Today I got a really cool dvd set in the mail : Collection One of episodes from the first season of "Tales Of Tomorrow", a very early television series from 1951! "Tales" was a sci-fi anthology series, one of the first ever created, and it was performed and broadcast live, so part of the excitement of watching it now is to see the cast flying by the seat of their pants and imagining them on air as it happened, when TV was brand new. You actually hear a flub or two in the delivery of lines, which makes the performance feel all the more real. As an added bonus, the original commercials are included in the episodes. In the one I watched tonight, which was called "Verdict From Space" and had to do with aliens being upset about our development of the H-Bomb, there was only a single sponsor, a maker of affordable designer watches. The ads for the watches are stylish but also so quaint as to make you smile sheepishly at the way the world once was, and how you might wish it to be again someday.
Anyway, hugely recommended! "Tales Of Tomorrow", man what a great show, if the first episode was any indication. The image looks passable, it is nearly 70 years old and has not been restored, but all in all it is very watchable. The audio sounds a bit garbled in places, but again, this does not detract overall.
The writing is excellent, you get a truckload of story in 25 minutes, and they explore topics like the hydrogen bomb, which was brand new in 1951! Holy smokes it was a topical issue! They were blowing the damn things off in the atmosphere, vaporizing small islands during tests.
Maybe it wasn't such an innocent time after all.......(oy). But really it was an innocent time, because the American culture was not yet bored and cynical, and so much had not yet happened. Elvis was still five years away, and the Moon eighteen. Personal computers would come in another lifetime called The Eighties. Everything was new in the 50s. It was a world of possibility.
Mom and Dad moved to Los Angeles in 1951, because Dad had just been hired by ABC-TV in Hollywood. Coincidentally, ABC is the station that broadcast "Tales Of Tomorrow", so maybe the show was on the schedule when Dad arrived to work at the station. I was stoked to find this dvd set on Amazon, and there are two more collections available. They don't have all the episodes, because I guess some weren't salvageable due to age, but I'm still gonna buy all the sets. This is one show I am gonna savor every moment of, because I love that time period of the early 50s (just like "The 1950s Housewife" does). :):) /////
I also watched a movie, "The Kid Brother" (1927) starring Harold Lloyd, a Silent comedy classic. I have been catching up on my Lloyd films, little by little, and I am coming to regard him as equal in talent to Buster Keaton, though in a different way. Of course, Harold Lloyd doesn't need my approval. He was a much bigger box office star than Keaton. Buster may have done the more elaborate stunts and set pieces, but Lloyd specialised in sight gags and facial expressions (he invented the Double Take), and he is almost manic in his energy, The pace never slows in a Lloyd movie, and the laughs keep coming throughout. Like Buster, he often was portrayed as a wimp trying to prove himself, and this is the case in "The Kid Brother", where he is seen as unmanly by his gruff Sheriff father and his two linebacker-sized older brothers. Ultimately he will have to prove himself to them, which he will do through sheer comedic insanity. The plot involves some crooks who have arrived in town in the guise of a traveling Medicine Show. They have a Pretty Girl in tow, and in Silent films, girls were at their prettiest and most girly, and always had "one up" on the men.
Lloyd and Keaton were like two sides of the same coin. I remember when we did a Buster Keaton retrospective at CSUN about two years ago, and Professor Tim remarked that there are two camps of dedicated fans, those for Buster and the others for Harold Lloyd. "There are Buster people and Lloyd people" is how he put it. He was talking about longtime fans, people who have followed Silent comedy from way back. Me, I was new to all of this when I saw my first Buster Keaton flick in 2017, and my first Harold Lloyd about a year later.
I don't see why you can't like 'em both. In fact, I think if you like one, you are automatically gonna like the other. I am finding Harold Lloyd to be an absolute riot and "The Kid Brother" may be the funniest film I've seen by him so far. This one is another recent release by Criterion and the restoration is close to perfect. It looks like you are watching a new release of a 92 year old film.
Two Huge Thumbs Up is the obvious result. If you want to have a good time, watch Harold Lloyd make a nitwit out of himself for 80 minutes, while thwarting some even bigger nincompoops. It's high energy comedy, and it goes without saying that "they don't make 'em like this anymore". ////
Because it was a day off, I finally got out on a hike, my first in three weeks. I only went up to Aliso, nothing new or fancy, but it was so good to be up there all the same. When you don't see it for a while, you regain that feeling of being in "Lord Of The Rings" territory. The place is pure magic and I am grateful to live nearby.
Elizabeth, I am happy to see that you are working on your new dance film. It's pretty wild that you guys still have a heavy layer of snow in May (I mean, that pic looks like the dead of Winter!), but as you say - "only in Wisconsin". And I am glad you were able to get your last minute shot. :)
That's all I know for tonight. See you in the morning, big love until then. xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
Tuesday, April 30, 2019
Monday, April 29, 2019
"Empire Of Passion" directed by Nagisa Oshima
Tonight I watched a fantastic movie called "Empire Of Passion" (1978), by Japanese director Nagisa Oshima. I found it in the library database as usual, in a search for new Criterion titles. Oshima made a film two years prior to this one called "Realm Of The Senses", which was notorious at the time for it's sexual content. I had never seen his work before tonight, but wow - this one was a masterpiece.
The year is 1895, post-feudal Japan, but the people are still living according to a class system. Gisaburo is a rickshaw driver living in a small village near a forest. He works long hours and barely ekes out a living, making just enough to feed his family (a wife and small child), with a little left over to buy some sake. He comes home tired every night. His wife Seki works too, not at a formal job but just doing tasks here and there for the local landowner, a nice lady who is wealthy but fair. Seki is a server at her parties and all the men remark on how good she looks for her age (she is 50 but looks early 30s).
There is a young man hanging around the village, an ex-soldier now unemployed and with nothing to do. His name is Toyoji and he is a bad egg. He observes Seki coming and going from her house to her jobs with the landowner. He also knows that her husband works all day and late into the night. He fixates on Seki and starts bumping into her on purpose, in the street, in the marketplace. Then one day he knocks on her door, knowing her husband is not home. You can guess what happens next.
The young soldier is a rogue, but he is handsome and confident, and he rightly assumes Seki will submit to him, even as he forces himself on her. Today this would be rape, and rightly so, but in the movie it is portrayed, accurately, as being ambiguous, even though Toyoji is a complete bastard and has initiated the action. But Seki has lived a hard life and has been neglected for too long by her loving but worn out husband, so when she does submit to Toyoji, she does so in full, and the sex becomes consensual. He has preyed on her, but she goes right along with it. This is a complex portrayal of a difficult scenario, and it is a courageous move by the director, when it would have been all too easy to make it a black-and-white moral issue. However, because this is the Me Too era, which I support 100%, I make the small disclaimer to ask that you watch the film for yourself so that you will not think I am defending Toyoji's actions, which I am not. It's just that the situation is complex, and thus accurate in my estimation, as it is depicted by director Oshima.
So Toyoji now has a hold over Seki, and he begins to visit her at home more often, and she is elated to see him.
It is at this place in the plot that all the reviews I have read, at IMDB and Amazon, give too many details away. I am gonna try to avoid that by being vague, though it might backfire on me, haha. :)
What happens is that soon, rumors begin to develop around the village about Toyoji and Seki. Her husband Gisaburo the rickshaw driver is no longer living in the house; Seki tells her friends that he has moved to Tokyo to find steady work. The implication is that he knows about her affair and has left her, but she won't admit it. This leads to more gossip among the villagers.
Meanwhile, a supernatural aspect is introduced to the story. Seki's adolescent daughter, who lives away at school, is having strange dreams. She reports the details to her mother, who in turn is troubled by them.
The landowner, the nice wealthy lady I mentioned above, has a son who is known as The Young Master. He is generally placid and tolerant of the poor villagers, all of whom live on his property. But he likes to go for long walks in the woods, and he begins to suspect that something is amiss regarding Toyoji, the rebellious soldier. The gossip of his affair with Seki - the wife of Gisaburo - has been building, and at some point the rumors of the locals will lead to direct questions.
An intrepid policeman in now in the mix, too, He proves to be somewhat relentless.
That is all I will reveal. The main thing with "Empire Of Passion" is it's directorial style. As I mentioned, I have never seen an Oshima film, but if this movie is any indicator, he's got it all.
Everything about it works, especially the pacing and editing. This is one of those movies where the guy cared enough to make sure that every scene led directly into the next, that the story continued to build from one scene to the next, and that there was no excess fat. It is a rare film where every single scene not only fits like a puzzle piece but does so with a maximum of efficiency - so the film never lags - and also maintains dramatic tension, so you are kept on the edge of your seat. It also helps to have incredible actors, which is exactly what we have here.
On top of all of this, if you could imagine a set design that alternates period realism (in the 19th century village) with phantasmagorical horror, all of it shot in painterly color, then you will see why I am saying that Oshima, at least in this movie, shows himself to be a consummate filmmaker.
The color photography is as good as it gets. In scene after scene you find yourself thinking "holy smokes, what a shot"!
The actors playing Toyoji and Seki are first rate, as are all the supporting players. I have long been a fan of Japanese acting, especially in the films of Ozu and Mizoguchi. I will now add Oshima to the list.
'Empire Of Passion" gets the highest rating from me. Two Huge Thumbs and Ten Stars. See it just for the color work alone, but more than that it is a great film altogether. /////
We had good singing in church this morning. Tomorrow I will try for a hike since it is a day off.
See you in the morning. Love during the night. xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
The year is 1895, post-feudal Japan, but the people are still living according to a class system. Gisaburo is a rickshaw driver living in a small village near a forest. He works long hours and barely ekes out a living, making just enough to feed his family (a wife and small child), with a little left over to buy some sake. He comes home tired every night. His wife Seki works too, not at a formal job but just doing tasks here and there for the local landowner, a nice lady who is wealthy but fair. Seki is a server at her parties and all the men remark on how good she looks for her age (she is 50 but looks early 30s).
There is a young man hanging around the village, an ex-soldier now unemployed and with nothing to do. His name is Toyoji and he is a bad egg. He observes Seki coming and going from her house to her jobs with the landowner. He also knows that her husband works all day and late into the night. He fixates on Seki and starts bumping into her on purpose, in the street, in the marketplace. Then one day he knocks on her door, knowing her husband is not home. You can guess what happens next.
The young soldier is a rogue, but he is handsome and confident, and he rightly assumes Seki will submit to him, even as he forces himself on her. Today this would be rape, and rightly so, but in the movie it is portrayed, accurately, as being ambiguous, even though Toyoji is a complete bastard and has initiated the action. But Seki has lived a hard life and has been neglected for too long by her loving but worn out husband, so when she does submit to Toyoji, she does so in full, and the sex becomes consensual. He has preyed on her, but she goes right along with it. This is a complex portrayal of a difficult scenario, and it is a courageous move by the director, when it would have been all too easy to make it a black-and-white moral issue. However, because this is the Me Too era, which I support 100%, I make the small disclaimer to ask that you watch the film for yourself so that you will not think I am defending Toyoji's actions, which I am not. It's just that the situation is complex, and thus accurate in my estimation, as it is depicted by director Oshima.
So Toyoji now has a hold over Seki, and he begins to visit her at home more often, and she is elated to see him.
It is at this place in the plot that all the reviews I have read, at IMDB and Amazon, give too many details away. I am gonna try to avoid that by being vague, though it might backfire on me, haha. :)
What happens is that soon, rumors begin to develop around the village about Toyoji and Seki. Her husband Gisaburo the rickshaw driver is no longer living in the house; Seki tells her friends that he has moved to Tokyo to find steady work. The implication is that he knows about her affair and has left her, but she won't admit it. This leads to more gossip among the villagers.
Meanwhile, a supernatural aspect is introduced to the story. Seki's adolescent daughter, who lives away at school, is having strange dreams. She reports the details to her mother, who in turn is troubled by them.
The landowner, the nice wealthy lady I mentioned above, has a son who is known as The Young Master. He is generally placid and tolerant of the poor villagers, all of whom live on his property. But he likes to go for long walks in the woods, and he begins to suspect that something is amiss regarding Toyoji, the rebellious soldier. The gossip of his affair with Seki - the wife of Gisaburo - has been building, and at some point the rumors of the locals will lead to direct questions.
An intrepid policeman in now in the mix, too, He proves to be somewhat relentless.
That is all I will reveal. The main thing with "Empire Of Passion" is it's directorial style. As I mentioned, I have never seen an Oshima film, but if this movie is any indicator, he's got it all.
Everything about it works, especially the pacing and editing. This is one of those movies where the guy cared enough to make sure that every scene led directly into the next, that the story continued to build from one scene to the next, and that there was no excess fat. It is a rare film where every single scene not only fits like a puzzle piece but does so with a maximum of efficiency - so the film never lags - and also maintains dramatic tension, so you are kept on the edge of your seat. It also helps to have incredible actors, which is exactly what we have here.
On top of all of this, if you could imagine a set design that alternates period realism (in the 19th century village) with phantasmagorical horror, all of it shot in painterly color, then you will see why I am saying that Oshima, at least in this movie, shows himself to be a consummate filmmaker.
The color photography is as good as it gets. In scene after scene you find yourself thinking "holy smokes, what a shot"!
The actors playing Toyoji and Seki are first rate, as are all the supporting players. I have long been a fan of Japanese acting, especially in the films of Ozu and Mizoguchi. I will now add Oshima to the list.
'Empire Of Passion" gets the highest rating from me. Two Huge Thumbs and Ten Stars. See it just for the color work alone, but more than that it is a great film altogether. /////
We had good singing in church this morning. Tomorrow I will try for a hike since it is a day off.
See you in the morning. Love during the night. xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
Sunday, April 28, 2019
"Passage To Marseille" w/ Humphrey Bogart
I'm writing to you tonight from home, off work for the next several days. Tonight I watched a fantastic movie called "Passage To Marseille" (1944), a WWII adventure story starring Humphrey Bogart, directed by Michael Curtiz. Man, I keep discovering new Bogie movies every time I search him in the library database! Just when I think I've seen 'em all I find another one, and this was one of the best ones yet.
As the announcer intones at the beginning of the film, the overall story is about the Free French Air Force, a group I had never heard of before. Everyone has heard of the French Resistance, but I did not know they had an air corps. The airmen were actually based in England, hidden on a large dairy farm. Their planes were parked in barns and everything was tucked away out of sight so that a passing German reconnaissance crew would never suspect their presence. Their pilots were Frenchmen who had escaped the German occupation of their country and were now prepared to fight back from their base in England.
The story involves multiple uses of flashbacks (including flashbacks upon flashbacks), so after we see Bogart heading out on a bombing run (and yes, he is playing a French airman but talking like Bogie), the story then retreats to the past to show us how he came to be a tail gunner for the Free French in the first place.
A French merchant ship is sailing through international waters in dangerous territory. German subs could be anywhere. Looking into his binoculars the Captain spies a small object bobbing in the water. It turns out to be a small canoe, holding five men who are in very bad shape. The men are rescued and pulled aboard the merchant ship. They are French and claim to have rowed their way from a Venezuelan river, where they were part of a gold mining crew. Their story sounds far fetched, and Sidney Greenstreet, who is onboard the ship as a French Major en route to Marseille, suspects that the men, who include Humphrey Bogart in their number, are actually escaped convicts from Devil's Island.
Sidney Greenstreet specialized in playing evil, dominant characters and he is doing so here, but he is right about the rescued men. They are indeed prison escapees, from the notorious Guyanese island of Cayenne. Now it is time for a flashback within a flashback to see how each of them came to be incarcerated there.
The middle of the plot has to do with the men's fate, and ultimately with that of the entire crew and the ship itself. Who is in charge here? Is it the menacing Greenstreet, who as a Major outranks everyone on board? He is a German appeaser, who is okay with Hitler's occupation of France. He demands that the captain return immediately to Marseille so he can turn the men in to the Nazi authorities who are running the show there. However, he has strong opposition in the person of the legendary Claude Rains, himself a French officer but one dedicated to the Resistance. Rains - a WW1 hero in real life - sides with the merchant ship's civilian capitan, who declares that the men will not be turned in, because they have declared their loyalty to France and are ready to fight for their country. That is the real reason they made the effort to escape the Devil's Island prison. There are no patriots like the French, that's for sure. But good for them I say, at least in their current, non-Napoleonic incarnation.
The French are not wimps. So there!
"Passage To Marseille" shows that the French Resistance fought with every means available to rid their country of the Occupation by the Nazis. Try to imagine if an invading army was standing in the streets of America, ordering you around, telling you what to do and where you could go and where you couldn't. That would be a frightening scenario, would it not? But many of the French stood and fought, even though they had to do so in surreptitious ways, because it was either fight or die for them.
Humphrey and his cohorts do eventually make it to England, where they keep their promise and join the Free French Air Force, and the final twenty minutes of the movie involves a pivotal mission for the group. Bogie also has a wife and son waiting for him in the countryside. He always asks permission to extend every flight so he can pass over his house and drop them a letter, enclosed in a metal pipe. There is a lengthy subtheme involving Bogie and his gorgeous wife Michele Morgan, and it is a major plot point, but I shant describe it to you as I have church in the morning, and this is yet another one of those movies with enough story development to fill a book, which makes it Epic with a Capital E, even with a relatively short running time of 109 minutes.
If you are a fan of WW2 movies, this one is an Absolute Must See. There are good aerial combat scenes and even a little bit of stock footage showing very scary tracer fire. Again I must say, how the world got past WW2 I will never know. All you have to do is watch the real life stock footage to see that it was literally Hell On Earth.
There is too much plot in "Passage To Marseille" to fully describe it to you, which is all the more reason for you to see it. Director Curtiz reunites Bogart, Greenstreet, Rains and even Peter Lorre from his classic film "Casablanca". Lorre plays one of the rescued convicts, and the rest of the large cast is, to a man (and the beautiful Michele Morgan), uniformly excellent.
Two Huge Thumbs Up for "Passage To Marseille", a must see for Bogie fans and WWII buffs.
See you in church in the morning. Huge love until then. xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
As the announcer intones at the beginning of the film, the overall story is about the Free French Air Force, a group I had never heard of before. Everyone has heard of the French Resistance, but I did not know they had an air corps. The airmen were actually based in England, hidden on a large dairy farm. Their planes were parked in barns and everything was tucked away out of sight so that a passing German reconnaissance crew would never suspect their presence. Their pilots were Frenchmen who had escaped the German occupation of their country and were now prepared to fight back from their base in England.
