1. In the past week or so, I've watched and loved two movies written and directed by Juzo Itami (Tampopo and The Funeral). I was in the mood for a matinee movie today. I decided to find out if three might be a charm, so I went to the Criterion Channel and selected Itami's A Taxing Woman. Like the first two Itami movies I watched, A Taxing Woman featured the versatile pair of actors Nobuko Miyamoto and Tsutomu Yamazaki.
One of aspects of Itami's moviemaking I enjoy is that he makes absorbing films out of unlikely subject matter. In Tampopo, he transmutes the making of ramen into a witty, erotic, and sometimes touching satire. In The Funeral, he turns the sudden death of a family's patriarch into a fascinating study of characters, Japanese rituals and customs, the impact of modernity, and of the love between the deceased and his widow that is it once mystifying and tender.
In A Taxing Woman, Itami invites us into the corrupt world of accomplished tax evaders and the governmental tax inspectors who work to uncover and arrest these criminals.
Nobuko Miyamoto plays the role of a brilliant and tenacious tax inspector, Ryoko Itakura. Her antagonist is a seasoned and accomplished organized crime lord, Hidecki Gondo, played with complexity by Tsutomu Yamazaki.
The movie is not only suspenseful, a really fun face off between brilliant law breakers and those who would uncover their schemes, but it's also a fascinating character study of both Ryoko Itakura and Hidecki Gondo and the intriguing relationship (not romantic) that develops between them.
2. I finished the leftover ham stock and vegetable with beans soup I made the other night and then ate a bowl of rice mixed with pork slices and the yellow curry sauce that was a result of braising that pork roast yesterday.
In between these two courses, I mixed myself a chilly and stiff dry gin martini and listened to Deep Purple's 1970 masterpiece, In Rock. Yes, the supersonic stylings of guitarist Ritchie Blackmore and Ian Gillan's powerful, wide-ranging vocals fire me up; but Jon Lord's work on the keyboard and organ is what moves me, touches my emotions. This evening, I hit my peak of gin and Deep Purple bliss when Jon Lord's deft prelude got the astonishing track, "Child in Time" underway and the band spent 10 minute and 20 seconds exploring this track's beauty, passion, and power.
I plan to relish a third straight night of Deep Purple and Tangueray on Sunday. I will listen to the first Deep Purple album I ever owned. Some call it simply Deep Purple. Others refer to it as Deep Purple III. It might be best known for its cover, a detail from Hieronymus Bosch's fantastical masterpiece "The Garden of Earthly Delights" -- a cover, by the way, that rattled Mary Idell West Woolum when she took a moment to examine it!
3. Until tonight, I didn't realize that Debbie had subscribed to Masterpiece on PBS. Once I realized this fact, I took Gibbs, my laptop, and the wireless speaker to the bedroom, reclined on the bed, and, for the first time in a few years, I watched an episode of one of my very favorite programs, Inspector Lewis.
I don't remember what episode of what season I watched. The story centered around a drug trial of an anti-depressant and one of the members of the trial being murdered.
My pleasure watching Inspector Lewis definitely comes from how much I enjoy the relationships between the characters, especially Lewis and Hathaway, their contrasting backgrounds and personalities, and their (sometimes begrudging) respect for each other.
In addition, I began watching Inspector Lewis in the living room of our apartment home in Greenbelt, MD. My feelings of nostalgia connected to living in Maryland are strong and persistent. I found it peaceful living in our modest apartment. On chilly evenings, I enjoyed mixing brandy or rum with hot water, being with Maggie and Charly, and sitting with Debbie while she watched programming on her laptop or knit or did whatever she needed to do to rest up from the unrelenting demands of her teaching job. Often I spent those evenings watching Inspector Lewis or A Touch of Frost and when I return to watching them here in Kellogg, the music on these shows and the characters themselves take me back to to the many feelings of enjoyment I experienced living in such a beautiful place full of so much activity and vitality.
It's been nearly five years since we left Maryland -- five years since Mom moved to Kindred and soon it will be five years since Mom passed away.
It's sobering.
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