's friendship to teach her to pursue her own happiness whilst still ensuring that of her friends and neighbors.
Cast
Audrey Tautou - Amélie Poulain
Mathieu Kassovitz - Nino Quincampoix
Rufus - Raphaël Poulain
Lorella Cravotta - Amandine Poulain
Serge Merlin - Raymond Dufayel
Jamel Debbouze - Lucien
Clotilde Mollet - Gina
Claire Maurier - Suzanne
Isabelle Nanty - Georgette
Dominique Pinon - Joseph
Artus de Penguern - Hipolito
Yolande Moreau - Madeleine Wallace
Urbain Cancelier - Collignon
Maurice Bénichou - Dominique Bretodeau
Michel Robin - Mr. Collignon
Andrée Damant - Mrs. Collignon
Claude Perron - Eva, Nino's colleague
Armelle - Philomène, air hostess
Ticky Holgado - Man in photo
Kevin Fernandes - Bretodeau, as a child
Flora Guiet - Amélie, 6 years old
Amaury Babault - Nino, as a child
André Dussollier - Narrator
Memorable Quotes from Amelie
Hipolito, The Writer: Without you, today's emotions would be the scurf of yesterday's.
Raymond Dufayel aka Glass Man: So, my little Amélie, you don't have bones of glass. You can take life's knocks. If you let this chance pass, eventually, your heart will become as dry and brittle as my skeleton. So, go get him, for Pete's sake!
Themes Depicted in the Film
“The things that make life worth living are often go unnoticed.”
“Enjoy the little things, the little moments for one day you may look back and realize they were the big things.”
“Manifest plainness, embrace simplicity, reduce selfishness,
have few desires.”
“Happiness is a by-product of an effort to make someone else happy.”
“Help yourself, and Heaven will help you.”
“Make love while you can. It is good for you.”
:)AMADEUS
(The Director’s Cut, 2002)
The Man... The Music... The Madness... The Murder... The Motion Picture...
Based on Peter Shaffer’s play of the same title
Directed by Milos Forman
Winner of 8 Academy Awards including Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor for F. Murray Abraham, Best Screenplay Adaptation for Peter Shaffer, Best Art Direction, Best Costume Design, Best Make-up and Best Sound
The extensive musical score is performed by Sir Neville Marriner conducting the British orchestra, Academy of St Martin in the Fields.
Noted choreographer Twyla Tharp staged the ballets used in Mozart’s operas the way they were danced in his day
”Some men are born great, some men achieve greatness, and some men, have greatness thrust upon them.”
”Some men are born mediocre, some men achieve mediocrity, and some men, have mediocrity thrust upon them.”
;DThe Cast
F. Murray Abraham Antonio Salieri
Tom Hulce W. A. Mozart
Elizabeth Berridge Constanze Mozart
Roy Dotrice Leopold Mozart
Simon Callow Emanuel Schikaneder
Christine Ebersole Katerina Cavalieri
Jeffrey Jones Emperor Joseph II
Charles Kay Count Orsini-Rosenberg
Kenneth McMillan Michael Schlumberg
Kenny Baker Parody Commendatore
Barbara Bryne Frau Weber
Martin Cavina Young Salieri
Roderick Cook Count Von Strack
Milan Demjanenko Karl Mozart
Peter DiGesu Francesco Salieri
Michele Esposito Salieri's Student
Richard Frank Father Vogler
Patrick Hines Kappelmeister Bonno
Nicholas Kepros Archbishop of Salzburg
Philip Lenkowsky Salieri's Servant
Herman Meckler Priest
Jonathan Moore Baron Van Swieten
Cynthia Nixon Lorl
Brian Pettifer Hospital Attendant
Vincent Schiavelli Salieri's Valet
Douglas Seale Count Arco
Miroslav Sekera Young Mozart
John Strauss Conductor
Karl-Heinz Teuber Wig Salesman
Rita Zohar Frau Schlumberg
Cassie Stuart Gertrude Schlumberg
:oSynopsis
The film of Amadeus is a celebration of Mozart’s timeless music as well as a gripping drama. On a November night in 1823 a distracted old man offers from his window an appalling confession to the city of Vienna: Forgive me, Mozart. Forgive your assassin. Moments later he attempts suicide, and is rushed through the snowy streets to the General Infirmary, a grim building containing all manner of sick and desperate patients. Some weeks afterwards, confined in a private room, the Hospital Chaplain, Father Vogler, visits him. While obviously contemptuous of the priest, the old man is drawn to confess to him. His story, told throughout one night, forms the substance of the film.