The story involves multiple uses of flashbacks (including flashbacks upon flashbacks), so after we see Bogart heading out on a bombing run (and yes, he is playing a French airman but talking like Bogie), the story then retreats to the past to show us how he came to be a tail gunner for the Free French in the first place.
A French merchant ship is sailing through international waters in dangerous territory. German subs could be anywhere. Looking into his binoculars the Captain spies a small object bobbing in the water. It turns out to be a small canoe, holding five men who are in very bad shape. The men are rescued and pulled aboard the merchant ship. They are French and claim to have rowed their way from a Venezuelan river, where they were part of a gold mining crew. Their story sounds far fetched, and Sidney Greenstreet, who is onboard the ship as a French Major en route to Marseille, suspects that the men, who include Humphrey Bogart in their number, are actually escaped convicts from Devil's Island.
Sidney Greenstreet specialized in playing evil, dominant characters and he is doing so here, but he is right about the rescued men. They are indeed prison escapees, from the notorious Guyanese island of Cayenne. Now it is time for a flashback within a flashback to see how each of them came to be incarcerated there.
The middle of the plot has to do with the men's fate, and ultimately with that of the entire crew and the ship itself. Who is in charge here? Is it the menacing Greenstreet, who as a Major outranks everyone on board? He is a German appeaser, who is okay with Hitler's occupation of France. He demands that the captain return immediately to Marseille so he can turn the men in to the Nazi authorities who are running the show there. However, he has strong opposition in the person of the legendary Claude Rains, himself a French officer but one dedicated to the Resistance. Rains - a WW1 hero in real life - sides with the merchant ship's civilian capitan, who declares that the men will not be turned in, because they have declared their loyalty to France and are ready to fight for their country. That is the real reason they made the effort to escape the Devil's Island prison. There are no patriots like the French, that's for sure. But good for them I say, at least in their current, non-Napoleonic incarnation.
The French are not wimps. So there!
"Passage To Marseille" shows that the French Resistance fought with every means available to rid their country of the Occupation by the Nazis. Try to imagine if an invading army was standing in the streets of America, ordering you around, telling you what to do and where you could go and where you couldn't. That would be a frightening scenario, would it not? But many of the French stood and fought, even though they had to do so in surreptitious ways, because it was either fight or die for them.
Humphrey and his cohorts do eventually make it to England, where they keep their promise and join the Free French Air Force, and the final twenty minutes of the movie involves a pivotal mission for the group. Bogie also has a wife and son waiting for him in the countryside. He always asks permission to extend every flight so he can pass over his house and drop them a letter, enclosed in a metal pipe. There is a lengthy subtheme involving Bogie and his gorgeous wife Michele Morgan, and it is a major plot point, but I shant describe it to you as I have church in the morning, and this is yet another one of those movies with enough story development to fill a book, which makes it Epic with a Capital E, even with a relatively short running time of 109 minutes.
If you are a fan of WW2 movies, this one is an Absolute Must See. There are good aerial combat scenes and even a little bit of stock footage showing very scary tracer fire. Again I must say, how the world got past WW2 I will never know. All you have to do is watch the real life stock footage to see that it was literally Hell On Earth.
There is too much plot in "Passage To Marseille" to fully describe it to you, which is all the more reason for you to see it. Director Curtiz reunites Bogart, Greenstreet, Rains and even Peter Lorre from his classic film "Casablanca". Lorre plays one of the rescued convicts, and the rest of the large cast is, to a man (and the beautiful Michele Morgan), uniformly excellent.
Two Huge Thumbs Up for "Passage To Marseille", a must see for Bogie fans and WWII buffs.
See you in church in the morning. Huge love until then. xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
Saturday, April 27, 2019
"The Ghost of Sierra de Cobre", a really weird TV movie directed by Joseph Stefano
Tonight's movie was a really weird and scary made for TV horror film called "The Ghost of Sierra de Cobre" (1964), directed by Joseph Stefano, who wrote the screenplay for Hitchcock's "Psycho" and, most notably, created the original "Outer Limits" television series, which I am a big fan of. This film was originally shot as a 52 minute pilot (which equates to one hour with commercials) for a planned TV series. "Outer Limits" was hot at the time and Stefano had a chance to expand on his brand, as it were. Apparently though, according to liner notes and IMDB comments, the TV executives were aghast when Stefano showed them the pilot. They found it as strange and creepy - and scary - as I did and as you no doubt will when you watch it.
But they also found it non-commercial, and you will understand their reasoning for that conclusion, too.
Martin Landau stars as an architect who lives in what looks like a futuristic Brutalist mansion set on a Malibu cliff. He is well off financially, but as a side gig he is also a paranormal investigator, a hobby he undertakes because he is good at it and also because he genuinely wants to help folks who are besieged by ghosts. He has a feisty housekeeper who acts as his foil. She is a determined non-believer.
Landau gets a call from Diane Baker, who wants him to look into a spooky situation in her own home, another even bigger mansion owned by her blind husband, the last surviving member of a wealthy family. It seems that the husband, blind since birth, had a domineering mother who was pathologically fearful of being buried alive. This is explained in expository dialogue between the characters. The mother was so afraid of death and burial that in her will she stipulated that her casket be kept open in her tomb, and that a telephone be placed within an arm's reach, just in case she was buried alive. That way, she could call her son, who had a telephone in his room at the other end of the line.
What is happening in the house is that the blind son has indeed been getting phone calls, and when he picks up, all he hears is terrible wailing and sobbing at the other end. And man, is it ever scary sounding! He thinks it is his deceased mother calling him. His wife Diane Baker thinks someone is playing a prank, which is why she has contacted ghost hunter extraordinaire Martin Landau. She wants him to debunk the case.
He asks her to meet him at the cemetery, so he can see the mother's tomb for himself, and inspect the telephone line inside. It is in there that he receives his first indication that the ghost calls may be real after all. All I will say about this sequence is that if I had seen it when I was four or five years old, it would have scared the bejeezus out of me and made an impression for life, as did many of the images from Stefano's "Outer Limits".
The story builds from there, on the intrigue created in the tomb. The catlike Miss Baker (a Kate Jackson lookalike) appears to be frightened of her husband's new housekeeper, and you would be too, because she is played by Dame Judith Anderson of "Rebecca" fame. Dame Judith reminds me of an even more sinister Agnes Moorehead, without any of Moorhead's smart ass charm. Judith Anderson (who was no doubt a nice lady in real life, haha) specialised in playing truly black-souled women, and here she is at her blackest, in dress as well as demeanor. She and Diane Baker seem to have some connection. Hmm, their hairdos are remarkably similar, though Diane's is a bit more fresh shall we say.
What do they know about the phone calls, if anything?
Inside the concrete mansion of Martin Landau is a painting, of a Spanish Mission called "Sierra de Cobre". In one of the earliest cases of his ghost hunting career, Landau had flown out to Spain to investigate a haunting at the mission that resulted in the death of an American tourist.
Why does Diane Baker recoil when she sees the painting? And why does Dame Judith always seem to be lurking in the background, waiting for a chance to slip Diane a vial of some dark liquid?
Is she drugging her? Just how weird is this movie, I ask you.
I mean, I ask you, but you haven't seen it so actually you should be asking me.
And just in case you are asking me, I'm telling you that it's plenty weird. In fact, it was so weird that the TV studio rejected it as a pilot for a tv series, and what Joseph Stefano did was to add 28 minutes of extra footage to make it feature length, so he could release it as a movie. I don't know where it played. Did it have an American release? I don't know. But it is clear that the extra running time had an effect on the pace. The whole movie feels as if everyone is one Thorazine, walking around in a trance. The slow pace does begin to drag a bit, as the movie approaches the one hour mark, but the stellar black and white photography - a Stefano trademark - holds your attention even when the dialogue becomes a little too abstract and causes the story to lose cohesion.
I will give "The Ghost of Sierra de Cobre" Two Thumbs Up anyway, and I also give it a hearty endorsement as an example of an early 1960s psychological or existential horror film or ghost story. This is the kind of film where an authority figure, in this case Landau, who is presumed to be an expert in his field, assumes at first that the phenomenon can all be explained by logic and examination of the facts. In these kinds of black and white films from the same time period, early 1960s, a mood was created that tried to show what a victim was experiencing inside their head, some horror that could not be understood by anyone with cynicism.
This is the dilemma of the movie, an isolated character study with only a handful of actors, photographed by the great Conrad Hall and William Fraker. This is big league cinematography.
It's just that the pace is slow and the dialogue sometimes ventures past the metaphysical into the experimental.
See it if you wish. You may love it or not, but it will surely scare the daylights out of you.
Two Thumbs Up from me, if I have not said that already. ////
Much love and I will see you in the morning. xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
But they also found it non-commercial, and you will understand their reasoning for that conclusion, too.
Martin Landau stars as an architect who lives in what looks like a futuristic Brutalist mansion set on a Malibu cliff. He is well off financially, but as a side gig he is also a paranormal investigator, a hobby he undertakes because he is good at it and also because he genuinely wants to help folks who are besieged by ghosts. He has a feisty housekeeper who acts as his foil. She is a determined non-believer.
Landau gets a call from Diane Baker, who wants him to look into a spooky situation in her own home, another even bigger mansion owned by her blind husband, the last surviving member of a wealthy family. It seems that the husband, blind since birth, had a domineering mother who was pathologically fearful of being buried alive. This is explained in expository dialogue between the characters. The mother was so afraid of death and burial that in her will she stipulated that her casket be kept open in her tomb, and that a telephone be placed within an arm's reach, just in case she was buried alive. That way, she could call her son, who had a telephone in his room at the other end of the line.
What is happening in the house is that the blind son has indeed been getting phone calls, and when he picks up, all he hears is terrible wailing and sobbing at the other end. And man, is it ever scary sounding! He thinks it is his deceased mother calling him. His wife Diane Baker thinks someone is playing a prank, which is why she has contacted ghost hunter extraordinaire Martin Landau. She wants him to debunk the case.
He asks her to meet him at the cemetery, so he can see the mother's tomb for himself, and inspect the telephone line inside. It is in there that he receives his first indication that the ghost calls may be real after all. All I will say about this sequence is that if I had seen it when I was four or five years old, it would have scared the bejeezus out of me and made an impression for life, as did many of the images from Stefano's "Outer Limits".
The story builds from there, on the intrigue created in the tomb. The catlike Miss Baker (a Kate Jackson lookalike) appears to be frightened of her husband's new housekeeper, and you would be too, because she is played by Dame Judith Anderson of "Rebecca" fame. Dame Judith reminds me of an even more sinister Agnes Moorehead, without any of Moorhead's smart ass charm. Judith Anderson (who was no doubt a nice lady in real life, haha) specialised in playing truly black-souled women, and here she is at her blackest, in dress as well as demeanor. She and Diane Baker seem to have some connection. Hmm, their hairdos are remarkably similar, though Diane's is a bit more fresh shall we say.
What do they know about the phone calls, if anything?
Inside the concrete mansion of Martin Landau is a painting, of a Spanish Mission called "Sierra de Cobre". In one of the earliest cases of his ghost hunting career, Landau had flown out to Spain to investigate a haunting at the mission that resulted in the death of an American tourist.
Why does Diane Baker recoil when she sees the painting? And why does Dame Judith always seem to be lurking in the background, waiting for a chance to slip Diane a vial of some dark liquid?
Is she drugging her? Just how weird is this movie, I ask you.
I mean, I ask you, but you haven't seen it so actually you should be asking me.
And just in case you are asking me, I'm telling you that it's plenty weird. In fact, it was so weird that the TV studio rejected it as a pilot for a tv series, and what Joseph Stefano did was to add 28 minutes of extra footage to make it feature length, so he could release it as a movie. I don't know where it played. Did it have an American release? I don't know. But it is clear that the extra running time had an effect on the pace. The whole movie feels as if everyone is one Thorazine, walking around in a trance. The slow pace does begin to drag a bit, as the movie approaches the one hour mark, but the stellar black and white photography - a Stefano trademark - holds your attention even when the dialogue becomes a little too abstract and causes the story to lose cohesion.
I will give "The Ghost of Sierra de Cobre" Two Thumbs Up anyway, and I also give it a hearty endorsement as an example of an early 1960s psychological or existential horror film or ghost story. This is the kind of film where an authority figure, in this case Landau, who is presumed to be an expert in his field, assumes at first that the phenomenon can all be explained by logic and examination of the facts. In these kinds of black and white films from the same time period, early 1960s, a mood was created that tried to show what a victim was experiencing inside their head, some horror that could not be understood by anyone with cynicism.
This is the dilemma of the movie, an isolated character study with only a handful of actors, photographed by the great Conrad Hall and William Fraker. This is big league cinematography.
It's just that the pace is slow and the dialogue sometimes ventures past the metaphysical into the experimental.
See it if you wish. You may love it or not, but it will surely scare the daylights out of you.
Two Thumbs Up from me, if I have not said that already. ////
Much love and I will see you in the morning. xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
Friday, April 26, 2019
"I Wanna Hold Your Hand", the 1978 movie + Time & Memory
Tonight I watched a movie called "I Wanna Hold Your Hand" (1978), which as you can imagine is about The Beatles, specifically about the efforts of six teenagers to Meet The Beatles (sorry, I couldn't resist) by finding and sneaking into the group's hotel during their stay in New York in February 1964 for the taping of "The Ed Sullivan Show".
I can remember when this movie came out, and again the time factor just blows my mind because it was 41 years ago. Jimmah Cahtah was President. All four Beatles were still alive. What I remember was that "I Wanna Hold Your Hand" was promoted almost as an indie flick, a big hearted crazy comedy made with unknown or little known actors by a young director who was a protege of Steven Spielberg. The director was Robert Zemeckis. He was 27 and making his debut film.
If I think back, I guess I didn't see the movie when it came out because the initial reviews were lukewarm and I really didn't know the cast except for Nancy Allen. I loved the idea of a movie about Beatlemania because that phenomenon was one of my earliest memories. The movie's title was also my very first favorite rock song, the song that introduced America to The Beatles and made them instantly huge. I guess it was just a combination of minor issues - and mainly the less than enthusiastic review I read - that caused me not to see the movie in the theater in 1978, but just a couple weeks ago I was doing a library search for new Criterion releases and I found this film. Immediately I felt nostalgia and I knew the time had come to finally watch it.
Well,,,,,,wow. Sometimes that is all you can say but I will say a little more. First I will say, man I wish times were like they used to be. Things just don't seem as lively anymore, and all you have to do is watch "I Wanna Hold Your Hand" as exhibit A. It is one of those big studio comedies of the late 70s and early 80s where the energy is through the ceiling. In this way it is the heir to the Screwball Comedies of the 1930s, but on steroids. New Jersey teenagers Wendy Jo Sperber, Teresa Saldana and Nancy Allen are aware, like every teen and most adults in America, that The Beatles have landed in NYC. They hatch a plan to get to the hotel; all they need is a limo, which fortunately one of their school friends has access to because his Dad owns a funeral parlor. So they score the limo and head out from Jersey to Manhattan, picking up some friends along the way, one of them a leatherjacketed 50s holdover who hates The Beatles with a passion. Another friend of theirs is a Bob Dylan folk purist, who also dislikes The Beatles and considers them commercial phonies. She is the kind of girl who irons her hair and makes strident pronouncements on what is genuine in art and music. She wants to ride along with the friends, if only to denounce The Beatles to news cameras that will be on site at the hotel. The friends let her ride along because she has gas money.
The six get to New York and find the hotel, and I really don't want to reveal any more than that, because this movie is so much fun and so crazy with energy that it would be better for you to discover it for yourself if you haven't already. It has Spielberg's stamp all over it (he produced), and it has "that look" you remember from big budget comedies of the era, just light years from what would be made now and thought of as funny. The cast is brilliant, especially Wendy Jo Sperber and Teresa Saldana, and I wanted to remark about both of them because they are no longer with us. Wendy Jo passed away in 2005 at only 47, and Teresa Saldana died just three years ago in 2016 at the age of only 61. She had something befall her in 1982, just four years after this movie was released, when she was only 27, that was so terrible that I don't even want to mention it. If you are a film buff you already know what I am referring to, otherwise you can Google it if you wish.
I watched the movie and because of the mechanism of time and memory, I was transported back to that time in my life. This happens to me on a daily basis, whenever I am thinking about a past event or era. I not only recall the thing I am thinking about, but I also feel the time period, in ways that words can't describe. You know what I am talking about because it happens to you as well. The only difference may be that I make a major point of absorbing my nostalgia and trying to understand it on a spiritual level. I do this because I feel it has immense meaning, this connection with different moments from the past.
Have you ever wondered if it would be possible, if you had 100% access to your memory, for you to go back and remember every single moment of your life? Literally like a 59 year long movie, or however old you are? Would you do that if you could? Not watch an entire lifelong movie re-run, because it would take too much time, but surely you would want to watch the playback of all the memories of which you were most fond.
Still, as a purely Schopenhauerian question, I ask you : Do you believe that somewhere in your consciousness is stored the memory of every second of your life? And if you had the time, would you sit and watch a replay of it?
I would.
And I would do it for two reasons.
The first is because I have loved this life in all it's joy and pain and complexity. I would live it forever if I could.
And the second reason is because I want to try and understand it. That is why I re-run things over and over again in my head.
This is what we all do, to a greater or lesser extent. Me, I tend to take things all the way, to their intuitive conclusion, though I never get there. ///
"I Wanna Hold Your Hand" was so full of energy and so inspired that it is not just a result of the combined talent of cast and director but of the time period in which the movie was created.
It was released in 1978, eight years after The Beatles broke up and fourteen years after Beatlemania hit America. Nowdays, eight years and even fourteen years pass by and nothing much happens, because we are in a lockdown cycle where the news media creates a reality, and I am not talking about Trumpian "Fake News". You know what I mean, I mean the era of electronics that we live in, and the paranoia post-9/11 state in America where fear is the daily measuring stick instead of joy and exuberance. Keep in mind that Beatlemania happened just weeks after President Kennedy was assassinated, and the kids still reacted with unbridled ecstasy to The Beatles arrival, because there wasn't this lockdown culture that we live in now, this media created groupthink 24/7 deal, where news is all that matters, whatever "news" is.
I will shut up now, and I didn't mean to detract from my review of the movie, but you know how I am.
"I Wanna Hold Your Hand" was a total blast from start to finish. It is entirely over the top and maybe fifteen minutes too long, but I still give it Ten Stars and my highest possible recommendation because it is so full of life.
