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Musicals did not start in the year of my birth, although 1949 did begin the golden age with the edgy and amorous South Pacific touching on issues of racial romance and indoctrinated bigotry (“You’ve Got to be Carefully Taught”). But it was the soaring lyricism of “Some Enchanted Evening” and “Younger Than Springtime” that embedded this musical into my young psyche. Mom wore the grooves off the LP to such an extent that even now I could sing most of the score from memory. The same is true for the lighter, but no less racially edgy romance on view in The King and I, another musical with a songs that seem to cling to your memory like dear friends.

Probably my favourite from those early days was Porgy and Bess, a musical that was originally staged in 1935 and again in 1942. But it wasn’t until the 1953 revival in London’s West End that all of Gershwin’s glorious music was performed. What a score that was! There isn’t a song in that musical that doesn’t grab you, from the sly suggestiveness of “It Ain’t Necessarily So” to the plaintive “Summertime.” But all of these early successes pale beside the enormous success of the last half of that decade. One year after the other there was My Fair Lady, West Side Story, Gigi, The Sound of Music and Oliver, each with at least half a dozen well crafted, powerful and memorable songs and lyrics.

But with the start of the 60s came the start of rock and roll, and while jazz and swing were admirably suited to the stage, rock was far less so. There was still the occasional gem of a show: Fiddler on the Roof in the 60s; Chicago in the 70s; Phantom of the Opera in the 80s; Rent in the 90s; and Wicked in 2000. However, the musical has never returned to the force it was in the twelve years between 1949 and 1960.

Which brings me to Les Mis, which we went to see last night. (The sweet little attendant wanted to know if we meant Less Miserable!). Pam loves musicals as much as I. For years at Christmas we would sit around the telly with our children in our laps and sing along with The Sound of Music.We took our children to see Phantom in Toronto, enjoyed the film version of Chicago and loved the stage production of Wicked, which we were fortunate enough to catch in Singapore. We had heard nothing but rave reviews about this film, so we were both looking forward to seeing it last night. I am sorry to say it was a disappointment.

There is nothing wrong with the story; it is a little convoluted, but that was the style in the days of Charles Dickens and his literary doppelganger across the Channel, Victor Hugo. Nothing wrong with the acting either. Russell Crowe was a little wooden, but then so was Javert, whose role he plays. It is nice to see that Hugh Jackman has some range beyond his Wolverine rage, and Anne Hathaway is transformational as Fantine. Once she dies – far too early in the treatment for my liking – the film loses half its radiance.

But it is the music that disappoints. Oh yes, “I Dreamed a Dream” is a song as lovely as any from the ‘classic’ era, and “Master of the House” as catchy as “You’ve Got to Pick a Pocket or Two,” from which it obviously derives. “On My Own” is sweet as well, and nicely sung. Now name me another. Stuck? No wonder. There is really nothing else that you can even call a tune. Instead you have atonal ramblings: words set to notes, but not tunes. I can name you ten songs from West Side Story without breaking a sweat. And sing them for you as well. Why? Because songs are powerful instruments that stir the heart and mind for decades; because in a musical the score is everything. And aside from two or three songs, Les Mis was a musical looking for its music.

If I had not grown up in the 50s and heard all these glorious showtunes played over and over again by my frustrated songstress and fangirl of a mother, I might have enjoyed the show. But I am cursed with an awful knowledge: I know what a good musical sounds like. And Les Mis, unfortunately, ain’t!

Here are the just the songs I know and love from the musicals I mentioned. I bet you know a dozen or more of these yourself. At the end of the list I have provided a link to the reviewer at The New Yorker magazine who agrees with my assessment, but is far funnier than I in doing so!

