Archive for April, 2007
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Imagine Christopher Walken in orange playing an orange and white tabby cat. And singing and dancing, to boot…
As Puss ‘N Boots
Yes, indeed, he’s just got his boots in this 1988 Cannon film of the fairy tale by Charles Perrault (attributed here to the Brothers Grimm) and now he’s doing a softshoe on the hay littered floor of a barn. And, no, he doesn’t dance very well and doesn’t sing very well either. But it’s Christopher Walken in an orange poet shirt and orange knicker pants setting off to seek his fortune with the third son of the miller, happy to have his boots now, not satisfied with bread and cheese and wanting the good life.
Christopher Walken crouching behind a bush on hands and knees, shaking his kitty cat rear as he prepares to catch a pheasant in his bag–now, that’s a moment in movie history.
Another not to be missed moment in cinema history is when he sings the miller’s son to sleep.
“Go to sleep my friend, dream of lovely things, of a prince and princess and castle…yes I’ll watch over you…watching over you is what I must do.”
The miller’s son is played by (get this) Jason Connery.
“Connery?” you say?
Yes, a son of Sean Connery.
Nothing messes with your mind like watching the son of Zardoz sung to sleep by Vincenzo Coccotti.
Walken also starred that year in the movie “Homeboy” directed by Mickey Rourke. In 1989 he starred as Whitley Strieber in “Communion”. I don’t know whether he considers this an artistically dry period in his career or if he thought of it as a fun break in psycho typecasting. I hope the latter.
Surprisingly enough, despite the low budget production values and a not very promising opening, it turns out to be a pretty amusing film. The court sets are clever, generous enough with color and texture that one feels somewhere between an upscale Holiday Inn and a third cousin, four times removed, of “Barry Lyndon”. With Yossi Jacobs as the King, Ilki Jacobs as Lady Clara and Amnon Meskin as the ogre, there’s a lot of stagy, posturing, buffoonish fun with the court, again in fairly delightful costumes a cut above average. The peculiar odd woman out among the powdered white wigs and colorful make-up is the princess in a too disturbing 1988 high school prom permanent in natural brown, but then she is supposed to be a princess who was never successfully molded for artifice and yearns to play the goose girl, so she is delighted to learn her prospective prince is actually a miller’s son, which is the one significant departure this tale takes from the Perrault, the confession of the miller’s son to her that he is not really a noble.
Another peculiarity of the film is its mixed message. We are sold that the simpler of things of life are the best and that the nobles are all hypocrites, even though the goal of the film is the pursuit of the comfortable, highly embellished life style of the nobles, the cat proving to the King that the Marquis really does possess 100 thousand bushels of wheat and a castle with a thousand rooms and one hundred horses each supplied by a different sultan and a chest full of precious jewels, which makes the king very happy and saves the miller’s son’s neck and wins him the hand of the princess.
Walken managed to make me buy him as the cat. He has a scene where he irons handkerchiefs and I bought that he irons handkerchiefs. I bought that he ate the ogre.
“You’re looking at a happy cat, a smug and slightly sappy cat…” Walken sings at the end, and in a wicked feat of Walken mischief we are convinced (or I was) that he is certainly the cat servant of the Miller Marquis, eager for nothing but the best for his master. Plus, we are reminded that actors are far more conniving than nobles.
Too bad I didn’t buy Jason Connery as the miller’s son who becomes a marquis. Though Walken was 45 I’m sure if he’d also played Jason Connery’s role, I would have bought him as the third and youngest son of the miller.
He could have played the ogre too! And the king. And the princess! Now, that would have been some fairy tale.
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I watched this movie in April of 2007 but am only now blogging about it in December of 2009 (but am retro posting this in April of 2007). What makes me sad is I don’t recollect anything about it other than it was really short, which was a plus, and had really bad production values. The bad production values were expected and were also a plus. Go-Go girl detectives in go-go boots! A man in an Easter Bunny costume! These are things I would have loved. So, why don’t I remember anything about this film? Usually, if I can’t remember a film at all it’s because it was so bad that my mind sacrificed that memory in favor of something better. Seems my brain was unable this time to distinguish between good bad and bad bad.
