Well, dear readers, I think I’m finally making some headway, or, at the very least, some elbowway on this fershluganah diet thing. I began to actually feel it last Friday and the pants are not so snug as they were and that gives me the will and grace to go on. I think the jogging helps, but it’s really now about maniacally counting calories and not overdoing the fat grams. I’ve been eating a lot of salmon, which is extremely low in calories – about 460 for 8 ounces. And lots of melon balls, both cantaloupe and honeydew. And shellfish, both crab and shrimp – so low it’s not even worth counting. My goal is to do 1200 calories a day – 600 for lunch, 600 for dinner, or 900 for lunch and 300 for a snack – whatever way it adds up doesn’t really matter. That and jogging should work. In about three weeks I’ll begin to weigh myself – I don’t really want to until I’ve lost at least ten to fifteen pounds, and it’s really easy for me to tell when that is by the way my clothes fit. The ultimate goal is that by June I want to have lost at least twenty pounds and I think that’s very doable. At that point, I’ll see how I feel, but I’m sure I’ll want to go down another ten to fifteen, for a total of thirty-five. And once I’m down that’s it – I’ve said it before but this time I mean it – never again will I gain this kind of weight. I hate the way it looks, I don’t like the way I feel. I do know that I can never get down to the kind of weight I had fifteen years ago, when I was still in my 140s – that would look awful at my age. But if I can get into my 150s again, which I did three years ago, I will be very happy indeed and I will damn well do it, damn it, and damn it again.
Yesterday was quite a pleasant day. I got up at nine, which actually wasn’t that pleasant, as I really wanted another hour of sleep. Thirty minutes later I was jogging and did three miles. After that, I answered e-mails and did some work on the computer, then got ready for my lunch at the Eclectic Café. Prior to leaving, our very own Mr. Nick Redman and his ever-lovin’ Julie Kirgo stopped by and we had a nice chat, and Nick gave me the latest Twilight Time releases. I moseyed on over there at the appointed time and met Mickey Rapkin, who is some sort of cousin, his father being the song of my Uncle Rube and Aunt Minnie. I gave him copies of both of my memoirs, since his grandparents are in the Prologue of There’s Mel, There’s Woody, and There’s You. They’re also in Benjamin Kritzer – I’m totally out of those books and most order some today. Mickey is a well-respected journalist and he’s currently living in LA, working on some projects. He’s written two popular books – Theater Geek and Pitch Perfect, the latter the basis for last year’s hit film with Anna Kendrick. We gabbed about family, he was interested in hearing about my life and career, and I his. I had salmon and some carrots and he had a Greek salad. It was really fun, and it’s fun getting to know him – he came with cousin Dee Dee and Alan to one of the Kritzerland shows, and Dee Dee is doing a dinner on Saturday night and he’ll be there, too.
After that, I picked up a couple of packages – actually it was stuff I sent back from Washington DC – some lotion that they don’t seem to carry anywhere here in LA, and two pairs of pants. Then I came home, the second carpenter came back to take some measurements, then I listened to some music and then I finally sat on my couch like so much fish.
