Listers: A Glimpse into Extreme Birdwatching (2025)

I know nothing about bird watching. But I thoroughly enjoyed Listers. It's a hilarious self-produced documentary distributed solely on Youtube. It follows two brothers on their Big Year, a birding challenge to see as many bird species as possible in a calendar year. They go to great lengths to see rare birds. And they capture some amazing high definition footage. Hilariously these nature shots are juxtaposed with blurry handheld camcorder footage of the brothers sleeping in their Kia Sedona parked at Cracker Barrel. They are very funny on camera and behind it in the edit. They interview random people they come across on their journey, as well as celebrity birdwatchers renowned for their 700+ Big Years. It covers a lot of ground about the bird watching community. And the part that really hit me is about eBird, the app that makes Big Years even possible. It's where serious and casual birders alike log (list) their bird sightings. Listing is an obsession of mine. And I simultaneously felt personally attacked and inspired to make my own documentary. The great irony is that the movie is not even on Letterboxd, so won't appear in any movie lists. Which raises its own logistical conundrum about what qualifies as a "movie". By all means this two hour documentary is a movie, but how are we to distinguish it from other long Youtube videos? This also comes at a time for me after my trip to the Everglades where I saw some of the same wildlife they did, and you know what, casual bird watching was a lot of fun!

Tristan und Isolde (Opera)

Hailed as the event of the season, the Met's towering new production of Tristan und Isolde lives up to the hype. It is daunting, no doubt, running a massive five hours. I was so impressed with the orchestra playing essentially four full hours of the most heart-wrenching music ever written (plus two intermissions). I also impressed myself staying awake! My new strategy is to chew gum. I also think periodically lifting my binoculars to my eyes really forced me to focus and not doze off. The Met has had some well-publicized financial woes, but the house was packed today, at what was actually an added performance after the original run sold out. And I'm very glad to have snagged a ticket to this Saturday matinee because I don't think I would've lasted at an after-work performance ending at midnight. The line to enter the opera house 10 minutes before curtain stretched the full length of Lincoln Center Plaza, and double-backed twice. I've never seen a crowd like that for the opera, with such rapturous applause. Timmy Chalamet, eat your heart out! How hard can it be really to create blockbuster opera all the time (I have a lot of ideas for the Met to attract audiences!)? I think the length actually works to its benefit. It makes it something more than just opera, but an endurance test to experience. People nowadays seek out experiences. It bodes well for the upcoming Ring cycle, which will reunite Yannick Nezet-Seguin with director Yuval Sharon and Soprano Lise Davidsen as Brunhilde. Seeing Davidsen live was incredible; this must be what it was like to see La Divina in her time. 

The set by Es Devlin is unconventional but inspired. It reminded me of a camera shutter or the barrel of a Skyfall-gun or an eye (with eyelid). At times it looked like a a James Turrell (the lighting by John Torres makes the characters glow). I liked that the singers are essentially elevated above the stage, aiding sight lines. There has been criticism about the cone shape making it hard to hear the singers over the orchestra. But that didn't really bother me. There's a delicacy to Davidsen's voice in the soft piano parts--but even if you're not hearing the note necessarily, you do still hear the shape of the phrase in the continuous melody. In Act I, there is a brilliant reference to Un Chien Andalou, the Bunuel/Dali movie that famously uses the Prelude to Tristan and Liebestod. Isolde holds up a dagger to Tristan's neck and the set perfectly mirrors the blade. It's so good it made me gasp. Only later did I realize the blade cuts the "eye", just like in the iconic scene from Un Chien Andalou. In Act II, the cone reveals segments that move in opposite directions separating the lovers. The production uses doubles, actors standing in for Tristan and Isolde doing a kind of performance art in slow motion in the foreground, seated at a table Marina Abramovic style. In Act I you don't quite get the meaning behind it. But in Acts II and III, they enter another spectral plane. They look down on themselves from a heavenly vantage point. The program quotes WH Auden about the yearning of their two souls to merge, a consummation impossible in the physical realm while they have bodies, and so their doubles allow them to to "leave" their bodies behind. The final coup is the ending, notoriously tragic but here ending not just with death but with a birth, confidently recontextualizing the Liebestod.

Chess (Broadway)

I bought these tickets because Lea Michele was going to be out this week. My co-worker advised that so long as Nicholas Christopher is there, it's worth seeing. And with just our luck, forty minutes before curtain mom got an email saying he would be out for both Wednesday performances. We didn't see that email, and when Anatoly first comes on stage, from the balcony I squinted real hard and concluded that was not Christopher on stage. Too late for a refund at that point. The understudies did valiantly but Christopher has this incredible baritone that we missed out on. Waiting for a cast recording to hear him sing Anthem. It looks like all the television appearances they've done did not include arguably the best, most famous song. 

The re-write of the book for this production was actually pretty decent. The jokes don't land, and in fact are really cringey trying to make contemporary jokes about our current politics. The Arbbiter's fourth-wall breaking was weird. But I liked the recontextualization of the show amidst SALT II negotiations and Able Archer exercises. I thought that was actually quite clever, giving the Cold War context more heft and meaning. And it was actually believable. The Cold War is a game of chess, and chess is a game within the game. And so the CIA and KGB are really pulling the strings behind the scenes to drive macro outcomes more important than this championship, even though there are personal stakes for our heroes with life and love on the line. 

The show is almost completely lacking in set. But the lighting is pretty good. It also suffers a bit with The Queen's Gambit problem, which is that chess is not that interesting. Here, they don't even attempt to show us the chess board. They sing about chess, speaking their moves aloud with no board to follow. The costumes are kind of bland, like something out of American Utopia or they're dressed like schoolkids from Matilda. And for much of the show, they sit on stage for no particular reason. The band on stage is fun!