The old man is Antonio Salieri, once the most famous musician in Vienna. A small town Italian lad from Legnago, he worked his way up to becoming Court Composer to Emperor Joseph II, brother of Marie Antoinette and lover, in a limited way, of music. All his early life Salieri had been possessed by one driving desire: to serve God through music. As a boy he made a solemn vow to Him in Church, offering his chastity, his unremitting industry, and his deepest humility if God in His turn will grant him musical excellence as a composer, and immortal fame for its exercise.
At first it seems to Salieri that his offer has been accepted. He goes to Vienna and rapidly becomes the most successful musician in that city of musicians and is accepted as Court Composer. Then in 1781 a young man arrives and changes everything forever – Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. Already famous as a prodigy at the age of six, Mozart was toured throughout Europe by his dominating father Leopold, showing off musical tricks for the amusement of the aristocracy. Now at age 26, the young man is far more than a performing monkey. He has become a composer, eager to show off his abilities. Salieri hears that Mozart is to give a concert of his music at the residence of his employer the Archbishop of Salzburg, and hurries there to hear it. That night changes his life.
Before the concert starts the Court Composer strolls through the throng of fashionable guests, striving to guess which one can be Mozart. His eye is suddenly distracted by trays of pastries being carried by servants to the buffet. He follows them, eager to steal a little private refreshment, is possessed of an Italian sweet tooth but instead encounters a giggling couple playing together on the floor like children, and rather dirty-minded children at that. Concealed from view, he is obliged to listen to an infantile scatological game played by the boy-man who is wildly attracted to the girl-woman. Salieri is scandalized by what he hears - and then astounded as music suddenly sounds from the great salon, and the boy springs up in alarm, cries My music and dashes from the room. This is Mozart? This giggling, dirty-minded creature who is crawling on the floor? And worse: the music Salieri hears an adagio from the Wind Serenade for Thirteen Instruments is the most beautiful he has ever heard in his life. God is apparently favoring not him, but a sniggering, unattractive little show-off.
From this moment, Salieri’s relations with his God begin to deteriorate. In the ensuing weeks he often meets Mozart, and the young man proceeds to unwittingly insult him in a variety of ways: firstly by sitting at the keyboard and turning the dull March of Welcome Salieri has composed into the brilliant tune later to be made world famous in The Marriage of Figaro-- Non Piu Andrai; secondly by seducing Salieri’s prize pupil Katerina Cavalieri, who sings the lead in the opera especially commissioned by a benevolent Emperor Joseph II. When his Majesty decides to show an additional mark of favor to Mozart by proposing him as a teacher of music to his royal niece, Salieri decides to block the appointment.
Constanze, Wolfgang’s wife, appears secretly at Salieri’s house to plead for her husband, bearing with her manuscripts of his music as evidence of his ability. Salieri studies them as she waits. The manuscripts form an incredible miscellany of work: the slow movement of the Flute and Harp Concerto; the last movement of the Concerto for Two Pianos; the Twenty-ninth Symphony; the Kyrie from the C Minor Mass. Incredibly, these original and first drafts of the music show no corrections of any kind; it is just as if Mozart has taken down dictation from God Salieri reads on, overwhelmed, he is maddened by their perfection. Mozart has been chosen to be His instrument; Salieri must remain forever mediocre, despite his longings to serve. In fury he turns on the Deity. He makes demands of Him: Why implant the desire to serve and then withhold the talent to do it? Why bestow your divine genius on Mozart, who is neither good nor chaste? Goodness is nothing in the furnace of art. And for that reason he vows to ruin God’s incarnation (Mozart) as far as he is able.
Relentlessly Salieri plots to destroy Mozart. When The Marriage of Figaro comes to be produced, he does everything in his power largely through the Italian faction at Court to ruin it. Inevitably Mozart begins to sink into poverty and sickness. Finally the Court Composer discovers a real weakness in his victim’s character, through which he can destroy him not only economically but also physically and mentally. Mozart’s father Leopold visits Vienna to stay with his son and daughter-in-law, of whom he violently disapproves. The visit despite attempts to cheer it up with parties and masquerades was a disastrous failure, and the old man leaves for Salzburg in bitterness. Shortly thereafter he dies. Mozart is badly stricken. Salieri perceives, at a performance of the opera Don Giovanni that in the dreadful figure of the accusing statue, Mozart has summoned up his father to accuse him, publicly, on stage. Guilt is deeply ingrained in the son’s soul, ready to be used against him by an enemy. Surprisingly, however, Salieri’s aim is not his immediate destruction.