See you in the morning with tons of love sent to you tonight. xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
I can remember when this movie came out, and again the time factor just blows my mind because it was 41 years ago. Jimmah Cahtah was President. All four Beatles were still alive. What I remember was that "I Wanna Hold Your Hand" was promoted almost as an indie flick, a big hearted crazy comedy made with unknown or little known actors by a young director who was a protege of Steven Spielberg. The director was Robert Zemeckis. He was 27 and making his debut film.
If I think back, I guess I didn't see the movie when it came out because the initial reviews were lukewarm and I really didn't know the cast except for Nancy Allen. I loved the idea of a movie about Beatlemania because that phenomenon was one of my earliest memories. The movie's title was also my very first favorite rock song, the song that introduced America to The Beatles and made them instantly huge. I guess it was just a combination of minor issues - and mainly the less than enthusiastic review I read - that caused me not to see the movie in the theater in 1978, but just a couple weeks ago I was doing a library search for new Criterion releases and I found this film. Immediately I felt nostalgia and I knew the time had come to finally watch it.
Well,,,,,,wow. Sometimes that is all you can say but I will say a little more. First I will say, man I wish times were like they used to be. Things just don't seem as lively anymore, and all you have to do is watch "I Wanna Hold Your Hand" as exhibit A. It is one of those big studio comedies of the late 70s and early 80s where the energy is through the ceiling. In this way it is the heir to the Screwball Comedies of the 1930s, but on steroids. New Jersey teenagers Wendy Jo Sperber, Teresa Saldana and Nancy Allen are aware, like every teen and most adults in America, that The Beatles have landed in NYC. They hatch a plan to get to the hotel; all they need is a limo, which fortunately one of their school friends has access to because his Dad owns a funeral parlor. So they score the limo and head out from Jersey to Manhattan, picking up some friends along the way, one of them a leatherjacketed 50s holdover who hates The Beatles with a passion. Another friend of theirs is a Bob Dylan folk purist, who also dislikes The Beatles and considers them commercial phonies. She is the kind of girl who irons her hair and makes strident pronouncements on what is genuine in art and music. She wants to ride along with the friends, if only to denounce The Beatles to news cameras that will be on site at the hotel. The friends let her ride along because she has gas money.
The six get to New York and find the hotel, and I really don't want to reveal any more than that, because this movie is so much fun and so crazy with energy that it would be better for you to discover it for yourself if you haven't already. It has Spielberg's stamp all over it (he produced), and it has "that look" you remember from big budget comedies of the era, just light years from what would be made now and thought of as funny. The cast is brilliant, especially Wendy Jo Sperber and Teresa Saldana, and I wanted to remark about both of them because they are no longer with us. Wendy Jo passed away in 2005 at only 47, and Teresa Saldana died just three years ago in 2016 at the age of only 61. She had something befall her in 1982, just four years after this movie was released, when she was only 27, that was so terrible that I don't even want to mention it. If you are a film buff you already know what I am referring to, otherwise you can Google it if you wish.
I watched the movie and because of the mechanism of time and memory, I was transported back to that time in my life. This happens to me on a daily basis, whenever I am thinking about a past event or era. I not only recall the thing I am thinking about, but I also feel the time period, in ways that words can't describe. You know what I am talking about because it happens to you as well. The only difference may be that I make a major point of absorbing my nostalgia and trying to understand it on a spiritual level. I do this because I feel it has immense meaning, this connection with different moments from the past.
Have you ever wondered if it would be possible, if you had 100% access to your memory, for you to go back and remember every single moment of your life? Literally like a 59 year long movie, or however old you are? Would you do that if you could? Not watch an entire lifelong movie re-run, because it would take too much time, but surely you would want to watch the playback of all the memories of which you were most fond.
Still, as a purely Schopenhauerian question, I ask you : Do you believe that somewhere in your consciousness is stored the memory of every second of your life? And if you had the time, would you sit and watch a replay of it?
I would.
And I would do it for two reasons.
The first is because I have loved this life in all it's joy and pain and complexity. I would live it forever if I could.
And the second reason is because I want to try and understand it. That is why I re-run things over and over again in my head.
This is what we all do, to a greater or lesser extent. Me, I tend to take things all the way, to their intuitive conclusion, though I never get there. ///
"I Wanna Hold Your Hand" was so full of energy and so inspired that it is not just a result of the combined talent of cast and director but of the time period in which the movie was created.
It was released in 1978, eight years after The Beatles broke up and fourteen years after Beatlemania hit America. Nowdays, eight years and even fourteen years pass by and nothing much happens, because we are in a lockdown cycle where the news media creates a reality, and I am not talking about Trumpian "Fake News". You know what I mean, I mean the era of electronics that we live in, and the paranoia post-9/11 state in America where fear is the daily measuring stick instead of joy and exuberance. Keep in mind that Beatlemania happened just weeks after President Kennedy was assassinated, and the kids still reacted with unbridled ecstasy to The Beatles arrival, because there wasn't this lockdown culture that we live in now, this media created groupthink 24/7 deal, where news is all that matters, whatever "news" is.
I will shut up now, and I didn't mean to detract from my review of the movie, but you know how I am.
"I Wanna Hold Your Hand" was a total blast from start to finish. It is entirely over the top and maybe fifteen minutes too long, but I still give it Ten Stars and my highest possible recommendation because it is so full of life.
See you in the morning with tons of love sent to you tonight. xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
Thursday, April 25, 2019
"Pan's Labyrinth" at CSUN + The Starting Point Of Schopenhauer's Philosophy
Tonight I went to the Armer Theater at CSUN to see "Pan's Labyrinth". I'd forgotten what a dark and brutal film it is. I guess the fantasy sequences are what stuck in my memory, and they are so full of magic that they offset the horrific main story. I am assuming you have seen the movie, so I don't feel the need to describe it, but I will say that upon seeing it a second time - and for the first time on on a movie screen - I think that the character of The Captain is one of the most evil portrayals of a villain that I've ever seen. He dominated so much of the film; it took the combined effort of every other character in the film to offset his wickedness, but a high commendation must be given to the actor Sergi Lopez for making him come to life in such an overpowering way.
I was surprised to see the 2006 copyright roll by at the end of the credits. I had thought the film to be more recent, say 2012 or so. But I know I first saw it when it came out on dvd, so that must have been twelve years ago now. I will have to check my movie lists (I write down every one that I watch), but once again the notion of the passage of time, and the very strange way in which it works in our memories and the emotions connected with the time period of those memories, never fails to leave me in a state of contemplation. How can One Thing that happened a dozen years ago feel more recent, and Another Thing that happened 30 or 40 years ago feel like yesterday, but A Third Thing that happened just five years ago feel like ancient history?
I have noted in the past that once you hit 40, it's like the years shift into high gear. They start to seem like they are going by faster and faster. But when you take them cumulatively, as in one big scope of memory from age 40 to 59, it seems like a very long time indeed, and it's really weird.
The Elasticity of Time is something I could talk about all day, just like with the subject of drawing as I mentioned the other night. I like to draw and I like to reminisce, to jump around in memory from year to year, and to associate memories with markers like songs, or locations or just abstract feelings of heart or mind that I let go without trying to define. I guess it kind of blew my mind that twelve years had passed since I first saw "Pan's Labyrinth", because I associated it as being much more recent. At any rate, I think it is a masterpiece, even though very violent and hard to watch in spots. ////
I am reading my books about Hugh Everett and Schopenhauer. In the former, I am still processing what is meant by the "wave collapse" in quantum theory, and also the "superposition principle". For the last few years I have taken to reading about physics as a hobby, simply because I was a good math student up to eighth grade and a part of me, now that I am older, wishes I had taken it farther. So I am very much enjoying books such as the biography of Paul Dirac from last year or the Everett book I am currently working on. These guys spent all their time thinking about what matter is, what particles break down to, how they behave and how the behavior of the smallest particles and the systems in which they move differ from the fixed reality that we see. For me it has taken several years and many books on the overall subject to begin to digest what is being talked about.
Schopenhauer is much more of what you might call "slow going", because he is a philosopher and not a scientist who has experimental results from which he can draw his conclusions. I am not well studied in philosophy, but from what I can discern from the first couple of chapters of Schopenhauer, these guys are interested in mental minutia that is much more broken down to it's basics than even the smallest particles of the physicists. Schopenhauer begins his philosophy by postulating that the truths, and ultimate Truth, of human experience can only be gleaned through explanation. For instance, a person is told, as an explanation, that what he is looking at is a mountain. Or the color red. Or he is told that two plus two equals four. Schopenhauer then goes on to deconstruct the validity of explanations - any explanation - as revealing truth, because he says that any explanation is subject to a further explanation and therefore does not close the subject.
"You say the color is red. Well, what is red? What is color? Could you please explain"? And if the explainer were to remark that the color red is a visual reception in the brain, then the questioner could ask for yet another explanation of what is meant by that statement and it's separate subjective breakdowns.
So here I am, reading this, and I am thinking that Schopenhauer could have more easily described it in child's terms by describing the original and simplistic "Question of 'Why' ". You probably know what I mean, the child's proverbial, if annoying, question : "Daddy, why is the sky blue"? "Well, because son, the refraction of the sunlight, blah blah....", and then the child asks why to that explanation and what is refraction, etc. And the child continues asking "why" to Daddy's further explanations until Dad either tells him to go to sleep or he falls asleep on his own.
Therefore, according to Schopenhauer, no truth can be proclaimed from any explanation because an observation is not a fact. Red is only red because we agree on it and assume we are seeing the same thing.
Okay, this is Ad here, your blogger. I am telling you all of this as a way of describing the slog of reading through a philosophical text. I was not aware that these guys were this bogged down in the hair splitting of basic thought. I have never studied philosophy, and only became aware of Schopenhauer, and interested in reading more about him, through Bryan Magee's book on Wagner that I recently finished. But man, it's a lot of work, getting through the heavily worded details of explaining things I, and most of us, instinctively understood as infants.
I already knew about "why, why why" when I was two years old, haha.
To be fair to Schopenhauer, this is only the very beginning of his philosophy, when he says that no truth can be gained from any explanation. He promises (or author Magee does) that he will work through the entire experience of Mankind to come to his final conclusions as to whether any such thing as truth is possible to be understood.
It is gonna take me a while to make it through this book, just because of the nature of the arguments. I am much more an intuitive person, not interested in arguing logic or the microscopic details of what constitutes reality. I do like the interpretations of the physicists, like Hugh Everett, but even he was only guessing, even if he was backed by solid mathematics.
The truth is that no one knows what reality is or what we are doing here. That's why I like to listen to the birds chirp. They may know something we don't, or it may be just a lot of gibberish, but it sounds really nice when you are taking a walk in the sunshine. The birds sound like real life. And Magee says that Schopenhauer liked to go for two hour walks. So go figure.
Me, I am all done thinking and talking for the evening. See you in the morning. Don't forget to Google Schopenhauer's picture. :)
xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
I was surprised to see the 2006 copyright roll by at the end of the credits. I had thought the film to be more recent, say 2012 or so. But I know I first saw it when it came out on dvd, so that must have been twelve years ago now. I will have to check my movie lists (I write down every one that I watch), but once again the notion of the passage of time, and the very strange way in which it works in our memories and the emotions connected with the time period of those memories, never fails to leave me in a state of contemplation. How can One Thing that happened a dozen years ago feel more recent, and Another Thing that happened 30 or 40 years ago feel like yesterday, but A Third Thing that happened just five years ago feel like ancient history?
I have noted in the past that once you hit 40, it's like the years shift into high gear. They start to seem like they are going by faster and faster. But when you take them cumulatively, as in one big scope of memory from age 40 to 59, it seems like a very long time indeed, and it's really weird.
The Elasticity of Time is something I could talk about all day, just like with the subject of drawing as I mentioned the other night. I like to draw and I like to reminisce, to jump around in memory from year to year, and to associate memories with markers like songs, or locations or just abstract feelings of heart or mind that I let go without trying to define. I guess it kind of blew my mind that twelve years had passed since I first saw "Pan's Labyrinth", because I associated it as being much more recent. At any rate, I think it is a masterpiece, even though very violent and hard to watch in spots. ////
I am reading my books about Hugh Everett and Schopenhauer. In the former, I am still processing what is meant by the "wave collapse" in quantum theory, and also the "superposition principle". For the last few years I have taken to reading about physics as a hobby, simply because I was a good math student up to eighth grade and a part of me, now that I am older, wishes I had taken it farther. So I am very much enjoying books such as the biography of Paul Dirac from last year or the Everett book I am currently working on. These guys spent all their time thinking about what matter is, what particles break down to, how they behave and how the behavior of the smallest particles and the systems in which they move differ from the fixed reality that we see. For me it has taken several years and many books on the overall subject to begin to digest what is being talked about.
Schopenhauer is much more of what you might call "slow going", because he is a philosopher and not a scientist who has experimental results from which he can draw his conclusions. I am not well studied in philosophy, but from what I can discern from the first couple of chapters of Schopenhauer, these guys are interested in mental minutia that is much more broken down to it's basics than even the smallest particles of the physicists. Schopenhauer begins his philosophy by postulating that the truths, and ultimate Truth, of human experience can only be gleaned through explanation. For instance, a person is told, as an explanation, that what he is looking at is a mountain. Or the color red. Or he is told that two plus two equals four. Schopenhauer then goes on to deconstruct the validity of explanations - any explanation - as revealing truth, because he says that any explanation is subject to a further explanation and therefore does not close the subject.
"You say the color is red. Well, what is red? What is color? Could you please explain"? And if the explainer were to remark that the color red is a visual reception in the brain, then the questioner could ask for yet another explanation of what is meant by that statement and it's separate subjective breakdowns.
So here I am, reading this, and I am thinking that Schopenhauer could have more easily described it in child's terms by describing the original and simplistic "Question of 'Why' ". You probably know what I mean, the child's proverbial, if annoying, question : "Daddy, why is the sky blue"? "Well, because son, the refraction of the sunlight, blah blah....", and then the child asks why to that explanation and what is refraction, etc. And the child continues asking "why" to Daddy's further explanations until Dad either tells him to go to sleep or he falls asleep on his own.
Therefore, according to Schopenhauer, no truth can be proclaimed from any explanation because an observation is not a fact. Red is only red because we agree on it and assume we are seeing the same thing.
Okay, this is Ad here, your blogger. I am telling you all of this as a way of describing the slog of reading through a philosophical text. I was not aware that these guys were this bogged down in the hair splitting of basic thought. I have never studied philosophy, and only became aware of Schopenhauer, and interested in reading more about him, through Bryan Magee's book on Wagner that I recently finished. But man, it's a lot of work, getting through the heavily worded details of explaining things I, and most of us, instinctively understood as infants.
I already knew about "why, why why" when I was two years old, haha.
To be fair to Schopenhauer, this is only the very beginning of his philosophy, when he says that no truth can be gained from any explanation. He promises (or author Magee does) that he will work through the entire experience of Mankind to come to his final conclusions as to whether any such thing as truth is possible to be understood.
It is gonna take me a while to make it through this book, just because of the nature of the arguments. I am much more an intuitive person, not interested in arguing logic or the microscopic details of what constitutes reality. I do like the interpretations of the physicists, like Hugh Everett, but even he was only guessing, even if he was backed by solid mathematics.
The truth is that no one knows what reality is or what we are doing here. That's why I like to listen to the birds chirp. They may know something we don't, or it may be just a lot of gibberish, but it sounds really nice when you are taking a walk in the sunshine. The birds sound like real life. And Magee says that Schopenhauer liked to go for two hour walks. So go figure.
Me, I am all done thinking and talking for the evening. See you in the morning. Don't forget to Google Schopenhauer's picture. :)
xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
Wednesday, April 24, 2019
"The Man I Love" starring Ida Lupino + King's X
Tonight's movie was called "The Man I Love" (1947), and starred Ida Lupino as a New York nightclub singer who is visiting her three siblings (two sisters, one brother) in California. The city is unspecified, but is probably meant to be Los Angeles.
The setting is Christmastime, 1944. Lupino, the eldest of the siblings, is something of a Mother Hen toward them as she is more sophisticated in the ways of the world due to her exposure to New York nightlife. In fact, upon arriving at her sisters' shared apartment, she is dismayed to learn that one of the sisters has her own job in a local club and is being hit on every night by the slick yet mildly sinister owner of the joint (played by Robert Alda, father of Alan). Lupino is further upset when she finds out that little brother Joey also works for Alda as an assistant, meaning that he does anything Alda tells him to do. This ends up landing him in jail after he gets into a fight outside the nightclub.
"The Man I Love" is technically a Noir, but it's also one of those ensemble melodramas where Many Lives Collide. Ida Lupino is a take charge gal, so she does two things in short order. First, she goes down to the jail to bail out the other man involved in the fight with her brother. She does this because she feels guilty that her brother is working for a hoodlum. Secondly, she goes to the nightclub herself to meet this oily boss (Alda) who is pressuring her sister and influencing her brother. But instead of reading him the riot act, as Joan Crawford would have done were she in this film, Lupino has a drink with him and ends up being his Star Act, the biggest draw at his club.
Now, this story is very convoluted, so after Ida Lupino settles in to her singing engagement at Robert Alda's club, she runs into the man she bailed out from jail, the guy her brother tried to beat up. The man is seated at a table watching her performance, so they have a drink and it turns out that he is a jazz pianist whose name she knows. Now we are right back in last night's movie, with a singer and a pianist, except this time the movie is good, haha.
The trouble with the pianist is that he is a has-been. Once a recording artist, he has been reduced to working as a merchant seaman. Lupino falls hard for him anyway. She has no one in her life and is trying to be the Hero for her family. Besides all of this there is a subplot with a neighbor couple in the sisters' apartment building. A young, blue-collar man - handsome and nice but not too bright - has a hottie for a wife who is going out to the nightclub with other men while hubby is at work. Ida Lupino spots her there, drunk, and it turns out that club owner Robert Alda is also after this woman, who is a classic Femme Fatale in the Film Noir sense. The subplot that involves her cheating on her husband will provide a major plot development later in the film, but for much of the middle section we are watching the back-and-forth between Ida Lupino and Bruce Bennett the pianist. He is very depressed at his downturn in life and tries to reject her so as not to drag her down with him........but this only makes her more determined. He is "The Man" referred to in the title of the movie.