Seriously, the odd note. I’m sitting here yesterday morning working on photos and there was a peculiar wispy beep sound from the kitchen. We should have no beep sounds coming from the kitchen, but there it was.
And then tonight I wake up and come in and sit down and after about five minutes from behind me there was a brief and clear pipe kind of whistle in G. It was so clear and resonant that I was able to check out on the piano what the note was, which is how I know it was G. If it was coming from he radiator, it seems it would sound like it was coming from the radiator. Instead it just sounded like it was coming out of the empty air.
We live in a flatulent old place.
‘Tis the Season for Festivals. H.o.p. missed music at the Dogwood Festival a couple weekends ago as the weather was nasty, but he had fun playing around on the kiddo installations. Made up for it today with an earful at the Inman Park Festival. Saw Gwen Hughes and the Swimming Pool Q’s and some of Ike Stubblefield and Bruce Hampton. He met Gwen and all the guys in her band. A little conversation with Jeff Calder and Tom Gray (who was singing his “Money Changes Everything” with the Q’s and hadn’t seen H.o.p. since he was small). He had fun hunting for souvenirs at the different stalls and brought home a rusty horse shoe for which he paid a dollar and a lovely frog percussion instrument…and a handful of melted candy from the festival parade which he won’t eat but it’s a souvenir!
He likes souvenirs. He brought home a magnolia leaf from the zoo yesterday as a souvenir. Actually, he brought home two magnolia leaves. One was given him by a little cousin and was only half a magnolia leaf and pretty decrepit but since his cousin gave it to him it was a must-have keeper. Now it is on the table and will remain in our possession for the next ten years.
So do we hang the horseshoe? Do the ends point up or down?
At one stall a woman was breaking down old Cracker Jack boxes for the prizes within, selling them as separate pieces. A festival goer was rather offended by this, arguing that this was history and she ought not to be selling the pieces separately. She said well if he paid such-and-such cents for an unbroken box he would be preserving history but this remark passed him by and he continued on about how really really she ought not to be defiling Cracker Jack in this manner.
H.o.p. enjoyed the music this time as one was able to sit and listen. He was fine with the old hippie contingent but towards the end when the old hippie/yuppie crowd (J. Crew) piled in for the Hampton show he wasn’t so comfortable with them and decided it was time to pack it in. And he didn’t care for the smell of stale beer. He never has been comfortable around drunk people.
Atlanta Zoo, Tiger Exhibit, April 2007
I don’t know who these people were in front of me but I love the expression on the woman to the far right. I wasn’t aware of her but she was aware of me and the camera and granted a bemused grin. Glad I caught it. Most people try to avoid the camera out of politeness. “Oh, I’m sorry!” they say, attempting to duck by.
A weekday is usually a great day to go to the zoo during the spring and autumn as you’re fairly assured a low crowd factor and a lazy, easy day of animal watching. But we realized, on the approach, this wasn’t going to be one of those days. Three counties must have decided this was the day to take their school kids on a field trip. There was school bus after school bus after school bus after school bus. Seemed like dozens of them. We arrived at noon and my sister was told that a good many of the school groups were leaving–and in fact I stood to the side at the gates, unable to cross to where H.o.p. and Marty were standing, as kids flooded out. But the zoo was still packed. And all the school kids had on matching red or blue t-shirts proclaiming what great readers they were. I’m hoping the field trip didn’t leave out the poor readers…
H.o.p. and the Komodo Dragon, April 2007
Encounter with a Tiger at the Atlanta Zoo, April 2007
The above niece’s encounter with the cartoon foot massager cat was more fulfilling for her than the outing in the tiger house.
Anyway, it was a gorgeous day and we all had fun. I wrestle for good shots of the kids but it’s difficult for me. I have a few more up at Flickr. There was H.o.p. and 6 of his cousins all of whom are continually in motion and I just take shot after shot hoping to get at least one decent one but the majority of time I have missed the “cute” shot by a split second and faces are already hidden behind surrounding arms and legs and trees and playground equipment.
