Epcot and Watching Farrah Turn On the Fawcett

The first time I arrived at EPCOT, I just may have thought that it was actually experimental.

I am sometimes wrong.




It hurts to even hit these keys.



I don't think I did think EPCOT was experimental though, even that first day.  But it's hard to go back to a time when I hadn't seen it before.  What was the experiment?  Let's see if somebody can make a big splash in Central Florida for people to come see from around the world... again?  That wasn't too much of a challenge for the Master.

Looking back; it looks like they just added water and stirred.

But I really love the whole thing.  I went there yesterday and the day before, and a couple times last week. And I plan to be there on the 4th.                   See you there.

By the way, what did I get from Morocco yesterday?  Water, of course.

Shaken, not stirred.

I guess maybe they were experimenting on some things; like how to make people want to go somewhere else close to Magic Kingdom.  And it totally worked.  I loved the fact that the monorail now went to both places.

The real fake train, with two rails the exact maybe width apart of Roman chariot wheels, goes around the Happiest Place on Earth.  But that was for babies.  The monorail- up there in the sky- well, the monorail goes around in a bigger circle and now it even goes somewhere new.

Let's take it.  Let's manténgase alejado de las puertas and get going!  

Arriba, Arriba! Andale, Andale!

On the monorail, the sky is bluer and the grass below is greener:  Hey, look at that!  I can ride a train from the future to the past or to space; to a castle or a jungle or the wild West.  It's all awesome here.  Everything is awesome.  I'd love to just be there and walk around Walk Disney World and step inside Fantasy Island and see what I can see in this experimental prototype community of tomorrow; which I knew from the start, it wasn't.  But I didn't care.

Go ahead, Master of Illusion.  Tell me it's one thing.  I know it's not that thing.  But even though I know what it's not, let me see for myself what it is.  Let me experiment my prototype of tomorrow.  

I loved it instantly.

Watch me where I arrived.  I passed a fountain and stepped underneath the supports for the Geosphere; which I did not like being called a golf ball.  I knew about geodesic domes; a little.  I knew right away it was more awesome than walking around chasing a little white ball trying to smack it into a hole.  And I saw the connections in architecture between the countless triangle tiles that are grouped into threes, making pyramid looking shapes that then comprise the big sphere; and the glass buildings around, clear with potential like those at the Louvre and outlined like lead that holds roses in Chartres or on an island in the Seine.  And this giant sphere, new and shiny, had history inside of it too.  If you mention the Egyptians, you've got me.

The wind whips around and underneath the Geosphere and I know that I'm there.  I can go in, into history if I want to, or I can step around it.  You can always catch it on the way back.  If you want to avoid it, you have a choice to make.  You have to go left or you have to go right.  Behind it there's a big fountain.  Maybe the biggest.  And it holds all the water that hits the sphere.  And more.  They added water.  Never will rain hit the sphere and bounce onto you.  It's collected there, stored and pushed up into the sky in time with the music, just like cast member shoes are compressed into matting for waterplay areas and other old things are repurposed from princess to Fairy Godmother.

You think those kids in It's A Small World look familiar?  Where's Timmy?  Did he actually make it back to the parking lot last time?

Do you think that Space Mountain dog still hears His Master's Voice?  Tilt your head and look.



I don't remember the music in Logan's Run.  But the music in the front part of Epcot takes me to that future world that I thought would be there when the century changed looking forward from 1980something.  The 21st century seemed so far away then.  But I could see it there and step into it that day.  I didn't really think about living there, but I wanted to visit.  I didn't think then about looking back from the 21st century today to that day and seeing the same Future World last night that was there then.  The water spouting into the sky got me.  The sound of it plopping back to earth drew me in.  It was timed to the music.  And it echoes in that open space.  Made ya look.  Over to the right, the water in a pond was serenely calm, rippling just slightly and glinting in the sun over river stones that I could see barely distorted, a few feet below the surface; rounded and placid.   Complete.  And then there was Jessica.

The front part of EPCOT was a real life Logan's Run, without any of that icky stuff.

What a great name.  I've had several run-ins with Jessicas since.  One of them was even at Epcot.  But even that more recent experience didn't ruin the place for me, or Jessicas.  I clearly like Epcot more than I like any Jessica I've known yet; but I haven't given up on the possibilities.  I didn't find a Jessica there that first time, but I felt that I had walked right into where she might live.

