Tag Archives: movies

Springtime Thursday Musings

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Warm again early in the day. Thunderstorms rolled through in the morning and again in the afternoon. Cool air came back late in the day.

Ahead of the rain, we walked the dog around a pond, where a good many red-winged blackbirds flitted around. Hardly our first encounter with them, though there don’t seem to be as many after spring is over.

Moths are back in the house. How did this happen? There’s no lasting victory over moths, looks like. So I put out fresh glue traps, and some dozens have been caught. I still see a few flitting around, and slap them when I can, but I hope they too will either die in the traps, or die mateless and without descendants.

Rabbits are back in numbers too, often in the back yard, but I leave them alone. The dog does too, seemingly not interested in chasing them any more. Such is old age.

Completely by accident, and speaking of rabbits, I learned that today is the 44th anniversary of a swamp rabbit attacking President Carter’s boat (which wasn’t known till later in 1979). Even better, I learned that the photo of the incident is in the public domain, being the work of a White House photographer. This copy is via the Carter Library, though I don’t remember it being on display there.

With the looming deadline for renting more Netflix DVDs in mind, I watched part of the disk I currently have at home, Judgment at Nuremberg. I don’t remember why I put it in the queue, except that I’d never gotten around to seeing it, and Spencer Tracy and Burt Lancaster are always worth a look.

I didn’t realize that William Shatner was in it until I saw his name in the opening credits. As it happens, he plays a captain. In the U.S. Army, but still a captain.

I also didn’t know that Werner Klemperer played a part, one of the defendants. Naturally, I had a silly thought when he entered the courtroom: Col. Klink was put on trial at Nuremberg? No! His incompetence consistently aided the Allied cause. Call Col. Hogan as a character witness.

I’m reminded of something I once heard about Klemperer on stage: “Kevin D. told me that, during a production of Cabaret at the Chicago Theatre in the late ’80s, Werner Klemperer played [a Jewish merchant not in the movie version], and got the biggest applause of the night. ‘Everyone knew it was because he played Col. Klink,’ Kevin said.”

In the staged revival of Cabaret I saw in 2002, Hal Linden played the same part, and likewise got a vigorous round of applause on his first appearance. For playing Barney Miller, I figure. Such is the power of TV.

Adios, Netflix Disks

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No more rental DVDs from Netflix? The bastards. Actually, that’s me just grumbling about change. I’ve been thinking of canceling for a while now, and there’s no use in getting overwrought about entertainment anyway. The operative word in fanboy is boy, after all.

Inertia has been a factor in preventing my cancellation, but so has the notion that streaming doesn’t have some of the more obscure movies and TV shows that are on DVD. Just a hunch, since I’ve never done any actual research on the matter, except look at a few articles like this.

I took a look at the list of my total rentals, which is a subpage of my account. Netflix doesn’t forget. Not until September, at least, when the FAQ section says such lists will be wiped. How many all together? Six hundred and sixty-three disks over 18 years, or nearly 37 each year. So three a month. Considering that sometimes more than one person has watched each disk, I suppose I’ve gotten my money’s worth.

If I’d really wanted to get my money’s worth, I would have quit about six or seven years ago, when rentals had dropped to maybe once a month or so. There were far more in the early years, when (for obvious reasons) titles like SpongeBob SquarePants, Barbie Mermaidia and Drake & Josh appeared in the queue. Obtaining kids’ entertainment was one of the reasons we signed up in the first place, along with finding Japanese titles, though as the years passed, demand in the household for each waned as everyone sought out other sources.

