1. It was time to stock the pantry and I bought some food and drink and non-food items at Yoke's. Patti was also shopping and we had a good visit. As I checked out, Harley told the checker to charge me double. Ha! Ha! That was pretty funny. Kerry was also at Yoke's and she and the checker joked about being addicted to buying plants for gardens, just like their mothers. Kerry realized that because of Christy and Carol's enthusiasm for gardening, passed on to them, in part, by Mom, I must know what she and the checker were talking about. Indeed I did! Another good laugh at Yoke's Fresh Market.
2. Around 3:30, Debbie and I headed up to the Lounge. I knew Ed would be in the house, but I didn't know Tim O'Reilly would be at the bar, too. But, yes, we walked in and Tim and Ed were yakkin' and I joined in and later on, so did Debbie. I learned more about Tim's trip out here to take care of property business and found out he was going over to the Elks Club later for an awards dinner. Debbie and I decided at some point to order food from Wah Hing -- house special fried rice and pot stickers -- and I switched from the champagne of bottled beer to Pepsi. I love drinking cola with Chinese food. After a while, Tim returned and later on his brother Jim came in. It was early in the evening, but Copper and Luna hadn't eaten since 5:30 a.m., so I went home, Debbie continued an involved conversation she was having with Tim, and I returned later and brought her home.
3. Back home, I returned to the Criterion Channel. The Criterion Channel presents tons of movies as parts of collections, collections centered on individual directors, a theme or genre, a country or global region's movies, and sometimes on movies made in a particular time period.
Sometimes, but not always, these collections include an introduction to the collection, a short talk given most often by a movie critic or scholar.
I love listening to these short talks. Today I listened to a handful. I'd never heard of one of the speakers before. I listened to talks about two, maybe three, filmmakers I had heard of, but the others were new to me. In no particular order, here are most, if not all, of the talks I played:
* Farran Smith Nehme is a freelance film historian who focuses her enthusiasm on pre-1960 cinema. She has blogged for over fifteen years as The Self-Styled Siren. She's published her work widely, including a novel, Missing Reels.
I listened to her superb introduction of the collection, Young Mr. Ford, a collection of movies director John Ford directed in his formative years from about 1925-41.
* The Criterion Channel is offering a look back to the 1970s and movies known as Blaxploitation films. Film scholar Racquel J. Gates introduces this collection and argues that these movies need to be watched and paid attention to with fresh perspectives and guides us in ways to reconsider the merit of these movies.
* Critic Imogen Sara Smith introduces a 1949 movie from blacklisted director Edward Dmytryk, Obsession, a noir-ish murder story about a Scotland Yard man who investigates a London psychiatrist's obsession with avenging his adulterous wife's lover.
* Lastly (I think - I really should take notes), I discovered Vittorio De Seta, an Italian maker of short documentary films in the 1950s. Martin Scorsese loves De Seta's works, calling him "an anthropologist who speaks with the voice of a poet."
Il Cinema Ritrovato (translates as "cinema rediscovered") is a film festival dedicated to the history of cinema. Its chief, Alan Luca Farinelli, introduces the Criterion Channel's De Seta collection, helping open the way for the uninitiated to more fully appreciate De Seta's films.
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