When I saw Logan's Run, I didn't even notice Farrah Fawcett, which brings me to a very long aside.  That's how much I loved Jessica then.  I didn't notice Farrah Fawcett until Charlie's Angels.  Now I notice Farrah. And it wasn't until just now that I realized why she's so famous.  I once heard her say that her poster- which did change the world at the time- was as squeaky clean as a toothpaste commercial.

She changed later, and the world changed too.  Farrah became a star, and then an actress and then a joke and then a better actress and then she disappeared, re-emerging even better, and then she became a hero who disappeared again; even from the In Memorium section at the Academy Awards.  But it all started with that poster.  Farrah understood, looking back.  I wonder what she knew at the time.  She was useful to clean up the image of sex.  She was known instantly for sex- but look at that poster again.  The faucet was opened and the world was turned on.  But why?  What was even new?  You don't change the world unless something comes along that is new.  Suddenly hair could be sexy.  That wasn't entirely new.  But everybody wanted the feather.

That was new.  It applied to everybody.  And now, I don't even see feathers in her hair in that photo.  It wasn't the particular poster, of course.  It was how we saw it.  Maybe the feather wasn't there until later, but the faucet was on.  Everybody ended up designing their hairstyle around the feather.  Either they wanted little ones or big ones or they didn't want one.  But suddenly that was the question.  Suddenly too, teeth could be sexy.  Come on people.  We're talking about teeth.  We're talking about some things everybody's got. Sure, she's a lovely lady- but she wasn't made famous for what women have.  She's famous for making sexy seem a possibility for everybody in the whole world.

There is a video taken of passersby seeing a huge image of Marilyn unveiled that was looming above a theater like a 50 foot giantess, looking down upon a showing of The Seven Year Itch.  One woman can be seen today on video, asking the world that was, what Marilyn Monroe has that a million other women don't have or don't prefer to show.  Well, that's a great question.  We've had a few decades to think about it.

Showing what you've got or not quite showing what you've got or pretending like you're accidentally showing it, or starting to show it but not showing it completely isn't new.  Careers rise due to this today as they have for millenia.  It's not rare, either. But riding high into the sky for showing what everybody's got, or at least had, or could?  That was something Farrah did that Marilyn didn't.

Farrah was new.  She was so right about that squeaky cleanliness.  Clean was sexy.  That wasn't new. Nobody was whiter than Marilyn in that white dress.  She was so pure that she had to be blonde everywhere because she was even showing her white underwear, and any color might seem like darkness next to the bedsheet white color.  But she was famous for showing things only women have.  Farrah is clearly a woman. But in that famous photo, she's riding on things everybody can have.  Anybody can be clean, and young, and happy, and have a head of hair. She wasn't the girl next door.  She was better.  She was the person next door.  And her name- with the double F alliteration, with an uncommon spelling of a common outdoor yard watering item one was allowed to drink from with no fear of germs- (oral cancer's skyrocketing rise wasn't imagined yet due to the fact that no one talked about sexual contact truthfully and AIDS wasn't even invented yet) and a great unfamiliar exotically sounding but normal first name- cemented it for us.  Add water and stir and there she was, hardening into an image at the foot of Grauman's Chinese.

The faucet opened.  And the swimsuit wasn't even wet.

Anybody young has hair.  And anybody at any age can get some.  Anybody over the age of two already has teeth.  And anybody; absolutely anybody, could bleach both.

; 

Back to EPCOT:

It isn't prototypical now.  It may once have been.  It was never a community- and I knew that from day one. But it is about tomorrow.  It's about how tomorrow is not mystical at all, but simply the day that comes around just after today.  It's Todayland.  Well, let's say it's the land of the day after today.  One sunset into the future.  Just a peek.

Yesterday and the day before I went to see a wonderful singer at Epcot.  The crowd was hefty and they guzzled their way around the world.  We've gotten bigger since EPCOT opened.  I think we've even gotten bigger since EPCOT became Epcot; not too long ago.

If you want to go to Disney World, you really need to practice walking.  Walk every day.  Walk with your family.  Walk carrying the baby or pushing the stroller and do this until you can walk ten miles.  Then, and only then are you ready to go to Disney World.  Do this often and you'll not be so so big, and you'll be happier and if you go to Disney World you'll actually be ready for it.  Maybe you'll even love it like I do.