Now, in addition to all of this, there are other subplots, one involving the shell-shocked husband of Lupino's next eldest sister. This man is a war hero, just like the blind pianist in last night's crazy Joan Crawford movie, and he is locked up in the Psych Ward at the VA because of his combat experience. He can't relate to his wife anymore without losing his marbles.....though there is a chance he will get them back, so keep your fingers crossed.
The bottom line is that there is a lot going on in this film. Conflict after conflict, multiple character interaction, shifting subthemes. On the back of the dvd box, it says that "The Man I Love" was the inspiration for Martin Scorcese's "New York, New York". That's an impressive stat, even though we early Scorcese fans did not love "NY,NY" when it came out. Now, it might be a great movie in retrospect. We were teenagers back when we first saw it, but anyhow, he got his inspiration from "The Man I Love", which was directed by the great Raoul Walsh, and found by me through the usual library database search using his name.
The story takes quite a while to gel, not because of any faults by the writers or by director Walsh, but because they are working with a script adapted from a novel, so you can imagine all the stuff the writers had to try and condense. Due to this condition, you the viewer are somewhat at sea for the first 12 to 15 minutes of the film, as the filmmakers throw everything they've got at you, in a diverse preamble, and expect you to follow along.
Ida Lupino was another great Golden Era actress, and she holds the picture together with her strong feminine portrayal of a family hero and leader. I give the film Two Thumbs Up because of her. For the first two thirds of the 96 minute movie, you may find yourself thoroughly involved in the relationship stories of the characters while still wondering, "is anything gonna actually happen"? Because so far, despite the 60 minute build up, nothing much has, in fact, happened.
But during the third act something does indeed take place, a culmination of all previous events in the movie. This is why I say it is one of those ensemble cast movies where everything comes together as the story rises like a wave......and then crashes, with everyone's plot issues coming to a head and then resolving, in the Noir way, somewhat darkly.
"The Man I Love" was an inspiration for Martin Scorcese, which is enough of a recommendation in itself, but I add my own two cents into the mix and suggest you see it too, even though it won't provide the type of hard-boiled conflict resolution you have come to expect as a Noir fan. It's more of a human drama, but still excellent. /////
That's all I know for tonight. I am super excited at seeing Doug Pinnick's Facebook posts that are covering the recording of the new King's X album, which is taking place in Pasadena, at the same studio Grimsley and I were privileged to hang out at during the making of Doug's "Strum Sum Up" solo album back in 2007. I was introduced to King's X by the great P.F. in June 1989, so we are coming up on the 30th anniversary of my first hearing the band, and they have meant more to me since that time than words can say.
See you in the morning, love all night as always. xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
The setting is Christmastime, 1944. Lupino, the eldest of the siblings, is something of a Mother Hen toward them as she is more sophisticated in the ways of the world due to her exposure to New York nightlife. In fact, upon arriving at her sisters' shared apartment, she is dismayed to learn that one of the sisters has her own job in a local club and is being hit on every night by the slick yet mildly sinister owner of the joint (played by Robert Alda, father of Alan). Lupino is further upset when she finds out that little brother Joey also works for Alda as an assistant, meaning that he does anything Alda tells him to do. This ends up landing him in jail after he gets into a fight outside the nightclub.
"The Man I Love" is technically a Noir, but it's also one of those ensemble melodramas where Many Lives Collide. Ida Lupino is a take charge gal, so she does two things in short order. First, she goes down to the jail to bail out the other man involved in the fight with her brother. She does this because she feels guilty that her brother is working for a hoodlum. Secondly, she goes to the nightclub herself to meet this oily boss (Alda) who is pressuring her sister and influencing her brother. But instead of reading him the riot act, as Joan Crawford would have done were she in this film, Lupino has a drink with him and ends up being his Star Act, the biggest draw at his club.
Now, this story is very convoluted, so after Ida Lupino settles in to her singing engagement at Robert Alda's club, she runs into the man she bailed out from jail, the guy her brother tried to beat up. The man is seated at a table watching her performance, so they have a drink and it turns out that he is a jazz pianist whose name she knows. Now we are right back in last night's movie, with a singer and a pianist, except this time the movie is good, haha.
The trouble with the pianist is that he is a has-been. Once a recording artist, he has been reduced to working as a merchant seaman. Lupino falls hard for him anyway. She has no one in her life and is trying to be the Hero for her family. Besides all of this there is a subplot with a neighbor couple in the sisters' apartment building. A young, blue-collar man - handsome and nice but not too bright - has a hottie for a wife who is going out to the nightclub with other men while hubby is at work. Ida Lupino spots her there, drunk, and it turns out that club owner Robert Alda is also after this woman, who is a classic Femme Fatale in the Film Noir sense. The subplot that involves her cheating on her husband will provide a major plot development later in the film, but for much of the middle section we are watching the back-and-forth between Ida Lupino and Bruce Bennett the pianist. He is very depressed at his downturn in life and tries to reject her so as not to drag her down with him........but this only makes her more determined. He is "The Man" referred to in the title of the movie.
Now, in addition to all of this, there are other subplots, one involving the shell-shocked husband of Lupino's next eldest sister. This man is a war hero, just like the blind pianist in last night's crazy Joan Crawford movie, and he is locked up in the Psych Ward at the VA because of his combat experience. He can't relate to his wife anymore without losing his marbles.....though there is a chance he will get them back, so keep your fingers crossed.
The bottom line is that there is a lot going on in this film. Conflict after conflict, multiple character interaction, shifting subthemes. On the back of the dvd box, it says that "The Man I Love" was the inspiration for Martin Scorcese's "New York, New York". That's an impressive stat, even though we early Scorcese fans did not love "NY,NY" when it came out. Now, it might be a great movie in retrospect. We were teenagers back when we first saw it, but anyhow, he got his inspiration from "The Man I Love", which was directed by the great Raoul Walsh, and found by me through the usual library database search using his name.
The story takes quite a while to gel, not because of any faults by the writers or by director Walsh, but because they are working with a script adapted from a novel, so you can imagine all the stuff the writers had to try and condense. Due to this condition, you the viewer are somewhat at sea for the first 12 to 15 minutes of the film, as the filmmakers throw everything they've got at you, in a diverse preamble, and expect you to follow along.
Ida Lupino was another great Golden Era actress, and she holds the picture together with her strong feminine portrayal of a family hero and leader. I give the film Two Thumbs Up because of her. For the first two thirds of the 96 minute movie, you may find yourself thoroughly involved in the relationship stories of the characters while still wondering, "is anything gonna actually happen"? Because so far, despite the 60 minute build up, nothing much has, in fact, happened.
But during the third act something does indeed take place, a culmination of all previous events in the movie. This is why I say it is one of those ensemble cast movies where everything comes together as the story rises like a wave......and then crashes, with everyone's plot issues coming to a head and then resolving, in the Noir way, somewhat darkly.
"The Man I Love" was an inspiration for Martin Scorcese, which is enough of a recommendation in itself, but I add my own two cents into the mix and suggest you see it too, even though it won't provide the type of hard-boiled conflict resolution you have come to expect as a Noir fan. It's more of a human drama, but still excellent. /////
That's all I know for tonight. I am super excited at seeing Doug Pinnick's Facebook posts that are covering the recording of the new King's X album, which is taking place in Pasadena, at the same studio Grimsley and I were privileged to hang out at during the making of Doug's "Strum Sum Up" solo album back in 2007. I was introduced to King's X by the great P.F. in June 1989, so we are coming up on the 30th anniversary of my first hearing the band, and they have meant more to me since that time than words can say.
See you in the morning, love all night as always. xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
Tuesday, April 23, 2019
"Torch Song" w/Joan Crawford, a Nutty Movie If There Ever Was One + Books
Tonight's movie was called "Torch Song" (1953), a musical comedy/melodrama starring Joan Crawford as a Broadway diva who is so unpleasant to everyone around her that her latest show is about to fall apart before opening night. Ultimately her longtime pianist quits after a projected bout of verbal abuse from Joan, and now the production really is going to be cancelled unless her saint of a production manager can find a replacement. I call him a saint because he puts up with Joan Crawford.
Now, I normally like Joan Crawford. Despite her post-"Mommie Dearest" image - that of the definitive show business shrew - I have found that if you watch a selection of her movies from throughout her career (and not just the later ghastly ones), you will see a fine actress at work, and one with a major amount of Hollywood Movie Star charisma.
I don't know the accuracy of the "Mommie Dearest" tales, but if "Torch Song" is any indication, Joan's daughter was telling the truth. It seems she is playing herself! This is one weird movie, folks. I described it as a comedy/melodrama, which would seem like a paradox, but I don't know what else to call it.
All Joan Crawford does for the first twenty minutes of the movie is bitch at her fellow actors during a production rehearsal. She also yells at her pianist. Her long suffering and sainted producer tries to step in from time to time, to quiet Joan down and smooth things over, but it doesn't work.
So for the first twenty minutes, nothing else happens. It's as if you walked into the rehearsal yourself, in real life, and watched the real Joan Crawford teeing off on her cast mates. But no story advancement happens during this time. Not until the pianist quits does anything resembling a plot begin.
You know how sometimes I rave about the legendary screenwriters of the Golden Era, many of whom were so talented that they could weave a lifetime of themes and plot twists together in creating an epic movie that ran only 90 minutes?
Well, this wasn't one of those screenwriters. :)
This whole movie was of the "what were they smoking"? variety.
A single theme plot does arise when a substitute pianist (played by Michael Wilding) is found to keep the rehearsals going. He is blind, which bugs Joan Crawford to no end. That he was a war hero who lost his eyesight in battle wins him no brownie points either. Now, to be fair to Joan, he is a bit on the smug side, and has a way of stating his opinions in a superior tone, as if they are absolute fact.
In other words, despite his blindness and musical gifts - which would ordinarily generate sympathy for a character - he is not very likeable himself (though he is not a monster like Joan).
So here we have a romance developing.......or is it a mutual hate-fest? It's hard to tell, because while Joan clearly has feelings for Wilding - and he for her - neither one of them can show it. All they do is fight.
This would make for a very unfortunate motion picture experience, were it not for the camp atmosphere that surrounds all the turmoil. Joan Crawford is playing her Image here, or maybe she's playing real life, but at any rate it's a performance John Waters would love. The other saving grace is the Technicolor art direction that bathes the film in luxurious purple and yellow pastels. You can "watch" it without turning it off just for this reason, because it looks so good. Did any time period ever look so dreamy on film as the 1950s?
Well anyhow, "Torch Song" is also saved, partially, by some classic laugh-out-loud one liners that I suspect were meant to be serious but in hindsight are part of the camp, or "comedy/melodrama" as I have called it.
This is as nutty a movie as I have seen in quite a while, a true Joan Crawford bitch-o-rama. I am gonna give it One Single Thumb Sideways, rather than a total rejection, because while I was tempted to turn it off during the first twenty minutes, I was not able to do so, and I remained in my seat, if not glued to it, watching the film to the end because of the Technicolor look and the non-stop histrionics of Miss Crawford. "Torch Song" has a happy ending, but it is one of the unhappiest of happy endings in Hollywood history, so there you have it.
As a person who watches millions of movies, I am glad I saw it, but I cannot recommend it to a casual movie fan in any way. This one is only for the Joan Crawford fanatics; you know who you are. ////
I am reading "King's X : The Oral History" by Greg Prato, which as I may have said is turning out to be one of the greatest rock biographies ever written. Anything and everything you've ever wanted to know about the guys and their music is in this book. I am also reading the Schopenhauer biography and the one about Hugh Everett III. What you do when you are reading several books at once is just read 10 to 15 pages of each per day. That way you don't lose the thread of any of them and you keep each book alive in your head, reading them all little by little. The importance of books is beyond my ability to state, and I hope you have your own favorites and are reading at least one at the present time.
I also finished my "Underground Tunnel" drawing, one of my best yet. Tonight I began a pencil sketch for a drawing of the time when a helicopter hovered above 9032 in 1995. This one will take some time to get right. ////
See you in the morning with love sent to you throughout the night. xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
Now, I normally like Joan Crawford. Despite her post-"Mommie Dearest" image - that of the definitive show business shrew - I have found that if you watch a selection of her movies from throughout her career (and not just the later ghastly ones), you will see a fine actress at work, and one with a major amount of Hollywood Movie Star charisma.
I don't know the accuracy of the "Mommie Dearest" tales, but if "Torch Song" is any indication, Joan's daughter was telling the truth. It seems she is playing herself! This is one weird movie, folks. I described it as a comedy/melodrama, which would seem like a paradox, but I don't know what else to call it.
All Joan Crawford does for the first twenty minutes of the movie is bitch at her fellow actors during a production rehearsal. She also yells at her pianist. Her long suffering and sainted producer tries to step in from time to time, to quiet Joan down and smooth things over, but it doesn't work.
So for the first twenty minutes, nothing else happens. It's as if you walked into the rehearsal yourself, in real life, and watched the real Joan Crawford teeing off on her cast mates. But no story advancement happens during this time. Not until the pianist quits does anything resembling a plot begin.
You know how sometimes I rave about the legendary screenwriters of the Golden Era, many of whom were so talented that they could weave a lifetime of themes and plot twists together in creating an epic movie that ran only 90 minutes?
Well, this wasn't one of those screenwriters. :)
This whole movie was of the "what were they smoking"? variety.
A single theme plot does arise when a substitute pianist (played by Michael Wilding) is found to keep the rehearsals going. He is blind, which bugs Joan Crawford to no end. That he was a war hero who lost his eyesight in battle wins him no brownie points either. Now, to be fair to Joan, he is a bit on the smug side, and has a way of stating his opinions in a superior tone, as if they are absolute fact.
In other words, despite his blindness and musical gifts - which would ordinarily generate sympathy for a character - he is not very likeable himself (though he is not a monster like Joan).
So here we have a romance developing.......or is it a mutual hate-fest? It's hard to tell, because while Joan clearly has feelings for Wilding - and he for her - neither one of them can show it. All they do is fight.
This would make for a very unfortunate motion picture experience, were it not for the camp atmosphere that surrounds all the turmoil. Joan Crawford is playing her Image here, or maybe she's playing real life, but at any rate it's a performance John Waters would love. The other saving grace is the Technicolor art direction that bathes the film in luxurious purple and yellow pastels. You can "watch" it without turning it off just for this reason, because it looks so good. Did any time period ever look so dreamy on film as the 1950s?
Well anyhow, "Torch Song" is also saved, partially, by some classic laugh-out-loud one liners that I suspect were meant to be serious but in hindsight are part of the camp, or "comedy/melodrama" as I have called it.
This is as nutty a movie as I have seen in quite a while, a true Joan Crawford bitch-o-rama. I am gonna give it One Single Thumb Sideways, rather than a total rejection, because while I was tempted to turn it off during the first twenty minutes, I was not able to do so, and I remained in my seat, if not glued to it, watching the film to the end because of the Technicolor look and the non-stop histrionics of Miss Crawford. "Torch Song" has a happy ending, but it is one of the unhappiest of happy endings in Hollywood history, so there you have it.
As a person who watches millions of movies, I am glad I saw it, but I cannot recommend it to a casual movie fan in any way. This one is only for the Joan Crawford fanatics; you know who you are. ////
I am reading "King's X : The Oral History" by Greg Prato, which as I may have said is turning out to be one of the greatest rock biographies ever written. Anything and everything you've ever wanted to know about the guys and their music is in this book. I am also reading the Schopenhauer biography and the one about Hugh Everett III. What you do when you are reading several books at once is just read 10 to 15 pages of each per day. That way you don't lose the thread of any of them and you keep each book alive in your head, reading them all little by little. The importance of books is beyond my ability to state, and I hope you have your own favorites and are reading at least one at the present time.
I also finished my "Underground Tunnel" drawing, one of my best yet. Tonight I began a pencil sketch for a drawing of the time when a helicopter hovered above 9032 in 1995. This one will take some time to get right. ////
See you in the morning with love sent to you throughout the night. xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
Monday, April 22, 2019
Happy Easter + "Ghost Story"
I just looked at last night's blog and I see that I not only failed to wish you a Happy Easter but I also forgot to sign off. Double fail, Ad! I mean, I never forget to sign off. It's automatic:
See you in the morning, tons of love til then (or a variation of the love description) xoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
But for some reason I forgot to do it last night. Probably because I was not only Dog Tired but was also Youtubing versions of our Easter Anthems at the last minute before I went to bed. I wanted to make sure I had all my lines right because I had never sung these songs before. So I guess I was preoccupied.
Well, I'll not let it happen again, and I hope you did have a nice Easter Sunday. We had a good turnout in church, and we in the choir sang our butts off throughout the service. I love especially the hymns, as you know, and a famous one for Easter is "Christ The Lord Is Risen Today", with it's rise-and-fall "alleluia" refrain. When I have a song like that with a powerful melody, that is also mostly sung in the upper tenor register, I am gonna give it everything I've got. I have also remarked, in my blog about Notre Dame, the spiritual energy I can feel when I am singing in church, and on Easter Sunday that feeling is amplified to the highest degree. I could sing those hymns all day because the melodies are so full of emotion and were deliberately written to inspire. ////
Tonight I watched an episode of "Ghost Story", and I've just gotta say yet again that this may be the scariest TV show that was ever broadcast. I mean, consider this : the stars of this episode were Hal Linden and Mike Farrell. In other words, "Barney Miller" and "B.J." from "M.A.S.H".
Two guys that are identified with classic sitcoms. How can you make them scary? And yet here, in this story about a serial killer on a college campus who may actually be a vampire, their light comedy personas work against the dark setting. Linden and Farrell are professors who are recruited by the campus police chief to act as the leaders of an escort safety patrol after night classes have let out. A killer has been attacking co-eds in the cemetery that borders the college. On safety patrol one night, Hal Linden swears he saw a fellow professor running after a girl in the cemetery.
The only problem is that the professor in question has been dead for several years. During his tenure in the Science Dept., however, he wrote a thesis about blood chemistry that made him a legend at the school because he tied his findings to a potential for immortality. He believed that an ongoing re-invigoration of the blood could extend a person's life indefinitely......and yeah, he was a pretty twisted puppy.
So now the campus police chief is all worked up because Linden claims he saw the dead professor in the cemetery, chasing down his latest victim. And I am sorry to tell you this, but the Chief recruits professors Linden and Mike Farrell to dig up the dead guy's grave, just to make sure he is still in there, because Linden is saying that he's not, that he is in fact out and about.
This is me speaking again. I don't think I need any more evidence to back up the Scariness Factor of "Ghost Story". And I haven't even touched on all the other aspects of this episode that make it so weird and frightening, but they mostly have to do with William Castle's use of color and lighting, and the way in which he isolates his characters in their environment, so that they seem to have no recourse to the outside world. If you haven't purchased the complete series dvd collection yet, I'm sure you will want to do so in the near future.
