Tonight is the first Thursday of the Fall Semester at CSUN, and for the first time since late August 2008, I was not at the Armer Theater watching the first movie of a semester-long retrospective on a world renowned director. Just as important as the films was the curator and host of our retrospectives, Professor Tim, who always gave an informative and interesting introduction to every movie, often including relevant documentary material such as an interview with the director or "making of" footage.
Professor Tim was the heart and soul of the CSUN Cinematheque. I saw close to 250 movies at the Armer, over a period of nine years, every Thursday night that school was in session, and the Professor and his presentation and knowledge of international film was one of the main reasons I rarely missed a week.
As you know, we lost our beloved Thursday night Cinematheque to a stupid and deliberate CSUN political agenda, and so that is why I was not at the Armer tonight as I have been for the past nine years.
So I decided to do a Cinematheque of my own, inside The Tiny Apartment for an audience of one. You can call it The Tiny Theater. I am the audience, still occupying my front row seat, and I am doing it - at least for this one semester - to honor Professor Tim, who gave us film fans so much for almost a decade.
I am also doing it because I love movies and I watch truckloads of them as you know, but for this semester, we are gonna do The Cinematheque every Thursday night at my pad, and we are gonna watch as many Mizoguchi movies as we can get our hands on. Kenji Mizoguchi was going to be the director we were going to feature this Fall. It wasn't to be, at CSUN at any rate, but I got a hold of a four pack of early Mizoguchi films from the Eclipse label, an offshoot of Criterion, and I can get four or five more from the Libe, so we will have a fair retrospective of our own.
I began tonight with the first film from my four pack, entitled "Osaka Elegy". I will start by saying that I expected Mizoguchi to be at least somewhat Ozu-like, very Japanese with stationary camera shots and sedate conversations between characters that slowly build to high dramatic situations.
Instead, I think that Mizoguchi - at least on first view of his early work - is more like Kurosawa and not immune to American motion picture influences.
"Osaka Elegy" is very hard-boiled, almost Noir-like, and I was surprised to discover that it was made in 1936, years before Noir came into the mainstream. In fact, this film was almost like a combination of a pre-Code Hollywood style morality drama with the look of a film noir, photographed as it is in shadows and foggy nighttime streetscapes.
Actress Isuzu Yamada, only 19 here but later to go on to prominence in Japanese films, plays Ayako, the nubile daughter of a single father who is out of work and taken to drinking all day. She has a job as a telephone operator for a pharmaceutical company, where her boyfriend also works as a salesman. Ayako is attractive, a fact noted by her lecherous boss Mr. Asai, who owns the company. At the beginning of the movie, we see Mr. Asai at home, verbally abusing his female servants and his wife as well. He is a full-on mysoginist, and right away we see the feminist perspective that Mizoguchi became known for. I use the term "feminist" in a non-political way here, because I cannot stand the politicised version of feminism. Mizoguchi presented the plight of Japanese women in a humanitarian light.
But Mr. Asai, the owner of the company, thinks he can have whatever he wants, and what he wants is Ayako. He has leverage on her, because he knows that her broken down father owes money to his former employer and is facing charges of embezzlement if he cannot pay back the debt. Mr. Asai tries charming Ayako, his employee, but he also waves her father's debt in her face, and as disgusted as she is, she chooses to sleep with her boss so that he will pay her dad's debt.
And Ayako is not portrayed as an altogether demure character to begin with. She is aware of her sex appeal, and once she sees the power it generates for her, she ditches her good-guy boyfriend and goes where the money leads her. Soon she is not only able to pay her father's debt, but also to pay for her conservative brother's college tuition, unbeknownst to him.
In doing all of this, in sleeping with her boss and her bosses' best friend (an even worse lowlife), Ayako winds up in over her head as you might expect, and so she calls on her one time boyfriend, the good guy, and asks him to marry her, for she is now in deep trouble with the bad guys.
That is all I will tell you about the plot, which is expertly carried by the acting of young Miss Yamada, who lived to be 95 and made many movies.
Director Kenji Mizoguchi, who is widely regarded as one of Japan's top three directors along with Yasujiro Ozu and Akira Kurosawa, had been making movies since the Silent era. Not many of his more than 100 films are available on dvd, but judging from the start of my own personal Cinematheque at The Tiny, we are in for a treat in the coming weeks if "Osaka Elegy" is anything to go by.
So far, though admittedly after only one week, we are dealing with a non-traditional Japanese filmmaker, one who was willing to throw women's issues in the face of Imperial Japan during the most aggressive period of it's existence just prior to WW2.
Ozu was also a champion for women, every bit as potent though in a more philosophical way.
But it looks like Mizoguchi went for the jugular.
Two humongous Thumbs Up then, for "Osaka Elegy". What a great start to this mini-retrospective of the films of Mizoguchi. See you next Thursday night at The Tiny Theater for the next one. :)
And I will see you in the morning, as usual. xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
Friday, August 31, 2018
Thursday, August 30, 2018
Yes featuring ARW at The Greek Theater
Tonight I went to see Yes at The Greek Theater, and because there are two touring versions of Yes nowdays, I am referring to the ARW unit, the one with Jon Anderson, Trevor Rabin and Rick Wakeman (rounded out by two fantastic session musicians on bass and drums). To me, you can't have Yes without Jon Anderson, for it is his voice above all that makes their music so unique.
Let me start by saying that the traffic was horrendous on the way down there. Positively apocalyptic. I was stuck first on the 101 freeway and then on the streets of Hollywood and I thought for sure I was gonna miss the first fifteen minutes of the concert, which was scheduled to start at 7:30. But I somehow made it to my spot at the bottom of the hill, just off Los Feliz, where I park for free to avoid the $25 Greek parking fee, and by 7:15 I was walking as fast as I could the one mile distance from car to Greek Theater, uphill, good thing I'm a hiker. I got in line precisely at 7:30 - a long line, letting one person in at a time with a TSA-level security check - and I expected to hear the crowd roar inside the theater at any moment as the band came onstage. I was anxious because I am one of those people where, if I miss even half a song at a concert, it kind of ruins it for me. Same with movies, where I would never even consider entering a theater even as the opening credits were rolling.
The reason is because it just ain't right.
I am not a casual fan of music, or movies. But this rule applies especially to concerts, which are sacred to me. If I miss the first song - which thankfully has only happened a handful of times in 44 years of concertgoing - then it feels to me like I have missed the whole concert. That may sound ridiculous, but it's just the way it is for me.
So I was waiting in this freaking TSA line, where it was taking forever to let people in, and I was stressing and saying "never again" (also because of the traffic), and somehow I finally got through the security checkpoint and into the theater itself.
It took me three more minutes to get to my seat, and I kid you not, as I was stepping gingerly past the already seated people in my row, the lights went down.
Yes came on stage about 20 seconds after I got to my seat.
Then the music started and all the stress from the horrible commute just drained out of me. I absolutely revere these guys and I was locked in from Note One.
The two hour set was a combination of the more pop-oriented music from the "90125" Trevor Rabin era and the longer, landmark progressive pieces from the band's early period in the 1970s. I was not initially a big fan of 1980s Yes music, but as time went by I came to appreciate it more and more. It was "Yes with hooks", and though the songs were shorter they still retained core elements of the original sound.
Yes has had many members over the years. Three different guitarists, beginning with Peter Banks, then Steve Howe, who is most closely associated with the classic Yes sound, and finally Trevor Rabin, who helped redefine the sound into the 80s.
Yes has also had four different keyboardists, beginning with Tony Kaye, who played with them on the early formative albums and up to their first classic, "The Yes Album" in 1971 (or was it 1970?). Then Rick Wakeman joined, in 1971 when he was only 22 years old, and he remained for most of the band's classic progressive run on albums like "Fragile", "Close To The Edge" and "Tales From Topographic Oceans". Swiss genius Patrick Moraz was brought in to play on one album, "Relayer" in 1974, that many people consider to be the band's most advanced work. Finally, there was Geoff Downes, who first played with Yes on the "Drama" album in 1980, when Jon Anderson was first replaced by another singer, Trevor Horne.
There have also been two drummers, the legendary Bill Bruford and then the sturdy Alan White, who was with the band since 1974 and now plays with Steve Howe in the other Yes.
Confused? If so, it is understandable.
There was only one instrument that was only ever played by a single member, and that was the bass, played by the musical giant Chris Squire. He was the only guy who played on every Yes album, and to some folks, he was the driving force behind the band. I won't argue that point, because I think that with Yes, you have several musical forces, and one overall genius, that being the singer and lyricist Jon Anderson.
Jon will turn 74 in a couple months, but onstage you would guess him early 60s. His voice is about 94% of what it was at his peak, which is not too shabby and in fact it's great.
The music is so spiritual and it harkens back to a time when experimental music was encouraged and celebrated, and this encouraging and supportive spirit resulted in a waterfall of truly inspired music during the period of about 1972 to 1976.
At the concert tonight, I was thinking, "I can hardly imagine music like this".
The music of Yes has meant - and means - so much to me that I cannot put it's meaning into words.
I felt these indescribable feelings as I watched the band from my seat, about one third of the way back, in the center.
Rick Wakeman now holds the record for Musician Who Has Elapsed The Longest Time Period Between First Concert Witnessed and Most Recent Concert Witnessed.
I first saw Rick Wakeman, as a solo act, at the Hollywood Bowl in September 1974. He was my third concert ever, so - granting him a few days leeway as we are still in August - Mr. Wakeman holds the record at 44 years between first concert and most recent. Right behind him is Alice Cooper at 43 years.
Then you have Sparks, who in November will come in at 43 years, Todd Rundgren, at 41 years, and Black Sabbath at 40 years. Van Halen has an outside shot at joining the 40 Year Club if they ever play again, for I first saw them in 1976.
Watching Yes tonight, and even Jon Anderson at age 74, I could see them going for another ten years at least.
We are in a new age of human potential and lifespan.
I don't really know what to say about the music except that it means more to me than I can say, because it touches me in my spirit, especially when performed live by the artists themselves.
See you in the morning. xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
Let me start by saying that the traffic was horrendous on the way down there. Positively apocalyptic. I was stuck first on the 101 freeway and then on the streets of Hollywood and I thought for sure I was gonna miss the first fifteen minutes of the concert, which was scheduled to start at 7:30. But I somehow made it to my spot at the bottom of the hill, just off Los Feliz, where I park for free to avoid the $25 Greek parking fee, and by 7:15 I was walking as fast as I could the one mile distance from car to Greek Theater, uphill, good thing I'm a hiker. I got in line precisely at 7:30 - a long line, letting one person in at a time with a TSA-level security check - and I expected to hear the crowd roar inside the theater at any moment as the band came onstage. I was anxious because I am one of those people where, if I miss even half a song at a concert, it kind of ruins it for me. Same with movies, where I would never even consider entering a theater even as the opening credits were rolling.
The reason is because it just ain't right.
I am not a casual fan of music, or movies. But this rule applies especially to concerts, which are sacred to me. If I miss the first song - which thankfully has only happened a handful of times in 44 years of concertgoing - then it feels to me like I have missed the whole concert. That may sound ridiculous, but it's just the way it is for me.
So I was waiting in this freaking TSA line, where it was taking forever to let people in, and I was stressing and saying "never again" (also because of the traffic), and somehow I finally got through the security checkpoint and into the theater itself.
It took me three more minutes to get to my seat, and I kid you not, as I was stepping gingerly past the already seated people in my row, the lights went down.
Yes came on stage about 20 seconds after I got to my seat.
Then the music started and all the stress from the horrible commute just drained out of me. I absolutely revere these guys and I was locked in from Note One.
The two hour set was a combination of the more pop-oriented music from the "90125" Trevor Rabin era and the longer, landmark progressive pieces from the band's early period in the 1970s. I was not initially a big fan of 1980s Yes music, but as time went by I came to appreciate it more and more. It was "Yes with hooks", and though the songs were shorter they still retained core elements of the original sound.
Yes has had many members over the years. Three different guitarists, beginning with Peter Banks, then Steve Howe, who is most closely associated with the classic Yes sound, and finally Trevor Rabin, who helped redefine the sound into the 80s.
Yes has also had four different keyboardists, beginning with Tony Kaye, who played with them on the early formative albums and up to their first classic, "The Yes Album" in 1971 (or was it 1970?). Then Rick Wakeman joined, in 1971 when he was only 22 years old, and he remained for most of the band's classic progressive run on albums like "Fragile", "Close To The Edge" and "Tales From Topographic Oceans". Swiss genius Patrick Moraz was brought in to play on one album, "Relayer" in 1974, that many people consider to be the band's most advanced work. Finally, there was Geoff Downes, who first played with Yes on the "Drama" album in 1980, when Jon Anderson was first replaced by another singer, Trevor Horne.
There have also been two drummers, the legendary Bill Bruford and then the sturdy Alan White, who was with the band since 1974 and now plays with Steve Howe in the other Yes.
Confused? If so, it is understandable.
There was only one instrument that was only ever played by a single member, and that was the bass, played by the musical giant Chris Squire. He was the only guy who played on every Yes album, and to some folks, he was the driving force behind the band. I won't argue that point, because I think that with Yes, you have several musical forces, and one overall genius, that being the singer and lyricist Jon Anderson.
Jon will turn 74 in a couple months, but onstage you would guess him early 60s. His voice is about 94% of what it was at his peak, which is not too shabby and in fact it's great.
The music is so spiritual and it harkens back to a time when experimental music was encouraged and celebrated, and this encouraging and supportive spirit resulted in a waterfall of truly inspired music during the period of about 1972 to 1976.
At the concert tonight, I was thinking, "I can hardly imagine music like this".
The music of Yes has meant - and means - so much to me that I cannot put it's meaning into words.
I felt these indescribable feelings as I watched the band from my seat, about one third of the way back, in the center.
Rick Wakeman now holds the record for Musician Who Has Elapsed The Longest Time Period Between First Concert Witnessed and Most Recent Concert Witnessed.
I first saw Rick Wakeman, as a solo act, at the Hollywood Bowl in September 1974. He was my third concert ever, so - granting him a few days leeway as we are still in August - Mr. Wakeman holds the record at 44 years between first concert and most recent. Right behind him is Alice Cooper at 43 years.
Then you have Sparks, who in November will come in at 43 years, Todd Rundgren, at 41 years, and Black Sabbath at 40 years. Van Halen has an outside shot at joining the 40 Year Club if they ever play again, for I first saw them in 1976.
Watching Yes tonight, and even Jon Anderson at age 74, I could see them going for another ten years at least.
We are in a new age of human potential and lifespan.
I don't really know what to say about the music except that it means more to me than I can say, because it touches me in my spirit, especially when performed live by the artists themselves.
See you in the morning. xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
Wednesday, August 29, 2018
"Gunsight Ridge"
I'm back. Sorry I didn't write last night but it was the usual double whammy of reasons : 1) I didn't have a movie to review, and 2) I could think of nothing to ad-lib about. Grim came over again and wanted to read me some articles about Trump, so we went over to campus and sat at the same table from a few nights ago. This was last night. Tonight I did watch a movie, which is why I am back. I'd rather write about watching a Western than about having a Trump discussion with Grim. All I want concerning Trump is to not have to think about him any more.
Tonight's movie was "Gunsight Ridge" (1957), starring the ultra reliable Joel McCrea as an undercover agent for a stagecoach line. This line, fictionalised for the movie but similar to Wells Fargo, carries not only passengers but also large sums of cash for bank transactions. The stage McCrea is riding in is intercepted on the trail and then robbed by two men. One man's bandanna falls from his face during the robbery and he is identified. Other passengers riding in the stagecoach know him from town. This robber turns up dead, though, discovered by McCrea and the local Sheriff in the brush near where the robbery took place. This narrows the search down to a hunt for a single robber, who is now also a killer.
It's a great setup for a plot that has unusual elements not ordinarily seen in a Western framework. For one thing, the lead stagecoach robber (played by handsome Noir actor Mark Stevens) is a psychologically damaged pianist, who gave up playing when his concert career failed to materialise. He plays occasionally now, when he spies a piano in a rooming house, but when a pretty woman compliments him, it only fuels his anger and frustration. He needs to play music and yet it torments him.
Now that is indeed an unusual character trait in a Western.
He has an everyday occupation as a gold miner, barely scraping by, who supplements his meager income by playing cards in the local saloon. His demeanor is so smooth that he is known as "Velvet". But the observant Joel McCrea sees something in Velvet's eyes and body language that causes him to suspect the outwardly law abiding Velvet as the man who led the armed robbery on his stagecoach.
As McCrea's suspicion mounts, Velvet's nerves unravel and he commits more brazen crimes, like a bank robbery in full view of the town square. Now Velvet is coming unglued and piling up a body count. Only Joel McCrea can stop him.
"Gunsight Ridge" is one of the movies included in my Western four pack dvd set that I got from Amazon for about $3.50. I had already watched and reviewed one of the movies, "Gun Belt", a week or two ago, and was impressed with it's quality. Now I am doubly and even triply impressed with this set, because "Gunsight Ridge", while also technically a B-Movie, has top level production values throughout. Shot in phenomenal black and white in an amazing sandstone sector of Arizona, the film's look is as iconic as any by John Ford or Anthony Mann. The acting, especially by Mark Stevens, elevates the Western Bad Guy basics to a humanistic level. Velvet is a violent criminal, but not a cliche. He is equal parts desperate, wanting to get caught, and outlaw, flaunting his villainy. And he is a musician.....
There is a ton of other stuff going on in "Gunsight Ridge", which - just because of it's name - should be considered a classic of the genre. All kinds of characters step in and out of the story, including an elderly Sheriff intent on proving his mettle one last time; a gang of troublesome local ranch hands who get blamed for one of Velvet's murders, and a young lonely farm girl, played by the tragic Caroline Craig, who is so desperate for company that she protects and feeds Velvet when he shows up at her house in his final act as a fugitive.
It's beyond classic, because it's got a ton of story, it's shot in black and white in a location I would love to see, because it starts Joel McCrea and because it looks and feels authentic. /////
That's all I know for tonight (as Dad would say). xoxoxoxoxooxoxoxoxoxo :):)
Tonight's movie was "Gunsight Ridge" (1957), starring the ultra reliable Joel McCrea as an undercover agent for a stagecoach line. This line, fictionalised for the movie but similar to Wells Fargo, carries not only passengers but also large sums of cash for bank transactions. The stage McCrea is riding in is intercepted on the trail and then robbed by two men. One man's bandanna falls from his face during the robbery and he is identified. Other passengers riding in the stagecoach know him from town. This robber turns up dead, though, discovered by McCrea and the local Sheriff in the brush near where the robbery took place. This narrows the search down to a hunt for a single robber, who is now also a killer.
