Tonight I watched a movie called "The Old Dark House". It wasn't the original 1932 version, directed by James Whale of "Frankenstein" fame and said to be a classic (I haven't seen that one but you know with Whale at the helm it's classic status is a given). The version I watched was the 1963 remake, directed by our friend William Castle, with whom we have spent much time lately. The remake was financed by the legendary Hammer Studios of England at the height of their Horror Heyday, so with Castle directing and Hammer producing, the ball has gotta get knocked so far out of the park that it's irretrievable, right? The result should be a guaranteed masterpiece of low budget but extremely well crafted quality, especially if we are using the other Castle spookers in his Horror Collection as examples to set high expectations for the film.
From the Horror Collection we have already reviewed "13 Ghosts", "Mr. Sardonicus" and the ingenious "Homicidal", all receiving Two Gigantic Thumbs Up, and all displaying inventive storylines, supercrisp photography and first rate art direction given the budget. All were well played by the actors. The thing about Castle is that he has a signature. His horror movies are different from those of other directors. They may not be the scariest, but they exude atmosphere, have unique storylines, kooky characters, and are just plain fun. And oftimes they are darn scary as well.
So what went wrong with "The Old Dark House"? (One moment while I turn off the italics)....
Hmmm, I'm not sure what went wrong, but I suspect that the mashup of Hammer and Castle had something to do with it. A case of too many cooks perhaps. Too many bigwigs. The Castle version is supposed to be an almost exact remake of Whale's original film as far as the plot is concerned. I knew enough about the Whale to know going in that "Old Dark House" is not a horror movie per se, but more of a comedy or farce set in a horror context, inside a Big Ol' Spooky Mansion (are there any other kinds of mansions?). So right from the get go I was not expecting the shock value or Hitchcockian suspense of Castle's other films. Also, the film was in color, the first I had seen as such. I had been used to the black and white format used in the three previous Castle films, with it's grey scale that worked so well not only in these movies but for decades in sci-fi and horror films from the 1930s through the early 1960s. Color gives a different feel to horror, and while Hammer mastered that effect, it has to be very subtly controlled by the director. In horror, you are trying to achieve the specific effect of scaring people, so you have to be very careful to have the right lighting, the right shadows, the proper depth of field and the right colors - if you are going to use color (which has been the standard for a long time). I miss the days of black and white horror, but I digress.
I do think, though, that the choice of color contributed to the overall humdrum effect the movie had on me. It was too brightly lit, and with fully saturated colors ablaze, it looked like you were on the set of a horror movie, with all the lights on, rather than watching a real story in the form of a movie, with disbelief automatically suspended. Maybe because the film is basically a comedy wrapped in horror guise, Castle felt the need to lighten up the look of the film as well, and add *obvious* trilling music whenever a caper was around the corner.
1960s comedy stalwart Tom Poston arrives in London to deliver a luxury car to his boss, who lives in the Old House in question. What he doesn't know is that he is a long lost American relation to the man, and to the man's in-laws. A whole bunch of them live in the Old Dark Joint and are not allowed to move out, lest they be disinherited by the requirements of the will of their wealthy progenitor. Each night, all seven or eight (you count 'em yourself) relatives must meet in a special room at Midnight, to prove that they are all home and inside the house, each and every day. Poston, who had a great bug eyed face, is now forcibly included in this nightly regimen. Having delivered the bosses' car, he wants to leave but can't.
From there the plot becomes your basic "Ten Little Indians" whodunit. One quirky relative is murdered in the night, and who will be next? Of course, all the relatives are quirky, except for the beautiful and normal young Englishwoman who provides the romantic foil to Poston. There is also a sexy, leopard skinned leotard wearing Auntie who has designs on Tom, but he must continually avoid her because her gigantic, bearded and mute father will tear him limb from him if he responds to her advances.
The movie has a decidedly 1963 eccentric English sense of humor, when that kind of thing was in vogue. Robert Morley is one of the stars, so you get the gist. It's all very Mod.
But unfortunately nothing ever gels. The characters jump, pose and gesture their way through the scenes, keeping everything professional and stagey, but there is no tension, no "what's gonna happen next"?
It's a Castle and Hammer Mashup, and because they say there is a first time for everything, I am gonna say that this is the first time I've been disappointed by a William Castle film, whose every Western has entertained me and whose previous horror movies have shocked me with their originality. This time, for whatever reason, or maybe for the reasons I have pointed out, it didn't work. I have never been disappointed by a Hammer Horror Film either - good Lord no! Hammer was equated with fright and terror in the 1960s. So this is a first for a Hammer film as well, a tepid result.
You should not get the idea that "The Old Dark House" (1963 version) is a complete flop. There are entertaining moments, and the movie does gain momentum in the last act, but overall I am sorry to say I can only give it one, half turned and wavering, Thumb Up. I give it the wavery Single Half Thumb because the players are clearly trying to please, but it just didn't add up.
Tomorrow night we will try again with another picture, hoping for better results.
Hope you had a great day. See you in the morning with much love sent until then, and more non-stop after that.
xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
Friday, November 30, 2018
Thursday, November 29, 2018
"Night Catches Us" at The Armer at CSUN
Tonight I went over to the Armer Theater at CSUN to watch a film called "Night Catches Us" (2010), directed by Tanya Hamilton. The current series at the Cinematheque focuses on the works of various female filmmakers. "Night.." tells the story of a group of former Black Panthers. The year is 1976. Most of the group still live in the same Philadelphia neighborhood they resided in when the Panthers were in their heyday in the mid-to-late 1960s, but none of them are members anymore. The Black Panthers have been extingushed in the neighborhood since the day their local leader was killed by police in a hail of bullets in his own living room. This was revenge for his murder of a cop (Google the real life story of Panther Fred Hampton for more info).
His widow (Kerry Washington) has gone straight. She still lives in the same house in which her husband was shot, but she seems to be a lawyer or a legal aide (never specified). She is raising her 10 year old daughter to follow the path of school and success - i.e the American Model - and her boyfriend is a paunchy, 45ish African-American lawyer who is fully committed to the System, as corporate as any white man.
Into the old neighborhood walks Anthony Mackie, an excellent actor and a rising star. In the movie, he has just been paroled from prison and is looking for a place to stay. His brother has converted to Islam and won't have him, so he seeks out Washington, his former partner in the Panthers a decade earlier. At first she wants nothing to do with him. They have a secret between them concerning the death of her husband. The little daughter wants to know what happened to her Dad, too. Washington won't let Mackie stay until she is convinced he is going straight, which he makes clear by running a young troublemaker out of the house.
The plot is focusing on the theme that the 1960s are over, and gone with that decade is the raw idealism that inspired the youth to push so many boundaries, both culturally and politically. In the mid-1970s, where they are now, their ideals have long since run up against the wall of reality. The Black Panthers were a political movement begun with high goals, but they were also a militant organisation, meaning they took the policies of Malcolm X to heart. "By any means necessary" was his motto. The Panthers swore they did not want violence but would defend their neighborhoods, with force, against police brutality if they had to. They posed for photos wearing military berets and carrying rifles. They did suffer police harassment as a result. Panther leaders like Huey Newton were jailed and Fred Hampton was murdered. But their initial high ideals were corrupted as well, by agitators within their ranks. The Panthers were not non-violent, and some bad apples got into the mix. This is shown in the movie by some former Panthers from the local group who have not gone straight but have gone into the criminal underworld. One former Panther leader now runs a bar and strongarms the neighborhood while running numbers and selling guns and drugs. Anthony Mackie, having done a stint in prison, wants no part of any aspect of the old neighborhood. His story drives the movie, and a very good film it is.
In going back to that era (mid-70s militancy), we see why Martin Luther King insisted a decade earlier on non-violence as a policy. He knew it was the only way to rise above the bigotry that was entrenched in some segments of America and which remains even now. MLK knew that dignity must be maintained, for any violence on the part of the black people would be met with police violence in return, and a "told-you-so" response on the part of citizen bigots and those in the news media. The Panthers chose the late Malcolm X as their prophet instead. I won't get into my opinion of the politics of this decision, because I was just an eight year old white kid from Northridge when a lot of this action was going down. But I did live next door to a University (CSUN, known then as San Fernando Valley State College) that was a hotbed of Black Student activity. Just for the record, it was okay to refer to the students as Black. The terminology went from Negroes, in the early 1960s, to "Colored People" in the mid-60s, to Black People in the late-60s. That seemed to have stuck until the term of African-American took hold......when? Was it in the 1980s? Early 1990s?
Well anyway, how about just thinking of everyone as People? That's the way I was raised, but from a cultural standpoint, at CSUN when the black students demonstrated in 1968, they wanted their new student union to be known as The Black House.
I say all of this because The Black House still stands, and I live directly across the street from it. When I start my walk at night, it is the first building I pass. And when I was a kid and attending Prairie Street School, which was located on the CSUN campus, we were often bussed home because of the hard-core protests and demonstrations that were taking place on University grounds. SFVSC was a hotbed of student political activity in the late 1960s.
I witnessed all of this, and the point of the movie is that, while some very positive changes came out of these political movements, it was not possible for the youth to maintain an idealistic philosophy because Big Business America was way too powerful to overthrow, and way too entrenched.
So the most enlightened of the radicals decided to join the system and try to change it more slowly, from the inside, by going down the center of the road.
That is where I have found myself, after flirting very briefly with communism in my youth. And again, I have never been very political, because I am against the whole idea of Big Ideas.
Big Ideas, of trying to force your way, or your organization's way onto the world, don't work. Those ways might have been successful in the 18th century, when the Europeans took over the North American continent through the use of superior technology, but they won't work anymore.
I don't believe in Big Ideas to try and change other people, only myself.
And that's all I know for tonight. xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
His widow (Kerry Washington) has gone straight. She still lives in the same house in which her husband was shot, but she seems to be a lawyer or a legal aide (never specified). She is raising her 10 year old daughter to follow the path of school and success - i.e the American Model - and her boyfriend is a paunchy, 45ish African-American lawyer who is fully committed to the System, as corporate as any white man.
Into the old neighborhood walks Anthony Mackie, an excellent actor and a rising star. In the movie, he has just been paroled from prison and is looking for a place to stay. His brother has converted to Islam and won't have him, so he seeks out Washington, his former partner in the Panthers a decade earlier. At first she wants nothing to do with him. They have a secret between them concerning the death of her husband. The little daughter wants to know what happened to her Dad, too. Washington won't let Mackie stay until she is convinced he is going straight, which he makes clear by running a young troublemaker out of the house.
The plot is focusing on the theme that the 1960s are over, and gone with that decade is the raw idealism that inspired the youth to push so many boundaries, both culturally and politically. In the mid-1970s, where they are now, their ideals have long since run up against the wall of reality. The Black Panthers were a political movement begun with high goals, but they were also a militant organisation, meaning they took the policies of Malcolm X to heart. "By any means necessary" was his motto. The Panthers swore they did not want violence but would defend their neighborhoods, with force, against police brutality if they had to. They posed for photos wearing military berets and carrying rifles. They did suffer police harassment as a result. Panther leaders like Huey Newton were jailed and Fred Hampton was murdered. But their initial high ideals were corrupted as well, by agitators within their ranks. The Panthers were not non-violent, and some bad apples got into the mix. This is shown in the movie by some former Panthers from the local group who have not gone straight but have gone into the criminal underworld. One former Panther leader now runs a bar and strongarms the neighborhood while running numbers and selling guns and drugs. Anthony Mackie, having done a stint in prison, wants no part of any aspect of the old neighborhood. His story drives the movie, and a very good film it is.
In going back to that era (mid-70s militancy), we see why Martin Luther King insisted a decade earlier on non-violence as a policy. He knew it was the only way to rise above the bigotry that was entrenched in some segments of America and which remains even now. MLK knew that dignity must be maintained, for any violence on the part of the black people would be met with police violence in return, and a "told-you-so" response on the part of citizen bigots and those in the news media. The Panthers chose the late Malcolm X as their prophet instead. I won't get into my opinion of the politics of this decision, because I was just an eight year old white kid from Northridge when a lot of this action was going down. But I did live next door to a University (CSUN, known then as San Fernando Valley State College) that was a hotbed of Black Student activity. Just for the record, it was okay to refer to the students as Black. The terminology went from Negroes, in the early 1960s, to "Colored People" in the mid-60s, to Black People in the late-60s. That seemed to have stuck until the term of African-American took hold......when? Was it in the 1980s? Early 1990s?
Well anyway, how about just thinking of everyone as People? That's the way I was raised, but from a cultural standpoint, at CSUN when the black students demonstrated in 1968, they wanted their new student union to be known as The Black House.
I say all of this because The Black House still stands, and I live directly across the street from it. When I start my walk at night, it is the first building I pass. And when I was a kid and attending Prairie Street School, which was located on the CSUN campus, we were often bussed home because of the hard-core protests and demonstrations that were taking place on University grounds. SFVSC was a hotbed of student political activity in the late 1960s.
I witnessed all of this, and the point of the movie is that, while some very positive changes came out of these political movements, it was not possible for the youth to maintain an idealistic philosophy because Big Business America was way too powerful to overthrow, and way too entrenched.
So the most enlightened of the radicals decided to join the system and try to change it more slowly, from the inside, by going down the center of the road.
That is where I have found myself, after flirting very briefly with communism in my youth. And again, I have never been very political, because I am against the whole idea of Big Ideas.
Big Ideas, of trying to force your way, or your organization's way onto the world, don't work. Those ways might have been successful in the 18th century, when the Europeans took over the North American continent through the use of superior technology, but they won't work anymore.
I don't believe in Big Ideas to try and change other people, only myself.
And that's all I know for tonight. xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
Wednesday, November 28, 2018
Farewell To A Friend
I am sorry to report that a longtime friend passed away last night, David F. If you have read the blog for a while, you might remember that I used to mention David on occasion when he would come over on a Saturday night to join me on a CSUN walk, sometimes with his daughter in tow. David had been coming over on Saturday nights for many years, perhaps as far back as 2010 when I began working for Pearl. But back in about February of 2017, he mentioned to me that he was having painful sensations in his upper jaw that extended up into his ear. He described it as unusual, accompanied by a clicking sensation, possibly a toothache but different. He said it was causing a slight balance problem. A week later, he went to a dentist who said his teeth were fine. She was concerned, and suggested he see a neurologist.
In early April of 2017, David came over for a Saturday night walk. When he arrived, he said he had some news. His demeanor was urgent. He told me he had just been diagnosed with a brain tumor.
On that night, you would not have known it. Physically, he looked and sounded fine, though he was understandably very shaken. The thing was, he asked me not to tell anybody about his diagnosis. He was adamant about it and asked me to promise not to tell. I did promise, and I did not tell anyone because he had asked me not to. I mention all of this because I had been carrying this secret for 19 months and when David was no longer able to come over for our Saturday night walks I just ceased to mention him at all, because it would have meant revealing his illness.
Right after he was diagnosed, David went in to the hospital for treatment. By around June of 2017 he was coming back on Saturday nights, and he continued to do so for most of the rest of last year. He was still able to drive a car. He joined the choir at his Temple and we talked about singing. We talked about his prognosis as well. By last December he was having more difficulty with his vision and his balance.
We went on our last CSUN walk in January of this year.
David called me in April to say that he was in a convalescent hospital here in the Valley. I went to visit him there at the end of the month. It was the last time I saw him.
I met David for the first time in 1978, near the home of a mutual friend. He was 15 and a real wise guy. Initially he was part of my brother's crowd. He and Chris had worked at a health food store in Granada Hills and had gone to Junior High together. But by 1981, he and I had become friends as well.
My friendship with David was not as close as it was with, say, Mr. D or the people in my tightest circle, and I have to be honest about that. My life has been unusual, and I have had very few close friends. But David was always there, throughout the 40 years I knew him. He was a core member of our Rathburn Street Gang of friends. We also played in a band together in the early 90s and had many good times over the years.
David did not have an easy life, and this must be emphasized. I mention this here because I need to say it, and because no one reads this blog anyway. David did not have an easy life. I was often his sounding board and I knew of his troubles. I think he chose me because I am a good listener.
He had a lot of tension in his life, but he also had a lot to say. He was a very intelligent man with a unique sense of humor, and he could dominate a conversation.
He was my friend, and though there is a very serious issue between us that is directly related to the events of 1989, which was never resolved, I am going to miss him.
God Bless You, David.
Soar high. /////
In early April of 2017, David came over for a Saturday night walk. When he arrived, he said he had some news. His demeanor was urgent. He told me he had just been diagnosed with a brain tumor.
On that night, you would not have known it. Physically, he looked and sounded fine, though he was understandably very shaken. The thing was, he asked me not to tell anybody about his diagnosis. He was adamant about it and asked me to promise not to tell. I did promise, and I did not tell anyone because he had asked me not to. I mention all of this because I had been carrying this secret for 19 months and when David was no longer able to come over for our Saturday night walks I just ceased to mention him at all, because it would have meant revealing his illness.
Right after he was diagnosed, David went in to the hospital for treatment. By around June of 2017 he was coming back on Saturday nights, and he continued to do so for most of the rest of last year. He was still able to drive a car. He joined the choir at his Temple and we talked about singing. We talked about his prognosis as well. By last December he was having more difficulty with his vision and his balance.
We went on our last CSUN walk in January of this year.
David called me in April to say that he was in a convalescent hospital here in the Valley. I went to visit him there at the end of the month. It was the last time I saw him.
I met David for the first time in 1978, near the home of a mutual friend. He was 15 and a real wise guy. Initially he was part of my brother's crowd. He and Chris had worked at a health food store in Granada Hills and had gone to Junior High together. But by 1981, he and I had become friends as well.
My friendship with David was not as close as it was with, say, Mr. D or the people in my tightest circle, and I have to be honest about that. My life has been unusual, and I have had very few close friends. But David was always there, throughout the 40 years I knew him. He was a core member of our Rathburn Street Gang of friends. We also played in a band together in the early 90s and had many good times over the years.