That's all I know for tonight. I will see you in the morning with much love sent to you until then.
xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
See you in the morning, tons of love til then (or a variation of the love description) xoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
But for some reason I forgot to do it last night. Probably because I was not only Dog Tired but was also Youtubing versions of our Easter Anthems at the last minute before I went to bed. I wanted to make sure I had all my lines right because I had never sung these songs before. So I guess I was preoccupied.
Well, I'll not let it happen again, and I hope you did have a nice Easter Sunday. We had a good turnout in church, and we in the choir sang our butts off throughout the service. I love especially the hymns, as you know, and a famous one for Easter is "Christ The Lord Is Risen Today", with it's rise-and-fall "alleluia" refrain. When I have a song like that with a powerful melody, that is also mostly sung in the upper tenor register, I am gonna give it everything I've got. I have also remarked, in my blog about Notre Dame, the spiritual energy I can feel when I am singing in church, and on Easter Sunday that feeling is amplified to the highest degree. I could sing those hymns all day because the melodies are so full of emotion and were deliberately written to inspire. ////
Tonight I watched an episode of "Ghost Story", and I've just gotta say yet again that this may be the scariest TV show that was ever broadcast. I mean, consider this : the stars of this episode were Hal Linden and Mike Farrell. In other words, "Barney Miller" and "B.J." from "M.A.S.H".
Two guys that are identified with classic sitcoms. How can you make them scary? And yet here, in this story about a serial killer on a college campus who may actually be a vampire, their light comedy personas work against the dark setting. Linden and Farrell are professors who are recruited by the campus police chief to act as the leaders of an escort safety patrol after night classes have let out. A killer has been attacking co-eds in the cemetery that borders the college. On safety patrol one night, Hal Linden swears he saw a fellow professor running after a girl in the cemetery.
The only problem is that the professor in question has been dead for several years. During his tenure in the Science Dept., however, he wrote a thesis about blood chemistry that made him a legend at the school because he tied his findings to a potential for immortality. He believed that an ongoing re-invigoration of the blood could extend a person's life indefinitely......and yeah, he was a pretty twisted puppy.
So now the campus police chief is all worked up because Linden claims he saw the dead professor in the cemetery, chasing down his latest victim. And I am sorry to tell you this, but the Chief recruits professors Linden and Mike Farrell to dig up the dead guy's grave, just to make sure he is still in there, because Linden is saying that he's not, that he is in fact out and about.
This is me speaking again. I don't think I need any more evidence to back up the Scariness Factor of "Ghost Story". And I haven't even touched on all the other aspects of this episode that make it so weird and frightening, but they mostly have to do with William Castle's use of color and lighting, and the way in which he isolates his characters in their environment, so that they seem to have no recourse to the outside world. If you haven't purchased the complete series dvd collection yet, I'm sure you will want to do so in the near future.
That's all I know for tonight. I will see you in the morning with much love sent to you until then.
xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
Sunday, April 21, 2019
Beautiful Hair + "It All Came True"
Elizabeth, your hair looks beautiful in red, and you should take some close ups of yourself too, to contrast the red hair with your eyes and your skin tone. In fact, you might have to do a whole new "Dress" series, or something involving an all new color scheme, because you are so good with colors.
Man, now I am once again feeling compelled to color my own hair. :) I've still got a touch of the original brown but the grey is rapidly taking over and this cannot be allowed to stand.
You wouldn't happen to be coming to the Reseda area anytime soon, would you? :):)
I only ask because the lady who cuts my hair has always refused to color it. She says, "some men look good with grey. Leave it alone". But I disagree, haha.
Tonight I watched an especially wacky crime comedy called "It All Came True" (1940), starring Humphrey Bogart and Ann Sheridan. I found it in the library database after conducting yet another search for Bogie movies. Every time I think I've found them all, another one turns up, and this one was really wild, hard to classify actually.
I knew nothing about the film, had never heard of it, and during the first ten minutes I thought I was gonna be watching a typical Humphrey Bogart crime caper. He is the owner of an illegal backroom gambling club. As the coppers prepare to raid him, he and an assistant burn all their bookmaking records in a trash can and hightail it out a side door. Once outside, Bogie sees a former associate standing in the shadows. The guy is a stool pigeon. He has sung to the police and brought them down on Bogart's operation, so Bogie shoots him on the spot before escaping into the night with the nightclub's piano player, who just happened to be on scene when the police raid commenced.
Little does the piano player know what he is in for, because the gun Bogie used to shoot the stoolie belongs to the pianist. It is registered in his name. Bogie used it on purpose, in order to blackmail the guy. If the cops catch up to them, Bogie will say he saw the piano player shoot the informant. The gun belonged to him, game over.
The pianist is not a criminal, just a musician who took a job playing in Bogart's club. But now he is on the hook. Bogie tells him, "I need a place to hide out and so do you. I know your mother owns a boarding house across town. We're gonna stay there and lay low, got it"?
So far, you have a straight-up crime film, but once we get to the boarding house, things are set askew.
The pianist's elderly mother runs the house with her partner, another old lady played by Una O'Connor, an Irish character actress with a certain look whom you've seen in a bunch of classic TCM films. O'Connor has an adult daughter, played by the knockout Ann Sheridan, who is an actress trying to break into the movies, but at the moment she is broke, and is moving back into the boarding house herself. Sheridan is a firebrand, a liberated woman very sure of herself with personality to burn and a heart of gold. It turns out that she has known the handsome young pianist since childhood, because their two mothers have been co-owners of the boarding house all this time.
What the pianist doesn't know is that Sheridan, who he is secretly in love with, knows the gambling boss Humphrey Bogart from a past liaison.
All of the preceding storyline, however, takes a back seat to the sudden notification received by the old ladies that their boarding house is about to be repossessed by the bank if a loan payment is not immediately sent in.
It is at this "juncture", to use a George Bush the First word (and you must think of it as it was said by Dana Carvey), that the movie does a 180. Bogart comes out of hiding in his upstairs room with an idea to save the boarding house : turn it into a nightclub, and use the eccentric tenants as live entertainment.
Already they have a nutty European magician living there, with his trained dog. He is played by an actor named Felix Bressart, who appeared most notably in "The Shop Around The Corner" with Jimmy Stewart. He and his dog almost steal the movie, but there are so many other great characters who get their screen time in as well, like Zasu Pitts as a secretly man-crazy spinster.
The ensemble of actors do set up a club in the large boarding house, with suppers cooked for the patrons by the old ladies and entertainment provided by the kooky residents, the stars being Ann Sheridan, who sings to accompany the pianist, and the crazy German magician with his dog, who must be seen to appreciate his comedic talent.
Meanwhile, nervous nelly Miss Pitts, the resident who is both repressed and man hungry, has recognised Humphrey Bogart from a photograph in a "True Detective" magazine she is reading. Now she knows he is wanted for the murder of the stool pigeon at the beginning of our story.
This is one of those Golden Era scripts that I used to harp about a year or two ago, where whoever wrote it had to have a very advanced ability to develop a story, because of the constant forward movement of many different layers that are interwoven and will ultimately collapse upon one another as the plotline resolves.
The storyline is unconventional to be sure, and even I - a veteran movie watcher if ever there was one - was thrown a curve by the eccentricity of this film - but as always, whenever I see world class screenwriting I am always impressed enough to want to mention it.
There could never be a movie like this made today, one that combines the disparate talents of post-vaudeville actors like Bressart, or Jessie Busley, who plays the pianist's mother and who was born in 1869! (I looked it up). She may be the oldest actress (or actor) I have ever discovered on IMDB, born just four years after the Civil War ended. And my point was that you just can't find these types of character actors anymore, ones who possess an individual eccentricity that is wholly unique to themselves and that you can find in no other actor.
Well, I have probably gone way out on a tangent, but this movie is really great and worthy of the highest recommendation. Ten Stars, I say. I have long been a fan of Ann Sheridan, who had a short life and should have been a bigger star, and I think that in this film she was finally directed to the best of her ability and photographed to the utmost of her beauty. Even with everything else that is going on in "It All Came True" and all the many actors, this is really her movie. /////
Man, now I am once again feeling compelled to color my own hair. :) I've still got a touch of the original brown but the grey is rapidly taking over and this cannot be allowed to stand.
You wouldn't happen to be coming to the Reseda area anytime soon, would you? :):)
I only ask because the lady who cuts my hair has always refused to color it. She says, "some men look good with grey. Leave it alone". But I disagree, haha.
Tonight I watched an especially wacky crime comedy called "It All Came True" (1940), starring Humphrey Bogart and Ann Sheridan. I found it in the library database after conducting yet another search for Bogie movies. Every time I think I've found them all, another one turns up, and this one was really wild, hard to classify actually.
I knew nothing about the film, had never heard of it, and during the first ten minutes I thought I was gonna be watching a typical Humphrey Bogart crime caper. He is the owner of an illegal backroom gambling club. As the coppers prepare to raid him, he and an assistant burn all their bookmaking records in a trash can and hightail it out a side door. Once outside, Bogie sees a former associate standing in the shadows. The guy is a stool pigeon. He has sung to the police and brought them down on Bogart's operation, so Bogie shoots him on the spot before escaping into the night with the nightclub's piano player, who just happened to be on scene when the police raid commenced.
Little does the piano player know what he is in for, because the gun Bogie used to shoot the stoolie belongs to the pianist. It is registered in his name. Bogie used it on purpose, in order to blackmail the guy. If the cops catch up to them, Bogie will say he saw the piano player shoot the informant. The gun belonged to him, game over.
The pianist is not a criminal, just a musician who took a job playing in Bogart's club. But now he is on the hook. Bogie tells him, "I need a place to hide out and so do you. I know your mother owns a boarding house across town. We're gonna stay there and lay low, got it"?
So far, you have a straight-up crime film, but once we get to the boarding house, things are set askew.
The pianist's elderly mother runs the house with her partner, another old lady played by Una O'Connor, an Irish character actress with a certain look whom you've seen in a bunch of classic TCM films. O'Connor has an adult daughter, played by the knockout Ann Sheridan, who is an actress trying to break into the movies, but at the moment she is broke, and is moving back into the boarding house herself. Sheridan is a firebrand, a liberated woman very sure of herself with personality to burn and a heart of gold. It turns out that she has known the handsome young pianist since childhood, because their two mothers have been co-owners of the boarding house all this time.
What the pianist doesn't know is that Sheridan, who he is secretly in love with, knows the gambling boss Humphrey Bogart from a past liaison.
All of the preceding storyline, however, takes a back seat to the sudden notification received by the old ladies that their boarding house is about to be repossessed by the bank if a loan payment is not immediately sent in.
It is at this "juncture", to use a George Bush the First word (and you must think of it as it was said by Dana Carvey), that the movie does a 180. Bogart comes out of hiding in his upstairs room with an idea to save the boarding house : turn it into a nightclub, and use the eccentric tenants as live entertainment.
Already they have a nutty European magician living there, with his trained dog. He is played by an actor named Felix Bressart, who appeared most notably in "The Shop Around The Corner" with Jimmy Stewart. He and his dog almost steal the movie, but there are so many other great characters who get their screen time in as well, like Zasu Pitts as a secretly man-crazy spinster.
The ensemble of actors do set up a club in the large boarding house, with suppers cooked for the patrons by the old ladies and entertainment provided by the kooky residents, the stars being Ann Sheridan, who sings to accompany the pianist, and the crazy German magician with his dog, who must be seen to appreciate his comedic talent.
Meanwhile, nervous nelly Miss Pitts, the resident who is both repressed and man hungry, has recognised Humphrey Bogart from a photograph in a "True Detective" magazine she is reading. Now she knows he is wanted for the murder of the stool pigeon at the beginning of our story.
This is one of those Golden Era scripts that I used to harp about a year or two ago, where whoever wrote it had to have a very advanced ability to develop a story, because of the constant forward movement of many different layers that are interwoven and will ultimately collapse upon one another as the plotline resolves.
The storyline is unconventional to be sure, and even I - a veteran movie watcher if ever there was one - was thrown a curve by the eccentricity of this film - but as always, whenever I see world class screenwriting I am always impressed enough to want to mention it.
There could never be a movie like this made today, one that combines the disparate talents of post-vaudeville actors like Bressart, or Jessie Busley, who plays the pianist's mother and who was born in 1869! (I looked it up). She may be the oldest actress (or actor) I have ever discovered on IMDB, born just four years after the Civil War ended. And my point was that you just can't find these types of character actors anymore, ones who possess an individual eccentricity that is wholly unique to themselves and that you can find in no other actor.
Well, I have probably gone way out on a tangent, but this movie is really great and worthy of the highest recommendation. Ten Stars, I say. I have long been a fan of Ann Sheridan, who had a short life and should have been a bigger star, and I think that in this film she was finally directed to the best of her ability and photographed to the utmost of her beauty. Even with everything else that is going on in "It All Came True" and all the many actors, this is really her movie. /////
Saturday, April 20, 2019
Hey Elizabeth Again! + I Love To Talk About Drawing + "Two Men In Manhattan" by J.P Melville
Hey Elizabeth! I agree with you that noses are hard to draw, but for me so are eyes, lol. Of course with my drawings, I am not attempting a realistic look for human beings or their body parts at the moment, simply because I don't have the natural talent to do so. I am curious, though, how long it takes you to doodle something like the single eye you posted. The eyebrow itself looks as if it would take an entire doodling session, for me at least. You obviously have either natural talent or instruction in drawing technique, because you know how to create, for instance, the reflections in the iris. Overall, you get a realistic look of the eye. Now with me, I absolutely love to draw, and I've been doing it on a regular basis since 2016 (and I was painting in the 90s), but until recently it's almost entirely been abstract. Now I am drawing realistic scenes from the "1989" scenario, but because I cannot make a human look exactly like a human, I am going more for a cartoon look. What I concentrate harder on, are the backgrounds, things like mountains or houses or streets or tunnels. I work the hardest on trying to create a recognizable context, so if I am drawing an underground tunnel, as I am now, the viewer will recognize it as such. The humans I draw are secondary, somewhat better than stick figures but not identifiably authentic.
My "1989" drawings do seem to be forming in a continuous style, though, which pleases me. I am almost finished with my fourth one, which does take place in an underground tunnel. If anyone saw these drawings who was not familiar with my stories of 1989, they would think I was nuts, haha.
But I am having fun, and am trying to train myself in things like perspective and shading. For instance, I wanted to draw a car at a certain angle and I kept getting it wrong and having to erase. So I actually went outside and looked at some cars from the same vantage point, and I studied the depth perception and the mirroring of the sun and stuff like that, and it helped me a whole bunch. Just trying to conceptualize a "whole scenario" of what I want to include in an entire picture - before I even start to draw - helps a lot. Doing this is a form of intent. "I want to draw such-and-such, in this particular way". Then I visualize it in my mind......then I very slowly begin to pencil it in, beginning with the most obvious object in the picture. I use short pencil strokes and have learned to leave room for overlapping objects and not to completely fill in any single object right away.
It's tricky but I am getting the hang of it, and most importantly I am having a blast! I only have time to draw for about 30-45 minutes in the evening, but I do it while listening to classical music, and because I have kept at it, I am getting some good (if cartoonish) results.
This trend toward realism started with my purchase of the Prismacolor pencil set, one of the best art decisions I've made in recent years, so thanks for the tip on the pencils! They are great and now I've gotta get the even bigger set with more color choices......
I could talk about drawing all day. :):) Draw, listen to opera and read about Schopenhauer, lol.
I did watch a movie tonight, called "Two Men In Manhattan" (1959), directed by the great Jean-Pierre Melville. Why he is not a bigger name in French film is a mystery to me. I mean, he is known, but not on the same level as Truffaut or Godard or Chabrol, and he should be, because he is the master of the French Crime Film. Jacques Becker is great also, as we know from his two classics "Grisbi" and "Le Trou" that we have recently seen at CSUN, but Melville made a whole lot more films in the genre, and every single one of them is fantastic. To me, he belongs at the top of the heap.
The story is about a United Nations Representative who has gone missing. He is the rep from France, and the French press who are stationed in New York City are trying to discover where he is before it becomes a scandal. The man is known to close associates as a womaniser. Director Melville himself stars as the reporter from Paris Match who is hot on the trail of the story. With the help of a photographer friend, a Frenchman also stationed in NY, they seek out a series of dancers, prostitutes, singers and actresses the UN Rep is reputed to have known. We get a tour of late 50s New York City in the process, and boy does it ever look slick in black and white. I would bet that Martin Scorcese saw this movie and used it as an inspiration for at least the intro to "Taxi Driver". Melville is about as good a photographer as you are gonna find for city street scenes.
The plot concerns whether or not the two men will be able to locate the missing United Nations Rep, and what they will do with the information if they find him. Is he out on the town, cheating with an actress? The photographer hopes so. He is an immoral alcoholic with no scruples whatsoever. This is shown when the two men sneak into the hospital room of one of the man's girlfriends. She has just attempted suicide over the news that the man is missing, and yet the photographer cares not about her condition. He takes flash pictures close up of the poor woman in her hospital bed, with the intention of selling them for big money to a scandal sheet.
Jean-Pierre Melville's newspaperman character is slightly more moral. He is after a story, too, and he is leading the way to find out what happened to the UN guy. The two men interview woman after woman. Finally they turn up an important clue, but it leaves the Rep in a compromising position.
What should a free press do in America? Should it print disgusting pictures that will ruin a man's life and career? The photographer thinks so, because the photos he has taken will net him thousands.
Melville, however, is working for a very scrupulous editor, who lectures him and the photographer on the overriding indecency of ruining an otherwise good man's life by printing photos and/or writing about his secret moral failings. The UN Rep in question was a French war hero and a political vanguard for his entire career. Only a few insiders knew of his womanising.
But now Melville and the amoral photographer know, and they have pics to prove it.
Should they print them? Should they tell their story with no holds barred?
Or should they respect the man's past heroism and his lifetime dedication to country?.....
The plotline is only half the fun in "Two Men In Manhattan", which I am gonna give Ten Thumbs Up because Jean-Pierre Melville rules. The movie is a time capsule of NYC that can't be recaptured except in such movies shot on location during that era, but the thing with Melville is his attention to detail. He captures every little thing about the city, even things you might miss if you were just passing through.
