Ask Me Anything: The Answer Post, Part 2

Hello readers! I seem to be making a habit of awfully long summer breaks in blogging, which I don't particularly like... But now I'm back with the second half of the Ask Me Anything event I hosted in April.

Before I get to that, let me remind you of another, rather more international-scale event that should be of interest to bookworms across the world: the Banned Books Week, 27.9-3.10. It's mostly an American event, initiated by libraries and booksellers, who are often pressured to remove "unsuitable" books from their selections. The Banned Books Week raises awareness of censorship and celebrates people's freedom to read and as these issues are relevant to readers everywhere in the world, I don't think we should let America celebrate all alone! Therefore, I'm inviting you all to pick a book that has been notoriously challenged or even banned and discuss it during the upcoming week in any medium available to you – blog, social media, circle of friends, anything that enables you to introduce this book and reflect on why you should have been prohibited from reading it. The American Library Association keeps lists of frequently challenged books from recent years, but there are plenty of notoriously challenged books all across the history of literature. I'm going to review Khaled Hosseini's The Kite Runner (2003), it would be great to see all of you fellow book bloggers participate with whatever you choose. Please throw me a link to your posts if you do! Let's really discuss censorship and read whatever the heck we want!

Now, moving on to the actual topic of the day. I'll be answering Hamlette's and Olivia's questions that they asked many... many months ago, and this little celebration for the second anniversary of Music & My Mind comes to an end. Thank you all for participating, I have had tremendous fun thinking up answers to all of these questions!

Hamlette asked:

What animated movie do you wish they would make a live-action version of next? Who would you cast?

As I'm supposed to be honest here, I'll have to tell you all that I'm completely bored and frustrated with this persisting Disney trend of live-action remakes. Not that I resist remakes on the whole or think that all of these Disney films are of bad quality – I'm absolutely open to the suggestion that some of them might be good films in their own right, even if I haven't bothered to see most of them myself.

The real reason why I don't applaud live-action remakes is that for me, the magic and the intrigue of the original Disney films is largely to do with the beautiful work they did with the animation. The older I got, the more awed I was by the fact that people could actually draw things like sunlight, thunderstorms and water – if you really stop to think about it, isn't it quite an achievement to animate even such an ordinary thing as a moving person? So I don't really see what the artistic gain is in telling essentially the same story as a live-action version. I hate to be cynical, but I get the feeling that Disney is after some easy profit in continuing with this trend.



What musical NEEDS a movie version but doesn't have one yet? Again, who would you cast?

I think some stage musicals are better off left on the stage in their awesomeness, but to be honest, I would be quite happy to see a film version of Jekyll & Hyde. The score is wonderful, the themes of addiction and ethics will never get old, and the Victorian setting would look gorgeous on screen – there would be so many things in this film's favour! As for casting, all I would ask for is actors with a strong musical background and at most a minimal amount of stunt casting. I would much prefer an unknown, interesting new talent with a gorgeous singing voice to a big-name Hollywood star who took a singing crash-course just before shooting.


Olivia asked: 

What is your opinion on the subject of Ramin Karimloo?

I can tell you that if you were to watch me listening to Ramin Karimloo,  you might witness something rather peculiar. There's this half-dreamy, half-zombie look in my eyes, I tend to clasp my hands really tight and perch on the very edge of whatever I'm sitting on. My goodness, what a voice. What a stage presence. Have you seen that look on his face when he plays Enjolras in the Les Misérables 25th anniversary concert and sings "The ABC Café Song"? And how, as the Phantom, he has incredibly expressive hands that more than make up for the fact that the mask hides half of his face? Just... wow.


Have you seen the new Cinderella movie? If so, what did you think?

I haven't, and as you can probably judge by my response to the question about Disney re-makes, I wasn't in a hurry to see it. However, a friend of mine saw it and told me that Cate Blanchett was magnificent, which I can easily believe!


Do you plan to pursue a career in theatre/musical theatre? Are you a soprano or an alto?

I would love to write plays and writing a musical is a crazy, ambitious dream that may or may not come true. I do like to sing though, and I'm definitely more of a soprano than an alto because my lower range is very limited and my belt voice is, quite frankly, pathetic.



What is your favourite version of The Phantom of the Opera? (Meaning any book, movie, or stage adaptation.)

That would be the stage musical composed by Andrew Lloyd Webber. I was lucky enough to see it at Her Majesty's Theatre in London, and it was one of the most impressive experiences of my life. Not only hearing but feeling the power of the music reminded me why I love musicals so much. I have also read the original novel by Gaston Leroux, which was quite a disappointment, unfortunately.

Ask Me Anything: The Answer Post, Part 1

The blog birthday is here! I'm so excited to share my answers to the Ask Me Anything questions that some of you readers sent me. In fact, there were so many more questions than last year and I ended up giving such lengthy answers to some of them that I thought it might be a good idea to do the Answer Post in two parts. Today's post will include the questions from Hannah and Siiri L. – thank you both, for coming up with such interesting questions and for being such great blog friends all this time!


Hannah asked...

If you could play any character in a musical and/or play, who would it be and why?

