Everybody comes to Rick's

A college student named Lawrence Dai watched the movie Julie & Julia every day for a year, and wrote a blog about it:

The Lawrence / Julie & Julia Project. 
His inspiration seems to have been seeing Julie & Julia, where the real person Julie Powell (played by Amy Adams in the movie) cooked her way through Julia Childs' Mastering the Art of French Cooking, in a year, and wrote a blog about it.

So he decided he was going to watch that movie every day, for a year, and write a blog about that.

It's kind of similar but not so much, because Julie Powell didn't cook the same dish every day for a year -- she moved through the series of recipes, cooking all the different foods....

Lawrence Dai, on the other hand, is -- or rather was -- watching the same movie over and over again.  Each day for a year.

The cooking blog-challenge was cooking something new each day.
The movie-watching challenge was -- finding something new to say about the same film, each day.

The film-watching and blogging amounts to a
R-E-A-L T-H-O-R-O-U-G-H
study, of this one movie.

Sometimes I read from Lawrence Dai's blog & it's very funny -- it makes you laugh (However -- curse words -- college-student humor - the easily-offended might want to avoid)...and I also get sort of an uneasy, iff-y, "nibbly" feeling around the edges of my mind where I ask myself if

I

might want to watch the same movie every day for a year and --
(surprise! -- original idea!) --
...Write blog posts about it - !

And sometimes I try to imagine, What movie would I choose, in the whole world, if I was going to watch it every day for a year?
And various movies float into my consciousness, perhaps none with the steady regularity of --
Casablanca.

-------------------
I have often speculated on why you don't return to America.  Did you abscond with the church funds?  Did you run off with a senator's wife?  I like to think you killed a man.  It's the romantic in me.

It was a combination of all three.

And what in heaven's name brought you to Casablanca?

My health.  I came to Casablanca for the waters.

Waters?  What waters?  We're in the desert.

I was misinformed.

-------------------------------
-------------------------------
No one can state, "I was misinformed" in as much of a conversation-closing style as Humphrey Bogart.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
NARRATOR (V.O.)


With the coming of the Second World
War, many eyes in imprisoned Europe
turned hopefully, or desperately,
toward the freedom of the Americas.
Lisbon became the great embarkation
point. But not everybody could get
to Lisbon directly, and so, a
tortuous, roundabout refugee trail
sprang up. Paris to Marseilles, across
the Mediterranean to Oran, then by
train, or auto, or foot, across the
rim of Africa to Casablanca in French
Morocco.

Here, the fortunate ones,
through money, or influence, or luck,
might obtain exit visas and scurry
to Lisbon, and from Lisbon to the
New World. But the others wait in
Casablanca -- and wait -- and wait --
and wait.

[The narrator's voice fades away...]

---------------------------- Instead of "wait -- and wait -- and wait," it would be "watch -- and watch -- and watch"...365 days of "Casablanca"-and-Comment.  I could do that.
But I probably don't need to.

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Time out of mind

When did I discover "old movies"?  Sometime during elementary school - into - junior high years, there was a sort of dawning realization that there was a whole treasure-trove of movies -- in the world -- and that you didn't have to be limited to whatever film turned up in your local Something-Plex.  There was other stuff out there -- but you couldn't get it, you had to wait and see if it would be on TV sometime, late at night, or during the day on "UHF" channels -- (very smushy and snowy usually, and hard to see // hear....)

I could read about it -- from local library, I took a couple of big, thick books which told you about history of the movies & had black-and-white photographs from the movies.  I experienced the iconic images in still-photo form, years before getting the opportunity to see the movies -- first on big screens at second-run theaters in Boston, then on classic-movie channels on TV, & videoes, then DVDs....

I still haven't seen all of the movies that I want to see.  There's like an unending -- well not unending, because there are only so many movies, but on the other hand, there are --
SO - MANY - MOVIES! -- that the potential for future pleasure and enjoyment and inspiration and discovery seems endless.

It's like a vast, thick, luxuriant Wealth of Life Richness and Cheer and Fun and Meaning and Fashion and poetry and Music and...it's available to just about Everyone on earth, now, with technology.

-------------------------------------------
I don't watch a movie because it is new, or because it is old; I watch because I think it is going to be good.  The writer E.M. Forster, in his book Aspects Of The Novel, writes about what he feels is the necessity of removing chronology as a way of looking at literature:

{excerpt}-----------------Books have to be read (worse luck, for it takes a long time); it is the only way of discovering what they contain.  A few savage tribes eat them, but reading is the only method of assimilation revealed to the west.  The reader must sit down alone and struggle with the writer....

