The end of the week! To state the glaringly obvious. A rather bumptious week, with the schedule out of whack all over the place. Took daughter to piano last in the day and found a sofa in the 3rd floor lounge and set my alarm and closed my eyes and off I went. There were noises in the distance; big school doors opening, clanking shut, a janitor pulling out a bucket. When you’re absolutely exhausted these things take on a surreal, meaningless, almost comforting aspect - like watching a shore recede.
I don’t have much writing in me tonight. Talked a lot today. Did a podcast and a radio interview and interviewed someone for the paper and got a column in and half-wrote another, a long smear of palaver - but! I got my iPhone fixed. It wasn’t charging. Problem: compacted lint. They told me it also had lint issues with the headphone plug, and when I got outside the store I blew in the jack-hole, so to speak - and it issued a shrill sharp whistle that echoed through the whole atrium. If daughter had been present instead of splurging birthday money down the hall she would have been mortified. Or pretended to be.
In belated memory of James Garner, I ask: where's this building? What's it's name?
If you saw the movie in the theater, you may have seen the headline in sharper detail. At some level you may have registered "A landmark (plan?) for a landmark building," and that would be enough. Of course, you'd already recognized it from the color of the brick, and the brief shot of the interior courtyard.
Ah, the magic of movies. The wig masks her for a while, but when she shoots someone a hard look or gets coquettish or changes mood in half a second, then you recognize her.
She didn't make enough movies. Every time I see Rita Morena in a movie I wonder why she didn't make four times more films than she did.
Couldn't have been Latin Spitfire Typecasitng, could it?
Possibly.
The movie: a shapeless mess, a squandered opportunity, a perfect brief against the studio system of the day. You think it would work, since Garner showed himself as a good beaten-down gumshoe, weary and decent, but it’s incomprehensible sludge and has no feeling for the Chandler elements; it’s just a name slapped on a reworked goulash that has a resemblance to “The Little Sister” inasmuch as it contains a sister, who is Little. I’ve read the book and seen other movie version and radio plays and I still couldn’t figure it out, or keep track of it. There is Bruce Lee, however.
He yells HI-YA and breaks things.
The poster is pure late-60s as well, and rips off a cigarette ad:
About those numbers. I know them as Lee Caps, a reworking of a once-ubiquitous font that was used indiscriminately, possibly because it really didn’t say anything. It was modern without having mood, striking without saying anything.
As usual for Friday, the Music Cues. I'll save the X-Minus Ones for next week, this being a particularly noteworthy Couple Next Door edition of the Bleat.
CND Cue #442 The Wah-wah orchestra thought this would be their breakout hit. Alas.
CND Cue #443 One of the more strenuously cheerful things you’ll hear. I clipped the end as a sent-message tone.
CND Cue #444 America! Land both Broad and Noble!
CND Cue #445 I was surprised when this one seemed to have intentions to be actual music, instead of auditory-transition-wavelengths.
CND Cue #446 The most un-Couple-Next-Door cue ever.
CND Cue #447 . . . and I think it came from the same batch as this one, which we heard many weeks ago . . . on X-Minus One. There it was intended to evoke a tropical planet; here it's a winter forest that may have INDIANS. Context is everything.
Now we return to the X-Minus One music cues, which are almost without exception a grave disappointent.
X-Minus 1 Cue #61 Comic science fiction required cues as annoying as the plays themselves.
X-Minus 1 Cue #62 March of the Hungover Army
X-Minus 1 Cue #63 Even the composer lost interest partway through.
X-Minus 1 Cue #64 Oh. I am scared beyond belief. My heart is racing like a triphammer. Oh will we ever escape. Oh me. Oh my.
That's enough. More underwhelming examples next week!
