News Fit To Print

 It's been a pretty calm week around the Homestead, and we are both hoping for more of the same.  Weather continues to be autumnal, and it's one of the greenest holiday periods we've ever seen.  We had a lot of rain on Christmas Day, spoiling my chance for an afternoon of hiking at Point Pelee National Park.  Deb wanted to spend a longer time with her mom on Saturday, so I had plans for a shorter visit, and then to go hiking.  Instead, I came home for a few hours, then drove back to pick up Deb in Kingsville.  Today it is bright and sunny.  Of course.

I spoke with my parents at length both on Christmas Eve and Christmas night.  They are both fine and doing quite well, though Dad is still barely mobile due to a bad knee.  As our local Covid cases surge, it looks like we will be hunkered down in January.  It's usually a good month for such activity anyway.  And of course it has been continually cloudy at night, so astronomy has been a no go.  At least I've been practicing piano regularly, and doing a lot of reading.  I usually read about 2 1/2 hours each day, and practice piano about 1 1/2 hours each day.  The exercise program continues as well, around 2 1/2 hours per week, until more is needed.

The shipping channels over here are as busy as ever, but the northern locks will likely close soon.  I have seen shipping continue year round once or twice, and this might be another year for it.  The Amherstburg coast guard ice breaker is in place, but there is no ice in sight yet.  I read a fun article yesterday, on the Accu Weather website, about the tradition of wanting a "white" Christmas, referring to fresh, fluffy snow on the ground.  I always wondered who to blame for such nonsense, and it seems I now have my target in sight.  It likely all started with Charles Dickens, but since then it's gotten way out of hand.  Kind of like ground hog day.  People seem starved for any time of "tradition", rather than trying to establish their own, or observe the real ones that have been around for millennia, such as the solstices.  It's a funny world peopled by funny people.

Our own Solstice Day celebration was a blast.  It was just barely cold enough to warrant an indoor wood fire, though it was of shorter duration than other years.  We sampled the first disc (of four) of Philip Glass' Music In Twelve Parts, and then listened to the CD called Glassworks, and another one called Philip Glass-Piano Works, performed by Vikingur Olafsson.  He is a favourite pianist whom we heard perform in London several years ago.  I already chose a piece from this collection to perform on my next next recital (probably late 2022).  And tonight we will give Einstein on the Beach a go.  We purchased a Blue Ray disc of the opera in early December, from Germany, and it arrived Dec. 22nd.

Just as the pandemic was getting underway in the late winter of 2020, we had booked flights to San Diego.  We had to cancel at the last minute, as Deb wasn't feeling well.  That week the disease exploded in California, so it's just as well we didn't travel then.  We had full insurance to cancel (through Orbitz) and got a full refund on our flight, hotel, and car.  So imagine my surprise when I looked at our Orbitz account recently and found out that we each have $373 in Delta flight credits, good until December 2022.  I don't know if it's a mistake, or why they are there.  We were refunded by the insurance company, and yet the flights are still available to us.  Hopefully we will get a chance to use these credits in 2022.

Other than movie talk, that's all the news for now.  So, on to movies. 

My two choices last week were Heaven Can Wait, directed by Lubitsch and from 1943, and Belladonna of Sadness, an animated feature from 1973 Japan.  Of the two, I preferred the Lubitsch, a gentle comedy about a man dying, meeting the devil, and telling him his life story, before being sentenced.  It was in colour, and had some wonderful lines.

Showing on Criterion until Friday night.

Belladonna is an adult animated feature, purportedly taking place in medieval times.  On her wedding day, a young woman is raped by the lord of the manor and his friends.  The movie is graphically sexual, though largely through symbolic images, and violent.  It doesn't pull any punches, as the woman survives and slowly becomes corrupted by vengeance.  The film is sometimes hard to watch because of flickering imagery, and should have come with an epilepsy warning.  Some of the animation techniques created some truly beautiful and stunning imagery, often seemingly at odds with the unrelenting horror of the material.  A very strange film from the psychedelic era.

Showing on Criterion through Friday.  

Deb's two choices were also from the Leaving Dec. 31st film list, and just as opposite one another as my two choices.  First up was The Mummy, from 1932, starring Boris Karloff as the reactivated man in love with his princess.  It is remarkable how easily he adjusted to life in 20th C. Cairo, after having been asleep since around 1700 B C.  He also has a very stylish apartment, with an indoor pool of water that gets remarkably good reception on various live channels, as well as ones from thousands of years ago.  Some creepy moments, but mostly still fun, in a dusty sort of way.