That is why, in the rather ramshackly course that lies ahead of us, we cannot consider fiction by periods, we must not contemplate the stream of time.  Another image better suits our powers:  that of all the novelists writing their novels at once.  They come from different ages and ranks, they have different temperaments and aims, but they all hold pens in their hands, and are in the process of creation.

Let us look over their shoulders for a moment and see what they are writing.  It may exorcise that demon of chronology which is at present our enemy and which...is sometimes their enemy too.  "Oh, what quenchless feud is this, that Time hath with the sons of men," cries Herman Melville, and the feud goes on not only in life and death but in the byways of literary creation and criticism.

Let us avoid it by imagining that all the novelists are at work together in a circular room.  I shall not mention their names until we have heard their words, because a name brings associations with it, dates, gossip, all the furniture of the method we are discarding....

All through history writers while writing have felt more or less the same.  They have entered a common state which it is convenient to call inspiration, and having regard to that state, we may say that History develops, Art stands still.-----------------------------------{end excerpt}

He says it for literature -- and I say, Same for movies.

----------------------------
{Aspects Of The Novel, by E.M. Forster.
Copyright, 1927.  Harcourt, Inc.
Orlando, Florida.}

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no such request

Re-reading the interesting Comments from a Reader of The New Republic, about current movies -- phrases stood out:

...Mainstream movies today, it seems, have not only abandoned story, and character, and photography -- in short, both style and substance, the entire art. They're downright cruel, besides. They're vicious, vulgar, sadistic, inhuman.

[I started to notice that over a period of years -- and I am a person who goes to "the movies" to ENJOY the movie, not to criticize.  It was like the quality of the "product" just drove me away.  I asked a co-worker in 2005 or 06, "Are movies getting stupider, or are my tastes becoming more sophisticated?"  He said probably both -- I don't agree, though, my taste is probably same as always....]

-------------

...or some action-movie atrocity that would be beneath contempt if it weren't so profitable.

[Profit is irrelevant; dehumanizing schlock is beneath contempt.  But he references profit because he believes that's the reason a movie co. makes a movie -- however the claim that, "This is what the public wants" is incredibly WRONG, wrong-all-over-the-place, that's why they SAY it so OFTEN -- no one in Hollywood has EVER asked me what I want in movies and I'll bet they haven't asked you either. 

It makes me think of an early episode of "Bewitched" -- within the first two or three seasons, when it was in black-and-white -- Uncle Arthur plays a trick on Darrin, getting him to think he will have magical powers to "zap" Endora back with, if he sings a magic chant and rings some bells and blows into a ka-zoo.  "Yagga-zoozie, yagga-zoozie, yagga-zoozie, ZIM!!"  (ring-a-ling-a-ding, mmffphooo!!)

He sings it in front of Endora and Samantha, & interrupts his magic singing long enough to bellow in frustration and imminent revenge, "Sam, your mother's been asking for this for a long time!"

And Samantha turns to Endora and deadpans in a voice that is flat but for a tiny hint of a perplexed tone, "Have you been asking for this?"

LOL

When movies come out that are advertised, indeed touted, for having A LOT OF VIOLENCE, I think of Darrin Stephens' silly song, and of Endora, & I think to myself, "No.  I have not been asking for this."

"It's what-the-public-wants" -- bull-roar.]

And his analysis of "The Godfather" and the tidal wave of Mafia movies it inspired for the next THIRTY years -- "They're criminals because they've never risen above their heartless, illiterate upbringing. And there's nothing, absolutely nothing, romantic about it."

[And] --

The Godfather … the gangster picture as oil painting with gilt frame  

-------------------------------
Thinking of "The Godfather" made me think of "Last Tango in Paris."  I was thinking, "I think they both had Marlon Brando in them, and I think they came out around the same time...."  When I was old enough to be aware of these movies, but not old enough to go to them.

Professor Google lets us know, Yes, Marlon Brando was in both of those films, & they both came out -- same year:  1972.
Marlon Brando.
His name was always familiar to me, through my whole life, from the time I was a little child. 
"Marlembrando" was how I used to hear it -- like one word.
A brand name, perhaps.
Cigarettes, maybe -- like Marlboro.

No thanks, I only smoke Marlembrandos.

Marlon Brando.
Called, by Roger Ebert, "the greatest film actor of all time."

