Starlight Express UK Theatre Show Review

Theatre is a big passion of mine; I love to go whenever I get chance and am especially fond of Andrew Lloyd Webber musicals. There is something about the music in his shows that really knows how to move you, he works along with some of the best in the music industry to help craft lyrics and The Andrew Lloyd Webber/Tim Rice partnership on various shows has been hugely successful.

One of the best musicals by Andrew Lloyd Webber alongside The Phantom of the Opera of course simply has to be ‘Starlight Express’ a beautiful story centred around a young boy playing with his train sets in his bedroom after dark. The trains are acted by real people and everyone in the show wears roller-skates and dances round the stage on them in some of the most wonderfully choreographed scenes you will have ever seen.

I missed the London run of this show so was thrilled when I found out that it was coming to a theatre not far from me; The Bristol Hippodrome in the UK. We decided to make a family evening out of it and my husband and I invited our parents, my sister and our 4 year old daughter came along too. We weren’t sure if she would enjoy the show or not as she does tend to get restless and bored if she’s sitting still long but as soon as the lights went down and the music began she was hooked!

The great thing about this show is its energy and its ability to appeal to both children and adults, when you enter the show you are given special 3D Glasses and told to wait to be told when to put these on. At several points during the show they released a large screen at the back of the stage and for the ‘race’ scenes you were treated to some pretty good special effects on the screen. This had all the children completely hooked and it’s something my little girl still talks about now.

The cast all have to go through weeks and weeks of training to perfect all of the dance routines on their skates and the effort they put in really does show, there was only ONE person who fell over in our showing and he got right back up again and carried on accompanied by rapturous applause from the audience.

If you are a theatre fan and are yet to witness the magic of Starlight Express for yourself then I highly recommend it when it next hits your theatres, also if you have never been to a theatre show before this is the perfect one to get started with, it brings out the true energy and fun factor of the theatre and I promise, after seeing this you wont be able to wait until you are able to take in your next show!

All in all a great night out, decent prices for tickets and beautiful songs and routines!

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Phantom of the Opera Sequel Confirmed

Good news for Theatre fans came recently when Sir Andrew Lloyd Webber announced on his official website that he would indeed be writing a sequel to the hit show ‘The Phantom of the Opera’ and that it would be set in New York. Rumours had been flying around about this for the past few months and I’m sure I’m not the only one excited by the prospect of this confirmation.

I wanted to write a piece about this as Theatre is a form of entertainment that is very close to my heart. Ever since I was a little girl I have loved theatre shows, especially musicals. Phantom of the Opera is the first one I ever saw live on stage at Her Majesty’s Theatre in London. I was instantly mesmerised by the dramatic effects and beautiful songs and I have travelled to London’s West End ever since to see various other shows at every opportunity. Read more

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Sex Objects and Examples of Bad Website Graphic Design

One year ago I wrote a brief article entitled “Examples of Bad Website Graphic Design” (copy of article on this website). Through article marketing, it was sydicated on a number of different sites including webdesign.org. I recieved the following comment on that article, which raises questions about my intended audience and woman as sexual objects. I’ve posted my reply below and I welcome your response.

Estela writes

Do you think you could you take off the comment about “People aren’t necessarily going to read the text of your website just because a girl in a bikini is on it” from your “Examples of Bad Web Site Graphic Design” article on webdesign.org? As a “girl” webdesigner, I feel like you aren’t addressing me in your article. Instead of contributing to the idea that women and girls are sex objects, why don’t you write to an audience of ALL people (male, female, etc)? That sentence sort of spoiled the rest of the article for me.

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Correspondence with Paul on Filmmaking, Photography, and BWNS

The following is a very detailed and interesting e-mail I received from Paul and my response to that message. I believe it contains some excellent advice and some inspirational words on filmmaking that I wanted to share with all my website visitors. Enjoy!

“I’ve just finished watching your film. I downloaded it from your website in BitTorrent format as I find it to be a very efficient and effective method for getting files.

I have some background in still photography, broadcasting and music and would like to offer some comments on your film. First off I want to congratulate you on producing a film of this size. It takes a lot of work and I think you’re doing a good job of promoting it. The background music was very fitting and well mixed. You’re use of zoom and/or special lenses in some scenes was effective as well. Possibly in some scenes you could benefit from a “fluid head” tripod to reduce vibration. These are available at most photography stores and are available for a modest price. These special heads greatly reduce shaking while panning the camera around. For some of the scenes when the camera is moving, perhaps consider making a really basic rolling frame, such as a couple of pieces of wood sitting on a skateboard (of the top of my head) rolling with the camera on top of it. Alternately, you could try panning the camera as the subject is moving. Reducing camera shake will go a long way to providing better film quality.

