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August 22, 2015:

NOTES IN CINNAMONSCOPE AND COLOR

Bruce Kimmel Photograph bk's notes

Well, dear readers, I must write these here notes in a hurry for not only will she of the Evil Eye be here all too soon, but I also have an all-day rehearsal to attend. So, I didn’t get eight hours of sleep but did get about seven, despite falling asleep after four in the morning. Once I was up, we made sure everything was good with both packages that are going to the printers – the new soundtrack release and the Welcome to My World packaging. I did a jog, but I wasn’t in the mood to go to the mail place, although they did alert me that the T-shirts had come in, so we can now begin to ship mugs and T-shirts when we get the Hangover Square CDs in. That will all fit nicely into a medium priority box. Then I did some work at the piano and on the computer and had some telephonic calls. Since I had a couple of hours before rehearsal, I then sat on my couch like so much fish.

Yesterday, I watched a motion picture on Blu and Ray entitled House of Bamboo, a motion picture in the startling process of Cinemascope or as my darling daughter used to call it, Cinnamonscope. It is also in actual color. House of Bamboo was directed by the unique and wacky Samuel Fuller who, despite his wacky singular moviemaking, is a director I have always loved. His films look and sound like no one others. And House of Bamboo is no exception. There’s a lot of great location photography in Japan, the music by Leigh Harline is terrific, the cast is an assemblage of interesting actors, including Robert Stack, Robert Ryan, Brad Dexter and many good character actors, including Japan’s Sessue Hayakawa, who’d shortly go on to make The Bridge on the River Kwai. The film itself is wonderfully odd and very Fulleresque, with colorful dialogue. The transfer? A spectacular, superb and stupendous-looking transfer, perfect in every way, especially the color. Plenty of the Fox blue that was kind of a trademark look for their films in the mid-1950s. There seems to be a whole anti-blue brigade on the warpath about the look of these transfers, but they are very accurate. The problem is they don’t look like previous home video transfers, and this seems to confuse some types who automatically assume a previous transfer’s color is correct. But the man overseeing these new 4K transfers knows his stuff AND – wait for it – has all the original color timing notes. That’s really the end of the story and I will trust that using those notes results in transfers that are accurate and wonderful. Certainly he knows more than the armchair experts who think faded brown and orange color is somehow correct. If you’re a genre fan or just a plain old movie fan, I highly recommend House of Bamboo and especially this amazing transfer. THIS is what movies of that era are supposed to look like. And actually, I have been so strong and so vocal about how good these transfers are and how the blue is absolutely correct, I seem to have had some small effect on people because there’s less complaining going on with this transfer than the last batch of Fox 1950s films on Blu-ray, and it’s as blue as the rest of them. Blue is good. We like blue.

Then we had our pre-rehearsal for the What If, and it was very wise to do it. They’ve now all got it down and it will be funny, I think. Jenna’s mom did a little staging and now we’ll be ready for the first real rehearsal. It did make me laugh every time they sang through it. Afterwards, Jenna, her mom, Brennley, her mom, and Sami, her mom, and I all went out to eat. I had an egg, cheese and onion breakfast burrito with a side of guacamole and salsa. Other than the fact that there wasn’t any cheese or onions in the burrito it was very good. Afterwards, I came home and did yet more work on the computer.

Today, we have an eleven to five rehearsal, so a long day. We’ll have a forty-five minute lunch break at some point. Today and tomorrow are when we’ll get the most stuff done – we can really drill stuff, do detail work, and work all the transitions so that Sami is really comfortable doing them – that’s something that just isn’t easy – getting from one thing to the next and I’m constantly adjusting that staging to make it flow smoothly. I’m sure I’ll eat something after the rehearsal and then I’ll relax in the evening.

Tomorrow we rehearse from eleven to four and by the end of that rehearsal we should be ready to start running through the entire show on Monday evening. Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday are rehearsal days, then we’re off on Thursday and Friday, unless I feel we really need to work on one of those days, then we have two more long rehearsal days and then we’re into the completely nutty Kritzerland rehearsal week which dovetails with us going into tech for Welcome to My World. That’s going to be supremely nutty, but hopefully we’ll get through it all well.

Well, dear readers, I must take the day, I must do the things I do, I must, for example, rehearse, eat, do a jog, and relax. Today’s topic of discussion: What are your favorite Mexican dishes to eat? Where have you had the best Mexican food? Let’s have loads of lovely postings, shall we, whilst I hit the road to dreamland, where I shall dream in Cinnamonscope and color by Technicolor.

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