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the Why in the How

"All that despicable Hollywood trash with its boring body counts" is how one Reader / Commenter describes the present state of Film, at the end of a New Republic article by David Thomson.

The Reader goes on to Comment, {Quote}:
Not every movie can be great truth-telling literature.... I'd more than settle for decent escapism -- slick entertainment with a gleam in the eye, a heart in the right place, and maybe even a little food for thought. For that, I have to go to the DVDs, because I'm not seeing it at the theaters anymore....

Our mainstream movies today, it seems, have not only abandoned story, and character, and photography -- in short, both style and substance, the entire art. They're downright cruel, besides. They're vicious, vulgar, sadistic, inhuman. What used to be called thrillers, like North by Northwest, have given way to the mainstreaming of horror shlock -- the dubious pleasure I'll never understand in seeing young, pretty people butchered or tortured or, most benignly, "dragged to Hell." They made perfectly decent "Hitchcockian thrillers" with some regularity right up through the 90s. It was the default dramatic genre for the adult audience. Now, the whole genre is gone, and Brian De Palma gets laughed at whenever he tries to resurrect it....
So, we adults can no longer rely on a steady stream of stylish suspense movies or sweet romantic comedies,... the best of which transcended their genres but not too much, and gave us great memorable moments that were great because the audience was involved. Now, it's horror or [a current actress], the adventures of [awful people] as chronicled in films like The Hangover, or some action-movie atrocity that would be beneath contempt if it weren't so profitable.
{end Quote / Comment}
----------------------------  And he answers another Reader's Comment which discusses the greatness of The Godfather, saying that one 'never gets tired' of watching it -- OK, ya set up Comment Man now...! --

{Quote / Comment}---------I don't know.... I get tired watching The Godfather every time I try -- the gangster picture as oil painting with gilt frame. It's so serious, heavy-handed, long-winded, and I don't like a single damn character in the whole damn epic saga. And, when I say "like," I don't mean, "Oh, he's a nice fellow I'd like to know." I mean, appreciate, empathize with, become involved with -- like Ray Liotta in Goodfellas, still the best gangster picture for my money, and a pretty honest one. When I watch the Godfather, though, I keep wanting someone to say, as Annabella Sciorra did in another honest gangster movie, The Funeral, "'They're criminals because they've never risen above their heartless, illiterate upbringing. And there's nothing, absolutely nothing, romantic about it."
{end Quote / Comment}

If he could only learn to form an opinion.

I was actually thinking about some of this -- I saw a documentary about movies & it said that when Sound was introduced in 1929 it caused seismic change in how movies were made, content, who could star in them -- (some of the stars of the earlier silent films had funny voices or accents and couldn't "translate" into the new movies that included sound, nicknamed "Talkies") -- and it said the way the MGM studio responded was to start putting singing & dancing in, like, every movie.

It became a constant formula, for a while.  They showed a clip of Clark Gable singing and dancing to "Puttin' On The Ritz" -- atypical, to say the least, & the narrator said his fans didn't like it -- it was not what they paid to see, and to look up to.  But that was how it was -- for a while the studio pushed almost every performer to sing and dance.  Theory:  Now that we have the technology, we have to use it.  ALL
THE
TIME.

The studio, and the industry, outgrew this limited vision eventually.  I was thinking a few years ago that some movies have so much cutting -- from one scene to another, one image to another -- cut cut cut cut cut until I'm thinking -- OK, I can't see anything I don't know what's supposed to be happening.  The super-fast cuttingcuttingcutting is -- well -- fast, but -- it isn't helping me or the story....

And then I read something in a magazine that said something new ("digital technology" I think) had allowed them to fit more cuts and skips into film than had been possible before, so it was kind of like when Sound was invented -- they have the technology, so they have to use it. 
All The Time And A Lot.

Use the Available Technology FOR something, not for its own sake. ...

-30-

stronger walls than yours

I hear Bob Dylan's new album has a song about John Lennon on it, called "Roll On John."

In September 17 TIME, Eric Pooley wrote,

--------------------- It was a delicious coincidence that songs from Bob Dylan's new record began flying around the Internet in the days between the two national political conventions.  You couldn't ask for a better remedy for such empty-chair posturing than a stiff dose of Tempest, Dylan's 35th studio album, set for release Sept. 11 -- 50 1/2 years after his first.

