The Broken Wrist

No, not my wrist.  Deb's wrist.  And various other assorted bruises and bumps she acquired after taking a tumble on Monday.  We spent Monday at an urgent care clinic, with x-rays, then went home.  That was supposed to be a hill walk day as well as Deb's infusion day.  Neither of those events transpired.  Tuesday she walked with me at Malden Hill, in between icing her various body parts all that day.  On Wednesday she got a call back from the clinic.  Back across the county we went yet again.  The wrist was broken.  Thursday morning we had to be at Met Hospital in Windsor for 5:30 am.  She got a wrist and arm brace, which is essentially a cast that can removed for showering.  Though continuing with plans to attend the film festival in Cincinnati, we called off the New Mexico hiking trip on Wednesday night.  However, we will now go to Cincinnati with our NM gear, and decide on Sunday if we should continue on west, or head home.  Deb's pain level and comfort will be the deciding factor.  She's goes back to the hospital in 6 weeks for a new x-ray.  So the final week of the exercise program sort of fell apart.  We will see how that goes.  We still have a full week before any real mountains are encountered., and we have increasingly strenuous hikes planned as we drive west.  We can always turn around at any point on our journey.  Stay tuned for further updates.  The house is being looked after 24/7, so no worries there.

 

There are two odd films to report, one of them being perhaps the oddest of them all.  Deb's leaving choice was called Sicilia, an Italian film from 1999.  It takes several actual Sicilian dialogues that were written down in the 1930s and attempts to dramatize them on location.  It seems an incredibly silly idea for a film, and it is.  No doubt it has some value to some cultural anthropologists, but for general viewers it is nothing but 67 minutes of people having conversations (which in Sicily appears to mean shouting at one another at nearly full volume) on the most mundane topics under the sun.  If any incentives were needed to keep me from visiting Sicily, this one would do it.  Much better to read a travel book about the island (which, if written by a local, might be all in block caps).

 

Leaving Mubi in 2 days. 

 

Deb's regular choice was a much better film, another by Hal Hartley.  The Girl From Monday is from 2005, and is a near future dystopian visit to an Earth run by corporations (whoever heard of such a thing!).  Aliens are involved in the resistance, but alas, the corporations have all the aces (hundreds of them) up their sleeves, and the protesters are tolerated because it is good for the economy.  Parts of the film bring back memories of David Bowie's alien in The Man Who Fell To Earth, as well as various other films and TV series.  A woman who turns to the resistance is caught doing something wrong and sentenced to two years of hard labour--she must teach high school for that time.  Definitely worth looking out for.

Now showing on Criterion. 

 

Normally, Deb would have her film festival choices this weekend.  But as we are attending Cindependent Film Festival in Cincinnati instead, I will be back with my own festival choices in late October.  Deb's film A Fable For Four Voices will be shown Saturday afternoon.

 

Mapman Mike

 

More Corman and Vincent Price

 It becomes more and more obvious every day that the world cannot afford wars.  Why not?  We have other priorities right now.  Just how much is it costing Canada to fight these summer long fires, which are still burning?  Guess who will pay?  Yup.  Taxpayers.  Then there was the Morocco earthquake.  How much will that cost to rescue and treat wounded people, to tear down and rebuild homes and businesses and mosques.  Who will pay for that?  Then there was the flooding in Greece and Libya.  The recent hurricane to hit Florida is costing the US hundreds of millions of dollars.  Another hurricane will likely hit Nova Scotia this coming weekend.  The amount of death and suffering just from natural disasters becomes more and more staggering with each passing month.  A quote today from an official in Libya said that they had no trained rescue teams available in the country, as it has been involved in civil war for years now.  Then there are the unending stream of refugees from war torn places around the globe, and those that can't escape.  Can we really afford war any longer?   With an IQ of 80 or higher, ANYONE would realize that no, we cannot afford war any longer.  My next question is related to the fires and floods and storms, and I will leave it unanswered, but how much longer can we continue to burn fossil fuels at such hellish rates?  Is most everyone in the world asleep at the wheel (sorry, that was two questions)?  I fear my rants are just beginning, so stay tuned if you like rants.  If not, just skip the first paragraph of these blogs as needed.