I'm going to pick one character from a musical and one from a straight play. My musical character choice would be Éponine, without a doubt. "On My Own" and "A Little Fall of Rain" are among my favourite songs from Les Misérables, and although the character in the musical is often criticized for lacking the complexities of her Victor Hugo counterpart, I think there would be plenty of chances for an actress to explore more of the derangement and instability that characterize Éponine in the novel. Everyone loves a good stage death, and Éponine departs singing a beautiful duet and fills the remaining rebels with new resolution to keep fighting. Plus, I really love that hat.

August: Osage County is my favourite modern play so far, and Ivy – the middle one of Violet Weston's three grown-up daughters – is one of the most interesting characters in it. She makes her sisters uncomfortable with her blunt and apparently cynical comments, but with Little Charles around she becomes a completely different person, which just adds up to the devastation that the romance ultimately brings her way. She shows deliberate indifference to what are often perceived as commonplace feminine values; her mother nags at her for not caring about her looks, and she appears completely fine with the fact that she can't ever have children. Like Éponine, Ivy has a wonderful last scene in the play, involving emotional breakdown and finally breaking away from the mother whose problems she was forced to deal with as her sisters moved away. All the different layers in Ivy's personality and that heart-wrenching character arc would be just wonderful to play.


Can you rank the Dickens novels that you've read so far?

I'll be more than happy to do that! I have only read three and a half of his novels so far, plus A Christmas Carol which I'll also include in the ranking even though it's a novella. I'm seriously working on my Dickens education, though – just look at my Classics Club list! I would like to point out that I have loved every Dickens novel I have read so far, they are all brilliant in different ways. Therefore, even the works that I have placed low on this ranking are not bad – just less amazing than the ones above them.

1. A Tale of Two Cities
This one bounced straight up to my list of "all-time favourite books of literary magic which will affect me for the rest of my life" – as soon as I was finished with despairing over the cruelty of the human race and crying about that bloody guillotine. Dickens does something very different than his usual thing here; the setting is in the late 1700s exploring the devastating effects of the Revolution and the Terror on the French society, there is none of Dickens' trademark satirical humour, and the page count is just over 400. The result is an absolutely heartbreaking account on how humanity's struggle for "justice" leads to tragedy both nation-wide and in the lives of ordinary men and women. I don't think any other book ever has sent my mind reeling so wildly, both during and after reading it.

2. Nicholas Nickleby
This was my first Dickens experience and it will most likely stay high in my esteem no matter how many Dickens novels I will read after it. It is a big book in terms of length and story, covering diverse layers of Victorian society in their various pursuits. However, the focus stays on young Nicholas Nickleby of idealistic values, as he develops one of literature's loveliest bromances with poor Smike, and learns to stand his ground against his miserly uncle Ralph. Nicholas Nickleby is many things, which makes it such an engaging read – it's viciously funny and unflinchingly tragic, a broad social commentary as well as an eventful coming-of-age adventure.

3. A Christmas Carol
I'm a complete junkie for fantasy, character development and the Christmas spirit, so if there exists a story about a sore old miser finding redemption through supernatural intervention at Christmastime, written in brilliant Dickensian prose, is there anything else for me to do but adore it? As always, Dickens' masterful pen creates literary images so awe-inspiring that it is best described as pure magic.

4. Little Dorrit
I'm exactly halfway through this one while I'm writing this blog post so I won't say much right now, but I'm fairly certain that Little Dorrit will rank somewhere hereabouts once I'm finished with it. The book is very slow-paced at times, but the good parts are very good. It explores themes such as the effects of institutionalisation (in this case, in a debtors' prison), the vapid constructions of high society, and the importance of a fulfilling life in great depth. Arthur Clennam is an interestingly atypical literary hero and the reader gets to really delve into how his past experiences have shaped his personality and current views of life.

5. Oliver Twist
As I discussed in my review about a year ago, this book has some structural flaws and Oliver Twist himself is not the most interesting or realistic of child heroes, but there is still more than a fair share of brilliant bits to be found here.


Would you rather J.K. Rowling wrote a series about the Hogwarts Founders, a series about the Marauders or a series about the next generation at Hogwarts?

Each of these ideas holds its own element of intrigue, but being such a history person, I would most like to hear about how Hogwarts came to be. I just happened to do some reading on the Anglo-Saxon period in British history, and how amazing would it be to know what that era was like for witches and wizards? And even compared to all the countless magical people that came from Rowling's imagination, the four who founded Hogwarts must be terrifically interesting characters!


If you could put various Doctor Who Doctors and companions together for a one-off episode, who would you pair up?

Oh, I was hoping Hannah might come up with a Doctor Who question, and this is a wonderfully interesting one! (Hannah, I want your answer on this in the comments.)

First of all, I would pair up the Twelfth Doctor with Donna simply because, as this article points out, it would be hilarious. Donna would first ask what the hell "Caecilius" was doing in the TARDIS and why he was even bothering to do such a lousy impersonation of the Doctor – the accent? being all grumpy? WHAT?!

