I love a tightly written, heavily plotted series that digs deep into murky waters. The Honorable Woman is just that with a story about Palestinian/Israeli relationships that is just as complicated as the real thing.
Maggie Gyllenhaal stars and she’s just as good as ever. I don’t remember the details but my review is making me want to give it another watch.
I randomly started watching Line of Duty again the other day. It remains an incredibly solid bit of crime television. It isn’t quite up to Prestige TV (whatever that means) standards, but it is a really good procedural.
I don’t remember watching Series Two back in the day, but I guess I did as I wrote a review. Not sure where in its many seasons I actually did stop watching. Keeley Hawes is in Series Two so I definitely got to get through my rewatch of Series One so I can catch her in action again. I loved her in Ashes to Ashes.
My review can be read here.
Alfred Hitchcock is one of my favorite directors. His movies are immensely entertaining, and utterly rewatchable, but also incredibly crafted and full of deep themes and meaning.
His best films were made in America (though there are still plenty of good ones made during his British period) and this book digs deep into how America influenced the great director and how he influenced American culture.
As much as I love movies I don’t actually read a lot of books about them. I do read a lot of articles online, but my library is definitely lacking in good books about cinema.
I read and reviewed this one for Cinema Sentries. Judging by the shortness of my review I don’t think I really loved it, or at least I didn’t have much to say about it. Books like this are hard to review because they are well-researched and informative, but also quite dull. Anyway, my review is here.
Bruce Springsteen
Stockholm Globe Arena
Stockholm, Sweden
June 15, 1992
(Two Of Us Master Series Volume 229)
Recorder 3
Recording: Shure Mic > Sony WM-D6C
Patch Recording: Sony 929LT Mic > Sony D3
Transfer: Master tapes > Nakamichi DR-01 (azimuth adjusted) > USB Sound Devices > Audacity > iZotope RX / ozone 9 (mastered) > xACT 2.50 > FLAC
01 Better Days (uncirculated Recorder 4)
02 Star Spangled Banner Intro (uncirculated Recorder 4)
01 Born In The USA (first 4:44 patched with uncirculated Recorder 4)
02 Local Hero
03 Lucky Town
04 Darkness On The Edge Of Town
05 If I Should Fall Behind
06 57 Channels (And Nothin’ On)
07 The Big Muddy
08 Living Proof
09 My Hometown
10 Leap Of Faith
11 Man’s Job
12 Roll Of The Dice
13 Gloria’s Eyes
14 Cover Me
15 Brilliant Disguise with Patti Scialfa
16 With Every Wish
17 Souls Of The Departed
18 Real World
19 Light Of Day
20 Human Touch with Patti Scialfa
21 Glory Days
22 Working On The Highway
23 Bobby Jean
24 Hungry Heart
25 My Beautiful Reward
Known Faults:
-Better Days: Recorder 4
-Star Spangled Banner: Recorder 4
-Born In The USA: first 4:44 patched with Recorder 4
-Cover Me: last 3 seconds patched with Recorder 4
-Brilliant Disguise: first 14 seconds patched with Recorder 4
-Glory Days: 25 seconds patched with Recorder 4
Between 1983 and 2002 there were not any tapers more active than the “Two Of Us”. For the better part of two decades they taped over 250 artists with an array being taped multiple times.
If you collect Springsteen then you are already familiar with some of their work, “fmcleanboots” has posted a half dozen or so of their “Tunnel Of Love” tour shows but has decided to pass the baton.
What you don’t know is their passion was not just for Springsteen but for music and that passion runs deep. It is astonishing how many artists they taped.
They followed tours taping club shows, theater shows, arena shows, big artists, mid-level artists and local artists.
If they were following a tour and the tour had an off night they’d see who else was playing that night to tape. Always focused on enjoyment of the show as the priority,
tickets were for the most part acquired outside of the venue as they worked to obtain the best possible seats, continually trading up until the correct seats were acquired.
The results of this were the captures are uniformly excellent but on occasion the start of the show was sacrificed as a trade-off for the seats.
The heavy lifting was done by the Sony WM-D6C and an external Shure Mic before moving to DAT for the last couple of years. None of their masters have ever been circulated and
have been safely stored for the past three to four decades in a climate controlled environment. Tapes transferred so far are in pristine condition.
Though we may do some mini releases of a series of shows in order for one portion of a tour for the most part shows will not be released in order, there are just too many of them.
This will be a very exciting series and we hope along the way we upgrade existing circulating audio and offer up shows that do not have any circulating audio, enjoy the ride, this is definitely not a dark ride.
It is funny to me now, but when I watched and reviewed this movie I had no idea what the Suicide Squad was, nor hardly any of the characters who made up the Squad (including Deadshot and Killer Frost). Now of course the Suicide Squad has had a couple of major live-action movies made about them and are a household name. But then they were just comic book characters.
The movie is pretty good. DC had done a great job making all sorts of animated feature films, many of which are better than the live-action ones they’ve put on the big screen.
You can read my full review here.