As the life of Mozart grows more and more desperate, he lapses into sickness and drunkenness and turns from the Court which has turned its back from him to produce entertainment for ordinary German people in the popular theater of Emanuel Schikaneder. Salieri, his tormented persecutor, suddenly decides that he wants Mozart alive at least for the moment. His lust for immortality propels Salieri toward a new and pathetic wickedness. Committed to his war with his Maker, he finally hits on the one stratagem that, in his eyes, could enable him to win the battle for eternal recognition.
The old man’s confession climaxes with this stratagem and the inevitable outcome of any such absurd challenge to divinity. God replies to Salieri in his own way.
::)What is Amadeus?
Playwright Sir Peter Shaffer, who adapted the screenplay of Amadeus from his long-running London and Broadway stage hit, calls Amadeus a fantasia based on fact. It is not a biography of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, nor was it intended to be. In telling a story about Mozart and his arch-rival, the court composer Antonio Salieri, I have not violated the specific nature of Mozart the man, and certainly not Mozart the composer. Above all, the film of Amadeus, much more than the play, is a celebration of Mozart’s music.
Shaffer has used known, undisputed facts about Mozart’s life and music, as seen through the jaundiced, hate-filled eyes of Antonio Salieri, to illuminate a number of universal themes that transcend both of these 18th Century composers. It is not Mozart, but his jealousy-maddened rival Salieri that Shaffer has cast center stage. Salieri is tormented by his vision of Mozart, Why do you favor him, God? This clownish, giggling repulsive buffoon whose very name, Amadeus, could be taken to mean beloved by God? Why have you lavished your divine gift on this blasphemous oaf, and withheld it from me your servant who prays to you daily to invest me with genius? Who has foresworn all fleshly pleasures to be of service to you, those delicious sexual delights this lecherous Mozart indulges in so wantonly? And with no impairment of his awesome musical powers?
What lies at the heart of Amadeus is Mozart’s music and Salieri’s constant reaction to it with a mixture of wonder and jealousy, religious exaltation, bitter frustration and self-contempt for his own puny exploits when compared to Mozart, whose pen seems to take dictation directly from God. What is most ironic is that Salieri hears in Mozart’s music the sound of divine genius. To his employer-patron, the Archbishop of Salzburg, Mozart is merely a troublesome, clever performing monkey hired to do a job. To his simple wife Constanze, he is a talented, lovable child without the knack of making money, attracting paying pupils or getting on at court. Salieri recognizes this misfit as the towering figure we celebrate today.
The universal theme of mediocrity confronting genius goes far beyond Mozart and Salieri; it is manifest in any era and in every human pursuit - business, sports, politics, academia and the fine arts. Another concept explored in Amadeus is man’s relation to God. How, as John Milton wondered, can God’s often perverse ways be justified to man? The once-pious believer Salieri turns away from God, and in fact defies God for making him a mediocrity and Mozart a genius. Mozart is Salieri’s living proof that God mocks me through that obscene giggle of Mozart. Go on, Signore! Laugh. Rub my nose in it: Show my mediocrity for all to see. Renouncing God, Salieri sets out to destroy His divine voice that sings through the pen of His favored Mozart. History assures us of Salieri’s grim success, aided by others equally jealous of Mozart’s talent and repelled by his arrogant childish behavior. Which strikes still another chord; the genius poorly rewarded by his society. No more shocking or dramatic example in all of history can be found than Mozart.
::)Walt Disney's dream of creating a "concert film" with a perpetually changing musical repertoire is at last realized with the debut of the animated extravaganza, "Fantasia 2000." The film introduces seven spectacular new animated sequences set to the music of the masters and spotlights the return of "The Sorcerer's Apprentice," a milestone piece of animation which was the genesis of the 1940 feature. Created over a nine-year period and utilizing the talents of a new generation of top animation talents, "Fantasia 2000" takes viewers on a journey into the imagination using incredible animated imagery, exquisite classical music and state-of-art technology.
Actors
Roy Disney
Steve Martin
Itzhak Perlman
Quincy Jones
Bette Midler
James Earl Jones
James Levine
Angela Lansbury
Donald Duck
Mickey Mouse
Chicago Symphony Orchestra
Themes, Issues, Conflicts in FANTASIA 2000
Ludwig van Beethoven, “Symphony No. 5”
• The myth of creation
• The fleeting nature of beauty: nothing lasts forever.