I’ve been active across the years as well, ordering such titles as (in rough order) The Alamo (2004), Ocean’s Twelve, Animal Crackers, Pee-wee’s Playhouse, The Lavender Hill Mob, Chocolat, The Man in the White Suit, Allo ‘Allo, Howl’s Moving Castle, The Blue and the Gray (miniseries), The Bridge on the River Kwai, Inserts, Rome, the rebooted Battlestar Galactica, The Great Race, A Night to Remember, That ’70s Show, Downfall, From the Earth to the Moon, Northern Exposure, The Cat’s Meow, The Battle of Algiers, Jeeves and Wooster, NewsRadio, Ripping Yarns, Bend It Like Beckham, The Flight of the Phoenix (1965), Mad Men (the seasons before I started watching them as broadcast), John Adams, Them!, Firefly, The Steel Helmet, Red Sun, SCTV, Fall of Eagles, Homicide: Life on the Streets, Life on Mars (UK), Slings & Arrows, Fargo (TV series), Bicycle Thieves, In Bruges, Closely Watched Trains, The Office (UK), The Umbrellas of Cherbourg, Alexander Nevsky, The Phenix City Story, The Artist, The Lost City of Z and The Pride of the Yankees. Just to name a few.

Just looking at the complete list stirs some nostalgia. More than, say, a list of my earlier rentals at Blockbuster or Hollywood Videos would, if such a thing existed (in the digital bowels of the NSA, perhaps?). The end of Netflix disks could be the end of renting physical media, which for me goes back to – 1989? I was a late adopter of VHS, as you can tell. Having no TV or VCR in ’80s, until I had a girlfriend who did, had that effect.

Go back much further and renting wasn’t an option anyway. I finished college 40 years ago next month. I’m glad that at no point in high school or college did any of my friends or I ever say, “Let’s go rent a video.”

The Catlow Theater Marquee

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Recently I had a few minutes to walk around the smallish downtown of Barrington, Illinois, and I passed right by The Catlow.The Catlow, Barrington
The Catlow, Barrington

That’s the thing-itself theater, including its marquee. On the other hand, this is the theater’s online presence: a plaque saying that the theater would open soon, but in the meantime the marquee was for lease.

It took me a while to figure out that byfs.org isn’t the web site address on the marquee, since it goes to a (temporary?) dead end. Instead, the sign must refer to barringtonbysf.org — the address of Barrington Youth & Family Services. But tickets to what?

Just eyeballing the theater entrance made me think the place has that permanently shut look. I know movies were being shown there only a few years ago, before – ah, that must be it. Temporarily closing in early 2020 turned out instead to be the big sleep for the theater. Unless it actually closed in December 2019, as Cinema Treasures says.

Regardless, considering The Catlow’s location in a well-to-do part of metro Chicago, funds might be raised for a revival of some kind.

“Named for its original owner, a local businessman named Wright Catlow, this Tudor Revival/Jacobean-inspired theater opened on May 28th, 1927,” Cinema Treasures says. “It was designed by the Chicago architectural firm of Betts & Holcomb.

Early on, the venue held live performances and showed movies, but within a few years, it was all movies, and somehow the theater survived into the 21st century. I went there sometime in the 2010s, not for a movie, but to look at the lobby and an adjacent small restaurant. Maybe. Or was that in the 2000s, when I took a photo of the exterior for my magazine at the time?

Never mind, the building seems to have changed hands more recently.

“The owners are currently in negotiations with the Village of Barrington to purchase the theater for use as a Community/Performing Arts Center. New owners took over on October 20, 2022,” Cinema Treasures says, a little cryptically. New owners? Does that mean the village, or someone else?

Questions, questions. If the theater ever starts showing movies again, I’ll make a point of going, provided the movie isn’t too stupid. And as long as the theater doesn’t decide to nickel and dime its patrons (more like quarter and dollar these days).

Reno Riverwalk

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It isn’t Vegas, but Reno is part of the national tapestry too. Somehow it wouldn’t have been the same had the prisoner shot a man in Omaha or Biloxi or Yonkers. Then again, if the crime was in Reno, what was he doing in a California state prison? Best not to nitpick great song lyrics too much.

Also, I’m just old enough to remember talk of Reno as a divorce capital. That was already a dead letter by the time I knew much about it, but there were still mentions in movies and on TV. Come to think of it, Betty Draper went to Reno to divorce Don in 1964, I believe.

On the morning of October 3, I arrived in downtown Reno for a look around, parking in a space near the Truckee River, which runs through the city. A riverwalk along its greener-than-expected banks has been developed since the 1990s.

I was eyeing the parking meters, those petty tyrants of auto placement.