South Pacific (1949):

• Bali Hai
• You’ve Got to be Carefully Taught
• I’m Gonna Wash That Man Right Out of my Hair
• Happy Talk
• Younger than Springtime
• I’m in Love with a Wonderful Guy
• Some Enchanted Evening

The King and I (1951)

• I Whistle a Happy Tune
• Hello Young Lovers
• Getting to Know You
• Something Wonderful
• We Kiss in a Shadow

Porgy and Bess (1953)

• I Loves You Porgy
• Bess You Is My Woman Now
• There’s a Boat That’s Leaving
• Summertime
• I Got Plenty of Nothing
• It Ain’t Necessarily So

My Fair Lady (1956)

• I Could Have Danced all Night
• Wouldn’t it be Loverly?
• Get Me to the Church on Time
• I’ve Grown Accustomed to Her Face
• With a Little Bit of Luck
• On the Street Where you Live

West Side Story (1957)

• Maria
• I Feel Pretty
• America
• A Boy Like That
• Gee, Officer Krupke
• Here Come the Jets
• Tonight
• Something’s Coming
• One Hand, One Heart
• I Have a Love

Gigi (1958)

• Thank Heaven for Little Girls
• She’s Not Thinking of Me
• It’s a Bore!
• Gigi
• I Remember it Well
• I’m Glad I’m Not Young Anymore
• The Night They Invented Champagne

The Sound of Music (1959)

• The Hills are Alive
• How Do You Solve a Problem Like Maria?
• Do-Re-Mi
• My Favourite Things
• Sixteen Going on Seventeen
• Edelweiss
• So Long, Farewell
• Climb Every Mountain

Oliver (1960)

• Food, Glorious Food
• Oliver
• Where is Love?
• You’ve Got to Pick a Pocket or Two
• Consider Yourself One of Us
• As Long as He Needs Me
• Who Will Buy?
• As Long As He Needs Me

http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/cinema/2013/01/07/130107crci_cinema_lane?currentPage=1

Bondi, Sydney’s claim to world beach fame, is a three dollar bus ride from the center of town. The walk from there to Coogee Beach is six kilometers of nature’s finest, laid out for geriatric codgers to negotiate. I didn’t make it all the way to Coogee, but I made it to Clovelly in moderate walking pace stopping often to take pictures of the views in about three hours. It was time well wasted.

You can take the train to Bondi Junction, but then you would miss walking through Hyde Park in downtown Sydney; not as famous as its namesake in London, but just as nice and certainly no less Victorian with its obligatory statue of the Missus, and her Consort guarding the entrance, and fountains with heroic figures taming the sea serpents to be had along with the Aussie’s favourite explorer, Captain Cook, and a very touching Anzac memorial to the soldiers of Gallipoli and other conflicts. Don’t miss St. Mary’s Cathedral on the east side of the park. The outside is deceptively plain, but the inside is bathed in a golden light that illuminates the graceful arches of its nave and seems to breathe a reverence that is often missing from more popular cathedrals in Europe.

The bus to Bondi starts at the appropriately named Victoria Street and the driver will be looking for exact fare so buy the bottle of water you are going to need at the beach and get some change. Buses in Sydney are clean and fast and I enjoyed the ride. The bus will go right down to the beach itself, but the nicer stop is the one at the top of the hill so you can take in the view. I went early on a cool day before the crowds and the heat built up. Pam and Shelley had gone a day earlier in the middle of a scorcher of a day – 43 degrees Celsius – and the beach and the water were wall to wall with people. I am glad I chose a cooler day for my walk!

I only stayed ten minutes at Bondi itself, as the walk itself was my goal, but I did wade for a bit and the sand was a golden granular tan and the water clean and relatively warm. South of the beach at the beginning of the walk is the Polar Bear Swimming Club that has a pool overlooking the ocean. Beyond that the path starts to climb, but never gets too high above the water at any point and often comes right down to the beach. The views of the cliffs dropping off to the restless sea are ever changing, and each new bay has its own particular character.

My favourite was Bronte Beach, named not for the writer, but for Lord Nelson, Duke of Bronte. Despite that literary disappointment, the beach was very nice. It is scorned by surfers as its narrowness and embankment of shale rocks make it unsuitable with better beaches at Bondi and Clovelly nearby. It is therefore free from the aggravating surfer dude culture that characterizes the larger beaches, making it not only safer for swimmers, but quieter, more relaxed and more civil. I had a very nice fried fish for lunch at a little spot overlooking the beach at a reasonable price without having to listen to a single misogynistic word before pushing on.

