Well, dear readers, the gloriously glorious Labor Day sans labor continues, and I, for one, have been enjoying it tremendously. The only thing I have not been enjoying is this bloody heat wave that’s reappeared here in Los Angeles, California, USA. Here, I thought we were done with it, and yet it has reared its ugly little head once again. This whole week has been unbearably hot – for example, last evening it must have been eighty-five degrees out. That is way too many degrees for a September evening, if you ask me and I know you do, which is why I answered. But the heat will not get me down, because I am enjoying relaxing and relax I shall whether heat, rain, or snot. Has anyone noticed that I accidentally typed “snot” instead of “snow,” which is what I meant to type? But I rather like the trio of heat, rain, and snot, don’t you? Speaking of snot, here I thought we’d put ye olde book to bed, but, as it turned out, there were a couple of little things that made themselves known to me because of an extreme bit of serendipity. After my jog, I was out in the garage looking for some magazines that were packed away in a box. Well, I came upon some old newspapers’ movie sections, which I love to collect. I took them in the house, along with said magazines. Now, in the book, there is a sequence in one of the stories where I had to say what was playing on a certain date in a certain year. I’d asked someone to do the research, but said someone couldn’t be bothered, and I didn’t have time to go to the library. So, I did a little google research and a little imdb research and just came up with a date I liked (a Saturday) and a film I liked playing at a theater I liked. Well, all the newspaper movie sections I found yesterday were not only from that year, but three of them were from that month. How lucky was that? How serendipitous was that? Well, google was incorrect about what date fell on what day, and the imdb was incorrect about when the movie came out. So, not only did I have an incorrect date (the date I used because of google actually fell on a Friday, not a Saturday), but the movie I had playing wasn’t released yet. Happily, I had a newspaper from December of that year, and the movie was in its second week, so I called Mr. Grant Geissman and we changed the date. About an hour later, he called back – he’d decided to read the story (which he loved) and had found a really tiny mistake – so, he fixed that, and NOW the book has been put to bed. It will all be sent tomorrow, including the rear cover’s blurb, which I got yesterday, and which I’ll print in the notes tomorrow. I’d sent the book out to get blurbs, but everyone I sent to has been super busy and I was worried none would come back in time. The one that came yesterday (courtesy of our very own Pogue) did the trick – it’s just right and because of the design of the back cover, one blurb actually works best. When I get the others I’ll just use them on the book’s website. So, we really are done and I, for one, say hallelujah.
Other than that, I didn’t do anything but sit on my couch like so much fish, watching DVDs. Oh, I worked at the piano for a couple of hours (if you can believe it, I rewrote some of the music for one of the Brain songs – I just felt it was a bit too rangy, and for a couple of other reasons I felt it should move along a bit quicker (it’s a torch song, but I wanted not to be quite so turgid as it was). I’m still thinking about it, but I’m liking it better – if that’s what I finally decide, then my music person will come over and fix the chart. The bridge stays exactly the same, as does the intro verse, and the very last four lines remain the same, so it should be fairly easy to fix.
Well, why don’t we all click on the Unseemly Button below so I can tell you about the DVDs I watched, whilst I sip on my Diet Coke whilst wearing my smoking jacket, my leopard-spotted dickie, my lounging pyjamas, and my bunny slippers.
Yesterday, I managed to watch a few count them a few motion pictures on DVD. First off, I finished watching Arabesque. It’s a perfectly enjoyable piece of fluff, but it so badly wants to capture the magic of Charade and it so badly fails to do so. As much I like Mr. Peck and Miss Loren, they aren’t exactly Cary Grant and Audrey Hepburn. Mr. Donen’s direction is very cutesy, too. Mr. Mancini’s score is top-notch, and the region 2 transfer is very good indeed. I then watched another motion picture on DVD entitled Tap, starring Mr. Gregory Hines. Aside from some excellent tap dancing scenes, this is a terrible motion picture. The script is awful, as is the direction of Nick Castle (who wrote the awful script). Mr. Castle was a flavor-of-the-week for a few years, but basically he was one of those eighties directors with no originality whatsoever – so some of his films are Spielbergesque, and others, like Tap, suffer from Taylor Hackfordisms in extremis. Every shot in Tap is suffused with smoke, with no front lighting and bright and obnoxious back light streaming in from windows or from lamps. In scenes that take place during the day in a dance studio, the only light is yellow sunlight coming in through windows – the rest of the room is dark – you’d think someone in that room would have turned on a light (the practical light in the set remains off). Well, the problem is that when you have mainly African-American actors with no front light and extreme back light causing extreme darkness, well, I think the problem is fairly obvious – you can’t see faces. Mr. Castle at least has the good sense to shoot the tap scenes from head-to-toe, so that’s nice. The plot and dialogue are horrid, but the cast is quite good, and it includes some great old tap dancers from the golden age. There are several of those puff featurettes, and listening to everyone you’d think this film had been a smash hit. Sorry. It wasn’t. It was a total box-office and critical loser. I guess they all just want to pretend it was a hit. I then watched yet another motion picture on DVD, which was entitled I Love You, Alice B. Toklas, starring Mr. Peter Sellers. Time has not been kind to this film – however, I didn’t find it so funny back when it came out. Now, it’s completely unfunny. I don’t for the life of me know why this film has any reputation – it’s one of Sellers most uninteresting performances. What it does have going for it are great LA location shots circa 1968 and the beautiful (and still beautiful) Leigh Taylor Young. The transfer is sharp, but the colors are off – typical these days for Warner Bros.
Today, I shall be meeting with Mr. Kevin Spirtas for a short time (the meeting was supposed to happen yesterday, but didn’t). After that, I have a neighborhood Labor Day partay to attend at the home of Mr. Tony Slide and Mr. Bob Gitt. Otherwise, I shall be doing nothing at all, save for watching DVDs and sitting on my couch like so much fish.
Well, dear readers, I must take the day, I must do the things I do, I must, for example, jog, meet, watch DVDs, partay, and watch DVDs. Today’s topic of discussion: Which films and plays did you absolutely love when you first saw them, and now when you watch them you wonder what on earth you could have seen in them? Let’s have loads of lovely postings, shall we, whilst we think about whether we’ll have heat, rain, or snot.