Indoor Pursuits

It's still cold, and hasn't risen above 0 C since January 19th.  It is scheduled to rise above on Tuesday, for one lousy day, and return to severe cold.  However, since we are still missing out on the big snowfalls, I am not complaining too bitterly.  To help keep me warm I have been expanding my road trip blog (link above left), with thoughts of New Mexico desert and mountains uppermost in my mind.  One or two ships pass by every day, but always preceded by an ice cutter.  The American and Canadian coast guards are keeping one narrow shipping lane open in the river.

American coast guard ice cutter, during a brief snowstorm on the Detroit River.  Two ships are due southbound later today. 

It's been a while since I have posted an art image from the DIA.  Today's artist emigrated from Scotland in the 1800s and settled in Detroit.  There are several works by this unique landscape painter, more influenced by European traditions than American.  Here is my favourite painting by him.

Graveyard By The Sea, ca 1875. Robert Hopkin, 1829-1909.  Oil on canvas.  Unfamed 45" x 54".  Collection Detroit Institute of Arts.

In film watching news, we are in the midst of Deb's film festival weekend.  Earlier in the week I had chosen three more episodes of the slightly bizarre but fun 1915-16 serial Les Vampires, about a criminal gang in Paris being hunted by a reporter.  We have finished episode six.  Irma Vep has been captured by a rival gang leader, and has been hypnotized into killing her boss.  Four more episodes remain.

My leaving this month choice was a short, very fast paced film called The Big Steal, from 1949.  Jane Greer is a marvel as an independent woman tracking down her fiancee in Mexico, after he borrowed two thousand dollars from her and disappeared.  She gets mixed up with Robert Mitchum and William Bendix in this amusing road movie, with probably the most intense car chase scene in any movie to that date, and likely well beyond.  Filmed in Mexico, the movie packs a lot of fun and adventure into 70 minutes.

Leaving Criterion January 31st. 

 

Deb's pick to start off the weekend was called Ace In The Hole, starring Kirk Douglas as a much-fired big city newspaper man on the lookout for his big story break.  He ends up in Albuquerque, working for the paper there.  He is on his way to cover a rattlesnake hunt when he comes across a disaster story in the making.  A man is trapped in an old mine, and soon Douglas is running the show.  And what a show it becomes.  This is likely the most cynical movie of all time, and a true pain to watch.  There are no good reporters, and certainly none who can dig out the real story here, which is Douglas and a crooked sheriff trying to extend the trapped man's agony for a full week by drilling to his rescue, instead of getting him out the normal way in 16 hours or less.  Filmed west of Gallup, NM.  It must have been quite a production, from Billy Wilder.

Showing on Criterion until Jan. 31st.

I'll be back soon with the January reading summary.

 

Mapman Mike