Well, dear readers, I must, once again, write these notes in a hurry because shortly I will be on my way to Mr. Grant Geissman’s house to do the final mixing on the new CD. Then, all that’s left is for me to figure out the order of the songs and voila – we ship it off to be mastered and pressed. Isn’t that exciting, isn’t that just too too?
Yesterday, I picked up several new DVDs, including a Peter Bogdanovich triptych, Targets, Paper Moon and Daisy Miller. I checked out the transfers, which are all splendidly splendid. What is not splendidly splendid are the Peter Bogdanovich “introductions” to each film. These are “written, produced, and directed” by my least favorite person who does these sorts of things, Mr. Laurent Bouzeareau. So, not only does Mr. Bogdanovich “introduce” each film, he gives away major plot spoilers (with accompanying scenes from the film) and each of the “introductions” are at least ten minutes long. Call them anything else but “introductions” and it would be fine. Or, warn the viewers that they’ll be hearing plot spoilers, including the endings of the films. Because, if one isn’t aware, one might just watch something called “introduction” thinking that all that will happen is that Mr. Bogdanovich will say a few words and then the film will begin. Brickbats to Mr. Bouzeareau, who gets paid a lot of money to do this sort of thing.
Last night, I went to a friend’s to see a screening of The Wizard of Oz in IB Technicolor. What I did not know was that this was one of the fifty IB Tech prints that were made in the year 2000. Since there hadn’t been much of anything printed in IB Technicolor since Technicolor stopped doing that sort of thing in 1974 (they, in fact, sold the machines to Red China) I didn’t hold out a lot of hope as to what the film would look like. But, before we ever got to the film we had to sit through a half-hour of outtakes from Annie Get Your Gun with Miss Judy Garland, a cartoon, and the complete making of The Wizard of Oz documentary from 1990 that’s on the DVD. By the time he started the film it was nine-thirty, so I only stayed until Judy got to Oz and the film went to Technicolor. But, I must tell you, it was the most gorgeous print I’ve ever seen of the film – it outdid any of the old IB Tech prints I’ve seen – it was, in fact, amazingly sharp and so colorful that it almost hurt one’s eyes. So, my feeling is that they should reprint lots of films in IB Technicolor – starting with The Adventures of Robin Hood.
What am I, Ebert and Roeper all of a sudden? Don’t I have an album to mix? I do, and I shall, so let’s all click on the Unseemly Button below so I can vamoose or, at the very least, vambuffalo.
Don’t forget, Donald will have a brand spanking new radio show up today, and our Unseemly Live Chat will take place tomorrow evening at six o’clock Pacific Mean Daylight Savings Time. Be there or be round.
I just read that Gregory Hines has passed on. Much too young, at fifty-seven year. Yesterday, I was driving around my old neighborhood (for research purposes) and I passed my high school and Mr. Hines was scheduled to host a big tap extravaganza there on August 19th. Very sad indeed – and let us hope that Mr. Hines will tap happily wherever his soul has moved on to.
Well, dear readers, I must take the day, I must do the things I do, I must go mix an album, which will probably take all the livelong day and some of the evening, and then I must come home and eat some various and sundried foodstuffs and get to bed. Today’s topic of discussion: It’s free-for-all day, the day in which you get to discuss any topic you so choose. So choose a topic you so choose and discuss away – I want lots and lots of posts to read, and I’m sure I’ll be checking in from Grant’s house. Let’s not have our usual dreary Sunday, let’s post until the cows come home, shall we? Post away, my pretties, and I’ll be back in a bit.