Movies - May 30

The Happiness of the Katakuris (2001) Directed by Takashi Miike, who gets talked about a lot by film geeks, so I figured I ought to see something by him. Bad choice. This seems to be nothing but an exercise in silliness - family opens a guest house in the country but all their guests die, there are musical numbers and claymation sequences, but it looks like they just made it up as they went along. Judging by the trailers included on the disc there appears to be an entire genre of this sort of half-assed amateurish crap, movies made up entirely of cliches. I don't need to see any more movies that are all cliches, but unfortunately it seems to be an established artform now. And it's so much easier to do. 3/10

Freebie Month

This month I got a surprising number of things for free, spotting them while on my way home on my bike. Here is what I got:

Two heavy duty pruners (kind of like scissors with a hooked blade and two-foot-long handles - for cutting tree branches up to a couple of inches diameter) - one old one in good shape, one newer super-heavy one with a geared-action blade. The latter had a handle that wouldn't stay on any more because, after much consideration and careful thought, the previous owner decided not to take 30 seconds to sharpen the blade but instead to force the dull thick metal edge through the wood until they wrecked the tool. It had formed what is called a "wire edge" on the end of the blade about a millimeter thick instead of coming to a sharp edge like you need on any cutting tool. I sharpened the blade and fixed the handle on with a nut and bolt and a couple of washers.

Three big packages of fiberglass insulation, too big to carry even one on a bike so I dashed home and zipped back with the car, expecting to arrive in time to see someone tossing them into a van. 24" wide R11 insulation, maybe $40 each.

Concrete bird bath. This was the only thing that didn't have a "free" sign next to it but it was by a bag of pop cans on the curb, and you don't put a broken concrete bird bath out by the curb unless you are trying to get rid of it. It's a pretty fancy one, with a motif of two standing herons on the pedestal and cattail pattern on the bowl, like they are standing under a bunch of cattails that spread out over their heads. It's broken at the bottom where it bells out to form a base - they made it hollow underneath, but so hollow that at some points the concrete is less than a half inch thick. It broke the whole bottom section off pretty cleanly, and it will be easy to put it back together with mortar, and fill in the hollow bottom with mortar as well, so it won't have any reason to break again. Again, impossible to carry on a bike but I didn't think there was as big a rush getting back to it with the car, and I was right.

Movies - May 29

El laberinto del fauno [Pan's Labyrinth] (2006) Excellent acting and overall well-made. I was apprehensive about all the rave reviews it got from people who usually like exploding robot movies, but it is an intellectual cut above the usual action fantasy. Very Spanish, full of blood and sorrow, interesting to see but not the sort of thing I really go for. 8.5/10

Movies - Recent Viewing

Something to Sing About (1937) Watched with Donna. Jimmy Cagney is a rising Hollywood star who must keep his marriage a secret. Produced, co-written, directed and music by Victor Schertzinger and, as often in similar cases, there is something just a bit off about it all. There are a few fairly good musical numbers, an occasional bit of snappy dialogue or amusing conception. Moderately entertaining, for the most part. 6/10

Random Harvest (1942) Ronald Colman marries Greer Garson while he has amnesia, then gets his memory back and forgets her. A full-blown classic melodrama which makes you forget the absurdity of the premise with a well-structured plot and appealing characters. There's nothing wrong with this at all, though it is a bit thick for modern tastes. Deserves greater recognition as a fine example of the genre. 9.5/10

Annals of Klepsis by R. A. Lafferty

I try to re-read a Lafferty novel once a year. I doubt that I shall live to see the day he is fully appreciated as one of the great writers of the 20th century, inventor of a unique literary style, a sort of doggerel prose. His books aren't the sort of book that you can say what they are about; they contain more ideas, more characters, and more things happening than a dozen normal stories, but only the uncertain things are certain. It doesn't really convey much about the book to say that Klepsis is a pirate planet without a history which provides free transportation to all one-legged irishmen, that all its kings still live as ghosts each in his own tower of the castle, that the residents of Klepsis celebrate an Old Fashioned Slave Sale by barbecuing a whale whole, or that most plants and animals but only one type of short-tailed human have the ability to jump spontaneously from one planet to another. Lafferty creates a sort of simultaneous duality in many of his books - some things or people or worlds there are actually two of, which are often impossible to tell apart although they are opposites and one may be invisible. Slaves own their purchasers. it may be the end of the world or the beginning, and everything may be just an image in the mind of a hunchbacked dwarf who has been asleep for two hundred years or in the mind of the one-legged ghost of the planet's pirate founder. Depending on which Lafferty novel I read, I sometimes only read a page every few days just because there is so much in it. I have quit recommending R. A. Lafferty since I don't believe he is a taste which can be acquired. If you are supposed to read something by him, you probably will.

Movies - May 24

Alexander's Ragtime Band (1938) Excellent cast fights its way through a rather contrived, maudlin plot which serves as the framework for an outstanding Irving Berlin retrospective. Alice Faye is always enjoyable to hear and sometimes amazing - it's just incredible the voice that comes out of that little gal. I have never really enjoyed Ethel Merman, but it seems she was once quite a cutie and she really swings it here, putting across some hot numbers - including one in a scanty spangled devil costume a far cry from her monolithic "Mame" period. For my money they could have dropped the plot entirely and done a straight revue but still 8/10.

Last night I finally got to see The Great Rupert (1950) after some 20 years since I first heard of it. Produced by George Pal, featuring a stop-motion animated squirrel, starring Jimmy Durante and ingenue Terry Moore before she got creepy. Not as squirrel-centric as I had hoped, with just a few short sequences, but it's an entertainingly eccentric novelty/christmas movie. You can't go wrong with Durante, and there is a surprise appearance by Frank Cady as an IRS inspector. 6.5/10

I got to see The Great Rupert because the price of the Comedy Classics 12 disc DVD set is now down to $4.95 on Amazon, and I finally felt I could justify getting it. There are a number of good things on it, many I haven't seen, but way too many East Side Kids movies. I just didn't feel like I could pay nearly $20 with shipping, but for under $8 I no longer had any qualms. I am looking forward to the inevitable decline of the DVD to push the set of 50 Sword and Sandal movies down to a reasonable level in the near future.

Movies - May 22

Hercules Against the Moon Men (1964) My all-time favorite Hercules movie - I think this is the third time I've seen it. Oiled-up hero must defeat eight foot tall rockmen to rescue princess from the Mountain of Death before her blood is used to awaken the Moon Queen who fell to Earth in a meteor 300 years earlier. ?/10 - not really rateable.