Weekend Entertainment

I had my first rehearsal with the community chorale last night. It turns out they really don't need another soprano. I think there were more sopranos than all the other parts combined. I'm also utterly drained, for some odd reason, so I'm worried about my productivity today. I may give it another week, see what the balance is and see how I react afterward. It's not as though I've really committed.

I forgot to discuss my weekend entertainment, other than the music workshop. I managed to be first on the request list at the library for Alan Dean Foster's new Star Wars novelization, and of course that became available on Friday when I was out all day. But I got home just in time to swing by the library before it closed. It seemed like this one was pretty short compared to the other novelizations, and it didn't add all that much to the movie, just a couple of what seemed to be trimmed scenes or moments and some introspection of some of the characters. One or two things became a little more clear, and although I'm no physicist, I got the feeling that the science behind one of the things made more sense the way it was described in the novel than it appeared to in the movie. It's worth a read for completion's sake, but I definitely wouldn't pay hardcover prices for it. I'm not even sure I'd buy this one as a mass market paperback, since I can't imagine re-reading it a lot in this era when we can easily rewatch the movie once it comes out on DVD.

For my movie viewing, I did my Alan Rickman tribute by watching A Little Chaos on HBO. This was one of his last film appearances, and it turned out to be even more of a tribute than I realized because he also directed it and was one of the writers. It's a nice little costume drama about the creation of the gardens at Versailles. Rickman played Louis XIV, but the main character was a female garden designer played by Kate Winslet, and the leading man was the head garden designer, played by the same guy from Far From the Madding Crowd, so I guess I've had a theme going lately. There was some conflict about the idea of order vs. the chaos of nature, but mostly it was about trying to create something beautiful and how that affects people. It was definitely a "spot the actor you know from another costume drama" kind of movie, which is always fun. It really made me want to create a garden. Maybe I should rearrange my Christmas cacti.

I've got a bunch of stuff piling up on the DVR. I went to bed early Sunday night, so I didn't manage to watch the premiere of Mercy Street, and I was at rehearsal last night, so I haven't yet watched the first episode of War and Peace. I have so much stuff going on this week and this weekend that I don't know when I'll catch up. Sunday afternoon may have to be some serious sofa time.