David did not have an easy life, and this must be emphasized. I mention this here because I need to say it, and because no one reads this blog anyway. David did not have an easy life. I was often his sounding board and I knew of his troubles. I think he chose me because I am a good listener.
He had a lot of tension in his life, but he also had a lot to say. He was a very intelligent man with a unique sense of humor, and he could dominate a conversation.
He was my friend, and though there is a very serious issue between us that is directly related to the events of 1989, which was never resolved, I am going to miss him.
God Bless You, David.
Soar high. /////
Tuesday, November 27, 2018
Happy Birthday, Elizabeth! + "Homicidal" by William Castle (he of the gruesome title)
Happy Birthday, Elizabeth! I hope you have a great day and I wish you much success with your art and your career in the coming year. :) I hope you still read this blog occasionally (though I wouldn't blame you if you don't, lol). It's the only means I have of communicating with you and I miss the days when our communication was a regular thing. I hope to see you on Facebook again, too. I miss your posts and your photographs. I'm only speculating here, so please forgive me if I'm wrong, but if you are feeling discouraged to any degree, great or small, by being stuck at your job when you were used to having your time as your own, devoted to your art and to advancing your career, please do not despair.
I have said it before and I will say it again : your career will take off, and you will spend your life as an Artist, in music, film, photography and in any other way you choose to express yourself. I am certain of this or I would not have been saying it all this time. All you have to do is believe in yourself and keep working your talents and your imagination. Keep making professional contacts and don't give up. In fact, you aren't allowed to give up! (though I know you wouldn't even consider doing so).
I just say all of this because I haven't seen you around, and I know you are working these days in a regular job. Please know that you are just going through a tunnel and (cue the cliche) there is light at the other end. But the cliche is true.
Please remember all that you have accomplished. Please remember that your life is your own. Please remember to keep your focus on your Intent (what you want your life to be) and don't succumb to what you don't want it to be.
Everything will turn out fine. Just keep creating. Keep your hat in the ring. Good things are coming.
Happy Birthday! xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
Well, tonight I watched a truly crazy and unique movie, courtesy of director William Castle. It has the charming title of "Homicidal" (1961), and a plot somewhat reminiscent of Hitchcock's "Psycho" from the previous year, but if ever there was a film of which I don't want to reveal too much, it is this one. So I will give a slight synopsis.
The action takes place in the picturesque "Danish replica" town of Solvang, California. Solvang is located slightly inland from the California coast, north of the city of Ventura, another location in the movie. A brother and sister stand to inherit a fortune from their deceased father just as soon as the brother turns 21, which will happen in two days. The sister runs a flower shop in Solvang. Her brother has just returned from Denmark, where he has been living, to prepare to collect his inheritance. During his years in Denmark, he met a woman named Emily. She is tall, striking and attractive. We meet her at the beginning of the film. Emily lives in the family mansion that is mostly empty since the sibling's father died. She works as a caregiver to an elderly wheelchair bound woman whose relationship to the family is not immediately clear. Is she an Aunt? That's what I thought.
At any rate, you have a Danish Connection between the country of Denmark, where the brother had been living, and the "replica" town of Solvang, California, where the sister lives and works. Her boyfriend runs a pharmacy a few doors down from her flower shop. A hotel in Ventura figures into the plot as well. But getting back to Solvang, my Dad took us there as kids and I think we have a picture or two of me and Chris standing on a sidewalk there, in 1966 or so. Solvang was a tourist destination in the 1960s. For us it was only an hour up the road (but it must be remembered that, for Californians, or for me at least, an hour's drive is a Big Deal. Whereas a Midwesterner might drive for 200 miles as if it were nothing).
Okay, so we have covered a little bit of the plot, and we have covered Solvang. But there seems to be something going on with Emily the caregiver. She checks into a hotel in Ventura at the start of the film, meets a bellboy, offers him money to marry her, and the next thing you know......
We are back in Solvang at the sister's flower shop.
Look, there is no way around the fact that you are gonna have to see "Homicidal" for yourself. Blame William Castle for the shocking title, but keep in mind that the year was 1961, when cinematic psychosis was in vogue. I've reported that Castle is no Schlockmeister, and he is proving this more and more with each Castle-directed Horror Film that I've seen. "13 Ghosts", then last weekend's "Mr. Sardonicus" (which was beyond weird on it's own), and now tonight with his strangest film to date, "Homicidal". One thing to note about Castle's films, be they Western or Horror, is that they are very well shot. This is especially true of his black and white horror movies, which have a crispness to their look. Every grey on the Grey Scale, and every black and white, is delineated. There is nothing to blur the lines in the Mise en Scene. Every wall in every set, and every object in the frame, every actor and every shadow, is properly lit and each stands out, or recedes, as required by the tension of the moment.
According to IMDB, "Homicidal" has a cult following, and after you see it you will undoubtedly become part of the cult. There is no way to see this movie and go "Ho Hum" when it ends.
Two Huge Thumbs Up, then, for "Homicidal". It has a William Castle introduction and then he butts in again, ten minutes before the end of the movie, with one of his patented William Castle gimmicks. Suddenly a clock is displayed over the picture. Castle's voice is heard, warning the audience that the most terrifying scene is approaching. He announces that he is giving the squeamish 45 seconds to leave the theater. The camera pauses on an unopened door as the overlaid clock ticks away the time.
Castle's horror gimmicks were highly publicized to attract teenage audiences, but more than 50 years later, what strikes you is that his movies not only hold up, even despite the gimmicks, but that his Horror Films are some of the weirdest and most original ever made, and all expertly shot and put together. So see "Homicidal", whatever you do. ////
And Happy Birthday again to Elizabeth. See you in the morning. xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
I have said it before and I will say it again : your career will take off, and you will spend your life as an Artist, in music, film, photography and in any other way you choose to express yourself. I am certain of this or I would not have been saying it all this time. All you have to do is believe in yourself and keep working your talents and your imagination. Keep making professional contacts and don't give up. In fact, you aren't allowed to give up! (though I know you wouldn't even consider doing so).
I just say all of this because I haven't seen you around, and I know you are working these days in a regular job. Please know that you are just going through a tunnel and (cue the cliche) there is light at the other end. But the cliche is true.
Please remember all that you have accomplished. Please remember that your life is your own. Please remember to keep your focus on your Intent (what you want your life to be) and don't succumb to what you don't want it to be.
Everything will turn out fine. Just keep creating. Keep your hat in the ring. Good things are coming.
Happy Birthday! xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
Well, tonight I watched a truly crazy and unique movie, courtesy of director William Castle. It has the charming title of "Homicidal" (1961), and a plot somewhat reminiscent of Hitchcock's "Psycho" from the previous year, but if ever there was a film of which I don't want to reveal too much, it is this one. So I will give a slight synopsis.
The action takes place in the picturesque "Danish replica" town of Solvang, California. Solvang is located slightly inland from the California coast, north of the city of Ventura, another location in the movie. A brother and sister stand to inherit a fortune from their deceased father just as soon as the brother turns 21, which will happen in two days. The sister runs a flower shop in Solvang. Her brother has just returned from Denmark, where he has been living, to prepare to collect his inheritance. During his years in Denmark, he met a woman named Emily. She is tall, striking and attractive. We meet her at the beginning of the film. Emily lives in the family mansion that is mostly empty since the sibling's father died. She works as a caregiver to an elderly wheelchair bound woman whose relationship to the family is not immediately clear. Is she an Aunt? That's what I thought.
At any rate, you have a Danish Connection between the country of Denmark, where the brother had been living, and the "replica" town of Solvang, California, where the sister lives and works. Her boyfriend runs a pharmacy a few doors down from her flower shop. A hotel in Ventura figures into the plot as well. But getting back to Solvang, my Dad took us there as kids and I think we have a picture or two of me and Chris standing on a sidewalk there, in 1966 or so. Solvang was a tourist destination in the 1960s. For us it was only an hour up the road (but it must be remembered that, for Californians, or for me at least, an hour's drive is a Big Deal. Whereas a Midwesterner might drive for 200 miles as if it were nothing).
Okay, so we have covered a little bit of the plot, and we have covered Solvang. But there seems to be something going on with Emily the caregiver. She checks into a hotel in Ventura at the start of the film, meets a bellboy, offers him money to marry her, and the next thing you know......
We are back in Solvang at the sister's flower shop.
Look, there is no way around the fact that you are gonna have to see "Homicidal" for yourself. Blame William Castle for the shocking title, but keep in mind that the year was 1961, when cinematic psychosis was in vogue. I've reported that Castle is no Schlockmeister, and he is proving this more and more with each Castle-directed Horror Film that I've seen. "13 Ghosts", then last weekend's "Mr. Sardonicus" (which was beyond weird on it's own), and now tonight with his strangest film to date, "Homicidal". One thing to note about Castle's films, be they Western or Horror, is that they are very well shot. This is especially true of his black and white horror movies, which have a crispness to their look. Every grey on the Grey Scale, and every black and white, is delineated. There is nothing to blur the lines in the Mise en Scene. Every wall in every set, and every object in the frame, every actor and every shadow, is properly lit and each stands out, or recedes, as required by the tension of the moment.
According to IMDB, "Homicidal" has a cult following, and after you see it you will undoubtedly become part of the cult. There is no way to see this movie and go "Ho Hum" when it ends.
Two Huge Thumbs Up, then, for "Homicidal". It has a William Castle introduction and then he butts in again, ten minutes before the end of the movie, with one of his patented William Castle gimmicks. Suddenly a clock is displayed over the picture. Castle's voice is heard, warning the audience that the most terrifying scene is approaching. He announces that he is giving the squeamish 45 seconds to leave the theater. The camera pauses on an unopened door as the overlaid clock ticks away the time.
Castle's horror gimmicks were highly publicized to attract teenage audiences, but more than 50 years later, what strikes you is that his movies not only hold up, even despite the gimmicks, but that his Horror Films are some of the weirdest and most original ever made, and all expertly shot and put together. So see "Homicidal", whatever you do. ////
And Happy Birthday again to Elizabeth. See you in the morning. xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
Monday, November 26, 2018
"Unconquered" by Cecil B. DeMille + Good Singing/Small Choir
Tonight I watched another Epic from our old pal Cecil B. DeMille, called "Unconquered" (1947). This time the setting was not Biblical but Early American. The story takes place just after the French - Indian War, a few years before the American Revolution. The film begins in England, where Paulette Goddard is on trial for the murder of a British soldier who has killed her brother. She is found guilty and given a choice : death by hanging or 14 years of indentured servitude in the American Colonies, where she will be sold upon arrival. She chooses servitude and next we see her on board a ship, sailing toward her destination.
A man of wealth and power is also aboard, played by Howard Da Silva. He is an arms dealer who sells the latest technology to the Indians - tomahawks mainly, but rifles too. He is in the war business and aims to cause conflict between the Indians and the Colonists, as he will profit from it. Beauty intrudes, however. Da Silva gets sidetracked when he sees Goddard, who is 37 in real life but playing (and looking) much younger. He finds out that she will be for sale as a bonded servant when the ship lands, and he wastes no time in making an early, preemptive bid for her, for no other reason than to possess her and force her to love him, though as a conniver in league with the warring Pontiac Indians, he already has an engagement with the daughter of their Chief, played by Boris Karloff of all people.
Gary Cooper, playing "Captain Chris Holden" is also onboard this ship. He knows all about the corrupt ways of Howard Da Silva, so he automatically bids against him for ownership of Miss Goddard. Cooper wins the shipboard auction, but instead of holding her prisoner until they reach land, he immediately signs papers giving Goddard her legal freedom. This angers bigshot Da Silva to no end, and from there the plot is launched.
This romantic angle runs throughout the film and is the thread that holds the plot together, but the content is all about the war at the Pennsylvania/Virginia border where Fort Pitt was located at the fork in the Ohio River. Manufacturers have discovered the vast amount of coal under the Earth, that could be used with the iron ore already being mined to create steel, which would later become the great commodity of that geographical area. The Howard Da Silva character is in on the steel game very early, and has control of the sharpest and most deadly instruments being produced. Gary Cooper is out to stop him. We never find out exactly where his Captainship comes from, but he seems to be in the Colonial Army and is in conference with Colonel George Washington (before he was a General).
This is a DeMille film, so there are dozens of characters and shifting subthemes recurring throughout the 2 hour and 26 minute production. It's the kind of movie where even the most marginal character is going to get his 45 seconds of screen time, and get in a good line of dialogue in the process.
But the greater whole of the movie is about the changing relationship between Paulette Goddard, red hair aflame and green gown aglow in the big studio light, and the low key Cooper, aka "Mr. Yup and Nope", who just has to show up and recite his lines in Technicolored period garb to come off looking good, which he does as always.
The film is not as classic as the Biblical DeMilles. It is long and somewhat unsustainable because DeMille is not so great at getting beneath the action. He leaves Paulette Goddard to try and carry the underwritten scenes in the plot interludes, simply by dressing her in finery and focusing on her expressive face. But it's not enough.
The Indians are mostly expressionless though intelligent savages.
Howard Da Silva is gonna hang in there to get what he believes is rightfully his.
There is a lot of Hollywood Cliche happening here, but the thing is that it's Cecil B. DeMille, so you expect it. The main problem, which keeps this movie from being great, is that he loses the playfulness he dared to show in the Biblical movies, the sauciness and idiosyncratic character motivations that we saw in "The Sign Of The Cross" for example. In "Unconquered" it feels like he is trying to give us a history lesson (ala William Castle, lol), but with somewhat wooden characters. It goes on forever and he can't make up his mind whether it's about Indians or Paulette Godard.
Still, I will give "Unconquered" Two Thumbs Up, just because - as overdone as it is - it's still Cecil B. DeMille, and we know by now that he is a great filmmaker if not a master director. We know that his films, at least some of them, are classics, and that others are worth seeing as well.
See "Unconquered", then, just to add to your De Mille education, and watch it on a night when you have time and patience. These days, I am like you - I am not big on movies that are longer than 90 minutes to be honest, because I want filmmakers to get to their point.
But again, this was Cecil B. De Mille, and Epics have their place, and stories told in Old Hollywood were always well written no matter the length, even if the director was more attuned to spectacle than subtlety. ////
This morning we only had four people in choir, but the singing was good anyhow. I like the concept of a "singing group" as I have mentioned, and don't mind the small number of singers, which vary from a low of 4 (as today), up to 10, when everybody shows up. I'd rather have our small group than a bigger one composed of semi-committed singers who attend sporadically for a few weeks and then are never seen in church again. We've had several of those. I like the permanent group we have, be we four or ten, or whatever number in between.
I hope your Thanksgiving weekend was a good one. See you in the morning.
xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
A man of wealth and power is also aboard, played by Howard Da Silva. He is an arms dealer who sells the latest technology to the Indians - tomahawks mainly, but rifles too. He is in the war business and aims to cause conflict between the Indians and the Colonists, as he will profit from it. Beauty intrudes, however. Da Silva gets sidetracked when he sees Goddard, who is 37 in real life but playing (and looking) much younger. He finds out that she will be for sale as a bonded servant when the ship lands, and he wastes no time in making an early, preemptive bid for her, for no other reason than to possess her and force her to love him, though as a conniver in league with the warring Pontiac Indians, he already has an engagement with the daughter of their Chief, played by Boris Karloff of all people.
Gary Cooper, playing "Captain Chris Holden" is also onboard this ship. He knows all about the corrupt ways of Howard Da Silva, so he automatically bids against him for ownership of Miss Goddard. Cooper wins the shipboard auction, but instead of holding her prisoner until they reach land, he immediately signs papers giving Goddard her legal freedom. This angers bigshot Da Silva to no end, and from there the plot is launched.
This romantic angle runs throughout the film and is the thread that holds the plot together, but the content is all about the war at the Pennsylvania/Virginia border where Fort Pitt was located at the fork in the Ohio River. Manufacturers have discovered the vast amount of coal under the Earth, that could be used with the iron ore already being mined to create steel, which would later become the great commodity of that geographical area. The Howard Da Silva character is in on the steel game very early, and has control of the sharpest and most deadly instruments being produced. Gary Cooper is out to stop him. We never find out exactly where his Captainship comes from, but he seems to be in the Colonial Army and is in conference with Colonel George Washington (before he was a General).
This is a DeMille film, so there are dozens of characters and shifting subthemes recurring throughout the 2 hour and 26 minute production. It's the kind of movie where even the most marginal character is going to get his 45 seconds of screen time, and get in a good line of dialogue in the process.
But the greater whole of the movie is about the changing relationship between Paulette Goddard, red hair aflame and green gown aglow in the big studio light, and the low key Cooper, aka "Mr. Yup and Nope", who just has to show up and recite his lines in Technicolored period garb to come off looking good, which he does as always.
The film is not as classic as the Biblical DeMilles. It is long and somewhat unsustainable because DeMille is not so great at getting beneath the action. He leaves Paulette Goddard to try and carry the underwritten scenes in the plot interludes, simply by dressing her in finery and focusing on her expressive face. But it's not enough.
The Indians are mostly expressionless though intelligent savages.
Howard Da Silva is gonna hang in there to get what he believes is rightfully his.
There is a lot of Hollywood Cliche happening here, but the thing is that it's Cecil B. DeMille, so you expect it. The main problem, which keeps this movie from being great, is that he loses the playfulness he dared to show in the Biblical movies, the sauciness and idiosyncratic character motivations that we saw in "The Sign Of The Cross" for example. In "Unconquered" it feels like he is trying to give us a history lesson (ala William Castle, lol), but with somewhat wooden characters. It goes on forever and he can't make up his mind whether it's about Indians or Paulette Godard.