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New Advertisers and Los Angeles Film Festival Article

Those were two people that purchased advertising on this website in the last two months. I wanted to say thank you to both of them by giving them some permanent links and little exposure for helping me out. I use all the advertising money to finance future films.

The first website contains an interesting article on the Los Angeles Film Festival. Thank you ~jgoodman – John Goodman maybe? It’s interesting, because the stie doesn’t contain anything commercial, so I’m guessing he purchased the advertising soley as a donation for future films.

The other advertiser is EZ Server (Flash, PHP, RoR - Web Hosting) a provider of web hosting and templates.

While I’m on the subject of thanking people…

Other people to thank:
Netop.org for Providing BitTorrent tracker, and seeds
Brainonfire.net for donating boywhoneverslept.com and setting it up to redirect to my site.

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E-mail Conversations with Film Fans from Around the World

Since Boy Who Never Slept has been released I’ve been receiving e-mails from film fans around the world and have engaged in some interesting e-mail correspondences. For now the conversations mostly concern BWNS and independent filmmaking. I’d love to share some of these with you, so I e-mailed the authors and asked permission to post them on this site, I also added a “May I publish your comments on this website?” question to the contact form and encourage everyone who sends me feedback via the regular web form to give me permission to post them here for everyone to read..

Every e-mail I receive inspires me to create more films. One particularity interesting message had a word count close to 900 words!!!

[tags]boy who never slept,film fans,films,movies,movie,solomon rothman[/tags]

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This Blog’s Getting Personal

Catching Up – new script – blog updates – new website.

It’s been longer then usual since my last post. I like to post as much as possible, but the last month and half has been really crazy and I’ve been swamped with work. I just launched SoloInnovations.com, it’s devoted to the professional web design services I offer along with services from other select designers and writers. It has a wordpress blog and I’ll be posting all my web design, SEO, graphic design, and writing articles there. Basically all my writing that has to do with my current profession will now be posted there first and afterwards syndicated here. I want to devote this blog to a more personal nature and use it to share my filmmaking endeavors, writing on other subjects, my rants, raves, responses to the many e-mails I receive and anything else I feel like posting.

Trying to balance my professional services and my other passions on the same website was becoming un-manageable and definitely far from ideal. Now I have more freedom than ever to bore you all to death with I’m working on!!!

[tags]blog,solomon rothman,boy who never slept[/tags]

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Custom Flix’s Mistake | BWNS retail DVD will be available soon.

After initially signing up with the DVD on Demand service from customflix.com, I physically mailed them the master DVD of Boy Who Never Slept and upon review they requested to be sent a series of legal releases. This was to be certain that I wasn’t distributing copyrighted material illegally.

I complied and after everything was re-reviewed I was told I would receive the DVD proof in 5 business days. Two weeks and nothing. Last Friday I was informed that there had been a mistake and the proof would be over-nighted to me. I have yet to receive it, but I expect to receive it today sometime. As soon as I’ll get it, approve it and make it available for sale, I’ll post the links on my site. It’s going to be available via customflix.com and on amazon. The retail price is $12.00.

I know, it’s a tiny bit steep, but the DVD ISO withl the cover art is available for free download, so you can watch the movie for free and burn your own DVD. I believe $12.00 is a fair enough price and this way it gives me some money from each sale to devote to future film projects. Think of it as directly supporting a filmmaker.

I’m wondering how the DVD will do on Amazon. Maybe not well at all, but I hope somebody buys one. Heck – I’ll buy one.

Solomon

[tags]boy who never slept,film,dvd,free movie,solomon rothman,films,movies,dvds,customflix,amazon dvd sales, custom flix[/tags]

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Boy Who Never Slept DVD ISO Released with Subtitles, Chapters, and Special Features

I just put up the ISO file (4.32 Gig) for a professional quality DVD with English subtitles, chapters, director’s interview, etc. It’s available for FREE download via bittorrent. If you have the ability, please get this version. If downloading it isn’t a possibility or if you want to help support more movies like BWNS I’ve signed up with CustomFlix and the DVD will be available for retail purchase on amazon.com later this week.

Website Advertising

I changed the donation page to provide advertising options, so if you can, please purchase a text link, increase the traffic to your website, improve your search engine ranking, and support more free movies at the same time.

Thanks again to NetOp (http://www.netop.org) for providing bittorrent tracker and seeds for Boy Who Never Slept

[tags]boy who never slept,DVD ISO,free movie,open source movie,download video clips,download full length movies,free movies,solomon rothman[/tags]

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Top 10 Video Distribution Websites for Content Producers

Best websites to upload your video clips

We are currently only in the beginning of the internet television revolution and new sites offering the ability for anyone to upload video clips and share them with the world are popping up left and right. I recently released a full length movie online and after a lot of research I determined these to be the best website to share your videos with the rest of the world.

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