Well, dear readers, it’s the start of a brand spanking new week and I can only hope that this week lasts a little longer than last week, which flew by like a gazelle on a pogo stick. We need a nice, slow, even-keeled week with lots of excellent vibes and xylophones. Remember, what’s good for the goose is good for the gander. What does that MEAN? I wonder if what’s good for the gander is also good for the goose? And really, who cares what’s good for the goose or the gander? Not me, certainly – I don’t give a flying Wallenda about the goose, the gander, or even the gazelle. Now I’ve gone off on a tangent about the goose and the fershluganah gander. Speaking of the goose and the gander, yesterday was quite a nice little day. I got up, I got out, I got to the post office, I got to storage, I got the music I needed, I got to Staples to Xerox said music, I got to The Wiener Factory for a couple of hot dogs, and I got rhythm. And that was all before one. At one, I came home and did quite a few necessarily necessary things around the home environment. In the afternoon, Miss Merissa Haddad came by to pick up a chart, and we had a nice conversation (it’s the first time I’ve seen her since her smashing debut). We’ll be lunching this week, and I think we’re going to do her show again in August, with just a couple of song changes. After she left, I continued doing things that needed doing, and then I finally sat on my couch like so much fish. After all, what’s good for the goose is good for the gander.
Last night, I managed to watch two count them two motion pictures on DVD. The first motion picture on DVD was entitled Music and Lyrics, starring Mr. Hugh Grant and Miss Drew Barrymore, written and directed by some person named Marc Lawrence. The movie opens with a faux early eighties music video that’s not quite on the money. Then there’s a really stupid joke saying that the leader of the band was so popular he even had a perfume named after him, called A Whiff Of Colin. So, within one minute of this film, I’m done, because the writer/director has just done a cheap, inane gag, which tosses any sense of reality right out the window. The movie has an occasional decent line (maybe three in all), but other than that, it’s a complete and utter failure and waste of time, living proof that they don’t know how to make romantic comedies anymore. The story is so slight, that in the last twenty minutes they finally have to manufacture (and I do mean manufacture) some conflict, lame as it is. Mr. Grant is Mr. Grant – he’s a one trick pony and I’ve seen the trick about five times too many. I don’t know what Miss Barrymore is, but she’s certainly not funny, and, for me, not very endearing. As a director, Mr. Lawrence is worse than Mr. Lawrence the writer. He makes Nora Ephron look like Orson Welles. The film is shot in New York, but there’s not one interesting location shot in the entire film. There are long dialogue scenes that just go on forever and go nowhere, yet if they’d cut them in half, the film would have only run about seventy minutes (it runs around ninety, sans end credits). Transfer is fine, as you’d expect. I then went from the ridiculous to the sublime – Billy Wilder’s Five Graves To Cairo, his second film as a director, written with the excellent Charles Brackett. While not as well known as some of his other films, Five Graves to Cairo is a crackling good film, with one great line after another, exquisite photography by John Seitz, a great score by Mikos Rozsa, and wonderful, colorful performances by Franchot Tone, Anne Baxter, Akim Tamiroff, Peter Van Eyck, and, of course, the brilliant Erich Von Stroheim as Field Marshall Rommell. Mr. Wilder never gets the credit he deserves as a visual stylist, and he should. While his direction is effortless and seamless, it is never less than artful and some of the images in Cairo are truly memorable. And that Wilder/Brackett dialogue – my favorite line is uttered by Mr. Von Stroheim at a dinner. Looking at his dessert, he says, “Rice pudding in Egypt – you don’t know if it’s flies or raisins.” A minor classic, and the region 2 DVD (it’s coming in region 1 from what I understand) sports a really lovely transfer. I’m afraid we will never see the likes of films like these again. If that’s progress, film industry-wise, you can keep it.
What am I, Ebert and Roeper all of a sudden? Why don’t we all click on the Unseemly Button below because what’s good for the goose is good for the gander, and vice versa and also versa vice.
Today, I’m happy to say, will almost all be mine and mine alone. With the exception of an hour long meeting at two, the rest of the day is mine to do with as I wish. I’m sure I’ll relax, perhaps take a drive, perhaps have something nice to eat, but mostly I shall lie about like a gazelle in a smoking jacket and a leopard-spotted dickie.
This upcoming week is filled with meetings and meals, not necessarily in that order. Why, tomorrow, I even have a meeting at LACC at eight-thirty in the morning, followed immediately by another LACC meeting. I have rehearsals, too, so it’s a pretty jam-packed little week.
Well, dear readers, I must take the day, I must do the things I do, I must, for example, jog (I finally did get a jog in yesterday), relax, meet, eat, relax, and watch as many DVDs as I can bear. 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, whilst we all remember that what’s good for the goose is good for the gander and also the yak.