Well, dear readers, these will be short notes today. Not only is she of the Evil Eye coming here, but I must hie myself to the Bur of Bank to participate in the Ray Courts Hollywood Collectors show. I’m taking Miss Tammy Minoff with me and she will be sitting with me all the livelong day, after which I shall reward her with a fine dining adventure. I hope to see some faces I know (when I first typed faces I accidentally typed “feces” but I hope to not see any feces I know – and believe me I know some feces, baby), I hope to say hello to a few of the attending celebs, and I hope to take lots of photographs with my digital camera. I shall also have my new phone with me and its camera is also quite good. I shall also have a stash of Diet Coke. I have to set my internal clock so I get up on time, as I must shave and shower and coif my do, oh, yes, I must coif my do. Isn’t that exciting? Isn’t that just too too?
Last night, I watched two count them two Japanese motion pictures on DVD. The first Japanese motion picture on DVD was entitled The Demon. Despite what the package art and copy would have you believe, it is not a tale of ghosts or the supernatural. It is a strange little motion picture about a man whose mistress, tired of him not giving her money, dumps their three children on his doorstep, but not before she informs his wife of everything that went on between she and the husband. Naturally the wife is not too happy with the situation or the kids. She’s quite mean to them at first, and then she actively gets worse, finally causing the death of the youngest, the one-year-old. The milquetoast man then takes his young daughter out for a day on the town and while they are in a tower looking at the city from high above, he vamooses out of there, leaving her behind. Then he tries to do the same thing with his five year old son. When that fails, he pushes the kid off a cliff. The kid survives and tries to protect the father, who is arrested. This is not a happy film, but it’s very well done. It’s also very difficult to watch a few of the child abuse scenes, and let me tell you they could not make this movie this way in the US. I then watched another Japanese film by the same director, this one entitled Zero Focus, sort of a Hitchcockian missing person scenario. A woman has been married for a week, when her husband must leave town to wrap up some business with his firm before he moves to a new branch, closer to his home with the wife. When he doesn’t show up on his due date and three more days elapse, the wife sets out to find out what happened. It’s quite a labyrinthine plot, and it works really well for about ninety of its one hundred and fifteen minute running time. Then the explanations start coming and we see them from several different perspectives. That part is clever and fine, but it just goes on and on and I finally lost interest. Both transfers are very nice.
What am I, Donald Ritchie all of a sudden (only film buffs will get the reference, I’m afraid)? Why don’t we all click on the Unseemly Button below because I must coif my do or, at the very least, I must do my coif.
It was quite a strange day yesterday, weather-wise. It was gray and ugly, then it drizzled, then the sun finally came out in the late afternoon. I hope we’re done with that and that we’ll have a beautiful weekend for the Courts show. His last show’s attendance was ruined because of the heavy rains. But I did have a lovelier than lovely luncheon with Miss Juliana A. Hansen.
Tomorrow, after the Courts show, I shall be attending a Passover dinner with complete strangers. I do hope that will be all right and that I am not weirded out by being around people I have never met before. These are friends of Mr. Walter Willison, who were very taken with the Kritzer books and who grew up in the same neighborhood. So, I’m sure at least some of the conversation will be about that.
Well, dear readers, I must take the day, I must do the things I do, I must go to Burbank and sit all the livelong day, I must look for familiar faces and not familiar feces, I must drink yard of Diet Coke, and I must hopefully sign various items for various people. I shall, of course, have a fuller than full report for you. Today’s topic of discussion: Several years ago, my close personal friend, Mr. Stephen Sondheim, gave forth a list of songs he wished he’d written. So, if you had to give forth with such a list, what songs would be on it – the songs you would love to have written (for artistic and not monetary reasons). You can also include other types of music, i.e. movie scores or classical music. Let’s have loads of lovely postings, shall we? As for me, I must coif my do.