At Clovelly the cliffscape levels out and there is a flat 1.2 kilometer stretch through beach and town around to where the walk starts to get interesting again. My feet decided by that point that they had had enough, and besides there was one of those clean and fast buses waiting to take me back to Bondi Junction. This time I did opt for the train as I wanted off at King’s Cross and our hotel so I could freshen up for the afternoon’s activities. Our time in Sydney is limited, but there were plenty of backpacker hostels all along the coast, and this is a spot that you could easily spend a week in, running into town for the evenings if you were so inclined. From KL you can get an eight hour flight with Air Asia to Sydney for around $500.

As Pam noted in an earlier post, Sydney is a lovely city, and would be a joy to study, live and work there. But all around Sydney there are signs of Australia’s tenuous grip on civilization. The nation is a vast desert, as large as the Sahara, bordered by a thin coastal strip of habitable land that is barely a kilometer wide in some places. Global warming is a looming threat to a country constantly on the edge of drought. Recently entire subdivisions have had to be scrapped for lack of available water.

On the two short days we were there 140 bush fires were raging in New South Wales alone. There were a hundred more in Victoria and Tasmania has suffered a devastating fire season with thousands stranded and hundreds of homes destroyed. The meteorological service had to add new colours to their maps to record temperatures well above the 50s in the interior. We flew north from Sydney and have rarely seen such a barren, arid wasteland. The heat builds up over this area and then pushes south. If the monsoon rains don’t come soon, it is going to be a long hot summer Down Under.

Our itinerary for this trip called for us to transit through Sydney, Australia so it made sense for us to see the city on our way through.  We arrived at noon on Tuesday and flew out Thursday morning so we needed to make the best possible use of the limited time we had.  Our friend Shelley was also there so she and I bought tickets for the Hop On/Hop Off City Tour and headed out as soon as we had checked in to our hotel.

The open topped, double decked bus provided some great views but the blazing midday sun and 43 degree temperatures quickly drove us back into the air-conditioned lower level.  A stop at Bondi Beach sounded very inviting and it was indeed a very beautiful beach, but most of Sydney was there before us and it was pretty much standing room only.  We did manage to find a quiet little restaurant for a salad and cool drink before we continued on our “guided” tour of the city.

The Sydney Opera House is designed to represent a ship in full sail and is really quite a magnificent building, placed on a very prominent peninsula at the end of the Royal Botanical Gardens.  Across the harbour is the massive steel arched Harbour Bridge and beautiful sailboats and yachts glide continuously through the waterways.

Unwilling to pay the exorbitant prices for a harbour tour, we opted for a $5.00 evening ferry ride from the Circular Quay to Darling Harbour where there was plenty of night life and a gigantic five storey Rubber Ducky, brought in for the Sydney Festival.  Sydney is really a lovely, lively city with a great mix of well preserved historical buildings and modern architecture.

In the center of the business district you find the Queen Victoria Building. Originally built as market, it was scheduled for demolition in the 50s but fortunately was preserved and is now billed as the most beautiful shopping center in the world.  While the building was modernized with the installation of escalators and air conditioning, its historical restoration is amazing. The tiled floors, stained glass windows, balustrades and arches are all carefully restored, creating a marvelous people place, not your average shopping mall.

Sydney may be a beautiful city, but the temperature peaked at 43.4 degrees around 4 pm and we are just not used to that kind of heat in Malaysia. In Fahrenheit for our American friends that is 110 degrees. It felt very nice when the sun went down and even nicer to put the aircon on high for a few minutes back at the hotel. Tomorrow is supposed to be cooler, thank goodness!

It seems like there are no straight roads in this part of the world, and the road from Queenstown to Dunedin was no exception. However, Pam had the good sense to book us into a small cabin at the campsite at the end of our drive that gave us a chance to drop our stuff and get into town for a bite to eat before sunset. The centre of Dunedin – the octagon – was a bowl surrounded by steep hills, scattered with fine examples of Scottish stonemasonry. We explored a few of the historic buildings before we settled into a little café for some blue cod and salad. In the morning we hit the road again for the long drive to Christchurch.

Pam has a high school friend in New Zealand that she has kept in touch with over the years and she and her husband were kind enough to put us up for a couple of days. I even got in a chess game with their son Jack, who I barely beat at chess before he clobbered me in Go. On New Year’s we met up with Shelley, a colleague from the school where I teach who happened to be in New Zealand for the holidays as well. The following day we drove out to the end of the Banks Peninsula to have a look around. Again the drive and the views were dramatic and scenic. We had the good fortune to pass a classic car show on the way out and stopped to have a look at the old MGs and Austin Healeys. There were even a couple of three-wheeled Morgans, a rare car that Dad owned after the war.

