Well, dear readers, the long weekend continues. I ask you, where else on all the Internet can you get such information? Nowhere, that’s where. I don’t really have any earth shattering news to impart. Oh, I have a little headache, but that is hardly earth shattering news – head shattering maybe, but not earth shattering. What else can I tell you that would be of interest? Well, last night, for example, I dreamed I was in Manderley. In my dream, I was painting my bedcover pink, because I’d apparently become board with the brown slipcover over the down bedcover. Wouldn’t it have been easier just to buy a new slipcover rather than painting the old one pink? But dreams have no logic or they have their own logic. When I woke up, my bedcover was still brown. Still, I’m now thinking about painting it pink. The Pink Bedcover – that’s the title of my next novel, a novel of gay abandon in the boudoirs of the rich and famous and also the famous and rich. What the HELL am I talking about? The Pink Bedcover? This headache is getting worse so I will have to take a pill or something. Speaking of a pill, yesterday was a very relaxing day for the likes of me. For example, I got up. That was relaxing. I then puttered around the home environment, then had a little breakfast, then did some errands, then came home and gulled, cullied and diddled, just for the HELL of it. I then did some work on Ye Olde Laptop, then went out and had a spot of dinner, then came home and sat on my couch like so much fish.
Last night, I watched a motion picture entitled The Good German. If you liked The Good German just skip to the next paragraph. I have never liked Steven Soderbergh as a filmmaker, but The Good German is the nadir, the absolute bottom of his weird little oeuvre (I mildly enjoyed the first Ocean’s 11). The film is based on a book by Joseph Kanon, a not very good writer whose books have done better than they should. But, Mr. Soderbergh didn’t want to just film the script – he wanted to film it in the style of a 40s film. If you read the imdb comments, everyone, and I do mean everyone, points to the same two films as the inspiration – Casablanca and The Third Man. Why? Because that’s what was in the press materials and what Soderbergh said in all his interviews. Well, Casablanca and The Third Man had great scripts and were directed by masters of the craft – Michael Curtiz and Carol Reed. Soderbergh is so far from their class it’s not even funny. So, he created a set of rules for himself – using old lenses, studio backlots, just as they would have done back then. Well, if you’re going to do that then have the bloody courage of your convictions and leave out the endless “F” words, the sex scenes, the ridiculous huge stereo sound. I’ve read that he had his actors perform in a presentational style, as if that’s what Bogart and Bergman and Joseph Cotton and Orson Welles were about. Puhleeze. And his actors are simply not capable of doing that, so you wouldn’t know that’s what they were doing – it’s that same minimalist crap that calls itself acting that all actors seem to do today (Mr. O’Toole comments on this trend on the Becket commentary – he doesn’t care for it, and who can blame him). Then Mr. Soderbergh says that Thomas Newman’s score is supposed to be in the grand and classic tradition of Steiner. Note to Mr. Soderbergh and Mr. Newman – Mr. Steiner knew how to write a tune. Here we get a full-bodied nothing of a score, not a theme in sight, just a lot of the same three droning chord progressions over and over again, along with a few loud passages, which, I suppose, are meant to invoke Mr. Steiner, but don’t. I mean, just make the movie and tell your story instead of having the film be all about “film” and style and ripping off better moviemakers. I spent over half the film trying to figure out what the HELL was going on, and the other half not caring what was going on. George Clooney is one of the most one-note actors ever, with absolutely no charisma or personality. Tobey Maguire is an embarrassment in his role as a despicable human being. Cate Blanchett is Cate Blanchett – I didn’t mind her in Notes On A Scandal, but here she just bored me. The transfer is okay, presented in full frame Academy ratio (it wasn’t projected that way – it was 1:66 inside a 1:85 frame). A complete bust and truly the cause of my headache. But I’ll boil it all down to its essence: How many times can people enter a dark room only to be attacked immediately by unseen people? How many times can George Clooney have the bejeezus kicked out of him? I gotta tell you.
Well, why don’t we all click on the Unseemly Button below because I must go take an aspirin and then check on my bedcover to see if it’s pink or not. And I also have to gull, diddle, and cully.
Today, I shall be relaxing, watching DVDs, perhaps having an alumni association meeting (haven’t had this confirmed yet), doing a little work, and then watching more DVDs. I suppose I shall eat a little something at some point, and I may even take a drive if the spirit moves me.
It’s now time to post these here notes, and yet I am not finished writing them. I must, therefore, finish them up posthaste so that I can haste post. I think I may try to rearrange some boxes in Ye Olde Garage, and also hopefully find some more stuff I’m looking for.
Well, dear readers, I must take the day, I must do the things I do, I must, for example, jog (if at all possible), have a meeting, do some eating, and watch some DVDs whilst relaxing on the couch like so much fish. Today’s topic of discussion: It’s free-for-all day, the day in which you dear readers get to make with the topics and we all get to post about them. So, let’s have loads of lovely topics and loads of lovely postings, as I dream of The Pink Bedcover.