When I saw the pyramids for the first time, I loved it.  Inside was an imaginative ride.  You stepped on lights and the carpet sang.  At first I just noticed that we were being herded along and it's human nature to step on the lights just because they're there making patterns on the floor.  And then I realized.  This is magic.  We're making the sounds.  When I step on this yellow light, this sound plays.  When I step on a blue one, the drums start.  Hmmm- we're the magic.

I saw a waterfall that flowed upward.  I saw bouncing bits of water that flew above us from one futuristic hedge display to another.  I saw a movie that jumped out at me with images of things from this world that were beautiful and saw reflections of a clean, metal and glass future one.  I took a boat ride into a glass greenhouse.  I saw bubbles mark my descent on the way to the ocean floor, saw lots of fish there, and surprisingly didn't need to see the bubbles on the way back up to the surface.

Ride's over.

Let's face it.  I felt like I was on Space Academy.

I was at EPCOT.

And that was only half of it.  In the back, I hadn't even reached the other entrance reminiscent of the English Channel that lies between France and the UK.  I hadn't yet circled the World Showcase lagoon into which each represented nation had ceremoniously poured out water from their homeland to mingle together with Disney's Florida drainage system.

You want to walk at Walk Disney World, too?  Come see Epcot.

Notes on The Accursed by Joyce Carol Oates

My first exposure was a book about a family who ate and ate.  The food was described so nicely and the family stuffed themselves to their and my delight.  It was in a sack of books we got from somebody around the time that I finished high school.  And there was a short story called "Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?" that I read in a college short story class.  Once I read both of them, I was hooked.  Separately I really enjoyed them, and then I realized they were written by the same author.  From that day, I've been interested in all of her work.  Someday I might try to determine if I've read all of the novels.  I think I've probably missed one.

Of course by the time I finish writing this post, Joyce Carol Oates may have published another novel.

When I saw The Accursed I was happy.  It's a big book.  And I prefer getting into a novel and staying there rather than going through a story quickly.  Sometimes I read slowly but for this one, I didn't have to.  It ends in all caps.  Remember how people say that an email with all caps is like shouting?  Well, sometimes I thought the author was deciding how far she could go without the reader throwing in the towel.  And sometimes I thought parts of the book were brilliant.

Joyce Carol Oates is my favorite living author.  I like Thomas Hardy and Edith Wharton at the moment, and together they are my top three.  Today I finished a book of four novellas by Joyce Carol Oates entitled Evil Eye.  It was certainly easier to read than The Accursed, which has footnotes, and letters from Woodrow Wilson and diary entries and those all caps.  I have to confess that I really didn't think all caps was that rude or worthy of note until I read the whole section of them at the ending of this book.  I'm not a fan.

But I never think that she doesn't know what she's doing, even when I think that I don't know what she's doing.

I like the quote from the young man who has trouble with letters who says on p. 466, "But why does it matter if words are spelled correctly, and used correctly, if they are lies?  No one can explain."

When I'm typing, I think about putting two spaces in between each sentence, and notice when that is done and when that is not.  I notice how Thomas Hardy uses to-day instead of today.  I notice incomplete sentences; and vacillate about their acceptability.  I notice capitalization, and I don't like it when I am inconsistent.  And I notice spelling errors in almost everything I read that has been written since the 1970s.  It seems once spellcheck was common, publishers stopped paying people to look for errors; and don't bother to use spellcheck consistently.  

In the beginning was The Word, or the Word, after all.  It's been with us the whole time.  But what was there?  Certainly not English; much less a form that I'm comfortable with.  Isn't the truth the idea, and not the expression?  Her words ring true to me.  I once wondered dreamily how someone I had known was doing these days, to realize I was thinking of a character from one of her books.  I was thinking about a character as a real person with a future and not as someone created with words.  Too often, I'm asking myself why an author has written something; but with hers I ask myself why the character did that or the other rather than what I was expecting them to do.

The book opens and closes with maps.  And that's a good sign for me.  

When she wins a Pulitzer, will she stop writing so often?  I hope not.  I love knowing that I can find a book that I know I will be interested in, just because of the author.

My Team

There's a shirt I wear every once in awhile and it makes people think I'm a fan of a certain football team.

I don't get it.  It's just a t-shirt, with no words, or symbols, and it's not even an odd color.

Is it the case that there's a particular shade that calls to mind a team specifically?  Everybody's choosing from the same 10 colors, aren't they?