Pam’s friends gave us a lift to the airport in the morning, and we made the short hop to Auckland where we planned to spend a few days. We left most of our camping gear in the south, as it will be city touring from here on out and checked into a serviced apartment down by the quay. It is cheap and allows us to cook, which saves us money in a very expensive city. On our first day here we walked through some of the city’s many parks and checked out the Pacific Heritage Museum.

Yesterday we took a ferry out to Devonport for a view of the harbor and a walking tour of the old navy settlement. Today we got in a visit with Barbara-Anne, a cousin of Pam’s who is in Auckland on a working holiday. She knew a little place that did nice crepes for breakfast. It was nice to chat about family so far from home. While Pam did a little shopping for gifts for the grandkids, I got in another walk through Auckland’s fabulous parks and trees.

Aside from a nice meal and visit with Shelley, New Year’s seemed to have just slipped by us. We hope you had a nice one, and that this year is filled with joy and adventure for you.

England’s Lake District is justifiably renowned. For those who have not had the privilege of touring through its gentle slopes and pristine waters, the recent biopic on Beatrix Potter has some gorgeous backdrops from the region. I first visited the area when I was eleven and have been back many times since. It features prominently as the subject of two lovely wedding gifts from my sister.

I have also had the good fortune to see Lake Titicaca in Guatemala, with its sole volcanic mountain as guardian silhouetted against the setting sun. Pam and I have driven around Lake Como and Lago Magiori in northern Italy, and Loch Lomond and Loch Ness in southern Scotland. We have camped beside the Thuner Sea at Interlaken and swam in the oceanic waters of Lake Huron. Great lakes, all of them, and a joy to see. But the ones we have seen in the last two days have been perhaps the most beautiful  in our experience.

We had driven from Punakaiki to Haast on Boxing Day, covering most of the West Coast that has a highway. Our target was Queenstown in the heart of the South Island’s Lake District. We were prepared for a stiff drive, having seen what some of these roads are like. What we were not prepared for was the knockout beauty of the trip. The pictures here do not do the views justice. The roads were not a problem. Traffic was light and the roads are well constructed and maintained. Given how tight the space was between mountain and lake there were few safe places to pull over, but we took advantage of the ones that offered a few feet of gravel with a view of the surroundings. The amazing thing to us was how few people are in this part of the world. Villages were non-existent and even farmhouses were extremely rare.

The next day we headed up from Queenstown to Glenorchy, reputed to be one of the ten most scenic drives in the world. We wouldn’t dispute that, having driven both there and back; the vistas were breathtaking. At Glenorchy we took a gravel drive past the hamlet called Paradise to as far as we could go before timidity and the depth of water in the fords we had been crossing caused us to pull over. And there, right where we stopped, was the forest of Lothlorien! I recognized it immediately, without the aid of the guide book; but again, pictures don’t do it justice. We also caught a glimpse of the Misty Mountains used by Peter Jackson in his film.

In has been a fun couple of days in the South Island. Tomorrow we make for the coast at Dunedin before heading up to Christchurch for New Year’s. The weather has held the entire time so far; warm and dry during the day, cool at night. The size of the river beds we crossed over indicate this is not the case during the rainy season; some river gorges are a kilometer wide. That would be a terrifying amount of water crashing down off the mountains!

Punakaiki seemed like an odd choice for Christmas Day when we first planned this trip. But then so much about this trip seemed odd. We have talked about seeing New Zealand for many years now. Pam has a friend from high school who lives in Christchurch that she has kept in touch with for donkey’s years. But given its distance and its cost, we never really thought we would make it. When one of our children backed out of coming to Malaysia and left us facing the prospect of Christmas alone, we decided to throw caution to the wind and take what might well be our last Christmas holiday in Asia. With New Year’s in Christchurch a certainty, we planned backwards seven days and that left us practically in the middle of nowhere on the west coast of the South Island. The midpoint was Punakaiki; that is how we got here. And here turns out to be a very nice place to be.

