Elizabeth + "Cult Of The Cobra"

Hey Elizabeth! I am glad to see you working on new music. That is a lovely melody you are playing over the cello notes, so I hope you do finish the piece.  :) And yeah, if you had a string library then you could get into orchestrations. I mean, I have no idea how the software works, or anything about it really, but I imagine that having the strings at your disposal would open up some pretty wide creative avenues to use as a basis for piano composition, or even some all-string pieces.

Do you still have your viola? If so, eventually you can write me a String Quartet! (one of my favorite forms of classical music).

I sure am glad to see you writing and playing again and I hope you will have a chance to continue. Just remember it's all about time management and the desire to create. On that aspect of it, I am finding over the years, regarding "the desire", that it's better just to schedule your time to write, or play, or even just noodle around. When I was younger I would sometimes say, "well, I'm not feeling inspired today, so I don't think I'll play". I think the act of beginning a daily journal changed that attitude for me. Twenty years ago this October I began to write down a daily record of my thoughts and activities, and it instilled in me a discipline that extended to other pursuits, like long form writing and eventually drawing, a hobby I began in 1997 and have recently taken up again starting in 2016. If I ever have enough room to do so, I can't wait to paint again, too. When I lived at Burton Street with the gang, I did about 25 paintings of various sizes, all of which I have stashed inside my apartment with my best one hanging on the wall.

My point is : don't wait to be inspired. Just play a little bit (or a lot) every day, or as many days as you can, but make it part of your schedule and before long it will fit into your day like second nature. That is the real inspiration, just doing it every day. Write, play, record and repeat. :)

And post! If you feel like it. But yeah, I am happy to see you back. xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo  :):)

I did watch a movie tonight, one from my Ultimate Sci-Fi Collection Volume Two, called "Cult Of The Cobra" (1955). I will try to keep my review brief so as not to tire out in the middle of it, haha.

Six American G.I.s are on leave in an unspecified city in Southeast Asia, probably in Thailand but maybe Nepal. Wherever it is that they have snake charmers. Anyhow, the G.I.s have their cameras with them and are looking for exotic things to snap. They spot a snake charmer and after taking a few pictures they strike up a conversation with him. Of course he speaks perfectly accented English, and tells the soldiers of a secret society of people he knows, called the Lamians. They are folks who are able to metamorphosize into cobra snakes. The snake charmer is a Lamian himself, and offers to sneak the men into one of the the group's sacred ceremonies. The G.I.s are looking for adventure so they accept his offer. They don hooded cloaks to enter the Lamian Temple, but in the middle of the opening dance (in a fantastic sequence performed by a pair of dancers known as The Carlssons) one of the soldiers - a true knucklehead - ruins everything by producing a flashbulb camera from under his cloak and bursting a photo.

Now everyone in the joint is aware of the American interlopers, and the chase is on to catch them as they try to escape the temple. A Hollywood-style punchout ensues, and you know that the soldiers are gonna win that battle over the scrawny Lamians, so the soldiers make their getaway.

But not before a curse is put upon them by the snake charmer himself, who declares as they run away that each one of them will be put to death by the Cobra Woman, whom the Lamians had come to worship at the ceremony.

All of this action takes about 25 minutes, and for the remaining hour the picture is relocated to New York and we have a whole new scenario but a continued plot of revenge.

Enter Faith Domergue, a dark eyed actress who starred in sci-fi classics like "This Island Earth" and "It Came From Beneath The Sea". Here she plays Lisa, a woman new to NYC who just so happens to have moved across the hall from the apartment of Marshall Thompson (another star of classic sci-fi). He was one of the soldiers involved in the temple ruckus back in Nepal. Thompson is instantly smitten with Domergue and offers to show her around the city. She has a mysterious air about her, and she seems reticent, but after their day on the town a romance is building.

The problem is that she is really The Cobra Woman, whose real reason for coming to New York is to carry out the curse that was proclaimed upon the remaining five soldiers. She means to kill them all, one by one, but now that she is falling in love with Marshall Thompson she doesn't know if she can go through with it. Some of the other guys aren't so lucky, however.

That's all I will tell you, and I am actually writing this part of the review the next afternoon (Monday July 29 at 2:30pm). I once again failed to finish last night, but I promise to correct the problem!

To sum up, "Cult Of The Cobra" is a nice little film, and different from what I was expecting, which was a diluted-color horror cheapie with really bad special effects and a woman in a rubber snake suit. Instead, it's shot in excellent, noir-ish black and white, with no cheezy special effects. It has an intelligent script and plays more like a mystery than a sci-fi. Faith Domergue was a very good dramatic actress and Thompson and Richard Long are also capable as the male leads. The only problem is that there isn't much tension because we already know who Lisa is, and all of her killings are presaged. We have to wait for the men to figure it out, and the coppers, too. Had the filmmakers explored the "discovery" theme a little more, they might've had a minor classic on their hands. It's still a good show, though, and I will give it Two Regular Thumbs Up. Definitely a keeper for fans of 1950s black and white cult horror and sci-fi. ////

Well, that's all for this afternoon. I am off to the store as usual, then a stop at the Libe to pick up more movies, with a "Grohl Walk" down past Studio 606 if I have enough time, just to get some daily mileage in. See you tonight at the usual time, have a great day!  xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo  :):)