Still, I will give "Unconquered" Two Thumbs Up, just because - as overdone as it is - it's still Cecil B. DeMille, and we know by now that he is a great filmmaker if not a master director. We know that his films, at least some of them, are classics, and that others are worth seeing as well.
See "Unconquered", then, just to add to your De Mille education, and watch it on a night when you have time and patience. These days, I am like you - I am not big on movies that are longer than 90 minutes to be honest, because I want filmmakers to get to their point.
But again, this was Cecil B. De Mille, and Epics have their place, and stories told in Old Hollywood were always well written no matter the length, even if the director was more attuned to spectacle than subtlety. ////
This morning we only had four people in choir, but the singing was good anyhow. I like the concept of a "singing group" as I have mentioned, and don't mind the small number of singers, which vary from a low of 4 (as today), up to 10, when everybody shows up. I'd rather have our small group than a bigger one composed of semi-committed singers who attend sporadically for a few weeks and then are never seen in church again. We've had several of those. I like the permanent group we have, be we four or ten, or whatever number in between.
I hope your Thanksgiving weekend was a good one. See you in the morning.
xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
Sunday, November 25, 2018
The CSUN Powwow & "Mr. Sardonicus" by William Castle
Last night was a Grimsley visit, hence no blog for the usual reasons. From the number of page views, it doesn't look like anyone's been reading lately anyhow. One or two hits over the past few days. I guess everybody's been busy with the Thanksgiving weekend, whoever my handful of readers are. I began writing here on Blogger in 2013 as a way to communicate with Elizabeth after Myspace went under. She seems to have taken an extended break from FB, so I am guessing she doesn't read this blog anymore, either. Well, anyway, I write to the General You at the moment, meaning anyone who happens to read, even if it's only one or two people (and no one has ever responded, not even one single time). One day in the not too distant future I will refocus on harder core stuff like 1989 and perhaps even weirder things, but for now movie reviews will have to suffice. Those, and the slightly dull observations of the everyday life of Yours Truly, occasionally spiced with attempts at humor.
I am back at work at Pearl's, but during my breaks this afternoon and this evening, I went over to the Powwow at CSUN. It was the 35th Annual Powwow and so there was a good turnout, both of participants from various Tribes (or Nations if you prefer) and bystanders or audience. I go to watch the dancers and to hear the drum songs, this time sung by a tribal group called (I think) the Black Bear Singers. Please forgive me if I am wrong, but I know I am at least close. It was a little hard to hear the MC. The point is that the music is very powerful, and the rhythm of the drum pulls you in while the singing moves and hypnotises you. You can feel what the colorfully garbed dancers are feeling. They are dancing in tune with the music, and the spirit and the prayers and the nature that the songs represent. It was really something to be there this evening. I walked back over after my evening shift, having already been there this afternoon, only now it was dark and a breeze was blowing. I stood watching the dancers and listening to the drums and the chants, and I looked up at the gigantic Moon and saw the trees blowing in the wind....and I just thought that we need American Indian culture to regain some degree of prominence in the United States.
That may seem like a far-fetched idea, but when you witness their celebrations you can understand why the culture has endured for thousands of years, because it is nature and spirit based. I think in these times of division and political turmoil that the Indians (and it's okay to refer to them as such, they do so themselves) could help us to heal if they were increasingly included in the American discussion. They were here first. The English and other European cultures may have been the ones to build the modern American empire, but we need the Indians because they are spiritually grounded to this land, and have been for a very long time. They are it's true guardians, and their way of life is based not on what we consider progress but on sustainance.
I am probably rambling, so I'll shut up, but that's the way I feel about it. ///
Tonight I watched a movie from my William Castle Horror Collection called "Mr. Sardonicus". Man was it weird. And pretty scary, too, in a Gothic way. The year is 1887. A prominent London doctor is gaining notice for his revolutionary healing techniques. One day he receives a wax-sealed letter, summoning him to a castle in Central Europe, not quite a Transylvanian setting, but close. What has happened is that his former girlfriend has married the Baron of this castle. She has written the doctor, imploring him to visit, for her husband is not well. She implies that her own well being is tied to his.
The doctor still has a flame burning for his ex, and so feels compelled to make the visit, even though he is warned by a local coachman that no one goes near that castle because the Baron is a major league Spook.
In truth, he is a Ghoul. Holy smokes. William Castle, in his Hitchcockian style, does a two minute intro before the movie starts to explain to the 1962 audience exactly what a Ghoul is. I really do not want to repeat his description, so I am trusting that you know about Ghouls.
"Mr. Sardonicus" is a twisted but excellent movie. I have now seen two of Castle's horror films and both were unique in style and in content. Castle is an original. "Sardonicus" is very gruesome, but is presented in Castle's less-is-more way, where you are shown brief glimpses of horror, but the build up is all in the atmosphere surrounding the shock.
I am gonna end my review here. Sorry but I have to get up for church and as usual I am tired and running late.
All I can say is that, if you wanna see a horror film that's truly weird, and well made, and has elements of "Eyes Without A Face", "Phantom Of The Opera" and "The Man Who Laughs", then see "Mr. Sardonicus".
An original and striking work, shot in medium black and white with a British cast.
It feels like a Hammer Film, but it's even weirder.
See you in the morning in church. xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
I am back at work at Pearl's, but during my breaks this afternoon and this evening, I went over to the Powwow at CSUN. It was the 35th Annual Powwow and so there was a good turnout, both of participants from various Tribes (or Nations if you prefer) and bystanders or audience. I go to watch the dancers and to hear the drum songs, this time sung by a tribal group called (I think) the Black Bear Singers. Please forgive me if I am wrong, but I know I am at least close. It was a little hard to hear the MC. The point is that the music is very powerful, and the rhythm of the drum pulls you in while the singing moves and hypnotises you. You can feel what the colorfully garbed dancers are feeling. They are dancing in tune with the music, and the spirit and the prayers and the nature that the songs represent. It was really something to be there this evening. I walked back over after my evening shift, having already been there this afternoon, only now it was dark and a breeze was blowing. I stood watching the dancers and listening to the drums and the chants, and I looked up at the gigantic Moon and saw the trees blowing in the wind....and I just thought that we need American Indian culture to regain some degree of prominence in the United States.
That may seem like a far-fetched idea, but when you witness their celebrations you can understand why the culture has endured for thousands of years, because it is nature and spirit based. I think in these times of division and political turmoil that the Indians (and it's okay to refer to them as such, they do so themselves) could help us to heal if they were increasingly included in the American discussion. They were here first. The English and other European cultures may have been the ones to build the modern American empire, but we need the Indians because they are spiritually grounded to this land, and have been for a very long time. They are it's true guardians, and their way of life is based not on what we consider progress but on sustainance.
I am probably rambling, so I'll shut up, but that's the way I feel about it. ///
Tonight I watched a movie from my William Castle Horror Collection called "Mr. Sardonicus". Man was it weird. And pretty scary, too, in a Gothic way. The year is 1887. A prominent London doctor is gaining notice for his revolutionary healing techniques. One day he receives a wax-sealed letter, summoning him to a castle in Central Europe, not quite a Transylvanian setting, but close. What has happened is that his former girlfriend has married the Baron of this castle. She has written the doctor, imploring him to visit, for her husband is not well. She implies that her own well being is tied to his.
The doctor still has a flame burning for his ex, and so feels compelled to make the visit, even though he is warned by a local coachman that no one goes near that castle because the Baron is a major league Spook.
In truth, he is a Ghoul. Holy smokes. William Castle, in his Hitchcockian style, does a two minute intro before the movie starts to explain to the 1962 audience exactly what a Ghoul is. I really do not want to repeat his description, so I am trusting that you know about Ghouls.
"Mr. Sardonicus" is a twisted but excellent movie. I have now seen two of Castle's horror films and both were unique in style and in content. Castle is an original. "Sardonicus" is very gruesome, but is presented in Castle's less-is-more way, where you are shown brief glimpses of horror, but the build up is all in the atmosphere surrounding the shock.
I am gonna end my review here. Sorry but I have to get up for church and as usual I am tired and running late.
All I can say is that, if you wanna see a horror film that's truly weird, and well made, and has elements of "Eyes Without A Face", "Phantom Of The Opera" and "The Man Who Laughs", then see "Mr. Sardonicus".
An original and striking work, shot in medium black and white with a British cast.
It feels like a Hammer Film, but it's even weirder.
See you in the morning in church. xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
Friday, November 23, 2018
A Very Nice Thanksgiving + Jesika von Rabbit at The Bootleg Theater last night
I had a very enjoyable Thanksgiving day and I hope you did too. I went over to Pearl's for an early dinner prepared by her daughter Helen and shared with my sister Vickie, her husband and their sons - my nephews who are now 32 and 23 years old. Our two-family Thanksgiving is a tradition that has been going on for many years, going back to when my parents were still alive. Today we had a lot of fun; much wine was consumed which prompted loquacious conversation on all kinds of topics (including politics), we ate a lot of good food and later found room for pie and coffee. It was a beautiful day outside so we even went for a walk around the block (which can be sung to the tune of "Rock Around The Clock" if you like, i.e. "We're gonna walk, around, the block tonight, we're gonna walk walk walk till broad daylight".....well, you get the idea).
Anyway, where was I? Oh yeah, so we went for our walk, and when we got back the men made it a point to watch football, too. I got home at about 6:30 and more or less took it easy the rest of the evening, though I did go for one full CSUN walk before metaphorically putting my feet up. One CSUN lap is 3 miles, two short of my daily average, but the tryptophan must've kicked in at some point to curtail me, which is why I found myself nodding off, or going unconscious haha, while reading about the Vedic idea of how consciousness comes into being, in Michael Cremo's "Human Devolution". The Vedic civilization never knew of post-Thanksgiving food comas. :)
I did recover enough to watch a movie, "The Man From Colorado" (1949) from my seven movie Western Showdown collection. Like "Texas" (1941), reviewed earlier and from the same dvd set, this one also stars the team of Glenn Ford and William Holden. In "Texas" they were pals. In "Colorado" they become mortal enemies. Glenn Ford plays a Union Army Colonel leading a company of troops in the last days of the Civil War. They come upon a depleted band of Confederate soldiers who are pinned down in some rocks out at Corriganville.......um, I mean.....well, the actual state is never specified but I don't think it's Colorado because Colorado (a territory then) was not heavily involved in the Civil War.
So let's just say that the Rebs are pinned down at Corriganville, which is awesome because it's a prime Western Movie location, but what happens is not awesome. The Rebs fly a white flag of surrender, but Colonel Ford ignores it. He calls in his artillery in the form of canons, and blows the Confederate troops away. The scene is pretty horrifying even by 1949 standards, and is depicted this way to show that Ford has lost his mind due to the emotional numbing of years of battle. His Captain, played by Holden, witnesses the white flag slaughter, but at first tries to cover up for his Colonel by feigning ignorance.
But then the war is declared over a few days later, and Glenn Ford and his troops return to Colorado, which as a territory did supply the Union with soldiers. These men are from that territory. All had been gold miners before the war, each with legally staked claims. But during the years of their service in the Army, a local tycoon had used loopholes in Federal law to have the soldiers' gold claims voided. They return home to find that he now owns the land and their gold. On top of that, the tycoon and his wealthy accomplices make Colonel Glenn Ford the new Federal Judge in town. And he has already shown himself on the battlefield to be a ruthless psychopath with no remorse for the downtrodden. Is it any wonder, then, that he sides with the amoral, land-usurping tycoon over his own former troops, who are now civilians and are bereft of the gold that should be rightfully theirs.
"The Man From Colorado" is a big budget psychological Western, a character study of Glenn Ford's Colonel-turned-Judge, as he hides from his war crimes in his newfound judicial power, but begins to crumble on the inside as his secrets come to light.
Which causes him not to fall apart but to act out in even more violent ways.
In the last scene, only his former Captain William Holden stands between Ford and the total destruction of the town, and this is a rare instance of the writer and director carrying a character's psychosis to it's ultimate end in a genre (Westerns) that usually seeks redemption for it's heroes fallen from grace.
Two Thumbs Up for "The Man From Colorado", a costume drama shot in Technicolor, featuring Ellen Drew as the woman torn between Ford and Holden. Her presence provides the emotional center of the film, as was usually designated to the female romantic role in these types of Westerns (and in crime movies as well). ////
I didn't post last night because I went to Los Angeles, to Historic Filipinotown, to see Jesika von Rabbit play at The Bootleg Theater on Beverly Boulevard near Alvarado Street. I have been a fan of JVR since 2006, when she led Gram Rabbit with her then-partner Todd Rutherford. Gram Rabbit broke up in 2016, and Jesika had begun a solo career as far back as 2012. Now she is a solo act full time. Back in 2006 through 2011, I used to go to a million Gram Rabbit shows. Since I've been working for Pearl, starting in 2010, I have tapered off on my attendance and haven't seen Jesika but every couple of years because she plays clubs with set times that are close to midnight. I can't attend a show that late, but last night I was off work, and it was a double bonus because she and her band went on at 9:15, an early set for the night before Thanksgiving. So I had a blast, and Grimsley showed up at the last minute as well. He introduced me to Jes and Gram Rabbit in 2006. Jesika and her band have a lot of power, and she comes across with even more creative presence and assertiveness on her own, playing her own music. It was very loud, which seems to be the standard nowdays. Grim spent most of the set standing in a small room off to the side and away from the stage. But he does that at most concerts now. He walked out on Sparks last week as reported, because it was Heavy Metal volume.
Me, I hang in there. I've got my one Tinnitus Ear, but it already has tinnitus and it's not gonna get any better (and hasn't gotten worse), and my other ear hears just fine and seems to be able to withstand any level of sonic bombardment, except for Iron Maiden, the one band I shall not see again without earplugs. :)
Jesika and band surprised me, and I think everyone in attendance, with an awesome cover of "Tom Sawyer" to close out her set. They say that everyone likes Rush, whether you are punk or metal or whatever genre a person might feel slotted into nowdays. Rush seem to be the unifying band, and JVR proved it because I never would have expected such a cover song from her.
But she and her band nailed it, and it was pretty awesome.
I drove home deaf, with no traffic. Then today was today, and here we are.
I hope you had a very happy Thanksgiving and tomorrow I will be back at work at Pearl's.
See you in the morning. Huge love until then. xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
Anyway, where was I? Oh yeah, so we went for our walk, and when we got back the men made it a point to watch football, too. I got home at about 6:30 and more or less took it easy the rest of the evening, though I did go for one full CSUN walk before metaphorically putting my feet up. One CSUN lap is 3 miles, two short of my daily average, but the tryptophan must've kicked in at some point to curtail me, which is why I found myself nodding off, or going unconscious haha, while reading about the Vedic idea of how consciousness comes into being, in Michael Cremo's "Human Devolution". The Vedic civilization never knew of post-Thanksgiving food comas. :)
I did recover enough to watch a movie, "The Man From Colorado" (1949) from my seven movie Western Showdown collection. Like "Texas" (1941), reviewed earlier and from the same dvd set, this one also stars the team of Glenn Ford and William Holden. In "Texas" they were pals. In "Colorado" they become mortal enemies. Glenn Ford plays a Union Army Colonel leading a company of troops in the last days of the Civil War. They come upon a depleted band of Confederate soldiers who are pinned down in some rocks out at Corriganville.......um, I mean.....well, the actual state is never specified but I don't think it's Colorado because Colorado (a territory then) was not heavily involved in the Civil War.
So let's just say that the Rebs are pinned down at Corriganville, which is awesome because it's a prime Western Movie location, but what happens is not awesome. The Rebs fly a white flag of surrender, but Colonel Ford ignores it. He calls in his artillery in the form of canons, and blows the Confederate troops away. The scene is pretty horrifying even by 1949 standards, and is depicted this way to show that Ford has lost his mind due to the emotional numbing of years of battle. His Captain, played by Holden, witnesses the white flag slaughter, but at first tries to cover up for his Colonel by feigning ignorance.
But then the war is declared over a few days later, and Glenn Ford and his troops return to Colorado, which as a territory did supply the Union with soldiers. These men are from that territory. All had been gold miners before the war, each with legally staked claims. But during the years of their service in the Army, a local tycoon had used loopholes in Federal law to have the soldiers' gold claims voided. They return home to find that he now owns the land and their gold. On top of that, the tycoon and his wealthy accomplices make Colonel Glenn Ford the new Federal Judge in town. And he has already shown himself on the battlefield to be a ruthless psychopath with no remorse for the downtrodden. Is it any wonder, then, that he sides with the amoral, land-usurping tycoon over his own former troops, who are now civilians and are bereft of the gold that should be rightfully theirs.
"The Man From Colorado" is a big budget psychological Western, a character study of Glenn Ford's Colonel-turned-Judge, as he hides from his war crimes in his newfound judicial power, but begins to crumble on the inside as his secrets come to light.
Which causes him not to fall apart but to act out in even more violent ways.
In the last scene, only his former Captain William Holden stands between Ford and the total destruction of the town, and this is a rare instance of the writer and director carrying a character's psychosis to it's ultimate end in a genre (Westerns) that usually seeks redemption for it's heroes fallen from grace.
Two Thumbs Up for "The Man From Colorado", a costume drama shot in Technicolor, featuring Ellen Drew as the woman torn between Ford and Holden. Her presence provides the emotional center of the film, as was usually designated to the female romantic role in these types of Westerns (and in crime movies as well). ////
I didn't post last night because I went to Los Angeles, to Historic Filipinotown, to see Jesika von Rabbit play at The Bootleg Theater on Beverly Boulevard near Alvarado Street. I have been a fan of JVR since 2006, when she led Gram Rabbit with her then-partner Todd Rutherford. Gram Rabbit broke up in 2016, and Jesika had begun a solo career as far back as 2012. Now she is a solo act full time. Back in 2006 through 2011, I used to go to a million Gram Rabbit shows. Since I've been working for Pearl, starting in 2010, I have tapered off on my attendance and haven't seen Jesika but every couple of years because she plays clubs with set times that are close to midnight. I can't attend a show that late, but last night I was off work, and it was a double bonus because she and her band went on at 9:15, an early set for the night before Thanksgiving. So I had a blast, and Grimsley showed up at the last minute as well. He introduced me to Jes and Gram Rabbit in 2006. Jesika and her band have a lot of power, and she comes across with even more creative presence and assertiveness on her own, playing her own music. It was very loud, which seems to be the standard nowdays. Grim spent most of the set standing in a small room off to the side and away from the stage. But he does that at most concerts now. He walked out on Sparks last week as reported, because it was Heavy Metal volume.