It's a great setup for a plot that has unusual elements not ordinarily seen in a Western framework. For one thing, the lead stagecoach robber (played by handsome Noir actor Mark Stevens) is a psychologically damaged pianist, who gave up playing when his concert career failed to materialise. He plays occasionally now, when he spies a piano in a rooming house, but when a pretty woman compliments him, it only fuels his anger and frustration. He needs to play music and yet it torments him.
Now that is indeed an unusual character trait in a Western.
He has an everyday occupation as a gold miner, barely scraping by, who supplements his meager income by playing cards in the local saloon. His demeanor is so smooth that he is known as "Velvet". But the observant Joel McCrea sees something in Velvet's eyes and body language that causes him to suspect the outwardly law abiding Velvet as the man who led the armed robbery on his stagecoach.
As McCrea's suspicion mounts, Velvet's nerves unravel and he commits more brazen crimes, like a bank robbery in full view of the town square. Now Velvet is coming unglued and piling up a body count. Only Joel McCrea can stop him.
"Gunsight Ridge" is one of the movies included in my Western four pack dvd set that I got from Amazon for about $3.50. I had already watched and reviewed one of the movies, "Gun Belt", a week or two ago, and was impressed with it's quality. Now I am doubly and even triply impressed with this set, because "Gunsight Ridge", while also technically a B-Movie, has top level production values throughout. Shot in phenomenal black and white in an amazing sandstone sector of Arizona, the film's look is as iconic as any by John Ford or Anthony Mann. The acting, especially by Mark Stevens, elevates the Western Bad Guy basics to a humanistic level. Velvet is a violent criminal, but not a cliche. He is equal parts desperate, wanting to get caught, and outlaw, flaunting his villainy. And he is a musician.....
There is a ton of other stuff going on in "Gunsight Ridge", which - just because of it's name - should be considered a classic of the genre. All kinds of characters step in and out of the story, including an elderly Sheriff intent on proving his mettle one last time; a gang of troublesome local ranch hands who get blamed for one of Velvet's murders, and a young lonely farm girl, played by the tragic Caroline Craig, who is so desperate for company that she protects and feeds Velvet when he shows up at her house in his final act as a fugitive.
It's beyond classic, because it's got a ton of story, it's shot in black and white in a location I would love to see, because it starts Joel McCrea and because it looks and feels authentic. /////
That's all I know for tonight (as Dad would say). xoxoxoxoxooxoxoxoxoxo :):)
Monday, August 27, 2018
"The Cabinet Of Dr. Caligari" + Good Singin' + Affektenlehre
Tonight I watched "The Cabinet Of Dr. Caligari" (1920), the legendary Silent masterpiece of German Expressionism. It's funny because you would think that I - a huge fan of horror and cinema in general - would have already seen "Caligari" by now, and multiple times at that. But I saw the dvd at Northridge Libe yesterday (when I also checked out "To Be Or Not To Be"), and I thought, "y'know....I'm not sure if I've actually seen 'Dr Caligari' ". I knew I'd seen parts of it over the years, maybe on TCM or PBS, but as I thought about it I came to the conclusion that I'd never seen it from start to finish.
"Gotta remedy that", I thought, and I did this evening. If you have heard of the movie or are aware of German Expressionism, you have probably seen images of the famous sets for this movie, which are set up on small stages and painted to look like a warped version of reality. Windows are tilted and curved, doorframes are canted. Building facades are painted on walls and are two dimensional. The film is staged as a play, but it plays like a film because the sets are so unusual and varied, and because the editor cuts away between scenes or fades to black, as if you were changing locations in real life.
Conrad Veidt plays "Caesare", a Somnabulist (sleepwalker) who, according to his caretaker, has been asleep for the entirety of his 23 years of life. The caretaker is a circus barker who takes Caesare to country fairs in order to exhibit him to make money. Patrons are told that Caesare can be wakened for brief periods, to answer questions from the audience and also make predictions like a fortune teller.
Right off the bat, a young man asks him "how long am I going to live"? Caesare replies that he will not live to see the morning. So there you have one hell of a setup that plays great, even as a silent movie. "Cabinet" is 75 minutes long and it staged in six parts, so each part is apprx. 12 minutes long give or take. Caesare lives in a box (the "Cabinet" of the title) inside Dr. Calgari's tiny little shack at the dead end of a street. The doctor himself is the head of an Insane Asylum.
But now I've told you too much. :)
The main reason to see "Dr. Caligari" is because of the art direction and the sets because they are part of film history and they still have the power 98 years later to make quite an impression on the viewer. They are simple sets, but they were created as psychological art, to describe the madness that has overtaken the life of the protagonist Francis, a nice young man whose fiance has been abducted by Caesare, who is in turn being manipulated by the evil and mesmeric Caligari.
But the sets are not the only reason to see this film. Conrad Veidt made his name playing "Caesare", who is scary even though he's asleep, and Veidt went on to become a movie star in Hollywood, even having a major role in "Casablanca", one of the most famous films of all time. The other actors, though not as well known, all came out of the German theater of the early 20th century and represented the experimentation that was encouraged during the Weimar Republic before Hitler took over. He would have hated this film, which is another great reason to see it. :)
Mostly, though, just see it because it is "The Cabinet Of Dr. Caligari". It is beyond legendary.
Yeah, it's Silent, but don't let that stop you. You might discover that you like Silent films, and "Caligari" is only an hour and fifteen minutes, so it's a piece of cake. Watch it around Halloween.
Me, I'll be moving on to "The Man Who Laughs" by Paul Leni. If you ever wanna see a creepy face, Google "The Man Who Laughs". He was the inspiration for "The Joker" from "Batman". ////
Good singing in church this morn. Afterward I drove to Burbank to take Sophie shopping out at the apocalyptically enormous Burbank Mall. The entire population was there, but we had a good time and got the job done.
I am reading, in my Dr. Farrell book "Microcosm and Medium" about the Baroque musical principle of Affektenlerhe, which has to do with intervals and ratios of notes on the musical scale and how they relate to universal human feelings.
Google "Affektenlehre" and also the "Anthropic Cosmological Principle" which has to do with the ancient Greek philosophical idea that Man is a Microcosm (a small Universe) in relation to the Macanthropos, the Universe itself.
I won't try to describe it, for it is Sunday night and the Flintstone Toothpicks are in place. So just Google it. See you in the morning. xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
"Gotta remedy that", I thought, and I did this evening. If you have heard of the movie or are aware of German Expressionism, you have probably seen images of the famous sets for this movie, which are set up on small stages and painted to look like a warped version of reality. Windows are tilted and curved, doorframes are canted. Building facades are painted on walls and are two dimensional. The film is staged as a play, but it plays like a film because the sets are so unusual and varied, and because the editor cuts away between scenes or fades to black, as if you were changing locations in real life.
Conrad Veidt plays "Caesare", a Somnabulist (sleepwalker) who, according to his caretaker, has been asleep for the entirety of his 23 years of life. The caretaker is a circus barker who takes Caesare to country fairs in order to exhibit him to make money. Patrons are told that Caesare can be wakened for brief periods, to answer questions from the audience and also make predictions like a fortune teller.
Right off the bat, a young man asks him "how long am I going to live"? Caesare replies that he will not live to see the morning. So there you have one hell of a setup that plays great, even as a silent movie. "Cabinet" is 75 minutes long and it staged in six parts, so each part is apprx. 12 minutes long give or take. Caesare lives in a box (the "Cabinet" of the title) inside Dr. Calgari's tiny little shack at the dead end of a street. The doctor himself is the head of an Insane Asylum.
But now I've told you too much. :)
The main reason to see "Dr. Caligari" is because of the art direction and the sets because they are part of film history and they still have the power 98 years later to make quite an impression on the viewer. They are simple sets, but they were created as psychological art, to describe the madness that has overtaken the life of the protagonist Francis, a nice young man whose fiance has been abducted by Caesare, who is in turn being manipulated by the evil and mesmeric Caligari.
But the sets are not the only reason to see this film. Conrad Veidt made his name playing "Caesare", who is scary even though he's asleep, and Veidt went on to become a movie star in Hollywood, even having a major role in "Casablanca", one of the most famous films of all time. The other actors, though not as well known, all came out of the German theater of the early 20th century and represented the experimentation that was encouraged during the Weimar Republic before Hitler took over. He would have hated this film, which is another great reason to see it. :)
Mostly, though, just see it because it is "The Cabinet Of Dr. Caligari". It is beyond legendary.
Yeah, it's Silent, but don't let that stop you. You might discover that you like Silent films, and "Caligari" is only an hour and fifteen minutes, so it's a piece of cake. Watch it around Halloween.
Me, I'll be moving on to "The Man Who Laughs" by Paul Leni. If you ever wanna see a creepy face, Google "The Man Who Laughs". He was the inspiration for "The Joker" from "Batman". ////
Good singing in church this morn. Afterward I drove to Burbank to take Sophie shopping out at the apocalyptically enormous Burbank Mall. The entire population was there, but we had a good time and got the job done.
I am reading, in my Dr. Farrell book "Microcosm and Medium" about the Baroque musical principle of Affektenlerhe, which has to do with intervals and ratios of notes on the musical scale and how they relate to universal human feelings.
Google "Affektenlehre" and also the "Anthropic Cosmological Principle" which has to do with the ancient Greek philosophical idea that Man is a Microcosm (a small Universe) in relation to the Macanthropos, the Universe itself.
I won't try to describe it, for it is Sunday night and the Flintstone Toothpicks are in place. So just Google it. See you in the morning. xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
Sunday, August 26, 2018
"To Be Or Not To Be" with Carole Lombard & Jack Benny
Tonight I watched another classic Screwball Comedy from director Ernst Lubitsch : "To Be Or Not To Be" (1942), starring Carole Lombard and Jack Benny. You may recall that I became a fan of Lubitsch after seeing his "Trouble In Paradise" a couple of months ago. That one starred Kay Francis, Herbert Marshall and Miriam Hopkins, and I was so impressed with how streamlined everything was, from the editing to the dialogue, to the motion of the actors, that I put a Lubitsch Bookmark in the back of my mind so that I would remember to look for more of his films, which flow like water. This afternoon I was at Northridge Libe returning some dvds, and I happened to see "To Be Or Not To Be" on the shelf. I knew the title, it's a famous movie and this release of it is on Criterion, and it also had the extra serendipitous bonus of having a Shakespearean title, just as we are in the midst of Shakespearemania.
So I had to check it out, and it was note perfect. Benny and Lombard play husband and wife acting team Joseph and Maria Tura, stars of the Polish stage. They have an acting troupe in Warsaw, and they are about to stage a farce about Nazism, called "The Gestapo". The only trouble is that the time is August 1939. WW2 starts on September 1st, when Hitler's troops storm into Poland. The actors have to tear down their promotional placards for "The Gestapo" before the real Gestapo sees them.
They do this successfully, and to keep their theater open under Nazi occupation, they stage Shakespeare's "Hamlet" instead, with Jack Benny in the lead role. Those of us old enough to remember Jack Benny can imagine him as Hamlet, right? Also, he is supposed to be a Polish stage actor, but he talks like Jack Benny, and it must have been a Lubitsch decision to have everyone in the cast speak in their natural American voices even though they are all supposed to be Polish or German, and it works because it adds to the comedy.
Lubitsch plays the Nazis as buffoons, and in this respect you can see where Mel Brooks got his humor for "The Producers" and a lot of his other styles as well. Robert Stack plays an All-American Bomber Pilot who just happens to be Polish. He is infatuated with Carole Lombard as "Maria Tura". He has seen all of her plays and read all of her magazine articles, and he is at every performance of the Turas' current production of "Hamlet". Stack doesn't care that she is married, and sneaks backstage to profess his love for her while her husband Jack Benny is hamming up the Hamlet soliloquy that begins with "To be, or not to be....".
Onstage, Benny notices the same tall, uniformed soldier walking out of the theater every time he begins Hamlet's famous speech, and he starts to suspect that something fishy is going on.
But this romantic triangle is only one aspect of the plot, and it is stashed away after 30 minutes or so because the Nazis are closing in and there are more pressing matters at hand.
As the local Gestapo leader becomes aware of Maria Tura, he wants to romance her himself, in order to convince her to become a Nazi spy.
The film plays as well as a thriller as it does as a comedy, and as was the case with our other recent Ernst Lubitsch movie "Trouble In Paradise", "To Be Or Not To Be" is seamless from start to finish. Every scene leads right into the next, no wasted words or edits, and the main thing about the "Lubitsch Touch", as it was called, is that he was an expert at knowing the visual and spacial geometries of filming a scene, and editing it, and knowing how it would look onscreen to a viewer, and so he knew down to a science just how to have his actors enter a room, or just how to move their shoulders, or adjust their stride. The human physical movement is a major part of the liquid flow of his films, as his actors arrive at their marks and deliver their expertly written lines with comic precision.
It looks effortless when you watch it, but when you stop and think about how such a movie was made, you realise that Lubitsch was a perfectionist. That's why his movies play as they do.
Carole Lombard was a well established star by the time she made "To Be Or Not To Be". She was a leading comedienne who would later on influence ladies like Lucille Ball and others. She had a celebrated romance and marriage to Clark Gable, who was coming off of the biggest box-office movie of all time, "Gone With The Wind". They had moved into a small ranch property in Encino here in the Valley.
Early in 1942, shortly after "To Be Or Not To Be" was completed, but before it was released in theaters, Carole Lombard and her mother were returning from a trip to Las Vegas, where they had been promoting the sale of war bonds. After takeoff to return home to Los Angeles, their plane crashed somewhere along the route and all onboard were killed.
Carole Lombard was 33. "To Be Or Not To Be" was her last film, and it is a five star classic.
Two huge thumbs up.
See you in the morning in church. xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
So I had to check it out, and it was note perfect. Benny and Lombard play husband and wife acting team Joseph and Maria Tura, stars of the Polish stage. They have an acting troupe in Warsaw, and they are about to stage a farce about Nazism, called "The Gestapo". The only trouble is that the time is August 1939. WW2 starts on September 1st, when Hitler's troops storm into Poland. The actors have to tear down their promotional placards for "The Gestapo" before the real Gestapo sees them.
They do this successfully, and to keep their theater open under Nazi occupation, they stage Shakespeare's "Hamlet" instead, with Jack Benny in the lead role. Those of us old enough to remember Jack Benny can imagine him as Hamlet, right? Also, he is supposed to be a Polish stage actor, but he talks like Jack Benny, and it must have been a Lubitsch decision to have everyone in the cast speak in their natural American voices even though they are all supposed to be Polish or German, and it works because it adds to the comedy.
Lubitsch plays the Nazis as buffoons, and in this respect you can see where Mel Brooks got his humor for "The Producers" and a lot of his other styles as well. Robert Stack plays an All-American Bomber Pilot who just happens to be Polish. He is infatuated with Carole Lombard as "Maria Tura". He has seen all of her plays and read all of her magazine articles, and he is at every performance of the Turas' current production of "Hamlet". Stack doesn't care that she is married, and sneaks backstage to profess his love for her while her husband Jack Benny is hamming up the Hamlet soliloquy that begins with "To be, or not to be....".
Onstage, Benny notices the same tall, uniformed soldier walking out of the theater every time he begins Hamlet's famous speech, and he starts to suspect that something fishy is going on.
But this romantic triangle is only one aspect of the plot, and it is stashed away after 30 minutes or so because the Nazis are closing in and there are more pressing matters at hand.
As the local Gestapo leader becomes aware of Maria Tura, he wants to romance her himself, in order to convince her to become a Nazi spy.
The film plays as well as a thriller as it does as a comedy, and as was the case with our other recent Ernst Lubitsch movie "Trouble In Paradise", "To Be Or Not To Be" is seamless from start to finish. Every scene leads right into the next, no wasted words or edits, and the main thing about the "Lubitsch Touch", as it was called, is that he was an expert at knowing the visual and spacial geometries of filming a scene, and editing it, and knowing how it would look onscreen to a viewer, and so he knew down to a science just how to have his actors enter a room, or just how to move their shoulders, or adjust their stride. The human physical movement is a major part of the liquid flow of his films, as his actors arrive at their marks and deliver their expertly written lines with comic precision.
It looks effortless when you watch it, but when you stop and think about how such a movie was made, you realise that Lubitsch was a perfectionist. That's why his movies play as they do.
Carole Lombard was a well established star by the time she made "To Be Or Not To Be". She was a leading comedienne who would later on influence ladies like Lucille Ball and others. She had a celebrated romance and marriage to Clark Gable, who was coming off of the biggest box-office movie of all time, "Gone With The Wind". They had moved into a small ranch property in Encino here in the Valley.
Early in 1942, shortly after "To Be Or Not To Be" was completed, but before it was released in theaters, Carole Lombard and her mother were returning from a trip to Las Vegas, where they had been promoting the sale of war bonds. After takeoff to return home to Los Angeles, their plane crashed somewhere along the route and all onboard were killed.
Carole Lombard was 33. "To Be Or Not To Be" was her last film, and it is a five star classic.
Two huge thumbs up.
See you in the morning in church. xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
Saturday, August 25, 2018
Grim Came Over + Starcrawler + Intent, David Lynch & Dirac
No movie again tonight (man, I'm slippin'..). Instead, Grimsley came over for a CSUN walk, and then we hung on on campus for a while. He wanted to tell me about an event he went to recently, the Echo Park Festival, which is one of those multi-venue deals where they close down a couple blocks of a street and have bands playing in all kinds of places from bookstores to maybe a small art gallery or curio shop and also hip, non-commercial coffee shops. It's what you would call a Street Fest, and in this case I think the street was Sunset Boulevard, on the eastern end near Los Angeles. You buy a ticket online or at the perimeter, and then you are free to enter the barricades and wander around to see any band you like, in any venue. Grim likes a lot of Indie stuff, and bands that lean toward punk or shock. He went to the festival mostly to see a new L.A. band that he says is his new favorite : Starcrawler.
They are young, average age probably 18 or 19. I know nothing about them because the L.A. band scene is not my thing, but Grim loves the Rock Star image they project onstage. The have a female lead singer named Arrow that he likes. For me, it's 1972 all over again, except that it's not 1972 anymore.
Well anyway, Grim and I don't have a lot in common except that we have been friends since 1974, so we hang out once in a while, and he is a good conversationalist. One thing we both agree on is that Trump Is Toast.