Last night, I watched two of the three Twilight Time releases on Blu and Ray. The first Twilight Time release I watched was The Fury, a film by Brian De Palma, starring Mr. Kirk Douglas, Miss Amy Irving, and Mr. John Cassavetes. I saw the film three or four times during its original run. I didn’t think it was as good as De Palma’s Carrie or Phantom of the Paradise, but I liked it okay. I especially enjoyed John Cassavetes. And the film has a wonderful John Williams score. Watching it after all these years, it’s really not up there with the best of De Palma – I don’t think there are a lot of films to go into the best of De Palma list, at least not for me – maybe the two I mentioned and Sisters – those are the ones that really work for me – and I don’t mind The Untouchables. There have been some of the usual suspects venting about the quality of the transfer. As usual, they are wrong in terms of where they are assigning blame. Most of them are really complaining about the opening fifteen minutes of the film, with one rather loud and vociferous fellow ranting that those fifteen minutes look horrible, rough, and like someone has taken a razor blade to the film. That is the kind of hysteria one finds on that particular discussion board – and it affects others who just go along with that wrongheadedness. Of course, these people were either not born in 1978 or not old enough to have seen The Fury back then. They have no knowledge of how bad opticals were in that era (they were at their nadir). They don’t know about diffusion filters, they don’t know about pushed film or exposures. But they think they know everything. When someone says that a transfer looks like someone took a razor blade to the first fifteen minutes, you really do want to just say “Are you out of your cotton pickin’ mind?” I mean, what do they think, that Fox had an element where only the first fifteen minutes look like that then magically it all gets better? The main titles, which are white on black, are spotless. Imagine my surprise – no negative dirt, no speckles, no nothing. We dissolve out of that into the first shot. Note to Mr. Vociferous – that is an optical, and yes there’s some very minor dirt that’s built into that optical. That’s what happened and there’s nothing to be done about it EVER. It was that way on the prints and it will be that way on every transfer. The minute it cuts out of the optical, everything is beautiful. Then we get a title card that says something like Middle East. That is an optical. So, some minor dirt there. I still haven’t seen anything that resembles “rough” or razor blades. There is then a very long tracking shot that is entirely the second half of an optical – again, once it cuts out of that shot – all is perfect. This same guy also said he felt the color was faded. He apparently doesn’t know what color looks like because the color is not faded – at all. The opticals in the film are all very grainy. There are several night sequences that are also really grainy due to the film being pushed. The first fifteen minutes of the film look exactly as they did back in the day. I remember sitting in the theater and thinking that the film didn’t really look very good and it didn’t. I can’t say for a certainty that they went from the camera negative, but whatever they went from yielded perhaps not a perfect transfer, but an excellent one that replicates the way the film looked – what else can you ask from a transfer? But this guy doesn’t know what the film looked like so he’s just making with the suppositions and assuming it should look better. Just another armchair expert with no expertise to back it up. There are a few good sequences in the film, and it has a rather good finale, but it’s just doesn’t hold up as well as Carrie or Sisters or Phantom of the Paradise.
I then watched the second Twilight Time Blu and Ray, which was entitled Christine, a film by John Carpenter, from the novel by Stephen King. Back then, for me, King could do no wrong. I devoured his books, reading each of them starting with The Dead Zone on the day they came out. Whatever one thinks about the actual writing, his storytelling skills were brilliant, with one knockout after another starting with Carrie, then Salem’s Lot, The Stand, The Shining (my favorite), The Dead Zone, Cujo, Firestarter, and Christine. Of the films made from those books I’d loved Carrie, liked the TV film of Salem’s Lot, hated The Shining (I enjoy it now as a Kubrick film but when I saw it I had literally just finished the book while waiting on line to see the movie on its opening day – I felt the book was brilliant, and the film was more about Kubrick than King), loved The Dead Zone (it and Carrie remain my favorite adaptations of King), thought Cujo was okay, hated every minute of Firestarter, and was on the fence about Christine, some of which I liked and some of which I thought didn’t work at all, and that included the finale of the film. But time has been good to Christine and it’s held up surprisingly well, and I found myself really enjoying it on just about every level. It’s well directed, well acted, the script, while not brilliant, works fine. The transfer from Sony looks fantastic. It’s fascinating, actually – the film was made five years after The Fury and by a different studio. Every Fox film back in the late 70s had that very grainy look, but Columbia films from that same era didn’t. Christine sold out in a day, but you can still get The Fury.
Well, why don’t we all click on the Unseemly Button below because I must get a good night’s beauty sleep.
Today, I shall jog, write liner notes, do errands and whatnot, eat, hopefully pick up some packages, and then relax.
The rest of the week is meetings and meals, and then I’m having dinner with cousin Dee Dee and Alan and various and sundried guests. The following week is hugely busy with prepping a release, two Kritzerland rehearsals and a stumble-through and then the show.
Well, dear readers, I must take the day, I must do the things I do, I must, for example, do a jog, write, do things, eat, hopefully pick up some packages, and then relax. Today’s topic of discussion: It’s Ask BK Day, the day in which you get to ask me or any dear reader any old question you like and we get to 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, while I contemplate a new motion picture entertainment entitled The Fury of Christine.