“No one checks those,” a man walking a small dog told me. “I’ve lived in that building for four years, and I’ve only seen anyone checking them twice.”

He pointed toward a mid-rise a block or so away.

“I see, thanks,” I said. “Looks like a nice building.”

“Yeah, on the outside.”

This began a discussion of apartment rents in Reno, with the elderly (75, he later said) black gentleman taking the lead in the conversion. After all, he lived around here and paid those rents. The long and short of it: The Rent Is Too Damn High.

Worse, he said he’d left California to get away from high rents. They’d followed him to Reno, where rents had no business being high. And yet, here we are.

He didn’t mention any industry numbers, but he didn’t have to. I can look those up – at least, averages. In Reno, the average apartment rent stands at $1,520/month these days, up from $1493/month a year ago, according to the Nevada State Apartment Association.

After he went on his way, I turned my attention to a stroll along the river.Truckee River, Reno Truckee River, Reno Truckee River, Reno

A bit of seasonal color for early October. When I was there, the leaves were just a touch non-green, like at home.Truckee River, Reno

Can’t have a riverwalk without some public art. I’m pretty sure that’s an important element of contemporary placemaking theory. Impressive, but no information about the artist. Birds liked it too.Truckee River, Reno

“Dual Nature” by Cecilia Lueza (2011).Truckee River, Reno

The descriptively named “Daring Young Man on the Trapeze” by Ric Blackerby (2004).Truckee River, Reno

By coincidence a few days later, I saw most of It Happened One Night on TV in our room. I hadn’t seen it in about 30 years. I appreciate even more now, as a gold standard for romantic comedies. Romcom confections made in our time should be half as good.

Then there was the scene in the bus when the riders broke out in song.

If only intercity bus rides were really like that. If only life were like that. The scene must have done wonders for the sale of the 1932 recording of the song by Walter O’Keefe, another busy and widely known entertainer who has been completely forgotten.

An NFT 42 Years in Development

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Not too long ago, I found this poster tucked away in a corner of my house. The year had to have been 1980, considering that April 16 was a Wednesday that year. Not only do I not remember the event mentioned on the poster — a lecture at Vanderbilt — I don’t remember why I saved it in the first place.

So I decided to post it in the downstairs bathroom, which has been pending renovation for some years now. At 17 inches tall and 11 wide, it covers 187 square inches of bald and unconvincing wall.

I remember Oakley Ray, VU professor and text book author, but faintly. I audited one of his classes, attending maybe 10 times at most. I don’t know whether I went to the event or not, but I do remember one other thing from that week, something that stands out a lot darker in memory — a dark star of a memory from April 1980, seeing Eraserhead at a movie theater.

NFT 4.24.22Simply put, that movie depicted a nightmare. That was my take on it 40+ years ago, and I don’t see any reason to revise it now. I emerged from the theater that night positive I never needed to see it again. I’ve stuck to that, too.

Never mind all that. I’ve created a bit of digital artwork that’s an NFT. Bidding starts at $100,000.

Snowy Thursday

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As expected, snow followed rain today. But at least yesterday’s rain didn’t leave an ice glaze everywhere. Especially underfoot. I salted a few patches of driveway this morning, but on the whole the surfaces were dry till the snow started around 1 p.m.

Views of the snowy scene this afternoon from the front door.

Wish I could say I wrote this, but no. By a random soul online: It’s only a comorbidity if it comes from the Comorbois region of France. Otherwise it’s just a sparkling pre-existing condition.

I heard a song by a band called Modest Mouse the other day on the radio in the car. Apparently they’ve been around for 30 years, but I miss a lot my not paying attention to much.

Interesting song, though I don’t remember what it was. Maybe that’s because I was busy imagining that Modest Mouse is Mighty Mouse’s lesser-known brother. He didn’t care for the spotlight, and never went into the Mouse family business of saving the day.

Text message from Ann not long ago (edited for caps and punctuation): Seeing Princess Bride at the Normal Theatre.

With this pic attached:
Normal Theatre 2022

Message continued: The sword fight was really great on the big screen.

My answer: Oh yes.