Hallelujah to the day he is gone, and may it not be too much longer in coming, thank You Lord. We have never had our country taken over by organised crime before, and it is most unpleasant.
I have finished the David Lynch book, and I think it is one of the greatest biographies I have ever read, and maybe the best. I have never even remotely heard of a person who has had a life similar to David Lynch, and I think that the experience of his life is the best example I can give to illustrate one of my favorite sayings, "Life Is Magic". You'd have to read the book to understand, but even aside from his work, and also because of it, Mr. Lynch has reaped the fruit of his Intentions (capital "I" on purpose). He understood as a teenager that self-realisation was about Intent, and making a declaration unto yourself to Be Yourself. He met a kid in high school whose Dad was a painter of fine art. The Dad was successful, but only locally known, in Virginia, but right then, upon meeting this man, his friend's father, David Lynch knew what he wanted to do, and what he wanted to be.
He wanted to be an Artist, just like Bushnell Keebler (the man's name). This news came out of the blue to David's parents, who were hoping their son would go to college and study a trade of one sort or another. But they ended up supporting his ambition to be a full time artist because once he began painting he showed immediate results.
That is Pure Intent at work.
That is Knowing Yourself, and Knowing Who You Are, not Who Society Or Anyone Else Thinks You Are.
That is how you Become Yourself, by Knowing Who You Are and Sticking To Your Guns with no compromise.
Now, it doesn't hurt to have someone who believes in you, and Lynch did.
But what if he had not believed in himself? Then his life story may have turned out different.
So, Intent is always the key, and we will not get into a long definition of it tonight because we have discussed it long ago. But we will say that Intent is private. It is an inner conversation between God, your Spirit, and You. It can be a whispered or spoken conversation, but it is mostly silent. It is an intuitive conversation, because you are conversing between realms.
But you are equipped to do this as a human. You are equipped to converse in silence, and to know God and yourself in this way. In fact, your psychic and intuitive powers are greater than your five sense observational powers. Your senses of sight, sound, smell, taste and touch may be easier to discern and understand on a conscious level, because that is the level of your waking life, your surface level.
But beneath is your subconscious, with no sight or sound, etc. No five senses. And that is where your Spirit is talking to you. God is in there too, silent mostly, but always responsive to any conversation that you begin. Intent is all about silence and this inner conversation between Yourself and God and Your Spirit, which is tethered above you but can soar at will.
You have experienced your Spirit soaring in your dreams, when you fly and go to places that in the morning, you know they exist. You know the places you have gone to in your most vivid dreams, exist.
And that is because your Spirit was at those places, as you slept, and was projecting them into your sleeping mind. Some dreams are mumbo-jumbo and abstract and disjointed. But other dreams have specific locations that repeat over time, and those dreams often involve flying or jumping way up high, or going down familiar paths.
That is your Spirit taking over while you are asleep.
I present this dream stuff as evidence that you and your Spirit are always in conversation on the subconscious level, even in your waking hours, and this is why I say that your subconscious intelligence and awareness is even more powerful and energetic than your conscious 5 Sense awareness.
Your conscious 5 Sense is just your Car, that you drive around in. Now, it is also incredibly powerful because it allows to to see all the beauty of the world, and to hear music and language, and to smell flowers and taste delicious food, and.....to touch.
Maybe most of all to Touch.
But it is in your subconscious that You Become You, by expressing your Intent to your Spirit and to God.
All of these things you should do all the time.
I know you already know all this stuff but I went off on a tangent and got carried away. :)
Now I am reading the biography of Paul Dirac, who seems to have known who he was since he was born. He was almost entirely directed inward, made only minimal conversation with anyone, and yet knew he had the information for Quantum Theory inside himself. He had his Intent handed to him and did not need to discover it, I think. But he did need to pursue it, and he did.
That's all for tonight. See you in the morning. xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
They are young, average age probably 18 or 19. I know nothing about them because the L.A. band scene is not my thing, but Grim loves the Rock Star image they project onstage. The have a female lead singer named Arrow that he likes. For me, it's 1972 all over again, except that it's not 1972 anymore.
Well anyway, Grim and I don't have a lot in common except that we have been friends since 1974, so we hang out once in a while, and he is a good conversationalist. One thing we both agree on is that Trump Is Toast.
Hallelujah to the day he is gone, and may it not be too much longer in coming, thank You Lord. We have never had our country taken over by organised crime before, and it is most unpleasant.
I have finished the David Lynch book, and I think it is one of the greatest biographies I have ever read, and maybe the best. I have never even remotely heard of a person who has had a life similar to David Lynch, and I think that the experience of his life is the best example I can give to illustrate one of my favorite sayings, "Life Is Magic". You'd have to read the book to understand, but even aside from his work, and also because of it, Mr. Lynch has reaped the fruit of his Intentions (capital "I" on purpose). He understood as a teenager that self-realisation was about Intent, and making a declaration unto yourself to Be Yourself. He met a kid in high school whose Dad was a painter of fine art. The Dad was successful, but only locally known, in Virginia, but right then, upon meeting this man, his friend's father, David Lynch knew what he wanted to do, and what he wanted to be.
He wanted to be an Artist, just like Bushnell Keebler (the man's name). This news came out of the blue to David's parents, who were hoping their son would go to college and study a trade of one sort or another. But they ended up supporting his ambition to be a full time artist because once he began painting he showed immediate results.
That is Pure Intent at work.
That is Knowing Yourself, and Knowing Who You Are, not Who Society Or Anyone Else Thinks You Are.
That is how you Become Yourself, by Knowing Who You Are and Sticking To Your Guns with no compromise.
Now, it doesn't hurt to have someone who believes in you, and Lynch did.
But what if he had not believed in himself? Then his life story may have turned out different.
So, Intent is always the key, and we will not get into a long definition of it tonight because we have discussed it long ago. But we will say that Intent is private. It is an inner conversation between God, your Spirit, and You. It can be a whispered or spoken conversation, but it is mostly silent. It is an intuitive conversation, because you are conversing between realms.
But you are equipped to do this as a human. You are equipped to converse in silence, and to know God and yourself in this way. In fact, your psychic and intuitive powers are greater than your five sense observational powers. Your senses of sight, sound, smell, taste and touch may be easier to discern and understand on a conscious level, because that is the level of your waking life, your surface level.
But beneath is your subconscious, with no sight or sound, etc. No five senses. And that is where your Spirit is talking to you. God is in there too, silent mostly, but always responsive to any conversation that you begin. Intent is all about silence and this inner conversation between Yourself and God and Your Spirit, which is tethered above you but can soar at will.
You have experienced your Spirit soaring in your dreams, when you fly and go to places that in the morning, you know they exist. You know the places you have gone to in your most vivid dreams, exist.
And that is because your Spirit was at those places, as you slept, and was projecting them into your sleeping mind. Some dreams are mumbo-jumbo and abstract and disjointed. But other dreams have specific locations that repeat over time, and those dreams often involve flying or jumping way up high, or going down familiar paths.
That is your Spirit taking over while you are asleep.
I present this dream stuff as evidence that you and your Spirit are always in conversation on the subconscious level, even in your waking hours, and this is why I say that your subconscious intelligence and awareness is even more powerful and energetic than your conscious 5 Sense awareness.
Your conscious 5 Sense is just your Car, that you drive around in. Now, it is also incredibly powerful because it allows to to see all the beauty of the world, and to hear music and language, and to smell flowers and taste delicious food, and.....to touch.
Maybe most of all to Touch.
But it is in your subconscious that You Become You, by expressing your Intent to your Spirit and to God.
All of these things you should do all the time.
I know you already know all this stuff but I went off on a tangent and got carried away. :)
Now I am reading the biography of Paul Dirac, who seems to have known who he was since he was born. He was almost entirely directed inward, made only minimal conversation with anyone, and yet knew he had the information for Quantum Theory inside himself. He had his Intent handed to him and did not need to discover it, I think. But he did need to pursue it, and he did.
That's all for tonight. See you in the morning. xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
Friday, August 24, 2018
The Boogeyman
No movie tonight. Instead I watched an episode of "Kolchak" that was about a guy who is part of a dream deprivation experiment at a science lab at Northwestern University. They've got the guy in a state of sleep, for six weeks!, but they keep him in the delta state and won't allow his brain to reach REM. He is hooked up to monitors by electrodes on his head and the doctors study him 24/7.
But then, a young lab assistant is killed one night. Police have only a flimsy suspect, who is released. A hippie is killed next, in an old shed beneath an apartment building where he went to smoke pot. Police have no idea who did it, but they later find a strange connection. The hippie was an acquaintance of the guy in the sleep study. That makes two recent murder victims who have ties to the sleeping man.
The Chicago police initially chalk it up to coincidence. How could the sleep guy have anything to do with the murders? He's asleep, for God's sake! But Kolchak is always a step ahead of the cops because he has had much experience with the supernatural. After three more deaths that all have a connection to the experiment, Kolchak tracks down a Cajun musician who is a friend of the sleeper. At all the murder sites, each victim was covered in a slimy green plant material. Kolchak had done some old school Googling, by interviewing a botanist, and he found out against the police' wishes that the slimy green stuff was Spanish Moss. The cops hate it when Kolchak goes supernatural on them because, hey - they don't believe in all that stuff. But Kolchak always does his homework, and when he talks to the Cajun musician, who is from Louisiana, he asks about the Spanish Moss........and at first the Cajun doesn't wanna talk about it. But then Kolchak pays him off, and he tells the old Bayou story of the Pere Malfait.
The Boogeyman.
I don't know about you, but maybe the very first guy I was ever scared of was The Boogeyman. This was when I was about four years old, maybe three and a half. I had heard that The Boogeyman hid in kid's closets, or under their beds. I remember asking my parents about that, and asking also if I could have a nightlight in my room, and could they leave my door ajar after tucking me in?
That's how bad The Boogeyman scared me when I was just becoming a Little Person.
It didn't last long, though. I don't recall how my fear ended, but I guess it was because The Boogeyman never did anything about it. He never came out of the closet; he never came out from under the bed.
Sorry, Mr. Boogeyman, but this ain't workin' for me. I'm not skeert no more.
So that was the end of that, and I went on to read and love every Stephen King book and all kinds of other horrible stuff.
It took a long time, but I think tonight that The Boogeyman was finally getting back at me and trying to re-establish himself. "C'mon, Ad....don't you remember me? I was hiding under your bed in 1963. Yeah, I was really under there! I know you don't believe in me anymore, but I did a show in 1974 called "Kolchak The Night Stalker", and it went over big! This time they were looking for me in the sewer, which may be a step or two beneath the bed, but it's been hard to maintain my status because kids don't believe in me anymore".
I felt a twinge of sadness for The Boogeyman when he told me that, and I offered to be his PR man when time permits.
Unfortunately, he didn't feel comfortable in that relationship, and I haven't heard from him since.
If you see The Boogeyman, or know anyone who knows him, tell them to give him my number, won't you? Thanks. ////
Elizabeth, it looks like there is gonna be a fair amount of water to drain at Pheasant Branch. The ground will be saturated and it will take a week or so for the water to sink in, but the main thing is if the trails are mostly intact. Our trails at Santa Susana survived the big rainstorms of 2017, with a bit of erosion. I think that if you guys don't get pounded by a lot of rain this fall, and if Pheasant Branch has the budget to fix the existing damage, it will be good as new before long. That's only my assessment from afar, knowing nothing about your situation except in comparison to our own weather damaged parks from the past two years. I think that landscapers can fix just about anything.
See you in the morning. xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
But then, a young lab assistant is killed one night. Police have only a flimsy suspect, who is released. A hippie is killed next, in an old shed beneath an apartment building where he went to smoke pot. Police have no idea who did it, but they later find a strange connection. The hippie was an acquaintance of the guy in the sleep study. That makes two recent murder victims who have ties to the sleeping man.
The Chicago police initially chalk it up to coincidence. How could the sleep guy have anything to do with the murders? He's asleep, for God's sake! But Kolchak is always a step ahead of the cops because he has had much experience with the supernatural. After three more deaths that all have a connection to the experiment, Kolchak tracks down a Cajun musician who is a friend of the sleeper. At all the murder sites, each victim was covered in a slimy green plant material. Kolchak had done some old school Googling, by interviewing a botanist, and he found out against the police' wishes that the slimy green stuff was Spanish Moss. The cops hate it when Kolchak goes supernatural on them because, hey - they don't believe in all that stuff. But Kolchak always does his homework, and when he talks to the Cajun musician, who is from Louisiana, he asks about the Spanish Moss........and at first the Cajun doesn't wanna talk about it. But then Kolchak pays him off, and he tells the old Bayou story of the Pere Malfait.
The Boogeyman.
I don't know about you, but maybe the very first guy I was ever scared of was The Boogeyman. This was when I was about four years old, maybe three and a half. I had heard that The Boogeyman hid in kid's closets, or under their beds. I remember asking my parents about that, and asking also if I could have a nightlight in my room, and could they leave my door ajar after tucking me in?
That's how bad The Boogeyman scared me when I was just becoming a Little Person.
It didn't last long, though. I don't recall how my fear ended, but I guess it was because The Boogeyman never did anything about it. He never came out of the closet; he never came out from under the bed.
Sorry, Mr. Boogeyman, but this ain't workin' for me. I'm not skeert no more.
So that was the end of that, and I went on to read and love every Stephen King book and all kinds of other horrible stuff.
It took a long time, but I think tonight that The Boogeyman was finally getting back at me and trying to re-establish himself. "C'mon, Ad....don't you remember me? I was hiding under your bed in 1963. Yeah, I was really under there! I know you don't believe in me anymore, but I did a show in 1974 called "Kolchak The Night Stalker", and it went over big! This time they were looking for me in the sewer, which may be a step or two beneath the bed, but it's been hard to maintain my status because kids don't believe in me anymore".
I felt a twinge of sadness for The Boogeyman when he told me that, and I offered to be his PR man when time permits.
Unfortunately, he didn't feel comfortable in that relationship, and I haven't heard from him since.
If you see The Boogeyman, or know anyone who knows him, tell them to give him my number, won't you? Thanks. ////
Elizabeth, it looks like there is gonna be a fair amount of water to drain at Pheasant Branch. The ground will be saturated and it will take a week or so for the water to sink in, but the main thing is if the trails are mostly intact. Our trails at Santa Susana survived the big rainstorms of 2017, with a bit of erosion. I think that if you guys don't get pounded by a lot of rain this fall, and if Pheasant Branch has the budget to fix the existing damage, it will be good as new before long. That's only my assessment from afar, knowing nothing about your situation except in comparison to our own weather damaged parks from the past two years. I think that landscapers can fix just about anything.
See you in the morning. xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
Thursday, August 23, 2018
Safe Is Good + New Music & Lynch Wisconsin Influence + "Gun Belt" & The Need For A Western Fix
Elizabeth, it was good to see on FB that you are safe after the floods, and I trust that you guys didn't suffer any damage. All looks good, with you at the keyboard working on music for a new film project. That's the spirit of creativity, and it reminds me of David Lynch - whose book has fascinated me - because he is constantly creating art, in one form or another, be it painting, photography, drawing, filming small projects, making music, or even making films and tv shows. The latter two are actually what he does least because they require crews and major backing. So even though his shows and movies are what he is most known for, he actually has spent more time creating personal art, at home.
I mention him also because - well, because I like mentioning him, haha - but also because he has a Wisconsin connection. His third wife Mary Sweeney is from Madison, and when Lynch was married to her from around 1992 - 2007, he spent a lot of time at her family home on Lake Mendota. He produced a lot of art there, and even worked on screenplays for "Lost Highway" and "The Straight Story", his most heartfelt and least weird movie that was partially filmed in Wisconsin. He is no longer married to Sweeney, but their son Riley was a major character in the new "Twin Peaks", and the period of his life spent at the house on the lake, when he had his own little motorboat to cruise around in and contemplate life, was a big influence on his work at the time.
Pretty cool, I think. :)
I am back at work, but you know I watched a movie, and!......drum roll....it wasn't a Shakespeare.
That could be construed as good or bad, I suppose, but I mean it as neither. It's only an observation because of the recent prevalence of WS material I've been consuming.
Nope, tonight I needed a Western Fix, and I knew I was gonna savor it because yesterday I had received in the mail, from Amazon, three separate dvd sets containing a total of 17 Westerns from the 40s and 50s. They are almost all B-Movies, but as we know from watching many Sci-Fi, Horror, Film Noir, and indeed Westerns, very often, B-Movies are better than the high grade stuff because they are so "for real".
B-Movies are professional, but they don't care about putting on an image. B-Movies are in your face, with realistic, blunt acting, solid camerawork and more often than not, above average scripts.
So I love 'em, I recommend 'em, and tonight I watched a great one, called "Gun Belt" (1953), starring George Montgomery as "Billy Ringo", one of two brothers and a nephew who make up the Three Ringos. As I watched, I was figuring John Lennon's age at the time - 13 - and was wondering if he'd seen this movie, because for sure the Ringo name in Western movies was an influence on dubbing Richard Starkey with that moniker. Starkey also wore a lot of rings, but it has been mentioned that the Western Ringo Factor may have planted the seed in young Lennon's mind.
Billy Ringo is a former gunslinger who has gone straight. He now owns a small farm and is about to marry, but just then his brother Matt Ringo breaks out of prison - organised by a casino owner - and Matt comes calling to his now-honest brother Billy, to help him rob a Wells Fargo Stage of half a million dollars. The robbery has been set up by the wealthy and powerful casino man. But he has a silent partner, a blackmailer by the name of Ike Clinton (a takeoff on the famous Western Clanton name), and Mr. Clinton wants in on the Wells robbery himself.
The plot deceptions and shifting loyalties were nearly Shakespearean, so in that way I felt I was inadvertently continuing the tradition. And I more than got my money's worth because not only was the story tight and the acting 100% Western (with lines like, "Hey Kid, go rustle up some grub"), but also because the whole thing was shot at Iverson Ranch, so I was seeing one Chatsworth location after another, mostly from Santa Susana and Garden Of The Gods. ////
Two Big Thumbs Up for "Gun Belt" and for the new stash of Westerns I have in hand.
I wish they'd made as many B-Grade Sci-Fi flicks, cause I need a new fix of those, too.