That just brought to mind the pencils for football teams that kids would buy at school and then hit them against each other trying to break the other guys'.  This brings back memories of riding the short bus in 7th and 8th grade.

Supposedly gorillas don't like to see red, and it may or may not be my imagination that when I wear red to Animal Kingdom, they notice me.  When I wear green, the aviary birds show great interest, and that's because the feeders wear green shirts.

I try to remember not to wear green if I'm going to visit the birds like this one, that'll swoop down on me.

Look Who I Found

It's a picture of The Queen.

Thank you to Herb Ritts for this picture of Elizabeth Taylor.  I saw in a review yesterday that someone else from Hollywood was called The Queen, but I think this picture says it all.

She has no crown but I can see it.

Tess of India

I first heard of Tess when the movie came out in 1979.  I saw commercials for it.  And the star was beautiful so it caught my attention.  I remember seeing her forlorn on the back of a cart going down a dirt road.

Let me see if I can find a photo like that and how it compares to my memory.

Nope.  But it might be the same road, maybe on a different leg of the trip.



There was something that captured my imagination about Tess, and it was her haunting facial expressions. And since I wasn't allowed to watch it- I wonder if they showed a boob- I remembered it since then from thousands of television commercials I have seen.

Recently, a good friend handed me the book since she was moving and getting rid of things.  Because of Tess, I've started reading all things Hardy and just saw a movie that states that it was based on Tess of the d'Urbervilles.  It was not.  I didn't pick up the movie because I thought it had anything to do with Hardy, but because the actress on the DVD cover had a beautiful haunting face.  Once I saw that it was based on Tess I couldn't think of it any other way.  Maybe it was a pretty good movie. Maybe it wasn't.  I really don't know. All I could think of is that if Hardy wasn't in the public domain, no one would have said it was based on Tess because they wouldn't want to pay for nothing.

A d'Urberville always sounded like a place to me.  It ends with ville, like Nashville or Louisville.  But it's a family name and Darbyfield is its Anglicized version.  Once I got to that paragraph in the book, I was hooked.  Who wants to go through life as a Darbyfield if there's a chance to be seen as a D'Urberville?

But I Want To

I want to go up to someone who has made an obviously unfortunate fashion choice like a crazy hat, or a big tattoo or a stupid nose ring, and act like I'm letting them know something they're not aware of about themselves.  You know when a friend has something on their shoulder like lint or dandruff, or there is something in their teeth and you make hand motions out of pity to let them know, and finally you say "You have something right there" or go to flick it off for them?  Acting like a deliberate choice someone made is simply a mistake like having toilet paper stuck to one's shoe sounds really awesome to me.

I want to go up to somebody who thinks they're cute standing there with a cup of something and put a dollar in it like I think they're homeless and begging for money.

I want to go up to someone shopping, who thinks they're too good for the store they're in and ask them for help like they work there.

Be Quiet

I was walking, carrying something, and a lady was standing in the way- in the middle of the only place to walk- in a public place- so I walked slowly toward her, holding my stuff off to the side, and turned sideways to fit my bundle past her without bumping her; without saying anything, and did a little quick-step shuffle to move past her.  My thinking was that I had a couple choices, and not calling attention to her being in the way was the best one.  But apparently she didn't feel the same way.  She yelled out: "Use your words!  It's not hard.  Just say 'Excuse me!' "

Being one to consider options, I had of course already thought maybe I should say "Excuse me" but had discounted it as it would call attention to her inability to recognize that she was standing in the way.  I thought in that situation that saying something would be more rude than not.  My "excuse me" would have come out sounding more like "Hello, you're in the way," even though I wasn't going to say those words.  Why point out to her that I think I'm right and I think she's wrong?  I had also considered saying hello, or just standing there and waiting, but I guess I opted for the "live and let live" idea that if she wants to stand in the way, who am I to comment?  I'm there to walk by, and so I did.

There are situations in which it's better to be quiet, but I don't think this was one of them.  She wanted me to say "excuse me" and if had known that, I should have.  But I didn't know.  I love when Mrs. Rabbit reminds Thumper of Mr. Rabbit's admonition.  He has to think a bit before he can come up with it.  There are a lot of versions of this idea, but I say "If you can't say something nice; well, why are you talking?"