Now, the Doctor that Donna knows – the Tenth – would have to go with one of the Eleventh's companions, and I would pick post-marriage Amy and Rory – I love them best when they're together, so that's a package deal. I don't really know what we might expect to happen with these three. The Doctor might notice that Amy has succeeded in being ginger, unlike him. He would also, for once, get to meet a pretty young woman who doesn't fall for him, and that young woman's husband whom he can't call an idiot, unlike the "companions' boyfriends" that he met. He would also witness two companions whose lives don't revolve entirely around TARDIS traveling.

Because Martha is my favourite companion right after Amy and Rory, I would definitely want to see her somewhere in this mix-up. She and Nine would make up a very interesting, business-like TARDIS team, wouldn't they? Nine might also appreciate her talents more than Ten did, and I think Martha would lecture the Doctor on how he's not allowed to label all humans as "stupid apes".

Martha and Donna being taken, the only regular companion left for the Eleventh Doctor would be Rose, and I can't really see anything interesting coming out of this. Maybe I'm just biased against Rose. Anyway, I had another idea... Captain Jack Harkness. He's not one of "the" companions, but think about it, seriously! The "Captain of the Innuendo Squad" paired up with the Doctor who doesn't understand why a married couple doesn't want bunk beds – endless hilarity! Also, my favourite Doctor + my favourite supporting character from series 1-4 would mean an extra birthday for me...


What are your top 5 Disney films?

A Disney question, yay! First of all, I did some thinking on what sorts of things make my personal favourite Disney films stand out from all the good Disney films. Here is a list of things that really matter to me regarding this question. All of my Top Five don't have all of these qualities, but mostly they do.

• Well-rounded main characters whose background, motivations and hopes are properly explored
• Great music
• Beautiful animation
• An interesting setting
• A well-paced, eventful story that has equal measures of touching and funny moments
• A good voice cast – I watched most Disney films with Finnish dubbing first, and I still think many of the Finnish voice actors are better than the original ones, no matter how objective I try to be.

So, getting to the point, my Top 5 Disney films are...

1. The Lion King

This was an easy choice to make; there has never been and never will be a competitor to how much I adore just about everything in this film. The music is wonderful, the animation is gorgeous, I love every single character (including that classic, awesome Disney villain Scar) and no matter how many times I watch it, I'm always completely heart-broken about how Mufasa's death affects Simba way into adulthood. No other movie in the world makes me cry three times in one viewing. The story is truly inspiring and I wish I could have Timon and Pumbaa as my best friends – the Finnish voice actor for Timon, Pirkka-Pekka Petelius, really stands out. Let me give all of you non-Finns a piece of him:

2. The Princess and the Frog
This film carries none of the childhood nostalgia that I get from The Lion King and Pocahontas and the likes, because it came out as late as 2009 and in fact I only saw it a year ago – so I was quite surprised at how high it jumped (frog-like) into my favourites list, I simply loved it straight away! New Orleans makes a wonderfully imaginative setting and I love how the "Disney Princess" concept gets a modern update in Tiana, who is one of my favourite Disney heroines ever. She knows wishing and dreaming won't get her anywhere – she's gonna work for it! She's also got Anika Noni Rose's voice, which is such a perfect fit for a Disney princess. I'm very happy with how her relationship with Naveen develops throughout the film; they go through a lot together and actually make each other better people, so when they (spoilers, sort of) fall in love and start a life together, it feels like they have truly earned it. I really enjoy the music in this film and Charlotte, Louis and Ray (sniffles!) are some of my favourite Disney supporting characters! This is the only film on my list that I haven't heard the Finnish version of, but Tiana's voice actress (including the singing) is Laura Voutilainen, whom I liked very much as Megara in Hercules. 

3. Mulan
Mulan is another wonderful heroine! She is such a great role model for anyone out there who feels like they don't fit in. She's smart, selfless and butt-kicking! She might even have actually existed! Again, the film looks beautiful and I really like the Chinese setting. It's possibly one of the funniest Disney films ever and makes me literally roar with laughter, but among the things I love most about it is the lovely relationship Mulan has with her father. "The greatest gift and honour... is having you for a daughter." Almost all of the earlier Disney heroines' relationships with their fathers were built on the fact that their mothers just weren't there, but I don't think any of their Disney Dads can top that line by Mulan's father. The soundtrack is amazing. The singing voices for both the original and the Finnish Mulan (Lea Salonga and Heidi Kyrö respectively) are very good, the scene where Mulan leaves her parents gives me the chills every single time, and this one below is one of my favourite work-out songs! (Shang's Finnish voice actor, Santeri Kinnunen, also voiced John Smith.)

4. Aladdin
Just hearing the first beats of "Arabian Nights" gets me all excited. By the time I finish watching, I think "Wow, this was even more awesome than I remembered", every single time! The setting in Agraba is full of mystery and excitement and Jafar is damn impressive as the villain. Jasmine is definitely on the smarter side of the Disney Princess line-up as she sees right through "Prince Ali's" pretense and fools Jafar into thinking she's suddenly smitten by him (I never stop giggling at that scene). Like Tiana, she gets to have adventures with Aladdin and learn things about him before she decides he's the man. The Finnish voice cast actually received some sort of a Disney award for best dubbing, with special recognition to the Finnish Genie, Vesa-Matti Loiri. He's a long-time household name over here and a man of many talents, and the energy and character that he brings to the Genie is spectacular. I do appreciate Robin Williams' portrayal as well.