It only takes 10 to 15 seconds to show a cop putting on his jacket in a diner, or a street kid smoking a cigarette, or a nightclub chanteuse in a recording studio. She actually gets a scene of her own, but there are many other uncredited characters that we only see in passing, but who give the night in New York a sense of authenticity.
My highest recommendation for "Two Men In Manhattan", and for any of Melville's films. Be sure to check out his work if you like French Crime Movies. He is the best. /////
That's all I know for tonight. See you in the morning. xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo (tons of love) :):)
My "1989" drawings do seem to be forming in a continuous style, though, which pleases me. I am almost finished with my fourth one, which does take place in an underground tunnel. If anyone saw these drawings who was not familiar with my stories of 1989, they would think I was nuts, haha.
But I am having fun, and am trying to train myself in things like perspective and shading. For instance, I wanted to draw a car at a certain angle and I kept getting it wrong and having to erase. So I actually went outside and looked at some cars from the same vantage point, and I studied the depth perception and the mirroring of the sun and stuff like that, and it helped me a whole bunch. Just trying to conceptualize a "whole scenario" of what I want to include in an entire picture - before I even start to draw - helps a lot. Doing this is a form of intent. "I want to draw such-and-such, in this particular way". Then I visualize it in my mind......then I very slowly begin to pencil it in, beginning with the most obvious object in the picture. I use short pencil strokes and have learned to leave room for overlapping objects and not to completely fill in any single object right away.
It's tricky but I am getting the hang of it, and most importantly I am having a blast! I only have time to draw for about 30-45 minutes in the evening, but I do it while listening to classical music, and because I have kept at it, I am getting some good (if cartoonish) results.
This trend toward realism started with my purchase of the Prismacolor pencil set, one of the best art decisions I've made in recent years, so thanks for the tip on the pencils! They are great and now I've gotta get the even bigger set with more color choices......
I could talk about drawing all day. :):) Draw, listen to opera and read about Schopenhauer, lol.
I did watch a movie tonight, called "Two Men In Manhattan" (1959), directed by the great Jean-Pierre Melville. Why he is not a bigger name in French film is a mystery to me. I mean, he is known, but not on the same level as Truffaut or Godard or Chabrol, and he should be, because he is the master of the French Crime Film. Jacques Becker is great also, as we know from his two classics "Grisbi" and "Le Trou" that we have recently seen at CSUN, but Melville made a whole lot more films in the genre, and every single one of them is fantastic. To me, he belongs at the top of the heap.
The story is about a United Nations Representative who has gone missing. He is the rep from France, and the French press who are stationed in New York City are trying to discover where he is before it becomes a scandal. The man is known to close associates as a womaniser. Director Melville himself stars as the reporter from Paris Match who is hot on the trail of the story. With the help of a photographer friend, a Frenchman also stationed in NY, they seek out a series of dancers, prostitutes, singers and actresses the UN Rep is reputed to have known. We get a tour of late 50s New York City in the process, and boy does it ever look slick in black and white. I would bet that Martin Scorcese saw this movie and used it as an inspiration for at least the intro to "Taxi Driver". Melville is about as good a photographer as you are gonna find for city street scenes.
The plot concerns whether or not the two men will be able to locate the missing United Nations Rep, and what they will do with the information if they find him. Is he out on the town, cheating with an actress? The photographer hopes so. He is an immoral alcoholic with no scruples whatsoever. This is shown when the two men sneak into the hospital room of one of the man's girlfriends. She has just attempted suicide over the news that the man is missing, and yet the photographer cares not about her condition. He takes flash pictures close up of the poor woman in her hospital bed, with the intention of selling them for big money to a scandal sheet.
Jean-Pierre Melville's newspaperman character is slightly more moral. He is after a story, too, and he is leading the way to find out what happened to the UN guy. The two men interview woman after woman. Finally they turn up an important clue, but it leaves the Rep in a compromising position.
What should a free press do in America? Should it print disgusting pictures that will ruin a man's life and career? The photographer thinks so, because the photos he has taken will net him thousands.
Melville, however, is working for a very scrupulous editor, who lectures him and the photographer on the overriding indecency of ruining an otherwise good man's life by printing photos and/or writing about his secret moral failings. The UN Rep in question was a French war hero and a political vanguard for his entire career. Only a few insiders knew of his womanising.
But now Melville and the amoral photographer know, and they have pics to prove it.
Should they print them? Should they tell their story with no holds barred?
Or should they respect the man's past heroism and his lifetime dedication to country?.....
The plotline is only half the fun in "Two Men In Manhattan", which I am gonna give Ten Thumbs Up because Jean-Pierre Melville rules. The movie is a time capsule of NYC that can't be recaptured except in such movies shot on location during that era, but the thing with Melville is his attention to detail. He captures every little thing about the city, even things you might miss if you were just passing through.
It only takes 10 to 15 seconds to show a cop putting on his jacket in a diner, or a street kid smoking a cigarette, or a nightclub chanteuse in a recording studio. She actually gets a scene of her own, but there are many other uncredited characters that we only see in passing, but who give the night in New York a sense of authenticity.
My highest recommendation for "Two Men In Manhattan", and for any of Melville's films. Be sure to check out his work if you like French Crime Movies. He is the best. /////
That's all I know for tonight. See you in the morning. xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo (tons of love) :):)
Friday, April 19, 2019
Hey Elizabeth! + Tim Holt in "Trail Guide" + Books
Hey Elizabeth! I liked your posts about the two year anniversary of "Notepainting". I had an FB "memory" notification today that ties in with it : today April 18 is the seventh anniversary of when you and I became friends on FB. How cool is that? Both things happened on the same day, five years apart. So here's to April 18th, a great day indeed. :):)
In your Instagram post, I liked what you said about it being "time to start recording again". I know I always harp on you to record (and write music, and take photos, etc), and you know the reasons why I do so. I am so glad you are posting again, and I second your observation about recording new music. I also agree 100% with your Mom's comment on the Instagram post. :):)
You have many beautiful melodies running through the music on "Notepainting"My favorite tracks are "Stargazing", "Runaway II" and especially "The Thaw". A listener can hear how much you were feeling it as you were playing that piece for the recording. I have been hoping you would have a chance to get back to your true calling, which is of course your artistic work. I think of all that you have accomplished in the seven years I have known you and it's a pretty impressive output.
Even taking just one creation, like the "Red Dress" series (which needs a gallery showing), is an exceptional and original effort. Sometimes you have to step away from what you have accomplished, and then go back and look at it with fresh eyes, as they say. If you look at the "Red Dress" photos in this way, or if you go back and listen to "Notepainting", you will understand what I am talking about.
I am glad you are back! Of course it makes me happy, cause I've been here since the beginning, since "Autre Temps", and I have always believed in what you are doing. :):)
I did watch a movie tonight : "Trial Guide" (1952), the last of my Tim Holt Westerns. The set I bought had nine movies and I've now watched them all, but the good news is that there are several other Holt volumes available. I will probably purchase another set very soon, although I am still looking for more "Durango Kid" movies starring Charles Starrett, and I may even try an altogether different Western collection with an all new Hero like Johnny Mack Brown or George O'Brien. We'll see what turns up, but one thing is for certain : I've gotta have my Westerns.
I should've starred in "Trail Guide" anyway. I mean c'mon....the title?.......and me?
It's a perfect match.
In Tim Holt's version of "Trail Guide", shot on location in Santa Clarita and Placerita Canyon, there is a land war between ranchers (who want the land to be open range for their cattle) and settler/farmers, who want to draw boundaries for homesteads and put up fences and grow crops, all of which will impinge upon the cattle ranchers.
But if I were the star of "Trail Guide", the movie would be all about the Trails in Santa Clarita and Placerita, with me as The Guide. There would be no ranchers or settlers, just me walking along the trails, guiding all the viewers. "Hey, look at that old tree"! "There's that rock formation that was in all the Tim Holt Westerns"! "Wow, can you believe a stagecoach ever made it down this trail"?
That would be pretty cool, eh? ////
Well anyhow, I am reading the new King's X biography by Greg Prato and I must say that it's one of the best and most comprehensive rock books I've ever read. Anything you've ever wanted to know about the band is in there. I am also reading "Many Worlds", the story of eccentric physicist Hugh Everett III, which is just getting underway, and I ordered from the Libe a book on the philosophy of Schpenhauer! Hooray! And it is also written by Bryan Magee, the excellent author of my recently completed book about Richard Wagner, who was influenced by Schopenhauer.
So that should be a depressing read, eh? :) Good old Schopenhauer. Have you Googled his photo yet?
I will see you in the morning. Tons of love til then. xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo
In your Instagram post, I liked what you said about it being "time to start recording again". I know I always harp on you to record (and write music, and take photos, etc), and you know the reasons why I do so. I am so glad you are posting again, and I second your observation about recording new music. I also agree 100% with your Mom's comment on the Instagram post. :):)
You have many beautiful melodies running through the music on "Notepainting"My favorite tracks are "Stargazing", "Runaway II" and especially "The Thaw". A listener can hear how much you were feeling it as you were playing that piece for the recording. I have been hoping you would have a chance to get back to your true calling, which is of course your artistic work. I think of all that you have accomplished in the seven years I have known you and it's a pretty impressive output.
Even taking just one creation, like the "Red Dress" series (which needs a gallery showing), is an exceptional and original effort. Sometimes you have to step away from what you have accomplished, and then go back and look at it with fresh eyes, as they say. If you look at the "Red Dress" photos in this way, or if you go back and listen to "Notepainting", you will understand what I am talking about.
I am glad you are back! Of course it makes me happy, cause I've been here since the beginning, since "Autre Temps", and I have always believed in what you are doing. :):)
I did watch a movie tonight : "Trial Guide" (1952), the last of my Tim Holt Westerns. The set I bought had nine movies and I've now watched them all, but the good news is that there are several other Holt volumes available. I will probably purchase another set very soon, although I am still looking for more "Durango Kid" movies starring Charles Starrett, and I may even try an altogether different Western collection with an all new Hero like Johnny Mack Brown or George O'Brien. We'll see what turns up, but one thing is for certain : I've gotta have my Westerns.
I should've starred in "Trail Guide" anyway. I mean c'mon....the title?.......and me?
It's a perfect match.
In Tim Holt's version of "Trail Guide", shot on location in Santa Clarita and Placerita Canyon, there is a land war between ranchers (who want the land to be open range for their cattle) and settler/farmers, who want to draw boundaries for homesteads and put up fences and grow crops, all of which will impinge upon the cattle ranchers.
But if I were the star of "Trail Guide", the movie would be all about the Trails in Santa Clarita and Placerita, with me as The Guide. There would be no ranchers or settlers, just me walking along the trails, guiding all the viewers. "Hey, look at that old tree"! "There's that rock formation that was in all the Tim Holt Westerns"! "Wow, can you believe a stagecoach ever made it down this trail"?
That would be pretty cool, eh? ////
Well anyhow, I am reading the new King's X biography by Greg Prato and I must say that it's one of the best and most comprehensive rock books I've ever read. Anything you've ever wanted to know about the band is in there. I am also reading "Many Worlds", the story of eccentric physicist Hugh Everett III, which is just getting underway, and I ordered from the Libe a book on the philosophy of Schpenhauer! Hooray! And it is also written by Bryan Magee, the excellent author of my recently completed book about Richard Wagner, who was influenced by Schopenhauer.
So that should be a depressing read, eh? :) Good old Schopenhauer. Have you Googled his photo yet?
I will see you in the morning. Tons of love til then. xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo
Thursday, April 18, 2019
A Nice Birthday + "Easy Rider" + "Y Tu Mama Tambien"
Sorry I missed you last night. It was my birthday and I had gone to the movies with Grimsley, then had come back to Pearl's where I tried to blog about it during my usual late night writing session, but I found myself so sleepy that I couldn't finish. So I just now completed my movie review and here it is. I also added a little bit about another movie I watched tonight:
(from April 16 2019) I had a very nice birthday today, with kind wishes sent from friends on Facebook and in phone calls and cards in the mail. If you are reading and wished me a Happy Birthday, thank you so much. I am grateful for your friendship, and for your readership too! :) Much love, from Me to You, and thanks again. ////
It was also a working day, so I took Pearl to her Golden Agers meeting as I do every Tuesday. Today she had good energy, so that was another blessing. Here I've been, pondering my last year in my 50s, while Pearl will be turning 95 in four months. Working as her caregiver, I can see what 95 looks like, so to speak, but I can't imagine what it feels like. And so for her to have a good energy day is quite a remarkable thing at the present time.
I did see a movie tonight, at an actual movie theater. For a birthday present, Grim took me to see "Easy Rider" (1969), the iconic counterculture movie that is now a half century old. It was playing at the Granada Hills Theater for tonight only, just a single showing, maybe to mark it's 50th Anniversary.
Before we went in, I said to Grim that I had seen parts of "Easy Rider" over the years, on broadcast TV or more recently on TCM here at Pearl's. I estimated that I'd seen two thirds of the film, all viewed in separate chunks, but I'd never watched the movie as a whole.
Seeing it tonight from start to finish, on the big screen, gives me a new appreciation for what I'd long considered (based on my haphazard viewing history of the film) as merely a Hippie Flick. You know what kind of pictures I am talking about, the low budget psychedelic works of directors like Roger Corman, that were produced in the late-60s/ and seem hopelessly dated now with their depictions of group LSD trips created by warped camera and lighting effects, and the bygone imagery of unwashed youthful dropouts hitchhiking around the country in a stoned-out haze. Though it was widespread, the Counterculture existed only for a short time in America, and while the idealism of the Hippies and students was admirable, because they actually tried to live their beliefs, the lack of practicality in their approach now seems hopelessly naive. You can't overthrow the Establishment with Flower Power, though it was a nice sentiment and produced a lot of colorful art and clothing.
That idealistic philosophy is present in "Easy Rider", and the two main characters encounter several different groups of hippies and other individuals who are living their lives in communes, far off the grid.
1969 really was a weird time in that respect. It seemed that the Hippies really were trying to make a go of living apart from the cities and trying to form self-sustaining small farms and the like, but overall the downfall of the movement was the use by many young people of heavy drugs like LSD and cocaine. Even the constant use of pot is a very destructive thing, as I could testify to and would warn the kids of today against. To go on a brief sidetrack, I think the legalisation of pot in it's current highly potent form is a very bad thing. But to get back to "Easy Rider", the movie gives a fair portrayal of the 60s youth culture, however, showing a couple of communes that are Christian based and have nothing to do with drugs.
"Easy Rider" stars Peter Fonda and Dennis Hopper (who also directed) as two young men who are crossing the country on their motorcycles, heading to New Orleans from California. They have just completed a cocaine deal that has netted them a substantial amount of money. Fonda is the more stylish of the two. He is tall and handsome, wearing black motorcycle leathers and riding a custom chromed chopper. His image in the movie is one of the most iconic in all of American film from the last fifty years. Hopper is the scruffy, buckskinned longhair, who could more easily be mistaken for a Hippie by rural onlookers - and he is perceived that way - but in truth, his character is anything but. Though he smokes marijuana throughout the film and is constantly laughing like an idiot, when he does assert himself to the more serious Fonda, or to Jack Nicholoson's liberal Southern lawyer character, it is always to stand up for capitalism in one way or another. Hopper may look like a freak, but on the inside he is pure Establishment. His main goal in the movie is to get to New Orleans in time for Mardi Gras, party it up with some hookers and then take his share of the dough and "retire in Florida".
Fonda smokes pot constantly as well, but he broods his way through the trip. Something is bothering him and we will later find out what it is. Along the way, as the two leave the wide open West and get closer to the poverty stricken South (which was still in pretty bad shape in the 1960s), the resentment against their "kind" begins to show itself. They are refused service or ignored in cafes. Rednecks mutter insults and threats. Local girls, however, find them cute and sexually interesting, but this only enrages the local men further.
I wasn't expecting "Easy Rider" to be anywhere near as well written as it is. There is a long campfire scene in the middle of the movie, where Nicholson - who has met the two bikers in a small town jail cell and is now hitching a ride with them - begins to talk about a wide range of ideas, on everything from his belief in UFOs and Aliens living among humans here on Earth, to the root causes of Conservative America's disgust at the Hippie youth movement. "They fear you because of what you represent", he tells Hopper and Fonda, and then goes on to explain in articulate detail the social and existential reasons why this is true. It's a riveting scene, and the movie as a whole is just as interesting, though there is a scene or two, early on at the communes, that could have been tightened up. Overall, though, the movie never stagnates.
The ending to "Easy Rider" is notorious and shocking, and if you know it you'll know why, but I will not reveal it. I will say, though, that it holds it's power all these decades later and the statement that it makes in just a handful of indelible images is just as frightening.
Two very big Thumbs Up, then, for "Easy Rider", not the low-budget and dated "Hippie film" I was expecting, but rather an exceptionally well written, expertly photographed Road Movie about two men in search of something to believe in during a tumultuous time in America. It is a film that has stood the test of time. ////
(this part is from tonight, April 17 2019) : Tonight I went back once again to the Armer Theater at CSUN, to watch a movie called "Y Tu Mama Tambien" (2001). It was on the roster of Latin American films included in this semester's Cinematheque retrospective. Rather than covering the career of a single director, as Professor Tim always did, the professors of the last two "post-Tim" era retrospectives have chosen to have an Umbrella Topic as their theme. The first prof did "women in film" last Fall, and the new prof is doing "Latin American film". This was my first attendance at one of her screenings and she did a good job as the host, giving a thorough and informative introductory lecture to the movie, though for me and the old 2009-2018 "regulars", no one can compete with Professor Tim.
You may know "Y Tu Mama Tambien" yourself, because it was a fairly popular crossover Art House hit in America when it was released in 2001. The critics loved it, and their adulation propelled director Alfonso Cuaron to major industry status. He is now one of the top directors in all of film as you know.
Much of the critical excitement over the film came from the blatant enactment of it's many sexual scenes. In this way it is just shy of being pornographic. In the hands of a lesser filmmaker, this daring approach could have looked cheap and trashy, but because Cuaron is a complete auteur in the technical sense, meaning that he is a high level editor and a cinematographer as well as being an artistic director, and he is a master of all three abilities, he knew just how to film these graphic sex scenes, and in what particular context (often using a light comedic overtone) to soften the hard-core blow.
The sex appears as light-hearted and fun, then, even though the imagery looks like the real thing minus the close-ups
Cuaron's context is, like with "Easy Rider", two young men in search of themselves. In this case they are teenagers in Mexico City whose girlfriends have just left together on a trip to Italy. These guys are boyishly macho, for them the whole world is about sex and competition. Because they are not as confident in their manliness as their banter would indicate, they mutually assume that their girlfriends went on vacation to cheat on them, with notoriously oversexed Italian men.
