Friday, June 09, 2006

Come to my room in half-an-hour. And bring some rye bread.

More new Bette Davis movies on DVD--yahoo. I've wanted the Man Who Came to Dinner for a long time, although really, people--aren't Ann Sheridan and Richard Travis awful? They both seem like they're borrowed from a bad stage production and stand out horribly amidst all the fabulousness. I do love the rye bread line with great ferocity. How can you not love something so inane that seems so lurid for no reason at all? Brill.

Watched part of Match Point tonight...verrrry interesting. I like it for a lot of reasons that may have nothing to do with it being good--the lovely talky linear Eric Rohmer quality of the plot, the opera, all the bits that scratch my Anglophilic itch, the careful scoring. I'm very interested in how Woody Freakin Allen got the Anglo stuff both correct and wrong--is he *that* familiar with British slang/language/idiom/social niceities? Alternately: didn't somebody tell him that they don't talk about upward mobility the way we do? Anyhow, so far a very fun indulgence or that delicious walking around the city and talking and having drinks and eating and smoking and sex type of (usually Frog) movie I am a sucka for. Obviously a little bit of Hitchcock thrown in here too (tennis, byooful blondes, etc.).

Deep, Deep, in the Way-Back Machine: I generally veer far far away from begathon crap on PBS and I even scoffed when I saw it was on, but I got TOTALLY sucked into the Tommy/Quadrophenia video concerts tonight. Surprised me. I opened my mouth and out came every single singalong word of both...I used to *pore* over the lyric sheets to those, esp. Quadrophenia. I mean, I forgot how much of my brainpan they actually occupy. It was interesting, too, to seem them performed as rock operas, since I hadn't seen them in so long...see how they held together. How dated they felt or not (still not sure). I did have several recurring thoughts, though: 1) I kept remembering when the Who licensed Rain O'er Me for a car commercial when I was just out of college and how disappointed I was...that now seems so naive 2) J. Entwistle's bass solo during 5:15 was, while slightly Derek Smalls-ish, totally fantastic...forgot those flying fingers. Kind of like Keith Moon's flying arms that never seemed like they were doing what they were. Then I kept thinking...He (JE) died with a hooker in Vegas tra la. 3) It was probably inevitable, but wow, was my obsession with Quadrophenia ever...unhelpful on some level. I was so depressed, and it fed into all the depression so well, down to the movie, which I never really knew well, but even the images on the LP. Blergh. Anyhow, interesting. I was left thinking: the Who were a little weirder than they get treated in their categorization, which is neat. I'm too tired to explain any of this well, but it was some interesting musical nourishment and I am always for that. The ushers were sniffin/eau de cologne-in...

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