1. Late Friday evening, I started to watch the film noir classic movie, Out of the Past (1947). I got about half way into it before falling asleep and so I picked it up again this morning. Especially in the second half of the movie, with several characters double and triple (at least) crossing each other, the plot gets convoluted (not unusual in film noir) and when the movie concluded, I decided to watch it a second time right away and see if I could sort it all out better.
I did! I admired how this movie portrayed murkiness, the darkness of deception and greed, how the evil in this movie created a vortex next to impossible for its characters to escape.
In fact, similar to other movies on the Vizio University screening list these past couple of weeks (The Gunfighter, High Noon, High Sierra), Out of the Past tells a story about the inescapability of the past, exploring the troubling ways in which the past continues to live on in the present and shape the future. The past is never over. It's never behind us. There are no fresh starts. In this movie, Robert Mitchum plays a private detective who entangles himself in a job for a gambling kingpin (played by Kirk Douglas) and, try as he might, to free himself from the work he did for this ruthless operator, he can't. I'll leave it at that except to say that Mitchum's original job for the Kirk Douglas character was to track down a woman who had shot him and stolen money from him. Mitchum's character finds her (she's played superbly by Jane Greer), they become physically (romantically?) involved, and it grows into another entanglement that he tries to escape.
2. These black and white film noir movies I've been watching are gorgeously photographed. The cinematographers in these movies create interplay between light and shadow that correlates to the murky situations of these movies, the way moral light and dark intersect, the way that we, as viewers, can feel we've been relegated to the shadows of understanding, especially when we aren't at all sure we know exactly what's going on.
Last week, one of my favorite movies about filmmaking arrived on my front porch. I ordered Visions of Light, a documentary produced by the American Film Institute that came out in 1992 and explores the history and evolution of cinematography from 1895-1990.
I had watched this documentary multiple times before it landed on my front porch, but it had been a few years. It's a brilliant movie, especially for someone like me. I have a long history of watching movies as if they were works of literature, as if they were novels, and I need all the educating I can find to help me watch movies as works of photography (and sound). I need help appreciating not only story structure and character development and the questions about life that arise out of these stories, but also how movies are shot, how lighting and focus and camera movement and other features of cinematography are at work, guiding how I see what's on the screen and affecting my experience with the movie.
Visions of Light has helped me more in expanding my movie viewing experience than anything else.
3. Debbie and I decided a while back that when she travels to Eugene, I will stay home and take care of Gibbs, Luna, and Copper.
This arrangement worked in the spring and it's working now in August.
The chief challenge of being alone with Gibbs, Luna, and Copper is that they can't be in the same room at the same time. Gibbs isn't mean to Luna and Copper, but he barks at them unrelentingly and chases them. Copper and Luna don't like being barked at and chased!
So, Copper and Luna spend much of their time either in the Vizio room or the bedroom.
Recently, I've been spending quite a bit of time in the living room writing and watching movies and other presentations related to movies on my MacBook.
Today, however, I left Gibbs alone in the living room and retired to the Vizio room to watch Out of the Past.
I found out instantly that I'd spent way too much time apart from Luna!
She leapt on to my lap, climbed up my chest, and dug her claws into my clothing as if to say, "Hey, buddy, I'm not going anywhere and neither are you."
I held Luna close, stroked her from her head to her tail repeatedly and could feel her body tremble with gratitude that I was giving her the attention she so deeply desired.
Copper doesn't jump on my lap, but shows his appreciation of my presence by moving closer to me.
Essentially, I spent the entire afternoon with Luna and Copper. Eventually, Luna had had enough of pinning me in my chair and she alternated between jumping onto the floor and then back up with me in my Vizio viewing chair.
On occasion, I checked up on Gibbs. Earlier in the morning we'd had a pretty good session of me throwing his toys so Gibbs can retrieving them and burn off a lot of energy. By the time I disappeared into the Vizio room, he was content to rest on the ottoman, love seat, and our pale green stuffed chair.
I know Luna and Copper miss being with me at night, but everything works better if Gibbs sleeps on my bed at night. I close the bedroom door so that Copper and Luna can roam around the living room and kitchen and they seem content to find comfortable places to sleep at night. In the morning, I delay bringing Gibbs out of the bedroom as long as I can so that Luna and Copper can enjoy time with me in the living room before Gibbs comes out and they return to being behind a closed door.
In a perfect world, all three would be in the living room together, the canine lying with the felines, but we aren't there yet. In the meantime, I'll just continue to do all I can to keep Gibbs, Luna, and Copper separated and content.
No comments:
Post a Comment