One of the great movie posters of the 30s!  Showing until Friday on Criterion. 

Eat A Bowl of Tea is from 1989, by director Wang Wang.  Based on a novel by Louis Chu, the setting is 1949 New York, just as the American government is finally allowing Chinese immigrants to return to China and bring women and families back to live.  With the current local population totally male, a young man makes the journey back to China, finds a bride, and returns with her to new York.  Dad immediately wants a grandson, but there is trouble on the horizon, as the son cannot seem to consummate the marriage.  Mostly a funny glance back at a very weird time, there is enough drama to satisfy those without a sense of humour.  Well acted, especially by the old timers.

Showing on Criterion until Friday. 

Mapman Mike

 

 

Winter Solstice 2021

Just watched a beautiful Solstice Eve sunset tonight, and there is hope we might even see the sun tomorrow, too.  It's seasonally cool, which is good news for our all day indoor wood fire, and we have a suitable stack of Philip Glass CDs ready to roll out.  We have to pop out tonight for some groceries, usually done on Tuesdays.  Otherwise we are all set for our big holiday!

On Saturday the weather was quite different.  I went to Kingsville with Deb, as I needed birdseed. While she visited her mom, I visited Lakeside park, mostly reading.  However, it was raining hard and 33 F.  Let me tell you, that was a cold rain!  And there was an ill wind blowing too, from onshore.  One or two degrees colder and we would have had a nasty ice storm on our hands.  I got out of the car at one point for a five minute stretch, managing to take three photos.  I took a quick walk to the garden area, searching for flowers.  I found one group of very tiny ones, still mysteriously blooming on one of the darkest, most miserable days of the year. There might be a message in there somewhere for us all.

A dreary and cold day at Lake Erie.  It was raining and 33 F.

A lonely and damp bench at Lakeside Par, Kingsville.
 

Four tiny flowers were blooming in the gardens at Lakeside Park.  Not your usual December in Canada, even if we are in the deep south. 

We watched Alois Nebel, a Czech film from 2011 that fits in well with our ongoing Czech New Wave film festival.  It's in b & w, with a theme that barely distinguishes in from some of its 1960s counterparts.  Only this film is animated in rotoscope, giving it a timeless beauty and sense of depth and perspective that regular films can seldom achieve.  An older railway employee, a station master at a small station, has a nervous breakdown and is put in an institution.  He loses his job, and when he is released he has to go to Prague headquarters to see about another job.  While there he meets a woman, and they seem to hit it off.  The animation allows for some fine special effects, and the quiet story has a dark undertone of the Nazi takeover during the war, as well as the Czech people who collaborated.  At the time of the present story, the Soviets are just leaving the country, and a new democratic president has just been sworn in.  Well worth watching.

Showing on Criterion until Dec. 31st. 

Deb's main weekend choice was Somewhere In The Night, from 1946 and directed by Joseph Mankiewicz.  Before we got the Criterion channel, I thought I had seen most of the great noir films.  I was wrong.  Everywhere you look, there is another great one that we haven't seen.  John Hodiak loses his memory after an act of bravery in Iwo Jima, and is sent home.  He becomes embroiled in finding another man who he thinks was his friend, who was involved in a docklands murder and a two million dollar heist.  With a great supporting cast and some fun lines, the atmosphere is thick and dark.

Now showing on Criterion, and worth catching. 

Deb's leaving Dec. 31st choice is East of Eden, and we should finish it up tonight. 

Happy Solstice to one and all; never fear, the sun is about to come back to us, after its long journey south of the equator.

Mapman Mike

 

 

Beethoven and Fitness

Mid-December marks 18 months of personal fitness for me, the longest streak since my late teens.  Had I been stranded in New Mexico for the pandemic, I would have hiked virtually any mountain I desired.  There are still a lot of them, plus a few I would love to reclimb.  Treadmill walking is somewhat different from real walking, however.  This past September, when I did a short trail hike and climb with my niece in Sudbury, I found I had to be quite careful walking on uneven surfaces, and that my balance was easily thrown off.  Before undertaking any mountain hiking I would, of course, have to get used to walking on rocky and uneven surfaces again.  But I figure that I am permanently about 4-5 weeks away from what I call "mountain fitness."  So there would be time to get on trails here before heading back into the mountains.  I fervently hope we can travel by Spring to NM, possibly by car.  I know I said the same thing last year at this time.

