A little patience

Blimey! How did 5 days go past so quickly? I'm failing in my pledge to blog every two days. Um, ok so Friday I started the day with a fairly intense yoga class. It's an intermediate to advanced level class so it is definitely challenging for me, which is why I like it. One of the challenges is how hot the room gets. The class is held in the smaller of the two studios at Black Dog and is very well attended so it doesn't take long for all that collective body heat to rise. Friday night I caught up with Aussies Nic and Mike, and Norwegians Julie and Dag for a few drinks at a local bar. Good wine list, tasty bar menu, not too noisy or packed with people; altogether quite cosy. On Friday nights, we discovered, they have a jazz band play a couple of sets. This was at just the right pitch; loud enough to hear and enjoy, but quiet enough to talk over without undue effort.


Saturday was another glorious sunny day. I spent the morning inside a theatre in Hollywood, attending the second of a series of classes with Rick Pagano and Russell Boast. As is often the case, there were a few people missing this week, I guess they decided it wasn't their cup of tea. Anyhoo, Rick handed out sides (scene scripts) to everyone and made a point of not letting us out of the room to go rehearse them. We had time to read them over, but he wanted this session to be about absolutely cold reading. He gave each of us some redirection, a few notes, and next week will be treated as a "callback" audition for which we will learn the script. It's funny; sometimes in a class like this I feel like I stand out, maybe I get lucky with a script that I immediately click with or that allows me to display my comic timing or something. Or maybe the average talent level in the room is lower. There's a lot of talented actors in this class, and while I feel that I match up to them, I don't feel that I've demonstrated that yet. It's frustrating and I think I'm psyching myself out. At least this week I can learn the script and prepare.

Quiet night Saturday, stayed home and watched Sleuth - the remake from a couple of years ago which recast Michael Caine in the Laurence Olivier role, and Jude Law in the Michael Caine role, directed by Kenneth Branagh. Sadly, it was not a patch on the original. The film got too caught up in technological wizardry in Caine's mansion; remote control lights, sliding walls, hidden doors, sophisticated video security etc. With so much attention paid to the bells and whistles, the essential tension and mind-game playing between the two men was somehow lost. When I switched that off, I discovered The English Patient was playing on TV and got drawn into that. I remember loving the film when it came out (now approaching 15 years ago, would you believe - 1996!) and it attracted a lot of Academy Award nominations, most of which it didn't win, so it then had this reputation as being overhyped. Not true. It stands up well as a beautifully shot, elegantly written and superbly performed piece of cinema. It's an desert epic with some Laurence of Arabia splendour, but also a meditation on the personal effect of war, the displacement of people and the actions it leads them to take which would have seemed inconceivable in peace time.