• Battle between good and evil
• Can evil triumph over good?
• Good will ultimately win in the end.
Ottorino Respighi, “Pines of Rome”
• Can whales fly? Everything is possible in the realm of the imagination.
• The need for the young to be independent
• Your parents will help and guide you in times of trouble.
• Learn to be independent. Develop the ability to solve problems.
• In difficult moments, visualize a favorite place.
• The solution to your problems lies within you.
• If there’s a will, there’s a way.
• Remember where you came from. Know your roots.
• The importance of the family to stay together
• In unity, there is strength.
• Nothing is impossible if only we unite as a nation.
George Gershwin, “Rhapsody in Blue”
• What is happiness to you?
• Understand the difference between being at work and working.
• Do not live a monotonous life.
• Observe proportion and moderation.
• All work and no play make a dull person.
• Resist temptation.
• If you want something badly enough, you have to make an effort to get it.
• Happiness is having your heart’s desire.
• Life is a balancing act.
• Don’t be a bum. Get a decent job.
• Spend quality time with your kids.
• Enjoy life.
Dmitri Shostakovich, “Piano Concerto No 2 Allegro Opus 102”
• Selfless love vs. selfish love
• Learn to overcome difficulties. Never doubt yourself.
• Love adds purpose to life.
• Love knows no defect.
• Don’t conceal love.
• Learn to fight for your true love.
• The course of true love never did run smooth.
• Stay true and be faithful to your beloved.
• If you find true love once, you are lucky. If you find it twice, you are blessed.
• Love will always find a way.
• Love conquers all.
Camille Saint-Saens, “Carnival of the Animals Finale”
• Individuality vs. conformity
• Any man more right than his neighbors constitute a majority of one.
• Be yourself. Stay faithful to yourself.
Paul Dukas, “The Sorcerer’s Apprentice”
• Obey your superior.
• Obey first before you complain.
• Duty first before pleasure.
• Do not get things if it is not yours.
• It is not fair to ask of others what you are not willing to do.
• Do not delegate your duty to others.
• If you want something to be done right, do it yourself.
• Know how to supervise.
• With great power comes great responsibility.
• Solve problems instead of making them worse.
• Learn from your mistake.
Edward Elgar, "Pomp & Circumstance – Marches 1, 2, 3 & 4"
• Don’t be a pasaway.
• Learn the art of communication.
• Give your best to your employer.
• Absence makes the heart grow ponder.
• Believe in destiny.
Igor Stravinsky, “The Firebird Suite”
• Let us all help protect and conserve Mother Earth.
RENT· Based on Giaccomo Puccini's opera
La Bohème
· Book, Music & Lyrics by Jonathan Larson
· Screenplay by Stephen Chbosky
· Directed by Chris Columbus
· Tony Awards for Best Musical, Best Book of a Musical and Best Original Score in 1996
· Pulitzer Prize in Drama in 1996
Cast
Taye Diggs - Benjamin "Benny" Coffin III
Wilson Jermaine Heredia – Angel Dumott Schunard
Jesse L. Martin - Tom Collins
Idina Menzel - Maureen Johnson
Adam Pascal - Roger Davis
Anthony Rapp - Mark Cohen
Rosario Dawson - Mimi Marquez
Tracie Thoms - Joanne Jefferson
Gilles Chiasson - Steve
Rodney Hicks - Paul
Kristen Lee Kelly - Mark's mom
Aiko Nakasone - Alexi Darling
Timothy Britten Parker - Gordon
Gwen Stewart - Mrs. Jefferson
Byron Utley - Mr. Jefferson
Musical Numbers
SEASONS OF LOVE
· Fill your life with love.
· In all that we do let us do it for love.
RENT
· Everything in life is rent.
YOU'LL SEE
· Idealism alone doesn't put food on the table. The idealism is there, but so is the practicality.
ONE SONG GLORY
· Create a worthwhile purpose in life.
· You only live once but if you work it right, once is enough.
LIGHT MY CANDLE
· Do not delay what your heart says.
· When you love someone, say it or else the moment will pass.
· If we don’t change, we don’t grow.
TODAY 4 U
· No act of kindness, no matter how small, is ever wasted.
TANGO: MAUREEN
· Our heart is a treasury. If you spend all its wealth at once, you are ruined.
· Once a pregnant dog will always be a pregnant dog.
