Well, dear readers, I wonder how amusing it would be to add up all the typos that have appeared in these here notes for the past nineteen YEARS. I shudder to think of such things, and yet as I nuked yesterday’s notes to begin today’s (writing in Word then pasting into the form I use) what did I notice? I noticed I spelled YouTube as YouTub. I think each notes has probably got a few of those. It’s unavoidable, especially late at night after a long day. But, that said, I rather like YouTub, don’t you? I find that very evocative, don’t you? I don’t really proof these here notes, I must type and paste and am done with them. I have neither the time nor the patience to proof them and I also don’t have the patience or the time. So, if autocorrect catches something, then that’s easy to fix. But if I type oesmthing it doesn’t catch it and why should it catch a word that just sits there like so much wacky looking fish? Or if I write “Well, ear readers” it doesn’t catch that because it doesn’t know that I mean dear and ear is a word. There’s nothing intrinsically wrong with “Well, ear readers” – I suppose there are people out there in the dark who read ears for a living. I just looked it up and that is quite a lucrative profession: Ear Readers. You can make $140,000 per years as an ear reader. Or, if you’re Steven Spielberg you can make a movie called Ear Readers of the Lost Ark. I, myself, don’t know any ear readers personally, but would like to, so I’ve joined the Facebook group Ear Readers and perhaps I’ll meet some nice person there. In any case, I’m afraid I must resign myself to the fact that there will be typos – that is a plain and simple fact of leaf. What the HELL am I talking about? Don’t I have notes to write? Isn’t she of the Evil Eye going to be here all too soon?
Yesterday was certainly Friday. That’s the best I can say about it, although it wasn’t a bad Friday, nor was it a good Friday. It was a reasonable Friday. I got seven hours of sleep or something approximating seven hours of sleep, arising at eleven. Once arisen, I answered e-mails, did whatever needed doing, I wrote a story on Facebook about the Kritzerland musical directors, and then I finally ordered food – pasta papa from Hugo’s. It arrived forty-five minutes later and I ate it all up and it was, as always perfectly perfect and very filling.
I never went to the mail place, just did some work on the computer and took it easy. 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 Stepfather, starring Terry O’Quinn, Shelly Hack, and Jill Schoelen. I hadn’t seen the Blu-ray since I got it a decade ago. I really like the movie better each time I see it, mostly due to a great screenplay by the great Donald E. Westlake, and the performance of Mr. O’Quinn, who’s terrific. The direction gets the job done and the pace is great. People refer to this as a “slasher” film – it’s anything BUT that, but they have the need to categorize everything for reasons I will never undersand. See what I did there? I meant understand. There are two major problems with the film, and both must be laid at the feet of the director, I’m afraid. The supporting performance by Stephen Shellen is terrible – shmacting 101 and he takes me right out of the movie every time he has a scene. Fortunately, that’s not a huge amount. The other major problem is the wretched score by Patrick Moraz, all cheesy synth stuff. Just because someone has a synth doesn’t mean that they know anything about film scoring or what a film score is actually supposed to do. For the suspense scenes you just the usual banging on the synth keys, but it’s the dramatic scenes that suffer from his non-approach. If this movie had a great score that actually worked with the drama it would be an all-time classic. An example of a low-budget thriller with a great score would be Dana Kaproff’s score for When a Stranger Calls (available on Kritzerland) – THAT score works because Dana Kaproff understands the purpose of a film score. You could probably take his score and just slap it on The Stepfather and it would work better. But in the end, the writing and acting carry the day. The transfer is great.
After that, I had to go get some Windex for she of the Evil Eye. Once home, I watched the first forty minutes of Alfred Hitchcock’s Strangers on a Train, the Blu-ray which I bought years ago and never actually watched. The opening twenty-seven minutes of this film are a textbook in how to direct a movie. Every shot, every set-up, the way the two lead characters meet, the fairground sequence – it’s just fantastic and the transfer is really excellent. I’ll talk more about it when I’ve finished it this evening. Of course, the most immortal line in the entire film is its first, when Robert Walker says, “Aren’t you Guy Haines?”
After that, I had some peanuts to get me up to 1000 calories, I listened to music and then it was time to write these here notes.
Today, I’ll be up at eight-thirty and out of the house by nine. I’ll probably go somewhere and have a light breakfast or something, so I can kill some time that way, then I’ll mosey on over to the mail place to see what’s up there, then I’ll come home and we’ll do our final work on the big tenth anniversary show, which is tomorrow. I’ll have the full links in the notes and please do try and watch this one live. At some point, depending on what I have in the morning, I’ll eat a little something to bring me up to 1000 calories. Then I’ll watch, listen, and relax.
Tomorrow, I’ll be up by noon, I’ll relax, then get ready for our tenth anniversary show, which begins at 5:00 PDT and 8:00 EDT or whatever o’clock if you’re in a completely different time zone. Then I will absolutely need a few days to recover and then I’ll have to deal with some stuff I’d rather not deal with.
Well, dear readers, I must take the day, I must do the things I do, I must, for example, be up by eight-thirty, I must have a light breakfast and I’ll try to keep it under 300 calories, I must mosey on over to the mail place, I’ll do some final preparation for tomorrow’s show, eat more food to get me to 1000 calories, and then I’ll watch, listen, and relax. Today’s topic of discussion: What are your favorite low-budget thrillers or suspense films – not the big, huge hits, but the small films that you’ve discovered and really like? Let’s have loads of lovely postings, shall we, whilst I hit the road to dreamland, where I shall try not to think about all those typos.