February is off to a brutally cold start, though we are still very limited in the amount of snow we have received this year. I'm sure that will arrive later in the month. Still, we are hopeful that things will begin to end by the middle of the month. It went briefly above freezing yesterday, before crashing to today's brutal tempts. 46 days so far with no rise above freezing, and several more in a row coming up this weekend. Even if we did have a lot of snow it would be too cold to snowshoe.
I have a new family doctor, since my doctor moved away. He is very thorough. He sent me for a heart stress test and it went well yesterday. Everything seems to be working as it should. Huzzah! Deb is urgently awaiting an iron transfusion, one of two that she needs asap. We are still waiting for an appointment, hopefully early in the coming week. She is very tired and run down and her breathing worsens weekly. She is able to work on her film, but far less intensely than before. Fingers crossed.
In gaming news we are currently playing two games on PC. TR-49 is a brand new game where the player has to get a very old computer working again. It has jumbled a lot of books and information and we are supposed to unscramble things. We have uncovered about a fifth of what we need to do. It's quite interesting in some ways, and quite boring in others. There is no travel--you sit in front of an old computer (the Bletchley one, lying forgotten and disused) and do research. The other game is the original Black Mirror from 2003. I played it many years ago and am replaying it now. There are two sequels which are also quite good, and a remaster of the one I'm now playing which I also look forward to trying. This is Deb's first time, though she undoubtedly helped me with some puzzles in my original playthrough.
In movie news there are three to report. One is a really terrible SF film from our DVD collection called The Creeping Terror from 1964. It's a low budget brain killer. Instead of trying to survive watching the film as delivered, we chose to watch it on MST-3K, with Mike and the bots joking as the film proceeds. A spaceship crashes and an alien comes out and begins eating people. The people never fun away, and sometimes have to insert themselves into the creature. It is too ridiculous. However, the MST episode is very funny and makes even this film quite palatable.
Days of Being Wild is a 1990 film by Wong Kar-Wai. A selfish and spoiled young man uses women until he tires of them and then moves on, often leaving them emotionally scarred. Though far from being a great film, it does introduce a lot of the director's signature themes, which are developed more maturely in his later films. The young man is searching for his birth mother (not too diligently) while living with the woman who adopted him. A local policeman gives the viewer some hope that something decent may yet come from a relationship he had with one of the young man's cast away girlfriends, though the film ends before a true ending is revealed. Odd and disjointed at times, and the young man is a true piece of turd, so the film isn't that pleasurable to watch.
Misericordia, a French, Portuguese, Spanish film from 2024 is even less fun to watch. A young man returns to the tiny French village where he grew up to attend the funeral of a man whom he once worked for in the village bakery. His arrival sparks jealousy in the dead man's son, who wants him to leave right after the funeral. For no apparent reason the young man stays on, and is then accused by the son of trying to bed his mother. They have several fights, and in their final one in a remote part of the forest the young man who returned kills the son in a fit of rage. He buries the body and his worries commence. The film might have had some credibility without a murder. But of course there is a murder. Why? Can no one make a film without a major crime in it anymore? The police know he did it but can't prove it. The local priest knows he did it and helps him cover up the crime, even moving the body from the forest to the church cemetery in the middle of the night. How this film ever made it to Cannes and Tiff is beyond me. It's a below average crime film with some not very impressive acting. The scenery, however, is lush and gorgeous, mid-autumn in the mountains. The wide screen aspect works well outdoors, but the many indoor shots look quite silly. Not recommended.
I have now put in four intense weeks of practice on the newest piano repertoire. It sounds like I'm still at the sight reading level. Progress is grim. 42 hours practice and not really much to show for it. I can barely play any of the pieces. It's always so disheartening at the beginning. In four more weeks I hope to have made at least a dent in the pieces. The first half features three works by my favourite composer. Two Part Invention in D Major will open the program, a fairly dense and very contrapuntal piece, and not as easy as it looks. That is followed by the Prelude and Fugue in D Major from Book 1 of Bach's Well Tempered Clavier. The Prelude is a jaunty number that gives the right hand a decent workout, with both hands jumping in for the finale. The Fugue is a little French Overture, one of the composer's least learned fugues. It promises to be a fun piece, and shouldn't be too difficult to learn. We'll see. All of the Bach is now being played (slowly) hands together, after many hours of hands separate practice.
Next comes a sonata by another top favourite composer of mine, Haydn. It is a miniature piece in three movements, with the first being a theme and variations. There is nothing too difficult here, and I am hoping it will sound okay in four more weeks. The second movement is a very short minuet (without trio!), and the third is a rousing finale, a crowd pleaser if there ever was one. It is the most concentrated and brief version of sonata form I have ever encountered. I will finish the half with a bagatelle by Beethoven, Op. 119 #1 in g minor. This is a favourite of mine and I haven't played it in many years. I have yet to begin this piece.
The second half opens with three (more) preludes from Op 11 by Scriabin, #s 4, 5 and 6. I have yet to begin work on #6, the most difficult one. The first two are slow and the third is madcap fast, in octaves. Next comes a Chopin nocturne, the most difficult piece on the program. The Op 27 Nocturnes are among the finest things he ever wrote. I played #1 years ago and thought I might learn it again, as it is my favourite Chopin piece. But I decided to give #2 a try. I can barely play the thing hands separately right now. This one will require much more time per day than I have been giving it so far. I likely made a mistake in choosing this one. Time will tell.
I will finish the program with a rousing etude by MacDowell called March Wind. It's a very effective showpiece, one I have played before. But I am excited to play it on the grand now! I'll report back in a month on my progress, if any.
Mapman Mike
No comments:
Post a Comment