The days of grey gloominess are here. Grey in the morning, grey in the afternoon, and gloomy all the time. For astronomy, December is the cloudiest month we have here in Essex Co., Ontario. Despite this unwanted feature, we both managed to get good glimpses of Mars being occulted by a full moon on Wednesday night. There were just enough breaks in the otherwise thick clouds to see bright Mars approach the moon, then pass behind it. It was too cloudy to risk setting up a telescope, but we managed with binoculars. We seem to have a skunk living beneath our back deck, and we kept thinking he was going to join us, but he (she?) never showed up.
Our Full Moon party also featured a lively and warm wood fire n the fireplace, using up wood from a tree felling project from two years ago. It's now ready to burn. And we also have a brand new pile of green wood to let sit for a time. Nathan, our tree guy, finally got back to us after about 18 months. He and his crew came and took down a very large poplar tree in our far back yard, a tree that kept dropping enormous branches at random. So the threat to a neighbour's garage roof is finally gone, as well as a threat to me when cutting the grass back there. We planted the tree many years ago, a tiny sapling that grew about six feet each year, until it became a skyscraper, then a somewhat dangerous skyscraper.
Also on the party schedule was the monthly opera selection. This time it was "The Trojans" by Berlioz, lasting for 10 sides of 5 LP records. The story follows Aeneus from his defeat at Troy to where he was given sanctuary in Carthage. Here he and Dido fell in love, but he ultimately had to leave her as the gods impatiently called him back to Italy. Dido was not impressed, and placed some wonderful curses upon the hero and his country before stabbing herself to death. Some truly great music, with the lead sung by Jon Vickers, pretty much a Canadian musical legend and hero.
In viewing news, we finally finished up the series Dark Sky. The series purports to be SF, but the SF element is pretty thin, at least until the final episode. Overall, things move much too slowly, and too much time is spent of details of life that could easily have been compressed to keep some kind of flow going. The story often just stops dead in its tracks. The series is about 75% soap opera, 22% noirish mystery, and about 3% SF. When the SF element finally comes to the forefront, it ends. The series was cancelled by Prime. But we have begun to watch two newer series: The English, a western on Prime, looks quite promising (an English woman teams up with a Native scout who worked for the South during the Civil War); and Interview With the Vampire on AMC has a very good sense of the period and location where it is set, with good acting, too.
In film watching news, there are 2 to report. Recently Sight and Sound came out with their (every ten year) list of the 100 best movies. Criterion then grouped all of the films that made the list that they have for viewing and streaming (more than half). So I now have a nice long list of classic and recent films to watch. Though we have seen many of the top 100 films, there are enough that we haven't seen, or haven't seen in far too long, to keep us busy for a time.
So my first choice was Claire Denis' Beau Travail, from 1999. It is listed as #7 on the top 100 list. It is a film about a small group of men training in Djibouti as members of the French Foreign Legion, and about their sergeant, and about their commander. Filmed on location in the city and in the volcanic and salt wastes of Djibouti, the film would have wide appeal. Women would like it for all the extremely fit and handsome young men, black and white, that are featured. Gay men would like it for the same reason. Straight men would like it for the macho qualities the film highlights. Though I am not a woman, a gay man, or a straight man who appreciates macho qualities, I still liked it. So there you go. Wide appeal. As the final credits roll, we are told that we have been listening a lot to Benjamin Britten's Billy Budd score, from his opera. Then the connection (however loose) is made to the film's plot: a sergeant who is none too pretty in the face begins to pick on one the most handsome men in his troupe, and is eventually accused of aiding and abetting his death when he is left in the desert alone with a defective compass. The sergeant is telling his story, about how he was removed from the Legion. Yes, the movie is quite good, and worth more than a single viewing. But #7? Really? There are two more of her films on Criterion that we might check out, too.
Next came a silly comedy starring William Powell and Myrna Loy called Double Wedding, from 1937. Hollywood's strange fascination with weddings continues here with Powell starring as a gypsyish wanna be film director who lives in a house trailer, and Loy as a successful business woman who runs her life like clockwork and by the book. Is there any doubt that these two will get married at the end? Despite some very funny moments, there isn't too much here except light entertainment. John Beal has a very funny role as a mousy man.
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