Veggies

Clockwise from the upper left: radishes, snow peas, carrots, spinach and lettuce.

Melon, zucchini, tomato, and peppers.  These photos were actually taken a couple weeks ago; the melon and zucchini have come up, and we've been harvesting lettuce, spinach, and radishes for salad.

Musicals that don't work -- Corpse Bride (2005) and Gigi (1958)

After the opening musical number of Corpse Bride, I turned to Sarah and asked "you don't think this is going to be a musical, is it?" "I'm afraid so." "Damn."  Danny Elfman is a brilliant composer of quirky instrumental music, but this had the musical quality of a mediocre Rankin and Bass special.  Finis Everglot even looks a bit like a hairless Heat Miser.  The basic premise is great, the animation is beautiful, and the short scene between Victor/Victoria at the piano has real feeling to it, but that's about it.  The story has been stretched thin so it's just barely feature film length, and could anything be more trite and unnecessary than the fight between Victor and Barkis?  


We had high hopes for Gigi; it won the Best Picture Oscar** and was a Lerner and Loewe vehicle with Andre Previn overseeing the scoring -- it's like a proto-My Fair Lady!  Leslie Caron even has a small spark of Audrey Hepburn's magnificent screen presence, and Gigi has some of Eliza's innocence and spunk.  Gaston and Honoré are a bit like Higgins and Pickering, though sadly while Higgins is charmingly contemptible Gaston is merely contemptible.  We don't exactly start off on the right foot, with Honoré signing the unfortunate "Thank Heaven for Little Girls" that was soundly mocked by SNL in its first season, and then we meet Gigi, and then we spend far too much time with Gaston, and we're nearly halfway through the movie before we get back to Gigi.  Help!  We're dying of thirst!  Give us more of the character that has a little life to her!  Interestingly, perhaps because Gaston is so unlikable, the moment with the greatest feeling between two characters comes during the "I Remember it Well" sequence with Honoré and Madame Alvarez (the YouTube video unfortunately cuts out the dialogue prior to the song, and that is vital to properly understand their relationship).  Let's just chalk this up as a practice run for My Fair Lady, in which they got everything right.


** over Auntie Mame, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, Separate Tables, and the Defiant Ones.  I doubt it would win a re-vote now.  My imaginary vote would go to Separate Tables, but I'm a sucker for David Niven.

The Best Years of Our Lives (1946)

This won 7 Academy Awards (8 if you include the honorary Oscar given to Harold Russell), but I can't help but feel that while The Best Years of Our Lives is an important film from a historical perspective, it really doesn't hold up artistically after 60 years, and bad pacing is the primary culprit.


** mild spoilers **


It starts well, with Dana Andrews returning home from the war and unable to get a flight home.  His struggles to get on a domestic flight are contrasted with a comfortable-looking "fat cat" civvie who happily pays a surcharge because he has too much luggage.  Finally, Dana picks up his single bag and heads off to the other side of the airfield, where other vets are waiting to catch flights home as they become available, and makes friends with Frederic March and Harold Russell (a double amputee with hooks for hands), who all happen to come from the same town.  They fly over the American heartland together and think about this great country they've fought for, and are concerned about what it will be like to go home.  They take a cab together, and each gets dropped off in turn.


Harold is worried about how his family and his girl will react to his prostheses; Frederic is worried about how he'll reacclimate to life as a wealthy banker; Dana was mostly concerned with being dropped off last, because he's slightly embarrassed that his family is so poor.  When he gets home, he find out that his wife has been living "in town" and has a job working late at a nightclub.  So Dana goes out to look for her.  Meanwhile, Frederic has taken his wife (Myrna Loy of The Thin Man fame) and daughter (who is out of HS and has been volunteering at the hospital) "out on the town", and Harold (after a painfully set up scene in which he drops a glass because of his hooks) goes for a walk to his Uncle Butch's bar (wonderfully played by Hoagy Carmichael), and naturally, soon enough Dana and Frederic (and his wife and daughter) end up there, too.  Dana and Frederic's daughter hit it off, though nothing can come of it because he's married, but by the end of the drunken evening he still can't find his wife, and so Frederic's wife and daughter drag him to their home to spend the night.  Dana has nightmares and Frederic's daughter sits by him until he can go back to sleep.  In the morning, there's palpable tension between the two, but Dana still has to go find his wife.


So far, so great!  But then there's an hour and a half of film devoted to a steady stream of scenes shot at the same steady pace to illustrate how they're having trouble "going home".  Harold refuses to believe his girl still loves him, takes up rifle practice in the garage, and scares his little sister.  Frederic has a drinking problem, his son is confused by his HS teacher about whether it was OK to drop the bomb on Japan, his daughter is in love with a married man, and his bank is too conservative with giving loans to veterans.  Dana can't find a good job and his wife loved the man in uniform, not the soda jerk.  This should be compelling stuff, but not when delivered in a cinematic monotone.


On the plus side, it ends well, with Dana Andrews reliving a war memory and then finally getting a decent job.  (there's a final scene with Harold's marriage, but it's just tidying up)

First no-dryer load of laundry of the summer

With hopefully many more to come.

Note this was actually some days ago; it rained all day today after holding off long enough yesterday to allow the neighborhood to have a (relatively) dry and sunny garage sale and potluck.

Kiss Kiss Bang Bang (2005)

So far this is the hidden gem of the aughts.  I'd never heard of it before trolling for Val Kilmer films to add to the netflix queue several months ago.  Seeing it wasn't a high priority because of all the crap that Val has been in (and netflix rated it slightly under 3 stars of 5 based on my prior ratings), and though I was slightly intrigued by the pairing with Robert Downey, Jr., the reality is that in 2005 (i.e., prior to Iron Man) they were both basically "damaged goods" as far as the potential quality of the movie was concerned, but my word, can they act, and in this case, they were supported by great writing. 


The script, partly based on a novel by Brett Halliday, gives us a comedy noir that constantly pokes fun at the noir genre, mocks itself, and breaks the fourth wall at will.  It has a running gag about grammar.  Actually, there are several independently running gags, and things mentioned offhandedly and irrelevantly in one scene (like how silly putty picks up stuff from comics) are used later on to the delight of those paying attention (as the visuals for a monologue about Michelle Monaghan's character's backstory, who, btw, is a very worthy member of the main trio).  


The end result is a bit like an Elmore Leonard film adaptation dialed up to 11.  No, we haven't learned anything by the end of the film (unless you didn't know how to use adverbs properly) but there are much less satisfactory ways to spend 2 hours of your life. Hm, if I were famous, do you think they'd use that as the quote on the poster?  At any rate, go see this if you haven't, and feel free to laugh at me if you saw it in the theater during its first release.