Well, dear readers, this week has flown by, like a gazelle shooting craps. I mean, I’ve been to DC, I’m back from DC and I’ve been doing and going instead of relaxing and relaxing and yesterday and yesterday were no exception. I was up at nine, I answered e-mails, and then I did another third of the edit road map for our next project, then did a two-mile jog, just to get myself in the jogging mode again. After that, I had some bacon, eggs, and toast, picked up a couple of packages, and then came home.
I did the final third of the edit road map. Since some of the cues didn’t end up in the film, I have to figure out what to call them – perhaps Untitled and the cue number would be easiest – or Unused and the cue number. We shall see. But it’s good to be done with that part. What’s not good is that the upload of the tracks to Dropbox, the big files for mastering, hadn’t finished uploading after two days, so the transfer guy stopped it and started it again – something was clearly wrong on his end. About half the files have uploaded over the last four hours, but it still says there’s about eight hours to go – must be REALLY big files. I’m just concerned that they all get uploaded because this has to get mastered on Monday and Tuesday and then the mastering guy has to move right to another project of ours.
I had to have several long and protracted telephonic conversations, the result of which will be a lot of busy work for me next week – probably two full days of it and I do hate busy work but there’s no way around doing it so do it I will. And then I finally sat on my couch like so much fish.
Last night, I watched two count them two motion pictures on Blu and Ray. The first motion picture I watched was entitled The Game. This is a motion picture about [SPOILER ALERT] – a game. I saw The Game when it came out and felt it was a film that was very well directed by David Fincher, but kind of ultimately a little silly by the end. It was Fincher in Pakula mode and even the score by Howard Shore, which is very good, is in Michael Small mode. But Michael Douglas is really terrific in it, as is Sean Penn and all the other actors. And it’s very well paced, as a thriller should be. Seeing it sixteen years later I liked it better than I did when I first saw it, and the fact that it’s a beautiful transfer with great sound is helpful.
I then watched the second motion picture on Blu and Ray, which was entitled Hard Times, the first film of Walter Hill. Somehow this film has eluded me all these years, despite even owning the DVD, which I’d watched only the credits of. The subject matter and the poster art just hadn’t grabbed me back in 1975, but for the majority of that year my time was completely taken up with making and editing The First Nudie Musical – I saw very few movies that year. But, it’s always fun to finally catch up to something you hadn’t seen, and Hard Times turns out to be an absolutely wonderful film, kind of a classic of 70s cinema, and certainly now my favorite film from Walter Hill, an erratic director – I’ve enjoyed some of his films and really haven’t enjoyed others. I loved the performances from James Coburn and Charles Bronson and Strother Martin gives a fantastic performance, too, but so does the rest of the cast. If someone brought the script of Hard Times into a studio today can you imagine what would happen? They’d either deposit it directly into the trash, or they’d call the screenwriters on the carpet and make them add backstories and character obstacles galore – in other words, Screenwriting 101, the McKee and Field show. But that’s the wonderful thing about the movie – it just tells its simple little story, you don’t really need to know anything about the backgrounds of the characters because it is – wait for it – not germane to the story. That’s why movies of that era are so great – because there were none of these inane “rules” of screenwriting – you wrote your movie, and it got made or it didn’t – yes, you might have to change this or that, but it wasn’t like it is today – by committee and the committee being a bunch of young twerps who were barely alive in the 90s let alone the 70s. I miss movies like Hard Times and I cannot recommend it highly enough. The icing on the cake is that the transfer is absolute perfection in every way. Perfect color, contrast, detail. Couldn’t be better. As they say on eBay – buy it now.
After that, I did another jog, this one a mile-and-a-half, and then I entered all the finessing and fixing of the commentary into the document on my desktop, so that’s all current now. Then I just listened to music.
Today, I shall hopefully arise after a good night’s sleep, and then I have to begin some liner notes after watching a motion picture on DVD so that I know what I’m writing about. Other than that, I’m relaxing and having a ME day. I’ll do a jog, I’ll hopefully pick up some packages, I’ll do some errands and whatnot, otherwise I’ll just relax and I’m sure watch some motion pictures if the fancy strikes me and let me tell you if the damn fancy strikes me I shall strike the damn fancy right back. Tit for tat, baby, and eye for an eye, baby.
Tomorrow I’ll try to finish the liner notes and get them to the designer, then I’m seeing Eileen Barnett’s cabaret show at The Federal, which I’m looking forward to. Next week will be endless busywork, but I must do it and get it out of the way. I’ll also prep our next release, we’ll ship the latest release hopefully on Thursday, then the helper is gone for a whopping nine days, which is not so good for Kritzerland business, so I may have someone come in so that things don’t get backed up too much.
Well, dear readers, I must take the day, I must do the things I do, I must, for example, do a jog, write, eat, hopefully pick up some packages and relax. Today’s topic of discussion: What are your favorite films of those wonderful actors, James Coburn and Charles Bronson? Let’s have loads of lovely postings, shall we, whilst I hit the road to dreamland where either my fancy will strike me or I will strike my fancy. Stay tuned.