I will soon be embarking on my second astronomy observing session of this lunar cycle. Last Saturday was also clear, and also very warm and fairly humid. Tonight will be even warmer (mid 70s) and slightly more humid due to heavy rain yesterday (not here, but out in the county). Summer observing is as bit of a pain, due to the very late hours necessary to obtain a dark sky. I skipped out on a previous night, but will take this one.
In piano news I am now 3 weeks into my newest pieces. A fuller report will come after one more week, but things are beginning to move forward. Only one piece remains stagnant, the Bach 3-part invention. But it will come, with time.
In Spirograph news, I am still learning what the different wheels can do for me. Some have very similar patterns with only subtle differences, while others change the landscape totally. I now have a set of ten coloured pens and a set of 24 markers. The markers have two ends, a sort of paint brush on one end and a very fine tip on the other. I will display more of the creations here soon.
We are halfway through Deb's movie picks, which this week includes her festival choices. We have two Polish films remaining to view. My final choice before Deb took over was another Screen One selection from BBC. Called Meat, it is from 1994 and stars a very young Johnny Lee Miller. He is just released from juvenile prison for a series of b & es, scraping the bottom of the barrel for jobs. He washes dishes somewhere for a while, then moves on to a waiter in a rundown cafe. If you don't think that London has seedy areas, this film may convince you otherwise. "Charlie" soon becomes involved with a young female prostitute, getting her pregnant. When she is hit by a car she loses the baby and he deserts her, becoming a male prostitute. Rather a nasty story (Danny Boyle) directed by John Madden. If you want to be depressed and angry, then this film is for you. Not so much for me.
The next four choices are Deb's, two of which we have just seen. They both were viewed on Criterion. Drive My Car is a Japanese film from 2021 directed by Ryusuke Hamaguchi. It's a long film (3 hours), and not all of it works. Driving around in a car for much of a Japanese film is a new experience for this viewer. Still, it is compelling to watch, even though we are often on bland freeways and long tunnels. It is presented in nine languages and adapted from Haruki Murakami stories—about an experimental staging of an Anton Chekhov play. It might have helped considerably if I knew Uncle Vanya well, but I don't know it at all. I found much of the film cold and emotionless, even when the characters were revealing the most horrendous tragedies that had happened to them. The two main characters are the male theatre director and former actor. He recently lost his wife to a brain hemorrhage, and earlier a young daughter to pneumonia. He is assigned a female driver when he comes to Hiroshima to direct the play, a young woman with her own cruel history. By the end the two of them have become friends, in a father/daughter way. His own daughter would have been her age if she had survived. I didn't find the play readings at all inspiring, the director insisting on low emotional involvement, but then demanding that the actors literally become the part they have been assigned. It's like telling musicians to play without emotion, but also to put themselves totally inside the piece. The play relates directly to the lives of some of the people involved, but that could also be said of any truly good play being performed. Despite the torn up lives (one of the actors is removed from the play and charged with killing a man in a fight), the film remains calm and cool, without hardly anyone smiling or showing anger. We do see some tears near the end, though. Deb liked the film much more than I did, though I didn't really mind watching it. But I won't be running out and buying a copy of the play anytime soon. And I was not a fan of actors speaking different languages (including sign), forcing the audience to read the play on a subtitled screen behind and above the actors. An interesting idea, perhaps, but one that viewers would tire of quickly.
Will-o'-the-Wisp is a Portuguese film from 2022, taking place about 50 years later. A young prince wishes to be a firefighter, and joins a local brigade. When his father dies he has to give up his dream and assume the role destiny has laid out for him. The gay sex and nudity is way overdone, taking up about half of the film. More penises per minute than any other film, it might even be in the Guinness Book of Records by now. There is one decent scene, when the brigade does an ensemble dance in the nearly empty fire station. The rest is mostly gay sex, with a fado song thrown in at the end during a funeral. The first part had some clever 4th wall scenes of the royal family at the dinner table. It is a very short film.
Mapman Mike
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