Well, dear readers, in breaking news, the Indiegogo funds have arrived and have already been helpful in taking care of some rather large bills. So, that was a wonderful way to start yesterday and as the day ends I’m listening to a very fun album that someone alerted me to – a cover version of the songs from The Young Girls of Rochefort – solos, Swingle Singers-style chorus, nice band – of course, I love the musique. Pierre-Gerard Verny and Graffiti Groupe are the artistes and it’s not available on CD that I can find – but is available on Amazon as a download, which is what I got – only eight bucks or so. Great sound and very pleasurable. I also managed to watch two count them two motion pictures on Amazon Prime – not free, but cheap to stream. The first was the worst and the worst was the first, not necessarily in that order. It was entitled Firestarter and was a remake of the 1980s film Firestarter based on the Stephen King novel, Firestarter. I really liked the book – King was on a real roll back then. Of the up to then film adaptations, I’d loved Carrie, liked The Shining (but not as an adaptation of the novel), loved The Dead Zone (still my favorite adaptation of a King book), didn’t really care for John Carpenter’s Christine (much better as a book), and then came the awful film of Firestarter, starring Drew Barrymore and David Keith, the latter in a career-killing performance. The screenplay was dreadful and to get a grade C exploitation filmmaker was the worst decision they made. King himself loathed it. So, it would take a whole lotta bad to top that first film. And yet, the talentless people who made the remake have managed that dubious feat and then some. The script is so inept that it beggars belief, and so is the direction, which is made up of the borrowings of other untalented filmmakers. There are sequences that are so dark that you literally cannot see what’s going on. The acting is terrible, but I don’t know how any actor could play the horrible writing. Zac Efron is the lead and I simply don’t get whatever it is he’s supposed to be. They muck up just about everything, book-wise – in fact, I wonder if the screenwriter actually read it or if he just read a synopsis somewhere. Completely wretched and at ninety-four minutes it seems like five hours.
Then I watched the second motion picture, which was entitled Kimi, directed by Steven Soderbergh and written by David Koepp, both of whom at least know their way around a movie. I wasn’t really expecting much of anything, but it’s pretty terrific straight down the line. Zoe Kravitz gives a terrific performance as the housebound agoraphobic, who spends her days analyzing people’s commands to Kimi, an Alexa-type thing – the ones Kimi doesn’t recognize. She makes adjustments and adds words to help Kimi’s cognitive skills. The first third is all set-up, but it’s all done efficiently and gets you involved in the character and what she does. And then, listening to someone’s Kimi commands she overhears something that sounds strange to her – she uses her tech tools to filter out stuff and what she’s heard is a bad argument and then, later, a murder. That’s all I’ll say about it, but from there it moves like a speeding train and while the ending may bet a bit silly, it’s very, very satisfying. Sans end credits, the film runs a very tight eighty-four minutes. This was a streaming-only thing – no theater release, which is a shame because I think the audience reaction would have been really fun. The film got mostly great reviews and they were deserved. It looks great and it has a really good Herrmann-like score by Cliff Martinez. Well worth your time and the five bucks to stream. I may, in fact, watch it again before it goes away on Wednesday night.
And now I am listening to Erich Leinsdorf’s really rarely mentioned performance of the Mahler sixth – in my top five greatest symphonies ever. It’s the Boston Symphony Orchestra, who play superbly, but it’s Leinsdorf who makes this one of my favorite performances, up there with the best of ‘em. The fact that this recording is rarely mentioned when performances of the sixth are blathered on about is, in my opinion, shocking. The recording itself is fantastic – RCA stereo circa 1966. It was, in fact, the symphony’s first stereo recording. There are a handful of critics who love the Leinsdorf but most simply ignore it. This was only issued on CD in Japan two decades ago, I think, and is impossible to find. I had to be content to grab it off YouTube, but everything is compressed so much it doesn’t sound great. Thankfully, a kind soul directed me to a copy on Amazon and the price was reasonable for such a rarity, so I plopped it in my cart. I went back the next day to make the purchase and it was already gone. But I went right to eBay and happily there was a single copy, same price but only a couple bucks’ postage because it was in the US rather than Japan like the Amazon copy. There was a make an offer, so I did, it was accepted, and now I have it and it really is just superb.
Yesterday was a nice, lighthearted day. I got seven hours of sleep and was up at eleven. I’d promised to make a little hello video for a podcast that was having Donna Pescow as a guest. So, I showered and made that and sent it off. Then I saw the funds had arrived save for the fifteen-hundred bucks they hold back – hopefully, that will arrive in the next couple of weeks. Then I went back to episode seven and didn’t like the opening set-up to the main sequence of the episode. So, I rewrote it. Hated it. Rewrote it. Hated it. And then did what I should have done all along – simply started it with the main sequence. Voila, problem solved instantly. I finished it and it came out to just under fourteen pages, the longest of any of the scripts. So, I went through and made judicious cuts and deleted one entire bit from the main sequence and when all that was done, we were a proper twelve pages. I sent that off and the reaction to it was lovely. I chose a really good song for it, too. So, now it’s on to episode eight, the last of the New York episodes. I have a couple of ideas rolling around in the cranium, so we’ll see which grabs me. There there’ll just be the two LA episodes left and I have ideas for those, including what I think will be a good season one finale.
After that, I moseyed on over to the mail place and picked up some packages, went to the Subway next door and got a pastrami sandwich to go, came home and ate it – it was very good but I don’t think I got as much pastrami as you’re supposed to get. Then I had some telephonic conversations, and then I watched the horrid Firestarter. After that, I ordered a chicken Caesar wrap from California Chicken Café and that arrived thirty minutes later. It was good, but maybe too much food. Of course, it irritates me to no end that eating two sandwiches in a day is somehow fattening. Sorry, I just don’t get that at all. Then I watched Kimi, and that was that.
Today, I’ll be up when I’m, I’ll do whatever needs doing, I’ll forward more orders so we can get the rest of the CDs shipped out, I’ll eat something light, maybe my low calorie hot dog things, I’ll start writing episode eight and maybe even try to finish it, I’ll hopefully pick up some packages, and then at some point I’ll watch, listen, and relax. Today’s topic of discussion: What are your favorite novels of Stephen King? Let’s have loads of lovely postings, shall we, whilst I hit the road to dreamland, happy to have had the funds arrive and that it was a nice, lighthearted day.