Links & Thoughts, November 12

Some suggestions of things to check out:

• My recent "Remake Breakfast at Tiffany's" post inspired a friend of mine to watch the film--the conversation continues over at her blog.

• Stephen Sondheim on classical music (h/t Terry). My love of Sondheim is what got me to start listening to Ravel a few years ago--now I will have to check out some of the other pieces he mentions!

• Blogging, rumors, the new-media paradigm, and play submissions. (via Parabasis)

• 99 Seats does a post about casting non-white actors in roles where the character's race isn't specified, something that I was thinking about a few months ago...
  

• Movie recommendation: Metropolitan (written & directed by Whit Stillman). I watched it for the first time last night and loved it. The screenplay is amazing. Quotable, witty, and far more charming than it has any right to be, considering the subject matter: Upper East Side debutantes and their escorts going to Christmas parties in the late 1980s. At the start of the movie, you feel overwhelmed by all of the hyper-literate WASPy characters; by the end, you feel like you know every character intimately. (Therefore your experience watching the movie mirrors the experience of its protagonist, Tom, a "poor" Upper West Side boy who joins the debutante crowd almost by accident.) If you happen to have the same Comcast package that I do, it's free on demand until the 17th--otherwise, go out and rent it! It's a little gem.

• Metropolitan is also one of the 400 Criterion Collection DVDs that are half-price at Barnes and Noble right now. I'm tempted by at least half a dozen of them...
  

• Bay Area Playwrights' Pub Night is coming up this Saturday! Looking forward to it!