That's all for tonight. See you in the morning. xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
I mention him also because - well, because I like mentioning him, haha - but also because he has a Wisconsin connection. His third wife Mary Sweeney is from Madison, and when Lynch was married to her from around 1992 - 2007, he spent a lot of time at her family home on Lake Mendota. He produced a lot of art there, and even worked on screenplays for "Lost Highway" and "The Straight Story", his most heartfelt and least weird movie that was partially filmed in Wisconsin. He is no longer married to Sweeney, but their son Riley was a major character in the new "Twin Peaks", and the period of his life spent at the house on the lake, when he had his own little motorboat to cruise around in and contemplate life, was a big influence on his work at the time.
Pretty cool, I think. :)
I am back at work, but you know I watched a movie, and!......drum roll....it wasn't a Shakespeare.
That could be construed as good or bad, I suppose, but I mean it as neither. It's only an observation because of the recent prevalence of WS material I've been consuming.
Nope, tonight I needed a Western Fix, and I knew I was gonna savor it because yesterday I had received in the mail, from Amazon, three separate dvd sets containing a total of 17 Westerns from the 40s and 50s. They are almost all B-Movies, but as we know from watching many Sci-Fi, Horror, Film Noir, and indeed Westerns, very often, B-Movies are better than the high grade stuff because they are so "for real".
B-Movies are professional, but they don't care about putting on an image. B-Movies are in your face, with realistic, blunt acting, solid camerawork and more often than not, above average scripts.
So I love 'em, I recommend 'em, and tonight I watched a great one, called "Gun Belt" (1953), starring George Montgomery as "Billy Ringo", one of two brothers and a nephew who make up the Three Ringos. As I watched, I was figuring John Lennon's age at the time - 13 - and was wondering if he'd seen this movie, because for sure the Ringo name in Western movies was an influence on dubbing Richard Starkey with that moniker. Starkey also wore a lot of rings, but it has been mentioned that the Western Ringo Factor may have planted the seed in young Lennon's mind.
Billy Ringo is a former gunslinger who has gone straight. He now owns a small farm and is about to marry, but just then his brother Matt Ringo breaks out of prison - organised by a casino owner - and Matt comes calling to his now-honest brother Billy, to help him rob a Wells Fargo Stage of half a million dollars. The robbery has been set up by the wealthy and powerful casino man. But he has a silent partner, a blackmailer by the name of Ike Clinton (a takeoff on the famous Western Clanton name), and Mr. Clinton wants in on the Wells robbery himself.
The plot deceptions and shifting loyalties were nearly Shakespearean, so in that way I felt I was inadvertently continuing the tradition. And I more than got my money's worth because not only was the story tight and the acting 100% Western (with lines like, "Hey Kid, go rustle up some grub"), but also because the whole thing was shot at Iverson Ranch, so I was seeing one Chatsworth location after another, mostly from Santa Susana and Garden Of The Gods. ////
Two Big Thumbs Up for "Gun Belt" and for the new stash of Westerns I have in hand.
I wish they'd made as many B-Grade Sci-Fi flicks, cause I need a new fix of those, too.
That's all for tonight. See you in the morning. xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
Wednesday, August 22, 2018
Pheasant Branch + "The Hollow Crown" (Part Three) + Richard III
Elizabeth, I was very sorry to see what happened to the Pheasant Branch Conservancy via your photos today. I know it is one of your favorite places and it's a shame it suffered so much damage. As you know, Placerita Canyon is one of my favorites, and it's main trail is still closed because of fire damage from two years ago. I hope it won't take as long to repair Pheasant Branch.
I wasn't aware of the Dane County rainstorms until I saw your pics and did some Googling, but my goodness : over 11 inches in 24 hours? Holy smokes that's a lot. Out here, we get flash flooding and mudslides after only 4-6 inches overnight, but maybe that's because the L.A. area is a basin surrounded by mountains. If we ever got 11.86 inches, we'd be completely underwater.
I saw that there were some evacuations in what they called West Madison. I don't know if that includes your town, but I hope you guys are okay and suffered no damage to your house or neighborhood. Your weather report says no rain for tomorrow and the next ten days, so hopefully that was the end of it.
Hang in there and post any updates if you are able to, and if you want to. :)
My tooth felt better today, so thank goodness I dodged a major toothache. I've gotta go easy on crunchy stuff like chips and popcorn until I get it fixed.
Tonight I watched Part Three of "The Hollow Crown", the story of Richard III of England as told in the play of the same name by William Shakespeare, our constant companion of late. Part Three, entitled "Richard III" is the best of the trio of plays, which is saying something because the other two are nearly flawless (save for the warned against violence). The actors have all upheld the state of the art English dramatic tradition, but I guess they saved Benedict Cumberbatch for last, as King Richard, because he knocks it way out of the ballpark with his nearly psychotic portrayal of a man driven since childhood by envy of everyone around him living in a normal body. Richard was born with or developed a severe scoliosis or curvature of the spine and had a withered arm as well, but he elicited little sympathy for his condition - according to Shakespeare - because he was so ill-tempered even as a child. I say "according to Shakespeare" because Richard's Wikipedia history is different than what is shown in the movie. I am sticking with our Uncle Will for now, though, because he was historically closer to the scene. He wrote his play within 100 years or so of Richard's death. And Wiki is Wiki., alternately full of facts and baloney depending on who submitted it.
As mean and vengeful as the other Dukes and Nobles were during The War Of The Roses, none of them could hold a candle to miserable Richard is his own quest for the crown, which he was able to wrest from his brother Edward when the latter became ill and died. Edward himself had become King when he and his brothers conspired to murder the peaceful Henry VI, of the first two plays. But now, the usurping brothers are turning on each other. Edward first has his second sibling Clarence jailed in the Tower Of London because of a superstitious prophecy. Then Edward falls ill after a meal and dies, possibly poisoned. This leaves the throne open to only two possible successors; Edward's nine year old son, or his crippled and diabolical brother Richard.
So of course Richard has his nephew murdered to ensure that the kingdom will be his.
Shakespeare portrays him as what we would call today a psychopath. Richard will kill anyone in his way, including women and children. His close associates are not immune either, if his paranoia gets the better of him.
The play "Richard III" takes the War Of The Roses story mostly away from the battlefield, which we saw so much of in the "Henry VI" plays, and focuses tightly on the double dealings that had been going on for decades during the war between the Houses Of York and Lancaster. This unrepentant deceit is finally distilled in the spirit of the hunchbacked Richard, who hates everyone including himself and wants to become King only to have the last laugh. He is a master manipulator and achieves his goal. But then.......ultimately all is lost, when a young relative from the Tudor family returns to England from France to claim the throne for his own.
You might recall a news story from 2013, fairly prominent, in which it was believed that the remains of King Richard III, missing for over 500 years, had finally been located. I myself followed that story even though at the time I had yet to become a fan of Shakespeare and knew nothing of Richard III.
I was fascinated because they were saying that the body of a famous English King had finally been discovered, underneath a paved parking lot in the year 2012.
Those few details alone are enough to get your attention. A King, lying dead 530 years underneath a modern parking lot. The search had to do with the Richard III Historical Society and the estimate of the area where he was killed in that final battle against Henry Tudor's army.
The remains were exhumed and carbon dated, subjected to familial DNA and all that stuff, and they were determined to be the bones of Richard III. The most telling evidence was the spinal scoliosis, which you can see for yourself if you do a Google Image search.
So......you watch this Part Three of "The Hollow Crown" with Benedict Cumberbatch personifying the Evil King Richard as written by Shakespeare, and you read the Wiki history and take that into account for what it may be worth, and then.......you think about King Richard lying undiscovered for 530 years, in ancient batleground that eventually became a parking lot.
He was the guy who uttered one of Shakespeare's most dramatic and famous lines : "My kingdom for a horse"!
But in the long run, maybe because of his karma, he was left to lie unknown for centuries, finally with automobiles parking on top of his skeleton.
I was blown away by this story tonight, especially on top of the Trump news.
See you in the morning. xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
I wasn't aware of the Dane County rainstorms until I saw your pics and did some Googling, but my goodness : over 11 inches in 24 hours? Holy smokes that's a lot. Out here, we get flash flooding and mudslides after only 4-6 inches overnight, but maybe that's because the L.A. area is a basin surrounded by mountains. If we ever got 11.86 inches, we'd be completely underwater.
I saw that there were some evacuations in what they called West Madison. I don't know if that includes your town, but I hope you guys are okay and suffered no damage to your house or neighborhood. Your weather report says no rain for tomorrow and the next ten days, so hopefully that was the end of it.
Hang in there and post any updates if you are able to, and if you want to. :)
My tooth felt better today, so thank goodness I dodged a major toothache. I've gotta go easy on crunchy stuff like chips and popcorn until I get it fixed.
Tonight I watched Part Three of "The Hollow Crown", the story of Richard III of England as told in the play of the same name by William Shakespeare, our constant companion of late. Part Three, entitled "Richard III" is the best of the trio of plays, which is saying something because the other two are nearly flawless (save for the warned against violence). The actors have all upheld the state of the art English dramatic tradition, but I guess they saved Benedict Cumberbatch for last, as King Richard, because he knocks it way out of the ballpark with his nearly psychotic portrayal of a man driven since childhood by envy of everyone around him living in a normal body. Richard was born with or developed a severe scoliosis or curvature of the spine and had a withered arm as well, but he elicited little sympathy for his condition - according to Shakespeare - because he was so ill-tempered even as a child. I say "according to Shakespeare" because Richard's Wikipedia history is different than what is shown in the movie. I am sticking with our Uncle Will for now, though, because he was historically closer to the scene. He wrote his play within 100 years or so of Richard's death. And Wiki is Wiki., alternately full of facts and baloney depending on who submitted it.
As mean and vengeful as the other Dukes and Nobles were during The War Of The Roses, none of them could hold a candle to miserable Richard is his own quest for the crown, which he was able to wrest from his brother Edward when the latter became ill and died. Edward himself had become King when he and his brothers conspired to murder the peaceful Henry VI, of the first two plays. But now, the usurping brothers are turning on each other. Edward first has his second sibling Clarence jailed in the Tower Of London because of a superstitious prophecy. Then Edward falls ill after a meal and dies, possibly poisoned. This leaves the throne open to only two possible successors; Edward's nine year old son, or his crippled and diabolical brother Richard.
So of course Richard has his nephew murdered to ensure that the kingdom will be his.
Shakespeare portrays him as what we would call today a psychopath. Richard will kill anyone in his way, including women and children. His close associates are not immune either, if his paranoia gets the better of him.
The play "Richard III" takes the War Of The Roses story mostly away from the battlefield, which we saw so much of in the "Henry VI" plays, and focuses tightly on the double dealings that had been going on for decades during the war between the Houses Of York and Lancaster. This unrepentant deceit is finally distilled in the spirit of the hunchbacked Richard, who hates everyone including himself and wants to become King only to have the last laugh. He is a master manipulator and achieves his goal. But then.......ultimately all is lost, when a young relative from the Tudor family returns to England from France to claim the throne for his own.
You might recall a news story from 2013, fairly prominent, in which it was believed that the remains of King Richard III, missing for over 500 years, had finally been located. I myself followed that story even though at the time I had yet to become a fan of Shakespeare and knew nothing of Richard III.
I was fascinated because they were saying that the body of a famous English King had finally been discovered, underneath a paved parking lot in the year 2012.
Those few details alone are enough to get your attention. A King, lying dead 530 years underneath a modern parking lot. The search had to do with the Richard III Historical Society and the estimate of the area where he was killed in that final battle against Henry Tudor's army.
The remains were exhumed and carbon dated, subjected to familial DNA and all that stuff, and they were determined to be the bones of Richard III. The most telling evidence was the spinal scoliosis, which you can see for yourself if you do a Google Image search.
So......you watch this Part Three of "The Hollow Crown" with Benedict Cumberbatch personifying the Evil King Richard as written by Shakespeare, and you read the Wiki history and take that into account for what it may be worth, and then.......you think about King Richard lying undiscovered for 530 years, in ancient batleground that eventually became a parking lot.
He was the guy who uttered one of Shakespeare's most dramatic and famous lines : "My kingdom for a horse"!
But in the long run, maybe because of his karma, he was left to lie unknown for centuries, finally with automobiles parking on top of his skeleton.
I was blown away by this story tonight, especially on top of the Trump news.
See you in the morning. xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
Tuesday, August 21, 2018
Hey SB + "His Kind Of Woman" starring Robert Mitchum and Jane Russell
Elizabeth, if you are reading I should say right off that I wasn't able to make it Downtown today as I had planned. I woke up early this morning with some mid-level tooth pain - I have a sensitive molar, partially broken, that needs to eventually be crowned or more likely replaced with an implant - and I thought, boy if I get down to L.A.. and it blows up on me, that will not be good. So I stayed home and got the pain under control with Advil and it seems to be going away now. I must have bit down on it in my sleep or got food lodged in the tooth. This has happened, to lesser or worse degrees, a few times since the tooth broke. This time doesn't seem too bad, so hopefully it will be back to normal by tomorrow. It's something I've been living with for a few years, just because I don't have dental insurance and to pay for an implant would be cost prohibitive at the moment. Luckily, the pain doesn't happen often, and I hope to get the repair work done in the next year or so. I am sorry I wasn't able to get there today, to the Marriott Hotel.
Rest assured, though, that there is no way I am gonna miss "Elemental". If I get a day of minimal activity with Pearl, I might even be able to make it down there on a work day during my afternoon break. But I also have another off-work period coming up in just about three weeks, beginning September 13. So I will 100% guaranteed be there to see it, because it has been pure magic the way the screening has come about, combined first and foremost with your work and ingenuity and that of your colleagues.
I am fascinated with The Way Things Work in life, and so for me to be there, and to see your film on that giant screen, will be the payoff of sorts, the end result of this particular bit of Life Magic. :)
Today was my final day off for this period, and I didn't do much but read and draw, though I did go for a small walk down to the store. The Lynch book is unputdownable, and I am really struck by the life he has had, the people he has met and the things he has done. It's extraordinary, as if he was touched by God, and his life story is all the proof you need that there is enormous magic in the world. All you need to do is look for it for yourself and your own purposes, in everything around you. ////
I did watch a movie tonight (when don't I?), a very different kind of Film Noir called "His Kind Of Woman" (1951), starring Robert Mitchum and Jane Russell. Mitchum plays a professional gambler who owes some chump change to a Mob figure over a betting loss. The Mobster (Raymond Burr, when he was young and played bad guy roles) has been deported for financial crimes and is living in Italy. He wants to come back to America to re-establish his real estate empire, and the only way he is gonna be able to pull this off is by changing his identity. Burr and his hoodlums recall that Mitchum the small time card player is about the same height and weight as Burr, and they choose him as a mark, the person Burr will "become" to re-enter the U.S.
The plot begins with a job offered to Robert Mitchum by associates of Burr. They confront him and say that his gambling debt will be forgiven if he takes a trip down to Mexico, to a hideaway resort, and on top of that he will be paid 50 G's if he completes the job.
"But what is the job"?, asks Mitchum, because the bad guys haven't told him much.
"You will understand it when you get there", they say, and so he goes because he hasn't much choice.
When he gets to Mexico, he checks in to the luxury resort and finds it peopled with a small group of unusual characters. This is where the movie starts getting weird. One guest is a writer who spends his days at poolside, playing chess against himself. Another is a famous ham actor (Vincent Price), an avid hunter who enjoys the opportunities provided by the wilderness surrounding the resort. Finally, there is also Jane Russell, the famed muse of Howard Hughes, who produced this movie. You can bet your bottom dollar that Hughes himself came up with the title, "His Kind Of Woman", because Jane Russell was that for Mr. Hughes. The title is not entirely peripheral to the story, and Russell plays a main part, but the plot is all about Mitchum and Burr and the identity theft, so you know Hughes - who had the money and the say-so - told the writers, "put my girl in the title".
It is an excellent movie, though, because it switched gears so drastically. It begins as a straight Noir, with Hard Guy Dialogue, and Mitchum looking as always like he's about to fall asleep, but then he gets to Mexico, and at the resort are all these weird characters that could - through six degrees of dramatic separation - almost be characters in a David Lynch film.
But it is in the final 40 minutes that the film changes entirely and almost becomes a parody of Noir, when the Vincent Price character takes charge, even using some Shakespearean dialogue (I was cracking up) as he goes after the hoodlums who have double-crossed Bob Mitchum.
The ending goes on too long, and the film could have been cut from 120 minutes to perhaps 110, but mostly it is classic stuff because where will you see a Film Noir with dark drama, oddball characters and an almost farcical third act with Price leading a group of comical Mexican policemen to overtake the yacht of Raymond Burr and his men?
"His Kind Of Woman" is a one-of-a-kind Noir, perfect for viewing in a Lynch frame of mind, and it has many other characters including Jim Backus ("Mr. Howell") in a supporting role.
Two Big Thumbs Up, then. This is one you won't wanna miss.
I will be back at work tomorrow morn, and we will settle back into the next cycle, and.....
oh yeah, just because I forgot to mention it, I took a night off from "The Hollow Crown" to watch "His Kind Of Woman" just because I needed a break from the intensity of Part Two, as described in last night's blog. However, we will watch and review Part Three tomorrow evening.
See you back at Pearl's. xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
Rest assured, though, that there is no way I am gonna miss "Elemental". If I get a day of minimal activity with Pearl, I might even be able to make it down there on a work day during my afternoon break. But I also have another off-work period coming up in just about three weeks, beginning September 13. So I will 100% guaranteed be there to see it, because it has been pure magic the way the screening has come about, combined first and foremost with your work and ingenuity and that of your colleagues.
I am fascinated with The Way Things Work in life, and so for me to be there, and to see your film on that giant screen, will be the payoff of sorts, the end result of this particular bit of Life Magic. :)
Today was my final day off for this period, and I didn't do much but read and draw, though I did go for a small walk down to the store. The Lynch book is unputdownable, and I am really struck by the life he has had, the people he has met and the things he has done. It's extraordinary, as if he was touched by God, and his life story is all the proof you need that there is enormous magic in the world. All you need to do is look for it for yourself and your own purposes, in everything around you. ////
I did watch a movie tonight (when don't I?), a very different kind of Film Noir called "His Kind Of Woman" (1951), starring Robert Mitchum and Jane Russell. Mitchum plays a professional gambler who owes some chump change to a Mob figure over a betting loss. The Mobster (Raymond Burr, when he was young and played bad guy roles) has been deported for financial crimes and is living in Italy. He wants to come back to America to re-establish his real estate empire, and the only way he is gonna be able to pull this off is by changing his identity. Burr and his hoodlums recall that Mitchum the small time card player is about the same height and weight as Burr, and they choose him as a mark, the person Burr will "become" to re-enter the U.S.
