Wonderful (A Boy And A Girl) (cinema)

Good Morning, my Beautiful Angel,

I took a short nap when I got home, still adjusting to the time change. Now I'm doing dishes & vacuuming. I love your post this morning, and I see that the weather in Middleton has come up quite a bit, and that makes me happy. One day, before too long, we will enjoy beautiful days together, in the sun, amongst trees with birds chirping in them, walking along hand in hand.

I'm off until 4:15, so I'm gonna finish cleaning, then maybe wander over to the Botanical Garden for a little bit, just to see what's blooming.

I'm basically around most of the day, a little bit here, a little bit there, and always close by.

I Love You, Elizabeth, and it's a wonderful feeling!  xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo  :):)

10pm : Good Evening, my Love. I just got back from my walk a few minutes ago. Been reading my Beatles book all evening, and at this pace I'll be able to finish it in the three allotted weeks before I have to return it. I saw your Eric Whitacre post and loved it. Now, are the lyrics for "A Boy And A Girl" also from an Octavio Paz poem? He kind of alludes to that in his comment in the post. I am not a poetry expert but I know enough to know that Paz was a great poet and writer. Wow, now I am impressed all over again!

Set to Whitacre's music, those words combine to form an incredible piece, which as you know had quite an effect on a certain person with the initials JAL.........

I will post this now, and then I'll be back in a few minutes. I Love You So Much, my Girl.

Love, your Boy.  xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo  :):)

11pm : I've been thinking about cinematography, and a recent effort I was really impressed by was "Prisoners" by Roger Deakins, which was just nominated for an Oscar, and I think it says something about the artistry of his work in that film, which was as grim as can be. I mean, the film itself is horrific, and I liked it but not everyone would, and it certainly is not for the squeamish. Films like "Prisoners" do not often wind up with Academy Award nominations, but the look of this film was just fantastic, and I noticed it right away, and the voters must have agreed, even if it didn't win. Nowdays, the technical level of cinematography is so high, and the technology and budgets available permit all kinds of camera movement, massive crane shots, drone shots, big sweeping 360 dolly shots, just all kinds of stuff, and it's also often enhanced by CGI and other computerised enhancement. Every summer blockbuster is an example of this, and even on films like the "Batman" series, the reliance on tech shots is so constant, that you kind of go "ho hum" after a while.

That's why you see all these critics describing movies as "a ride", as in : "A Hell Of A Thrill Ride"!

It gets to the point where you don't notice it anymore, and so, when you see a job like the one Deakins did on "Prisoners", you do notice, because there is a look, an artistry.

It's a gruesome film, just brutal, so I can't recommend it if you have difficulty with that stuff, and many do. But, for me, I really took notice of it's look, not something I automatically do nowdays.

Most of my favorites are from older films, and I will try to mention them when I think of them. Right off the bat, I will mention the films of Michaelangelo Antonioni as having some of the greatest camerawork I've seen, and especially in a film called "L 'Avventura", where every shot looks like a composed still photograph.

Another favorite is "Taxi Driver", which I think is Michael Chapman, not otherwise distinguished, but he captured the realism of the streets of New York, especially at night, and used an effect like having the streets wetted down before every shot so that the cornucopia of neon lights would be reflected and add even more to the color of the street scene.

These are just off the top of my head, from thousands of movies.

Of course, a great one is Terrence Malick's "Days Of Heaven", with it's famous wheat field shots.

Another favorite of mine (and one of my top ten films) is "Diary Of A Country Priest" by director Robert Bresson, an incredible filmmaker. I don't know the cinematographer, but you can Google it. Anyhow, the look (black and white) is somewhat grainy, with straightforward camera technique. Many mid-level or even low shots looking up at the Priest in question, who is slowly self destructing. It is interesting to pay attention to camera angles, and how they enhance or "direct" a scene. An angle affects the viewer's emotional connection to the scene, to a character. There is no grand cinematic style in a film like "Country Priest", and yet, the look of the depressed French countryside in that film is something you will never forget. The close-ups on the Priest, the shots of him doing something as simple as parking his bicycle, are considered with the utmost artistry. It's a naturalistic approach, and it's intuitive. Robert Bresson obviously knew his technical stuff, which he demonstrated in many other films. He developed a camera style where he would have his cinematographer show you only a segment of an image. For instance, if a man was riding away on a horse, you'd see a quadrant of the image. You'd see the right-front leg of the horse, and the bottom of the man's leg in the stirrup, and you'd see the motion of the galloping horse. It became a unique style for him, used in several films. But in "Diary Of A Country Priest", he and his cameraman truly transport you to the French countryside, in a way in which you don't notice, because the camera is not obtrusive.

So again, out of thousands of films, these are just a few "off the top", and if I were to come up with a list, there would be all kinds of films on there, in every style from every era. These are just a few I was thinking of as I wrote.

So I will see you in the morning, and you know that I triple Love You (love, love, love).

Yes I do.  xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo  :):)