Kelson Reviews Stuff - Page 56

Today we drove down into San Diego to see the new touring version of Disney’s Beauty and the Beast stage musical. The simpler staging and costumes work (though the castle set from the 1995 Los Angeles production really added a lot to the mood), but the big numbers like “Be Our Guest” do suffer from the smaller cast. And while I don’t really miss the two songs they cut (“No Matter What” and “Maison Des Lunes” were the weakest of the score), I did miss the battle between the townspeople and the enchanted objects…and the new song (OK, not that new, but it wasn’t in the original production) they added, about how happy Belle is to have given up her dreams, is actually creepy. Seriously, did no one think that one through?

More specifically, good DC time-travel comics.

DC One Million is a Justice League story that spans 800,000 years. It was a big event, but there’s a collection that features the main story and the key tie-ins.

JLA: Rock of Ages is another Justice League time travel story. Grant Morrison revisited some of the same ground later on with Final Crisis (in this one, several members of the League jump forward in time a decade or so and find that Darkseid has conquered Earth), but IMO Rock of Ages hangs together better.

Time Masters from ~1990 is a good stand-alone story featuring Rip Hunter. (Not to be confused with Time Masters: Vanishing Point - I haven’t read that one, but as I understand it was built around Batman: Return of Bruce Wayne and Flashpoint.) It was reprinted a few years ago, so you should be able to find it. It’s a time travel conspiracy story with the modern team of time travelers trying to block Vandal Savage and the Illuminati in different periods of history.

I rather liked the short-lived series Chronos, about an industrial spy who stumbles into becoming a time traveler. It only lasted around 10 issues or so. Another short-lived series, Hourman, was about a time-traveling android and spun out of DC One Million.

We saw Cirque du Soleil’s resident Los Angeles show last weekend. Cirque is always impressive, and Iris has the usual collection of trapeze artists, contortionists, tumblers, ribbon flyers, and elaborate costumes you’d expect from one of their shows. This one stands out for several reasons:

• I like the history of movies, so all the thematic references to early cinema and classic movies were fun. The Dolby Theater is a great match for this look.
• They did a great job of mixing live performances with live and time-delayed video, giving it a very different look from most shows. (And as the program pointed out, the video effects react to the performers, not the other way around.)
• This is the first Cirque show I’ve seen in a long time where I enjoyed the clown performances as much as the acrobatics.

Some highlights:

• The filmstrip act, where the performers walk through a series of identical rooms, each performing an action for a camera that plays back on a short delay, and each interacting with the previous performer’s recorded action.
• The soundstage number at the opening of act two. I think the entire cast was onstage, all doing something different, all at the same time. An incredible illusion of chaos.
• A film noir-style fistfight turned into a tumbling trampoline act.

The only disappointment was that act two felt a bit short, probably because the individual numbers were so long.

Great local coffee shop. Good coffee, friendly staff, nice, relaxed atmosphere. Plus they make a mean panini for lunch.

And if you find yourself in the mood for an ice blended drink and get the Triple Chocolate Delight, be sure to get it with whipped cream. Normally I don’t like whipped cream on my drinks, but with this one, it’s chocolate whipped cream, and it makes a huge difference. Without it, it’s technically only a double chocolate delight.

Incredible views of the Pacific Ocean and Catalina Island. Also easy to get to and park. I haven’t tried any of the hiking trails in the area yet, but I keep meaning to.