...Dylan doesn't write anthems anymore.  He writes fever dreams.  "Narrow Way"...contains what may be the only topical political reference on the album -- and it hails from 1814.  ("Ever since the British burned the White House down / There's a bleeding wound in the heart of town.")  And yet, like every other song on Tempest, "Narrow Way" has plenty to say about 2012:

This is hard country to stay alive in
Blades are everywhere, and they're breaking my skin...
It's a long road, it's a long and narrow way
If I can't work up to you
You'll surely have to work down to me someday

This is the method to Dylan's septuagenarian magic.  With his skintight road band (joined by Los Lobos multi-instrumentalist David Hidalgo) repeating a simple hypnotic riff, he matches his original verses to a chorus filched from "You'll Work down to Me Someday," a 1934 song by the Mississippi Sheiks, and comes up with bloody gold.

It's the method that saved his career.  A half-century ago, young Bob found his muse by turning his back on the news of the world and digging into chilling folk songs from a disappearing America.

And after he reached his creative nadir 25 years ago, middle-aged Bob revived his muse in the 1990s by returning to those songs.  He recorded two albums full of them, then wrote a set of great new ones -- built from shards of the old folk blues -- that became his comeback record, Time Out of Mind.  Playing roughly 100 nights a year in his traveling medicine show, old Bob honed a crack road band and used it to produce the most remarkable string of late-career records in rock history:  Love and Theft, Modern Times, Together Through Life and now Tempest.

...What sets Tempest apart is good humor.  Dylan picks his way through the carnage with a jaunty step to balance his jaundiced eye.  In "Soon After Midnight," a floaty rumination that recalls 1997's "Not Dark Yet," he coaxes a Louis Armstrong croon from his blown-loudspeaker voice and declares:

My heart is cheerful, it's never fearful
I've been down on the killing floors
I'm in no great hurry, I'm not afraid of your fury
I've faced stronger walls than yours

{end TIME excerpt}--------------------------------------
I like the part at the beginning of the article, with "empty-chair posturing," and I like how the author calls this new collection of songs a "record" though when we go looking for it, it'll surely be in CD-form....

-30-

I understand levity

And speaking of Fashion, the Sept. 17, 2012 issue of TIME magazine includes a one-page feature about a clothing designer named Prabal Gurung -- a laughing (in the photograph) man from Nepal.  (Right there between India and China....) 

First Lady Michelle Obama has worn several dresses by Mr. Gurung. 

He wears jeans and a white tee shirt.  Always.

(I read about another designer who always wears the same outfit -- black, or something.  They want to keep their own clothing utilitarian, and focus on innovation and imagination in the clothing they make for others....)

TIME asked him,
Is it true that you decided to move to the U.S. because you watched an Oprah special about living your dreams?  Are you still a big fan of hers?
P.G.:  "Yes.  She's very aware of the platform she has.  A lot of celebrities just earn.  Nobody says you have to give back.  You do it out of choice, and that decision makes her who she is."

TIME:  You have one of the most highly anticipated shows at New York Fashion Week.  Why should the rest of the country care?
P.G.:  "It's a billion-dollar industry that affects the country economically, socially and culturally.  I make 98% of my collection in New York City and am generating jobs, so fashion isn't just frivolous for me.  I understand levity about it.  I also understand the depth of it."

TIME:  What do you think about Ralph Lauren's outsourcing the production of the U.S. Olympic uniforms to China?
P.G.:  "There must be a reason they did it, and I can't speak on their behalf.  I just hope the reason was good enough at the end of the day."

TIME:  Paul Ryan has caught flak for his ill-fitting shirts.  How would you make him over?
P.G.:  "It's a fun question, but I'm conflicted about answering it.  I wish people would pay more attention to who he is and what policies he supports."

TIME:  Fashion is cyclical by nature, but what's one trend you never want to see come back?
P.G.:  "It saddens me to see the reality-television shows that are getting so much fanfare that are a celebration of stupidity and the degradation of women.  And those women are consistently wearing too short, too tight dresses.  I hope the trend of aging gracefully returns."

---------------------------------
"It's a fun question...."
"...I can't speak on their behalf.  I just hope...."
"I understand levity about it."
"I make 98% of my collection in New York City."
"It's a fun question, but I'm conflicted about answering it."
"I understand levity about it.  I also understand the depth of it."

(A "politician" as well as a designer....)

-30-

YOU, again??!!

...and when I "Google" that song, "Wagon Wheel" -- turns out it was
originally
written -- ("sketched") by --

Bob DYLAN -- "Hell-oh??!!!"

everything I like seems to trace back to this Source

all roads lead to Bob Dylan

lol

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