When I see someone I know, I want to see a nod or hear a word of recognition.  But I really don't want to talk to strangers most of the time and it feels intrusive at some times.  This reminds me of walking into a store and being asked if I need any help.  I feel someone should be there if I want help, but just stand there unless spoken to, okay?

I guess for me it comes down to eye contact.

There are people all around and we're going about our business.  But if we make eye contact, then both should say a quick acknowledgement or nod their head.  I didn't want to talk to that lady, and we hadn't made eye contact, so I felt that silence was the best option.

I wonder what her rules are?  Obviously she felt in that situation that I should have said "excuse me," but did she think she should speak to someone who doesn't follow her rules of engagement, and tell them what they ought to have done, or did her words just slip out?


Not everyone is weighing their options before doing anything.  Some people actually get some things done.  I used to get a lot done.  Now, I think.

I remember other silences when being too overwhelmed to speak- when I see somebody I know unexpectedly, or find myself in a group when I don't want to be, or when somebody takes my breath away. But when should one choose silence?

I think that when a child cries it's best to be quiet at first.  Rushing over to them and asking them if they're sure they don't need an ambulance makes them feel alarmed and keeps them crying.  If they are not aware of an audience, they'll just get up and move on, unfazed by momentary discomfort.  For some reasons parents have become confused and think their job is to keep the child from being uncomfortable instead of teaching them how to deal with it.  These are the same people that know practice improves performance and that the only way to strengthen a muscle is to use it.

The first cough or sneeze also should elicit silence.  If it continues, you want to make sure the person is alright.  But why call attention to something that wasn't meant for your acknowledgment?

Take Me Back - Parkland (2013) and American Hustle (2013)

Whenever I see footage shot in another time, it's really easy to tell.  I haven't figured out why an artist can't make a clip now that looks like a clip from the past; but apparently they can't.

Hair sometimes gives it away.  You can't ride the rails in tsarist Russia with a 20th century fall on top of your head.  Accents sometimes do it.  In fact, you can actually tell the difference between an actor on film and an interview of a real person on film.  I suppose some actors are real people, but even with hours of pretend candid footage under our belts, we can just tell when film is shot rather than caught.  And usually there is something in the quality of the film processing that makes it look old, and I suppose current directors don't want to make their movies look like that; apart from putting some cosmetically unpleasing too-uniform scratches on a clip or making it a little jumpy on purpose by sending it through at an off speed.

Parkland captures something of 1963 so well that the clips used, even though they are so familiar, don't seem jarring.

Both films feature great acting.  I so rarely watch a whole movie without complaining about at least one of the actors; and both of these movies left me thinking of characters as people, not characters as actors.

Jacki Weaver stole the show again.  It's not a nuanced performance, but she wasn't playing a nuanced lady.  Every minute she's on the screen; that's where you look.

American Hustle took me back to a time that I remember.

Neither film had me thinking that I was watching a previous decade when I wasn't, but they captured that time for me.  I don't really know what hospitals and the FBI were like in 1963, but I think they were like Parkland.  But I clearly remember guys as obnoxious as the men in American Hustle when society didn't seem to mind.  Do you remember alpha males not having to be seen as nice?  I do.  Times have changed.

Connecting Anything

I was reading a magazine in the break room.  I think it was a current issue of Smithsonian.  It was an article about confusing similar trends with correlation.  I'm not a statistician, but the idea intrigues me.  There was an example comparing Nicolas Cage movies to shark bites.  I suppose I remember that one because it's hard to say which one of those things is worse, but apparently if you put the data on a graph, the numbers match almost perfectly.

I don't remember if it was the amount of money the movie made or when it was made, but in this age of metadata in which there are so many numbers to compare, there was a distinct similarity between trends in completely unrelated fields.  I also don't remember if the shark bites were in the U.S. or the world.  But Nicolas Cage movies and shark bites aren't generally as bad as people think they are, so maybe there is a reason behind the matching statistical graphs.

We must remember that sequence doesn't determine causality and that if we have enough numbers we can get some of them to match purely by chance.

I often think that if I have two thoughts that connect I can easily add a random third that seems to fit right in there, and I wonder what value this skill has in my life other than to make me distractable.

I think if I randomly pulled out a word, an image and any one other thing, or two, I could write something interesting about their connection.  But why do I want to do this, and for what end?





Since I wrote that, I've found the article again, in the break room, and it's not about shark attacks.  It's about accidental drownings.  And I think it was in Scientific American, if not Smithsonian.  I'm going to resist the urge to check on this.