The plot begins with a job offered to Robert Mitchum by associates of Burr. They confront him and say that his gambling debt will be forgiven if he takes a trip down to Mexico, to a hideaway resort, and on top of that he will be paid 50 G's if he completes the job.
"But what is the job"?, asks Mitchum, because the bad guys haven't told him much.
"You will understand it when you get there", they say, and so he goes because he hasn't much choice.
When he gets to Mexico, he checks in to the luxury resort and finds it peopled with a small group of unusual characters. This is where the movie starts getting weird. One guest is a writer who spends his days at poolside, playing chess against himself. Another is a famous ham actor (Vincent Price), an avid hunter who enjoys the opportunities provided by the wilderness surrounding the resort. Finally, there is also Jane Russell, the famed muse of Howard Hughes, who produced this movie. You can bet your bottom dollar that Hughes himself came up with the title, "His Kind Of Woman", because Jane Russell was that for Mr. Hughes. The title is not entirely peripheral to the story, and Russell plays a main part, but the plot is all about Mitchum and Burr and the identity theft, so you know Hughes - who had the money and the say-so - told the writers, "put my girl in the title".
It is an excellent movie, though, because it switched gears so drastically. It begins as a straight Noir, with Hard Guy Dialogue, and Mitchum looking as always like he's about to fall asleep, but then he gets to Mexico, and at the resort are all these weird characters that could - through six degrees of dramatic separation - almost be characters in a David Lynch film.
But it is in the final 40 minutes that the film changes entirely and almost becomes a parody of Noir, when the Vincent Price character takes charge, even using some Shakespearean dialogue (I was cracking up) as he goes after the hoodlums who have double-crossed Bob Mitchum.
The ending goes on too long, and the film could have been cut from 120 minutes to perhaps 110, but mostly it is classic stuff because where will you see a Film Noir with dark drama, oddball characters and an almost farcical third act with Price leading a group of comical Mexican policemen to overtake the yacht of Raymond Burr and his men?
"His Kind Of Woman" is a one-of-a-kind Noir, perfect for viewing in a Lynch frame of mind, and it has many other characters including Jim Backus ("Mr. Howell") in a supporting role.
Two Big Thumbs Up, then. This is one you won't wanna miss.
I will be back at work tomorrow morn, and we will settle back into the next cycle, and.....
oh yeah, just because I forgot to mention it, I took a night off from "The Hollow Crown" to watch "His Kind Of Woman" just because I needed a break from the intensity of Part Two, as described in last night's blog. However, we will watch and review Part Three tomorrow evening.
See you back at Pearl's. xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
Monday, August 20, 2018
"The Hollow Crown" (Part Two) & "Room To Dream" by David Lynch
Tonight I watched Part Two of "The Hollow Crown", which is also part of the title of the play it was taken from : "Henry VI Part Two" by William Shakespeare. Well, you know how I was saying last night, about "Part One", that there was a lot of treachery and intrigue, and battles galore?
In "Part Two", you can forget about the treachery and intrigue. There are those elements but basically it's just one bloody battle after another for two straight hours.
Last night in my review I exhorted you to "see it, see it, see it"! - and I still do - but I must now warn you that if you are gonna make it through Part Two, you will be subjected to some of the worst onscreen violence that I personally have seen since that godawful episode of "The Walking Dead" that caused me to abandon that show two years back.
The battles are filled with rage and ruthless aggression, and depict the kind of hand-to-hand personal combat that existed exclusively in war before gunpowder came into wide use. It's all broadswords and axes and bludgeoning and it's made even more terrible by the fact that these warriors have so much hatred for the other side that they become crazed with bloodthirst. This is amply demonstrated in scene after scene, and if you are in the least bit squeamish then I cannot recommend it.
In the story, The War Of The Roses continues, and the spiritual, pacifist King Henry VI tries to entreat his noblemen to abandon their grudges and ambitions, but to no avail. They all see Henry as weak, so they battle one another's forces, each with the goal of claiming the crown for himself.
To use a baseball analogy, you almost need a scorecard to tell all of the players, and whomever is in charge changes from battle to battle, as do loyalties.
It's just straight up brutality, with Henry as The Christ Figure, suffering and praying to God while chaos surrounds him. He abhors violence, and in that way he was very much ahead of his time, because to shun one's wartime duty in Europe in the middle ages, or worse yet, to proclaim pacifism, was akin to treason, not to mention a blight on one's manhood. It's odd or ironic, because some Europeans may now look at America as the soul of violence, but we got it from them because we are their descendants. The history of Europe, until about 75 years ago, was one of almost non-stop warfare, and in the middle ages, before guns made killing impersonal, these wars and battles were fought with a level of anger and cruelty that - to me (and to King Henry) - must certainly have been directly influenced by The Devil.
So, to sum up concerning Part Two, it continues the fascinating tale of Henry VI and The War Of The Roses, as written by our pal William Shakespeare, so it is no lowbrow work, despite the horrors that are witnessed. The unmatched skill with language is all there as you would expect, and the performances are towering, especially Tom Sturridge as Henry. But the violence is of the worst degree, so that is my warning.
Had the context not been a marvelous work of Shakespeare, I'm not sure I would have been able to make it through, myself. But tomorrow night, onward into Part Three, the final play in the trilogy, about the reign of Richard III, to be played by the redoubtable Benedict Cumberbatch. ////
No hike today. My knees were a little sore from yesterday's trek, so I just stuck to my normal CSUN walk. I am reading the David Lynch book, and wow.......what an amazing life he has had. He seems to have been "on the go", creating art and films, since he graduated high school, and he has so much energy for getting stuff done, and for creating, that you just go, "this is a very special human being".
I think I would need to be twins just to get half the stuff done that he does, but his story is incredibly inspiring for all creative people. It is told in a breezy narrative that is easy to read, with tons and tons of anecdotes and history from his life and career, and I just can't recommend it highly enough. He is one of my Most Important People. ////
That's all for tonight. We had good singin' in church. See you in the morning. xoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
In "Part Two", you can forget about the treachery and intrigue. There are those elements but basically it's just one bloody battle after another for two straight hours.
Last night in my review I exhorted you to "see it, see it, see it"! - and I still do - but I must now warn you that if you are gonna make it through Part Two, you will be subjected to some of the worst onscreen violence that I personally have seen since that godawful episode of "The Walking Dead" that caused me to abandon that show two years back.
The battles are filled with rage and ruthless aggression, and depict the kind of hand-to-hand personal combat that existed exclusively in war before gunpowder came into wide use. It's all broadswords and axes and bludgeoning and it's made even more terrible by the fact that these warriors have so much hatred for the other side that they become crazed with bloodthirst. This is amply demonstrated in scene after scene, and if you are in the least bit squeamish then I cannot recommend it.
In the story, The War Of The Roses continues, and the spiritual, pacifist King Henry VI tries to entreat his noblemen to abandon their grudges and ambitions, but to no avail. They all see Henry as weak, so they battle one another's forces, each with the goal of claiming the crown for himself.
To use a baseball analogy, you almost need a scorecard to tell all of the players, and whomever is in charge changes from battle to battle, as do loyalties.
It's just straight up brutality, with Henry as The Christ Figure, suffering and praying to God while chaos surrounds him. He abhors violence, and in that way he was very much ahead of his time, because to shun one's wartime duty in Europe in the middle ages, or worse yet, to proclaim pacifism, was akin to treason, not to mention a blight on one's manhood. It's odd or ironic, because some Europeans may now look at America as the soul of violence, but we got it from them because we are their descendants. The history of Europe, until about 75 years ago, was one of almost non-stop warfare, and in the middle ages, before guns made killing impersonal, these wars and battles were fought with a level of anger and cruelty that - to me (and to King Henry) - must certainly have been directly influenced by The Devil.
So, to sum up concerning Part Two, it continues the fascinating tale of Henry VI and The War Of The Roses, as written by our pal William Shakespeare, so it is no lowbrow work, despite the horrors that are witnessed. The unmatched skill with language is all there as you would expect, and the performances are towering, especially Tom Sturridge as Henry. But the violence is of the worst degree, so that is my warning.
Had the context not been a marvelous work of Shakespeare, I'm not sure I would have been able to make it through, myself. But tomorrow night, onward into Part Three, the final play in the trilogy, about the reign of Richard III, to be played by the redoubtable Benedict Cumberbatch. ////
No hike today. My knees were a little sore from yesterday's trek, so I just stuck to my normal CSUN walk. I am reading the David Lynch book, and wow.......what an amazing life he has had. He seems to have been "on the go", creating art and films, since he graduated high school, and he has so much energy for getting stuff done, and for creating, that you just go, "this is a very special human being".
I think I would need to be twins just to get half the stuff done that he does, but his story is incredibly inspiring for all creative people. It is told in a breezy narrative that is easy to read, with tons and tons of anecdotes and history from his life and career, and I just can't recommend it highly enough. He is one of my Most Important People. ////
That's all for tonight. We had good singin' in church. See you in the morning. xoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
Sunday, August 19, 2018
"The Hollow Crown" (Part One) + East Canyon Mega Hike + Your Cats
Tonight I watched Part One of an English miniseries called "The Hollow Crown" (2013). With that title you may be guessing that I am still in Shakespeare Mode, and you are guessing right. :) The three part series is comprised of a trio of WS' historical plays, two of which cover the rule of Henry VI, the mild and devoutly religious son of the heroic Henry V, who we just saw in Laurence Olivier's film last week. Shakespeare wrote two plays about Henry VI (the son); those plays are subtitled Part One and Part Two, and they make up the first two parts of "The Hollow Crown", which is subtitled "The War Of The Roses". That war came about because the Duke of York felt that upon Henry V's death, that he was entitled to the throne due to a complicated set of birth relationships that you'd do better to Google.
In a secret meeting, York asked his fellow Dukes and Earls to stand by him in his claim to the throne. Those that agreed were to wear a white rose as their symbol. But the Earl of Somerset does not agree and brings an insincere challenge, claiming that he would not support a usurpation of the teenaged Henry VI, but what he really wants is the crown for himself. During the secret meeting, he plucks a red rose to adorn his chest and asks his fellows to support him. In the end, half of those gathered support the white rosed Duke of York, and half support the red blossomed, treacherous Earl of Somerset. And there you have your setup for the eventual War Of The Roses, a war between two sides of noblemen who want to overthrow the peaceful young Henry for their own power hungry reasons.
Man, this is great stuff!
I confess that I leave the subtitles on when watching Shakespeare on dvd. It helps me to understand the intricacies of the plot without having to rewind and listen to a scene over again, because as with all Shakespeare the words come at you rapidly and in formal Olde English.
But I'm getting good at it, and tonight I was able to follow the dialogue pretty much word for word.
What a show! What oratory! What treachery!
Man, you think politics is horrible now, go back to Merry Olde England, or France, and try those places on for size. Sheesh.......war after war after war. Well anyway, it gave William Shakespeare a lot of material, and boy did he knock it out of the park.
I am still relatively new to his work, having five years of Shakespeare By The Sea under my belt, and now a few movies (with more on the way), and I still like his famous comedies the best, but now that I am seeing the historical works as well, I am finding them most impressive.
The English actors and actresses all seem to have that history in their blood, and each one embodies their character.
Recommended highly, therefore, and tremendous is "The Hollow Crown".
Now I'm talking backwards like they did in Shakespeare's time. :) But see it, see it, see it. I will continue with reviews of Parts Two and Three in the next two blogs. ////
I drove out to East Canyon in Newhall this afternoon for my hike. Technically it's in Santa Clarita, but it's really Newhall. East Canyon and Rice Canyon start from the same trailhead, located just off The Old Road about two miles west of the top of Balboa. I hadn't planned on a megahike when I left my apartment, but that's what I wound up doing when I got there. I didn't have a time limit as I do on workdays, so I just started walking up the trail. I tried Rice Canyon first and went down about a half mile, past this shady grove that serves as a landmark. The trail was somewhat eroded after that point, only about two feet wide with a substantial cliff going straight down, so I thought "this is far enough" and I turned back to try the East Canyon side. East is not quite as scenic as Rice, but you still see a lot of trees and dried plants, the remnants of flowers. The temp was about 95 today, and it's been a super hot Summer, so there is not a lot of color in the landscape, but there is instead that arid, Summery smell and feel. The shadows contain ghosts, birds and squirrels "skritch" in the brush - then are silent - and the tiny lizards scamper into their holes as you walk past. No one is on the trail but you and the private world of nature, so you keep going if you have the time, and I did.
Trails can be by turns magical or just a bit haunted, maybe slightly ominous ("will a cat jump out of nowhere"?).....but you know one won't. It's just the breeze and the trees making their sounds, the powdered dirt puffing up on the steady climb of the hill as your gaze flickers from sky to ground, and the alternating patterned shadows cast by leaves and branches, and the blazing sunshine out in the open fields that get you thinking this way, that something might be waiting and watching above you on the hill.
It's not so much The Unseen Cat, because you know that never happens, not on these trails.
What it really is, is just the mountains themselves. They house critters and noises and shadows, and none of those things need streets or stores or tv shows or any human normalcy.
So you are in their world, and you keep walking because the more you walk the more you feel a part of it. Back in 2014 and 2015, when Placerita was still open and when I had more free time on workdays, I was very much attuned to the spiritual vibrations of all the various trails. I would go on Hundred Degree Hikes and tune in to all the phenomena.
At any rate, I'm still in decent enough shape to do a four mile roundtrip hike, as I did at East Canyon today. As I ascended the trail, I thought "y'know, this has got to be right behind the mountain where Mission Point is located". The Old Road runs along the back of the Santa Susana Mountains. I went up on the East Canyon trail for almost two miles and got close to the top of the mountain, but then I was getting a little tired and didn't know where the trail would end, so I turned back.
When I got home, I did some Googling (do I ever do some Googling, or what?), and I discovered exactly what I had suspected : that if you keep going on the East Canyon trail, you will eventually arrive at Mission Point, on the San Fernando Valley side. The total milage, one way, according to Modern Hiker, is 4.86 miles. I would have had to do almost three more miles to get there, but one day I will do it, just to say that I went over the top of the Santa Susana Mountains and into the Valley from Santa Clarita. The Unseen but Suspected Cat will not follow me but the sounds will still surround me.
East Canyon has it's own vibe, best experienced in the Summer when the leaves are dry and golden.
Maybe I will see you there, if not in person then for certain in spirit. ////
Elizabeth, I see that a couple of cats were in the picture today. :)
Your black kitty looks a lot lot our own (at Pearl's), except that your's appears to have a small patch of white on his/her tummy. Your grey striped kitty seems to be more of the kick-back type, ready for a snooze after enjoying a piece of pizza...or maybe two.
That's probably why there are two pizza boxes in the picture. Hungry cats. And come to think of it, that's probably why the black kitty was watching you....
"Hey, Elizabeth......did the Pizza Man get here yet"?
At Pearl's we have the black kitty, who has lived with us since 2014. She is still semi-feral and lives outside. And then we have two neighbor cats who never go home because I feed them.
I'm sorry but I can't resist, and it's okay because they live across the street. I guess their owners don't pay much attention to them, so they come over to Pearl's house.
I think of animals as "people", meaning that all are individuals and never just an "it".
The Spirit of The Kobedog lives on, and I can feel him just as I feel the intuited things on the hiking trail, and at Pearl's, he would insist on pizza for everyone - especially for himself.
That's all for tonight. See you in church in the morning. xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
In a secret meeting, York asked his fellow Dukes and Earls to stand by him in his claim to the throne. Those that agreed were to wear a white rose as their symbol. But the Earl of Somerset does not agree and brings an insincere challenge, claiming that he would not support a usurpation of the teenaged Henry VI, but what he really wants is the crown for himself. During the secret meeting, he plucks a red rose to adorn his chest and asks his fellows to support him. In the end, half of those gathered support the white rosed Duke of York, and half support the red blossomed, treacherous Earl of Somerset. And there you have your setup for the eventual War Of The Roses, a war between two sides of noblemen who want to overthrow the peaceful young Henry for their own power hungry reasons.
Man, this is great stuff!
I confess that I leave the subtitles on when watching Shakespeare on dvd. It helps me to understand the intricacies of the plot without having to rewind and listen to a scene over again, because as with all Shakespeare the words come at you rapidly and in formal Olde English.
But I'm getting good at it, and tonight I was able to follow the dialogue pretty much word for word.
What a show! What oratory! What treachery!
Man, you think politics is horrible now, go back to Merry Olde England, or France, and try those places on for size. Sheesh.......war after war after war. Well anyway, it gave William Shakespeare a lot of material, and boy did he knock it out of the park.
I am still relatively new to his work, having five years of Shakespeare By The Sea under my belt, and now a few movies (with more on the way), and I still like his famous comedies the best, but now that I am seeing the historical works as well, I am finding them most impressive.
The English actors and actresses all seem to have that history in their blood, and each one embodies their character.
Recommended highly, therefore, and tremendous is "The Hollow Crown".
Now I'm talking backwards like they did in Shakespeare's time. :) But see it, see it, see it. I will continue with reviews of Parts Two and Three in the next two blogs. ////
I drove out to East Canyon in Newhall this afternoon for my hike. Technically it's in Santa Clarita, but it's really Newhall. East Canyon and Rice Canyon start from the same trailhead, located just off The Old Road about two miles west of the top of Balboa. I hadn't planned on a megahike when I left my apartment, but that's what I wound up doing when I got there. I didn't have a time limit as I do on workdays, so I just started walking up the trail. I tried Rice Canyon first and went down about a half mile, past this shady grove that serves as a landmark. The trail was somewhat eroded after that point, only about two feet wide with a substantial cliff going straight down, so I thought "this is far enough" and I turned back to try the East Canyon side. East is not quite as scenic as Rice, but you still see a lot of trees and dried plants, the remnants of flowers. The temp was about 95 today, and it's been a super hot Summer, so there is not a lot of color in the landscape, but there is instead that arid, Summery smell and feel. The shadows contain ghosts, birds and squirrels "skritch" in the brush - then are silent - and the tiny lizards scamper into their holes as you walk past. No one is on the trail but you and the private world of nature, so you keep going if you have the time, and I did.
Trails can be by turns magical or just a bit haunted, maybe slightly ominous ("will a cat jump out of nowhere"?).....but you know one won't. It's just the breeze and the trees making their sounds, the powdered dirt puffing up on the steady climb of the hill as your gaze flickers from sky to ground, and the alternating patterned shadows cast by leaves and branches, and the blazing sunshine out in the open fields that get you thinking this way, that something might be waiting and watching above you on the hill.
