1. Debbie's improving. Her sore throat is gone. So is any sign of a headache. Debbie worked on classroom preparation and organization much of the day, signifying that her energy is improving. She coughs occasionally and her cough has the sound of congestion, but her coughing is less frequent. The best news, from my perspective, is that she's sleeping well at night.
I continued to sequester myself, much of the day, in the Vizio room. I was tired, not because I was ill, but I think the presence of Covid in the house has been wearing on me and I fell asleep frequently while watching things on television. In addition, I had a virtual meeting with my financial advisor and while, overall, things look okay, talking about, thinking about, and being offered alternatives about money also wears me out. Every single time.
So, rather than go to the Elks for burgers, hang out at The Lounge, and go to Kellogg's Homecoming football game against St. Maries, I stayed home (well, I did leave once to go to Pinehurst to the liquor store at Debbie's request!).
(I'm writing this post late Saturday morning. I slept in today until almost 9:00 -- I don't remember the last time I slept in this long.)
2. As I've no doubt mentioned several times before, but it's vital to me, so here I go again, the Criterion Channel is valuable to me not only for its staggering variety of movies, but also for the interviews it collects.
I especially enjoy their ongoing series, Adventures in Moviegoing. It features interviews with directors, actors, and other people involved in the world of cinema. The interviewees reflect on their personal history with movies and how they came to love movies and then got involved in making them. Each subject also chooses a handful of movies they love or have been inspired by from the Criterion Collection and discuss each movie for under five minutes.
Okay.
Watching Detour sparked my curiosity about B movies.
To my delight, I discovered that Roger Corman, one of cinema's most prolific creators of B movies was featured as a subject in Adventures of Movie Going.
I listened to his interview and learned that he was a key figure over fifty years ago in getting international movies distributed in the USA. The three movies he singled out as important to him were all non-USA films: Cries and Whispers, Amarcord, Dersu Uzala, and The Tin Drum, movies from Sweden, Italy, Japan, and Germany.
Later, I watched interviews with Paul Feig and Mira Nair.
Paul Feig discussed Rashomon, 8 1/2, Playtime, Stranger than Paradise, and Withnail and I, four movies wildly different from each other that Feig had fascinating reasons for selecting.
Mira Nair discussed The Music Room, 8 1/2, La Jetee, Battle of Algiers, An Angel at the Table, and Breaking the Waves.
I loved the twenty-four minute long interview with Mira Nair. She's full of vitality, voraciously intelligent, and full of deep love for the movies, particularly the visual beauty of cinema. I loved how she connected her study of photography to her practices as a film director and a movie lover.
Until today, I was unaware of the movie Battle of Algiers and when I'm next in the mood for a demanding, documentary looking movie about political revolution, I will watch Battle of Algiers.
In fact, Mira Nair's enthusiasm for Battle of Algiers led me to watch another interview selection on the Criterion Channel featuring five directors, Spike Lee, Steven Soderbergh, Mira Nair, Oliver Stone, and Julian Schnabel all discussing Battle of Algiers. In some ways, the interviews made me wary about watching the brutality of certain passages in this movie, but I am sure I'll brace myself and watch it all the same for its complexity, stirring black and white cinematography, and its documentary film like realism.
Listening to these directors moved me to think it's also about time for me to watch Z and Traffic.
3. Ever since I started posting on this blog about my own adventures in moviegoing(viewing), different people have said to me something along these lines, "I enjoy reading your Three Beautiful Things, Bill, but, I don't know, when you write about movies, you kind of lose me."
I get that.
I love having this record of the movies I've been watching and how much they matter to me.
I accept wholeheartedly that's it's not what a lot of people are interested in.
So, if you are still with me as I write this third beautiful thing, I'm glad you are here.
I'm going to sort of pretend I'm being interviewed on Criterion's series Adventures in Moviegoing and write about how I think I can trace one approach I have to watching movies all the way back to when I was a third grader at Sunnyside Elementary School.
When I watch movies, I am a believer.
I never have a voice in my head saying, "That's implausible" or "That could never happen" or "How does this movie expect me to believe THAT?"
To me, whatever is going on in the movie is happening in the world this movie has created and so I accept whatever occurs and believe in it.
How did I develop this stance toward movie going?
I ask because it seems to me it's unusual. Frequently I hear or read people say about things that happen in movies comments like "such and such a scene ruined the movie for me because that could never happen!" or "I've been (fill in the blank -- a soldier, a pilot, a teacher, whatever) and I know what I saw in that movie doesn't happen and could never happen".
Today, I finally figured out the title of a movie I watched at home after school when I was in the third grade, a movie I remember being on tv more than once in the afternoon after school on one of the local Spokane channels.
I figured out that the movie is Invasion from Mars (1953) and after a little searching on my SmartyPants TV, I discovered it's available on demand on Pluto TV.
Invasion from Mars was just the kind of movie I was looking for after watching Detour.
It's low budget, had to have been quickly made, relies on primitive special effects, and has many minutes of stock footage of trains, military tanks and other equipment, of landscapes being blown up, and other stuff.
The movie also tells a wild story about a boy who sees a flying saucer disappear into a sand pit out behind his family's home and how different people then disappear into this sand pit and re-emerge as feelingless, destructive, almost zombie like beings who commit acts of destruction and then suddenly die.
Sound outlandish? Sound implausible?
Maybe.
But when I was in the third grade, I accepted and believed in everything in that movie and it scared me and haunted my dreams.
Watching it about today, about 60 years later, I accepted and believed everything in the movie again -- but I doubt it'll give me nightmares.
I've never lost that capacity to be fully drawn into a movie and believe everything that happens on the screen and respond to what I see with fear, joy, sadness, respect, wonder, perplexity, or whatever feeling the movie is inviting me to feel.
It's the foundation of my movie viewing experience.
Once upon a time, maybe thirty or forty years ago, as I was going to a lot of movies, especially in Eugene, I thought it would be fun to be a movie reviewer.
Before long, though, especially as I read more movie reviews and I listened more closely to reviewers like Roger Ebert and Gene Siskel on television, I realized I could never do it.
I'm too accepting. I'm a believer. I don't suspend disbelief because I never get to the point of disbelieving.
I'm not saying that my habits of surrendering to and believing in what I see in a movie began with Invasion from Mars, but watching that movie again today certainly helped bring into focus how long I've been watching movies with an attitude of belief, acceptance, and an almost unshakeable resolve to enjoy what I see.
So, see, who could trust someone like me to review movies? After all, my mindset toward the makers of a movie as any movie under way is summed up this way: "You are going to have to work hard to disappoint me". Who would trust a movie reviewer who enjoys almost every movie he sees? (There are exceptions, but I prefer not mention them!)
My movie reviews would increase the number of complaining letters to the editor. That's mostly what they'd be good for!
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