Well, dear readers, it’s Friday, the end of the work-week or, at the very least, the end of the week-work. I spent a good deal of yesterday mapping things out for the script I’m rewriting – figuring which characters to keep, which to lose, which to change, but more importantly, trying to give it a structure it doesn’t have, and to make everyone’s motivations, both heroes and bad guys, simple but clear. In the original draft, everything is arbitrary and you never really know if you’re supposed to think the lead guy is a bad guy or a good guy and the villains don’t have any motivation for what they do at all. So, I made lots of notes and will really start writing seriously over the weekend. I’ve already done about ten pages, which includes the prologue and the main title sequence, and I’m pretty happy with that stuff. So, forward we go. I also had to go to Mr. Grant Geissman’s and attend to this little fix we had to do for the publisher (one of the margins was off by something like a quarter of an inch and apparently they don’t even have that much room to play with when their printing house trims the pages). So, that’s done and should be waiting for them via e-mail this very morning. Isn’t that exciting? Isn’t that just too too?
Last night I watched two motion pictures on DVD. First, I finished watching Mr. Roman Polanski’s The Fearless Vampire Killers. I’ve always liked this film, even though it was not liked by just about everyone, critics and public alike, on its initial release. Of course, that version was about fifteen minutes shorter, had a tacked-on animated sequence and had the two leading actors dubbed. This DVD, while retaining the US title (it was originally called Dance of the Vampires, and yes, Virginia, it was the basis for the musical), is the full-length original Polanski cut of 107 minutes. MGM tried to sell it as a slapstick comedy (the trailer is ridiculous), and while it has moments that are very funny, it’s not an out-and-out comedy. Jack MacGowran and Polanski are wonderful as the professor out to kill vampires and his assistant – both of their voices are restored here (the dubbing was unbearable), Sharon Tate is beautiful and sweet as one of the vampire’s early victims, and Ferdy Mane makes an elegant and lethal vampire. Mr. Polanski’s direction is superb, filled with one memorable image after another. And the actual “dance” of the vampires is brilliantly shot, including the famous shot where all the vampires dance up to a mirror but all we see in the mirror is Polanski, Tate (now safe again) and MacGowran – the rest of the vampires, of course, have no mirror image. It’s a clever, clever shot, one which totally confounded people back then, but which has been ripped off several times, most notably in the opening shot of Peggy Sue Got Married. The score is by Polanski regular, Krystof Komeda, who, had he lived, I think would have been a major force in film music. He died tragically while in his mid-thirties. But he left behind Rosemary’s Baby, Cul de Sac, and Fearless Vampire Killers (all for Mr. Polanski) along with a few others, including his final film, Riot, with Jim Brown. The transfer is very sharp, and while the skin tones are a bit on the brown side, the colors are vivid as can be. The extras include a silly featurette made at the time of the film, and the laughably bad trailer. I then watched a motion picture entitled It’s Alive, written and directed by Mr. Larry Cohen. Mr. Cohen has made some of the strangest genre films ever made, and this one stands tall amongst them. It’s really strange – continuously amusing, although I’m not sure Mr. Cohen meant for it to be (but maybe he did), filled with Mr. Cohen’s trademark strange casting. John Ryan thinks he’s doing Shakespeare, so emotive is he, but he’s so method and over-the-top it’s just hard to watch him. Sharon Farrell plays the unfortunate mother and she’s strange, too. The whole thing is strange, but would you expect less from a movie about a killer baby? The score, which does its best to keep things chilling and creepy, is by the great Bernard Herrmann. This thing was such a hit that Mr. Cohen made two sequels, which are paired on another DVD. They are equally strange, equally amusing, and equally strange. Strange is the word, and if you’ve ever seen Mr. Cohen’s Q or God Told Me To, you know just how strange strange is. The transfer is excellent, although some might find it less so because they don’t know that this is what it looked like on its initial release – very low budget, bad lighting, grainy film stock and some of the worst art direction I’ve ever seen.
What am I, Ebert and Roeper all of a sudden? Why don’t we all click on the Unseemly Button below because today I shall be getting a haircut and then viewing the What If video footage.
I’m feeling a bit better, cough-wise and throat-wise, so maybe this thing is finally on its way out. Then I can be fancy-free, and flit about like a water buffalo dancing The Nutcracker.
Last night I got some take out from a place called Panda Express and it wasn’t half-bad. They just opened one a block from my home environment, right downstairs from the CPK. This little mall or whatever you’d call it, has had seven restaurants in the downstairs section, each one of them failing within six months. They were finally smart to open something like Panda Express – just the right kind of joint. I’ve never eaten at one of these places, but the food was decent (orange chicken, chicken with string beans, and kung pao chicken – chicken was the theme) and the price is right.
Chicken was the theme. I like that sentence, don’t you? I find it piquant and zesty with a certain buoyancy. Chicken is the theme. It’s quite zingy, if you ask me. Short and sweet, but zippy, too. That’s a lot of “z”s.
Well, dear readers, I must take the day, I must do the things I do, I must get a haircut, I must write, and I must view video footage. And remember – chicken is the theme. Yes, that certainly has zotz. Today’s topic of discussion: It’s Friday – what is currently in your CD player and your DVD/video player? I’ll start – DVD, Tess, un film de Roman Polanski. CD, a whole assortment of goodies, including, Fitzwilly, The Great Escape, Piranha and The Great Train Robbery (all from Varese Sarabande), and a newly remastered soundtrack to the original 1954 Godzilla. Quite a potpourri. Your turn. Let’s have loads of lovely postings, shall we, and don’t forget – chicken is the theme.