Well, dear readers, I’m just up from another needed evening nap, this one only one hour in duration, so I am not completely coherent, and yet, when have I ever been completely coherent? I can’t recall. Maybe if I turn on some music I’ll be more coherent. Ah, the Brahms fellow and his beautiful violin concerto, an early Ormandy mono recording and lovely performance. I am sipping from a can of Canada Dry Zero Sugar ginger ale. That brings to mind, at least MY mind, the fact that I haven’t seen a Vernor’s diet ginger ale for ages. I must research that and see what’s what. Well, they still make it, so I must find a six-pack and check it out. I have not been all that fond of Zero Sugar things, especially Coke. The Canada Dry Zero Sugar is okay but not as good as the regular diet soda, but I guess they don’t make that anymore. What else can I tell you? Oh, I can tell you I watched another DGA screener. As you know, I could take no more of the bombast and arch thing that was Everything Everywhere All at Once. Last night, I watched a motion picture entitled Women Talk and oh yes, they talk, and talk, and talk – a real talking picture. It’s about women in a religious community where the men can rape and abuse them and father children as much as they please and the women are told if they don’t let that happen they will not get into the kingdom of heaven. These women are not allowed to be taught how to read or write – the fact that there are actually people who believe this stuff and allow it to happen is the shocker, but that’s how cults work. In this film, a group of the women band together and decide through endless talking if they want to leave. It’s 108-minutes long but it may as well have been two-and-a-half hours because that’s what it seemed like. It’s basically the same argument – should we leave, should we stay and fight, should we do nothing – over and over again. The cast is fine, I suppose, but I have to tell you that I’m really bored of English actors playing Americans when there are perfectly wonderful American actors to play these roles. And the most irritating performance in the film, not her fault although she really leans into the script’s one-note rantings her character has, is Jessie Buckley, who is actually an Irish actor, but one whose success is from her time in England. The part calls for her to constantly lambast the one decent man in the cult, just because he’s a man. And yet, her character has stayed with the man who rapes her and beats the living daylights out of her. Yeah. It’s a dreary film and therefore, yes, it’s a critics’ darling, with the direction being praised for the brilliance and novelty of the director having desaturated the color, like thirty other directors haven’t done that before. And she shoots the film or at least “presents” the film in the impossibly wide ratio of 2.76 – the same ratio of Ultra Panavision 70mm movies like It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World, only those movies had screens that were able to do that without it looking like a Band-Aid strip, which is exactly what this looks like. The best performance in the film is from Judith Ivey, who is wonderful. It’s what I call a lecture picture and I’m not a fan of being lectured by a movie. Finally, the score by the current flavor-of-the-month, Hildur Guonadottir is absolutely horrible. But I find all her meanderings horrible, but this is what passes for film music today. And they act like she’s the first woman to score major films. Well, no, she isn’t. Long before her there were some really fine female film composers, including Rachel Portman, Anne Dudley, Joanna Bruzdowicz, Sharon Farber, Lolita Ritmanis, Shirley Walker, Jocelyn Pook, Debbie Wiseman, and if you want to go back to the Golden Age, the great English composer Doreen Carwithen, as well as Elizabeth Lutyens, and Germaine Taillleferre. And, of course, Angela Morley (formerly known as Wally Stott before transitioning in 1972), so, no, this woman is not alone. And she’s a one-trick pony – meandering chords over assorted cello lines that just sit on top of the film and never do what film music is supposed to do. It’s music as sound design and I’m bored to tears by it. Is THAT coherent enough for you?
Yesterday was yet another weird day with some merde to deal with, but also a couple of okay things. I only got four-and-a-half hours of sleep and that MUST change and change now. Once up, I answered e-mails, dealt with some text messages, and then the handyman arrived, heard the drip, drip, drip immediately, and after about ten minutes found the problem, a faulty valve. I ordered the tri-salad from Art’s, which is way too expensive, but I was in the mood for it. I forgot to tell them to do two coleslaws instead of one coleslaw and one potato salad – there’s something in potato salad that doesn’t sit well with me these days and I shouldn’t have eaten it, but it was there, so I did. Otherwise, it was very good.
The handyman returned a couple of hours later, telling me that he had to order the valve and it would be five days, and he’d turned the water off. I told him I could not go one day let alone five without showering and I asked him to turn it back on and that I’d live with the drip, drip, drip. He was in there for forty-five-minutes and told me that he’d had an idea – the big bathtub has the same exact thing that the shower does – so he took that unit and put it in the shower and put the shower unit in the tub and voila – everything works as it should, no drip, drip, drip, and when he gets the replacement valve he’ll install it in the bathtub. I’ve never once used the bathtub, by the way, as I don’t do baths.
Then I spent hours typing up the end credits for each episode of Sami – shouldn’t really be my job, but there was too much confusion, and I just did it. That’s now with Marshall Harvey and his assistant, Ethan. I wrote about seven pages of the new book, the way I always do, so that when I begin on January 1, I’m already into it. Then I watched the talking picture.
Today, I’ll be up when I’m up, I’ll do whatever needs doing, I’ll do some banking at the bank, which is the best place to do banking, I’ll hopefully pick up some packages, one of which is more Pepcid, then I’ll continue assigning songs and get everyone their music, I’ll eat, and then I can watch, listen, and relax.
Tomorrow, she of the Evil Eye comes, so I’ll go somewhere for a light breakfast. I’m also expecting a delivery here at the house – someone bought me some Omaha Steaks – I’ve never had them so I’m looking forward to sampling them. I’ll let she of the Evil Eye know it’s coming so if it comes while I’m gone, she can bring it in the house. And then I start my two weeks of ME days.
Well, dear readers, I must take the day, I must do the things I do, I must, for example, be up when I’m up, do whatever needs doing, bank, hopefully pick up packages, eat, and then watch, listen, and relax. Today’s topic of discussion: What were your favorite books, both fiction and non, of 2022? Let’s have loads of lovely postings, shall we, whilst I hit the road to dreamland, hoping the notes were both coherent and incoherent, as we like to cover all our bases.