5. Pocahontas
I wonder what people might think about me placing Pocahontas in my top favourites, because it seems that nobody particularly likes it. However, for me it was one of the most important films of my childhood. In all honesty, I can say that the importance I place on anti-racist and environmental values originates from how profoundly affected Little Me was by Pocahontas. Years later, when I had to give a presentation of a hero for a school assignment, I chose the real-life Pocahontas. I love the look of the film, the character designs and the colours (of the wind). Watching Pocahontas is also one of those times when being a Finn is a vast advantage, because you get to hear Arja Koriseva and Santeri Kinnunen as the leads. I don't really like Judy Kuhn's singing, whereas Arja Koriseva's voice seems to vibrate with the forces of the wind, the earth and the river that she sings about. I also find John Smith much more believable when he doesn't speak with the voice (and the American accent) of Mel Gibson. Now listen to Arja Koriseva sing like a goddess.

Honourable mentions: Fantasia because of its amazingly imaginative re-interpretation of some of the greatest compositions of classical music, and The Great Mouse Detective because it's such a fun tribute to Sherlock Holmes.


Have you seen any Jane Austen adaptations? If so, which did you like best?

I haven't seen many Jane Austen adaptations and, to be honest, I'm not terribly enthusiastic about them. In my opinion, Jane Austen's strongest asset is her distinctive, sharp and witty narrative voice – when that gets inevitably eliminated in the process of adapting to screen, the result is mostly leisurely-paced relationship dramas with very predictable endings. Therefore, I often get a little bored when watching Austen on screen. I have seen the Pride and Prejudice film from 2005, The Lizzie Bennet Diaries web series, the 1995 film and part of the 2008 miniseries of Sense and Sensibility, and the 2009 miniseries of Emma. My favourite of these would be The Lizzie Bennet Diaries because the modern update is very cleverly done! Out of the actual period dramas, the film version of Sense and Sensibility is my top pick because it has a good cast, a couple of additional scenes that really advance the characters, and beautiful directing by Ang Lee.

You're a polyglot: what's your favourite word in Finnish, Swedish, English, French and Spanish?

What an interesting question – and what a challenge! It's impossible to give definite answers to this one, but I tried to come up with something.

• Finnish: possibly valo, which means light (the noun). I'm not even remotely sure about this, though – it's really hard to evaluate my first language in this way! Eino Leino, one of the greatest Finnish poets (1878-1926), liked to use words with the back vowels a, o and u, and I really like the Finnish sound of them as well. 
• Swedish: Swedish words are almost always cluttered with sounds like d, j, ä, g, and r (seriously, there are so many r's!) which don't make the pleasantest combinations if you ask my ears. There is also an abundance of weird phonemes which involve s in the front and a variety of other consonants right after it. Himmel is a nice, soft exception, and it means sky.
• English: Damn, this isn't any easier than the two previous ones! English is my favourite language and I'm constantly impressed by the scope and variety of its vocabulary. If I had to pick one, I might go with dramatic. It sounds exactly like what it means – dramatic!
• French: Oh, everything sounds beautiful in French, even vulgarities and words like trash ("Oh là là, this pubelle is rotting!"). Avenir is a particularly nice one, I think – future. It's rather clever too, as it's constructed from à venir, which means upcoming. 
• Spanish: On my last visit to Spain, I stayed near to a village that has the word arroyo (brook) in its name, and I realized that even though the rhotic r is one of my least favourite sounds in Finnish and Swedish, in Spanish it sounds passionate and vivacious. 

What's your favourite pizza topping?

Pineapple! It's one of the best fruits ever, not just in pizza – when it's fresh, actual pineapple, that is. The sickly-whiteish bits that swim around in tin cans do not deserve to be called pineapple.


Siiri L. wanted to know my Hogwarts house, wand and Patronus.

I am a Ravenclaw according to every single Hogwarts test I've ever found on the Internet, including Pottermore's, and I completely agree with the results. I have always identified with the bookish, knowledge-valuing Ravenclaw crowd, and when Pottermore revealed that the house also values creativity and originality (to the point where others call it being just plain weird), it sounded exactly like my old high school which specializes in performance arts and is locally famous as the "artsy weirdoes' school". (Note that I use the phrase as a term of endearment.)

According to Pottermore, my wand is of maple and unicorn hair, 10 inches and surprisingly swishy. Unicorns are my favourite mythological creatures and maple wands are supposed to fit for travelers and explorers who don't like to stay in one place, so I think it fits pretty well! The Patronus question is a tricky one because I don't think it's something you can choose, but I would love a wolf Patronus. Fear and hate of wolves is a deeply-rooted mindset in the Finnish population, but I've always thought they're beautiful and mysterious (though I do understand how people who live in the heavily wolf-populated areas where children are sometimes afraid to walk to school might find it hard to agree with me). The Starks' direwolves are one of my absolute favourite things in A Song of Ice and Fire!

The Ask Me Anything event finishes tomorrow with my answers to Hamlette's and Olivia's questions! :) Please feel free to share your own thoughts on the questions above!