We spent the night in Westport, at a passable campsite with a martinet for an owner who liked to order his guests about. After dressing down our neighbor for his litter he condemned our tent heater as being “dangerously unsafe” and forbade its use. Fortunately for us the night was warm for a change so Pam slept in for a bit and we took our time getting up and going in the morning. Just down the road was a place called Seal Colony Point, and we decided it was worth a look. It has been our experience that many such places are either misnamed or exorbitantly expensive. This was neither. After a very pleasant walk on a well maintained path we arrived at a lookout point from which many seals could be seen frolicking in the waves (there is no other explanation for their behavior: they were simply body surfing) or sunbathing on the rocks, at which time they are practically invisible.

We moseyed down a pretty coastal road, stopping often for the views until we arrived at our destination for the night, the Punakaiki Resort; as pleasant a spot as you are likely to find on this wild coast. After dropping our stuff in a spacious and well equipped room we headed up the road to an area called The Pancakes, an appropriately named spot as it turns out for the stacked layers of sedimentary rock being eroded by wind and wave. After far more pictures that we could ever use of blowholes and surges, headlands and cormorants we wandered our way a little further up the road for a Christmas meal of fish and chips and some chatter with fellow Christians from Texas.

Sunset was cloudy and basically nondescript. But Moonset! Have I ever seen Moonset over the ocean before? I think not; indeed I’m not even sure there is a term. But I certainly saw it last night, and it was beautiful! The moon was full and almost completely orange. It sailed through the clouds towards the ocean like the sun itself, only with a ghostlier gleam. It coloured the clouds with an awesome and eerie glow. I watched in wonder for about an hour; unable to sleep, and unable to take my eyes away from the celestial show. What a marvel that a rational God would want us to see how perfectly He has constructed the world to have the moon the same apparent size as the sun (only from the eath!). What a stimulus to rational and scientific inquiry this has brought about. I marvel in the reason and the rationality of our God! And His beauty. Gosh this is a beautiful world!

From Santa and his two aging elves, now cooling their hooves in New Zealand, we wish all of our family and friends a very Merry Christmas. Hope you get some snow!

Wellington is New Zealand’s capital city, and with a population of 395,000 is only slightly larger than our hometown of London, Ontario. That is where the similarity ends. London has done to itself what many towns and cities in North America have done: it has sold itself to the highest bidder, usually Walmart, and abandoned any pretext of urban planning in order to line its greedy little pockets. The result is a dangerous downtown of shuttered offices and stores, and sidewalks lined with refuse, both material and human. Sporadic attempts to “revitalize” the core are often inconsistent. Bell Canada was encouraged to locate downtown, but then permitted to build a barricade between itself and the street, blocking any public access or social discourse with the street. Where is the civic vision, you may well ask?

Well it is alive and well in Wellington! The core of the city is packed with pubs, cafes, restaurants and nightspots. The streets are jammed with people strolling easily down the avenues wandering in and out of the countless stores and shops. The waterfront has live bands and skateboard parks, museums and art galleries. The parks are spacious and well kept, lanes and paths are lit and swept. Buildings have been artfully preserved and renovated. We particularly liked our little hotel, the Comfort and Quality Inn, not only for its location on the lively Cuba Street, but for its wide staircases and deep, enamel tubs.

We caught the morning ferry (having missed the one the afternoon before; an almost unheard of mental lapse!) to Picton, and enjoyed the cruise across a very placid Cook Strait and up Queen Charlotte Sound. About New Zealand car rentals had our vehicle ready for us and we were on our way in no time, driving through the pleasant vineyards of Marlborough to Nelson and our campsite. After pitching the tent we grabbed our ‘coussies’ and headed to the beach for a swim in the delightfully warm waters of Tasman Bay. Supper back at the site was all we could afford in this very expensive country.

After another fairly cool night which required many applications of blasts of heat from our little appliance, we decided to look in Nelson for some warmer sleeping bags. In the tiny town of Nelson there were four outdoor stores, a testament to the popularity of nature in this beautiful part of the world. We saw lots of sleeping bags; we couldn’t afford any of them. A ‘fly’ for the tent to keep off the rain and keep in the heat cost $300. Just the ‘fly’! After a quick trip to the library (gosh how I miss those things in Southeast Asia) to get caught up on the internet, we hit the road again, this time to the west coast.

