We finally saw The Phantom of the Opera over the weekend.  I’d been putting it off because it got such dreadful reviews, but I love the music (pretty much love most of Webber’s music) and so I had to give it a go.

Well, the reviews were pretty much right, I’m sorry to say.  The main problem is that it is opera.  I’m not an especial opera fan but I have nothing against it either.  Opera is almost entirely an affair of the stage where the immediacy of the performance helps to balance the fact that you’ve got people standing and singing for long stretches of time while very little else goes on.  A stage is necessarily limited in terms of action and special effects but the fact that things are unfolding right in front of you makes up for that.  There is nothing like a live performance with the story and the music rolling out fresh and immediate, right in front of you.

And this movie is nothing like a live performance.  Unfortunately, it isn’t much like a movie either.  It is more like a filmed play.  Sometimes that can work - especially when the story is clear and gripping, the characters well-developed and the acting solid.  If there is good chemistry between the cast members, so much the better.  This movie, sadly, lacks all of these things.  The story is scant and rushed, the characters cardboard and the acting perfunctory at best.  Some props should go to Gerard Butler (the phantom) for at least infusing some passion into his performance.  The other two main characters, Christine Daae (played by Emmy Rossum) and Raoul (played by Patrick Wilson) have no presence and no personality.

But the music is still breathtaking. 

Dad and I went up to Portland, ME on Saturday to have lunch in a restaurant called DeMillo’s.  Not cheap but very, very good - some of the nicest fish I have ever had and an absolutely superb Portuguese sausage soup - rich and spicy.  DeMillo’s is also interesting because the restaurant itself is a ship.

I worked on the entrelac afghan quite a bit this weekend, though it may not exactly look like a lot has been done :)

I have always worked the left-leaning decreases in entrelac as SSKs but I’ve been experimenting with doing them the old fashioned way, as a slip 1-knit 1, pass slipped stitch over.  My SSks always looked sloppy and doing it the other way seems to help this.

And I finished the hat :)

Whoopee :)  I know I have more of the sock yarn I carried along to make the hat with and I intended to start a pair of socks to go with it last night.  But I couldn’t find the rest of the damned sock yarn!  I’ve got a little bitty ball left from the hat and that’s not going to cut it.  You’ve been hearing me natter on about organizing the stash for a couple of weeks now but I’ve been avoiding it.  No surprise there, eh?  Well, things are slowly reaching a sort of critical mass and I really am going to have to do something about it :)