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July 4, 2011:

THE FOURTH OF JULY, FIREWORKS, AND WIENERS

Bruce Kimmel Photograph bk's notes

Well, dear readers, let me be the first to tell you that it is the fourth of July, Independence Day, which is also the title of a song from The Brain From Planet X. It is a day of barbecuing wieners and burgers and chicken and fish and kabobs and it is an evening of fireworks and loud noises and rowdy people and drunken revelry and I shall be experiencing very little of it since I don’t like kabobs, loud noises, rowdy people and drunken revelry – I don’t mind watching fireworks and I’m certainly always up for a wiener, barbecued or otherwise. I do love these long weekends and this one has been just as I wished it to be. Yesterday, for example, was a lovelier than lovely day. I slept until ten, answered e-mails and then, at noon, did the four-mile jog. It was way too hot and the jog was way too difficult in that kind of heat, so from now on I have to do it no later than ten or else in the late afternoon/early evening.

Then I was a pretty good boy, calorie-wise, having three smallish chicken tacos (have to lay off the beef for the first few weeks of this here diet) with just some lettuce and cheese as accoutrement. Since a beef taco at Taco Bell is only 170 calories, this should have been on a par with that. I had some strawberries for dessert with a little whipped cream on them. I also bought some other fruits like apples and grapes and I got some carrots, too, and I snacked on all that for the rest of the evening. So, a good day of eating and a good day of not too many calories, considering I burned 400 on the jog. Then I saw the latest five ideas for a Nudie Musical cover for the Blu and Ray. I’ve never really been satisfied with any of the many posters or art done for the film. We all hated the Paramount poster at the time, but I’ve come to sort of like it. The second poster for the new distributor had a great logo – the line-art chorus girl with the title being her costume. It was done by Jimmy Pearsall, who did the great poster art for Chinatown. But I didn’t care for the way it was used on the poster – which was all yellow and black and white. The logo itself was very cute, and kind of elegant – that part’s fine, but the layout was just sort of blah. The movie ads in the newspapers used the line art better.

The cover of the DVD was okay – kind of a mish-mash and they tried to fill in the line art chorus girl to give her more shape, but that’s not what the art is. Also, I felt that black and pink didn’t really have a pop to it and the whole thing just wasn’t fun enough. The Kritzerland designer began working on the design last week and sent me six options, none of which I liked. The problem with line art is that it usually has to be on a solid background to show up – in this case, all the backgrounds had to be light, but I just thought it was completely boring, and that the chorus girl just didn’t pop enough and didn’t look good on the different colored backgrounds – he had white, yellow, pink, blue – and he was getting frustrated because all I could tell him was that it wasn’t working for me. I then found the poster for the 16mm release of the film from Cinema 5. That poster, while not executed terribly well in terms of its drawings, at least had an elegance about it, with very pleasing colors, and I liked the elements of it – steps, curtains, a skyline – and they’d painted chorus girls but that’s where they failed because whoever did it just couldn’t really get the faces right. So, I gave that to our designer, just to see the layout, the kind of retro feel, and the color and the elements I liked – and then I told him to just let his mind roam free. And yesterday he sent me the latest five options, which were much better and much more what I was hoping for – I had to see them to know that, though. None were perfect, and I asked him to tweak all five in different ways. He did that and sent them back and they were all closer. Then we eliminated two of them and will now further tweak the three best candidates, which, when he’s through with the tweaking, I may post here for your comments. But each of the three has a sense of elegance and style while having a bit of a fun look and the chorus girl art looks great the way he’s incorporated it. What he did was come up with a design solution that made the line art work. So, it will definitely be one of the three and any of them would be fine and look much more appealing than what we’ve had. We’ll also probably put two quotes at the bottom of the front cover – the Newsday quote calling it one of the best films of the year, and the great Judith Crist Star Wars quote from the NY Post. We’ll put others on the back of the case. I then sat on my couch like so much fish.

Last night, I watched a motion picture on Blu and Ray entitled The Outlaw Josey Wales. I saw it on its opening day back in 1976 and really loved it a lot. Plus, I had the fun of seeing an LACC schoolmate, Tom Roy Lowe, get his dream come true of appearing in a movie oater. In my musical Stages, which is based on my experiences in the LACC theater department, there’s a character based on Tom named Lorne Roy Wayne. I owned the DVD of Josey but only watched the beginning, so I really haven’t seen the film all the way through since it first came out (when I saw it several times). The film holds up marvelously – it’s beautifully written and structured, Clint is at his best, Sondra Locke is cute as a button, and the great John Vernon is great, as always. Many in the supporting cast are from Clint’s “stock company” and they’re all great. And it has a brilliant score by Jerry Fielding. The transfer is absolutely breathtaking – all transfers should look like this. Perfect color, not too much grain (it was done from the camera negative), and sharp as a tack, save for the opticals or purposely soft shots. It also handles Clint’s love for very dark photography really well. This is the poster child for what the color in westerns should look like, and it puts the color in the transfers of The Wild Bunch and The Searchers to shame. Highly recommended by the likes of me. Interestingly, every “review” I read on those various and sundried forums hedged their bets – basically saying it was a great transfer (no way around that), but saying things like “I did see a couple of halos” and nonsense like that. It’s like these people don’t know much of anything and they’re afraid to just give it full marks because then some poster might call them a fool and say “Why didn’t you mention the halos?” Note to “reviewers” – there are no halos or any other artifacts in this fantastic transfer, and if you think you are, really, get some glasses, learn about movie photography and backlighting and sunshine on film because you make yourselves look like twits. I haz spoken.

Well, why don’t we all click on the Unseemly Button below because I must get to bed and get as much beauty sleep as possible for I must be up at six in the morning to announce the new Kritzerland title.

Today, I shall be up at six in the morning to announce the new Kritzerland title. I shall try to go right back to sleep and hopefully I will be able to. Then I’ll do the four-mile jog, after which I believe we’ll have a rehearsal with the thirteen-year-old, if she’s feeling all better, which I hope she will be. If we do it, then I think her folks are bringing food over, so that will be nice. I’m sure I’ll watch a little of the City of Studio fireworks from in front of the home environment.

Tomorrow, I’m hoping to go down to LACC for a little meeting about our show in November – just want to discuss the look of it and how it’s all going to work. I’ve cast the two ringers – Alet Taylor and Damon Kirsche, and we’ve got our very own wonderful dear reader Jose as musical director. After that, we have our stumble-through at five. Then Wednesday is our sound check and show, which I hope will be well attended. Thursday I’m back at the lab to do the sound portion of the Nudie transfer – I’ll be very interested in that process.

Well, dear readers, I must take the day, I must do the things I do, I must, for example, announce a title, jog, have a rehearsal and eat something light but amusing. Today’s topic of discussion: What’s the most dazzling display of fireworks you’ve ever seen? Where was it, when was it, and what made it so spectacular? Let’s have loads of lovely postings, shall we, whilst I hit the road do dreamland, where I will be filled with Independence.

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