Good Morning, Baltimore

I have an interview with a junior high on the other side of town on Wednesday. I'm still a bit reticent about taking a teaching position after the school year has already started, but, as they say, beggars can't be choosers. We'll see how it goes.

In an effort to get my mind off my own pitiful drama, I went to go see "Hairspray" tonight. It's actually the first time that I have been to a movie since the beginning of summer. Unfortunately, may Divine forgive me, I actually enjoyed it. Once you get over the fact that John Travolta sucks in the role -- he wasn't convincing as a woman, as a Baltimorian, or even, oddly, as being fat -- it actually works really well. The songs were, by and large, enjoyable, and the entire thing came was cinematic enough to justify the remake. It started particularly strong, with the songs gining it momentum; eventually the plot starts to slow down, and the songs became a bit less enjoyable and irreverent. Other than Travolta, I found myself quite pleased with the rest of the cast, and I have a crush on Elijah Kelley, the young man who played Penny Pingleton's beau Seaweed. He was frankly beautiful, and just lit up the screen with his enthusiasm. Some bits of the movie had me thinking to myself, "That's not how it happened!" But by the end, I just accepted it for what it was, as something independent of its source material. After the disappointment of the recent cinematic adaptations of "The Producers" and "Dreamgirls", it was nice to see a confident, well-crafted musical that I genuinely enjoyed.

Unfortunately, before the year is out we're going to be faced with Tim Burton's re-imagining of Sondheim's "Sweeney Todd," something which I find myself less than enthusiastic about.