Some Midsummer discoveries

So, Midsummer celebrations came and went again – the day when most of Finland typically locates to their countryside mökkis or some other retreat to celebrate the longest day of the year. Most years, the weather does not favour outdoor celebrations, but people do that anyway. Midsummer formally ends the day after, when the newspapers have informed us how many people drowned amidst this year's festivities – unfortunately, for many people Midsummer is just another convenient occasion to get seriously drunk, go boating on the lakes and forget everything about safety on boats.

Well, the getting drunk part of Midsummer was never my thing, but this year, my celebrations were even more against Finnish traditions than usual. I stayed in town and watched movies all day – and had a wonderful day! One of my friends, code named A, has a very impressive hoard of DVDs, and she brought a couple of them over with her. In the end we took the "animated films" route all the way, and I was introduced to two films I had never seen before: Brave and Hoodwinked!

I had heard such conflicting reviews about Brave, ranging from "awesome" to "nothing special", that I was really interested to see how I reacted to it. Conclusion: it's absolutely amazing in every way I can think of! Ten times better than Frozen! All the characters are extremely entertaining, the story is refreshingly unpredictable in all its tosses and turns, I love the way they used Scotland as a setting (with  a touch of fantasy of course), and the animation is exceptionally beautiful – my favourite things to look at were the sunlight, the horse Angus' shiny black coat, and, obviously, Merida's hair! I was also extremely surprised that this film actually managed to make me tear up! Twice! The genuineness with which Elinor and Merida's mother-daughter conflict is handled is really something to admire. I did not expect this when the film started off with the we've-all-seen-this-done-before "rebel princess who wants to escape from the responsibilities of royalty" setting. However, in the end I was both thoroughly moved and wildly entertained. The humour in Brave was also something I didn't quite expect from a Disney film, and I mean it in a positive way. Brave also happens to feature some of my favourite actors: Billy Connolly, Emma Thompson, Julie Walters and Kevin McKidd – though I have to admit that I was so utterly fooled by the last three's Scottish accents that I didn't realize it was them till I saw the end credits!

Young Macintosh, my new Disney crush...

Angus is the most beautiful Disney horse ever. I want an Angus of my own!

Next up was Hoodwinked!, and this is where our indoors Midsummer celebrations reached a whole new level of uncontrollable hysteria. This movie is incredibly hard to describe, but I think I come pretty close when I say "brilliantly random". It's kind of a re-telling of "The Little Red Riding Hood", with an ample dose of psychedelic-level creativity. Nothing makes sense in the warped fairy-tale realm of Hoodwinked!, and it's not supposed to. You just go with the flow when you meet Wolf the investigative reporter, Red's Granny who secretly indulges in extreme sports, and Japeth the Goat who has a set of horns for every occasion and has to put everything he says into song. I am just literally quite lost for words when it comes to this film, just... just go and see it if you want to know what it is!

Got to love the singing goat, just got to.

By the way, I'm finishing this blog post at 2:20 in the morning, and that is just part of my Midsummer "tradition". This time of the year in the northern regions means that the sun doesn't really set properly (hence the "midnight sun" phenomenon), and my light-sensitive brain is absolutely convinced that it's daytime around the clock. I have gone with absolutely minimal sleep for the last two or three weeks, and not feeling remotely tired! It's so good to have a blog to keep me from getting bored on these kinds of days... nights, I mean.

I hope everyone had a fun Midsummer, and that there weren't too many sad boating incidents this year – it was a rather cold day, so it well may be.

My pick for the 2014 Original Song Oscar winner

I have to say I know very little about the films competing for the Academy Awards this year. Last year was very exciting because Les Misérables was nominated in so many categories, and I even watched the whole awards show for the first time in my life. I haven't seen any of the mega-awards-nominated movies from this year (such as 12 Years A Slave and American Hustle), but I decided to do my research  in at least one category: the Best Original Song nominees.

So now I'm going to list all the five Original Song nominees from my least favourite choice to the one I would want to win the award – with comments that justify their placement in that order, of course. I haven't seen any of the films where these songs appear so I will judge their qualities as individual songs only, not taking into account how they function in their respective films. If you've already done your research and made your pick, see if your opinion agrees with mine! And if you haven't I'll embed videos of all the songs so you can choose your favourite now.

#5 The Moon Song from Her

The Moon Song gets the last place in my ranking because that kind of guitar-plucking, wheezy-voiced style of music never resonates with me. I'm surely not the only one who can't make anything out of half of the lyrics because they just get blurred into oblivion? And because of that, I have completely no idea what this song is even supposed to be about!

#4 Alone Yet Not Alone from Alone Yet Not Alone

Every time this song begins, I think "It's actually quite a beautiful melody." But by the time the tune rolls halfway through, I'm bored. I don't know if it's because of the lullaby-esque rendition or the fact that I can't relate to the lyrics at all, but I. Get. Bored. It's by no means a bad song, just not at all Oscar material. (and even though it has nothing to do with the song itself, I just have to wonder who on Earth, in the 21st century, makes a film that has Native American characters without hiring actual Native Americans... Seriously, the black wigs and the feathers don't trick anyone anymore)
EDIT// As of January 29th, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has disqualified "Alone Yet Not Alone" as a nominee. Composer Bruce Broughton personally contacted some members of the Academy music branch (of which he used to be the governor) during the voting period in order to get more attention for his song, which the Academy considered unethical. A replacing nominee has not been chosen.

