Well, dear readers, I must write these here notes in a hurry for she of the Evil Eye will be here bright and early and also early and bright for her first visit of the New Year, a little year I like to call 2009. Therefore there will by no shilly-shallying or even shally-shillying, I will simply get to the point and I will do that as soon as I can figure what the point IS. Speaking of the point (and who wasn’t), yesterday was an interesting day. For example, I got up. That was interesting. It was quite foggy and quite chilly out so I decided to take the day off from the long jog – I’ve decided now that I’ve reached my optimal weight that I can take a day or two off each week without doing any harm. In fact, after six straight months of everyday jogs (I only missed three or four days), I think my body appreciates a respite every now and then and frankly or even georgely I think the respite appreciates my body every now and then. I read through all of David’s recent additions and changes to Nudie Musical, and then I toddled off to meet him for lunch. We went to a deli in Tarzana called Mort’s, which, I gather, is famous. I’d never heard of it before, but the food was quite good although nowhere near as good as Langer’s or Nate ‘n’ Al’s. I had a pastrami sandwich with cole slaw and Russian dressing – it wasn’t like Art’s or Jerry’s – the sandwich was not huge and I enjoyed it. We spent two hours discussing Nudie stuff, and David has three short scenes to write, and I will now enter everything we’ve agreed on into our master script. We’ll definitely be ready to do our staged reading in February or March. After lunch, I went to the mail place where a plethora of packages awaited me – almost all of the stuff I’ve been waiting for arrived, so I’m only due one or two more packages, I think. I then came home, wrote a few pages of the new novel, and then the CDs arrived. We had a little problem in that a box of inlay cards seems to have gone missing, but I got the bulk of what was coming, and I packaged them up and shipped off all but three packages for dealers. When those are shipped today, I’ll still have about 100 CDs to ship to other dealers, but those can go out as soon as the inlays are found and/or reprinted, which won’t be later than mid-week next week. But it was great to get 1100 CDs out the door. I then came home and was gratified to realize that my knee isn’t sore anymore, and the bruise on my face is almost completely gone. I then wrote a little more (mostly I’ve been adding to what I did the day before, but also moved on to new stuff), then made some tuna, which I ate (sans bread) whilst sitting on the couch like so much fish.
Last night, I watched a motion picture entitled The Human Factor, the final film of Otto Preminger. It was the only Preminger film I hadn’t seen, and I was happy to finally catch up with it. I wish I could say I loved it, but frankly I liked the imperfect Rosebud better. That said, it has some excellent performances from Nicol Williamson, John Gielgud (a brief cameo), Robert Morley, and Richard Attenborough, and an embarrassingly bad performance from model Iman. The script (from a novel by Grahame Greene) is by Tom Stoppard. I have the feeling that, like Rosebud, if this film had a great score by say a Goldsmith, or Fielding, or Elmer Bernstein, it would be a lot better. Mr. Preminger always had an amazing ability to choose great film composers, most of whom were not that well-known when he chose them – composers like Mischa Spoliansky and Elmer Bernstein and Ernest Gold and Jerry Goldsmith and Jerry Fielding and Paul Glass and Harry Nillson. But for Rosebud and The Human Factor, he got the worst possible people to score them – the composers had no idea what a film score’s function is and therefore the films have no rhythm, no pace, and the drama never gets to you in a way that I think it would have if a proper film composer had done these two films. It would be an interesting experiment to replace the music with music by a Fielding or Goldsmith and I’d bet it would be a whole different viewing experience and that each of these films would suddenly seem a lot better. The transfer on this French DVD is problematic – first of all, it’s full frame. The credits of the film say it was shot in Panavision, which would be the norm for Preminger, but frankly the film looks open matte and when I used my zoom function it framed perfectly for 1.76. I also saw no evidence of pan-and-scan and had it indeed been Panavision I certainly would have seen evidence of pan-and-scan, so the Panavision credit is a mystery, and from the looks of things, probably incorrect. The film looks very cheap (it was plagued by money troubles), but there are moments where everything works well, and the script is very interesting. The print used is pretty washed out but I’ve seen worse.
Well, why don’t we all click on the Unseemly Button below because I cannot have any shilly-shallying because she of the Evil Eye will be here all too soon.
Today, I shall do the long jog (weather and fog-permitting), and then I shall do several errands and whatnot, after which I’ll return home and do some writing. I’ll definitely finish the first chapter and I hope to get well into the second chapter. I have a hankerin’ for the Kansas City Barbecue and, best of all, I have several discount coupons, so that’s where I’ll be having my meal o’ the day. I have lots of DVDs to watch, so that will, most likely, be my evening’s entertainment.
Tomorrow, I have no plans at all and will write and watch DVDs and listen to CDs. Then the week will bring several meetings, a lot of writing, and I’ll be planning the next few weeks. I have a script to read and music to listen to, and there are several things in the offing that I’m trying to pin down. I also have to prep the next Kritzerland release, which I’m hoping to have up for preorder by the 15th of this month. As always, you dear readers will be the first to know what it is.
Well, dear readers, I must take the day, I must do the things I do, I must, for example, do the long jog, do errands and whatnot, write, eat barbecue, and then watch DVDs. Today’s topic of discussion: Who was your all-time favorite teacher. Why was he/she your favorite teacher? And have you seen said teacher since leaving school. Those who’ve read Benjamin Kritzer and Kritzerland know who mine was. Let’s have loads of lovely postings, shall we, as we dispense with all shilly-shallying and get on with the postings.