Me, I hang in there. I've got my one Tinnitus Ear, but it already has tinnitus and it's not gonna get any better (and hasn't gotten worse), and my other ear hears just fine and seems to be able to withstand any level of sonic bombardment, except for Iron Maiden, the one band I shall not see again without earplugs. :)
Jesika and band surprised me, and I think everyone in attendance, with an awesome cover of "Tom Sawyer" to close out her set. They say that everyone likes Rush, whether you are punk or metal or whatever genre a person might feel slotted into nowdays. Rush seem to be the unifying band, and JVR proved it because I never would have expected such a cover song from her.
But she and her band nailed it, and it was pretty awesome.
I drove home deaf, with no traffic. Then today was today, and here we are.
I hope you had a very happy Thanksgiving and tomorrow I will be back at work at Pearl's.
See you in the morning. Huge love until then. xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
Wednesday, November 21, 2018
My Trip To Bell Canyon and El Escorpion Park + "The Life Of Oharu" by Mizoguchi
Today I had a strong urge to drive out West Hills to try and locate a trailhead or entry point for Bell Canyon Park. I woke up thinking about it, and I figured my sudden interest was subconsciously generated by the recent Woolsey fire. The community of Bell Canyon, home to many celebrities, had been ravaged by the fire and had been in the news a lot last week. But as I sat down at my computer this morn, I wasn't thinking about the fire as I Googled directions for Bell Canyon Park. I was really only following my urge to find the trailhead, because I have been hiking the same places over and over and I simply wanted to find a new one. I had tried to locate Bell Canyon Park once before, about two years ago. I Googled the directions that time, too, and I followed the route I was given : Valley Circle past Roscoe to Bell Canyon Road, then up that road to the supposed entrance to the park, which - all told - would be about 11 miles from my apartment. Driving Valley Circle Boulevard is the Valley's version of being out in the country, if not the Boondocks. You are way out in some open space below Chatsworth, but when you get down to the intersection with Roscoe, you start to see some regular development. Then you turn right on Bell Canyon Road, which leads you up into the mountains.
The sun was in my eyes as I drove up the canyon road. Even with the driver's side windshield shade pulled down, it was hard to see. I drove slow and craned my neck, looking for any sign of a trailhead leading to Bell Canyon Park. Sometimes, neighborhoods like to keep these trails a secret and I understand why. I am an unobtrusive hiker however. All I wanted to do was find a new trail. Finally at about a mile in, I came upon the large security guard shack that marks the entrance to the wealthy enclave of Bell Canyon itself. Now I remembered exactly what had happened the last time I tried to find the park trail : I'd reached the same high security guard shack, with gate, and had made a u-turn before reaching same, so as to avoid an embarrassing situation. The gate is opened for residents only.
So now I was turned around and heading back down Bell Canyon Road. I figured I would just go back to Valley Circle and drive another mile or so to El Escorpion Park, one of my favorite hikes, home to the Cave of Munitz, with an entrance on a familiar street. That was my thought as I turned around.
But now I was facing away from the sun and I could see real well, and what I saw as I drove down Bell Canyon Road shocked me. The entire hillside was blackened from the fire, for almost the whole way down to Valley Circle. Immediately I thought of the news reports of what had happened in the community of Bell Canyon, past the guard shack. Many people lost their homes and everything that belonged to them.
I thought that had happened much further in, because the majority of the 20 mile long fire had burned closer to the canyons leading to the ocean. Bell Canyon is on the western edge of all of that. I knew the interior had burned, but I didn't realise it had come so close to the Valley floor, nor that it had burned entire hillsides.
I continued on to El Escorpion Park, not knowing what to expect, but figuring it would be okay as I had heard nothing on the news to indicate otherwise. As I began my hike, however, I very quickly saw that it was not okay. Just a hundred yards past the entrance, several acres of grassland had been burned flat, not far from a residential street. As I continued on, the damage got worse and by the time I reached the Cave of Munitz, 3/4s of a mile in, I could see that most of the back area of the park had been heavily burned. El Escorpion Park lies in a canyon as well, a "sister" canyon to Bell, just on the other side of the Castle Peak mountain that separates it from Bell Canyon Road. The fire had jumped Bell Canyon and gotten into El Escorpion, setting much of the vast acreage ablaze. An area of about a half mile square, formerly so thick with vegetation that you could not see between trails, was now charred to the ground and almost barren. You could walk across the blackened soil without regard for trails. I hiked all the way to the back of the park, to where it runs up against another set of mountains, one and a quarter miles in. I was trying to recognize former landmarks : "This is where all the bee bushes were.....this is where my favorite oak trees were, where the sun would come through the branches in late afternoon and cast amazing shadows.....".
Beginning with my drive back down Bell Canyon Road, where I experienced my first visual shock, and continuing through my hike to the back of El Escorpion Park, I was really affected not just by what I saw, but by the emotional power of what I saw. On my hike I thought, "how in the world do you get a handle on this much fire"? And I was just looking at a few hundred acres of it. The whole of the Woolsey fire, last I heard, was somewhere around 140,000 acres.
I can't even imagine how they put it out, just seeing the damage to one small part of it, which even so was pretty extensive.
Being there, and feeling the power of it in the aftermath, blew me away. I cannot even begin to fathom what the folks in the Bell Canyon community experienced.
All I could think was "God Bless them all". Sounds trite, maybe, but that was the only thing I could offer upon the shock seeing it in person, my own small prayer. The feeling, though, was genuine.
I drove home after my hike and stopped at Trader Joes and Super King for supplies. Both stores were jam packed pre-Thanksgiving. The checkout at Super King took more than twenty minutes. Normally I'd have said "screw it" and bailed. But I was in a bit of a trance.
At home this eve, I watched another movie in my own personal Cinematheque Retrospective of director Kenji Mizoguchi. You will recall that I was watching several of his films before taking a break to concentrate on Horror for Halloweentime. Only eight Mizoguchis are available from the Libe, tonight I watched my seventh : "The Life Of Oharu", a full scale Masterpiece almost on the level of "Sansho The Baliff" (reviewed in September, and considered one of the ten greatest films ever made).
Very briefly, "Oharu" is a middle aged woman who has suffered nothing but misfortune in her life. Once, she was a Lady In Waiting to the court of a local Lord. Her family was part of the nobility. But she was in love with one of her servants (played by a young Toshiro Mifune). They were discovered and she and her family were cast out, exiled to the working class of 17th century Japan, which meant poverty and struggle, and extreme shame and punishment for a woman who broke the rules of a male dominated society.
Be prepared to suffer along with Oharu as you watch the movie. It is long, 135 minutes, and it feels longer because it is slow, so have patience. You will be rewarded with one of the most deeply emotional films you will ever see. Cinematically it is brilliant. I am thinking more and more that Mizoguchi has got to be considered with the greatest directors of all time. Consider "Sansho The Baliff" and now this film. Two # 10s, as great as films get.
No amount of superlatives nor Thumbs Up can accurately describe my recommendation.
Just see it, when you are in the mood.
That's all for tonight. See you in the morning. Much Love and God Bless. xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
The sun was in my eyes as I drove up the canyon road. Even with the driver's side windshield shade pulled down, it was hard to see. I drove slow and craned my neck, looking for any sign of a trailhead leading to Bell Canyon Park. Sometimes, neighborhoods like to keep these trails a secret and I understand why. I am an unobtrusive hiker however. All I wanted to do was find a new trail. Finally at about a mile in, I came upon the large security guard shack that marks the entrance to the wealthy enclave of Bell Canyon itself. Now I remembered exactly what had happened the last time I tried to find the park trail : I'd reached the same high security guard shack, with gate, and had made a u-turn before reaching same, so as to avoid an embarrassing situation. The gate is opened for residents only.
So now I was turned around and heading back down Bell Canyon Road. I figured I would just go back to Valley Circle and drive another mile or so to El Escorpion Park, one of my favorite hikes, home to the Cave of Munitz, with an entrance on a familiar street. That was my thought as I turned around.
But now I was facing away from the sun and I could see real well, and what I saw as I drove down Bell Canyon Road shocked me. The entire hillside was blackened from the fire, for almost the whole way down to Valley Circle. Immediately I thought of the news reports of what had happened in the community of Bell Canyon, past the guard shack. Many people lost their homes and everything that belonged to them.
I thought that had happened much further in, because the majority of the 20 mile long fire had burned closer to the canyons leading to the ocean. Bell Canyon is on the western edge of all of that. I knew the interior had burned, but I didn't realise it had come so close to the Valley floor, nor that it had burned entire hillsides.
I continued on to El Escorpion Park, not knowing what to expect, but figuring it would be okay as I had heard nothing on the news to indicate otherwise. As I began my hike, however, I very quickly saw that it was not okay. Just a hundred yards past the entrance, several acres of grassland had been burned flat, not far from a residential street. As I continued on, the damage got worse and by the time I reached the Cave of Munitz, 3/4s of a mile in, I could see that most of the back area of the park had been heavily burned. El Escorpion Park lies in a canyon as well, a "sister" canyon to Bell, just on the other side of the Castle Peak mountain that separates it from Bell Canyon Road. The fire had jumped Bell Canyon and gotten into El Escorpion, setting much of the vast acreage ablaze. An area of about a half mile square, formerly so thick with vegetation that you could not see between trails, was now charred to the ground and almost barren. You could walk across the blackened soil without regard for trails. I hiked all the way to the back of the park, to where it runs up against another set of mountains, one and a quarter miles in. I was trying to recognize former landmarks : "This is where all the bee bushes were.....this is where my favorite oak trees were, where the sun would come through the branches in late afternoon and cast amazing shadows.....".
Beginning with my drive back down Bell Canyon Road, where I experienced my first visual shock, and continuing through my hike to the back of El Escorpion Park, I was really affected not just by what I saw, but by the emotional power of what I saw. On my hike I thought, "how in the world do you get a handle on this much fire"? And I was just looking at a few hundred acres of it. The whole of the Woolsey fire, last I heard, was somewhere around 140,000 acres.
I can't even imagine how they put it out, just seeing the damage to one small part of it, which even so was pretty extensive.
Being there, and feeling the power of it in the aftermath, blew me away. I cannot even begin to fathom what the folks in the Bell Canyon community experienced.
All I could think was "God Bless them all". Sounds trite, maybe, but that was the only thing I could offer upon the shock seeing it in person, my own small prayer. The feeling, though, was genuine.
I drove home after my hike and stopped at Trader Joes and Super King for supplies. Both stores were jam packed pre-Thanksgiving. The checkout at Super King took more than twenty minutes. Normally I'd have said "screw it" and bailed. But I was in a bit of a trance.
At home this eve, I watched another movie in my own personal Cinematheque Retrospective of director Kenji Mizoguchi. You will recall that I was watching several of his films before taking a break to concentrate on Horror for Halloweentime. Only eight Mizoguchis are available from the Libe, tonight I watched my seventh : "The Life Of Oharu", a full scale Masterpiece almost on the level of "Sansho The Baliff" (reviewed in September, and considered one of the ten greatest films ever made).
Very briefly, "Oharu" is a middle aged woman who has suffered nothing but misfortune in her life. Once, she was a Lady In Waiting to the court of a local Lord. Her family was part of the nobility. But she was in love with one of her servants (played by a young Toshiro Mifune). They were discovered and she and her family were cast out, exiled to the working class of 17th century Japan, which meant poverty and struggle, and extreme shame and punishment for a woman who broke the rules of a male dominated society.
Be prepared to suffer along with Oharu as you watch the movie. It is long, 135 minutes, and it feels longer because it is slow, so have patience. You will be rewarded with one of the most deeply emotional films you will ever see. Cinematically it is brilliant. I am thinking more and more that Mizoguchi has got to be considered with the greatest directors of all time. Consider "Sansho The Baliff" and now this film. Two # 10s, as great as films get.
No amount of superlatives nor Thumbs Up can accurately describe my recommendation.
Just see it, when you are in the mood.
That's all for tonight. See you in the morning. Much Love and God Bless. xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
Tuesday, November 20, 2018
A Return To The Armer Theater for "Out Of The Past" + Aliso
Tonight was fun! I went back to the Armer Theater at CSUN for a special Monday night screening of the classic film noir "Out Of The Past" (1947), which stars Robert Mitchum and Jane Greer. Our host and lecturer for the evening was Professor Schultheiss, but Professor Tim was there also as were two other "regulars" from our beloved Thursday Night Cinematheque Retrospectives, so it was a mini-reunion. It was great to see Professor Tim, who had been a weekly fixture in my life from September 2009 until last May, when his tenure as the Cinematheque host came to an end. Speaking with him tonight, however, there is a possibility he may be called back, as the programming of the new Cinematheque has not been as successful and nothing is scheduled at the moment for future retrospectives.
We shall see. But it was a blast to see everyone. I spent nine years at the movies with these guys. :)
Professor Schultheiss is an awesome lecturer himself. He hosted a smaller version of the Cinematheque before Professor Tim took the helm, and in the three times I have attended his latest screenings, he has always delivered an interesting and insightful introduction to the scheduled film. Following his lecture on the making of "Out Of The Past" and it's critical reception, we were well warmed up to watch it for ourselves. I actually own the dvd, but had never seen it on the big screen. This was my third viewing.
Prof. Schultheiss described "Out Of The Past" as the quintessential Film Noir after presenting a lengthy checklist of elements required for the genre, of which "OOTP" checked every box. It is generally considered one of the great films of it's type, with it's doomed protagonist (Mitchum) and it's Femme Fatale from Hell (Greer). It has a script that took three writers to complete, one (the author of the book it was based on) to provide a basic screenplay, a second to whittle it down and write shorter lines of snappy Noir dialogue. The second writer failed at that task and so a third was brought in, one Frank Fenton, who rewrote every line of dialogue into a cohesive patter that has all the provocations and comebacks - all the verbal jibes between characters - that gives a Noir it's tension. Noir characters don't converse; they joust. And never more competitively than in this film.
Mitchum - who I must not let you forget had a deodorant named after him - plays an ex-Private Eye who has left the game to live a quiet, less dangerous life in a small town on the outskirts of Lake Tahoe. There he has found a new girl, wholesome and honest who loves and believes in him. He is now the proprietor of a gas station in town, that he runs with the help of a deaf-mute teenager who will later become a pivotal figure in the plot.
One day, a man from his past arrives in town looking for Mitchum. He has a score to settle and makes Mitchum an offer on behalf of his millionaire boss, an offer that Mitchum - given the secrets he holds from his investigative days - has no choice but to accept. Now Mitchum must explain his past to his new girlfriend, who is innocent to the dark corners of big city life.
Once upon a time, he had been hired by the Millionaire (played by Kirrrck! DOUG-lasss!, said with clenched jaw) to track down the Millionaire's girl, a dame on the run who has stolen 40 gees of Kirk's money. Nobody does that to Kirk Douglas (say it with me!), except for Jane Greer, who has the "face of an Angel" as the script says, but the soul of a devil. As soon as she enters the bar in Acapulco where Mitchum has tracked her, she has him on her hook, and we are talking about Robert F-for-freaking Mitchum, whose deodorant stops even the worst perspiration and resultant b.o. Robert Mitchum never sweats anything.
Except for Jane Greer, who has his number right up to the last act of the movie.
Or does she? The three-screenwriter script has so many twists and turns that you need a roadmap to keep up. Greer's loyalty is constantly shifting, from Mitchum to her lord and master Douglas who she is on the run from. Greer's performance is the axis of the film. You never know which way she is gonna run to save her own skin, and she will go to any length to do so. ///
That's all I will tell you because as always I don't want to give any spoilers, but if you like Film Noir and have not already seen this famous example, then I highly recommend it for inclusion in your upcoming motion picture schedule (pronounced "shedge-yool" as always).
You've also got Rhonda Fleming in a smaller role as a major double-crosser to add to the recommendation. ////
Two Huge Thumbs Up for "Out Of The Past", which has an 8.1 rating on IMDB. Don't miss it.
I had a nice hike at Aliso this afternoon. It was great to get up there for the first time in a few weeks. At work these days, even an Aliso hike is difficult to schedule. But now I am off until Friday, so I'll see where else I can go.
See you in the morning. Big Love. xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
We shall see. But it was a blast to see everyone. I spent nine years at the movies with these guys. :)
Professor Schultheiss is an awesome lecturer himself. He hosted a smaller version of the Cinematheque before Professor Tim took the helm, and in the three times I have attended his latest screenings, he has always delivered an interesting and insightful introduction to the scheduled film. Following his lecture on the making of "Out Of The Past" and it's critical reception, we were well warmed up to watch it for ourselves. I actually own the dvd, but had never seen it on the big screen. This was my third viewing.
Prof. Schultheiss described "Out Of The Past" as the quintessential Film Noir after presenting a lengthy checklist of elements required for the genre, of which "OOTP" checked every box. It is generally considered one of the great films of it's type, with it's doomed protagonist (Mitchum) and it's Femme Fatale from Hell (Greer). It has a script that took three writers to complete, one (the author of the book it was based on) to provide a basic screenplay, a second to whittle it down and write shorter lines of snappy Noir dialogue. The second writer failed at that task and so a third was brought in, one Frank Fenton, who rewrote every line of dialogue into a cohesive patter that has all the provocations and comebacks - all the verbal jibes between characters - that gives a Noir it's tension. Noir characters don't converse; they joust. And never more competitively than in this film.