Because of this assumption, when they have a chance to get back at what they think their girls are doing to them, or at least to get something in return, they hatch a plan to convince an older woman (of 28) to accompany them on a vacation of their own, a road trip to a mythical beach that may or may not exist. The woman is the married cousin of one of the youths. She is from Spain, an exotic quality that excites the young friends, but though she is smoking hot, she has had a very difficult life that they cannot begin to understand because they are a couple of sheltered goof-offs. Their objective on this road trip, once they have convinced the woman to go with them, is......you guessed it.....to have sex with her, even though she is married to one of their cousins.
She is older and turns the tables on the friends as they drive cross country, asking them direct questions about their girlfriends and their sexual conquests. It seems she is playing a game with them, toying with them to tease them, but because of the movie's sexual openness, you always know what is going to wind up taking place. There can only be so much talk about sex before it finally happens. This was the purpose for the trip in the first place, not only for the two teenaged boys, but for the 28 year old woman also.
Like Peter Fonda in "Easy Rider", our other Road Trip movie, something is bothering this beautiful lady. I do not want to go into detail because anything I say will cause the plot to unravel, but I will add that Cuaron presents an undercurrent to all the sexual fun and games in the brief images of police state action we see by the Mexican roadsides as the friends travel along on their journey. Out of their car windows are briefly seen shots of Federales and Army soldiers lining up peasants on the side of the road. Are they to be arrested for some minor indiscretion.....or do they face something even worse?
Cuaron, who later expanded on this Mexican government fascism in "Children Of Men, only hints at what might happen here, but it is enough to offset the dichotomy of the hot blooded but comedic sexuality and place it all against a threatening backdrop. Poor people are being detained and arrested for no apparent reason, in the background, by the roadside, as the friends drive along.
Just like in "Easy Rider", the ending in "Y Tu Mama Tambien" packs a powerful punch. Here it is especially profound, and you can see why Alfonso Cuaron has gone on to have the career he has had.
With "Easy Rider", what could be a typical "Hippie Movie" turns out to be well developed on several levels, and with "Y Tu Mama" we are also surprised, because what at first seems to be a sex romp slowly turns into a deeply profound meditation on eternal life.
Both movies aptly take place on the Road. Two huge Thumbs Up for "Y Tu Mama Tambien" also.
See you in the morning.
Love. xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
(from April 16 2019) I had a very nice birthday today, with kind wishes sent from friends on Facebook and in phone calls and cards in the mail. If you are reading and wished me a Happy Birthday, thank you so much. I am grateful for your friendship, and for your readership too! :) Much love, from Me to You, and thanks again. ////
It was also a working day, so I took Pearl to her Golden Agers meeting as I do every Tuesday. Today she had good energy, so that was another blessing. Here I've been, pondering my last year in my 50s, while Pearl will be turning 95 in four months. Working as her caregiver, I can see what 95 looks like, so to speak, but I can't imagine what it feels like. And so for her to have a good energy day is quite a remarkable thing at the present time.
I did see a movie tonight, at an actual movie theater. For a birthday present, Grim took me to see "Easy Rider" (1969), the iconic counterculture movie that is now a half century old. It was playing at the Granada Hills Theater for tonight only, just a single showing, maybe to mark it's 50th Anniversary.
Before we went in, I said to Grim that I had seen parts of "Easy Rider" over the years, on broadcast TV or more recently on TCM here at Pearl's. I estimated that I'd seen two thirds of the film, all viewed in separate chunks, but I'd never watched the movie as a whole.
Seeing it tonight from start to finish, on the big screen, gives me a new appreciation for what I'd long considered (based on my haphazard viewing history of the film) as merely a Hippie Flick. You know what kind of pictures I am talking about, the low budget psychedelic works of directors like Roger Corman, that were produced in the late-60s/ and seem hopelessly dated now with their depictions of group LSD trips created by warped camera and lighting effects, and the bygone imagery of unwashed youthful dropouts hitchhiking around the country in a stoned-out haze. Though it was widespread, the Counterculture existed only for a short time in America, and while the idealism of the Hippies and students was admirable, because they actually tried to live their beliefs, the lack of practicality in their approach now seems hopelessly naive. You can't overthrow the Establishment with Flower Power, though it was a nice sentiment and produced a lot of colorful art and clothing.
That idealistic philosophy is present in "Easy Rider", and the two main characters encounter several different groups of hippies and other individuals who are living their lives in communes, far off the grid.
1969 really was a weird time in that respect. It seemed that the Hippies really were trying to make a go of living apart from the cities and trying to form self-sustaining small farms and the like, but overall the downfall of the movement was the use by many young people of heavy drugs like LSD and cocaine. Even the constant use of pot is a very destructive thing, as I could testify to and would warn the kids of today against. To go on a brief sidetrack, I think the legalisation of pot in it's current highly potent form is a very bad thing. But to get back to "Easy Rider", the movie gives a fair portrayal of the 60s youth culture, however, showing a couple of communes that are Christian based and have nothing to do with drugs.
"Easy Rider" stars Peter Fonda and Dennis Hopper (who also directed) as two young men who are crossing the country on their motorcycles, heading to New Orleans from California. They have just completed a cocaine deal that has netted them a substantial amount of money. Fonda is the more stylish of the two. He is tall and handsome, wearing black motorcycle leathers and riding a custom chromed chopper. His image in the movie is one of the most iconic in all of American film from the last fifty years. Hopper is the scruffy, buckskinned longhair, who could more easily be mistaken for a Hippie by rural onlookers - and he is perceived that way - but in truth, his character is anything but. Though he smokes marijuana throughout the film and is constantly laughing like an idiot, when he does assert himself to the more serious Fonda, or to Jack Nicholoson's liberal Southern lawyer character, it is always to stand up for capitalism in one way or another. Hopper may look like a freak, but on the inside he is pure Establishment. His main goal in the movie is to get to New Orleans in time for Mardi Gras, party it up with some hookers and then take his share of the dough and "retire in Florida".
Fonda smokes pot constantly as well, but he broods his way through the trip. Something is bothering him and we will later find out what it is. Along the way, as the two leave the wide open West and get closer to the poverty stricken South (which was still in pretty bad shape in the 1960s), the resentment against their "kind" begins to show itself. They are refused service or ignored in cafes. Rednecks mutter insults and threats. Local girls, however, find them cute and sexually interesting, but this only enrages the local men further.
I wasn't expecting "Easy Rider" to be anywhere near as well written as it is. There is a long campfire scene in the middle of the movie, where Nicholson - who has met the two bikers in a small town jail cell and is now hitching a ride with them - begins to talk about a wide range of ideas, on everything from his belief in UFOs and Aliens living among humans here on Earth, to the root causes of Conservative America's disgust at the Hippie youth movement. "They fear you because of what you represent", he tells Hopper and Fonda, and then goes on to explain in articulate detail the social and existential reasons why this is true. It's a riveting scene, and the movie as a whole is just as interesting, though there is a scene or two, early on at the communes, that could have been tightened up. Overall, though, the movie never stagnates.
The ending to "Easy Rider" is notorious and shocking, and if you know it you'll know why, but I will not reveal it. I will say, though, that it holds it's power all these decades later and the statement that it makes in just a handful of indelible images is just as frightening.
Two very big Thumbs Up, then, for "Easy Rider", not the low-budget and dated "Hippie film" I was expecting, but rather an exceptionally well written, expertly photographed Road Movie about two men in search of something to believe in during a tumultuous time in America. It is a film that has stood the test of time. ////
(this part is from tonight, April 17 2019) : Tonight I went back once again to the Armer Theater at CSUN, to watch a movie called "Y Tu Mama Tambien" (2001). It was on the roster of Latin American films included in this semester's Cinematheque retrospective. Rather than covering the career of a single director, as Professor Tim always did, the professors of the last two "post-Tim" era retrospectives have chosen to have an Umbrella Topic as their theme. The first prof did "women in film" last Fall, and the new prof is doing "Latin American film". This was my first attendance at one of her screenings and she did a good job as the host, giving a thorough and informative introductory lecture to the movie, though for me and the old 2009-2018 "regulars", no one can compete with Professor Tim.
You may know "Y Tu Mama Tambien" yourself, because it was a fairly popular crossover Art House hit in America when it was released in 2001. The critics loved it, and their adulation propelled director Alfonso Cuaron to major industry status. He is now one of the top directors in all of film as you know.
Much of the critical excitement over the film came from the blatant enactment of it's many sexual scenes. In this way it is just shy of being pornographic. In the hands of a lesser filmmaker, this daring approach could have looked cheap and trashy, but because Cuaron is a complete auteur in the technical sense, meaning that he is a high level editor and a cinematographer as well as being an artistic director, and he is a master of all three abilities, he knew just how to film these graphic sex scenes, and in what particular context (often using a light comedic overtone) to soften the hard-core blow.
The sex appears as light-hearted and fun, then, even though the imagery looks like the real thing minus the close-ups
Cuaron's context is, like with "Easy Rider", two young men in search of themselves. In this case they are teenagers in Mexico City whose girlfriends have just left together on a trip to Italy. These guys are boyishly macho, for them the whole world is about sex and competition. Because they are not as confident in their manliness as their banter would indicate, they mutually assume that their girlfriends went on vacation to cheat on them, with notoriously oversexed Italian men.
Because of this assumption, when they have a chance to get back at what they think their girls are doing to them, or at least to get something in return, they hatch a plan to convince an older woman (of 28) to accompany them on a vacation of their own, a road trip to a mythical beach that may or may not exist. The woman is the married cousin of one of the youths. She is from Spain, an exotic quality that excites the young friends, but though she is smoking hot, she has had a very difficult life that they cannot begin to understand because they are a couple of sheltered goof-offs. Their objective on this road trip, once they have convinced the woman to go with them, is......you guessed it.....to have sex with her, even though she is married to one of their cousins.
She is older and turns the tables on the friends as they drive cross country, asking them direct questions about their girlfriends and their sexual conquests. It seems she is playing a game with them, toying with them to tease them, but because of the movie's sexual openness, you always know what is going to wind up taking place. There can only be so much talk about sex before it finally happens. This was the purpose for the trip in the first place, not only for the two teenaged boys, but for the 28 year old woman also.
Like Peter Fonda in "Easy Rider", our other Road Trip movie, something is bothering this beautiful lady. I do not want to go into detail because anything I say will cause the plot to unravel, but I will add that Cuaron presents an undercurrent to all the sexual fun and games in the brief images of police state action we see by the Mexican roadsides as the friends travel along on their journey. Out of their car windows are briefly seen shots of Federales and Army soldiers lining up peasants on the side of the road. Are they to be arrested for some minor indiscretion.....or do they face something even worse?
Cuaron, who later expanded on this Mexican government fascism in "Children Of Men, only hints at what might happen here, but it is enough to offset the dichotomy of the hot blooded but comedic sexuality and place it all against a threatening backdrop. Poor people are being detained and arrested for no apparent reason, in the background, by the roadside, as the friends drive along.
Just like in "Easy Rider", the ending in "Y Tu Mama Tambien" packs a powerful punch. Here it is especially profound, and you can see why Alfonso Cuaron has gone on to have the career he has had.
With "Easy Rider", what could be a typical "Hippie Movie" turns out to be well developed on several levels, and with "Y Tu Mama" we are also surprised, because what at first seems to be a sex romp slowly turns into a deeply profound meditation on eternal life.
Both movies aptly take place on the Road. Two huge Thumbs Up for "Y Tu Mama Tambien" also.
See you in the morning.
Love. xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
Tuesday, April 16, 2019
Notre Dame Cathedral + Faith, Hope & Love
We all watched in shock today at the news coming out of Paris, and I'm sure we shared in the tremendous sadness that was felt around the world. It's numbing, really, and while we are already numbed by all the human tragedy we see in this day and age, this was tragedy of a different kind, the destruction of one of the greatest and most monumental works of art ever produced by human beings, built in the name of Our Lady, Mother of Jesus. In the book about composer Richard Wagner that I just finished reading, the author talks about the vital importance of great music to release the yearnings of the soul that cannot be expressed in words. He mentions Wagner's operas as being among the greatest music ever written and then goes on to say that music may be the greatest, most powerful, most transformative art there is.
He then mentions one art form, a very specific one, which - though limited in it's collective output - may nonetheless surpass the majesty of music. The Gothic Cathedrals of Europe.
I am not an expert on the cathedrals, but I would imagine that Notre Dame has always been considered the most magnificent of them all. Also, it may have been the oldest. Was it? I don't know.
As I say, I'm not an expert, but like millions of people the world over, I have an affinity for these beautiful churches, and of course just to simply call them "beautiful churches" is wholly inadequate. But if author Bryan Magee is right in saying that the cathedrals of Europe surpass even music as the most important works of art of human beings, and if Notre Dame was the greatest of the cathedrals, than that would make it also the greatest work of art that has ever been created.
I think, and the evidence shows, that the Gothic Cathedrals were built as direct conduits to God, gigantic temples that would resonate and amplify the human voice in prayer and devotion, and send it upward. These churches were built according to the laws of Sacred Geometry, and every part of each cathedral has a specific function and meaning that is meant to facilitate communion with the Divine.
I will tell you something : When I am sitting with the choir at Reseda Methodist, I am behind the Pastor who is speaking to the congregation, and I too (and all of us in the choir) are looking out over the pews toward the front of the church. We can see all the people. We can see the Pastor, and the stained glass windows. And speaking for myself, I can feel - coming from all of this but also from the vaulted architecture of the church itself - an immense, energizing empowerment.
I can feel it coming from the structure and shape of the building and it's cavernous interior, and the light coming in through the stained glass. All of this is constructed with a deliberate purpose.
If I am feeling this power inside Reseda Methodist, just imagine what a choir member or a congregant or a tourist - or anyone - must have felt inside the cathedral of Notre Dame.
I am a big believer in the reality of Faith, Hope and Love, so I was heartened - after the hours-long news reports indicating nothing but total devastation - to learn that many of the interior artworks had survived the fire. I was further heartened to see a brief video inside of Notre Dame in the aftermath of the fire. Yes, it was horrible looking, but not as bad as we had feared. My heart soared with joy, then, as I am certain millions of hearts did, when President Macron said "We will rebuild".
Because that means, and we could see in the video, that there is something left to rebuild. There is quite a lot, actually.
I have never been to France and thus have never seen Notre Dame. But if they can rebuild it in my lifetime, and I imagine they can (because the French are some very determined people), then I will make every effort to finally make the trip to Paris that my sister and I keep saying we want to do.
You can't undo the damage from a fire, but you can rebuild. And if you rebuild to exacting standards, you can recreate, to some extent, the building as it was. The wood will be new, and the vibe may be changed, but the effort put in by the souls of the recreationists will serve to make up the difference.
And if the recreated Notre Dame stands for another 800 years, that will be something to see. ////
I wish you Peace and Love tonight, and Good Blessings Always. The house I am writing from, Pearl's house, burned nearly to the ground on Christmas Day in 1972. But the outer structure survived, and it was completely rebuilt, in exactly the same way that Edward Fickett designed it. It is the exact same house, and I am sitting in it as I sign off to you tonight.
So : Faith, Hope & Love, and I will see you in the morning. xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
He then mentions one art form, a very specific one, which - though limited in it's collective output - may nonetheless surpass the majesty of music. The Gothic Cathedrals of Europe.
I am not an expert on the cathedrals, but I would imagine that Notre Dame has always been considered the most magnificent of them all. Also, it may have been the oldest. Was it? I don't know.
As I say, I'm not an expert, but like millions of people the world over, I have an affinity for these beautiful churches, and of course just to simply call them "beautiful churches" is wholly inadequate. But if author Bryan Magee is right in saying that the cathedrals of Europe surpass even music as the most important works of art of human beings, and if Notre Dame was the greatest of the cathedrals, than that would make it also the greatest work of art that has ever been created.
I think, and the evidence shows, that the Gothic Cathedrals were built as direct conduits to God, gigantic temples that would resonate and amplify the human voice in prayer and devotion, and send it upward. These churches were built according to the laws of Sacred Geometry, and every part of each cathedral has a specific function and meaning that is meant to facilitate communion with the Divine.
I will tell you something : When I am sitting with the choir at Reseda Methodist, I am behind the Pastor who is speaking to the congregation, and I too (and all of us in the choir) are looking out over the pews toward the front of the church. We can see all the people. We can see the Pastor, and the stained glass windows. And speaking for myself, I can feel - coming from all of this but also from the vaulted architecture of the church itself - an immense, energizing empowerment.
I can feel it coming from the structure and shape of the building and it's cavernous interior, and the light coming in through the stained glass. All of this is constructed with a deliberate purpose.
If I am feeling this power inside Reseda Methodist, just imagine what a choir member or a congregant or a tourist - or anyone - must have felt inside the cathedral of Notre Dame.
I am a big believer in the reality of Faith, Hope and Love, so I was heartened - after the hours-long news reports indicating nothing but total devastation - to learn that many of the interior artworks had survived the fire. I was further heartened to see a brief video inside of Notre Dame in the aftermath of the fire. Yes, it was horrible looking, but not as bad as we had feared. My heart soared with joy, then, as I am certain millions of hearts did, when President Macron said "We will rebuild".
Because that means, and we could see in the video, that there is something left to rebuild. There is quite a lot, actually.
I have never been to France and thus have never seen Notre Dame. But if they can rebuild it in my lifetime, and I imagine they can (because the French are some very determined people), then I will make every effort to finally make the trip to Paris that my sister and I keep saying we want to do.
You can't undo the damage from a fire, but you can rebuild. And if you rebuild to exacting standards, you can recreate, to some extent, the building as it was. The wood will be new, and the vibe may be changed, but the effort put in by the souls of the recreationists will serve to make up the difference.
And if the recreated Notre Dame stands for another 800 years, that will be something to see. ////
I wish you Peace and Love tonight, and Good Blessings Always. The house I am writing from, Pearl's house, burned nearly to the ground on Christmas Day in 1972. But the outer structure survived, and it was completely rebuilt, in exactly the same way that Edward Fickett designed it. It is the exact same house, and I am sitting in it as I sign off to you tonight.