#3 Ordinary Love from Mandela: Long Walk To Freedom

This song, by the U2, doesn't awaken any thoughts in me, either positive or negative, so the middle is a good place for it. Because of this lack of feeling, I find it hard to say anything about it. I just don't quite grasp what the lyrics are trying to say. What is the definition of "ordinary love" and why is it better than "extraordinary love"?

#2 Happy from Despicable Me 2

Finally this list gets to the songs that make me say "Yeah, this is awesome!" I dare you not to tap your foot to this one. There's never too many happy songs on this planet, and Pharrell Williams has something really cool going on here. The song might be a bit too long and the lyrics get somewhat repetitive, but that instrumental background is just too infectious to resist!

And the winner should be... Let It Go from Frozen 

Alright, before I say anything else I have to admit that I might have been a little biased in this song's favour from the start. I heard and fell in love with Let It Go weeks before I knew anything about the other ones. Besides, I just happen to be in a situation in my life right now where inspirational songs like this are like chocolate. Oh, and I've been a huge fan of Idina Menzel for years. But well, no matter how many times I listen to all the Oscar nominees in different order, this one always wins. None of the others have those amazing piano runs in the gaps between the verses, and as a Finn who knows everything about the combination of cold and dark I wholeheartedly congratulate Kristen Anderson-Lopez and Robert Lopez (the husband-and-wife team behind this song) on managing to create the winter night atmosphere right in the first few bars of the song. A great song, there's no getting over it, and it should definitely win the award. And they should definitely get Idina Menzel to sing it at the gala, that would be one bullet-proof way to bring some quality into that show. If she doesn't, I'll be sad. If they get Demi Lovato to sing her version of it, I'll roll my eyes.

What's your pick for the award winner? Are you going to watch the gala, and if so what are you most expecting to see? I'm really excited to see Ellen DeGeneres hosting the show! I know she's done it once before, but I didn't watch that year. However, I've come to realize that the clips from her show are one of the best and funniest things on Youtube, which is why I think she'll make a very entertaining hostess.

Great Movie Expectations

I've been thinking whether I should blog about movies in addition to books, theatre and music. Well, obviously I've reviewed a couple of movie musicals already, but that's because they're, you know, musicals. So far, I've decided that I might at least talk about movies that are based on books! I won't change the sub-heading to "my thoughts on music, theatre, literature & films" though – that would look a bit clumsy, don't you think?

Today, however, I'm going to talk about some trailers instead of actual films. There's two films coming up that I can't wait to see!

More trailers of The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug have come up after this first teaser, but it's still my favourite from all of them. I think the main reason for this is King Thranduil, played by Lee Pace! When he appeared in the trailer, I stopped breathing for a while. I promise you I'm not exaggerating one bit when I say that Thranduil in the film looks exactly as I've always imagined him – the presence, the voice, every little detail in his face, and that crown, which is pure awesomeness. Seeing Thranduil like he was picked straight out of my mind has seriously made me wonder if any of my grandmother's ancestors who were burned as witches in the Middle Ages passed some of that witch blood (and the gift of foresight) to me...

King Thranduil, brought to material reality by Lee Pace, first imagined by Mizzie-Me

Besides Thranduil, Elf-King of Amazingness, it looks like this middle part of the trilogy will include all of my favourite parts from the book: Beorn, Bilbo kicking some giant spider butt, the Silvan Elves, and Lake Town. It would also seem that we get to see Smaug already, and oh my, what a dragon voice! I think they did a seriously good job with that – it's clearly inhuman, but not overdone.

However, one thing which probably will be as overdone in this film as was in the last, is the fight/action sequences. I was always okay with all the battle stuff in the Lord of the Rings films, but frankly, I got bored when in the first Hobbit film, the escape from the goblins under the mountain went on and on and on. And there are some not-in-the-book fight scenes coming up in the new film, which isn't entirely bad – I know I'm going to like all the Gandalf bits that were never shown in the book. However, I'm very suspicious about the scene where he elves are stalking Bilbo and the dwarves who float in open barrels for all the world to see, for goodness' sake! In the book, Bilbo came up with a genius plan that a) got the dwarves out of the dungeons without anyone ever seeing them, and b) made sure nobody would drown in the process. In the film, they don't seem to think any of this matters.

Speaking of changes and additions to the book, I'm actually very open-minded about the Legolas/Tauriel subplot, whatever it's going to be. I don't have a problem at all with Legolas being present since there's no reason to doubt he actually was there (he's Thranduil's son after all), and I'm really liking Evangeline Lilly as an elf. I'm really interested to see what these two characters will be up to. Luckily, the movie will premiere in Finland on December 11th already and not months after the official premiere (which sadly happens here to every movie that isn't expected to be a huge box office seller). I can't wait, there's so much to see!

What about this next new film, who's going to see it?