There's a book about connecting things that aren't connected, and this was one of the examples.



One way to connect things that aren't connected is to make stuff up.

Looking Back - Song for Diana Ross

I was listening to Diana Ross hits and comparing them to some of her other songs and I thought that her voice is much better, but in the same style, as many top pop singers today.

So I tried to figure out what makes a hit for her.  It's something to do with her interpretation of lyrics.  She takes a phrase that is something one might say, and turns it into art.  The lyrics are usually simple, but they say a lot.

So I wrote a song for Diana Ross to sing, and here is one verse.


I'm so often convinced that I can't write a tune without copying another, that I haven't really written too many songs; but many fragments.  Notes only have so many variations, so I never have confidence that I'm not just riffing off of something I've heard.



Looking back, I see the times I failed you.

Looking back, I know how hard I tried.

And I know, in my heart, I'll always be a part

of you, as you go

as you grow,

Wherever life may take you now.




I pictured Diana standing in the wings as one of her kids is about to get married and fly the coop.  This was a few months before Evan announced his wedding.  I didn't really know how many of her kids were married at the time I made up the song.

Best Book Ever - William Maxwell's So Long, See You Tomorrow

I was working at Barnes and Noble, which was a job I loved because it had some variety.  I remember that I didn't like much of what I did, but each task was rotated so that I never did the same thing for more than two hours.

Sometimes I wrapped presents- I wasn't good at that.  Sometimes I manned the cash register- I was always somehow able to earn the company an extra penny without any desire to do so.  Sometimes I shelved books and sometimes I cleaned the bathroom.  And sometimes I helped people that wanted to find a book; like the people who looked in an art history book to find confirmation that the painting they just bought at a yard sale had to be a recognized masterpiece so important that it would be in an art history book.

"Is this all the art you got?  We're looking for one that has boats in it."



I have to say doing anything for an hour is better than doing the same thing for eight hours.  But the pay isn't as good.

Coming out of college, which provided a plethora of choices for me- I would just grab the class calendar and then narrow down the 15 classes I wanted to take each semester into something affordable and manageable- and I was working three part time jobs- was a great environment for me.  I was doing lots of stuff, all the time, and it was all different.  When I finally stopped being a music major, I was playing my violin more than ever, just not for a grade anymore and life was great.

Then I packed up everything and moved and needed a job and worked for Barnes and Noble.

In the break room was an advanced copy of a little paperback which I've read about twenty times.

I recommend William Maxwell's So Long, See You Tomorrow to you.

The Two Faces of January (2014)

Finally. 

I found a movie I like everything about.  It's been a really long time and I've been watching lots of movies; about one or two a day. And I've found lots of stories I like, and lots of performances I like and some actors to look up and see what else they've done, and so on.  But there's almost always a few nagging plot holes or a bad accent or some boring parts, or something to distract me.  Sometimes I think too much of the actor and/or the script instead of getting into the character and the plot.  I know it's a good movie or book when I ask myself "Why did that person just do that?" forgetting for a moment that it's all contrived.  More often, I'm asking myself "Why was the scene written that way?"  or "Why did the actor make that choice here?"

The Two Faces of January has one annoying aspect and that is that the title makes no sense to me.  But since I liked everything else, I'm willing to admit that maybe I just didn't catch the meaning in the title.  Maybe the book makes it more plain that the two faces on the bracelet are like Janus, who also wears two faces.  I don't even remember if the word January was mentioned.  Other than that, the movie was great.  I never heard of it until I found it at the local library, so I bet it didn't do well at the box office.  Maybe, it was even straight to DVD.  I'm anxious to look it up on IMDB.com and see what others thought of it.

Yesterday, I finished a series that was well-received critically, and I liked it, but I didn't like everything, and it had a very high score on IMDB.  I bet this one doesn't.  But I liked the music, the scenery, the story, the acting and it held my interest for the entire time.  I believe if the same movie was made in black and white in the 50s it would have been good box office for the time and considered now to be well done and to some people it would be a classic.  But since it was made recently, I bet it was basically overlooked.

Now let's see what IMDB.com has to say about it.

Hmmm.  Many people found the pace slow and with not enough characterization.  I think both were excellent in this film, and I often dislike both, but this one did it right. This is the directorial debut of  Hossein Amini so I'm very interested to see what he does next.  I really liked Snow White and The Huntsman also, and he had a hand in that too.

