By the EIE Editorial Staff
Lady Gaga is a horse lover and received her first horse, Arabella, from her record company as a birthday present.
We appreciate Lady Gaga’s musical talents and saw her the week she was the final performing act at the historic Roseland Ballroom in New York City.
We were also lucky enough to see her with Tony Bennett at his final performance at Radio City Music Hall in a concert where every song ended with a standing ovation from an adoring crowd. She said, “Hello Mr. President,” to Bill Clinton who was sitting nearby amongst an audience of celebrities.
Interestingly, Radio City had everyone put their cell phones in a secured bag so there was no filming or photos during the event, however HBO was on hand to record for a later broadcast. It was an unforgettable evening.
Joaquin Phoenix is fantastic and we met him briefly while driving down Ninth Avenue in New York City. We exchanged friendly barbs and he laughed off suggestions to stop smoking (he smokes like a chimney) and had a great sense of humor despite being a bit cavalier about his health. 😊
Both the 2019 film Joker and the 2024 Joker: Folie à Deux featured a long set of stairs in upper Manhattan. We have even (barely) climbed those long set of stairs. This, coupled with the admiration of Phoenix and Gaga, was the reason which compelled us to run out to see Joker: Folie à Deux.
The movie was different from what we expected. It was a musical. Having seen Phoenix in Walk the Line as Johnny Cash, we know that Phoenix, here as Arthur Fleck, has some musical talent but seeing a character with a clear mental illness suddenly break into song was at first a bit disconcerting.
Gaga plays the part of his love interest and advocate, Harley Quinn ("Lee"), in an equally complicated character. There seemed to be no point to the movie apart from an examination of the complexity of mental illness. It is always great to see the talents of both actors in their respective roles who did as much as they could with a script which fell flat for us.
Unlike reports of people walking out of the movie, no one in our theatre did but like most movies today, the theatre was not well attended as the trend seems for people to wait for a streaming service to enjoy the movie (or switch it off) at home. The BTX (Bow Tie Xtreme) viewing which is AMC’s version of IMAX was not worth the upcharge.
You can find more interesting stories in our section on Recreation & Lifestyle.