I am 100% a fan of Hammer Horror. I love the production designs, the sets and costumes, and the way their films looked. I love their stable of great British actors including Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee. I’ve watched something like 28 of the 70 or so films the studio made in the horror genre. So again I say I am a fan.
But I have to admit, that while I love a great many things about these films, I often find them rather dull. The films look gorgeous, and there is often a wonderful amount of sex and violence for a 1960s production, but the plots often have this staidness to them. There is a lot of boring talking and exposition that takes place that just causes me to nod off.
The Devil Rides Out (or The Devil’s Bride if you prefer) kept me completely enthralled from start to finish. It is quite wonderful throughout.
Christopher Lee stars as Nicholas, Duc de Richleau (who was apparently a recurring character in a popular series of novels from 1933 to 1970) a nobleman with a sturdy education and who is well-versed in the occult.
When his friend Rex Van Ryn (Leon Greene) returns home from a long voyage they decide to stop at their mutual friend Simon Aron’s (Patrick Mower) house. There they are met by a strange group of people Simon calls his Astronomy Club, but whom Richleau quickly deduces is a satanic cult.
They manage to rescue him from the house but almost immediately lose him again. They rescue him a second time, this time from a Satanic Orgy/Baptismal ceremony where a goat-headed Satan has been summoned. They also rescue Tanith Carlisle (Niké Arrighi) who was also supposed to be Satanically baptized that night.
Simon and Tanith are both somewhat under the spell of the head Satanist Mocata (Charles Gray). He can sometimes mind-control them into doing things for him (and sometimes he can’t depending on the needs of the script).
It is all a bit silly, but it won me over by the power of the performances (especially Christopher Lee who is always great, but especially wonderful here). Unlike a lot of Hammer films which tend to lean into their silliness, The Devil Rides Out is completely serious in its presentation and it is all the better for it.
There is a scene in the back half of the film in which Richleau creates a circle of protection that he and his cohorts must stand in to resist the power of Mocata. It begins with most of his friends being skeptical. It is a bit silly to think a chalk circle with some Latin written in it will protect them from anything. But then there is a loud knocking on the door and the sound of Simon yelling to be let in. Then a giant spider attacks, followed by Death riding a horse. The effects are cheap and goofy, but somehow effective. By the end, everyone is terrified, including me.
It is a scene that shouldn’t work. In the hands of less competent people, it wouldn’t work. And yet it is one of my favorite scenes in all of Hammer Horror. The entire film is like that. It shouldn’t be as good as it is, but somehow it is all pulled off magnificently.
Now this is a series I remember fondly. It is a dark, violent, hilarious, short series about a doctor’s life in a remote section of Russia. Jon Hamm and Daniel Radcliffe star. You can read my review here (and then I might just rewatch it).
The thing about being an amateur reviewer is that you gotta take the good with the bad. Since I don’t really get paid, I do get to choose what I review, but I’m always taking chances. Sometimes they pay out and I find something amazing, sometimes they don’t and I’m stuck watching (and then talking about) something awful.
Chiller was apparently awful. I don’t remember anything about it, actually, but you can read my thoughts here.
Blues Traveler
May 23rd, 1992
Ventura Theatre
Ventura, CA
Master:
Aiwa CM-30 Stereo Cardioid >Sony WM-D6C >Cass(m)
Front Row, Left; Balcony
Conversion:
Sony TC-D5M >HHb CDR 800 PRO Standalone >CD
Extraction:
CD >xACT 1.69 (cdparanoia) >AIFF >xACT 1.69 >FLAC
by Dave Mallick
Recorded, Transferred, FLAC Tags, & Front-Cover Artwork By Oldneumanntapr
Disc 1 [77:35.51]
Disc 2 [65:48.43]
Notes:
OldNeumanntapr Notes-
This was the first time that I had seen Blues Traveler. I didn’t know that they allowed recording. I guess I should have asked for a board patch but instead I ran up to the balcony to get a front row spot. The Nakamichi CM-300s probably would have sounded better but for some reason I chose to go with the little Aiwa stereo mic. It was a pretty good show and I still have the t-shirt! The recording is OK but would have sounded better with the CM-300s. I added it to etree because I noticed that this date wasn’t listed at all in the master list. Thanks to Dave Mallick for the help with the set list.
I am not a great intellectual. I’m not even that smart. When I talk about movies I try to impart at least some sense of their themes and meaning, but I’m not very good at it.
I tend to connect to movies with my gut not my brain. I talk about them from an emotional standpoint not necessarily an intellectual one. I don’t know if that’s good, or bad, but that’s the way it is.
I love Ingmar Bergman’s films. He is, perhaps, one of the most intellectual filmmakers to have ever made a film. I do connect to them emotionally, but I have a difficult time understanding why. Persona is one of his most difficult films to understand, and yet I love it still.
I struggled with my review over it because I felt I needed to talk about it from an intellectual point of view, and yet I’m not sure I understood anything about what it means. You don’t have to. It stands on its own as a beautiful mystery.
themidnightcafe.org 