1. Patrick continued his take over of the kitchen and fixed a most delicious dinner. He combined four cheese ravioli with pesto and cherry tomatoes and grated hard cheese. There might have been more to it, but, no matter, he served us a superb meal. Debbie pitched in with a fantastic spinach and arugula salad complimented by some vegetables and dressed with a perfect vinaigrette, one of her many specialties.
2. At the strong recommendation of Vizio University Honorary Professor Dan Armstrong, this afternoon I watched what many film scholars see as the climactic movie of the film noir period. I watched Kiss Me Deadly (1955) director Robert Aldrich's adaptation of Mickey Spillane's novel of the same name (but with a comma after Me).
As this movie concluded, was I ever glad I had no idea what was coming. My experience makes me wary to say very much about the movie's plot. I will say that the movie is a Mike Hammer story and that Ralph Meeker plays Hammer as a violent, largely amoral opportunist, possibly out to enrich himself as much as he is looking to solve the movie's central mystery.
Consequently, as you might expect from a film noir, this is a dark movie exploring varieties of human depravity and paranoia. Mike Hammer moves through this world adroitly. He is mostly, but not entirely, emotionally unmoved by the terrible and even carnal things he experiences and confronts.
I don't want to say much more. I read several articles about the movie after I watched it and gained a better appreciation for the movie's influence on other filmmakers and its importance as an exploration of the 1950s in the USA, a critique of what one writer called "America's vulgar underbelly".
Okay. One more thing. I'll watch the first ten minutes or so of this movie over and over again. Not only is it an arresting and alarming start to the movie, it also features Cloris Leachman's unforgettable, if somewhat brief, first real role in feature film.
It's chilling.
She's haunting.
3. I wanted to watch another movie. Patrick and Meagan were on a jaunt to Coeur d'Alene. Debbie was resting after a week of teaching.
I decided to leapt twenty years forward from Kiss Me Deadly and enter another corrupt, amoral, criminal world, but in a movie not as, well, deadly serious as Kiss Me Deadly.
I watched Get Shorty (1995).
It made its Turner Classics Movie channel debut a few weeks ago and I recorded it.
I watched Get Shorty around the time it came out and my main memory of it was that it made me laugh.
It made me laugh again this evening.
Get Shorty is an absurd movie about the way the worlds of moviemaking and loan sharking intersect in wild and highly entertaining ways.
For me, the movie worked because of the sharply written screenplay and the superb cast which included John Travolta (as good as I've ever seen him), Gene Hackman, Rene Russo, Danny DeVito, Dennis Farina, Delroy Linda, James Gondolfini, and an over the top cameo appearance by Bette Midler.
I must really like movies about movie making -- Get Shorty gave me much of the same pleasure I felt when I watched The Player and, most recently, when I went out to see See How The Run.
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