Well, dear readers, I hope you are all enjoying your Labor Day Weekend. I spent yesterday relaxing and watching a couple of DVDs, and I even picked up a couple of CDs I’d been meaning to get, including the Joel Grey dual album on DRG and Carol Burnett’s 1971 album. Today I shall continue proofing whilst sitting on the exercise bike at the gym, and then I shall watch a few more DVDs and maybe even a couple of things I TIVOd. Isn’t that exciting? Isn’t that just too too?
The problem with spending a relaxing day doing nothing is that I then have nothing to write about. Hence, today’s notes will be about nothing. Have you ever tried to write about nothing? It’s very difficult. Why? Because as soon as you start to write about nothing you’re writing about something, namely nothing. That is the conundrum of writing about nothing. It is an exercise in futility, but it’s the price one pays ($1.88 plus tax) when one has nothing to write about because one has done nothing but relax. In any case, these here notes will be nothing to write home about. Perhaps tomorrow I can write home about something although frankly home never writes me at all. If someone would like to step up and tell me what the hell I’m talking about I’m sure everyone would be grateful.
Yesterday I finished watching a motion picture on DVD entitled Ransom, starring Mr. Sean Connery. This is a region 2 DVD. Ransom is a terrible piece of cheese – bad script, horrible direction and surprisingly lousy photography from the usually lauded Sven Nykvist. It features a loud Jerry Goldsmith score, too, very much in his mid-seventies Capricorn One phase. It’s about a terrorist hijacking and kidnapping, but I really couldn’t tell you who was doing what to whom or why they were doing it. Muddled would be a kind way of putting it. Inept would be another. I then watched the new DVD of Mr. Alfred Hitchcock’s I Confess, starring Mr. Montgomery Clift, Miss Anne Baxter and Mr. Karl Malden. I really like this film a lot – it’s so beautifully directed and shot and has real tension and moral issues at its heart. The actors are all excellent, especially O.E. Hasse and Dolly Haas, who are both phenomenal. A good deal of it was shot on location in Quebec. The film is considered second-tier Hitch but not by me – it’s first-tier all the way and if you haven’t seen it, you should. The transfer is fantastic – rich black-and-white, and excellent mono sound. There is the standard Laurent Bozeareau (I have no idea if that’s how to spell his last name) documentary – it’s my big complaint about this Hitchcock set: Each documentary on each of the films has the same participants basically and I just can’t stand them. The only interesting participant from a fun standpoint, is on the I Confess DVD – Jack Larson reminiscing about Montgomery Clift. For those who don’t know, Mr. Larson played Jimmy Olson in the classic George Reeves Superman TV show. I’ve also checked out the transfers on Strangers on a Train, Suspicion, and Foreign Correspondent, and they’re all top-notch. I’ll be watching them and the rest of the collection this week. I then watched Mr. David Cronenberg’s very disturbing film, Videodrome. It’s not my favorite Cronenberg, but seeing this wonderful transfer from Criterion is a revelation of sorts – I’d only seen this film on VHS and then laserdisc. The production design of Cronenberg regular Carol Spier is, as always, amazing, Howard Shore’s score is spooky and perfectly suited to the film, and James Woods is excellent in the leading role. I’m not much of a Debby Harry fan and her performance here is okay but not great. The film has some interesting things to say about media and its effect on the human race, but some of the imagery is truly disgusting and disturbing. Lots of extras on a second disc. The first disc, aside from containing the film and two commentary tracks, also contains a five-minute short film that Mr. Cronenberg did for the Toronto Film Festival (I think) in 2000. It’s a small masterpiece, shot on hi-def video (with the exception of one shot) and I’d get the disc for that five minutes alone.
What am I, Ebert and Roeper all of a sudden? Well, why don’t we all click on the Unseemly Button below – for Nothing Notes there is already way too much content.
I definitely have nothing else to write about. Today I shall try to do something so that tomorrow’s notes will have depth and meaning, not necessarily in that order. But, I’m afraid that today’s notes are simply nothing. The Nothing Notes. I might as well just leave the pages blank.
Of course, if I left the pages blank then you’d just be staring at nothingness and you’d be confounded and confused, not necessarily in that order. You’d think there was something wrong with your eyesight. You’d think you’d lost your sanity or that there was a problem with your various and sundried computers. So, no blank pages. I shall fill these here pages with nothingness. Damn them, damn them all to hell.
Well, dear readers, I must take the day, I must do the things I do, I must do something more than nothing so that I don’t have to write about nothing again tomorrow. Today’s topic of discussion: What is the most disturbing imagery you’ve seen on film and in the theater? Let’s have loads of lovely postings, shall we, and make certain they are about nothing, just to be in keeping with the theme of today’s notes. Actually, the theme of today’s notes is Dimitri Tiomkin’s The High and the Mighty. Let’s all start whistling whilst we post.