Mitchum - who I must not let you forget had a deodorant named after him - plays an ex-Private Eye who has left the game to live a quiet, less dangerous life in a small town on the outskirts of Lake Tahoe. There he has found a new girl, wholesome and honest who loves and believes in him. He is now the proprietor of a gas station in town, that he runs with the help of a deaf-mute teenager who will later become a pivotal figure in the plot.
One day, a man from his past arrives in town looking for Mitchum. He has a score to settle and makes Mitchum an offer on behalf of his millionaire boss, an offer that Mitchum - given the secrets he holds from his investigative days - has no choice but to accept. Now Mitchum must explain his past to his new girlfriend, who is innocent to the dark corners of big city life.
Once upon a time, he had been hired by the Millionaire (played by Kirrrck! DOUG-lasss!, said with clenched jaw) to track down the Millionaire's girl, a dame on the run who has stolen 40 gees of Kirk's money. Nobody does that to Kirk Douglas (say it with me!), except for Jane Greer, who has the "face of an Angel" as the script says, but the soul of a devil. As soon as she enters the bar in Acapulco where Mitchum has tracked her, she has him on her hook, and we are talking about Robert F-for-freaking Mitchum, whose deodorant stops even the worst perspiration and resultant b.o. Robert Mitchum never sweats anything.
Except for Jane Greer, who has his number right up to the last act of the movie.
Or does she? The three-screenwriter script has so many twists and turns that you need a roadmap to keep up. Greer's loyalty is constantly shifting, from Mitchum to her lord and master Douglas who she is on the run from. Greer's performance is the axis of the film. You never know which way she is gonna run to save her own skin, and she will go to any length to do so. ///
That's all I will tell you because as always I don't want to give any spoilers, but if you like Film Noir and have not already seen this famous example, then I highly recommend it for inclusion in your upcoming motion picture schedule (pronounced "shedge-yool" as always).
You've also got Rhonda Fleming in a smaller role as a major double-crosser to add to the recommendation. ////
Two Huge Thumbs Up for "Out Of The Past", which has an 8.1 rating on IMDB. Don't miss it.
I had a nice hike at Aliso this afternoon. It was great to get up there for the first time in a few weeks. At work these days, even an Aliso hike is difficult to schedule. But now I am off until Friday, so I'll see where else I can go.
See you in the morning. Big Love. xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
Monday, November 19, 2018
"Dragonwyck" with Vincent Price and Gene Tierney (a great film) + Santa Susana (finally)
Tonight's movie was "Dragonwyck" (1946), the third and final film in my Fox Horror Classics Vol. 2 collection. I had been meaning to see it for many years because it stars Gene Tierney, one of my favorite actresses. "Laura", the famous film noir, is her most well-known role and she was good in many others, usually playing fragile but resilient heroines, sometimes naive and preyed upon by men who used her beauty against her. Gene Tierney was exceptionally beautiful and at one point early in her career she was courted by Senator John F. Kennedy, the future President. But she didn't have an easy life. She grew increasingly nervous on the sets of her films and began hearing voices. At one point she climbed out he window of her mother's 14th floor apartment building and stood pressed against the ledge, not sure if she could jump. In the early 1950s she had a complete breakdown and entered an institution, where she slowly made a recovery. But her career never fully recovered and she dealt with depression and the effects of her condition for the rest of her life.
But when she was at the top of her game she was a fine actress, and in "Dragonwyck" she has a role tailor made for her personality. She plays a young woman living on a farm in Connecticut with her parents and little sister. Her father (The great Walter Houston) is very religious. He consults The Lord on every major decision. A letter arrives at the farm from a distant cousin, a landowner in New York who is known as a "Patroon", meaning a man who allows small farmers to use his vast land holdings in exchange for a share of their crops and an exorbitant rent. The year is 1844 and the rest of the country has done away with such unfair policies. The local farmers in New York are organising too, but Vincent Price, who plays the haughty Patroon, has vowed to fight them will all of his will. His family has owned the land and the gloomy Dragonwyck mansion for 200 years, and Price will not go down without a fight.
He has sent the letter to his cousin Walter Houston (who has never met him) because he needs a nanny for his young daughter, whom he and his troubled wife more or less ignore. Houston's daughter Gene Tierney desperately wants to go. She respects her strict religious upbringing but wants to see more of life. Her father is against it, but after meeting Vincent Price he agrees to pray on it, and finally he agrees to let his daughter go to Dragonwyck.
Boy was that ever a mistake.
Here we are in Haunted House territory again, like we were last night with "13 Ghosts". Only this time, we are watching a major studio production, a Grade A melodrama directed by top Hollywood craftsman Joseph L. Mankiewicz (great uncle of TCM's Ben). The script is well-developed from a popular book, and the ghosts are mostly in the heads of the deeply disturbed Price and his blood relations. Vincent Price, a great actor not always given credit as such, is in a role here that should have earned him an Oscar nomination. He is a wealthy but tottering control freak who will not tolerate any change in his fortunes, even as those around him (such as his sickly, self absorbed wife and treasonous maid) can see the newly liberated working class breaking free from his hold that has been a death grip on their lives. He is a hated man who responds with bitter coldness toward any who oppose him.
But he also has deeply hidden secrets, and this is the mystery of whatever is going on inside the many-roomed mansion. Gene Tierney is not allowed up to the top floor, nor is a second maid (the great Jessica Tandy), even more inquisitive than the first. Price detests Tandy because she is crippled, another sign of self-projected rot in his character.
I shall now tell you no more, because to do so would threaten to reveal the secrets of Dragonwyck, which you must uncover for yourself.
I mentioned that I'd been waiting to see this movie for a long time, maybe five years or more. I found it available a couple of years ago in the Fox Horror Classics Vol. 2 collection, but still I waited because the collection was expensive for a three film set, and also because reviewers described "Dragonwyck" not as a horror film but more of a Gothic Drama. I was confused but intrigued, yet the urge to see it never abated. It was always in my mental movie queue, and when I finally saw it tonight it matched the high expectations I'd held for it for such a long time.
"Dragonwyck" is an Absolute Must See, in the tradition of "Rebecca" and "Wuthering Heights", only a bit weirder than either. Vincent Price gives a towering performance as the rigidly sadistic Patroon, who undermines the people closest to him as he slowly sabotages himself with self hatred.
I was blown away by every aspect of this movie, from the classic, full bodied black and white photography to the brilliant set design of the mansion, to the shifting chiaroscuro lighting and especially the performances, of Price especially, and also the lovely Gene Tierney and Walter Houston (and all the others).
Two Huge Thumbs Up, a must see.
This morning we had good singing in church, and later this aft, I actually got a hike in. Not an easy feat these days, but it was a day off, so I went out to Chatsworth Park and hiked up the hillside into Santa Su, where I had a nice stroll and took a few pics, one of which I posted on FB earlier.
Hope your day was good. See you in the morning. xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
But when she was at the top of her game she was a fine actress, and in "Dragonwyck" she has a role tailor made for her personality. She plays a young woman living on a farm in Connecticut with her parents and little sister. Her father (The great Walter Houston) is very religious. He consults The Lord on every major decision. A letter arrives at the farm from a distant cousin, a landowner in New York who is known as a "Patroon", meaning a man who allows small farmers to use his vast land holdings in exchange for a share of their crops and an exorbitant rent. The year is 1844 and the rest of the country has done away with such unfair policies. The local farmers in New York are organising too, but Vincent Price, who plays the haughty Patroon, has vowed to fight them will all of his will. His family has owned the land and the gloomy Dragonwyck mansion for 200 years, and Price will not go down without a fight.
He has sent the letter to his cousin Walter Houston (who has never met him) because he needs a nanny for his young daughter, whom he and his troubled wife more or less ignore. Houston's daughter Gene Tierney desperately wants to go. She respects her strict religious upbringing but wants to see more of life. Her father is against it, but after meeting Vincent Price he agrees to pray on it, and finally he agrees to let his daughter go to Dragonwyck.
Boy was that ever a mistake.
Here we are in Haunted House territory again, like we were last night with "13 Ghosts". Only this time, we are watching a major studio production, a Grade A melodrama directed by top Hollywood craftsman Joseph L. Mankiewicz (great uncle of TCM's Ben). The script is well-developed from a popular book, and the ghosts are mostly in the heads of the deeply disturbed Price and his blood relations. Vincent Price, a great actor not always given credit as such, is in a role here that should have earned him an Oscar nomination. He is a wealthy but tottering control freak who will not tolerate any change in his fortunes, even as those around him (such as his sickly, self absorbed wife and treasonous maid) can see the newly liberated working class breaking free from his hold that has been a death grip on their lives. He is a hated man who responds with bitter coldness toward any who oppose him.
But he also has deeply hidden secrets, and this is the mystery of whatever is going on inside the many-roomed mansion. Gene Tierney is not allowed up to the top floor, nor is a second maid (the great Jessica Tandy), even more inquisitive than the first. Price detests Tandy because she is crippled, another sign of self-projected rot in his character.
I shall now tell you no more, because to do so would threaten to reveal the secrets of Dragonwyck, which you must uncover for yourself.
I mentioned that I'd been waiting to see this movie for a long time, maybe five years or more. I found it available a couple of years ago in the Fox Horror Classics Vol. 2 collection, but still I waited because the collection was expensive for a three film set, and also because reviewers described "Dragonwyck" not as a horror film but more of a Gothic Drama. I was confused but intrigued, yet the urge to see it never abated. It was always in my mental movie queue, and when I finally saw it tonight it matched the high expectations I'd held for it for such a long time.
"Dragonwyck" is an Absolute Must See, in the tradition of "Rebecca" and "Wuthering Heights", only a bit weirder than either. Vincent Price gives a towering performance as the rigidly sadistic Patroon, who undermines the people closest to him as he slowly sabotages himself with self hatred.
I was blown away by every aspect of this movie, from the classic, full bodied black and white photography to the brilliant set design of the mansion, to the shifting chiaroscuro lighting and especially the performances, of Price especially, and also the lovely Gene Tierney and Walter Houston (and all the others).
Two Huge Thumbs Up, a must see.
This morning we had good singing in church, and later this aft, I actually got a hike in. Not an easy feat these days, but it was a day off, so I went out to Chatsworth Park and hiked up the hillside into Santa Su, where I had a nice stroll and took a few pics, one of which I posted on FB earlier.
Hope your day was good. See you in the morning. xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
Sunday, November 18, 2018
"13 Ghosts" by William Castle, pretty awesome stuff
I'm writing from home tonight, off until next Friday as previously mentioned. Tonight I watched an awesome movie, "13 Ghosts" (1960), once again directed by low budget impressario William Castle. This one was taken from his five film Horror Collection which I unwrapped tonight, having finished his Western Collection last night. I mentioned to you that, while Castle's Westerns are very good, he was mostly known for his horror movies. After seeing "13 Ghosts" I can see why. The seamless craftsmanship is there, giving you a lot a bang for your buck, but there is quite a difference in the overall cinematic value. You remember what I said about his Westerns, that they are like "study films", in the sense that, while the movies are very entertaining there is a slight flatness to the drama, likely due to the need to shoot quickly and get every scene down in one take due to budget concerns.
With "13 Ghosts", made 17 years after his debut feature "Klondike Kate" (reviewed here recently), you can see the progress he has made. "Ghosts", though still bearing many of Castle's efficient technical trademarks, feels like an A-Grade film. The story begins at the Los Angeles County Museum Of Natural History. A Paleontologist is giving a tour of the dinosaur exhibits. Later in his office he gets a call from his wife, telling him that their furniture is being repossessed due to failure to make payments.
He and his family are broke. As they sit in their empty house, they celebrate the birthday of the 10 year old son, who blows out the candles on his birthday cake and makes a wish, for a house with furniture that no one can ever take away.....
Before any of this happens, the movie starts with one of the best title sequences I have ever seen, and then William Castle himself appears, to give you an introduction and a few instructions on how to use the blue and red glasses that were passed out to moviegoers at the theater in 1960 when it opened. I am not certain the glasses were 3D, but maybe more like a filtering device the way Castle explains it. I will say no more, because it's a great introduction and you should see it for yourself.
Back to the action, the boy's birthday wish comes true. The next thing you know, the family has received a telegram informing them that they have inherited the mansion of the paleontologist's late Uncle. Of course it is a creepy old Victorian, overgrown with trees and vines (probably shot somewhere in Los Angeles before they tore 'em all down). They meet with the late Uncle's lawyer, played by a young Martin Milner of "Adam-12" fame, and he informs them that they may not want to live in the house because it is inhabited by ghosts.
Naturally, the family does not believe this, and besides - the house is a windfall for them. They have no money and were close to being homeless.
Ahh, but they should have listened to Martin Milner.
"13 Ghosts" delivers real atmosphere, shot in crisp, mid range grey-scale and lit with background shadows and elongated angles. There is some great camerawork here, a big step up from Castle's Westerns, and I found myself thinking that "13 Ghosts" must have had a big stylistic influence on horror directors to come. In fact, there are shots reminiscent of Hitchcock's "Psycho", which Castle could not have copied because the two films were released the same year, 1960.
Castle later became known for the so-called "gimmicks" in his horror movies, like having a vibrating buzzer installed under the seats in theaters showing his film "The Tingler" (oh boy!) :)
He also used 3D, and he would often appear in introductions like the one here, where he would "warn" susceptible teen audiences of the early 60s about the terror they were about to experience. Such an approach could often be schlocky - once again see Roger Corman, a godawful filmmaker - but in the hands of Castle, who had talent and knew how to put together a solid film, the "warnings" only add to the fun. His horror films were designed to pack theaters with Teenagers ready to scream their heads off on Friday and Saturday nights. In "13 Ghosts" the scares would have been just taut enough to achieve the desired effect, but what would have really impressed the audience at the time was the special effects of the Ghosts, which are revealed in a double exposure, projected in a two-color blue/red effect.
These are some really cool effects for 1960. I only wish I had the glasses to separate the images. But it still looked awesome even without the glasses, and in this movie it was Castle's first horror "gimmick", and not cheesy at all but very effective indeed. The art direction in the old house is spooky and claustrophobic. The daughter finds a Ouija board and of course the family plays with it (something you should never do!).....
Later on in the movie they have a seance, and I was weirded out because just a little while earlier I had been reading my book "Human Devolution" by Michael Cremo, and was in the middle of a long chapter devoted to paranormal research. I was specifically reading pages detailing the accounts of seances conducted by famous mediums in 19th Century England.
Some bizarre stuff in those accounts, yes indeed.
And right after I finished reading I started the movie, which ends up in a seance, with a very special medium (you will see who when you see the movie).
And you have to see it. I won't order you to, but I will recommend it most highly, with Two Huge Thumbs Up.
It's a small horror picture with big ambitions, and it succeeds mightily on those terms because of it's technical and dramatic merits. /////
I am gonna chill out for the next few days, just relax and unwind, go on an easy hike or two, try and take some photos.
Has anybody seen Elizabeth? She was last seen posting from an airplane, in flight. But that was a couple weeks ago. I think she may have flown into The Twilight Zone......(I'll ask Uncle Rod).
Seriously though, for Elizabeth, I hope all is well and that you are hanging in there.
Good things are coming.
See you in church in the morning. xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
With "13 Ghosts", made 17 years after his debut feature "Klondike Kate" (reviewed here recently), you can see the progress he has made. "Ghosts", though still bearing many of Castle's efficient technical trademarks, feels like an A-Grade film. The story begins at the Los Angeles County Museum Of Natural History. A Paleontologist is giving a tour of the dinosaur exhibits. Later in his office he gets a call from his wife, telling him that their furniture is being repossessed due to failure to make payments.
He and his family are broke. As they sit in their empty house, they celebrate the birthday of the 10 year old son, who blows out the candles on his birthday cake and makes a wish, for a house with furniture that no one can ever take away.....
Before any of this happens, the movie starts with one of the best title sequences I have ever seen, and then William Castle himself appears, to give you an introduction and a few instructions on how to use the blue and red glasses that were passed out to moviegoers at the theater in 1960 when it opened. I am not certain the glasses were 3D, but maybe more like a filtering device the way Castle explains it. I will say no more, because it's a great introduction and you should see it for yourself.
Back to the action, the boy's birthday wish comes true. The next thing you know, the family has received a telegram informing them that they have inherited the mansion of the paleontologist's late Uncle. Of course it is a creepy old Victorian, overgrown with trees and vines (probably shot somewhere in Los Angeles before they tore 'em all down). They meet with the late Uncle's lawyer, played by a young Martin Milner of "Adam-12" fame, and he informs them that they may not want to live in the house because it is inhabited by ghosts.
Naturally, the family does not believe this, and besides - the house is a windfall for them. They have no money and were close to being homeless.
Ahh, but they should have listened to Martin Milner.
"13 Ghosts" delivers real atmosphere, shot in crisp, mid range grey-scale and lit with background shadows and elongated angles. There is some great camerawork here, a big step up from Castle's Westerns, and I found myself thinking that "13 Ghosts" must have had a big stylistic influence on horror directors to come. In fact, there are shots reminiscent of Hitchcock's "Psycho", which Castle could not have copied because the two films were released the same year, 1960.
Castle later became known for the so-called "gimmicks" in his horror movies, like having a vibrating buzzer installed under the seats in theaters showing his film "The Tingler" (oh boy!) :)
He also used 3D, and he would often appear in introductions like the one here, where he would "warn" susceptible teen audiences of the early 60s about the terror they were about to experience. Such an approach could often be schlocky - once again see Roger Corman, a godawful filmmaker - but in the hands of Castle, who had talent and knew how to put together a solid film, the "warnings" only add to the fun. His horror films were designed to pack theaters with Teenagers ready to scream their heads off on Friday and Saturday nights. In "13 Ghosts" the scares would have been just taut enough to achieve the desired effect, but what would have really impressed the audience at the time was the special effects of the Ghosts, which are revealed in a double exposure, projected in a two-color blue/red effect.