In other news, Haydn symphonies never seem to get old.  Even on the third go around for some of the most obscure ones, there are treasures to be rediscovered with every listening.  I already miss not playing any of his piano sonatas.  My last two choices from the Classical piano repertoire have been two large Beethoven pieces.  No regrets there, but I must get back to Haydn again for the next piano program.  The first movement of the Beethoven sonata (Op 10 #3) is at last memorized, thought hardly secure.  It is a sprawling movement, played very fast (someday).  Parts of it fit me like a glove, but other parts not so much.  It is a jovial Haydnesque piece overall, only on steroids.  It is very upbeat, with little jokes everywhere in it (except the 2nd movement, which is incredibly serious and devastating).  His next piano sonata was the Pathetique, so it was quite a jump after the Op 10 one.  I will spend a long winter getting right down inside of it, hopefully performing it in early spring.  By then it should be a part of me.  Right now we are still two distinct entities.

Today was our longer walk day.  We walked the Detroit River pathway in Windsor, west to east, and managed to get part way back to our starting point before taking the bus back to our parked car.  It was cool and grey, a perfect day for a long walk.  We stopped for a filling vegan lunch at Taloola's Cafe, which was very busy, before walking home on surface streets, following the bus route.  We managed to walk 5.6 miles, slowly upping our game.  Next week we hope to walk in Ann Arbor, MI, in a forest with big hills.

Phone pic from the top of Malden Hill, where we do our hill training 2x per week.  The new Gordie Howe international bridge continues to progress, possibly opening late next year.  Currently there is one bridge and one tunnel for cars and trucks, and one tunnel for trains.  The incomplete span in the middle is over the Detroit River.  More photos to come when I bring my camera next week.

 

2 cormorants cavort atop an archaeological ruin on today's walk.  Before the railway tunnel between Detroit and Windsor was widened, larger rail cars were shipped across the river on large barges pushed by tugboats.  I worked as a deckhand on such a tugboat one summer here, loading rail cars at one end and unloading them in Detroit.
 

As we passed by on our walk today, the Viking cruise ship Octantis was just docking in Detroit.  It cruises all over the Great Lakes in summer. 

 

Our topic finally turns towards the title of this blog entry.  Two more Corman/Price films were watched.  Tales of Terror is from 1962, and contains three short films: "Morella," "The Black Cat," and "The Case of M. Valdemar."  Price stars in all three.  The main interest is in the central film, which also stars Peter Lorre.  They make a truly hilarious pair in this film.  Most notable is the wine tasting competition between the two of them.  Price is priceless, and Lorre is perfect in his role as the alcoholic husband.  The final tale is pretty creepy, with Basil Rathbone playing a nefarious hypnotist, and Price as the victim who is hypnotized just seconds before his death.

Leaving Criterion Sept. 30th/23. 

 

The Haunted Palace is from 1963.  An old curse comes back to haunt the village when, after more than 100 years, a relative of the diabolical Joseph Curwen returns to claim his ancestral home.  Not many people are happy to see him back.  The innocent descendant is soon taken over by the spirit of the dead madman.  This film has nothing to do with Poe, and is very loosely based on Lovecraft's "The Case of Charles Dexter Ward."  Unfortunately for monster lovers, it remains in the pit.  An okay film, it does have good atmosphere.

 

Leaving Criterion Sept. 30th. 

 

A few more of these old but fun films remain, all of them in widescreen and colour, so stay tuned to this channel. 

Hal Hartley's first film is from 1989.  Called The Unbelievable Truth, it concerns a man just out of prison looking to restart his life in the same town where he committed his crime.  Convicted for manslaughter against his girlfriend's father, he learned how to be a mechanic while in prison.  Pretty much a comedy, he falls in love with his new boss's daughter, and vice versa.  Her old boyfriend keeps appearing, picking fights with anyone who looks at her.  Everyone in town has a different version of what his crime was.  We don't learn the truth until the end.  Not great cinema, it is still worth watching if you liked No Such Thing.  The main actor and actress in that film are also the main ones in this earlier one.

Now streaming on Criterion. 

 

Next up is a film about Goya.  Come back soon!