The film stars three actors who do a great job.  Each one did exactly what they should have.  I look at one of them and I then they could be a nice guy occasionally doing some swarmy things... or maybe they're swarmy characters doing some nice things.  And that question is constant for all three!  

You see it and you decide.


Viggo Mortenson has a great quote on IMDB.com about an actor's role in a film:

"It comes down to the fact that you supply the blue, and they supply the other colors and mix them with your blue, and maybe there's some blue left in the painting and maybe there isn't. Maybe there wasn't supposed to be any there in the first place. So have some fun and make a good blue and walk away."

Here, Viggo is captivating.  I never know what it is about him.  Maybe his face is molded from plastic and he's basically an acting mannequin; the kind whose wavy hair is molded on top of his head all in one piece, or maybe he's aged well or maybe he hasn't.  Has he had a ton of work or none at all on his face?  I don't know, but there's something about it.  Who needs dialogue when you have faces?  Well, we have lots of good dialogue, too.

Oscar Isaac plays a great foil to Viggo.  Don't you want to know what he's thinking?

Kirsten Dunst makes you wonder.  Can she be exactly what she seems?  Or is there something else going on inside that hat?

Don't you want to see what this guy is up to?  Is there something in that newspaper he can't quite believe so he has to turn away?  Or did somebody just call his name and he glanced up for a second.

I know, maybe he's just using the newspaper to give his hands something to do while he's staking the joint, thinking it will help him blend in with the surroundings.

Kissing on the steps at The Parthenon, wandering through a bazaar in Istanbul, dancing in Greece... Come on, this is what a movie is supposed to contain.

What are these people up to, anyway?

Kirsten Dunst has intrigued me since she played an old vampire in the body of a little girl.  She can play young, but she can be any age.  She's a real actress, who sometimes plays parts that any girl could play.


Oscar Isaac is great in this.  I'm glad to see that he's in Star Wars and I look forward to seeing him there.



The film got a pretty decent score on IMDB.com but I found the comments making me defensive about it.  I liked it.  I really liked it.  

Perspective Examples- Film or Text

I'm using the Times font here, which I assume is named after the Times New Roman Font, which is named after The Times newspaper it was developed for.  I suppose somebody (Google) doesn't want to use the real font for monetary reasons?  I don't know how that works today with everybody so easily able to copy and paste nearly anything anywhere with impunity.



Lately I've been thinking about perspective: things like the glass half empty or half full.  I hate the phrase that perception is reality; mainly because I like words and I can clearly see that one of those words is not the same as the other.  One word starts with a p and is pretty much twice as long as the other one and no, they do not mean the same thing and there is a really big difference between the two...  But I do wonder about the issue of perception and know that a great deal depends upon how one looks at something, or where one views something from; which would be perspective.  If I look at a buffet from outside the restaurant I can't enter it looks quite different than when I'm in front of it with a plate.

I'm thinking of a way to express the thought of "it depends on how you look at it" with film or text.  Every time I go to a friend's house the conversation turns to how old or how wrinkled everybody on tv looks.  And that certainly is one perspective to judge people from; but I hardly ever do that when I'm not with that one friend.

"Oh she's gained a lot of weight, but so and so looks good.  I wonder if she's had any plastic surgery."  I usually think to myself, as I join in the conversation, that it's so superficial.  Why aren't we discussing ideas instead of people?

I envision a film clip that builds upon this idea, in which the characters are defined in one way, and then the same clip is shown again but they are defined in another.  It reminds me of when a cartoon character is hungry and sees the other characters, not as their comrade, but as food.

A little scenario unfolds with various characters and one time they would be shown as if the viewer would classify them according to weight and another time as if someone would classify them according to net worth and some would classify them according to how interesting they were, etc.

It would probably be very easy to express the same idea with a text that didn't change that includes a bare story line with plenty of room for additions or addendum and then with a drop-down menu, one can fill in gaps between words with choices such as race, occupation, weight, net worth, etc.  I'm picturing Mad Libs but online with one choice that fills in all the blanks depending on how you want to look at it.

My New Phrase

Dear Blog,

I've been away from you for so long that I know you've missed me.


When I was reading The Children by Edith Wharton again, I was reminded of how like children adults can be; flitting from one interest to another and wanting everything they see like two-year olds sitting in a grocery cart, convinced that whatever is at eye-level is necessary.