· Learn to forget your ex-lover. Get your ex-lover out of your system.
NO DAY, BUT TODAY
· There is no past, nor is there any future. Only the present forever.
· Forget regret, or life is yours to miss.
OUT TONIGHT
· If we will insist always on being serious, and never allowed ourselves a bit of fun or relaxation, we would go mad or become unstable without knowing it.
ANOTHER DAY
· Do not be a slave to the past.
· If we deny love that is given to us, if we refuse to give love because we fear pain or loss, then our lives will be empty, our loss greater.
· To fear love is to fear life, and those who fear life are already three parts dead.
WILL I?
· Trouble is part of your life — if you don't share it, you don't give the person who loves you a chance to love you enough.
· Learn to be more understanding and compassionate.
SANTA FE
· Find a place of refuge.
I'LL COVER YOU
· Choose your love and love your choice.
· The love we give is the only love we keep.
· The heart has its reasons which the mind cannot comprehend.
OVER THE MOON
· Never underestimate the power of a woman.
· Stay faithful to yourself.
· Tap into your creativity.
LA VIE BOHEME
· Life without art is possible, but what a boring life it would be.
I SHOULD TELL YOU
· Love means never having to say you’re sorry.
· We came to love not by finding the perfect person, but by learning to see an imperfect person perfectly.
TAKE ME OR LEAVE ME
· Marry only for love.
· Love is not merely saying. It is doing.
· Love should not dominate, it should cultivate.
WITHOUT YOU
· Life without love is like a tree without fruit.
· Death leaves a heartache no one can heal. Love leaves a memory no one can steal.
· Death puts life into perspective.
I’LL COVER YOU REPRISE
· Some people come into our lives and quickly go. Some stay for awhile and leave footprints on our hearts. And we are never, ever the same.
GOODBYE, LOVE
· Can there be a love which does not make demands on its object?
· Love is so short, forgetting is so long.
WHAT YOU OWN
· Recharge if you need to.
YOUR EYES
· Looking back, I have this to regret, that too often when I loved, I did not say so.
· Love can hurt as well as heal.
· Love is the best inspiration for the arts.
FINALE
· Enjoy life. There’s plenty of time to be dead.
· Live life without regrets.
Amelie or Le Fabuleux Destin d'Amélie Poulain (The Fabulous Destiny of Amélie Poulain)Synopsis
Amélie is the story of Amélie Poulain, a girl who grows up isolated from other children by Raphaël, her taciturn doctor father, due to his mistaken belief that she suffers from a heart condition (a mistake in fact resulting from the increase in her heartbeat caused by the rare thrill of physical contact by her father, who only ever touches her during medical check-ups). Her mother (who is just as neurotic as her father) dies when Amélie is young, victim of a freak accident involving a suicidal woman who throws herself off the top of Notre Dame Cathedral and lands on Amélie's mother, causing her father to withdraw even further (and devote his life to building a rather eccentric shrine to his late wife). Left to amuse herself, Amélie develops an unusually active imagination.
When she grows up, Amélie becomes a waitress in a small Montmartre café, The Two Windmills, run by a former circus performer. The café is staffed and frequented by a gang of eccentrics. By age 22, life for Amélie is simple; having spurned romantic relationships following a few failed efforts, she has devoted herself to simple pleasures, such as cracking crème brûlée with a teaspoon, going for walks in the Paris sunshine, skipping stones across St. Martin's Canal, trying to guess how many couples in Paris are having an orgasm at one moment ("Fifteen!", she informs the camera), and letting her imagination roam free.
Her life changes on the same day that Princess Diana dies. Following a series of circumstances resulting from her shock at the news, behind a loose bathroom tile she finds an old metal box of childhood memorabilia hidden by a boy who lived in her apartment decades ago. Fascinated by the find, she resolves to track down the now grown-up man who put it there and return it to him, making a deal with herself in the process: if she finds him and it makes him happy, she will devote her life to goodness.
She meets her reclusive neighbor Raymond Dufayel, a painter who continually repaints Luncheon of the Boating Party (Le Déjeuner des canotiers) by Pierre-Auguste Renoir. He is known as 'the Glass Man' because of his brittle bone condition. With his help, she tracks the former occupant down, and places the box in a phone booth, ringing the number as he passes to lure him there. Upon opening the box, the man has an epiphany as long-forgotten childhood memories come flooding back. She trails him to a nearby bar and observes him secretly. On seeing the positive effect she had on him, she resolves from that moment on to do good in the lives of others. Amélie becomes something of a secret matchmaker and guardian angel, as she persuades her father to follow his dream of touring the world (with help from his garden gnome and an air-hostess friend), her co-workers and friends (two of whom she sets up), the concierge of her building, and Lucien, the boy who works for the bullying owner of the neighborhood vegetable stand (Mr. Collignon, upon whom Amélie delights in playing pranks).