The Normal Theater

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One of the things Ann wanted to do when we were visiting was see a showing of Beetlejuice at the Normal Theater, a single-screen moviehouse of ’30s vintage only a few minutes’ walk from her dorm. Since Yuriko didn’t want to see the movie, she stayed in our room with the dog and I went to the show with Ann.

As it happened, I’d never seen that movie. Neither had Ann, but she didn’t have the opportunity to see it when it was new. Not sure why I didn’t. I saw a fair number of movies in my late ’80s Chicago bachelor days — first run, foreign and arthouse — both highly memorable (e.g., The Princess Bride) and much less so (e.g., the ’87 movie version of Dragnet).

It’s a fun romp. A good example of a movie that doesn’t take itself that seriously, entertainment by a talented cast working from a good script that also includes all sorts of interesting visual detail. Tim Burton certainly has a gift for the visual, which you’d think would be mandatory to be a director, but apparently not.

Lots of weirdness, bright and dark, all mixed in effective ways. For a few moments, I’d swear the look of the afterlife owed a lot to German Expressionism, but also Brazil and Kafka, with B horror movies and screwball comedies and Fellini and Saturday morning cartoons and who knows what else thrown in to the rest of the movie.

Now I believe I need to see some of the other Tim Burton movies I’ve missed, such as Edward Scissorhands, The Nightmare Before Christmas, Big Fish, Sweeney Todd and Big Eyes, and maybe re-watch Pee-wee’s Big Adventure and Batman, which I haven’t seen since the decade they were made.

Better yet, I saw Beetlejuice‘s rampant weirdness in a real movie theater. Not a multiplex, either. The Normal Theater is one of the scant few survivors of another age of moviehouses: a neighborhood theater from that time when a lot of neighborhoods had them.
Normal Theater

It isn’t a movie palace, but its Art Moderne style is charming to modern eyes, which are inured to bland interiors.

“The architect was Arthur F. Moratz, youngest sibling of Paul O. Moratz, another prominent local architect,” the theater web site says, which also includes some good pictures. “In Bloomington, Arthur Moratz buildings include the acclaimed Art Deco-style Holy Trinity Catholic Church at the north end of downtown, and his own residence, 317 East Chestnut Street.”

When it opened in 1937, the theater had 620 seats (these days, 385). First movie: Double or Nothing, with Bing Crosby and Martha Raye. Soon it found its niche in the world of Normal moviehouses.

“The Normal, generally speaking, did not screen the just-released prestige pictures and big budget epics,” the web site says. “Those were shown instead at the Irvin (and sometimes the Castle), which were both owned by Publix Great States Theatres. After all, why would the chain compete against itself? For its part, the Normal was known for genre and B pictures, especially westerns and musicals, as well as second-run fare.”

Of course, after its heyday, the theater followed the usual course for such places, with the 1960s and ’70 being unkind to it, though the Normal limped into the ’80s, surviving as a discount theater (dollar tickets and later $1.50).

I remember paying $1 at the Josephine Theatre in San Antonio ca. 1974 to see a Marx Bros. double feature, two of their lesser-shown works, Out West and At the Circus (I think, though one of them might have been The Big Store). Later in the ’70s, that theater showed X-rated pictures, which were advertised in small print in the newspapers, and no one I knew ever went there. I’m glad to say that the Josephine was later restored, and until the pandemic at least, was open.

As for the Normal, I don’t know whether it ever showed dirty movies (the web site is silent on the matter), but in any case, it closed in 1991. “The reason we closed it is that nobody went to it,” the owner said at the time. No doubt.

Amazing to relate, the town of Normal then bought the place, and a combination of federal grants, donations and local tax dollars was used to restore the theater, with a re-opening in 1994. It’s been showing old movies, foreign films and art pictures ever since — everything a nonstandard, nonchain theater should show. Admission: $6. A bargain these days.

This month is devoted to various horror and horror-adjacent movies, serious and not. Besides Beetlejuice, on the bill are Halloween (1978), PG: Psycho Goreman, The Witch, The Brood, Nightmare on Elm Street and its immediate sequel, Destroy All Monsters, Dead of Night (Ealing Studios), Mad Monster Party and The Rocky Horror Picture Show.

