Autumn is Peaking

October has been a sunny month overall, though a bit chillier than usual.  I managed 5 astronomy outings!  Our leaves here in the southernmost part of Canada are turning colours now.  A day trip may be in order soon!  Monday was advanced voting for local elections, so we went and voted in the a.m.  Afterwards we walked the lagoon trails near our house.  Besides local sidewalk walking we now have three choices for nature walks: the lagoons; the recently explored Covallino Wetlands; and the rails to trails segments.  While summer is often too hot and winter is too cold, spring and fall are ideal outdoor walking days around here.

The lagoons had many geese and a pair of swans. 

 

The deep woodlands had a wood nymph or two.  No sasquatch today. 

 

There are two movies to report, both watched on Criterion.  Take Me In Your Arms is another musical/melodrama vehicle for Mexican starlet Ninon Sevilla.  This time she gives up her village life and leaves home to live with an old lecher so that he won't foreclose on her father's fishing boat.  What a gal.  Of course she doesn't tell anyone, including her boyfriend.  When the old guy dies she finds another one waiting, this time a married old lecher who is also an aspiring politician.  She keeps bumping into her old boyfriend, who snubs her.  She becomes a big movie star and sings and dances.  Then she leaves the old guy and goes back to her village.  Her boyfriend eventually takes her back.  Not nearly as interesting a story as her previous film we watched, this one is pretty boring.  It is from 1954 and is in b & w, fully restored. 

 

Showing on Criterion.
  

Antonioni's 1970 Zabriskie Point is one of those cult films that perhaps is just a bit overrated as classic cinema.  The photography, however, is stunning, as are the desert locations. Daria Halprin stars as a young woman travelling to Phoenix from LA in her own car who gets caught up with activist and anarchist Mark Frechette.  They have sex in a National Monument, and the film probably started a trend.  It's painful to watch them romping through the stony and dangerously hilly desert with no water, no proper shoes and no sunblock, never mind being naked and having sex on the ground.  Anyway, by the end of the film he is dead and she now has the mindset of an anarchist herself.  Watch out world!  Mostly of interest to fans of the director, this is certainly not one of his greatest achievements.

 

Leaving Criterion Oct. 31st. 

 

Mapman Mike