Elizabeth, I just want to say right off the bat how great I think your new cello piece sounds - even just the few seconds I heard - and how happy I am that you are recording in the studio with classical musicians, or at least the one musician (the cellist). Maybe there are others, I don't know, but I just think it's wonderful, and if it's not presumptuous of me to say, I am also so proud of you and what you've accomplished. Congratulations! Is the piece that is being recorded the same one you were working on in your last post, the one that you said you might finish? It's hard to tell from the short clip of the cellist. The melody is different, I think, but it's along the same lines as the one you posted previously, so maybe it's another part of the same piece. Anyway, I am excited for you. I see that the cellist (and you, I assume) are recording in a professional studio. Has your music been commissioned as part of an outside project, or is this something you have undertaken yourself? Only your further posts will tell....... :)
So, post further if you get a chance. :):) And keep writing and exploring themes. I know you have said that classical music was your first love, and believe me, you have the ability to really branch out now with your composing. You can write for solo or multiple instruments in any mode you choose.
Just listen to what your musical ear is telling you. /////
I did, of course, watch a movie this evening, a really weird noir called "Kiss Me Deadly" (1955) that was directed by Robert Aldrich, whose "Emperor Of The North" we just watched last week. "Kiss Me Deadly" was made much earlier in his career, but is no less accomplished even though it is somewhat formulaic in structure. The movie is based on a Mickey Spillane mystery novel and stars Ralph Meeker as Spillane's renegade Private Eye Mike Hammer.
As the movie opens, Hammer is driving his sports car at night, in the darkness of what looks to be one of the beach area canyons of Los Angeles. Suddenly, a woman (a very young Cloris Leachman, or "Clorox Bleachman" as my Dad would say) appears in his headlights. She is running down the middle of the road, barefoot and wearing only a trenchcoat. Hammer swerves to avoid her and nearly wrecks his car in the process. She is in distress, so of course he gives her a ride, and it turns out that she has just escaped from a mental institution.
Bleachman engages in all kinds of non sequitorial double talk with Mike Hammer, and then asks to be let off at the nearest bus stop. But before he can do that, his car is forced off the road by anonymous hoodlums, who we see only from the waist down, and then he and the girl are beaten, drugged and pushed off a Malibu cliff in Hammer's car, which explodes into a ball of fire.
That should be the end of them, and Clorox Blea...I mean Cloris Leachman is indeed dead, but Mike Hammer has somehow escaped. The next we see him is in the hospital, where he has awakened from a three week coma.
This is another plot that I can't reveal too much of, because it might lead you to guess what the mystery is all about in this movie, and believe me, that would ruin all the fun because as I said, this is one weird film noir. As Hammer's girlfriend Velda says to him, "you're after the Big Whatzit, aren't you"?
Ralph Meeker, who was so great as one of the mutinous passengers in the legendary TV movie "Lost Flight", is an excellent choice to play Mike Hammer, handsome and brutal in equal measure. He's a big hit with the ladies, and at one point in the movie I had to laugh because gets out of his car, a woman walks up to him, and they are making out within five seconds. And he's never met her. :):)
But he's also the kind of guy who bites off more than he can chew. In this case he is trying to solve, that begins with the death of Leachman and leads down a twisted alley, he assumes he knows better than the cops what is taking place, and more importantly what is literally being covered up.
When he finds out what it is, you might say he is blindsided by his discovery.
If you are gonna see "Kiss Me Deadly", don't read anything about it beforehand. Also, don't worry if you can't always follow the plot or understand every character's motivation. I couldn't, and neither can Mike Hammer.
I give it Two Big Thumbs Up, because director Robert Aldrich keeps things moving and interesting. Meeker and the other actors hit all the right notes, and the whole thing looks terrific in nighttime black and white. Aldrich also captured some great 1950s Southern California atmosphere, using old time roadside gas stations, auto repair shops and old Victorian homes as some of the locations.
"Kiss Me Deadly" is highly recommended, a unique and really weird film noir. /////
We had good singing in church this morning. Hope you are enjoying your Sunday afternoon and I will see you back here later tonight at the Usual Time.
Tons of love! xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
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