It's not so much The Unseen Cat, because you know that never happens, not on these trails.
What it really is, is just the mountains themselves. They house critters and noises and shadows, and none of those things need streets or stores or tv shows or any human normalcy.
So you are in their world, and you keep walking because the more you walk the more you feel a part of it. Back in 2014 and 2015, when Placerita was still open and when I had more free time on workdays, I was very much attuned to the spiritual vibrations of all the various trails. I would go on Hundred Degree Hikes and tune in to all the phenomena.
At any rate, I'm still in decent enough shape to do a four mile roundtrip hike, as I did at East Canyon today. As I ascended the trail, I thought "y'know, this has got to be right behind the mountain where Mission Point is located". The Old Road runs along the back of the Santa Susana Mountains. I went up on the East Canyon trail for almost two miles and got close to the top of the mountain, but then I was getting a little tired and didn't know where the trail would end, so I turned back.
When I got home, I did some Googling (do I ever do some Googling, or what?), and I discovered exactly what I had suspected : that if you keep going on the East Canyon trail, you will eventually arrive at Mission Point, on the San Fernando Valley side. The total milage, one way, according to Modern Hiker, is 4.86 miles. I would have had to do almost three more miles to get there, but one day I will do it, just to say that I went over the top of the Santa Susana Mountains and into the Valley from Santa Clarita. The Unseen but Suspected Cat will not follow me but the sounds will still surround me.
East Canyon has it's own vibe, best experienced in the Summer when the leaves are dry and golden.
Maybe I will see you there, if not in person then for certain in spirit. ////
Elizabeth, I see that a couple of cats were in the picture today. :)
Your black kitty looks a lot lot our own (at Pearl's), except that your's appears to have a small patch of white on his/her tummy. Your grey striped kitty seems to be more of the kick-back type, ready for a snooze after enjoying a piece of pizza...or maybe two.
That's probably why there are two pizza boxes in the picture. Hungry cats. And come to think of it, that's probably why the black kitty was watching you....
"Hey, Elizabeth......did the Pizza Man get here yet"?
At Pearl's we have the black kitty, who has lived with us since 2014. She is still semi-feral and lives outside. And then we have two neighbor cats who never go home because I feed them.
I'm sorry but I can't resist, and it's okay because they live across the street. I guess their owners don't pay much attention to them, so they come over to Pearl's house.
I think of animals as "people", meaning that all are individuals and never just an "it".
The Spirit of The Kobedog lives on, and I can feel him just as I feel the intuited things on the hiking trail, and at Pearl's, he would insist on pizza for everyone - especially for himself.
That's all for tonight. See you in church in the morning. xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
Saturday, August 18, 2018
"A Midsummer Night's Dream" by Max Reinhardt + An Explanation Of 1989 Frustration + SB
Tonight I was back in Shakespeare mode. I watched the classic 1935 version of "A Midsummer Night's Dream", which I bought from Amazon. If you are a fan of TCM, you may have seen all or part of this movie. They show it a few times a year and this is how I discovered it. I saw a few minutes of it at Pearl's one day a couple months ago and right away I knew I needed to own it.
As far as reviewing it, I'll start by saying that I was blown away tonight, seeing it all the way through for the first time. Cinematically, it is in my opinion one of the greatest films ever made. I did some Googling afterward and learned that director Max Reinhardt had staged a live production of the play at the Hollywood Bowl, and apparently a lot of what you see in the film was adapted directly from the stage. It's a simply phenomenal production, with the bulk of the 143 minute film taking place in an enchanted forest filled with dancing, balletic fairies photographed in a dreamy gauze. The Fairy King and Queen look like mythical creatures and the air sparkles around them. An adolescent Mickey Rooney plays "Puck", Shakespeare's mischievous Boy-Spirit of The Woods, who acts as an agent of the Fairy King, played by the great Victory Jory, who could play any character in the world. The Fairy King, frustrated over the custody of a Changeling (do some Googling), wishes to cause havoc in the lives of two lovelorn couples who are traversing the woods. He sends Puck to sprinkle drops from the leaves of a magic plant onto the eyelids of the lovers, to confuse who is in love with whom.
As always with Shakespeare, t'would be far better for you find a plot synopsis that rely on my description. But you can rely on my highest possible recommendation for the film because you've never seen anything like it. It's pure fantasy, looks like a dream and is wonderfully cast and acted by big names such as Cagney and de Havilland (in her first screen role), early screen comic Joe E. Brown and a host of other talents. A small caveat because it is William Shakespeare, so you've either gotta be in the mood if you are a casual fan or are unfamiliar with his plays, and also because it is a long film, almost two and a half hours.
However......if you already like Shakespeare, or have seen a play or a movie or two, and are discovering that you are enjoying his work, then stop whatever you are doing and see this movie right now.
It's a truly amazing motion picture, especially for 1935, and just for the art direction, cinematography, costuming and staging, it will never be surpassed for the type of film that it is.
I'd bought the dvd a couple of months ago and had it sitting around, but it's length at 143 minutes precluded me watching on a work night, so I'm glad I still had it unopened for tonight, because it was the perfect movie to see after yesterday's disappointment with another CIA FOIA denial.
I am sorry if I went off a bit in my blog last night. I always feel bad in retrospect the next day if I have said anything hurtful or mean spirited, because I don't mean to. I do try to articulate my frustration which is very real and very hard to deal with, but I also know that my take on the situation is only mine, is only one side of the story, and even though I know how it has affected my life, I don't know how it has affected Lillian's life, or what she has been through.
When I hold in my hands a letter from the CIA and I read their responses to my requests, the enormous truth hits me all over again, the way it first hit me in 1996, when I realized the gravity of what had happened:
We were involved in a National Security situation, an emergency situation that brought out the CIA, and also military, headed up on scene by two very important political figures, one a former Governor of California, and the other a Governor of another state who went on to become The President Of The United States of America.
The thing is, when you live with it for over twenty years as I have, not knowing the entirety of what happened or why, it can become blase. You never get an answer, and so you try to go about your daily life, and What Happened recedes somewhat as you work, and go to concerts or whatever, and now it's something in the back of your mind : "Yeah, I was kidnapped by a psychopath and then Bill Clinton rescued me". And it feels like some "waaaay back" thing in your mind, and you even get a superficial ego boost from it, because of Bill Clinton, and the CIA......
But then the hammer comes down, because you feel the reality of it, of how horrible it was, how terrifying and inexplicable. How it felt that a group of people, people like Gary Patterson and Mr. Rappaport, wanted you to die. And how the army came out. You remember what you saw, things that seem beyond belief but that you know you witnessed. So you start writing letters, because the question of "why" never goes away. It stays with you every day of your life. And when you don't know the answer to "why", to something of this magnitude, you get frustrated. To put it mildly.
And suddenly the "why me" ego boost comes crashing down in flames like a 9/11 skyscraper, because you remember what it was like to be inside the house of Jared Rappaport, or at the house of Gary Patterson, people who tortured you. And you know that your friends were in on it, because they were involved in drug deals.
But you also know that the CIA doesn't cover mid-level drug deals. They do much bigger things.
And so you still don't know "why".
And man is it ever hard to deal with. I mean, for me, you have no idea how hard it is for me on a daily basis just to think about it every day.
I don't want it to affect my life anymore. I want it to be solved and I believe it is profoundly wrong to keep it a secret any longer, because it has affected my soul. I worry, "what if I became a 90 year old man and I still didn't know what happened"? What if I died not knowing?
That could have great effect on the passing of my soul.
So I hope things will turn around before then, but I have seen how this thing has changed people, and that is why I mentioned Lillian last night. I know it was not her fault and that she would never have wanted something like this thing to happen, whatever the hell it was.
All I wanted to express was how difficult it is for me to still not know what happened or why, after almost 25 years of trying. I don't want to get old and die not knowing, is all, because it would affect my soul, and this is not a joke or something to be taken lightly.
That's all on the subject for tonight. It's not right for the CIA to deny my requests, but they do. /////
Elizabeth, I hope you got your camera filter fixed with the glue remedy. I am of the same school of fixing anything with glue or tape, lol. I think you can "jimmy-rig" just about anything and get it to keep on working, so I am guessing in your case the glue worked. :)
I had fun this evening taking pix of webs up at Aliso.
That's all for tonight. See you in the morning. xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
As far as reviewing it, I'll start by saying that I was blown away tonight, seeing it all the way through for the first time. Cinematically, it is in my opinion one of the greatest films ever made. I did some Googling afterward and learned that director Max Reinhardt had staged a live production of the play at the Hollywood Bowl, and apparently a lot of what you see in the film was adapted directly from the stage. It's a simply phenomenal production, with the bulk of the 143 minute film taking place in an enchanted forest filled with dancing, balletic fairies photographed in a dreamy gauze. The Fairy King and Queen look like mythical creatures and the air sparkles around them. An adolescent Mickey Rooney plays "Puck", Shakespeare's mischievous Boy-Spirit of The Woods, who acts as an agent of the Fairy King, played by the great Victory Jory, who could play any character in the world. The Fairy King, frustrated over the custody of a Changeling (do some Googling), wishes to cause havoc in the lives of two lovelorn couples who are traversing the woods. He sends Puck to sprinkle drops from the leaves of a magic plant onto the eyelids of the lovers, to confuse who is in love with whom.
As always with Shakespeare, t'would be far better for you find a plot synopsis that rely on my description. But you can rely on my highest possible recommendation for the film because you've never seen anything like it. It's pure fantasy, looks like a dream and is wonderfully cast and acted by big names such as Cagney and de Havilland (in her first screen role), early screen comic Joe E. Brown and a host of other talents. A small caveat because it is William Shakespeare, so you've either gotta be in the mood if you are a casual fan or are unfamiliar with his plays, and also because it is a long film, almost two and a half hours.
However......if you already like Shakespeare, or have seen a play or a movie or two, and are discovering that you are enjoying his work, then stop whatever you are doing and see this movie right now.
It's a truly amazing motion picture, especially for 1935, and just for the art direction, cinematography, costuming and staging, it will never be surpassed for the type of film that it is.
I'd bought the dvd a couple of months ago and had it sitting around, but it's length at 143 minutes precluded me watching on a work night, so I'm glad I still had it unopened for tonight, because it was the perfect movie to see after yesterday's disappointment with another CIA FOIA denial.
I am sorry if I went off a bit in my blog last night. I always feel bad in retrospect the next day if I have said anything hurtful or mean spirited, because I don't mean to. I do try to articulate my frustration which is very real and very hard to deal with, but I also know that my take on the situation is only mine, is only one side of the story, and even though I know how it has affected my life, I don't know how it has affected Lillian's life, or what she has been through.
When I hold in my hands a letter from the CIA and I read their responses to my requests, the enormous truth hits me all over again, the way it first hit me in 1996, when I realized the gravity of what had happened:
We were involved in a National Security situation, an emergency situation that brought out the CIA, and also military, headed up on scene by two very important political figures, one a former Governor of California, and the other a Governor of another state who went on to become The President Of The United States of America.
The thing is, when you live with it for over twenty years as I have, not knowing the entirety of what happened or why, it can become blase. You never get an answer, and so you try to go about your daily life, and What Happened recedes somewhat as you work, and go to concerts or whatever, and now it's something in the back of your mind : "Yeah, I was kidnapped by a psychopath and then Bill Clinton rescued me". And it feels like some "waaaay back" thing in your mind, and you even get a superficial ego boost from it, because of Bill Clinton, and the CIA......
But then the hammer comes down, because you feel the reality of it, of how horrible it was, how terrifying and inexplicable. How it felt that a group of people, people like Gary Patterson and Mr. Rappaport, wanted you to die. And how the army came out. You remember what you saw, things that seem beyond belief but that you know you witnessed. So you start writing letters, because the question of "why" never goes away. It stays with you every day of your life. And when you don't know the answer to "why", to something of this magnitude, you get frustrated. To put it mildly.
And suddenly the "why me" ego boost comes crashing down in flames like a 9/11 skyscraper, because you remember what it was like to be inside the house of Jared Rappaport, or at the house of Gary Patterson, people who tortured you. And you know that your friends were in on it, because they were involved in drug deals.
But you also know that the CIA doesn't cover mid-level drug deals. They do much bigger things.
And so you still don't know "why".
And man is it ever hard to deal with. I mean, for me, you have no idea how hard it is for me on a daily basis just to think about it every day.
I don't want it to affect my life anymore. I want it to be solved and I believe it is profoundly wrong to keep it a secret any longer, because it has affected my soul. I worry, "what if I became a 90 year old man and I still didn't know what happened"? What if I died not knowing?
That could have great effect on the passing of my soul.
So I hope things will turn around before then, but I have seen how this thing has changed people, and that is why I mentioned Lillian last night. I know it was not her fault and that she would never have wanted something like this thing to happen, whatever the hell it was.
All I wanted to express was how difficult it is for me to still not know what happened or why, after almost 25 years of trying. I don't want to get old and die not knowing, is all, because it would affect my soul, and this is not a joke or something to be taken lightly.
That's all on the subject for tonight. It's not right for the CIA to deny my requests, but they do. /////
Elizabeth, I hope you got your camera filter fixed with the glue remedy. I am of the same school of fixing anything with glue or tape, lol. I think you can "jimmy-rig" just about anything and get it to keep on working, so I am guessing in your case the glue worked. :)
I had fun this evening taking pix of webs up at Aliso.
That's all for tonight. See you in the morning. xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
Friday, August 17, 2018
Another Glomar Response To My CIA FOIA About Dad
I am writing from home tonight, off work until next Tuesday. Very briefly, I should mention that I received in the mail today a response from the CIA to my FOIA request for information and/or records about my Dad. I mentioned writing my request in a blog a little while back, and I had said that, now that I had lost my appeal for information about myself (concerning 1989) I was going to begin writing requests for subjects involved in or related to 1989 who are deceased. The only way you can get info on another person, without enclosing a signed and notarised release from said person, is if the subject of your request is deceased. Then all rights to privacy cease to apply. All you have to do is provide proof that the person is no longer alive.
So that's what I did with Dad, and I got the same response I got when I applied for my own records, almost word for word. It's called a "Glomar" response, and the way they word it is very tricky. First they tell you that they were not able to locate "any responsive records" on your subject (Dad), but then they add the qualifier "that would reveal an openly acknowledged CIA affiliation with the subject".
This does not leave out the possibility that they did locate responsive records that revealed a relationship between the CIA and the subject (Dad) that was not openly acknowledged.
Remember that I have been saying for over twenty years that no one besides myself has ever acknowledged What Happened In Northridge in September 1989.
So with the CIA, because even they have to follow the regulations of the FOIA, I get a Glomar response, which - from my Googling - is a response given mainly in two types of situations. One is when it is felt by the Agency that a person's privacy might be violated. My subject, Dad, is deceased, so privacy is not an issue.
The other time a Glomar response is meted out is when the subject involves National Security. This is what the Google information says. For instance, if you were to make an FOIA request about particularly sensitive areas of the 9/11 case, say having to do with Building 7, and you asked very pointed questions, you might get a Glomar response. After the Wikileaks thing began, many people FOIAed for info on Julian Assange, or for specific documents he had purportedly leaked, and most of them got Glomar responses.
The second and most famous part of a Glomar response is when the CIA (or another agency), refuses "to confirm or deny" having classified information on a subject. And again, this response is usually invoked for aspects of very sensitive subjects, Google "Glomar response" for more info.
But in my case, I wasn't asking about the Cuban Missile Crisis, or JFK, or 9/11.
I was merely asking for any information on myself, at first, and then my Dad.
And I got the same Glomar response in both cases, first saying that the CIA has no records revealing an openly acknowledged relationship with subjects (me or Dad), and then going further to state that they can neither confirm nor deny that any classified records exist, because to do so would violate several National Security exemptions and statutes in the United States Code.
Usually, from what I am Googling, responses of this type are reserved for requests about high-security issues. But I got these responses for two people who would seem to be rather anonymous (although Dad had a more conventionally ambitious life than I), but still.........we are not Julian Assange or Fidel Castro. So, why does the CIA not simply say (in so many words), "we are sorry but you are Joe Schmoe, and we have never heard of you"? I have just given you my basic analysis of the Glomar I've received twice now, but it gets even trickier when you figure in their final response to my appeal for the denial of information on myself, which took several months to process. I believe, and really I am certain, that they do indeed have information about me concerning 1989. The trick is in learning more about it, even if they won't yet release any of it. And to learn more, I have analysed the wording of the responses over and over again.
As far as Dad is concerned, he would have been on the periphery of 1989, but he had direct involvement with an incident as well, as a victim, and moreover as my father, I have speculated that he would have been made aware of what was happening to me, just as there is no doubt whatsoever that Lillian's father was made aware of her involvement, and in her case, her sister Ann was aware too.
I will leave it be for tonight, but will continue to examine the issue as my mental energy permits. There is no turning back now. I have just finished Michelle McNamara's book on The Golden State Killer, and she is my new hero, which I've probably said a time or two already. Catching that monster killed her, but she never gave up, and she and the equally heroic detectives did catch him.
And now he is toast. Good job, Michelle. You are a Hero, and you never gave up.
I, too, will never give up, but I know I must do more.
The problem in my case is that What Happened In Northridge is an issue no one has ever talked about, and in Lillian's case, it changed her entire personality. She became a different person, no joke, and that is because she knows more about what happened than I do, and she knows more about why it happened, and she knows the significance of it. And this knowledge frightened her to a high degree, and it changed her personality. This does not mean that she isn't the same person inside that she always was, but it does mean that 1989 caused her to put up a hard shell wall around herself that is not only impenetrable as far as the subject is concerned, but will also bring out a violent reaction from her if the subject is even broached. I last tried in 2007 and was shot down with fury.
So she is dealing with a lot of pain also, but instead of collaborating and trying to get to the bottom of it, she has chosen to exacerbate the tension and widen the division. She has proven herself as not a person to be trifled with, but in doing so, she has aligned herself with the secret keepers and bad guys in this story. If Lillian had no idea of anything that happened, that would be one thing. But she does know, and not only does she say nothing and do nothing, she also gets extremely angry if asked about it because she wants to simply "have her way" by pretending that it never happened.
That is no good, and it won't work forever. Telling the truth is a better way.
For myself, I side with the Michelle McNamaras and the cold case detectives like Paul Holes, who kept their heads down and worked, and followed the clues and finally caught a terrible killer.
What would the world be like if everyone ignored violent crime? I shudder to think.
What if we didn't have Robert Mueller and the Justice Department to protect us from criminals who become President? I shudder to think.