These are some really cool effects for 1960. I only wish I had the glasses to separate the images. But it still looked awesome even without the glasses, and in this movie it was Castle's first horror "gimmick", and not cheesy at all but very effective indeed. The art direction in the old house is spooky and claustrophobic. The daughter finds a Ouija board and of course the family plays with it (something you should never do!).....
Later on in the movie they have a seance, and I was weirded out because just a little while earlier I had been reading my book "Human Devolution" by Michael Cremo, and was in the middle of a long chapter devoted to paranormal research. I was specifically reading pages detailing the accounts of seances conducted by famous mediums in 19th Century England.
Some bizarre stuff in those accounts, yes indeed.
And right after I finished reading I started the movie, which ends up in a seance, with a very special medium (you will see who when you see the movie).
And you have to see it. I won't order you to, but I will recommend it most highly, with Two Huge Thumbs Up.
It's a small horror picture with big ambitions, and it succeeds mightily on those terms because of it's technical and dramatic merits. /////
I am gonna chill out for the next few days, just relax and unwind, go on an easy hike or two, try and take some photos.
Has anybody seen Elizabeth? She was last seen posting from an airplane, in flight. But that was a couple weeks ago. I think she may have flown into The Twilight Zone......(I'll ask Uncle Rod).
Seriously though, for Elizabeth, I hope all is well and that you are hanging in there.
Good things are coming.
See you in church in the morning. xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
Saturday, November 17, 2018
"Duel On The Mississippi" by William Castle + Cameron Carpenter
Tonight I closed out my William Castle Western Collection with a film called "Duel On The Mississippi" (1955), starring Tarzan actor Lex Barker and Patricia Medina. The action takes place down in Louisiana, where a war over sugar crops is raging between two organised groups, the Planters (i.e. Plantation owners who grow the crops) and the Raiders (bandits who cut down and steal the crops in the dead of night, but feel justified because the Plantation owners have displaced many less wealthy families). The French Creoles seem to control the sugar, which - now being in high demand - is worth more than gold. I am trusting William Castle and his screenwriter on that fact. I had never heard of the sugar wars before, but each Castle Western is like a 72 minute history lesson with some romance thrown in. That's why I said, a few movies ago, that Castle Westerns were like the "study films" that you saw in elementary school.
The romance comes in the form of a battle between handsome Lex Barker and handsome-but-villainous Warren Stevens over the affections of the lovely-but-fiesty Patricia Medina. Stevens is only really interested in his business relationship with her as it relates to his loyalty to the sugar thieves of the Raiders. Medina makes no secret of her crush on Tarzan...I mean Barker, even as she takes him to court to make him her indentured servant over an unpaid debt. This creates romantic tension that will ultimately be released in Your Basic Heavy 1950s Movie Makeout Scenes with full wraparound clinch. The script once again presents a reasonably layered story that explains, scene by scene, the history behind the wars, the rise of sugar in the South, and the political fights between the landowners and the surrounding ethnic groups, both of which in Louisiana were sometimes of mixed race and/or nationality. There is even a minor subtheme about the old debtor's prison in Baton Rouge, which was notorious for it's conditions, depicted as a disgusting muddy cave in the movie.
You get a lot of stuff in a William Castle Western, even if the cinematic aspects of his movies are bare bones (stationary camera, scenes that have a "one take" feel). The Technicolor is spectacular, though, and the Period Look as you sail down the Mississippi on a Paddle Boat in the 1820s, is authentic.
I give "Duel On The Mississippi" Two Thumbs Up, and typing the title just now I see I forgot to mention that there actually are a couple of well-choreographed duels in the picture, between Lex Barker and Warren Stevens. These add a dash of "swashbuckle" to the proceedings as a bonus.
The William Castle Western Collection is formally titled "The Fastest Guns In The West", and is highly recommended for fans of shorter length Westerns, each film running about 72 minutes.
Next up will be the five film William Castle Horror Collection that I received in the mail last week. Though he got his start with Westerns, Castle is most well known for his Horror Films, which - true to his style - are low-budget but not cheap, meaning that they don't look crummy like a Roger Corman film, and they have good stories and professional no frills technical aspects. I'm not sure when I will break out these five horror films, as the Halloween Horror period just ended. I suppose it's always horror time, any time of the year (right?), but I think I will dole these movies out sparingly as we are getting to the Holiday Season and I will be focusing on more dramatic and sentimental themed films.///
I don't know if you checked out the Youtube video I posted on my FB, of Cameron Carpenter playing Bach on his International Touring Organ (ITO for short). I first heard of Carpenter about a year ago, on the Jim Svedja show on KUSC. He's been recording for a decade and performing since he was a child. He's 37 now. At first, I didn't pay much attention because I thought he was pretentious. Unlike most classical musicians, he presents an image of himself that is akin to that of a rock star. He wears sequined shoes, dresses in all black. He wore a mohawk at one point. More than that, he is openly gay (or bisexual), which is fine......but in his promotional videos this was a little bit "in your face". If you saw one, you would see what I mean.
The reason this was different was because he is a classical musician. These players usually subjugate their professional images behind the music they are playing. I mean, someone like Hilary Hahn definitely has an image, but it is toned down and is complimentary to the music.
Cameron Carpenter, at first glance, seemed to be way out in front of the music, like "here I am, Super Classical Rock Star" in the Freddie Mercury mode.
I also think that he took some ill advised suggestions to make one of his promo videos, but now that I have said all of this.....
I have discovered recently, again because he has been promoted by KUSC, that Cameron Carpenter is one hell of an incredible musician. That's why I posted the video of him playing the Bach Passacaglia on the ITO, a digital organ designed specifically to his specifications.
Because I love the organ (I sit next to it in choir), and because I love organ music, I decided to give Cameron Carpenter another chance. They are promoting him heavily on KUSC right now, and as I drove home from the Sparks concert last night, he was being interviewed by Jim Svejda on the latter's show. He came across entirely different from the image projected in his publicity videos, thoughtful rather than full of himself, and he just sounded like an intelligent person.
So I ended up buying a ticket to his recital at Disney Hall next April. If you watch the video I posted, of him playing Bach, you'll see why. The guy is off the charts.
So there you have it for tonight. Tomorrow night I will be writing from home, I'll be off through Thanksgiving. I will be glad to unwind and hopefully get a few hikes in. They don't come easily anymore, so I'll try to get out there while I can. Monday is the most likely.
See you tomorrow. xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
The romance comes in the form of a battle between handsome Lex Barker and handsome-but-villainous Warren Stevens over the affections of the lovely-but-fiesty Patricia Medina. Stevens is only really interested in his business relationship with her as it relates to his loyalty to the sugar thieves of the Raiders. Medina makes no secret of her crush on Tarzan...I mean Barker, even as she takes him to court to make him her indentured servant over an unpaid debt. This creates romantic tension that will ultimately be released in Your Basic Heavy 1950s Movie Makeout Scenes with full wraparound clinch. The script once again presents a reasonably layered story that explains, scene by scene, the history behind the wars, the rise of sugar in the South, and the political fights between the landowners and the surrounding ethnic groups, both of which in Louisiana were sometimes of mixed race and/or nationality. There is even a minor subtheme about the old debtor's prison in Baton Rouge, which was notorious for it's conditions, depicted as a disgusting muddy cave in the movie.
You get a lot of stuff in a William Castle Western, even if the cinematic aspects of his movies are bare bones (stationary camera, scenes that have a "one take" feel). The Technicolor is spectacular, though, and the Period Look as you sail down the Mississippi on a Paddle Boat in the 1820s, is authentic.
I give "Duel On The Mississippi" Two Thumbs Up, and typing the title just now I see I forgot to mention that there actually are a couple of well-choreographed duels in the picture, between Lex Barker and Warren Stevens. These add a dash of "swashbuckle" to the proceedings as a bonus.
The William Castle Western Collection is formally titled "The Fastest Guns In The West", and is highly recommended for fans of shorter length Westerns, each film running about 72 minutes.
Next up will be the five film William Castle Horror Collection that I received in the mail last week. Though he got his start with Westerns, Castle is most well known for his Horror Films, which - true to his style - are low-budget but not cheap, meaning that they don't look crummy like a Roger Corman film, and they have good stories and professional no frills technical aspects. I'm not sure when I will break out these five horror films, as the Halloween Horror period just ended. I suppose it's always horror time, any time of the year (right?), but I think I will dole these movies out sparingly as we are getting to the Holiday Season and I will be focusing on more dramatic and sentimental themed films.///
I don't know if you checked out the Youtube video I posted on my FB, of Cameron Carpenter playing Bach on his International Touring Organ (ITO for short). I first heard of Carpenter about a year ago, on the Jim Svedja show on KUSC. He's been recording for a decade and performing since he was a child. He's 37 now. At first, I didn't pay much attention because I thought he was pretentious. Unlike most classical musicians, he presents an image of himself that is akin to that of a rock star. He wears sequined shoes, dresses in all black. He wore a mohawk at one point. More than that, he is openly gay (or bisexual), which is fine......but in his promotional videos this was a little bit "in your face". If you saw one, you would see what I mean.
The reason this was different was because he is a classical musician. These players usually subjugate their professional images behind the music they are playing. I mean, someone like Hilary Hahn definitely has an image, but it is toned down and is complimentary to the music.
Cameron Carpenter, at first glance, seemed to be way out in front of the music, like "here I am, Super Classical Rock Star" in the Freddie Mercury mode.
I also think that he took some ill advised suggestions to make one of his promo videos, but now that I have said all of this.....
I have discovered recently, again because he has been promoted by KUSC, that Cameron Carpenter is one hell of an incredible musician. That's why I posted the video of him playing the Bach Passacaglia on the ITO, a digital organ designed specifically to his specifications.
Because I love the organ (I sit next to it in choir), and because I love organ music, I decided to give Cameron Carpenter another chance. They are promoting him heavily on KUSC right now, and as I drove home from the Sparks concert last night, he was being interviewed by Jim Svejda on the latter's show. He came across entirely different from the image projected in his publicity videos, thoughtful rather than full of himself, and he just sounded like an intelligent person.
So I ended up buying a ticket to his recital at Disney Hall next April. If you watch the video I posted, of him playing Bach, you'll see why. The guy is off the charts.
So there you have it for tonight. Tomorrow night I will be writing from home, I'll be off through Thanksgiving. I will be glad to unwind and hopefully get a few hikes in. They don't come easily anymore, so I'll try to get out there while I can. Monday is the most likely.
See you tomorrow. xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
Friday, November 16, 2018
Sparks at The Palace Theatre in Downtown Los Angeles
Tonight I went to see Sparks at The Palace Theatre in Downtown Los Angeles. I took the Red Line from North Hollywood, got off at Pershing Square. The Palace is just two blocks down from there, on Broadway near 6th. I had never been to a show there, and I'm not sure how long it's been re-opened, but it's yet another of the century-old Downtown Movie Palaces in the historic theatre district that have been re-opened in the last fifteen or so years. In the 1920s when they were all new, these theatres were promoted as "Movie Palaces", that's what they called them. Whoever owned "The Palace" must have figured, "well, the name's good enough for me". In all seriousness, it's really great to be able to see concerts at all these old theatres now, because I can remember back in the 1970s, when Dad would take me and Chris Downtown to go to The Athletic Club, all of these theaters were closed and boarded up. But lo and behold, after another three decades passed, entrepreneurs got some good ideas, and now they are all opening back up again.
The Palace is a trip, because it obviously has either been recently re-opened, or it hasn't been used much, because there are still some signs of wear inside. My seat was in the balcony, front row, and when you look up at the stage curtain, you can see the fraying at the top, and a tear down one pleat, and you think "wow! This is the original curtain, the one that has been here since the theatre opened.
I just now Googled it, and found out that The Palace opened in 1911, as a Vaudeville Theatre, so that curtain has been hanging there all this time. There are very large paintings hanging on the walls left and right of the stage, depicting idyllic country settings for society types. There are Angels on the ceiling. This theatre, more than even the others I've been to, really evokes a feeling of going back in time to the early 20th century. I mean, think about it; the building hosted all those performers from that era, and it was full of that energy from the time when Vaudeville was popular.
Then it closed, probably in the 50s or earlier, after the Hollywood Theaters took over, and it just sat there for 60 years or so. The paint is flaking a little bit around the edges of the proscenium.
So you can still see the place as it was, and you can still feel the ghosts.........sort of.
Until Sparks come onstage and blast them out of the building. Sparks has always been a hard rock band in a live setting, they play with as much force and energy as any band you care to name, but in the past year they seem to have taken things a step farther. Now they play like a heavy metal band. I mean, it's still Sparks music and their sound, but they have a band of young backing musicians they've been using for the Hippopotamus Tour, since 2017, who play very tight, very punchy and very loud. The drummer in particular. So the Sparks concerts I have seen in the Hippopotamus Era have all been very loud (my tinnitus ear is ringing right now, as I write), but they've also been delivered in the style of any of the hardest rock concerts you have ever been to. All of this is okay with me. I have always thought of Sparks as a hard rock band. They were in 1974 and they are now. Grimsley didn't like it, but then he's not as big a fan as I. He walked out of a show last year at the El Rey.
Me? Sparks is in my top ten favorite bands of all time. I love the energy and the volume.
The thing is that, here you have Russ Mael. The guy has just turned 70. That's Seventy. And yet he moves onstage, dancing, jumping, light on his feet and agile, as if he were 40. He sings like he's 40.
Something weird is going on, and we might be entering an era where in a few years we might see an 80 year old Rock Star, and I don't mean a feeble one, but one who still performs more or less as he always did in his early days.
Candidates include Russell Mael, Alice Cooper, Todd Rundgren, all of whom are 70 this year, all of whom I've seen live this year, and all of whom performed with the energy, voice and moves of a 40 year old.
These guys are walking advertisements for staying in shape, which Yours Truly is going to do as well. When I watch Russ Mael I can hardly believe what I am seeing (and keep in mind that he is the singer who influenced Freddy Mercury).........well, I am probably rambling so I will leave it at that for tonight.
Les Sewing Sisters opened the show with a half hour set. They were novel and fun, though the surprise of their act was gone, since I saw them open for Sparks twice last year at the El Rey. They switched their set up though, and played some new stuff. Grimsley likes Les Sewing Sisters better than he likes Sparks. Me, I think they're alright, but they don't really play music. It's more like sewing machines crossed with rhythmic vocal duets, mostly spoken, in deadpan delivery. They are good but it's about persona and performance art. But they are also very original and everybody should see them at least once.
Well, enough jabbering. It was another awesome Sparks concert, my eighth since 2006.
I once saw Van Halen open for Sparks, on New Year's Eve 1976. Imagine that, what a double bill.
See you in the morning. xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
The Palace is a trip, because it obviously has either been recently re-opened, or it hasn't been used much, because there are still some signs of wear inside. My seat was in the balcony, front row, and when you look up at the stage curtain, you can see the fraying at the top, and a tear down one pleat, and you think "wow! This is the original curtain, the one that has been here since the theatre opened.
I just now Googled it, and found out that The Palace opened in 1911, as a Vaudeville Theatre, so that curtain has been hanging there all this time. There are very large paintings hanging on the walls left and right of the stage, depicting idyllic country settings for society types. There are Angels on the ceiling. This theatre, more than even the others I've been to, really evokes a feeling of going back in time to the early 20th century. I mean, think about it; the building hosted all those performers from that era, and it was full of that energy from the time when Vaudeville was popular.
Then it closed, probably in the 50s or earlier, after the Hollywood Theaters took over, and it just sat there for 60 years or so. The paint is flaking a little bit around the edges of the proscenium.
So you can still see the place as it was, and you can still feel the ghosts.........sort of.
Until Sparks come onstage and blast them out of the building. Sparks has always been a hard rock band in a live setting, they play with as much force and energy as any band you care to name, but in the past year they seem to have taken things a step farther. Now they play like a heavy metal band. I mean, it's still Sparks music and their sound, but they have a band of young backing musicians they've been using for the Hippopotamus Tour, since 2017, who play very tight, very punchy and very loud. The drummer in particular. So the Sparks concerts I have seen in the Hippopotamus Era have all been very loud (my tinnitus ear is ringing right now, as I write), but they've also been delivered in the style of any of the hardest rock concerts you have ever been to. All of this is okay with me. I have always thought of Sparks as a hard rock band. They were in 1974 and they are now. Grimsley didn't like it, but then he's not as big a fan as I. He walked out of a show last year at the El Rey.
Me? Sparks is in my top ten favorite bands of all time. I love the energy and the volume.
The thing is that, here you have Russ Mael. The guy has just turned 70. That's Seventy. And yet he moves onstage, dancing, jumping, light on his feet and agile, as if he were 40. He sings like he's 40.
Something weird is going on, and we might be entering an era where in a few years we might see an 80 year old Rock Star, and I don't mean a feeble one, but one who still performs more or less as he always did in his early days.
Candidates include Russell Mael, Alice Cooper, Todd Rundgren, all of whom are 70 this year, all of whom I've seen live this year, and all of whom performed with the energy, voice and moves of a 40 year old.
These guys are walking advertisements for staying in shape, which Yours Truly is going to do as well. When I watch Russ Mael I can hardly believe what I am seeing (and keep in mind that he is the singer who influenced Freddy Mercury).........well, I am probably rambling so I will leave it at that for tonight.