I encouraged Ann to take advantage of the theater, and I think she might. The movie theaters I had access to in college, especially Sarratt Cinema at Vanderbilt and the Texas Union Theater at UT, were an entertaining part of my education — something I didn’t appreciate until some years later.

Tottori Sand Dunes, 1992

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Pleasant spring-ish weekend. Sour old man winter will return again sometime soon, of course, but probably not in full force as spring slowly gains the upper hand.

Referring to the Tottori Sand Dunes, Wikipedia has this to say, among other things: “Each year, around two million visitors — mostly from within Japan and East Asia — visit the dunes.[citation needed]”

Maybe so. When we went there in March 1992, the place was pretty popular.Tottori Sand Dunes Tottori Sand Dunes Tottori Sand Dunes

The dunes aren’t that far from the heavily populated Kansai region — Osaka-Kyoto-Kobe — and they count as a novelty draw since Japan doesn’t a lot in the way of epic sand dunes. If that’s what you want to see, Tottori is the place to go. The dunes stretch nine miles from east to west, and are a little more than a mile wide. At their highest, they rise about 165 feet over the Sea of Japan.

“The Sendai River carries sediment from the nearby Chugoku Mountains that eventually washes out into the Sea of Japan,” JNTO says, along with images of the area wider than anything I have. “Strong sea currents and winds work together to push these sediments back onto the shore to form the sand dunes. These same intense winds continuously move and re-shape the dunes.”

The dunes supposedly inspired Kobo Abe’s novel, The Woman in the Dunes (砂の女 Suna no Onna, “Sand Woman”), which I haven’t read. Years ago I did see the 1964 movie based on the novel, which is a well known avant-garde film and, I thought, relentlessly grim. Fitting for a retelling of the Sisyphus myth.

Sink the Bismarck!

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I was surprised recently to find Sink the Bismarck! on YouTube, gratis, no commercials even. Did the copyright lapse? So over the last few days I’ve been watching it as time allows. I think I rented it on VHS in Japan nearly 30 years ago, but I’m not sure; might have seen it later.

Considering that the ships are obviously models, this is a movie that’s improved — to modern eyes, used to better effects — by being on a small screen. Much of the story involves talking, and occasionally the exposition pops through (especially at the beginning), but on the whole it’s fast-moving and, in its way, suspenseful. The main actors all do well, especially the leads.

Also, it’s reasonably accurate in terms of its history, though since the movie came out in 1960, it wasn’t up to speed on the fact that British intelligence had cracked German codes, or that the men on the Bismarck scuttled her at the very end. No matter, it’s been a good diversion from the pace of work and the woes of the nation.

Debris Under the Tree

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Another Christmas, come and gone. We opened presents in the morning that day, as usual.

Not as usual, we had a family Zoom in the afternoon. My brothers, and my nephews and their expanding families, Lilly, and Yuriko and Ann and I were all linked. A geographic diversity: Texas, New York, Washington state and Illinois. We had an enjoyable time, even if the connection was wonky occasionally.

Later in the day, our Christmas movie was The Day the Earth Stood Still. The original version, of course. I hadn’t seen it in at least 30 years, but it was as good as I remember. The movie also inspired me to look up its source story, “Farewell to the Master” by Harry Bates, originally published in Astounding in 1940. No doubt a copy of that edition is somewhere in the house in San Antonio, among my father’s sizable collection of SF. I’d never read the story before, so I found in on line. I did know about its unnerving, surprise ending, however. I heard about it from a college friend years ago.

Another New Year’s Day has gone as well, featuring ice precipitation on top of an inch of two or snow that had fallen a few days earlier. Not enough to rise to the level of an ice storm, but enough to keep us within our walls, occasionally listening to the tap-tap-tap of ice hitting the ground or roof, but mostly paying attention to electronic entertainment, or lost in a book or two, for me including American Lion: Andrew Jackson in the White House (Jon Meacham, 2009) that I put down this summer and which I’m finishing now, about half way through. Big things ahead: Old Hickory is going to destroy the Second Bank of the United States and go up against nullification, and win, along with a second term. He’s already set the Trail of Tears in motion.