Turning now to Beethoven, the anniversary of his naming day was Dec. 16th.  We began our massive biographical and listening program just over a year ago.  While I knew that we wouldn't be finished in one year, I didn't realize how long it might take.  We do some listening every evening, and Beethoven comes up every third evening.  So it probably will take a year, as in 365 nights, to complete the project.  We have probably completed 125 by now.  And where are we?  We are still in the early 1800s, around 1802.  His hearing is going, his health is bad, and he has yet to write his 2nd symphony.  But the Op 18 quartets are done, and many fine piano sonatas, along with two piano concerti.  His early works are still trying to please his mainly aristocratic audiences, though he has been poking quite outside the Haydn/Mozart classical tradition many times, too.  We are following the Biamonti numbering system, which goes as close to chronological as possible, and we have just passed the 300 mark (out of about 900).  I am reading ahead in the biography, and penciling in paragraphs for us to read together as we go along.  Sometimes we stop on a certain piece and hear it in multiple versions.  For example we listened to the 1st Symphony four times, all with different orchestras and conductors.  The one we liked best was directed by John Eliot Gardner, using an orchestra much like Beethoven would have had access to.

In movie news, we briefly turned to Prime for a feature film.  Called The Electric Life of Louis Wain, it stars Benedict Cumberbatch as an eccentric and psychologically fragile artist (Britain seems to have been blessed with an ungodly amount of them).  Most famous in his day for his illustrations of cats, the story of his life is told with great sensitivity and detail.  The only son among a family of girls, it is his responsibility to bring home a paycheck, and though he does his best, he is not much of a success.  Cumberbatch is totally brilliant as the increasingly mad artist, and the make up department did a superb job of aging him as the film proceeds.  You do not have to love cats to love this movie.  It is a beautiful film from start to finish.

Showing on Prime in Canada. 

Deb's "going away this month" choice from Criterion was Out of the Past, Robert Mitchum starring as a private eye who crosses his hoodlum customer.  This is a great and classic film noir, fun to watch from beginning to end.  If anyone trusts a dame in a film noir, you know there is going to be trouble ahead.  Mitchum gets into plenty of it here.  Lots of cigarette smoking, too.  It becomes quite obvious watching these old adult movies, especially the b & w ones, that Hollywood was vastly responsible for encouraging smoking.  With he-men like Mitchum, and beauties like Jane Greer smoking up a storm, how could their fans resist doing the same?

Leaving Criterion Dec. 31st. 

My pick of the week was a very strange film, one of the restored ones from the World Cinema Project.  Called Revenge, it was made by a Kazakhstan director working with a writer from Korea.  If that isn't strange enough, then try the film sometime.  A teacher, in a fit of anger, kills a young girl, then flees the village.  The parents are devastated.  When a son is born, he is brought up to get revenge.  While the story sounds simple, it is anything but.  We travel to many different places, and time passes.  At times we almost forget the revenge element, but it eventually comes back, in a haunting way.  The film comes with an 18' interview with the director, who speaks English well and describes his huge respect and fascination with the writer.  He tries to follow the book as closely as he can, but had to make some concessions at the end.  While certainly worth watching, there are some scenes of animal cruelty that are very disturbing.

Now showing on Criterion. 

Turning briefly back to art, and staying on the theme of eccentric artists, here's one from the DIA that comes with no biographical info whatsoever.  And so I will present the image with no words from me.

False Faces, 1953.  Elemer A. Lakatos, American, 1910-1957. Overall: 20 × 24 inches. No more information is available.  

Mapman Mike

 

 

 

 

Another November

While it's not unusual here for months to become reversed as to climate, this December is definitely wackier than most.  We are amidst a strong streak of mild weather more suited to late October and early November, as we race towards Winter Solstice.  The vicious tornadoes that ravaged Kentucky and Illinois overnight Friday manifested themselves here as very high winds and thunderstorms with heavy downpours.  We got 1.2" of rain.  None of our trees blew down, and our power stayed on.  However, there were many trees and poles down in the county and city, with plenty of short term power outages.  Most Great lakes shipping came to a standstill, as the captains wisely steered their vessels into sheltered coves.  Things are back to normal today, and it is sunny, mild, but still breezy.