Les Sewing Sisters opened the show with a half hour set. They were novel and fun, though the surprise of their act was gone, since I saw them open for Sparks twice last year at the El Rey. They switched their set up though, and played some new stuff. Grimsley likes Les Sewing Sisters better than he likes Sparks. Me, I think they're alright, but they don't really play music. It's more like sewing machines crossed with rhythmic vocal duets, mostly spoken, in deadpan delivery. They are good but it's about persona and performance art. But they are also very original and everybody should see them at least once.
Well, enough jabbering. It was another awesome Sparks concert, my eighth since 2006.
I once saw Van Halen open for Sparks, on New Year's Eve 1976. Imagine that, what a double bill.
See you in the morning. xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
Thursday, November 15, 2018
"Battle Of Rogue River" by William Castle + Wind
Sorry I missed you last night. I actually did watch a movie yesterday, but I was really tired at blogtime and I was just kind of zoned out from all the non-stop wind that was blowing gale force all day. I really don't like wind, it creates disarray and a bad vibe. It puts a lot of electricity in the air, not good, and it stirs up negative energy. Anyway, I was also a bit worn down from my job and the week of news from the fires, and I wasn't able to go for my walk for three days in a row, and I can't remember the last time that happened. Maybe during the heavy rains of January 2017. I've trained myself for daily exercise for twenty years now, so it's hard when I can't go.
I hate it when it sounds like I am bitching and complaining because my present troubles are miniscule compared with others who have lost their houses, or worse, this past week. I'm not really complaining, just explaining why I didn't write, even though I have no idea if anyone even reads this thing.
Tonight, Grimsley came over, so tonight would normally be the night when I wouldn't blog, but because I didn't write about last night's movie I can do so now.
I watched another one of my William Castle Westerns, this one called "Battle Of Rogue River" (1954), starring George Montgomery, one of my favorite Western stars, as a Major in the United States Cavalry who is tasked with establishing peace with the Indians in Oregon Territory, so that Oregon can be turned into a State. The year is 1859. Wealthy white landowners in the Territory have conspired with a civilian scout (a man who interacts with the Indians and knows their chief), to keep the conflicts going, to thwart any attempt at peace. The landowners, who also control factory interests back East, stand to lose their positions of power if the Oregon Territory achieves statehood. They do not want Federal oversight into their surreptitious business dealings, and so they conspire to keep the wars going between Chief Mike (yeah, that's his name) and the Oregon Tribes, and the US Cavalry. The Federal Government will not grant Oregon statehood until a peace treaty is signed. So the men of corporate interest are trying to prevent that from happening.
I was surprised to see such a detailed political plot in a smaller Western by Castle. The story was exceptionally well written (the Era Of Great Screenwriting strikes again!), and we see the same devious and downright evil type of men who never went away in America, but passed down their degraded values to their children and compatriots. In the movie, the plot is limited to the peace between the military (representing the United States), and the Indians, who were here on the continent first.
That has always been a noble representation of what is historically true, at least to some extent. For it was not the military, per se, who sought to wipe out the Indian population in America. It was private pre-corporate interests. Wealthy white men who wanted the land for themselves. Railroad builders, somewhat. But really it was men who wanted to own land, supported by virulently racist Scots-Irish settlers.
Imagine the idea of private ownership of vast tracts of land, when the American frontier was still unsettled and add in the fact that the Indians were here first. These Western movies show that the military was sent in to try and keep the peace between greedy corporate interests, who had moved into the areas, and the Indians, who had understandably reacted against such a takeover. The military were not the aggressors, but the mediators. That is what is shown in these films.
The real bad guys were always the greedy capitalists. The men who sought to own land and control manufacturing, and to change the entire way of life of a continent of people.
Here's to the Westerns of William Castle and many other directors of the 1950s, who expose the situation for what it likely was.
It's the same thing that Trump would like to return us to today, ultra-greed, where no amount of money is enough, and it doesn't matter if it's legally earned.
Two Thumbs Up for "Battle Of Rogue River", which follows the William Castle formula of low budget but high quality craftsmanship and storytelling.
Tomorrow night I will be going to see Sparks at the Palace Theater in Downtown Los Angeles. See you after the show. xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
I hate it when it sounds like I am bitching and complaining because my present troubles are miniscule compared with others who have lost their houses, or worse, this past week. I'm not really complaining, just explaining why I didn't write, even though I have no idea if anyone even reads this thing.
Tonight, Grimsley came over, so tonight would normally be the night when I wouldn't blog, but because I didn't write about last night's movie I can do so now.
I watched another one of my William Castle Westerns, this one called "Battle Of Rogue River" (1954), starring George Montgomery, one of my favorite Western stars, as a Major in the United States Cavalry who is tasked with establishing peace with the Indians in Oregon Territory, so that Oregon can be turned into a State. The year is 1859. Wealthy white landowners in the Territory have conspired with a civilian scout (a man who interacts with the Indians and knows their chief), to keep the conflicts going, to thwart any attempt at peace. The landowners, who also control factory interests back East, stand to lose their positions of power if the Oregon Territory achieves statehood. They do not want Federal oversight into their surreptitious business dealings, and so they conspire to keep the wars going between Chief Mike (yeah, that's his name) and the Oregon Tribes, and the US Cavalry. The Federal Government will not grant Oregon statehood until a peace treaty is signed. So the men of corporate interest are trying to prevent that from happening.
I was surprised to see such a detailed political plot in a smaller Western by Castle. The story was exceptionally well written (the Era Of Great Screenwriting strikes again!), and we see the same devious and downright evil type of men who never went away in America, but passed down their degraded values to their children and compatriots. In the movie, the plot is limited to the peace between the military (representing the United States), and the Indians, who were here on the continent first.
That has always been a noble representation of what is historically true, at least to some extent. For it was not the military, per se, who sought to wipe out the Indian population in America. It was private pre-corporate interests. Wealthy white men who wanted the land for themselves. Railroad builders, somewhat. But really it was men who wanted to own land, supported by virulently racist Scots-Irish settlers.
Imagine the idea of private ownership of vast tracts of land, when the American frontier was still unsettled and add in the fact that the Indians were here first. These Western movies show that the military was sent in to try and keep the peace between greedy corporate interests, who had moved into the areas, and the Indians, who had understandably reacted against such a takeover. The military were not the aggressors, but the mediators. That is what is shown in these films.
The real bad guys were always the greedy capitalists. The men who sought to own land and control manufacturing, and to change the entire way of life of a continent of people.
Here's to the Westerns of William Castle and many other directors of the 1950s, who expose the situation for what it likely was.
It's the same thing that Trump would like to return us to today, ultra-greed, where no amount of money is enough, and it doesn't matter if it's legally earned.
Two Thumbs Up for "Battle Of Rogue River", which follows the William Castle formula of low budget but high quality craftsmanship and storytelling.
Tomorrow night I will be going to see Sparks at the Palace Theater in Downtown Los Angeles. See you after the show. xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
Tuesday, November 13, 2018
Horror Stories + "The Little Foxes" starring Bette Davis
I just now finished reading "Disappearance At Devil's Rock" by Paul Tremblay. It's a terrifying story of a teenager who vanishes during a nighttime visit to a secret hangout in a wilderness park near his home. He and his 16 year old buddies meet in the park at night, to drink beer at the giant rock named in the title. On the night in question, after getting slightly drunk the boy runs off into the woods suddenly and without warning. His friends chase and call after him, but ultimately have to return home in the middle of the night - without him - to tell their parents (and the boy's mother) what has happened.
From there a tale unfolds and - like all of Tremblay's tales - it is flat-out scary. I have talked about Tremblay (or "The Trembler" as I have come to think of him) a lot lately, and for good reason. It is extremely rare to find a writer of this quality, and after reading all three of his horror novels, which take place in real life settings, I am ready to say that he is the best horror writer since The Master, Stephen King. Now, Tremblay is nothing like King in style, but again, that's another reason he is so great, because he is a unique voice with a syntax so smooth it's like glass (which I think I already said several blogs ago). The real mark of my high opinion of Tremblay is the speed with which I completed his trilogy of horror novels. I think I obtained "Cabin At The End Of The World" in late September, maybe around the 29th. That was my first Tremblay, and it was his latest book, recommended by Stephen King which is why I checked it our from The Libe.
But something happened which never happens. I had to find other books by this guy immediately. I mean, of course there have been several other writers I've felt compelled to continue reading, even right away, but not with the urgency I felt to obtain the next book by Tremblay. He has a very special and unique "writer's voice", mixing eloquence with everyday narrative and idiosyncratic observations that come off the top of his head. He gets inside the characters' heads and, by writing mostly in the present tense in all three books, he places you somewhere in the netherworld between their thoughts and their actions in up-to-the-moment real life. In his books, you are right there with everything that is being thought and felt by each character, and you are there with every one of their actions. Tremblay is my new favorite; unfortunately he's only written three horror novels and I powered through them all in seven weeks. I will highly anticipate his next book for sure.
The thing with the best horror writers is that their stories are not just a lot of slam-bang violence, gore and scares. If they were, I wouldn't give them a second glance. And there are a lot of horror writers who merely concentrate on the effects, the gross-outs and extreme stuff. It's similar to the situation with metal music, and it's funny because some of my friends would probably identify me as a metal head, and I'm not one and never have been. Most metal is mediocre to really bad. I only like the really good stuff, and in music that means the bands that are unique and have good songs, good melodies, and have musicians with their own personal styles.
I have never liked a genre just because it is a genre. So with metal, only a few bands have ever stuck with me, and with horror writing it's the same. I don't read horror for the horror - that part is a stylistic effect best used sparingly, or as a backdrop - I read horror for it's insights into the human condition, and even more for the writer's ability to tell a scary tale. When I was eight years old, in the Summer of 1968, I went to Y-Camp. YMCA. There were a couple of weekends where we had sleepovers at Chatsworth Park, on the main lawn, under the stars in sleeping bags. Something I doubt would be allowed today.
I may have related this before, but on those sleepover nights, we would sit around campfires and our YMCA counselors would tell us horror stories. Not just ghost stories, mind you. Horror stories!
Some, which I haven't the time to tell you of tonight, have stayed with me ever since, and at the time I would have been terrified almost to the point of nightmares.
But it wasn't just the scare that made such an impression. It was the way that the counselors (not much more than teenagers themselves) told the stories.
The scare was all in the telling, but the telling was very human, and involved human emotions that even a little kid could intuitively understand.
So that's what horror stories really involve, the best of them anyway. An exploration of the depth and breadth of human emotions and reactions to extreme situations. The best writers of the genre capture all of these feelings with discretion and nuance. It's as if you are feeling them yourself, and that's what horror is all about, just feeling human feelings. ////
I watched a movie tonight called "The Little Foxes" (1941), starring Bette Davis in an Oscar nominated role as a faltering Southern aristocrat, one of three siblings (she has two brothers) who come from working-class roots but who have schemed and married their way into money.
I may not have the energy to tell you the whole story because I am dog tired, but Davis lives in a mansion with her budding daughter, played by 1940s sweetheart Teresa Wright. They have colored servants and the appearance of wealth. But really they need the investment of factory capital to keep their cotton production from collapsing. The brothers and sister (Davis) have a potential investor on the hook as the movie opens, but they need the money of each sibling to make a reciprocal commitment to this factory builder.
From there a plot develops, into stealing the needed funds of Davis' recalcitrant husband, who is dying of a heart condition.
These people, the two brothers especially, are greed personified. Bette Davis is selfish and hard bitten (and also a great actress), and she wants her share of the money too, and doesn't care if her husband has to suffer for her to get it.
That is all I am gonna tell you because I really am about to fall asleep, but I give "The Little Foxes" Two Huge Thumbs Up. It's got an 8.2 IMDB rating for a reason. It was Oscar nominated for Best Picture of 1941 as well as Best Actress, and it could have won both, but check out the competition that year. You will have to Google it as I cannot look it up for you at this time.
I am on a roll with great movies recently, gotta find more that I haven't seen.
Praying for an end to wind and fire soon. See you in the morning. xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
From there a tale unfolds and - like all of Tremblay's tales - it is flat-out scary. I have talked about Tremblay (or "The Trembler" as I have come to think of him) a lot lately, and for good reason. It is extremely rare to find a writer of this quality, and after reading all three of his horror novels, which take place in real life settings, I am ready to say that he is the best horror writer since The Master, Stephen King. Now, Tremblay is nothing like King in style, but again, that's another reason he is so great, because he is a unique voice with a syntax so smooth it's like glass (which I think I already said several blogs ago). The real mark of my high opinion of Tremblay is the speed with which I completed his trilogy of horror novels. I think I obtained "Cabin At The End Of The World" in late September, maybe around the 29th. That was my first Tremblay, and it was his latest book, recommended by Stephen King which is why I checked it our from The Libe.
But something happened which never happens. I had to find other books by this guy immediately. I mean, of course there have been several other writers I've felt compelled to continue reading, even right away, but not with the urgency I felt to obtain the next book by Tremblay. He has a very special and unique "writer's voice", mixing eloquence with everyday narrative and idiosyncratic observations that come off the top of his head. He gets inside the characters' heads and, by writing mostly in the present tense in all three books, he places you somewhere in the netherworld between their thoughts and their actions in up-to-the-moment real life. In his books, you are right there with everything that is being thought and felt by each character, and you are there with every one of their actions. Tremblay is my new favorite; unfortunately he's only written three horror novels and I powered through them all in seven weeks. I will highly anticipate his next book for sure.
The thing with the best horror writers is that their stories are not just a lot of slam-bang violence, gore and scares. If they were, I wouldn't give them a second glance. And there are a lot of horror writers who merely concentrate on the effects, the gross-outs and extreme stuff. It's similar to the situation with metal music, and it's funny because some of my friends would probably identify me as a metal head, and I'm not one and never have been. Most metal is mediocre to really bad. I only like the really good stuff, and in music that means the bands that are unique and have good songs, good melodies, and have musicians with their own personal styles.
I have never liked a genre just because it is a genre. So with metal, only a few bands have ever stuck with me, and with horror writing it's the same. I don't read horror for the horror - that part is a stylistic effect best used sparingly, or as a backdrop - I read horror for it's insights into the human condition, and even more for the writer's ability to tell a scary tale. When I was eight years old, in the Summer of 1968, I went to Y-Camp. YMCA. There were a couple of weekends where we had sleepovers at Chatsworth Park, on the main lawn, under the stars in sleeping bags. Something I doubt would be allowed today.
I may have related this before, but on those sleepover nights, we would sit around campfires and our YMCA counselors would tell us horror stories. Not just ghost stories, mind you. Horror stories!
Some, which I haven't the time to tell you of tonight, have stayed with me ever since, and at the time I would have been terrified almost to the point of nightmares.
But it wasn't just the scare that made such an impression. It was the way that the counselors (not much more than teenagers themselves) told the stories.
The scare was all in the telling, but the telling was very human, and involved human emotions that even a little kid could intuitively understand.
So that's what horror stories really involve, the best of them anyway. An exploration of the depth and breadth of human emotions and reactions to extreme situations. The best writers of the genre capture all of these feelings with discretion and nuance. It's as if you are feeling them yourself, and that's what horror is all about, just feeling human feelings. ////
I watched a movie tonight called "The Little Foxes" (1941), starring Bette Davis in an Oscar nominated role as a faltering Southern aristocrat, one of three siblings (she has two brothers) who come from working-class roots but who have schemed and married their way into money.
I may not have the energy to tell you the whole story because I am dog tired, but Davis lives in a mansion with her budding daughter, played by 1940s sweetheart Teresa Wright. They have colored servants and the appearance of wealth. But really they need the investment of factory capital to keep their cotton production from collapsing. The brothers and sister (Davis) have a potential investor on the hook as the movie opens, but they need the money of each sibling to make a reciprocal commitment to this factory builder.
From there a plot develops, into stealing the needed funds of Davis' recalcitrant husband, who is dying of a heart condition.
These people, the two brothers especially, are greed personified. Bette Davis is selfish and hard bitten (and also a great actress), and she wants her share of the money too, and doesn't care if her husband has to suffer for her to get it.
That is all I am gonna tell you because I really am about to fall asleep, but I give "The Little Foxes" Two Huge Thumbs Up. It's got an 8.2 IMDB rating for a reason. It was Oscar nominated for Best Picture of 1941 as well as Best Actress, and it could have won both, but check out the competition that year. You will have to Google it as I cannot look it up for you at this time.
I am on a roll with great movies recently, gotta find more that I haven't seen.
Praying for an end to wind and fire soon. See you in the morning. xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
Monday, November 12, 2018
Good Singing + Burbank + "The King Of KIngs" by Cecil B. DeMille
So tired I can barely keep my eyes open, but I'll try to jabber away in a semi-coherent fashion until I finish the blog. My eyes are burning from all the smoke in the air, and my nose is stuffy and throat a little raw for the same reason, but at least we had good singing in church this morning. We got to sing a hymn called "Be Still, My Soul" with music by Sibelius. I had never sung it before but I recognised the melody, which is from "Finlandia". The Christian Hymn just has different words put to it that were written in the 18th century. It's one of the most beautiful pieces of music I've ever heard and I really enjoyed singing it with the choir.
After church I drove out to Burbank to take my sister Sophie shopping. Her local Ralphs was jam-packed. Burbank is funny because the streets are quiet compared to my end of the Valley. You don't see anywhere near the traffic we have in Northridge. But go into a store - grocery or otherwise (like Target) - and you discover where all the people are. In Burbank, they're all in the stores, and there's a million of them. :)
I didn't do any walking for the second day in a row. My legs will sure be rested when the smoke eventually clears, and they'll be so rarin' to go that my walk will turn into a run.
Wait a minute. Scratch that; I hate running. :)
I don't mind walking rapidly, though, and sometimes when Grimsley comes with me on my CSUN walks he complains that I keep getting ahead of him. I reply that I can only walk just so slowly, and that I am going as slow as I can, and then at a certain point I will just turn around and walk backwards while going forward, so we can continue our conversation with me in the lead but facing him.
