With a month-long vacation coming up, I think it's time to finally finish these weekly visits to my concert-going past. Without comment, here are a few of the artists I haven't yet included in these Music Fridays.
Joe Ely
k.d. lang
Gogol Bordello
The word that comes to mind is "whimsical".
The long, stuffed-to-the-brim original novel begs for the kind of multiple-episode series that has room for the kitchen sink, and in fact there are at least five attempts at that kind of serializing. In reducing David Copperfield to a two-hour running time, Armando Iannucci, the director-producer-cowriter, necessarily admits in advance that he intends to truncate. Nonetheless, Iannucci manages to squeeze in a very large cast of characters. Only a few are truly fleshed out, and casting does a lot of the work here. Actors like Tilda Swinton (Betsey Trotwood), Hugh Laurie (Mr. Dick), and Peter Capaldi (Micawber) are able to blend their skills with our perceptions of their past work to make the characters feel welcomed. Opposite to this, Ben Whishaw has been good in a variety of roles over the years, but he climbs into the unctuous Uriah Heep so completely that I forget Whishaw was in the movie until the closing credits. Gwendoline Christie (Game of Thrones) is probably always going to be recognized because of her height, but she makes the most of her limited screen time. Finally, Iannucci manages to give us diverse casting that doesn't just feel like pandering (Benedict Wong and Rosalind Eleazer are a perfect father and daughter, and the best example of how this casting works). Of course, Dev Patel as David is the most obviously diverse piece of casting, but what matters is that Patel is a fine actor who gets all of the various aspects of David as the character grows older.
Things do move too quickly at times ... again, it would be nice to see this as a mini-series. But each scene in its moment is solid, and rarely does Iannucci leave us scratching our heads and wondering what we missed. The Personal History of David Copperfield is as good of a two-hour version of Dickens' novel as you are likely to encounter.
[Letterboxd list of Geezer Cinema movies]