Libera's concert at St. George's 2013

The first Libera fans arrived in the late morning. When I got there, Yorkie and Tom already had a chat with David, a nice guy from the  Libera staff.

St. George's doesn`t look very spectacular from the outside, but I was pleasantly surprised on how nice it was in there:

 

The staff was already at work setting up the equipment. They even put up screens for the people who weren't so lucky to have a premium ticket.

One by one all the important guys in charge of things arrived

The same can be said about the fans. After lunch there were quite a few of us there, including Patrick, Meme, Yuki, Paul and a few others.

After we got back into the cathedral (there was a service that day which we didn't want to interrupt), the tech guys were ready for sound and light tests.

Shortly afterwards we were asked to leave and the doors were closed. Standing outside was pretty interesting as well though because the boys arrived and gathered in a building beside the cathedral entrance. As it had a glass front we could watch the boys to put on their robes, signing programmes and some looked like they were doing homework. I admire the time and dedication they put into their hobby.

After they finally finished their rehearsal, the premium ticket holders were allowed to queue in the side building and we got the chance to buy signed programmes. Of course those were sold out very quickly. Then the rush to secure the best places began. I was extremely lucky to gain one directly behind Robert Prizeman on the main aisle.

For the first time, they had their "juniors" on the program, They were seated at the far left and right seats in the front row. When the show began, the regular boys would proceed to the stage through the main aisle and so walked by me within only a few centimeters. You don't get many chances to be so close to them I presume. The "juniors" would go on stage for one song or another and retain their seats for the time between.

The setlist for the evening was
Dies Irae
Gloria
Angels from on high
The Wexford Carol
Sanctus
I'm dreaming of home
Voca me
Away in a manger
In Dulci Jubilo

And after the Interval
God rest you merry gentlemen
Orinocco Flow
Joy to the  world
What child is this
Carol of the bells
Corpus Christi carol
Gaudete
Silent night
Exsultate

not on the list was "Hymn to Mary" which Isaac performed before the Intermission and the encores Have yourself a merry little christmas and, because of the typhoon relief effort, Bayan Ko.

 The concert itself was great. I still can't believe how high Thomas can sing, especially noticeable on Voca me. He seems to get more solo parts now, he sang the Corpus Christi Carol all by himself. Then there was of course Isaac who was in top form again.

The speeches begin to get a bit old after several concerts but they alter them at least a bit to retain the element of surprise. I liked Cassius' bit after "Gloria" which went like "the next song is about angels...just like us". I also liked the fact that Allessandro made a short speech. I think it was the part about how they didn't even have time to change their school uniforms for other clothes before taking off for the Philippines and that they arrived in school uniforms for this concert as well.  I could hear that he was very nervous as he began speaking very fast before Robert gave him a sign to slow down a bit.

Here are some pics I could take at the end of the show. The first one is from one of the "junior" groups. Perhaps someone can stick names to their pics. The other group of them was gone from stage so fast that I couldn't get them on film.

 

While I wast standing outside after the concert I got to see quite a few of the boys being picked up by parents or relatives. It felt really good to see how proud they were of the kids. There was much hugging and kissing going on and some of them even got some attention from girls who didn't behave exactly like relatives. So after all, the hard work seems to be paying off ;-)

Ender's Game

The following critique of the film Ender's Game comes from the perspective of a hardcore fan of Card's Enderverse.

All in all it's a decent to good film, there's  much eye candy in the form of CGI and they got most of the essential parts of the book into the film. There are, however, differences. Some were surely the consequences of time and budget shortages and thus more or less necessary but there were some unnecessary as well.

If you haven't read the book and haven't seen the film yet, you should quit reading here for possible spoilers.

The more or less necessary differences include the compressed timeframe (to save money  for quite some actors) and the nearly inexistent background of earth's society. Also, the family scenes only last a few minutes. There's much missing in the Peter/Ender relationship.

The Battle School part of the film is much too short as well, leaving no room to properly tell the story of the launchies. This is especially sad because I enjoyed the banter parts quite much. It's nearly as trying to film Harry Potter without Hogwards. Needless to say that many dialogues that were a highlight in the book didn't make it into the film. As a consequence many of the secondary characters aren't well represented.

Ender's development and Graff's motives and character are present but quite a bit lacking in details. I concede though, that it is probably hard to turn so much thought content into speech/dialogue. The effect was, that these characters seemed a bit stereotypic and it was hard to connect with them.

What really angered me was that they changed the whole Enderverse by leaving out the relativistic effects which take a great role in the books, although not so much in the first book. They also relocated the command school from an asteroid to the first formic colony. Probably to save screen time. For me that was a big no-go.

All in all, it was a bit much to make the book into a 90 min movie. Another half hour with the right content would have made the difference between a decent/good and a spectacular movie.

What really interests me is, if reading the book first actually increases the value of the movie because one automatically adds content and evens out the edges or if it decreases the value because one finds so much lacking. It would be nice if other fans would comment on this.