Our road began gently, but soon started to climb up into the hills with the switchbacks that have become routine in this part of the world. At the top we stopped for some pictures before beginning the long descent to the coast. This time the road ran through the valley of a river that was a deep aquamarine in colour and absolutely gorgeous. The road was dangerously narrow and down to one lane in part as it hugged the narrow gorge through which the river would occasionally run before widening out again. I loved the drive myself, but I did notice that Pam’s fingernails were pretty much buried in the fabric of the seat beside me. To her credit she let out only a few gasps on some of the trickier sections.

We arrived in Westport in time to pick up a few groceries and set up our tent before heading down to the beach. This time the water was like ice; clear and beautiful but bone numbingly cold. The sand is volcanic in nature, grey-black in colour, and with the white, sun-bleached driftwood logs looked beautiful. Pictures don’t capture it. We splurged on some steaks for supper, it being Christmas Eve and all, but tomorrow it will be back to canned tuna and salad. We have however, booked ourselves a hotel for the coming night to celebrate our Lord’s birthday, and we want to take this opportunity to wish all of our readers a very blessed Christmas Day. May it be a time of warmth and celebration to lighten your hearts.

There’s not much to say about this film that hasn’t already been said (http://shotguncritic.com/2012/12/20/review-the-hobbit/?_r=true) and perhaps with better insight. My own take is admittedly literary; I love Tolkien’s books and place them among Moby Dick, Don Quixote and The Divine Comedy, as among the best I’ve ever read. I also admire Peter Jackson’s careful attention to detail. Hobbiton is a masterpiece; a present day Oz as wondrous and fully realized as anything on screen.

That said I must take issue with certain liberties; again with literature in mind. Let’s start with this. After whom is the archetypical hero named? Some candidates for your consideration: Hercules? Achilles? Neither, nor more than a dozen others. It is Ulysses; the Greek Odysseus, hero of the Trojan War and protagonist of Homer’s second greatest epic. But why? Was he stronger? Braver?  Did he kill more people? No; none of the above, although in today’s degenerate age you can be forgiven such Ramboesques thoughts.

No; he was more clever. It was Odysseus who came up with the idea of the Trojan Horse. It was Odysseus who defied the gods and found his way home again. It was Odysseus who remained faithful to Penelope and the ideals of hearth and home that not only the Greeks but generations of Westerners have found so appealing, and so pivotal to their understanding of masculinity. In literature brutal, revenge-seeking male clods are mocked, as Shakespeare dismantled the bloody Macbeth and elevated Malcolm and Macduff.

Tolkien, the Oxford don, understood and employed the Odyssean archetype in Bilbo Baggins, an unlikely hero who succeeds not on the strength of arms, but by wit and common (Christian) decency. It is this characterization which has propelled The Hobbit, and its darker sequel, The Lord of the Rings, to the status of ‘greatest novel of the twentieth century.’ Why then does Jackson slander this hugely appealing character by making him into a common half-wit hero? In the novel, Bert and the other trolls are not defeated in battle; they are outwitted by the timid and careful Bilbo who gets them arguing among themselves (in Tolkien’s respectful nod to a contest with Homer’s hero). In the novel, Bilbo would never come running down the tree to stand over the fallen body of Thorin and stab at wargs as he does in the film. But neither would he meekly accept a sword from Gandalf unnamed as he does in the film; the literary Bilbo has more stuff in him than that. It is Bilbo who seizes and names the sword that will help define him. In fact the only contest which is faithfully rendered is that with Gollum, where wit and nerve are equally matched with life or freedom on the line. Jackson wisely does not mess with this eternal scene.

However, to give Jackson his due, the film in 48 frames per second and 3D was sparkling in clarity and breathtaking in scope of imagination. I loved the cinematic experience of it. It was especially poignant having seen the real Hobbiton just a few days earlier. New Zealand makes the perfect backdrop for Middle Earth, and travelling through some of the terrain pictured in the film has a double resonance for me. I will remain a fan and look forward to seeing the concluding two episodes. If Jackson wanted to slow down and film each chapter, I would still watch. But I do wish he would let my beloved Bilbo be the hero that Tolkien created.