So : Faith, Hope & Love, and I will see you in the morning. xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
Monday, April 15, 2019
1950s Housewife + "Ghost Story" + Tiger + "The Many Worlds Of Hugh Everett"
Hey Elizabeth! I really like your 1950s Housewife look. :) That mixer is classic retro and I love old appliances from that era because they remind me of the kitchens I grew up in (plus I just love the 1950s vibe in general). There was an appliance store here in Reseda that catered to retro tastes, they had all kinds of old stoves and refrigerators, all in good condition. Sadly it has gone out of business, but I used to love to window shop there. But yeah, I love that era as you know, and I think that among all the other things you've got going, you should have a show on the Food Network. You can be "The 50s Housewife", and it will be a big hit. :) That's a great pic and a good look for you. Keep posting if you have the chance. I am glad you are back. :):)
I did not see a movie tonight, but I did watch a particularly scary episode of "Ghost Story" in which a young blonde woman has the ability to turn herself into a mountain lion, which she does to kill anyone or anything that threatens her relationship with her man, a rodeo rider played by 70s TV stalwart Doug McClure. It's a twist on the classic werewolf story, filmed in part up at Vasquez Rocks, and the "isolation" technique producer William Castle uses to create a sense of impending doom is very effective here, In his movies and in this show, he always opts for very small casts, usually just a handful of characters. This grows into a feeling of isolation for the viewer, once the trouble starts, because the five or six people involved have no one to turn to. They can't call the cops or tell a neighbor what is going on because there are no cops or neighbors. In these shows, the small cast of each episode live in an enclosed world. They just have to solve their problems on their own, and in every episode one of the group is the main malevolent influence, a demon in their midst. In this case it is the shape shifting Bo Derek lookalike. Transformed into the vicious Puma, she will even attack the huge, rampaging bull that threw and trampled her husband (McClure) during a bronco busting exhibition. On paper it might not sound all that scary : rodeos and dusty Western motifs don't usually mix with terror or horror, but as always with "Ghost Story", you've gotta trust me with this series. I haven't seen an episode yet (out of seven) that has been anything less than stellar. They are like mini-horror movies. I am trying to dole them out to myself, but they are so good that I will probably have finished the 22 episodes in another month or so. ////
We had a nice Palm Sunday in church, with good singing. Back at home, Pearl and I watched highlights of Tiger's victory at The Masters. Like many fans, I was very much down on Tiger when all of that stuff came out about him in 2009. It turned out he was as fallible as the rest of us, but his image had portrayed him as squeaky clean and a little arrogant. It was therefore easy to cheer on his downfall, which I did, but then - as the years went on and we saw him keep trying to come back, only to keep failing, ranked low in the 400s or some such number, his story turned around to become one of sheer determination. The sportswriters were saying he was almost all the way back to form about a year ago, and now today......eleven years after he last won a major tournament.....he finally won The Masters for the fifth time at age 43. That is an amazing accomplishment, because A) he was all washed up, and B) eleven years had passed.
I don't care how great you are, eleven years is eleven years, and in sports that is a very long time indeed. Really it is the length of a person's career, in most cases. But this was Tiger Woods, who in the 1990s and early 2000s was said to be the greatest golfer ever, and now we see why. No matter what we thought of Tiger during his rise or his fall, the kind of determination we saw today in the culmination of an eleven year comeback, was incredibly inspiring. ////
So that was cool, and it was also Ritchie Blackmore's birthday, which we always celebrate around these parts. Sir Richard turned 74 today, but like many of those English rockers of a certain vintage he just always seems to be The Same Guy He Always Was, just like Paul McCartney, several decades older than when we first saw him but Still Doing It and not much changed.
It is mindblowing to me the way in which the years pass. I like to jump around in my mind and fancy myself in different eras, both ones I have lived through and ones I haven't but wish I had, like the 1950s.
I just began a book this evening called "The Many Worlds Of Hugh Everett III", about a physicist who came up with a now famous theory, that material reality, and therefore our lives, branch off into multiple and endless parallel worlds, because of the way in which atoms function as waves instead of particles. Atoms only become particles when we stop to measure them. Hugh Everett (whose estranged son became the leader of a band called The Eels) phrased all of this in mathematical terms to prove his theory, or so he believed. The "Multiple Worlds" theory was considered so far out at the time that Everett was ridiculed and drummed out of the world of physics.
Imagine another world, where you have perhaps won the Lottery, a world that exists in a parallel frame, simultaneous to the life you are living now.
I remember being a little kid of about seven. I would get my hair cut at the Los Angeles Athletic Club, and in the barber shop they had mirrors on both walls, in front and in back of the client, opposing one another. I remember sitting in that barber chair, waiting for him to finish trimming the edges, and looking into the mirror that was facing me.
That mirror would reflect not only me, but a slightly curving endless series of "me"s, because the first "me" from the original reflection was turned back on itself by the mirror on the opposite wall. The two opposing mirrors created an effect of "endless Me"s, sitting in the barber's chair, curving off into eternity.
That would be how I think of The Many Worlds Of Hugh Everett tonight, not having read the book yet.
I am not a mathematical genius, but I'll wager I'm on the right track.
See you in the morning with love through the night. xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
I did not see a movie tonight, but I did watch a particularly scary episode of "Ghost Story" in which a young blonde woman has the ability to turn herself into a mountain lion, which she does to kill anyone or anything that threatens her relationship with her man, a rodeo rider played by 70s TV stalwart Doug McClure. It's a twist on the classic werewolf story, filmed in part up at Vasquez Rocks, and the "isolation" technique producer William Castle uses to create a sense of impending doom is very effective here, In his movies and in this show, he always opts for very small casts, usually just a handful of characters. This grows into a feeling of isolation for the viewer, once the trouble starts, because the five or six people involved have no one to turn to. They can't call the cops or tell a neighbor what is going on because there are no cops or neighbors. In these shows, the small cast of each episode live in an enclosed world. They just have to solve their problems on their own, and in every episode one of the group is the main malevolent influence, a demon in their midst. In this case it is the shape shifting Bo Derek lookalike. Transformed into the vicious Puma, she will even attack the huge, rampaging bull that threw and trampled her husband (McClure) during a bronco busting exhibition. On paper it might not sound all that scary : rodeos and dusty Western motifs don't usually mix with terror or horror, but as always with "Ghost Story", you've gotta trust me with this series. I haven't seen an episode yet (out of seven) that has been anything less than stellar. They are like mini-horror movies. I am trying to dole them out to myself, but they are so good that I will probably have finished the 22 episodes in another month or so. ////
We had a nice Palm Sunday in church, with good singing. Back at home, Pearl and I watched highlights of Tiger's victory at The Masters. Like many fans, I was very much down on Tiger when all of that stuff came out about him in 2009. It turned out he was as fallible as the rest of us, but his image had portrayed him as squeaky clean and a little arrogant. It was therefore easy to cheer on his downfall, which I did, but then - as the years went on and we saw him keep trying to come back, only to keep failing, ranked low in the 400s or some such number, his story turned around to become one of sheer determination. The sportswriters were saying he was almost all the way back to form about a year ago, and now today......eleven years after he last won a major tournament.....he finally won The Masters for the fifth time at age 43. That is an amazing accomplishment, because A) he was all washed up, and B) eleven years had passed.
I don't care how great you are, eleven years is eleven years, and in sports that is a very long time indeed. Really it is the length of a person's career, in most cases. But this was Tiger Woods, who in the 1990s and early 2000s was said to be the greatest golfer ever, and now we see why. No matter what we thought of Tiger during his rise or his fall, the kind of determination we saw today in the culmination of an eleven year comeback, was incredibly inspiring. ////
So that was cool, and it was also Ritchie Blackmore's birthday, which we always celebrate around these parts. Sir Richard turned 74 today, but like many of those English rockers of a certain vintage he just always seems to be The Same Guy He Always Was, just like Paul McCartney, several decades older than when we first saw him but Still Doing It and not much changed.
It is mindblowing to me the way in which the years pass. I like to jump around in my mind and fancy myself in different eras, both ones I have lived through and ones I haven't but wish I had, like the 1950s.
I just began a book this evening called "The Many Worlds Of Hugh Everett III", about a physicist who came up with a now famous theory, that material reality, and therefore our lives, branch off into multiple and endless parallel worlds, because of the way in which atoms function as waves instead of particles. Atoms only become particles when we stop to measure them. Hugh Everett (whose estranged son became the leader of a band called The Eels) phrased all of this in mathematical terms to prove his theory, or so he believed. The "Multiple Worlds" theory was considered so far out at the time that Everett was ridiculed and drummed out of the world of physics.
Imagine another world, where you have perhaps won the Lottery, a world that exists in a parallel frame, simultaneous to the life you are living now.
I remember being a little kid of about seven. I would get my hair cut at the Los Angeles Athletic Club, and in the barber shop they had mirrors on both walls, in front and in back of the client, opposing one another. I remember sitting in that barber chair, waiting for him to finish trimming the edges, and looking into the mirror that was facing me.
That mirror would reflect not only me, but a slightly curving endless series of "me"s, because the first "me" from the original reflection was turned back on itself by the mirror on the opposite wall. The two opposing mirrors created an effect of "endless Me"s, sitting in the barber's chair, curving off into eternity.
That would be how I think of The Many Worlds Of Hugh Everett tonight, not having read the book yet.
I am not a mathematical genius, but I'll wager I'm on the right track.
See you in the morning with love through the night. xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
Sunday, April 14, 2019
Grim's Experience At The Nita Strauss Concert + Why I Don't Need To Do That Anymore
Sorry I missed ya last night. Grimsley came over and wanted to tell me all about his experience at the Whisky A Go-Go where he went to see Nita Strauss (lead guitarist for Alice Cooper and solo artist). We both like Nita, and Grim is a huge fan. She is an excellent player and has good stage presence for The Coop. I had told Grim I wouldn't be going to the Whisky show - which was a solo set for Nita in support of her new album - because with my job being what it is, I can't do late night club shows. Grim went anyway, because he lives for rock shows and is willing to put up with a lot of what I now consider in my older age to be hassles or disadvantages of going to such shows.
For me, I don't wanna wait around until 11pm anymore for the main act to go onstage. Been there, done that, many many times. I don't wanna stand in place, surrounded by my fellow Sardines, for a couple hours watching endless opening acts and getting my ears pummeled. Been there, done that, got tinnitus in my right ear and don't wanna make it worse.
So, while I do love The Whisky as a club (everyone is super nice and it has a great vibe), and I love my own rock n' roll heritage, I am at the point in my concert going career where if the hassle outweighs the enjoyment, I won't be going. And that is the case for most club shows, for me. "Must See" bands are an occasional exception, i.e King's X, Alcest or Eric Johnson. But all three of those acts go on at reasonable times anyway, with no opening acts or one at most.
So Grim told me his story, of working his butt off all day, being really tired, but still feeling the need to drive down to Hollywood to see Nita, and no doubt she is worth seeing. But Grim didn't consider the above mentioned factors. So Nita, who was supposed to go on at 10:30 (way too late for me), didn't end up going on until 11:20. Grim said she was shredding but he couldn't hear her leads because the bass and drums were cranked way up in the mix. That problem is a standard one in clubs, where volume is given precedent over sound quality, and unless a band has their own sound man, you are doomed to get your eardrums blown out.
This was happening to Grim. He couldn't hear Nita's guitar, he had waited until 11:20 for her to go on, and he was dog tired when he got off work, hours before he even went down there. Grim is 65. That is not "old" old, for us rock fans (and we keep in shape), but it is old in the sense of "why am I putting up with this BS anymore"?
For me, I've done it. I've gone to Runaways shows at The Starwood when nobody had a car and we had to take the bus down to Hollywood, and then after the concert was over we had to sit at a table in Ben Frank's nursing a plate of French Fries until the earliest bus for the Valley left Sunset Boulevard at 3:45 in the morning.
That was Rock 'n Roll. And it even sucked then, but it was worth it to see the shows. DJ and I used to drive down to the Long Beach Arena the night before Judas Priest tickets went on sale at the box office, because we wanted to get front row tickets. So we would get there at midnight and sit in the cold all night long until 10am when the tix went on sale.
That too, was Rock 'n Roll. But I did it, I've been to somewhere around 800 concerts, and I don't need to do it anymore.
Nowdays, I like concerts that begin no later than 9pm, on time and with no opening acts. Even better, I like shows at the Downtown Theater district venues that always start at 8pm, or similar shows at the Greek Theater. Last Sunday I saw Cameron Carpenter at Disney Hall, which started at 7:30. There was no opening act, I wasn't Sardined in a club with a blaring bass heavy sound system, the audience not only didn't make a peep during the performance, but there was nary a cell phone in sight. The sound was phenomenal (state of the art classical acoustics), and I was watching one of the greatest musicians I have ever seen.
So - for me, now that I am pushing 60 - that is Rock n' Roll nowdays.
The genre of music isn't what is important, just the hassle factor.
Grim, who is seven years older than I and has been to at least one thousand concerts, is still willing to put up with all the Stuff. But he often regrets it, and so all of this was to tell you that he left the Nita Strauss concert only twenty minutes after it began, and he loves Nita.
I listened to his tale thinking, "hmmm....I could've predicted that".
Well, as Jim Tyler (a maker of custom guitars) once told me, "You gotta bleed for rock n' roll". He told me that when I mentioned that a guitar he built for me was heavier than I had expected (and I still have that guitar). He was right about bleeding for rock; you do gotta do that.
But I've done it, and now, for me it's the other way around. When I go to a concert nowdays, I am seeking a transfusion. A transfusion of musical lifeblood, nothing more and nothing less.
Don't need no hassles nor ear damage.
Grim, however, will keep on going to these kinds of shows, and in a way I admire him for doing that, because he wants to keep his ethos alive. I had many of my greatest concert experiences in my teens and twenties, and at some shows I reached the highest of spiritual heights, from which I have never come down even though the memory is 30 to 45 years distant.
But I have also moved on, and acknowledged the things I never liked about rock concerts even when I was 15 years old. I never liked that fans were treated like cattle at some shows, or that you had to stand like a sardine at others. I did it anyway because I loved my bands, and those shows are badges of honor for me, and are legendary beyond belief.......
But why would I want to try and replicate them in this day and age?
That's all I am asking.
I know I must sound like a curmudgeon but I am really a pleasure seeker, and I will see you in church in the morning. xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
For me, I don't wanna wait around until 11pm anymore for the main act to go onstage. Been there, done that, many many times. I don't wanna stand in place, surrounded by my fellow Sardines, for a couple hours watching endless opening acts and getting my ears pummeled. Been there, done that, got tinnitus in my right ear and don't wanna make it worse.
So, while I do love The Whisky as a club (everyone is super nice and it has a great vibe), and I love my own rock n' roll heritage, I am at the point in my concert going career where if the hassle outweighs the enjoyment, I won't be going. And that is the case for most club shows, for me. "Must See" bands are an occasional exception, i.e King's X, Alcest or Eric Johnson. But all three of those acts go on at reasonable times anyway, with no opening acts or one at most.
So Grim told me his story, of working his butt off all day, being really tired, but still feeling the need to drive down to Hollywood to see Nita, and no doubt she is worth seeing. But Grim didn't consider the above mentioned factors. So Nita, who was supposed to go on at 10:30 (way too late for me), didn't end up going on until 11:20. Grim said she was shredding but he couldn't hear her leads because the bass and drums were cranked way up in the mix. That problem is a standard one in clubs, where volume is given precedent over sound quality, and unless a band has their own sound man, you are doomed to get your eardrums blown out.
This was happening to Grim. He couldn't hear Nita's guitar, he had waited until 11:20 for her to go on, and he was dog tired when he got off work, hours before he even went down there. Grim is 65. That is not "old" old, for us rock fans (and we keep in shape), but it is old in the sense of "why am I putting up with this BS anymore"?
For me, I've done it. I've gone to Runaways shows at The Starwood when nobody had a car and we had to take the bus down to Hollywood, and then after the concert was over we had to sit at a table in Ben Frank's nursing a plate of French Fries until the earliest bus for the Valley left Sunset Boulevard at 3:45 in the morning.
That was Rock 'n Roll. And it even sucked then, but it was worth it to see the shows. DJ and I used to drive down to the Long Beach Arena the night before Judas Priest tickets went on sale at the box office, because we wanted to get front row tickets. So we would get there at midnight and sit in the cold all night long until 10am when the tix went on sale.
That too, was Rock 'n Roll. But I did it, I've been to somewhere around 800 concerts, and I don't need to do it anymore.
Nowdays, I like concerts that begin no later than 9pm, on time and with no opening acts. Even better, I like shows at the Downtown Theater district venues that always start at 8pm, or similar shows at the Greek Theater. Last Sunday I saw Cameron Carpenter at Disney Hall, which started at 7:30. There was no opening act, I wasn't Sardined in a club with a blaring bass heavy sound system, the audience not only didn't make a peep during the performance, but there was nary a cell phone in sight. The sound was phenomenal (state of the art classical acoustics), and I was watching one of the greatest musicians I have ever seen.
So - for me, now that I am pushing 60 - that is Rock n' Roll nowdays.
The genre of music isn't what is important, just the hassle factor.
Grim, who is seven years older than I and has been to at least one thousand concerts, is still willing to put up with all the Stuff. But he often regrets it, and so all of this was to tell you that he left the Nita Strauss concert only twenty minutes after it began, and he loves Nita.
I listened to his tale thinking, "hmmm....I could've predicted that".
Well, as Jim Tyler (a maker of custom guitars) once told me, "You gotta bleed for rock n' roll". He told me that when I mentioned that a guitar he built for me was heavier than I had expected (and I still have that guitar). He was right about bleeding for rock; you do gotta do that.
But I've done it, and now, for me it's the other way around. When I go to a concert nowdays, I am seeking a transfusion. A transfusion of musical lifeblood, nothing more and nothing less.
Don't need no hassles nor ear damage.
Grim, however, will keep on going to these kinds of shows, and in a way I admire him for doing that, because he wants to keep his ethos alive. I had many of my greatest concert experiences in my teens and twenties, and at some shows I reached the highest of spiritual heights, from which I have never come down even though the memory is 30 to 45 years distant.
But I have also moved on, and acknowledged the things I never liked about rock concerts even when I was 15 years old. I never liked that fans were treated like cattle at some shows, or that you had to stand like a sardine at others. I did it anyway because I loved my bands, and those shows are badges of honor for me, and are legendary beyond belief.......
But why would I want to try and replicate them in this day and age?
That's all I am asking.
I know I must sound like a curmudgeon but I am really a pleasure seeker, and I will see you in church in the morning. xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
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