I'm really interested in this film because of its setting. I'm obviously a fan of the film Mary Poppins, and Saving Mr Banks is about the making of that film – the main focus being, it seems, on how Walt Disney managed to get the film-making rights from P.L. Travers (the author of the Mary Poppins books). I think both Tom Hanks and Emma Thompson will be superb in their roles as Mr Disney and Ms Travers, but the film is in a rather tricky position to tell the story it intends to tell. It is widely known that the working relationship between Disney and Travers was incredibly strained, and Travers was very displeased with the film Mary Poppins. So how is Saving Mr Banks, produced by Walt Disney Pictures (yes, really), featuring the father/hero/god figure behind that very same enterprise, going to handle a story where, in real life, someone (Travers) very vocally expressed how they disapproved of something Walt Disney did? Something tells me the film is not going to show P.L. Travers' negative reaction to Mary Poppins, and I think even people who don't have Medieval witch genes can agree with me. So there are a couple of other options.

1) Portray P.L. Travers as an unreasonably critical kill-joy and Walt Disney as the good guy who makes people's dreams come true. This way, the film can justify the fact that Ms Travers hated the Mary Poppins film by "well, she was just a cranky British lady who couldn't be pleased no matter what you tried to do."

or

2) Just take some artistic liberties and make it so that in the end P.L. Travers loves the outcome of Mary Poppins and Walt Disney gets to be the hero who convinced the cranky British lady.

So yes, I'm a bit skeptical about the accuracy of Saving Mr Banks, but I'm sure it will be fun to watch otherwise. It's got two leading actors that I respect very much, the music in the soundtrack is great, and the bits with the Sherman brothers (the two guys behind the piano who made the songs for Mary Poppins) are very funny. The film is officially released in December, but it looks like the Finnish premiere will be near the end of February (see what I told you about Finnish movie release dates?)

MoMoMu: Jolly holiday with Mary!

MoMoMu??? That stands for "Monthly Movie Musical", which means I'm going to blog about one movie musical each month. I started off with my Les Mis post in April but missed May, so I'll try to redeem the situation by doing TWO movie musicals for June.

I actually did watch this movie in May even though didn't get around to write about it till now. 9th of May was some sort of a Christian holiday – I wasn't really aware of what the celebration was, but I decided that a holiday would be a wonderful excuse to watch a dear movie musical which I hadn't seen  in a couple of years. So, the next installment of the Monthly Movie Musicals: Mary Poppins!

Mary Poppins was one of Disney's most successful films, earning 13 Academy Award nominations and winning five, including Best Actress in a Leading Role for Julie Andrews, who made her film debut as the title character. She made another great musical film role in The Sound of Music, so things turned out pretty fine for her even though she didn't get the much-expected lead role in the My Fair Lady film.

But it isn't the amount of trophies that shapes your personal opinion of a movie. I still love the same things about Mary Poppins that I loved when I was younger: Julie Andrews in all her beauty, the whole animation combination part in the painting, the chimney-sweeps' awesome Step in Time dance, and Uncle Albert who just floats around the ceiling and laughs.

However, a whole new aspect of the movie rises up when you watch it after learning something about the English history. I didn't realize until now what Mr Banks – the more than slightly chauvinistic banker who ends up hiring Mary Poppins as his childrens' nanny – is really rejoicing about when he sings "King Edward's on the throne, it is the AGE OF MEN!" Before King Edward, Queen Victoria had been on the throne for 64 long years. Get it? And married to Mr Banks with these ideologies is Mrs Winifred Banks, who energetically sings, shouts and marches for women's votes whenever her husband is out of the house. Clearly a match made in Heaven.

This brings us to the central theme of the movie: the reunion of a dysfunctional family from which especially the uptight father Banks is estranged. In flies Mary Poppins who puts the household upside down by teaching the children, Jane and Michael, the things that their parents can't teach them, and when the father's eyes are opened and the whole family is happily flying a kite, Mary Poppins leaves as her work there is done.

There is another intended theme which doesn't come across quite as well. The Feed the Birds ballad and the resulting "invest your money in the bank vs. buy food for the pigeons" heralds the morale of caring about others around you and giving what you can, but the birds make kind of a weak target for sympathy because we never see them properly in the movie (and judging by the amount of pigeons in my area, they really don't need peoples' charity to get fat).

Speaking of the ballad, I should say something of the music in general to make this a proper MoMoMu review. Most of the tunes are really catchy and I could still remember almost all the lyrics even though it had been a while since I last heard them. Memorable as they are, I don't think there's anything ultra-special about the songs themselves – it's the setting where they're in. Like the jaw-dropping dance number of the chimney-sweeps, to take my favourite example. And now that I've mentioned them twice already, I really have to share this video.

Did you see Dick Van Dyke's (Bert's) moves there? Did you know he'd never had any dance training before Mary Poppins? I find it just as amazing as the fact that this was Julie Andrews' first movie. It just seems so totally natural to her what she's doing. The two Banks children (Karen Dotrice and Matthew Garber) act very nicely as well, which can't be said of all child actors.

