RandomCha

The response to my Rob’s Best of 2007 mix CD offer was a bit underwhelming so I’m extending the offer one more time.

It’s that time of year. That time of year when I make my mix CD!

Night of the Demon [1957] 

1. The cloud of smoke: an ink splotch spreading in a tank of water. Eerie.
2. Dana Andrews’ voice is so different than in Laura. More gravel, deeper. He was definitely a smoker and a drinker.
3. The hypnotic gleaming shoehorn-like object. “This is all you see. This is all you see.”

Laura [1944] 

1. Vincent Price wearing his raincoat like a cape.
2. The opening shot is of Waldo’s collection of prized relics; the closing shot is of Waldo’s smashed clock.
3. “He’s no good, but he’s what I want.”

 100 Spinning Plates has sold out!

Come see me today at the Renegade Craft Fair! I’m in booth #12. There’s gonna be lots of cool, reasonably-priced, locally-made crafts and gewgaws. Perfect for all your holiday gift needs!

Last night I was just plain tired, mentally. I zoned out in front of the Christmas tree for awhile  with a glass of wine. Andy was in the other room hard at work on his final projects for school. He’ll be working on those pretty much every night until the semester is over on the 15th. So until then I’m more or less largely on my own. 

I sat there with my wine. And I was just plain tired, mentally; thinking of things, writing them down, trying to fulfill vague obligations of responsibility and ambition. Coming home from work to do more work, always in an attempt to “get ahead,” to acquire “experience.” All I really wanted to do was reteat into the Christmas spirit for awhile. I played a little of the Dave Brubeck Christmas album, watched the frost on the windows.

Frankly I’m very glad that 100SP is almost over forever. I’ve been building the damn things for four years now. Every box is glued together and numbered by hand. Last night I built copy no. 492. If the Renegade goes well this weekend, I’ll sell every last copy.
 
I popped in my DVD of Laura and watched it again; I’ve watched it four times this year I think. Each time it becomes more mysterious, more abstract somehow. More crystal clear and less fathomable. The dialog, so brilliant, seemingly has nothing to do with the action. People live one life with their bodies and another in their words. The words exist on their own plane of reality. The characters’ behavior functions according to a weird, unknowable logic. Unknowable even to the characters themselves. There are so many complications and layers that in the end it’s beside the point to untangle them. Every actor onscreen is his or her own magnet, and my atttention is pushed and pulled between them all for the entire length of the film.  And the dream settings that are Laura Hunt’s apartment and Waldo Lydecker’s apartment, worlds as self-contained as the White Lodge and the Black Lodge in Twin Peaks.

When it was over I felt a strange calm and, after reading some Patricia Highsmith stories, slept very well. Somehow those things didn’t seem to contradict Christmas at all.

Julius Caesar [1953]

1. Marlon’s near-shirtless entrance. Mmmmm. Who cares what he’s actually saying, he looks hot.
2. Wow, John Gielgud looks young. His diction is flawless, yet completely natural-sounding. When he talks about “bending his body” to Caesar I believed every syllable of his rage.
3. Brutus being stabbed: the sound of a knife plunging into a block of cole slaw.