However, while she is looking after others, no one is looking after Amélie. In helping other people achieve happiness, she is forced to examine her own lonely life - made ever more apparent and painful by her relationship with Nino Quincampoix, a quirky young man who collects the discarded photographs of strangers from passport photo booths, with whom she has fallen in love. Although she intrigues him through her various roundabout methods of attraction (including something like a treasure hunt for one of his forgotten photo albums), she is painfully shy and incapable of actually approaching him. It will take Raymond's friendship to teach her to pursue her own happiness whilst still ensuring that of her friends and neighbors.
Cast
Audrey Tautou - Amélie Poulain
Mathieu Kassovitz - Nino Quincampoix
Rufus - Raphaël Poulain
Lorella Cravotta - Amandine Poulain
Serge Merlin - Raymond Dufayel
Jamel Debbouze - Lucien
Clotilde Mollet - Gina
Claire Maurier - Suzanne
Isabelle Nanty - Georgette
Dominique Pinon - Joseph
Artus de Penguern - Hipolito
Yolande Moreau - Madeleine Wallace
Urbain Cancelier - Collignon
Maurice Bénichou - Dominique Bretodeau
Michel Robin - Mr. Collignon
Andrée Damant - Mrs. Collignon
Claude Perron - Eva, Nino's colleague
Armelle - Philomène, air hostess
Ticky Holgado - Man in photo
Kevin Fernandes - Bretodeau, as a child
Flora Guiet - Amélie, 6 years old
Amaury Babault - Nino, as a child
André Dussollier - Narrator
Memorable Quotes from Amelie
Hipolito, The Writer: Without you, today's emotions would be the scurf of yesterday's.
Raymond Dufayel aka Glass Man: So, my little Amélie, you don't have bones of glass. You can take life's knocks. If you let this chance pass, eventually, your heart will become as dry and brittle as my skeleton. So, go get him, for Pete's sake!
Themes Depicted in the Film
“The things that make life worth living are often go unnoticed.”
“Enjoy the little things, the little moments for one day you may look back and realize they were the big things.”
“Manifest plainness, embrace simplicity, reduce selfishness,
have few desires.”
“Happiness is a by-product of an effort to make someone else happy.”
“Help yourself, and Heaven will help you.”
“Make love while you can. It is good for you.”
:)AMADEUS
(The Director’s Cut, 2002)
The Man... The Music... The Madness... The Murder... The Motion Picture...
Based on Peter Shaffer’s play of the same title
Directed by Milos Forman
Winner of 8 Academy Awards including Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor for F. Murray Abraham, Best Screenplay Adaptation for Peter Shaffer, Best Art Direction, Best Costume Design, Best Make-up and Best Sound
The extensive musical score is performed by Sir Neville Marriner conducting the British orchestra, Academy of St Martin in the Fields.
Noted choreographer Twyla Tharp staged the ballets used in Mozart’s operas the way they were danced in his day
”Some men are born great, some men achieve greatness, and some men, have greatness thrust upon them.”
”Some men are born mediocre, some men achieve mediocrity, and some men, have mediocrity thrust upon them.”
;DThe Cast
F. Murray Abraham Antonio Salieri
Tom Hulce W. A. Mozart
Elizabeth Berridge Constanze Mozart
Roy Dotrice Leopold Mozart
Simon Callow Emanuel Schikaneder
Christine Ebersole Katerina Cavalieri
Jeffrey Jones Emperor Joseph II
Charles Kay Count Orsini-Rosenberg
Kenneth McMillan Michael Schlumberg
Kenny Baker Parody Commendatore
Barbara Bryne Frau Weber
Martin Cavina Young Salieri
Roderick Cook Count Von Strack
Milan Demjanenko Karl Mozart
Peter DiGesu Francesco Salieri
Michele Esposito Salieri's Student
Richard Frank Father Vogler
Patrick Hines Kappelmeister Bonno
Nicholas Kepros Archbishop of Salzburg
Philip Lenkowsky Salieri's Servant
Herman Meckler Priest
Jonathan Moore Baron Van Swieten
Cynthia Nixon Lorl
Brian Pettifer Hospital Attendant
Vincent Schiavelli Salieri's Valet
Douglas Seale Count Arco
Miroslav Sekera Young Mozart
John Strauss Conductor
Karl-Heinz Teuber Wig Salesman
Rita Zohar Frau Schlumberg
Cassie Stuart Gertrude Schlumberg
:oSynopsis
The film of Amadeus is a celebration of Mozart’s timeless music as well as a gripping drama. On a November night in 1823 a distracted old man offers from his window an appalling confession to the city of Vienna: Forgive me, Mozart. Forgive your assassin. Moments later he attempts suicide, and is rushed through the snowy streets to the General Infirmary, a grim building containing all manner of sick and desperate patients. Some weeks afterwards, confined in a private room, the Hospital Chaplain, Father Vogler, visits him. While obviously contemptuous of the priest, the old man is drawn to confess to him. His story, told throughout one night, forms the substance of the film.