Even though none of the movie's songs make it to my list of favourite musical tunes and it isn't very deep thematically, Mary Poppins is definitely a recommendable movie musical. It's very clear how much heart and effort was put into it, and it will always make you happy – it's quite literally a "jolly holiday with Mary!

Good old English fox-hunting in good old English countryside – wouldn't even dream of chuckling at these elegant upper-class redcoats! I honestly didn't!!

Fun Facts

• Julie Andrews does the bird whistling in A Spoonful Of Sugar
• Feed The Birds was Walt Disney's favourite song, he would constantly invite the Sherman brothers over just so they could play it.
• While Dick Van Dyke showed some natural talent in dancing, his wannabe Cockney accent was ranked #2 on the Empire magazine's poll of the worst film accents in 2003.
• David Tomlinson, who played Mr Banks, also voiced Mary Poppins' talking parrot umbrella handle.
• The three geese in Jolly Holiday are voiced by Marni Nixon, who has dubbed many singing parts for actresses who couldn't sing – she sang Eliza Doolittle in My Fair Lady as well as Maria in West Side Story, and finally made an actual screen appearance in The Sound Of Music as one of the nuns.
• Dick Van Dyke also played the ancient and hobbling Mr Dawes Sr. and had some fun with it: he'd go outside in full Mr Dawes Sr. makeup, spot a tourist bus and make it wait while he slowly limped across the street à la Mr Dawes. When he'd finally made it across and the bus took off, he'd run at a full sprint next to it and shock the tourists.

Before you go, take this challenge: try to watch Uncle Albert's clip from start to finish without laughing out loud!

Let's get singin'!

Yay, back to blogging after a couple of weeks' pause. I've got some awesome blog posts on the making – I don't know if bloggers usually spend days and days typing and fussing over their posts, but I do. However, something great and unexpected happened today, well worth a quick post before I get those other ones ready!

 Don't you just love postmen (or women) when they come to your door with a package for you that you've been anxiously expecting for weeks? Well, today around midday I got a package all the way from the States! What was especially wonderful about this event was that I'd been tracking the package via Amazon and I was under the impression that it was still stuck in Virginia, customs delay or something. But here they are now: Be A Broadway Star! board game and The Teen's Musical Theatre Collection: Young Women's Edition, some wonderful sheet music!




As board games and musical theatre are two of my most favourite things, it was only natural that one day I started wondering if there was a musical-themed board game out there somewhere. Amazingly, Google gave me a very straightforward answer when I asked for "Broadway board game": it led me to Be A Broadway Star!, by Broadway producer Ken Davenport and BroadwaySpace.com.

In the game, you're pretending to be an aspiring Broadway star and as you roll the dice and move your piece you have to do things like buy a new makeup kit, pay your agent and publicist and audition for roles. If you audition successfully, you earn some nice bucks and you can even win Tony Awards! The goals are to reach the Broadway Hall of Fame and to gain as many fans as possible – the amount of fans is indicated in Fan Cards, each worth 25, 50 or 100 fans. Getting cast in shows gets you more fans, but if you do something bad like yell at a child actor, you lose fans. All you can do is throw the dice and see what your landing space says.

There are two especially fun things in the game. First of all, when you audition (by taking an Audition Card which tells you which show and role you auditioned for), you get an extra turn if you can sing two lines from the show in question.

But sadly, sometimes your audition fails and you don't get the part. I would never ever get this specific "cut" card in real life:

Another element of fun are the "Make or Break" challenges. When you land on a "Make or Break" space, you have to pull a card and perform the challenge, such as:

Actually, this challenge would be an easy one for me. By the time I graduated from high school (or whatever the heck this Finnish system would be called in English) I'd become such a Shakespeare nerd I put the beginning of the "All the world's a stage" speech into my grad party invitations. But most of these challenges are NOT going to be easy – like "Perform two Bob Fosse dance moves"...

The box is really long and thin. See how I can't fit it properly into my bookshelf with my other board games!



This game sounds like loads of fun, especially with a bigger group (up to six) of musical-minded friends! I'm going to do a test round tomorrow with a friend whom I'll call Em here, and then I'll try to round up a couple of more friends who might like this so we can have a proper supercalifragilisticexpialidocious game night. You'll be sure to hear about it in this blog if and when it happens!

Alright, item two of the package: great sheet music for women from musical theatre! Well, there's a couple of Disney songs as well (such as Beauty and the Beast and God Help the Outcasts), which is a bit weird as I wouldn't call Disney movies musical theatre, but I don't mind at all because I love most Disney tunes to pieces. The songs from actual musicals include some of my absolute favourites, such as Memory (Cats), On My Own (Les Mis), There Are Worse Things I Could Do (Grease) and Wouldn't It Be Loverly (My Fair Lady). Then there are plenty of tunes which I've never heard and I can't wait to get to know them! The music is presented in the regular sheet music fashion: melody and piano accompaniment. But with the unknown tunes, it's especially great to have the accompaniment CD which plays piano accompaniments to each song, with the melody as well.

Here's some of the songs listed on the back cover:


See how wonderfully chunky it is (I'm holding it between my fingers)! 33 songs!
I think I'll be spending even more time singing show tunes from now on. Thank goodness I have good thick walls in my apartment...