Michelle's husband Patton Oswalt says that when she got a discouraging response to some clue she had been working on, that she would be depressed for a bit, and then would get right back at it, begin working on a new angle. That's what I want to do, except my case is more tricky because no agencies, police or federal, seem to want to help me to find out what happened to me in September 1989. So unlike Michelle, I don't have any professional investigators on my side.
What Happened In Northridge is, as I have always said, the most Top Secret of all the Top Secret secrets. You would've had to have been there, but if you were, you'd know why I say this.
And if you were there, you should talk about what you know. No matter how much it scares you.
I see that I wrote about this much more than I intended to, but it is a volatile subject and also it needs to be written about.
I did watch a movie, "All The Money In The World", and it was tremendous, but it also made me mad because J. Paul Getty was such a horrible man, and so were the phoney-baloney communist kidnappers, and the poor guy who got caught in the middle was Paul Getty III, who after he was finally freed, had a rotten life and died young at age 55.
I am an easygoing person, but I hate criminals, and I have no respect for people who cover them up, and in my case I have no respect for people who have left me to twist in the wind just so they can save their own skin, for almost 30 years.
That's all for tonight. See you in the morning. xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
So that's what I did with Dad, and I got the same response I got when I applied for my own records, almost word for word. It's called a "Glomar" response, and the way they word it is very tricky. First they tell you that they were not able to locate "any responsive records" on your subject (Dad), but then they add the qualifier "that would reveal an openly acknowledged CIA affiliation with the subject".
This does not leave out the possibility that they did locate responsive records that revealed a relationship between the CIA and the subject (Dad) that was not openly acknowledged.
Remember that I have been saying for over twenty years that no one besides myself has ever acknowledged What Happened In Northridge in September 1989.
So with the CIA, because even they have to follow the regulations of the FOIA, I get a Glomar response, which - from my Googling - is a response given mainly in two types of situations. One is when it is felt by the Agency that a person's privacy might be violated. My subject, Dad, is deceased, so privacy is not an issue.
The other time a Glomar response is meted out is when the subject involves National Security. This is what the Google information says. For instance, if you were to make an FOIA request about particularly sensitive areas of the 9/11 case, say having to do with Building 7, and you asked very pointed questions, you might get a Glomar response. After the Wikileaks thing began, many people FOIAed for info on Julian Assange, or for specific documents he had purportedly leaked, and most of them got Glomar responses.
The second and most famous part of a Glomar response is when the CIA (or another agency), refuses "to confirm or deny" having classified information on a subject. And again, this response is usually invoked for aspects of very sensitive subjects, Google "Glomar response" for more info.
But in my case, I wasn't asking about the Cuban Missile Crisis, or JFK, or 9/11.
I was merely asking for any information on myself, at first, and then my Dad.
And I got the same Glomar response in both cases, first saying that the CIA has no records revealing an openly acknowledged relationship with subjects (me or Dad), and then going further to state that they can neither confirm nor deny that any classified records exist, because to do so would violate several National Security exemptions and statutes in the United States Code.
Usually, from what I am Googling, responses of this type are reserved for requests about high-security issues. But I got these responses for two people who would seem to be rather anonymous (although Dad had a more conventionally ambitious life than I), but still.........we are not Julian Assange or Fidel Castro. So, why does the CIA not simply say (in so many words), "we are sorry but you are Joe Schmoe, and we have never heard of you"? I have just given you my basic analysis of the Glomar I've received twice now, but it gets even trickier when you figure in their final response to my appeal for the denial of information on myself, which took several months to process. I believe, and really I am certain, that they do indeed have information about me concerning 1989. The trick is in learning more about it, even if they won't yet release any of it. And to learn more, I have analysed the wording of the responses over and over again.
As far as Dad is concerned, he would have been on the periphery of 1989, but he had direct involvement with an incident as well, as a victim, and moreover as my father, I have speculated that he would have been made aware of what was happening to me, just as there is no doubt whatsoever that Lillian's father was made aware of her involvement, and in her case, her sister Ann was aware too.
I will leave it be for tonight, but will continue to examine the issue as my mental energy permits. There is no turning back now. I have just finished Michelle McNamara's book on The Golden State Killer, and she is my new hero, which I've probably said a time or two already. Catching that monster killed her, but she never gave up, and she and the equally heroic detectives did catch him.
And now he is toast. Good job, Michelle. You are a Hero, and you never gave up.
I, too, will never give up, but I know I must do more.
The problem in my case is that What Happened In Northridge is an issue no one has ever talked about, and in Lillian's case, it changed her entire personality. She became a different person, no joke, and that is because she knows more about what happened than I do, and she knows more about why it happened, and she knows the significance of it. And this knowledge frightened her to a high degree, and it changed her personality. This does not mean that she isn't the same person inside that she always was, but it does mean that 1989 caused her to put up a hard shell wall around herself that is not only impenetrable as far as the subject is concerned, but will also bring out a violent reaction from her if the subject is even broached. I last tried in 2007 and was shot down with fury.
So she is dealing with a lot of pain also, but instead of collaborating and trying to get to the bottom of it, she has chosen to exacerbate the tension and widen the division. She has proven herself as not a person to be trifled with, but in doing so, she has aligned herself with the secret keepers and bad guys in this story. If Lillian had no idea of anything that happened, that would be one thing. But she does know, and not only does she say nothing and do nothing, she also gets extremely angry if asked about it because she wants to simply "have her way" by pretending that it never happened.
That is no good, and it won't work forever. Telling the truth is a better way.
For myself, I side with the Michelle McNamaras and the cold case detectives like Paul Holes, who kept their heads down and worked, and followed the clues and finally caught a terrible killer.
What would the world be like if everyone ignored violent crime? I shudder to think.
What if we didn't have Robert Mueller and the Justice Department to protect us from criminals who become President? I shudder to think.
Michelle's husband Patton Oswalt says that when she got a discouraging response to some clue she had been working on, that she would be depressed for a bit, and then would get right back at it, begin working on a new angle. That's what I want to do, except my case is more tricky because no agencies, police or federal, seem to want to help me to find out what happened to me in September 1989. So unlike Michelle, I don't have any professional investigators on my side.
What Happened In Northridge is, as I have always said, the most Top Secret of all the Top Secret secrets. You would've had to have been there, but if you were, you'd know why I say this.
And if you were there, you should talk about what you know. No matter how much it scares you.
I see that I wrote about this much more than I intended to, but it is a volatile subject and also it needs to be written about.
I did watch a movie, "All The Money In The World", and it was tremendous, but it also made me mad because J. Paul Getty was such a horrible man, and so were the phoney-baloney communist kidnappers, and the poor guy who got caught in the middle was Paul Getty III, who after he was finally freed, had a rotten life and died young at age 55.
I am an easygoing person, but I hate criminals, and I have no respect for people who cover them up, and in my case I have no respect for people who have left me to twist in the wind just so they can save their own skin, for almost 30 years.
That's all for tonight. See you in the morning. xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
Thursday, August 16, 2018
The X-15
No movie tonight, but I did watch an excellent and really weird episode of "Rawhide" about an archaeology professor and his strange daughter who are searching in the desert for ancient Druidic ruins, ala Stonehenge. They encounter the drovers, but Clint Eastwood has never heard of "Druds" as he calls them. Mr. Favor, his more sophisticated boss, has heard of a "European Tribe" by that name, but he assures the professor that there are no such monuments in Texas. Meanwhile, the professor's daughter seems to be in a trance, muttering about all kinds of superstition and folklore involving Druids and Oak Trees and New Moons. I think this must've been a Halloween episode, very different from the normal "Rawhide" storylines, although it did have a Bad Guy, necessary in all Westerns, underpinning the plot.
He was played by the former Northridge resident Claude Akins, who it was not uncommon for locals to see in the Alpha Beta supermarket or thereabouts, during the early 1970s.
I also watched some amazing X-15 footage. In one of the flights from April 1962, test pilot Joe Walker set an altitude record of 271,000 feet, or 51 miles high, and they show the view from onboard the jet. It is mindboggling to watch the lake bed at Edwards get smaller and recede into the surrounding desert, and then the desert shrink into a section of the state of California and the mountains look like ripples on a map. But then he keeps going up until the sky turns black, and you can see the thin blue layer of atmosphere surrounding the Earth, and you can see the side of the planet, and it's curved outline.
Imagine being Joe Walker. Half an hour earlier, he was sitting in the cockpit of the X-15 on the runway at Edwards in the Mojave desert. Familiar surroundings. Then, after being carried up under the wing of the NASA B-52, he is suddenly rocketed away at Mach 4 and up to the edge of space, in a jet that is not much bigger than a city bus (and far skinnier).
I remember being in 3rd grade at Prairie Street School, and kids would be talking about X-15 after every flight. This was in 1968. The jet was retired at the end of that year, 50 years ago this December. The final flight was October 24, 1968. I wonder if NASA or Edwards will do anything to commemorate the occasion. Man, I wish they would do an airshow again at Edwards. They haven't had one since 2009 but they used to have them every year, and I was there in 1997 - with Dad and Mr. D - for the 50th Anniversary of the breaking of the sound barrier by the Bell X-1. On that day in October '97, Yeager (who was over 70 at the time) celebrated the occasion by breaking the sound barrier again, this time in an F-15.
Chuck Yeager is still living. He is 95.
He never flew the X-15, but he set the standard for all of those pilots to surpass.
The Jet Age was quite something. I was an infant when most of the test flights took place, but I can remember back to the early 60s when "X-15" was almost a household word. The bigger rockets had taken over the news by then, and most folks - if they were thinking about trips into space - would have been talking about Project Mercury, the first manned American rocket program. The Space Age overtook the Jet Age, and the kids followed along. Every boy wanted to be an astronaut, and certainly some girls did too.
But the X-15 was like a secret for the kids who were really into the subject of experimental test aircraft.
We didn't know it was experimental, or a test subject. We just thought it was really cool, because it was a rocket jet that carried only one guy, and it went super fast, and "Mach" was a cool sounding word, and the name "X-15" was even cooler. The plane itself looked like a black dart.
The X-15 stayed with me all my life, mostly in my subconscious, until it came back to the surface and I ordered this dvd set last Fall from Spacecraft Films.
Such is the persistence of memory of powerful influence and experience.
Next I will order the Project Mercury dvd set from Spacecraft Films, early in 2019.
That's all for tonight. More movies tomorrow. See you in the morning. xoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
He was played by the former Northridge resident Claude Akins, who it was not uncommon for locals to see in the Alpha Beta supermarket or thereabouts, during the early 1970s.
I also watched some amazing X-15 footage. In one of the flights from April 1962, test pilot Joe Walker set an altitude record of 271,000 feet, or 51 miles high, and they show the view from onboard the jet. It is mindboggling to watch the lake bed at Edwards get smaller and recede into the surrounding desert, and then the desert shrink into a section of the state of California and the mountains look like ripples on a map. But then he keeps going up until the sky turns black, and you can see the thin blue layer of atmosphere surrounding the Earth, and you can see the side of the planet, and it's curved outline.
Imagine being Joe Walker. Half an hour earlier, he was sitting in the cockpit of the X-15 on the runway at Edwards in the Mojave desert. Familiar surroundings. Then, after being carried up under the wing of the NASA B-52, he is suddenly rocketed away at Mach 4 and up to the edge of space, in a jet that is not much bigger than a city bus (and far skinnier).
I remember being in 3rd grade at Prairie Street School, and kids would be talking about X-15 after every flight. This was in 1968. The jet was retired at the end of that year, 50 years ago this December. The final flight was October 24, 1968. I wonder if NASA or Edwards will do anything to commemorate the occasion. Man, I wish they would do an airshow again at Edwards. They haven't had one since 2009 but they used to have them every year, and I was there in 1997 - with Dad and Mr. D - for the 50th Anniversary of the breaking of the sound barrier by the Bell X-1. On that day in October '97, Yeager (who was over 70 at the time) celebrated the occasion by breaking the sound barrier again, this time in an F-15.
Chuck Yeager is still living. He is 95.
He never flew the X-15, but he set the standard for all of those pilots to surpass.
The Jet Age was quite something. I was an infant when most of the test flights took place, but I can remember back to the early 60s when "X-15" was almost a household word. The bigger rockets had taken over the news by then, and most folks - if they were thinking about trips into space - would have been talking about Project Mercury, the first manned American rocket program. The Space Age overtook the Jet Age, and the kids followed along. Every boy wanted to be an astronaut, and certainly some girls did too.
But the X-15 was like a secret for the kids who were really into the subject of experimental test aircraft.
We didn't know it was experimental, or a test subject. We just thought it was really cool, because it was a rocket jet that carried only one guy, and it went super fast, and "Mach" was a cool sounding word, and the name "X-15" was even cooler. The plane itself looked like a black dart.
The X-15 stayed with me all my life, mostly in my subconscious, until it came back to the surface and I ordered this dvd set last Fall from Spacecraft Films.
Such is the persistence of memory of powerful influence and experience.
Next I will order the Project Mercury dvd set from Spacecraft Films, early in 2019.
That's all for tonight. More movies tomorrow. See you in the morning. xoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
Wednesday, August 15, 2018
Hey Elizabeth! + Great Interview + Five Books + Toshiro Mifune in "Drunken Angel"
Hey Elizabeth! : more congratulations and another high-five are in order for the excellent interview you gave to the folks at StandardVision. You did a great job of explaining your inspiration from nature and also your methods of working on the film. Very articulate. :)
I think it's just great that your name and artistic reputation are getting out there more and more. Good things are happening, and I will be looking forward to seeing what you come up with for your Winter film project. :)
In the meantime, I will soon be heading Downtown to see Elemental on the StandardVision screen. That will be either this Saturday or next Monday, not sure which one just yet cause it will depend on whether I take the train or the subway (trains don't run on Saturdays), but it will for sure be one of those two days. :)
Today, nuthin' fancy just the usual. I did add another book to the Daily Reading Rotation, the new David Lynch biography "Room To Dream". Did I already mention that? Well anyway, that makes five books I am working on in the "between hours" of my daily work routine : "Energy From The Vacuum" by Thom Bearden. I feel like I'm getting a degree in electrical engineering with that one. "Regular Polytopes" by HSM Coxeter. The author's name sounds like a ship, and I am out to sea as far as understanding most of what he is talking about, but still I read, if only to absorb geometry at it's highest level, in order to try and understand the concept of the Fourth Dimension. "I Will Be Gone In The Dark", the late Michelle McNamara's first person account of her dedicated effort to try and identify the Golden State Killer. This book is a normal page-turning story, not a difficult academic work, so I have gone through it quickly and will finish tomorrow. "The Strangest Man", a biography of Paul Dirac. I think I already mentioned him too. He was a physicist, you can Google him. I am gonna read more about physicists in the future rather than serial killers, although the detective in me will always have a yen for the most well-known of the True Crime cases. And finally, the David Lynch book. In his art, Lynch kind of bridges the gap between physics and killers. I mean - not really - but you know what I mean. He is a very bright man who works in the dream world, between the dark and the light, but he also emphasizes both extremes, and especially the dark side David Lynch has been one of my very favorite filmmakers and artists (and maybe my favorite) for over forty years now. He has been with me for most of my life and has been a huge influence in every way.
So those are the five books I am working on, although after tomorrow it will be four. Two is the best number, where you can just switch from one book to another and back again, but sometimes, when you get your books from the Libe, you've gotta check 'em out when they arrive on the hold shelf or they will send 'em back.
So there you have it. To paraphrase Chick Hearn, you have "shot and scored" yet again. /////
I did watch a movie, "Drunken Angel" (1948) on Criterion, directed by Akira Kurosawa in his early Noir period. I am unsure if I will have the energy at this juncture to give an adequate review, but I am gratified that I was able to find a grammatical slot for "juncture", which I try to squeeze in to the proceedings a few times a year in honor of Dana Carvey and George Bush the First.
In "Drunken Angel", legendary Japanese tough guy Toshiro Mifune (in an early role) plays a Tokyo hoodlum, a wannabe Yakuza. He is young, well dressed and handsome, but stricken by extreme angst because he has tuberculosis, which he is trying to conceal because it would make him a liability to his Mob bosses. Also, he fears his diagnosis and would rather ignore it than face it. At the start of the film, he visits a local doctor, just to see what he will discover about the illness. The doctor is played by another legendary Japanese actor whose name you can IMDB.
The doctor is not a nice man. He is an alcoholic and his practice is located next to a toxic swamp, polluted with chemicals from nearby factories. This part of Tokyo is a slum, with muddy unpaved roads and prostitutes on the streetcorners, gangsters in the nightclubs.
The alcoholic doctor, the "Drunken Angel" of the title, hates what Tokyo has become, overrun with criminals, and yet he sees something in Toshiro Mifune's gaunt young hood that makes him want to help. He prods Mifune to show him the lung x-rays, taken by another doctor, that will reveal the extent of Mifune's disease.
Mifune plays his role ultra macho. He doesn't need doctors. He will go it alone, for he is a Yakuza.
Or so he thinks.
That is all I will tell you about "Drunken Angel" because I must shortly go to sleep.
But to sum up, I will say that, while it has all the cinematic qualities of a first rate Noir, all the shadows and canted camera angles and angry characters, it is a slow moving story, and in that respect it does not compare to the kind of classic Hollywood Noirs where the story moves at a brisk pace, such as in "The Racket" as reviewed last night. However, from an artistic point of view, "Drunken Angel" succeeds mightily, due mostly to the performances of Toshiro Mifune, who has a German Expressionist influence to the way he plays his character, and also due to the performance of Takashi Shimura (I Googled him), whose role as the doctor, trying to defeat tuberculosis in his town, anchors the film.
The movie is slow and very Japanese, with guttural male dialogue, where it sounds like the characters are angry even when they are making small talk. Japan was still emerging from centuries of male dominated Feudalism, even as late as the post WW2 period, and this is Kurosawa's point, which he makes at the end of the film.
It's not a classic noir because it moves too slowly but as an art film using noir techniques to describe the Japanese predicament at that time, in 1948, when crime ruled the cities, it is a very effective and engrossing movie. See it especially for Mifune's tubercular performance, channeled through Conrad Veidt in "The Cabinet Of Dr. Caligari", for real. :)
Two Thumbs Up, then, for "Drunken Angel".