In the same conversation, the characters speak of suicide and concerns less than trivial. The example I found was a comment about a certain shade of lipstick- as if one choice was so much better than the other:

It certainly could not be Baiser Défendu, but Nouveau Péché.

Welcome to October

October is the eighth month, kinda.  I can see it.  Of course the name is a leftover consequence of forgotten clashes of civilizations, but I see a connection to the way we think of these things today.

Basically, we people can only count to ten, since we've got ten fingers in front of us.  And, the year really does end around the end of December; even if it's really January 3 or 2nd or whatever the Sunday along in there happens to show up.

So that means that if this is October, as in 8, that fits in with the whole year being two months longer than it is now- 10, 12... they're both completions, but 10 probably wins the contest so since we've got 2 months left, it makes sense.

My blog is a little over 9 months old.

Ah, my baby.

The Dream Is Still Alive

I had a chance to see Wilson Phillips in concert and they can sing!  I wasn't sure if they were like many artists whose best work is recorded; and mixed, and fixed.  But I enjoyed the banter and the songs.  It was a good show.

For some reason, I had felt that as children of Beach Boys and Mamas and Papas, that the girl group was watering down a legacy.  I don't feel that way now.  Everybody is a child of some mama and papa, and these girls stayed in the family business and they've proven themselves, whether I knew that or not.

I enjoyed hearing their version of California Dreamin'.  It sounds good to hear old songs again in a new way, and if the singers are related, good for them.

According to Wikipedia, The Beach Boys had over eighty songs chart worldwide, thirty-six of them US Top 40 hits (the most by an American rock band), four reaching number-one on the Billboard Hot 100 chart.^[3] The Beach Boys have sold in excess of 100 million records worldwide.

The Mamas and the Paps released five studio albums and seventeen singles, six of which made the top ten and sold close to 40 million records worldwide.

In 1992, Wilson Phillips also made history as Billboard declared their debut album the best selling album of all time by an all female group, peaking at No. 2 on the Billboard 200 album chart, and selling over 5 million copies in the US and over 10 million copies worldwide, which also made Wilson Phillips, at the time, the best selling female group of all time for a single album, breaking the previous record set by The Supremes.

I think anybody who compares to The Supremes is doing alright.  Wilson Phillips also have 5 studio albums, and 13 singles, of which 3 went to #1.  After 25 years, they're still singing and sounding great and thanks to Spotify, I can listen any time.

The Outstanding Cast of The Cincinnati Kid

I just watched The Cincinnati Kid from 1965 and couldn't believe how many great actors were in one movie. The star power is not limited to those in front of the camera.

Norman Jewison directs and Ray Charles provides the theme song.

 

Sweet Emma (Barrett) makes a cameo as a New Orleans musician.  The other photos here are from the film itself, but this one was taken from one of her albums.  She's not in the film very long, but like everybody else, she gets it done right, just doing what she does, flawlessly.

There is actually a kid in the movie.  Here is Kenneth Grant who is not a star, but from his one film role you think he could have been.  He's as good as everybody else so I didn't want to leave him out.

Ann-Margret is so very good; and when she's bad she's incredible.  She really can do no wrong.  I don't think there was a wasted gesture or nuance that went too far or even not far enough.  How do you provide eye candy without being too sweet?  Well, just watch the pro.  Her performance is perfectly balanced.

Cab Calloway takes his place at the poker table with all these serious actors and holds his own as the true showman that he is; not even showing one bit of a soft shoe shuffle or smile for the camera.  If you only knew him from this role, you'd think he was the character that he plays rather than one of the hardest working entertainers in show business.

It's great to see Edward G. Robinson inhabit his role confidently and to compare what he did in 1965 with today's Most Interesting Man In The World commercials.  I can hear him saying "I don't always play this type of character, but when I do, I do it right with no apologies."  I can also imagine him saying that he'll sell no wine before it's time.  He does what he wants to do and he's not asking for anyone's permission.

Joan Blondell shines as always.  I don't think I'll give too much of the plot away if I mention that her character's name in the film is Lady Fingers.  Watch her work them!  This lady knows what she's doing.
 

Karl Malden is captured on film one more time; karling just right, as one would expect him to do.

Rip Torn smolders like nobody's business.

Steve McQueen stars.  I don't think it's his fault that everybody calls him Kid although he's obviously a man.

Tuesday Weld plays the girl.