In domestic news, our fridge died on Thursday.  We had a $90 repair bill to tell us that the fridge had lost its freon due to a leak, and was no longer any good.  After another $2300 spent we have a new fridge, the best one we have ever owned.  However, it didn't fit through the door into the kitchen.  I don't wish to go into any details at this time, as they are too painful to recall, but the fridge is now in its place and working like a charm.  In upcoming domestic news, we also need a new washing machine.  Look for an update on this topic next week.  It's a good thing that we don't have any travel expenses these days.  We still have a $3000 tree to be cut down in our far back yard, though after the recent wind storm our tree guy will likely be far behind again, with us pushed back to the bottom of his list.

In art news, I came across this tiny print by one of the German Romantic artists.  It's the only piece in the Detroit collection by him, but we have seen some of his wonderful landscape paintings, mostly in a travelling exhibit held in Toronto many years ago now.  The image below is larger than its actual size.  Deb is thinking of using it as a location in one of her upcoming short films.  If ever a set for a fairy tale was etched on to paper, this is it.

Old Chapel Under The Trees Surrounded By A Wall, 19th C.  Carl Friedrich Lessing, German (1808-1880).  Etching printed in black ink on woven paper, 3 3/4" x 4 7/8". 

 I have two movies that need reporting, both black and white and both shown on Criterion.  The first one was a tale of highway robbery, starring James Mason and feisty Margaret Lockwood as two swashbuckling highway robbers.  Called The Wicked Lady (great title!), it is from 1945 and was directed by Leslie Arliss.  From the blurb on Criterion's website: "This nasty, subversive treat was the most commercially successful of all the Gainsborough melodramas."  And it's just in time for Christmas!  There is a 1983 remake floating around somewhere, starring Faye Dunaway.

Now showing on the Criterion Channel.

My going away choice (yes, Wicked Lady was my choice!) was called Cluny Brown, from 1946 and directed by Ernest Lubitsch.  Though we had seen it before, it had been many years.  This is a very funny movie starring Charles Boyer and Jennifer Jones, about a young woman who must "find her place" in English society.  Boyer plays a Czech writer fleeing the Nazis just before the war, and Jones is a free spirit who loves working as a plumber.  She gets a job as a maid in a quiet household, and finds out the hard way that Boyer, whom she had met earlier and hit it off with, is a guest at the house.  The picture is a complete send up of the British class system, and is quite hilarious in places, while making its point about how one should behave and not behave.  Boyer is great in this role, one of the few times I really enjoyed his acting.  Movies this good never seem to age, either.  Una O'Connor has no speaking lines, but contributes some very funny moments, making the most of her small role.

Showing on Criterion until Dec. 31st/21 

Mapman Mike

 

Winter Sampler

 The past two days have seen our coolest temps so far this season.  Tuesday it never got above 0 C, but today it managed to just sneak over the freezing mark.  However, predictions are for it to warm up again, through Solstice if we are lucky.  There is no snow; we had 3" early in the month but it is long gone.  We managed to get through an entire astronomy cycle with no clear nights suitable for dark sky work.  This is typical for late November and December, so I am not too surprised.

I'll begin with some art prints today, and move on later to movies.  The following two prints from the Detroit collection come from 1551 (earlier than Bruegel's signature works).  They make a pair, with confusing titles (see below).  These are fascinating works, though I have never seen them on display.

Two Pines and a Cabin Across From A River Town, 1551.  Hans Sebald Lautensack, German (1524-60).  Etching printed in black ink, 6 5/8" x 4 3/8".  Detroit Institute of Arts.  This is the left side of the pair.

Right half of the pair.  See above for info.  6" x 4 1/2".

Deb combined the two prints on her photo program for a full landscape view.  Detroit has two other prints by the artist, both in landscape format.  Of course even in the mid 1500s it was ideal to live alone in the forest, but near a city.  My dream. 

In film watching news, Deb chose two shorter films as her main selection last weekend, and another Robert Mitchum feature from a Chandler novel.  First up was a 62' documentary on Lotte Reiniger, the woman who made outstanding animated films using cut out silhouettes, made famous by her feature film The Adventures of Prince Achmed.  Next came a 62 minute animated feature by Don Hertzfeldt, called It's Such A Beautiful Day.  What a great little masterpiece of filmmaking this is, and I highly recommend it if it can be found anywhere.  Here is a cut from the Criterion description:  "It relates the experiences, memories, and hallucinations of Bill, a stick-figure everyman undergoing an intense psychological journey as he attempts to repair his shattered mind. What emerges is an at once profound and almost unbearably moving meditation on life, loss, death, and the human condition."  Not to be missed!