That's all for tonight. See you in the morn. xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
I think it's just great that your name and artistic reputation are getting out there more and more. Good things are happening, and I will be looking forward to seeing what you come up with for your Winter film project. :)
In the meantime, I will soon be heading Downtown to see Elemental on the StandardVision screen. That will be either this Saturday or next Monday, not sure which one just yet cause it will depend on whether I take the train or the subway (trains don't run on Saturdays), but it will for sure be one of those two days. :)
Today, nuthin' fancy just the usual. I did add another book to the Daily Reading Rotation, the new David Lynch biography "Room To Dream". Did I already mention that? Well anyway, that makes five books I am working on in the "between hours" of my daily work routine : "Energy From The Vacuum" by Thom Bearden. I feel like I'm getting a degree in electrical engineering with that one. "Regular Polytopes" by HSM Coxeter. The author's name sounds like a ship, and I am out to sea as far as understanding most of what he is talking about, but still I read, if only to absorb geometry at it's highest level, in order to try and understand the concept of the Fourth Dimension. "I Will Be Gone In The Dark", the late Michelle McNamara's first person account of her dedicated effort to try and identify the Golden State Killer. This book is a normal page-turning story, not a difficult academic work, so I have gone through it quickly and will finish tomorrow. "The Strangest Man", a biography of Paul Dirac. I think I already mentioned him too. He was a physicist, you can Google him. I am gonna read more about physicists in the future rather than serial killers, although the detective in me will always have a yen for the most well-known of the True Crime cases. And finally, the David Lynch book. In his art, Lynch kind of bridges the gap between physics and killers. I mean - not really - but you know what I mean. He is a very bright man who works in the dream world, between the dark and the light, but he also emphasizes both extremes, and especially the dark side David Lynch has been one of my very favorite filmmakers and artists (and maybe my favorite) for over forty years now. He has been with me for most of my life and has been a huge influence in every way.
So those are the five books I am working on, although after tomorrow it will be four. Two is the best number, where you can just switch from one book to another and back again, but sometimes, when you get your books from the Libe, you've gotta check 'em out when they arrive on the hold shelf or they will send 'em back.
So there you have it. To paraphrase Chick Hearn, you have "shot and scored" yet again. /////
I did watch a movie, "Drunken Angel" (1948) on Criterion, directed by Akira Kurosawa in his early Noir period. I am unsure if I will have the energy at this juncture to give an adequate review, but I am gratified that I was able to find a grammatical slot for "juncture", which I try to squeeze in to the proceedings a few times a year in honor of Dana Carvey and George Bush the First.
In "Drunken Angel", legendary Japanese tough guy Toshiro Mifune (in an early role) plays a Tokyo hoodlum, a wannabe Yakuza. He is young, well dressed and handsome, but stricken by extreme angst because he has tuberculosis, which he is trying to conceal because it would make him a liability to his Mob bosses. Also, he fears his diagnosis and would rather ignore it than face it. At the start of the film, he visits a local doctor, just to see what he will discover about the illness. The doctor is played by another legendary Japanese actor whose name you can IMDB.
The doctor is not a nice man. He is an alcoholic and his practice is located next to a toxic swamp, polluted with chemicals from nearby factories. This part of Tokyo is a slum, with muddy unpaved roads and prostitutes on the streetcorners, gangsters in the nightclubs.
The alcoholic doctor, the "Drunken Angel" of the title, hates what Tokyo has become, overrun with criminals, and yet he sees something in Toshiro Mifune's gaunt young hood that makes him want to help. He prods Mifune to show him the lung x-rays, taken by another doctor, that will reveal the extent of Mifune's disease.
Mifune plays his role ultra macho. He doesn't need doctors. He will go it alone, for he is a Yakuza.
Or so he thinks.
That is all I will tell you about "Drunken Angel" because I must shortly go to sleep.
But to sum up, I will say that, while it has all the cinematic qualities of a first rate Noir, all the shadows and canted camera angles and angry characters, it is a slow moving story, and in that respect it does not compare to the kind of classic Hollywood Noirs where the story moves at a brisk pace, such as in "The Racket" as reviewed last night. However, from an artistic point of view, "Drunken Angel" succeeds mightily, due mostly to the performances of Toshiro Mifune, who has a German Expressionist influence to the way he plays his character, and also due to the performance of Takashi Shimura (I Googled him), whose role as the doctor, trying to defeat tuberculosis in his town, anchors the film.
The movie is slow and very Japanese, with guttural male dialogue, where it sounds like the characters are angry even when they are making small talk. Japan was still emerging from centuries of male dominated Feudalism, even as late as the post WW2 period, and this is Kurosawa's point, which he makes at the end of the film.
It's not a classic noir because it moves too slowly but as an art film using noir techniques to describe the Japanese predicament at that time, in 1948, when crime ruled the cities, it is a very effective and engrossing movie. See it especially for Mifune's tubercular performance, channeled through Conrad Veidt in "The Cabinet Of Dr. Caligari", for real. :)
Two Thumbs Up, then, for "Drunken Angel".
That's all for tonight. See you in the morn. xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
Tuesday, August 14, 2018
"The Racket"
Tonight's movie was a very well done Noir that I was suprised I hadn't heard of, "The Racket" (1951),
starring Robert Ryan and Robert Mitchum. That's about as macho a co-starring duo as you could hope for and they play their roles to the hilt. Rarely did Bob Mitchum ever play a good guy, but this time he is the straight-arrow captain of a New York police precinct. He is new to the precinct because he has been forced out of another one where he was also captain. But he would not take bribes or look the other way at Mob corruption in the department, so he was transferred. Now he is running the new station, and he tells his officers that things are gonna be different. He has just come from a corrupt station and he is not going to let it happen again. He expects his officers to uphold their sworn duties.
But then along comes Robert Ryan, in tall, thin but physically fit psycho mode. Unlike Mitchum (who it is important to remember had a deodorant named after him), Ryan very often played a good guy - a detective, a military officer, a husband. He was a versatile actor who was usually intense and taciturn but who gave a good performance no matter the role. He did excel at tough guys, though, and he could play an unhinged criminal quite convincingly.
In "The Racket", Ryan plays a big fish in a small pond local Mobster, who is so unpredictable in his violent impulses that nobody wants to cross him. His lackeys won't even report bad news, for fear he will explode. He is the man responsible for corrupting Mitchum's former precinct. Ryan had everybody on the take, from officers to the brass, all the way up to a heavyweight prosecutor who is looking to become a judge. They all look to Robert Ryan for the okay signal before any of them do anything, because, in his words, he "is the City". And now he is moving his operation into Robert Mitchum's new police district, the one Mitchum is determined to keep clean.
On top of this is another organised crime outfit, bigger and more anonymous than Ryan's heavy handed hoodlums. This syndicate is run under the cover of a high-end real estate company, whose unknown owner has everyone in his pocket, including the New York State Crime Investigator assigned to build a case against Ryan.
It's all very convoluted and downright Trumpian. Collusions and obstructions galore, in New York no less, and with Mitchum in the Mueller seat, the incorruptible champion of justice.
There are other characters of note, particularly smoky voiced Lizabeth Scott as a nightclub chanteuse reluctantly engaged to Robert Ryan's dimwitted brother, and William Talman, who plays an honest altruistic cop devoted to Captain Mitchum's policy of keeping the Mob out of their sector. Talman, it should be noted, could also play a complete whack job, as he demonstrated in the classic B-Noir "The Hitch Hiker".
I often rattle on about the development of motion picture scripts and how the craft of screenwriters reached a zenith in the 40s and 50s. Noirs are formula pictures by nature - about solving a crime - and so you know you are gonna get some variation of that framework in every movie of this sort, but still, I was impressed with how well the many threads of interplay were woven together in making "The Racket". First you are looking at one character's subterfuge, which leads to a response from the police, which leads to more coverup from the mobsters, which leads to a fringe character's action that throws tightens the noose around the criminals, and all of the sneaky political crooks on the fringe, who are exposed as the case against Ryan's mob builds.
The script and the direction must have been a prototype for other filmmakers in the Noir genre, and even for the big budget, more technical crime movies that were to come in the 1960s and 70s.
"The Racket" was a blueprint for how to make a crime film, with plot detail and character development.
It gets my highest recommendation for a Noir, and is thus classified as a Five Star Must See for fans of the genre, or anyone else.
It's the perfect Noir for this day and age and what we are living through at present, with our Organised Crime Presidency and their attempted takeover of the United States Of America.
See it especially for the performances of the Dueling Roberts, Mitchum and Ryan.
That's all the news for today. See you in the morning. xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
starring Robert Ryan and Robert Mitchum. That's about as macho a co-starring duo as you could hope for and they play their roles to the hilt. Rarely did Bob Mitchum ever play a good guy, but this time he is the straight-arrow captain of a New York police precinct. He is new to the precinct because he has been forced out of another one where he was also captain. But he would not take bribes or look the other way at Mob corruption in the department, so he was transferred. Now he is running the new station, and he tells his officers that things are gonna be different. He has just come from a corrupt station and he is not going to let it happen again. He expects his officers to uphold their sworn duties.
But then along comes Robert Ryan, in tall, thin but physically fit psycho mode. Unlike Mitchum (who it is important to remember had a deodorant named after him), Ryan very often played a good guy - a detective, a military officer, a husband. He was a versatile actor who was usually intense and taciturn but who gave a good performance no matter the role. He did excel at tough guys, though, and he could play an unhinged criminal quite convincingly.
In "The Racket", Ryan plays a big fish in a small pond local Mobster, who is so unpredictable in his violent impulses that nobody wants to cross him. His lackeys won't even report bad news, for fear he will explode. He is the man responsible for corrupting Mitchum's former precinct. Ryan had everybody on the take, from officers to the brass, all the way up to a heavyweight prosecutor who is looking to become a judge. They all look to Robert Ryan for the okay signal before any of them do anything, because, in his words, he "is the City". And now he is moving his operation into Robert Mitchum's new police district, the one Mitchum is determined to keep clean.
On top of this is another organised crime outfit, bigger and more anonymous than Ryan's heavy handed hoodlums. This syndicate is run under the cover of a high-end real estate company, whose unknown owner has everyone in his pocket, including the New York State Crime Investigator assigned to build a case against Ryan.
It's all very convoluted and downright Trumpian. Collusions and obstructions galore, in New York no less, and with Mitchum in the Mueller seat, the incorruptible champion of justice.
There are other characters of note, particularly smoky voiced Lizabeth Scott as a nightclub chanteuse reluctantly engaged to Robert Ryan's dimwitted brother, and William Talman, who plays an honest altruistic cop devoted to Captain Mitchum's policy of keeping the Mob out of their sector. Talman, it should be noted, could also play a complete whack job, as he demonstrated in the classic B-Noir "The Hitch Hiker".
I often rattle on about the development of motion picture scripts and how the craft of screenwriters reached a zenith in the 40s and 50s. Noirs are formula pictures by nature - about solving a crime - and so you know you are gonna get some variation of that framework in every movie of this sort, but still, I was impressed with how well the many threads of interplay were woven together in making "The Racket". First you are looking at one character's subterfuge, which leads to a response from the police, which leads to more coverup from the mobsters, which leads to a fringe character's action that throws tightens the noose around the criminals, and all of the sneaky political crooks on the fringe, who are exposed as the case against Ryan's mob builds.
The script and the direction must have been a prototype for other filmmakers in the Noir genre, and even for the big budget, more technical crime movies that were to come in the 1960s and 70s.
"The Racket" was a blueprint for how to make a crime film, with plot detail and character development.
It gets my highest recommendation for a Noir, and is thus classified as a Five Star Must See for fans of the genre, or anyone else.
It's the perfect Noir for this day and age and what we are living through at present, with our Organised Crime Presidency and their attempted takeover of the United States Of America.
See it especially for the performances of the Dueling Roberts, Mitchum and Ryan.
That's all the news for today. See you in the morning. xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
Monday, August 13, 2018
Alice Cooper at The Greek Theater + Home Is Where The Heart Is
Tonight I went to The Greek Theater to see Alice Cooper. Man, it was a total blast. Nobody puts on a show like The Coop, who throws everything but the kitchen sink at you, and come to think of it he's probably got one of those in his giant onstage Toybox, too.
It was a non-stop slam-bang production, and because Alice never breaks character, there was no talking whatsoever between songs; no "how ya doin' tonight, Los Angeles"?! or any of the usual stage banter. Instead, it was just one hit song after another, about half from the classic Original Alice Cooper Band era and the other half from Alice's most well known solo albums. His crack live band - one of the best "hired gun" bands you will ever see - plays every song to perfection with the added performance energy of guitarist Nita Strauss as a bonus. It's a rock n' roll nightmare circus where every song is acted out by Alice himself, often aided by other characters such as a 12 foot Frankenstein or the psychotic nurses (played by his wife and daughter!) who torment him in the asylum during "The Ballad Of Dwight Frye". Finally they lead him to the guillotine, as they do near the end of every Alice Cooper show (a setup that began with the original band in 1972) and Alice loses his head, only to return triumphant after a rousing rendition of "I Love The Dead", sung by the other band members and the audience as well.
I never got to see the original Alice Cooper Group. I started going to concerts in April 1974, a year after the "Billion Dollar Babies" tour ended, when AC was the biggest band on Earth for a while. By September of '74, they had broken up. Alice was headed for a solo career that has lasted 44 years now. He's been in the business for an incredible 54 years, since 1964 when the original guys formed The Earwigs while in high school. My first Alice concert was at The Forum during his first solo tour for "Welcome To My Nightmare in June 1975. So that makes 43 years between my first Cooper Concert and tonight.
Grimsley did get to see the original band, twice I think, and he goes back to 1972 and the "School's Out" tour. He was at the concert tonight and we sat together for Ace Frehley and his band, who opened and played some KISS songs mixed in with his own stuff. He was a lot of fun, with a total New York attitude and sense of humor, and he played for 45 minutes.
I haven't been to The Greek that many times, but I do know that they use what is called "stacked" parking in their lots, which means that there are no two-way parking aisles like you would be used to in any normal parking lot. Instead, they sardine can the cars three or four deep, without any markings or lanes for departure, so you have to wait until all of the people whose cars are surrounding your own make their way leisurely and slowly back to the lot to take their sweet time driving away. Then, about an hour after the concert has ended, you can finally leave the parking lot yourself, a privilege that you paid 15 to 20 dollars for when you entered.
Me, I didn't do any of that stuff.
I parked for free on a side street off Los Feliz. Then I walked to Vermont and up the hill to The Greek.
The walk seemed a about a mile or so. Not too shabby, and way better than paying 20 bucks and dealing with stacked parking. I'll park on the same street when I go to see Yes at The Greek on August 29.
For now, three words : Alice Freakin' Cooper. Go see him as soon as you can. ///
Elizabeth, I saw your photos on FB from what looked like an awesome hike. The was again no text, but I am guessing it was in Wisconsin. On your website your location is once again listed as Madison.
Wherever you are, I am sure you are in the best place that's meant for you to be, at least for the time being.
I say so because I remember your recent poem about Chicago that accompanied a photo on FB Stories. I commented in a blog that I wasn't sure of your intent with that poem.....but anyhow.
I know how much you love your home, and to have a good feeling for a place is a great thing, a spiritual thing.
The best place for anyone to be is where their Spirit feels at home.
I don't know if I've got any of this correct, or all of it wrong, but I liked your photos and I am glad you had a nice hike in such a beautiful place.
We had good singing in church this morning. See you tomorrow. xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
It was a non-stop slam-bang production, and because Alice never breaks character, there was no talking whatsoever between songs; no "how ya doin' tonight, Los Angeles"?! or any of the usual stage banter. Instead, it was just one hit song after another, about half from the classic Original Alice Cooper Band era and the other half from Alice's most well known solo albums. His crack live band - one of the best "hired gun" bands you will ever see - plays every song to perfection with the added performance energy of guitarist Nita Strauss as a bonus. It's a rock n' roll nightmare circus where every song is acted out by Alice himself, often aided by other characters such as a 12 foot Frankenstein or the psychotic nurses (played by his wife and daughter!) who torment him in the asylum during "The Ballad Of Dwight Frye". Finally they lead him to the guillotine, as they do near the end of every Alice Cooper show (a setup that began with the original band in 1972) and Alice loses his head, only to return triumphant after a rousing rendition of "I Love The Dead", sung by the other band members and the audience as well.
I never got to see the original Alice Cooper Group. I started going to concerts in April 1974, a year after the "Billion Dollar Babies" tour ended, when AC was the biggest band on Earth for a while. By September of '74, they had broken up. Alice was headed for a solo career that has lasted 44 years now. He's been in the business for an incredible 54 years, since 1964 when the original guys formed The Earwigs while in high school. My first Alice concert was at The Forum during his first solo tour for "Welcome To My Nightmare in June 1975. So that makes 43 years between my first Cooper Concert and tonight.
Grimsley did get to see the original band, twice I think, and he goes back to 1972 and the "School's Out" tour. He was at the concert tonight and we sat together for Ace Frehley and his band, who opened and played some KISS songs mixed in with his own stuff. He was a lot of fun, with a total New York attitude and sense of humor, and he played for 45 minutes.
I haven't been to The Greek that many times, but I do know that they use what is called "stacked" parking in their lots, which means that there are no two-way parking aisles like you would be used to in any normal parking lot. Instead, they sardine can the cars three or four deep, without any markings or lanes for departure, so you have to wait until all of the people whose cars are surrounding your own make their way leisurely and slowly back to the lot to take their sweet time driving away. Then, about an hour after the concert has ended, you can finally leave the parking lot yourself, a privilege that you paid 15 to 20 dollars for when you entered.
Me, I didn't do any of that stuff.
I parked for free on a side street off Los Feliz. Then I walked to Vermont and up the hill to The Greek.
The walk seemed a about a mile or so. Not too shabby, and way better than paying 20 bucks and dealing with stacked parking. I'll park on the same street when I go to see Yes at The Greek on August 29.
For now, three words : Alice Freakin' Cooper. Go see him as soon as you can. ///
Elizabeth, I saw your photos on FB from what looked like an awesome hike. The was again no text, but I am guessing it was in Wisconsin. On your website your location is once again listed as Madison.
Wherever you are, I am sure you are in the best place that's meant for you to be, at least for the time being.
I say so because I remember your recent poem about Chicago that accompanied a photo on FB Stories. I commented in a blog that I wasn't sure of your intent with that poem.....but anyhow.
I know how much you love your home, and to have a good feeling for a place is a great thing, a spiritual thing.
The best place for anyone to be is where their Spirit feels at home.
I don't know if I've got any of this correct, or all of it wrong, but I liked your photos and I am glad you had a nice hike in such a beautiful place.
We had good singing in church this morning. See you tomorrow. xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
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