When we got home the landlord showed up and looked at the kitchen and promised to fix and paint it in the next couple of weeks. He had a box full of books for the library book sale and he had me come out and dig through to see if I could find anything for H.o.p.
Something bit the c#@*! out of my back while I was sleeping the other night. A nice row of bites. An application of Benadryl helped a lot and it looked a lot better yesterday but it still hurts like crazy.
Prowling the Museum of the Americas
Digital Painting 2007
Click on the above to see larger and larger larger at my website.
Used a personal photo for reference.
Down in Arizona, near the Petrified Forest, is the Museum of the Americas with large dinosaurs placed to entice. Just don’t climb on them. They have totally weird security prowling the grounds that’ll track you down, force you to play Dino Attack for hours, and then further penalize you by having you purchase them the latest in Bionicles.
Well, we missed Bill Moyers’ “Buying the War” on television last night, so am happy to find that I can watch it online, which is what I’m now getting ready to do.
P.S. Watched. It’s nice to have Bill Moyers back.
Hopefully you have 3-D glasses on you. Because this image of the sun in 3-D is pretty wonderful. I’d read the images were going to be released at the end of April and was looking forward to it.
H.o.p. was appropriately impressed.
More incredible images.
I’m so tired I can hardly focus but I’ve had this sitting on my computer for a couple days and it’s time to clear the desk.
First confounded then allured by pre-Raphaelite art…
…I have just wasted some time trying to read Charles Kingsley’s Hypatia, upon which this painting of the pagan, Greek philosopher, by Charles Williams Mitchell, is said to be based. She in nubile form (though she was probably murdered in her sixties, but what fun is that) about to be be torn apart by a Christian mob, having just herself apparently been converted to Christianity. So goes Charles Kingsley’s story and yes I spy a sardonic moral there (maybe) but I’ve read the book is supposed to be in parts humorous, and if it’s black humor it is so soppy with overwrought flesh and spirituality that it’s difficult to detect, unless it’s very very very black humor, and the determined manner of overwroughtness has me thinking this isn’t the case.
Anyone have good words to say about this book before I put it down?
“Redwall” is a children’s book about mice and other animals at war with rats. Marty spent quite a while this past winter reading “Redwall” to H.o.p. at night. This past weekend H.o.p. got the “Redwall” TV series (first part) from Netflix.
This is the state of conversation around here.
Marty: They got it all wrong!
And etc. They got it all wrong, they got it all wrong. He went on at length last night after he got in in from his session, and yesterday morning before he went out to his session, and this morning before he left for his session. The television series has gotten everything all wrong!
Marty: I can’t believe I’m going on like this.
Me: Uhmmmmm.
Then off he’d go again.
Me: I can’t believe you’re going on like this….
Didn’t stop him for a second.
And that is the state of our conversation these days.
This evening I got to play “Redwall” with H.o.p., which was interesting as I’d not read him the book and don’t know the story line except for some of Marty’s rants about how the television series departs from the book, “And throws it all off! Throws it all off! They don’t even have so-and-so in the right place on the tapestry! He shouldn’t be up in the middle! He should be down on the lower right. It’s very important…”
And so on and so forth for the next fifteen minutes.
H.o.p. has been doing little radio play recordings at the studio once a week, acting out characters from different stories he likes, creating stories of his own for them. He has told me that I get to be Constance the Badger in the next recording, which will be to do with “Redwall” and so we had to rehearse. He said. Must rehearse.
“Are you excited you get to be Constance in my next recording? Aren’t you excited?”
Made for an interesting and confusing rehearsal because the story kept changing. First I was Constance rescuing Matthias the not-quite-orphaned mouse in the street and taking him back to the Abbey.
“Now you must sound very smart,” H.o.p. said.
“Oh, so I don’t sound smart enough as it is as your mom.”