Now showing on Criterion. 

The Big Sleep is from 1978, directed by Michael Winner.  Though this Robert Mitchum remake has its good moments, it is a letdown after the previous Farewell, My Lovely.  For one thing, Philip Marlowe is in London instead of LA.  For another, there are much fewer of Chandler's quotes in this film, and the supporting cast, despite a list of brilliant names, never really seems to connect with the old school private detective.  And for another, the script just isn't as good, either.  Mitchum is perfect, however, and the movie is fun to watch, wondering when Marlowe will get hit on the head or shot at.

Showing through Dec. 31st on Criterion. 

Until next time...

Mapman Mike

 

Celebrating Weekends

Since full retirement for me at the end of August 2019, my life has been one extended long weekend.  And yet so ingrained is the ritual of having two days off work (though not always during school teaching, when we often spent music time with students on weekends), that I still continue it today, though mostly tongue in cheek.  Deb has returned to a sort of half day work week, three times each week.  The only time she gets two days off from visiting the home where her mother resides is on Thursdays and Fridays.  So her weekend begins Wednesday night, and ends Friday night.  I am able to stick to the old schedule, so my weekend begins Friday night and ends Sunday night.  How are my weekends different from the regular work/play week?  They differ very slightly.  On Friday, after my final hour of piano practice, I announce that my weekend has begun.  Deb rolls her eyes.  Saturday nights we watch DSO Live From Orchestra Hall at 8 pm, pretending we are in Detroit and watching the concert there (more about visiting Detroit for real in a moment).  Sunday mornings we have a special breakfast and listen to a Bach Cantata as we eat.  Deb makes waffles one week, and I make French toast the next week.  Sunday is also the day I do the laundry.  And that's about it, folks.  The party is 24/7 around here, let me tell you.

Deb has received her 3rd Moderna vaccine shot, and I will be able to book my 3rd Pfizer beginning December 13th.  Once I triple fully vaccinated, I will consider a day trip to Detroit to visit the DIA, and stop and pick up some ale at a favourite taproom/shop.  Canadians can now visit across the border without having to have a test in able to return.  A phone app must be downloaded to show when returning as proof of vaccine.  They don't accept paper.  This may all change yet again, due to the Omicron variant, plus the fact that Michigan is one of the world's hot spots now for Covid.  Nothing can ever be certain until the world is 100 % vaccinated.  In other words......

There are three film views to briefly report.  Deb's going away choice was Kazan's 1976 The Last Tycoon, with a terrific performance by Robert De Niro as a successful but bullying Hollywood studio boss.  It has a cast filled with big stars, including Tony Curtis, Jeanne Moreau, Robert Mitchum, and many others.  The film starts out okay but really bogs down once De Niro falls for a beautiful face, and can't live without the woman.  However, she can live without him, and eventually does so.  It's an age old tale, retold yet again.  There are a few fine moments, and it's fun seeing all the famous faces, but overall this is not so great a film.

No longer showing on Criterion.

Antonioni's 1982 Identification of a Woman has a story that isn't too far off Kazan's.  A directionless movie director walks around for two hours not really knowing what he wants (besides sex, of which he wants a lot, and we get to see most of it in graphic detail), and ruining his chances with women every chance he gets.  He is an older man, selfish and set in his ways, and not liable to change any of them for anyone.  There are some lovely shots of Rome and Venice, some great interior shots, and far too many sex scenes.  We more or less get the point after one such extended scene, but I guess the director really wanted us not to miss out on any fun.  The editing in this film is often bizarre, jumping abruptly from one scene with two people to the next day in a scene with the same two people.  Not a film I would likely rewatch.

Now showing on Criterion.

1975's Dick Richards' film Farewell, My Lovely stars Robert Mitchum as one of the best Philip Marlowe actors ever seen.  He is so perfect in the role, and the script allows much more of Chandler's wit and insight that ever seen before.  Moose Maloy hires Marlowe to find his "Velma."  The plot thickens, is stirred, shaken, and tossed about, and Marlowe ends up with several bumps on his head, and a few other inconveniences besides.  Charlotte Rampling makes a perfect stand in for Lauren Bacall, and there are some great old cars, too.  Quite an amazing film! Also starring Harry Dean Stanton and Sylvester Stallone.

Showing on Criterion until Dec. 31st. 

Mapman Mike