The old man is Antonio Salieri, once the most famous musician in Vienna. A small town Italian lad from Legnago, he worked his way up to becoming Court Composer to Emperor Joseph II, brother of Marie Antoinette and lover, in a limited way, of music. All his early life Salieri had been possessed by one driving desire: to serve God through music. As a boy he made a solemn vow to Him in Church, offering his chastity, his unremitting industry, and his deepest humility if God in His turn will grant him musical excellence as a composer, and immortal fame for its exercise.
At first it seems to Salieri that his offer has been accepted. He goes to Vienna and rapidly becomes the most successful musician in that city of musicians and is accepted as Court Composer. Then in 1781 a young man arrives and changes everything forever – Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. Already famous as a prodigy at the age of six, Mozart was toured throughout Europe by his dominating father Leopold, showing off musical tricks for the amusement of the aristocracy. Now at age 26, the young man is far more than a performing monkey. He has become a composer, eager to show off his abilities. Salieri hears that Mozart is to give a concert of his music at the residence of his employer the Archbishop of Salzburg, and hurries there to hear it. That night changes his life.
Before the concert starts the Court Composer strolls through the throng of fashionable guests, striving to guess which one can be Mozart. His eye is suddenly distracted by trays of pastries being carried by servants to the buffet. He follows them, eager to steal a little private refreshment, is possessed of an Italian sweet tooth but instead encounters a giggling couple playing together on the floor like children, and rather dirty-minded children at that. Concealed from view, he is obliged to listen to an infantile scatological game played by the boy-man who is wildly attracted to the girl-woman. Salieri is scandalized by what he hears - and then astounded as music suddenly sounds from the great salon, and the boy springs up in alarm, cries My music and dashes from the room. This is Mozart? This giggling, dirty-minded creature who is crawling on the floor? And worse: the music Salieri hears an adagio from the Wind Serenade for Thirteen Instruments is the most beautiful he has ever heard in his life. God is apparently favoring not him, but a sniggering, unattractive little show-off.
From this moment, Salieri’s relations with his God begin to deteriorate. In the ensuing weeks he often meets Mozart, and the young man proceeds to unwittingly insult him in a variety of ways: firstly by sitting at the keyboard and turning the dull March of Welcome Salieri has composed into the brilliant tune later to be made world famous in The Marriage of Figaro-- Non Piu Andrai; secondly by seducing Salieri’s prize pupil Katerina Cavalieri, who sings the lead in the opera especially commissioned by a benevolent Emperor Joseph II. When his Majesty decides to show an additional mark of favor to Mozart by proposing him as a teacher of music to his royal niece, Salieri decides to block the appointment.
Constanze, Wolfgang’s wife, appears secretly at Salieri’s house to plead for her husband, bearing with her manuscripts of his music as evidence of his ability. Salieri studies them as she waits. The manuscripts form an incredible miscellany of work: the slow movement of the Flute and Harp Concerto; the last movement of the Concerto for Two Pianos; the Twenty-ninth Symphony; the Kyrie from the C Minor Mass. Incredibly, these original and first drafts of the music show no corrections of any kind; it is just as if Mozart has taken down dictation from God Salieri reads on, overwhelmed, he is maddened by their perfection. Mozart has been chosen to be His instrument; Salieri must remain forever mediocre, despite his longings to serve. In fury he turns on the Deity. He makes demands of Him: Why implant the desire to serve and then withhold the talent to do it? Why bestow your divine genius on Mozart, who is neither good nor chaste? Goodness is nothing in the furnace of art. And for that reason he vows to ruin God’s incarnation (Mozart) as far as he is able.
