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June 17, 2015:

RAISING A NON-RUCKUS

Bruce Kimmel Photograph bk's notes

Well, dear readers, it’s always amusing to know that there are people who read these here notes and who can’t wait to report something that may have been said here to someone so it can raise a ruckus.  Note to people who can’t wait to do that: Fail.  Always.  No one gives a flying Wallenda, you cause no trouble, and it’s kind of a big old bore.  Don’t you have something productive you can do rather than trawling through these here notes looking for anything you think might be fodder for you?  But, if it brings pleasure to those types then it’s fine by me.  We’re here to please and we’re please to here.  We’re here to provide that fodder, baby, and we will never EVER stop providing it because we speak truth in these here notes and if people can’t handle the truth then they should go elsewhere, like Facebook, where there is untruths every second of every day.  Here we speak truth.  You can’t handle the truth?  I can handle the truth.  What am I, a few good men all of a sudden?  Needless to say, some “person” with too much time on his/her or her/his hands attempted to cause trouble and failed.  Oops (spoo, spelled backwards).  I am happy to know that his/her still reads these here notes religiously, both Catholic and Jewish with a touch of Mormon.  We welcome you here with open arms and closed feet.  And now, since it is quite late, perhaps I’d better write some notes, and may they be filled with fodder that’s odder than yesterday’s fodder.  Oh, and let’s not forget that next Sunday is Fodder’s Day.  We don’t allow groaning here at haineshisway.com.

Yesterday was a perfectly decent day.  I didn’t get to sleep till three, then got up at eight-thirty, then fell asleep, then got up at eleven, for just about eight hours of sleep.  Once up, I did the usual morning things, finally finished the casting of the Kritzerland show, assigned almost all the songs and got folks their music, and now I’ve just got three more songs to assign and that part will be mercifully done.  We’re still waiting on our guest star, and it’s a biggie, so send excellent vibes and xylophones that we get the biggie.  And we’d hoped John Boswell would be MD, but he told us yesterday he can’t, so we’re on the search for a replacement.  The helper came by, then Mr. Nick Redman came by and then we went and had some lunch and fun conversation.  I had a patty melt and a little chili.

After that, I didn’t feel like going to the mail place, so I just came home, did more work on the computer and then sat on my couch like so much fish with the new batch of Twilight Time Blu and Rays.

Last night, I watched the new Twilight Time Blu and Ray of Francois Truffaut’s film The Mississippi Mermaid, from the novel Waltz into Darkness by William Irish (aka Cornell Woolrich), one of my favorite writers.  The two leading players are Catherine Deneuve and Jean-Paul Belmondo, so there’s star power galore.  I saw the film many times on its original release.  I liked it better than Truffaut’s other Woolrich adaptation, The Bride Wore Black, even though Mermaid kind of peters out by the end.  I’m also very fond of the score by Antoine Duhamel.  Now, I’d read bad reports about the transfer and, no, it isn’t perfect or near perfect, but a disaster it’s not.  In fact, it’s quite nice.  The film’s first credit, Les Artistes Associes, is out of focus, scratchy and terrible – and maybe that’s what people are judging the transfer by, but once you’re out of that and into the proper credits, things are detailed, the color is nice and I thought it looked fine.  No, it’s not a 4K restoration and no that was never in the cards.  This weird Blu-ray community has become so obsessed with grain and black crush and screen caps and dirt and they want everything to be like a real movie-going experience – well, guess what – the real movie-going experience up until digital projection was nothing like watching a movie with a 4K restoration off the camera negative.  So, they don’t really want the movie going experience – they want some idealized movie going experience.  Because 35mm prints had dirt occasionally, had gate weave occasionally, had blemishes, opticals had big, huge yellow grain the size of popcorn and on and on.  Now people sit at home way too close to their screens, they freeze-frame, they analyze every inch of the screen without really understanding film at all, they zoom in and blow up things until they finally can see something they THINK is a transfer problem, but which frequently isn’t.  But this transfer of The Mississippi Mermaid is very much like the release prints were.  The color is accurate, in most of the shots the detail is excellent, and the opticals are the opticals and, in this film, it’s not always easy to spot where they begin and end.  Furthermore, Nick has learned enough about these things that he would not take a terrible transfer – he’s turned down many transfers.  No, not everything will be up to the standards of Columbia and Fox, especially with the MGM/UA titles.  But I’d venture to say that this transfer is probably seven or eight years old and while it could definitely be better, cleaned up a little, I’m sure the original camera negative is in France and so that was not going to be an option, nor would sales justify such an option.  The fact is, this Blu-ray is a 1000 times better than the DVD and I’m just not that nitpicky when a transfer is in the ballpark of what it should be.  So, if you’re a fan of the film, buy with confidence because I think you’ll like what you see, as long as you’re not sitting with your nose up against the screen or zooming the image until it’s an ugly blur.

I checked out a few other transfers, but I want to hold off until I’ve actually watched the movie – I can tell you briefly that The Young Lions is a spectacularly good transfer, A Man for All Seasons looks really nice, and Absolute Beginners also looks very nice – talk about garish colors and a feeling of electricity – that film literally jumps off the screen and its famous and very long opening shot is amazing.  More about these later.

After that, I got a little thing of potato salad from Gelson’s, came home and had some telephonic conversations, mostly about the Sami show.  We now are booked, our opening night is September 12, and we have a three-week run and can extend a week should we be selling well.  So, we’re trying to organize everything – I have to bring an actual line producer on board because I’m not doing any of that.  The set and costume designers are all set, and hopefully so is the lighting guy – he’s moving to London shortly, but has said he may fly back to do this show, which would make me very happy.  We’ll be doing a little indiegogo campaign to help fund it, but I won’t actually have anything to do with that other than getting the word out.  But the campaign will have a two-fold purpose – to help fund the production and to help pay for the cast recording, which we’ll do about two weeks prior to opening so we can have it for the run.  I can’t tell you how many parents and young folks came up to me after the workshop wanting a recording and sheet music.

Today, I’ll be up by ten, then I’m meeting Mr. Richard M. Sherman for lunch – we’ve been trying to do a lunch for a couple of months now – just the two of us, so that will be a lot of fun.  After that, I’ll hopefully pick up some packages, and then I’ll come home and get everyone their remaining music and hopefully we’ll have a musical director by the end of today.

Tomorrow I have some kind of meeting in the afternoon and I think a dinner in the evening, but I just can’t remember right now.  Not sure what’s happening on Friday, but Saturday night I think I’m seeing a show and Sunday I’ve been invited to a Father’s Day celebration, but there’s something happening before that.  And in one of the weirder events, a producer of a show PMd me and asked if I’d audition for a role.  I told her I wasn’t really acting anymore and that I probably wouldn’t have time, but to send me the script anyway, which she did immediately.

Well, dear readers, I must take the day, I must do the things I do, I must, for example, have lunch with Richard Sherman, hopefully pick up packages, send everyone the rest of their music and 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, waiting to see if anything from today’s notes will be reported so there can be a raising a non-ruckus.

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