I can't walk slow, sorry. It comes from trying to keep up with my parents when I was little. Dad used to talk about "30 mile marches" in the military, and he had that March Stride down pat, at least until he got older. When they were younger, Mom would match his pace, and little kid me would try to keep up. That's why I walk so fast. Plus, I'm hyper to begin with (holy moly, Ad, you've gotta slow down sometimes). And I do that too. I try to have at least 20-30 minutes of meditation every afternoon. Not the "official" kind of meditation, more like just the quiet kind, lying down with no external stimuli, quieting the mind and concentrating on breathing. Try it, it's a stress reducer.
Tonight's movie was a mega-epic, "The King Of Kings" (1927). We were back with Cecil B. DeMille once again to finally watch his Silent masterpiece, which was also the movie that premiered on the opening night of Grauman's Chinese Theater. "King Of Kings" is another of those movies that you'd have thought I'd have seen but actually hadn't, and since we broke the DeMille ice with "The Sign Of The Cross" last week, I figured we might as well keep going. Now, "King Of Kings" is about the Passion and has all the traditional story elements in it's script, so it's really more of a movie for Easter, but I found a copy of it at Chatsworth Libe yesterday afternoon and thought of DeMille, and tonight was the perfect night to watch because it is a long movie (155 minutes) that I normally would not have time to watch, but I wasn't gonna go on my walk because of the fire smoke, so I did have time. All the stars aligned.
"The King Of Kings" is thee Biblical Epic of the Passion as far as I am concerned. The Jeffery Hunter version is very good, but this one is the best. Now that I've seen his performance, there is no substitute for H.B. Warner as Jesus. He holds the center of the entire film with a measured, serene performance that has almost none of the Silent film facial gesturing usually seen by actors of that era. Playing Jesus Christ with manic expression wouldn't be appropriate, so Warner leaves the emoting to his disciples and to Mary Magdalene. As an aside, it is interesting to note how different the acting styles are in two DeMille films just five years apart. "The Sign Of The Cross" plays like a full-fledged modern sound film, in fact a blockbuster that would hold up today. But a mere five years earlier, in "The King Of Kings", the acting is purely from the Silent era, with the accompanied gesturing and body language.
It strikes me how specific the direction must have been for Silent pictures, in order to get the plot across. There was no sound and no dialogue, so the director had to make sure the actors were conveying the story with their faces and bodies. And they had title cards to fill in the gaps.
But just five years later, DeMille has seemingly mastered the sound format, and so have his actors, and they make another Biblical Epic ("Sign Of The Cross") that seems light years ahead technologically. So I guess the kicker (if I've made any sense) is that not only DeMille but his actors too, were practised and ready to jump into the Sound Era, and were ready to use their voices to speak dialogue, to tell the story with words instead of facial expressions. It had to be a sea change, and yet in this case, with the two movies mentioned, the actors seem to have jumped right into it. I would love to know a little bit more about the transition from Silent to Sound, and how - if at all - the actors and directors were prepped for it.
But yeah, make sure you watch "The King Of Kings" at some point, maybe next Easter. The cinematography is very advanced for 1927, and the sets are magnificent. The budget for "Kings" was 2.5 million. You surely see every dollar of that budget on the screen, in the sets, costumes, and......special effects! Yes, you get some magical lighting wizardry and double exposure manipulation near the end of the film that is astonishing for 1927. I watched these scenes with an eye toward the history of film, this time very impressed with what DeMille was able to achieve in order to present the full supernatural aspects of the life of Jesus Christ.
Two Thumbs Up, one of the greatest Silent Films ever made and perhaps it shoutld be considered one of the greatest films of any kind ever made. I cannot recommend it highly enough, not only for it's content but also because of it's history as one of the first truly epic movies. See it to continue your education in film.
That's all I know for tonight. I will now hopefully get some sleep unless I start thinking about that Tremblay book....... ;)
See you in the morning. xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
After church I drove out to Burbank to take my sister Sophie shopping. Her local Ralphs was jam-packed. Burbank is funny because the streets are quiet compared to my end of the Valley. You don't see anywhere near the traffic we have in Northridge. But go into a store - grocery or otherwise (like Target) - and you discover where all the people are. In Burbank, they're all in the stores, and there's a million of them. :)
I didn't do any walking for the second day in a row. My legs will sure be rested when the smoke eventually clears, and they'll be so rarin' to go that my walk will turn into a run.
Wait a minute. Scratch that; I hate running. :)
I don't mind walking rapidly, though, and sometimes when Grimsley comes with me on my CSUN walks he complains that I keep getting ahead of him. I reply that I can only walk just so slowly, and that I am going as slow as I can, and then at a certain point I will just turn around and walk backwards while going forward, so we can continue our conversation with me in the lead but facing him.
I can't walk slow, sorry. It comes from trying to keep up with my parents when I was little. Dad used to talk about "30 mile marches" in the military, and he had that March Stride down pat, at least until he got older. When they were younger, Mom would match his pace, and little kid me would try to keep up. That's why I walk so fast. Plus, I'm hyper to begin with (holy moly, Ad, you've gotta slow down sometimes). And I do that too. I try to have at least 20-30 minutes of meditation every afternoon. Not the "official" kind of meditation, more like just the quiet kind, lying down with no external stimuli, quieting the mind and concentrating on breathing. Try it, it's a stress reducer.
Tonight's movie was a mega-epic, "The King Of Kings" (1927). We were back with Cecil B. DeMille once again to finally watch his Silent masterpiece, which was also the movie that premiered on the opening night of Grauman's Chinese Theater. "King Of Kings" is another of those movies that you'd have thought I'd have seen but actually hadn't, and since we broke the DeMille ice with "The Sign Of The Cross" last week, I figured we might as well keep going. Now, "King Of Kings" is about the Passion and has all the traditional story elements in it's script, so it's really more of a movie for Easter, but I found a copy of it at Chatsworth Libe yesterday afternoon and thought of DeMille, and tonight was the perfect night to watch because it is a long movie (155 minutes) that I normally would not have time to watch, but I wasn't gonna go on my walk because of the fire smoke, so I did have time. All the stars aligned.
"The King Of Kings" is thee Biblical Epic of the Passion as far as I am concerned. The Jeffery Hunter version is very good, but this one is the best. Now that I've seen his performance, there is no substitute for H.B. Warner as Jesus. He holds the center of the entire film with a measured, serene performance that has almost none of the Silent film facial gesturing usually seen by actors of that era. Playing Jesus Christ with manic expression wouldn't be appropriate, so Warner leaves the emoting to his disciples and to Mary Magdalene. As an aside, it is interesting to note how different the acting styles are in two DeMille films just five years apart. "The Sign Of The Cross" plays like a full-fledged modern sound film, in fact a blockbuster that would hold up today. But a mere five years earlier, in "The King Of Kings", the acting is purely from the Silent era, with the accompanied gesturing and body language.
It strikes me how specific the direction must have been for Silent pictures, in order to get the plot across. There was no sound and no dialogue, so the director had to make sure the actors were conveying the story with their faces and bodies. And they had title cards to fill in the gaps.
But just five years later, DeMille has seemingly mastered the sound format, and so have his actors, and they make another Biblical Epic ("Sign Of The Cross") that seems light years ahead technologically. So I guess the kicker (if I've made any sense) is that not only DeMille but his actors too, were practised and ready to jump into the Sound Era, and were ready to use their voices to speak dialogue, to tell the story with words instead of facial expressions. It had to be a sea change, and yet in this case, with the two movies mentioned, the actors seem to have jumped right into it. I would love to know a little bit more about the transition from Silent to Sound, and how - if at all - the actors and directors were prepped for it.
But yeah, make sure you watch "The King Of Kings" at some point, maybe next Easter. The cinematography is very advanced for 1927, and the sets are magnificent. The budget for "Kings" was 2.5 million. You surely see every dollar of that budget on the screen, in the sets, costumes, and......special effects! Yes, you get some magical lighting wizardry and double exposure manipulation near the end of the film that is astonishing for 1927. I watched these scenes with an eye toward the history of film, this time very impressed with what DeMille was able to achieve in order to present the full supernatural aspects of the life of Jesus Christ.
Two Thumbs Up, one of the greatest Silent Films ever made and perhaps it shoutld be considered one of the greatest films of any kind ever made. I cannot recommend it highly enough, not only for it's content but also because of it's history as one of the first truly epic movies. See it to continue your education in film.
That's all I know for tonight. I will now hopefully get some sleep unless I start thinking about that Tremblay book....... ;)
See you in the morning. xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
Sunday, November 11, 2018
The Fire Began At The Field Lab + The Books I Am Reading + "MIdnight" with Claudette Colbert
The air was filled with smoke today, the Woolsey fire still raging. Fortunately the wind had died down so they were able to get 5% containment. Yesterday I speculated on the reason for Woolsey as a designation; I was worried about the Santa Susana Field Laboratory which is situated at the top of Woolsey Canyon. In my blog, I guessed that it had nothing to do with why the fire was named Woolsey, but I was wrong. As it turns out, the fire started on the Field Lab's property, in some brush located near the old Sodium Reactor building where the nuclear meltdown happened in 1959.
Needless to say, this has not been mentioned on the news. I discovered it by Googling "Santa Susana Field Lab" + "Woolsey Fire" this morning, and I found a small online article about local Chatsworth residents who have been involved in a legal battle with Boeing, the current owner of the Field Lab property, over the decades-long cleanup of chemical waste in the soil there. That story is a long one and i won't get into it (you can Google if you want), but I have taken several tours of SSFL since 2010, and I believe the Boeing spokespeople who say that the 1959 meltdown posed no toxic threat to the community, and I also believe that their efforts to remediate the soil have been ongoing and productive, though it is true that that soil was highly contaminated during the 1950s and 60s by rocket fuel and other chemicals, which no doubt washed into the groundwater during that time.
They are not to blame for the fire, though, and I am glad (or at least I hope) that the Field Lab property was not heavily damaged, though I believe one of the rocket test stands may have been burned.
All of this is nothing compared the people who have lost their homes and belongings, and in some cases their animals. Watching their devastation on the news is sad beyond belief. The Woolsey Fire will probably rival the horrific Bel Air of November 1961 as one of the most destructive as far as homes as concerned. The Bel Air was legendary when I was a kid, almost 500 homes were burned to the ground, many belonging to movie stars and other celebs. Woolsey is in the same general area, but closer to the beach. The whole thing is horrible, but thank God we have some of the best firefighters in the world working around the clock to knock it down. /////
I didn't do much today but read my books. The air quality was too hazardous to take Pearl out, or to go on my usual walks.
I have finished "Energy From The Vacuum" by Thom Bearden, a 900 page text that I began in early July. It was a highly technical work that was not an easy read, but I feel as if I got a real education on electrodynamics and the nature of the spacetime vacuum, and how energy is transduced between the time domain and three dimensional space. It took me four months to get through but was well worth it, one of the greatest and most important books I have ever read. Beyond highly recommended for anyone so inclined.
My current daytime book is Michael Cremo's "Human Devolution", which proposes a Vedic alternative to the Theory Of Evolution, which you know I do not believe in. I do not know if I will believe the Vedic alternative either, because my take on the subject is that no one really knows the true story of human origins (not even scientists nor anthropologists), but it is an interesting read so far, and I trust Cremo to at least be thorough. He is the guy who wrote "Forbidden Archaeology", another major tome I read this year, which relates a truckload of evidence for ancient human ancestry here on Planet Earth. That book is also highly recommended.
My nighttime "page turner" book, that I read here at Pearl's when I have time, is Paul Tremblay's "Disappearance At Devil's Rock", which tonight has gotten so scary that I may have trouble getting to sleep. I had never heard of Tremblay before August, when Stephen King recommended his latest book "Cabin At The End Of The World". Now I have read two of his horror novels and have almost finished the third, and after tonight, I think he is the scariest horror writer since King. Tremblay is major league; it's so rare to find a writer this good (if you can handle the subject matter). But yeah, he scared me silly tonight, and as Stephen King himself said about Tremblay : "I don't scare easily".
Paul Tremblay is very highly recommended as well. That's all my books for the moment. ///
Tonight I watched a classic screwball comedy called "Midnight" (1939). It's a bit late for me to give a full review, but it stars Claudette Colbert (rapidly becoming a favorite) as a dancer just arrived in Paris, broke and out of luck. All she owns is the gold lame dress on her back. She runs from handsome Don Ameche, the taxi driver who is pursuing her for love, because he is nearly broke as well, though he does earn a steady living. She has her sights set on the Paris Wealthy, and ends up impersonating a Countess at a high society party that she happens upon one rainy night.
From there, she meets the inimitable John Barrymore, a megarich baron who needs help getting rid of a suitor toward his wife.
As you can imagine, the hijinx flow from there, and all the way through the film. I wish I had more time to tell you about it, but I must sleep because of church tomorrow. The script by Billy Wilder is one of the best I have seen in screwball comedy, and everyone involved in the production, from the cast to the crew, is a Ten. This movie is so good that it should be known in the same company as "Dinner At Eight" and "The Awful Truth" and other classics of the era.
Man, you had to have a great cast and director to pull off a movie like this. Every single person had to be top notch, no weak or even "moderate level" contributors were permissible. This is why Hollywood ruled the movie world in the 30s and 40s, and why these films will hold interest indefinitely, because these people were so talented and had so much charisma.
Long live the legacy of Studio-era Hollywood. That's all I know for tonight, I will see you in church in the morn.
xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
Needless to say, this has not been mentioned on the news. I discovered it by Googling "Santa Susana Field Lab" + "Woolsey Fire" this morning, and I found a small online article about local Chatsworth residents who have been involved in a legal battle with Boeing, the current owner of the Field Lab property, over the decades-long cleanup of chemical waste in the soil there. That story is a long one and i won't get into it (you can Google if you want), but I have taken several tours of SSFL since 2010, and I believe the Boeing spokespeople who say that the 1959 meltdown posed no toxic threat to the community, and I also believe that their efforts to remediate the soil have been ongoing and productive, though it is true that that soil was highly contaminated during the 1950s and 60s by rocket fuel and other chemicals, which no doubt washed into the groundwater during that time.
They are not to blame for the fire, though, and I am glad (or at least I hope) that the Field Lab property was not heavily damaged, though I believe one of the rocket test stands may have been burned.
All of this is nothing compared the people who have lost their homes and belongings, and in some cases their animals. Watching their devastation on the news is sad beyond belief. The Woolsey Fire will probably rival the horrific Bel Air of November 1961 as one of the most destructive as far as homes as concerned. The Bel Air was legendary when I was a kid, almost 500 homes were burned to the ground, many belonging to movie stars and other celebs. Woolsey is in the same general area, but closer to the beach. The whole thing is horrible, but thank God we have some of the best firefighters in the world working around the clock to knock it down. /////
I didn't do much today but read my books. The air quality was too hazardous to take Pearl out, or to go on my usual walks.
I have finished "Energy From The Vacuum" by Thom Bearden, a 900 page text that I began in early July. It was a highly technical work that was not an easy read, but I feel as if I got a real education on electrodynamics and the nature of the spacetime vacuum, and how energy is transduced between the time domain and three dimensional space. It took me four months to get through but was well worth it, one of the greatest and most important books I have ever read. Beyond highly recommended for anyone so inclined.
My current daytime book is Michael Cremo's "Human Devolution", which proposes a Vedic alternative to the Theory Of Evolution, which you know I do not believe in. I do not know if I will believe the Vedic alternative either, because my take on the subject is that no one really knows the true story of human origins (not even scientists nor anthropologists), but it is an interesting read so far, and I trust Cremo to at least be thorough. He is the guy who wrote "Forbidden Archaeology", another major tome I read this year, which relates a truckload of evidence for ancient human ancestry here on Planet Earth. That book is also highly recommended.
My nighttime "page turner" book, that I read here at Pearl's when I have time, is Paul Tremblay's "Disappearance At Devil's Rock", which tonight has gotten so scary that I may have trouble getting to sleep. I had never heard of Tremblay before August, when Stephen King recommended his latest book "Cabin At The End Of The World". Now I have read two of his horror novels and have almost finished the third, and after tonight, I think he is the scariest horror writer since King. Tremblay is major league; it's so rare to find a writer this good (if you can handle the subject matter). But yeah, he scared me silly tonight, and as Stephen King himself said about Tremblay : "I don't scare easily".
Paul Tremblay is very highly recommended as well. That's all my books for the moment. ///
Tonight I watched a classic screwball comedy called "Midnight" (1939). It's a bit late for me to give a full review, but it stars Claudette Colbert (rapidly becoming a favorite) as a dancer just arrived in Paris, broke and out of luck. All she owns is the gold lame dress on her back. She runs from handsome Don Ameche, the taxi driver who is pursuing her for love, because he is nearly broke as well, though he does earn a steady living. She has her sights set on the Paris Wealthy, and ends up impersonating a Countess at a high society party that she happens upon one rainy night.
From there, she meets the inimitable John Barrymore, a megarich baron who needs help getting rid of a suitor toward his wife.
As you can imagine, the hijinx flow from there, and all the way through the film. I wish I had more time to tell you about it, but I must sleep because of church tomorrow. The script by Billy Wilder is one of the best I have seen in screwball comedy, and everyone involved in the production, from the cast to the crew, is a Ten. This movie is so good that it should be known in the same company as "Dinner At Eight" and "The Awful Truth" and other classics of the era.
Man, you had to have a great cast and director to pull off a movie like this. Every single person had to be top notch, no weak or even "moderate level" contributors were permissible. This is why Hollywood ruled the movie world in the 30s and 40s, and why these films will hold interest indefinitely, because these people were so talented and had so much charisma.
Long live the legacy of Studio-era Hollywood. That's all I know for tonight, I will see you in church in the morn.
xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
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