It was less than 3 years ago that I made my first attempt at acting, and that was followed by a hiatus of nearly 2 years until last fall. It was a bit different the second time around.

I started picking apart the process. It’s what I’ve always done with everything…try to take it apart to understand to transmute the mysterious inner workings into something tangible. The productions I’ve been in haven’t necessarily been high art, but I’ve tried to approach them with some precision just the same.

Over the last 9 months the craft of acting and dramatic production in general has intrigued me more and more. I had never really looked at movies and theatre as anything more than banal entertainment until I stepped on a stage myself. Witnessing a great production is now a rich and inspiring event.

I just finished watching the special features on the Gosford Park DVD, and I’m taking note of how grateful I am that the DVD media format allows for glances behind the scenes: director’s commentary, The Making Of… special features, and so on — the people that make these things believable speaking frankly about their craft.

I’ve been out of the movie “loop” for a few years now, so my Netflix queue is packed with all of the best stuff that I never got around to seeing when people were still buzzing about it. It’s really pretty exciting to have the opportunity to see so much great material with what amounts to new eyes. And as for theatre…the more I do, the more I want to do. Casting directors willing, I have a feeling that I’ll be doing it and enjoying it for a long time.

This guy sells cell phones. He also happens to be a talented amateur opera singer.

That performance really impressed me. This one really blew me away. I’ve never really cared at all about opera, but I have to admit that I got a little misty watching this one. That doesn’t happen very often:

…for poor Paris Hilton.

Fresh fish!

When I read Fahrenheit 451 for a junior high book report, I apparently missed the author’s intended message along with the rest of the world. I could have sworn it was about The Man denying otherwise intellectually thirsty people of the books they loved.

It turns out that the “firemen” were just cleaning up a mess of old literature that had already become irrelevant due to the rise of television and the population’s apathy toward books.

from LA Weekly:

Now, Bradbury has decided to make news about the writing of his iconographic work and what he really meant. Fahrenheit 451 is not, he says firmly, a story about government censorship. Nor was it a response to Senator Joseph McCarthy, whose investigations had already instilled fear and stifled the creativity of thousands.
…
Bradbury, a man living in the creative and industrial center of reality TV and one-hour dramas, says it is, in fact, a story about how television destroys interest in reading literature.