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November 7, 2012:

WE NOW RETURN YOU TO OUR REGULAR PROGRAMMING

Bruce Kimmel Photograph bk's notes

Well, dear readers, the election is over and I, for one, say hoo and ray to the election being over. It will be so nice not to be bombarded with endless campaigning, nastiness, and both sides’ partisans sniping at each other as in a high school debate. Four years ago the same exact thing happened and when President Obama won we had tears and dreams and hopes ad nauseum all over Facebook. All the hopes and dreams didn’t quite pan out, but that didn’t stop the same thing from happening last night when the announcement was made. So, let’s just hope that this time the hopes and dreams do pan out. The country deserves it and certainly the people who reside in these here United States deserve it. And that’s all I’m saying about that.

I spent the entirety of yesterday avoiding Facebook and any media. It was very pleasant. I went about my business and did the things I needed to do. They included getting up – I always think it’s a victorious day when I can get out of bed without help, doing work on the computer, eating, doing many errands and whatnot, picking up no packages thanks to Ontrac delivering late again, having many telephonic conversations, locking down the musical director for the December Kritzerland show, which is fully cast now save for a guest star – we’ve got Dan Callaway, Emma Degerstedt (she recently did an Outside The Box episode and is terrific), Damon Kirsche, Lisa Livesay and Jane Noseworthy, along with young Jenna Rosen and our musical director is once again Lloyd Cooper, who did a great job on our last show – and then I finally sat on my couch like so much fish.

Last night, I watched a motion picture on Blu and Ray entitled The Birds. I saw The Birds at the Picwood Theater on opening day and really loved it. I went back several times. I owned a beautiful 16mm Tech print of it, too, and used to run it quite often. I’ve owned it on every home video format and it’s never looked very good. Universal did a major restoration, and already some of the usual suspects have criticized it for DNR and other junk like that. Well, I’m happy to say it looks pretty terrific – color is perfect for ninety-nine percent of the film, which is a huge plus. It’s very sharp (save for Miss Hedren’s close shots, which are shot with a diffusion filter), and I don’t really care what tools were used to smooth out the difference between the production photography and the huge number of multi-pass opticals, they did a great job with it. The theatrical prints, which were generations away from the camera negative, smoothed out things some, and that’s exactly what Universal has done here and in this particular case it works very well. The effects shots look really good in this transfer. The only time the color goes awry is in the final shot, which has been turned into an almost black-and-white image, which it shouldn’t be. That’s a minor nit to pick, however. I still love the film, despite its occasional weaknesses. Hitchcock’s direction is just fantastic, and I like Tippi and Rod and Jessica a lot. So, thus far in this Hitchcock box set there are two transfers that I’m pretty pleased with – this and Vertigo.

I also watched a motion picture on the computer, the name of which I cannot say because we’re doing the score. I had no idea that Amazon prime members can watch any movie on Amazon for free – so it was great to finally see this film that I somehow managed to miss all these years. It’s a good but not great film, with really good performances and a great score that makes a lovely CD. As soon as I finished it, I played the CD master while I wrote the liner notes. It took a while but I got it done, so that’s one down and two to go or, conversely, two to go and one down. After that, I took a hot shower, ate some Halloween candy, and continue to try and cast the two remaining parts for next week’s shoot. It’s agonizing.

Well, why don’t we all click on the Unseemly Button below because I am quite overtired and really need a good night’s beauty sleep.

Today, I think will be another liner notes day – I may have to go to Amazon to watch one more film but if I can just get the two sets done that will be a big load off my small mind. I’ll also eat, pick up the Ontrac package I should have had yesterday, relax, and perhaps watch a motion picture.

Tomorrow, I will be in the editing room at noon, most likely swapping out one shot in episode one, and then viewing the first cut of episode two, after which we’ll probably make some changes and futz with things, as we always do. Then we’ll put the finalized episode one on our hard drive in compressed and uncompressed form and I’ll get it on my computer and ready to upload Saturday at midnight for our Sunday season two premiere. Tomorrow night, I have a work session on a project I’ve been helping with. Friday I don’t know what is happening other than I’ll be sending out the schedule for next week’s shoot and hopefully by the end of this day we’ll have the two outstanding roles cast. The weekend is pretty open at this point and that’s a good thing as I have to finalize the song choices for the Kritzerland show and get everyone their music.

Well, dear readers, I must take the day, I must do the things I do, I must, for example, try to do a jog, write liner notes, watch a film or two, hopefully pick up some packages (other than the one I know I’m picking up), and relax. Today’s topic of discussion: It’s Ask BK Day, the day in which you can ask me or any dear reader any old question you like and we can give any old answer we like. So, let’s have loads of lovely questions and loads of lovely answers and loads of lovely postings, shall we, whilst I hit the road to dreamland and hope that we can all now return to our regular programming. Won’t THAT be pleasant.

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