Relentlessly Salieri plots to destroy Mozart. When The Marriage of Figaro comes to be produced, he does everything in his power largely through the Italian faction at Court to ruin it. Inevitably Mozart begins to sink into poverty and sickness. Finally the Court Composer discovers a real weakness in his victim’s character, through which he can destroy him not only economically but also physically and mentally. Mozart’s father Leopold visits Vienna to stay with his son and daughter-in-law, of whom he violently disapproves. The visit despite attempts to cheer it up with parties and masquerades was a disastrous failure, and the old man leaves for Salzburg in bitterness. Shortly thereafter he dies. Mozart is badly stricken. Salieri perceives, at a performance of the opera Don Giovanni that in the dreadful figure of the accusing statue, Mozart has summoned up his father to accuse him, publicly, on stage. Guilt is deeply ingrained in the son’s soul, ready to be used against him by an enemy. Surprisingly, however, Salieri’s aim is not his immediate destruction.
As the life of Mozart grows more and more desperate, he lapses into sickness and drunkenness and turns from the Court which has turned its back from him to produce entertainment for ordinary German people in the popular theater of Emanuel Schikaneder. Salieri, his tormented persecutor, suddenly decides that he wants Mozart alive at least for the moment. His lust for immortality propels Salieri toward a new and pathetic wickedness. Committed to his war with his Maker, he finally hits on the one stratagem that, in his eyes, could enable him to win the battle for eternal recognition.
The old man’s confession climaxes with this stratagem and the inevitable outcome of any such absurd challenge to divinity. God replies to Salieri in his own way.
::)What is Amadeus?
Playwright Sir Peter Shaffer, who adapted the screenplay of Amadeus from his long-running London and Broadway stage hit, calls Amadeus a fantasia based on fact. It is not a biography of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, nor was it intended to be. In telling a story about Mozart and his arch-rival, the court composer Antonio Salieri, I have not violated the specific nature of Mozart the man, and certainly not Mozart the composer. Above all, the film of Amadeus, much more than the play, is a celebration of Mozart’s music.
Shaffer has used known, undisputed facts about Mozart’s life and music, as seen through the jaundiced, hate-filled eyes of Antonio Salieri, to illuminate a number of universal themes that transcend both of these 18th Century composers. It is not Mozart, but his jealousy-maddened rival Salieri that Shaffer has cast center stage. Salieri is tormented by his vision of Mozart, Why do you favor him, God? This clownish, giggling repulsive buffoon whose very name, Amadeus, could be taken to mean beloved by God? Why have you lavished your divine gift on this blasphemous oaf, and withheld it from me your servant who prays to you daily to invest me with genius? Who has foresworn all fleshly pleasures to be of service to you, those delicious sexual delights this lecherous Mozart indulges in so wantonly? And with no impairment of his awesome musical powers?
What lies at the heart of Amadeus is Mozart’s music and Salieri’s constant reaction to it with a mixture of wonder and jealousy, religious exaltation, bitter frustration and self-contempt for his own puny exploits when compared to Mozart, whose pen seems to take dictation directly from God. What is most ironic is that Salieri hears in Mozart’s music the sound of divine genius. To his employer-patron, the Archbishop of Salzburg, Mozart is merely a troublesome, clever performing monkey hired to do a job. To his simple wife Constanze, he is a talented, lovable child without the knack of making money, attracting paying pupils or getting on at court. Salieri recognizes this misfit as the towering figure we celebrate today.
The universal theme of mediocrity confronting genius goes far beyond Mozart and Salieri; it is manifest in any era and in every human pursuit - business, sports, politics, academia and the fine arts. Another concept explored in Amadeus is man’s relation to God. How, as John Milton wondered, can God’s often perverse ways be justified to man? The once-pious believer Salieri turns away from God, and in fact defies God for making him a mediocrity and Mozart a genius. Mozart is Salieri’s living proof that God mocks me through that obscene giggle of Mozart. Go on, Signore! Laugh. Rub my nose in it: Show my mediocrity for all to see. Renouncing God, Salieri sets out to destroy His divine voice that sings through the pen of His favored Mozart. History assures us of Salieri’s grim success, aided by others equally jealous of Mozart’s talent and repelled by his arrogant childish behavior. Which strikes still another chord; the genius poorly rewarded by his society. No more shocking or dramatic example in all of history can be found than Mozart.