“No, no, you sound smart…”
It’s all very dramatic with H.o.p. half passed out, barely able to speak, and me exclaiming and cooing over him and bundling him together and promising to get him warm food and shelter and what’s more he gets to live with me forever and ever, and he likes that (because none of us should ever die, forever and ever is a good thing). And Matthias’ sister, who had carried him on her back, to her doom, was lying dead somewhere, as far as I knew, because that’s how it is in the television series. She falls down a hill and lies there suddenly dead, done in by a small puddle of water it seems, her face half in half out. But Matthias (H.o.p.) kept asking for her and I didn’t know what to tell him and kept asking him but H.o.p. was in character and he couldn’t break character in the middle of a scene. But then next his sister was actually alive because the mother (me) and little brother had found her. Many adventures pass with snakes and birds and rats and they track Matthias to the abbey (we had been through an hour of character changes by now) and were about to find him when H.o.p. decided they shouldn’t and that they should bypass the abbey altogether…
And well it went on for about another hour with many reversals in plot and doings over again with this different plot line and that and me trying to figure out what was going on. You with children or you who were once children yourselves know how it is.
In a particularly sweet scene he went (as Matthias) to get flowers for his sweetheart, Cornflower. I was a mouse supplying the flowers. I said well he couldn’t have flowers for free so he gave me a bag of food and plucked some daisies, one, two, three, four, five, six, not wanting to take too many flowers, and I said oh no he needed to have lilacs and violets too and this and that and doesn’t it all smell beautiful etc. etc. And H.o.p. made sure to tell me then that there wasn’t just good food in the bag, there were also seeds for me to grow more roses.
Tonight, after H.o.p. is in bed and I’ve read to him and he falls asleep, I go to the computer and I read all the wonderful news about the world. Just wonderful news that makes your head so heavy you can barely stand it and your stomach turns and churns.
But earlier today it was “Redwall” (lots of comedy, too, H.o.p. always makes sure there’s lots of comedy) and Atlantis. We watched a movie on the mystery of Atlantis and read just a little of Plato on it, because what’s more entertaining than the ancients talking about the ancients and a world long past even before their own–and because H.o.p. had singled it out for today’s viewing. Is Atlantis distorted fact? Was it allegory? Was it this island next to Crete? What was it? We watched the movie (in the meanwhile he gets to see scenes of Crete and Turkey and Egypt) though I was also a little reticent and taking care because last night he was asking why in so many stories and games and movies there is an apocalyptic scenario.
H.o.p. picked up on the part of Plato’s story where the Atlanteans, in their bounty and excesses, became debased and full of unrighteous power, and was trying to figure out what kind of people they would be in his own potential movie.
“What destroyed Atlantis?” H.o.p. asked.
“Maybe earthquake,” I said.
“Bombs,” H.o.p. said.
“Hmmm, I think maybe a natural disaster.”
We watched the movie a little while longer.
“What destroyed Atlantis?” H.o.p. asked again.
“Sounds like a natural disaster,” I said.
“Bombs,” H.o.p. insisted. “Bombs.”
He doesn’t even watch the news.
“Will I have a long life?” H.o.p. asked. “I know, you can read my palm!”
There are times you don’t question these things.
He wanted to know if he would live longer than his Opa. If he would live as long as his grandfather and grandmother and if they would live a lot longer and if all his cousins would live really long as well and they’d all grow old together.
“Ah, you’ll have a wonderful, long, life,” I told him, reminding him the thing to do is not forget about today. That so many people are worried about the next day that they forget to pay attention to today’s moments (I’m one of them). “You will go a lot of places and do a lot of things!”
“Like to Italy!”
“Yes!”
“And China!”
“Yes!”
“And I will see my great-grandchildren.”
“Yes!”
“And my great-great-great grandchildren!”
(“Oh, he’ll see his children when he’s fourteen,” Marty says, reading over my shoulder, walking by. H.o.p. has this way with girls….)
H.o.p. has decided I should get a crystal ball.
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