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April 20, 2022:

RHODA PENMARK MOVE OVER – MEET ESTHER

Bruce Kimmel Photograph bk's notes

Well, dear readers, you’ve met Rhoda Penmark, you’ve met Damian, you’ve met the blonde children from Village of the Damned, you’ve met The Good Son, you’ve met adorable turned horrible Reagan from The Exorcist, and I’m sure you’ve met others in the Evil Child genre, but if you haven’t met her, perhaps it’s time to meet Esther from the film Orphan. I’d never heard of this film at all and can’t remember how I even found it, frankly, just three days ago – somehow, it must have popped up somewhere for some reason and it sounded interesting to me so since it wasn’t streaming anywhere for free, I bought the Blu-ray for six bucks, and it arrived yesterday. Now, let me preface it by saying I’m not that much of a horror movie fan, especially horror movies made these days, but although I think they were attempting to sell it as a horror film, it’s more of a thriller and a pretty nifty one at that. Yes, surprise of surprises, I ended up really liking Orphan. I thought it WAS a new film, but the minute the Blu-ray began, I knew it wasn’t new because the disc opens with a lot of blather about Blu-ray. And indeed, it’s a 2008 film, starring Vera Farmiga and Peter Sarsgaard, and newcomer (then) Isabelle Fuhrman, who’s gone on to do quite a few films, including The Hunger Games. It’s not perfect – it goes on too long, over two hours and would be better off without its opening dream sequence, which it doesn’t need and just gets the film off to a weird start because in the end it doesn’t pay off or really have anything to do with anything. Ten minutes shorter would be a good thing, but it still holds the viewer (it sure held me), and it’s directed reasonably well. Of course, every few minutes it has a pointless “Boo!” scare – usually a music sting or loud noise, but those are cheats and the film doesn’t need them. Miss Fuhrman is terrific and so are the others, and of course it’s fun to watch the Evil Child do her thing, because with this movie occasionally you root for her to do her thing to a schoolgirl who deserved it. It’s creepy fun, and the fun is part of why it works. The reviews were split pretty evenly between those who loved it (Roger Ebert did) and those who hated every minute of it. And then there’s a reveal that is really good and which propels us to the end, which, like the rest of the movie, would work a bit better if it were shorter. There are some deleted scenes of no value, and an alternate ending that wouldn’t have been as much fun as the one used but would have ended the film on a more ambiguous note. Amusingly, there’s a prequel in the works all these years later. I’ll star far away from that. But if you like a fun, creepy, Evil Child movie, you might just like this one. I even want to watch it again, so that should tell you something. And it has a very good score by John Ottman, that actually functions like a movie score should.

And now, it’s more Carmen Dragon, a mono album with a horrid LP transfer – noisy, shrill, and I’m skipping a lot of it. But that’s been the problem with this set – some good vinyl transfers and some completely inept vinyl transfers.

Yesterday was another short day. I fell asleep around four o’clock, was up at six-thirty, went back to bed at seven-thirty and then slept until two. As I was getting up, Grant called and said he could come and hang pictures, so I quickly dressed and brushed my teeth. He came over and spent about an hour deciding where to hang the stuff, then hanging it. It required moving a couple of things around, but it looks great now. Mostly it was the three original Harvey Schmidt Bagley cover paintings, but also two other things. Once he left, I went and picked up the little package containing Orphan and came right home. I ordered a chicken Caesar salad from Stanley’s and that arrived very quickly. I ate that all up and it was of their usual high quality. Then I did a bit of writing, then finished up a three-episode true crime thing from the same folks that did the one I just watched about Elisa Lam at the Cecil Hotel. This one was about a nasty serial killer who mostly did his thing in Times Square, circa the late seventies. This one doesn’t overstay its welcome, which is good, but suffers from the usual recreation footage, which I find pointless, but it goes off on many tangents to fill out it’s run time. But the reason to watch is the unbelievably great footage of a Times Square that no longer exists. I lived through that era because it was every bit as sleazy in 1969 when I lived there, as it was in 1979, when I was a regular visitor there. Actually, a lot of the footage is from earlier in the decade – easy to tell by what’s playing at the various movie theaters. The amount of porno in the city by the late 1970s was astonishing. The fact that it was allowed is even more astonishing, and while I know the then powers that be want to claim all the credit for cleaning all that up, it wasn’t them, really, it was AIDS. While it’s brighter and safer now, it’s more Disneyland than Times Square and as you watch the archival footage there is a certain pang of perhaps misplaced nostalgia for the old Times Square. Then I watched Orphan.

After that, I held firm and didn’t eat anything else. I’m kind of hungry now and I suppose I could have a hot dog, as that’s under two hundred calories, but we’ll see. I’ll try to be in bed no later than two-thirty so I can get up at a more reasonable hour.

Oh, and the final book cover stuff came in, we fixed a couple of typos, and that looks great now. So, I’ll talk to Author House this morning and then we can get this puppy in and hopefully start preorders tomorrow or Friday. If you enjoyed Some Days Are Murder, I’m quite sure you’ll enjoy this one – for me, I like it even better just because the plot and milieu are so interesting to me back in December of 1975.

Today, I’ll try to be up by eleven at the latest, I’ll do whatever needs doing, I’ll talk to the publisher, we’ll hopefully send them the book by the end of the week, I’ll write, eat, hopefully pick up some packages, and then watch, listen, and relax.

Tomorrow is more of the same, Friday we resume performances and I’ll probably attend all three, but we’ll see how I’m feeling. We have the second of our talkbacks on Sunday, and I always enjoy those. I hope we have good houses this weekend – we really need them.

Well, dear readers, I must take the day, I must do the things I do, I must, for example, be up by eleven at the latest, do whatever needs doing, talk to the publisher, hopefully send the book in, write, eat, hopefully pick up some packages, and then watch, listen, 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, where I shall probably dream of Rhoda Penmark meeting Esther.

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