 

Mapman Mike

 

 

 

Roger Corman and Poe

We are just about to begin our third week of training, as those sizable western mountains loom closer and closer to us.  Will I be ready to climb some really big mountains in three weeks?  Nope.  Not a chance.  During our 2nd week of training we had to make some switches, mostly due to extreme heat and humidity.  Our long walk Tuesday was shortened not by the weather, though, but by swarms of very hungry mosquitoes on the path.  We fled, resorting to treadmill work at home instead, in a nice and cool basement.  And because of recent rains (it never stops around here) we had to move our cross training day to today.  Cross training day means yard cleanup, mostly weeding.  We have seen an enormous increase this year in poison ivy, and for the 2nd summer in a row my skin has made contact with the nasty plant.  It caught me at the edge of the glove on my right wrist this time, a very narrow strip about 1/4" wide and about 1" long.  The skin turns bright red, and some of it boils.  The itch goes bone deep.  But this year I tried a new medication, and it works really well.  My symptoms began Sunday night, and are still going as of today (Friday).  But the ointment really works, and I can sleep in heavenly peace.  Unlike last year's batch, which was more widespread.  Anyway, back to yard work later today.

 

In piano news, I have slowly begun to use more and more features of my new Yamaha Avantgrand piano.  I am just starting to use the recording feature now, and have already used the transposition feature and a different scale tuning to help simulate the sound of Baroque keyboard music on its harpsichord setting.  I should have 4 short pieces to perform at our next gathering, on the 23rd.  I practice exclusively with headphones now, and really like it a lot.

 

In music listening news, we are finally getting serious with the 222 Bach CDs.  We are currently getting through the organ music.  And on Sunday mornings we continue to listen to a different Cantata each week.  It will take some time.  We are also deeply into the Haydn box set, too.  We are now on our 3rd go around of the complete (104) Haydn symphonies.  This CD set was recorded in the Haydn room at Esterhazy, where all the concerts were originally presented.  And we continue to get through the LP record collection, weaning as we go.  We are currently listening to all of the Liszt records.

 

Turning now to films, all of the Corman/Poe films are leaving Criterion this month.  We hope to get through most of them by then.  First up was the best of the set, Masque of the Red Death.  From 1964, we saw it in a beautiful print.  Jane Asher's hair never looked so red!  Price is not too hammy in this one, and his presence in nearly every scene holds the picture together quite well.  Skip Martin is also very good as Hop Toad, who seeks a terrible vengeance on a thoughtless aristocrat.  Hazel Court has a bad dream, and brands herself with an upside down crucifix.  Shares of red paint went up quite a bit that year, too.  Atmospheric, and undoubtedly influenced by earlier Hammer horror efforts.  A classic that still holds up well today.  Nicholas Roeg did the photography!

 

Leaving Criterion Sept. 30th. 

 

Next came a much earlier picture, Corman's The House of Usher. Though atmospheric, this film does not entirely succeed.  For one thing, there are only four characters, and it is filmed almost like a play.  In parts it is very slow moving.  By taking a short story and dragging it out to feature length, too much depends on the acting.  Aside from Price, who is great in the role of big brother not wanting his young sister to leave home (incest being a taboo subject not only in Poe's time, but also Corman's), the other actors barely manage to make it to the adequate stage of acting.  Definitely watch this one, but not right after Masque.

 

Leaving Criterion Sept. 30th.  

 

Leaving Corman and Poe for a time (they will be back here soon), but staying withing the realm of fantasy and horror, comes a neat little independent film by Hal Hartley.  His 2001 feature is called No Such Thing, and is a modern version of Beauty and the Beast, or Beowulf if you prefer, with a difference.  A monster that has lived forever and cannot be killed, lives a lonely existence in remote coastal Iceland.  A young woman goes in search of her fiancee, who was believed killed by the monster.  Their first meeting is a bit rough, but they gradually come to respect and like each other.  Robert John Burke plays the most memorable monster in our recent film watching experience.  Sarah Polley plays the fearless and enterprising young woman (looking much like a schoolgirl most of the time, but not always).  Helen Mirren plays a news editor for a shlocky New York news service, and Julie Cristie (!) plays a doctor that helps Beatrice (Sara P.) recover from an accident.  While parts of the film are quite hammy (Mirren's role as editor, a mad scientist who may be able to kill the monster, and a sadistic research scientist), others are humourous and serious as needed.  Though the film overall is very good, there are some scenes that could have been excluded or improved, such as the Willy Wonka-like press interview, Beatrice's nights long sex rampages, and the entire plane crash thing.  The monster torture scenes and beatings are a bit overdone, too.  I would have spent more time and energy on the relationship between the monster and the young woman.  Highly recommended, but uneven.

 

Now showing on Criterion. 

 

Mapman Mike