"Nature is utterly indifferent"

Werner Herzog on 60 Minutes.

Warm milk - R.I.P. David Lynch

First news that Bob Uecker had died appeared and then it wasn't long before word came down that David Lynch had joined him. So many great memories of enjoying his work. I think his films fostered a deep love of the uncanny in me. There's a nice tribute by Brian Tallerico up at rogerebert.com.

As far as I can remember, I first heard of Lynch when I was in college from a friend who was a bit older than me. We were hanging out at his apartment at Johnson and Bassett and he remarked that he was excited for Lynch's new TV show, On the Air, to debut. Upon learning that I was not familiar with Lynch, he went on to extol the virtues of Twin Peaks, Blue Velvet, etc.

Another great memory is binge watching Twin Peaks while I was house sitting for a friend out in rural Edgerton. A shiver went down my spine as the Giant intoned, "It's happening again..." I was perplexed yet couldn't help but be intrigued when the horse appeared to Sarah. Surely it was all those scenes in the Black Lodge that gave me such an affinity for the uncanny.

It was freezing outside when I went to Chicago to see Inland Empire at The Music Box. If memory serves, it was on Super Bowl Sunday with the Bears playing the Colts. The Kennedy Expressway was as dead as I'd ever seen it and we made great time.

Watching Lost Highway at Cinematheque here in Madison a couple years back was just fantastic. I got to hear the soundtrack as it was meant to be heard for the first time and it was incredibly unnerving.

Tone Madison published a nice article a couple years back that detailed Lynch's affiliation with Tandem Press here in Madison called "The art life of David Lynch in Madison".

I raise my coffee mug to him! Got a light?

New Nosferatu trailer

We have a new trailer for Robert Eggers' Nosferatu. It will be a good Christmas.

Lola rennt 25 Jahre später

I went to see Run Lola Run, a.k.a. - Lola rennt, on the big screen. I don't think I'd seen it since c.1999 when it originally came to theaters. Great fun. I had forgotten quite a bit, such as the brief bits of animation.

Watching it this week, I recalled a bit of how it felt doing so 25 years ago. It felt new wavey back then with an electronic music soundtrack at a time when that genre was The Next Big Thing every year for a few years. Its frenetic pace with a plethora of camera angles woven together provided continuity but also served to heighten the tension. The characters were about my age and there was some of that aforementioned animation along with split screens. A very nice visual mix.

Now that I am older, I can really appreciate the ideas here, the notions of destiny and that one's life could have been different.

R.I.P. David Bordwell

The Jacques Ledoux Professor Emeritus of Film Studies at my alma mater has passed away.

I never had a class with him but did use the classic/standard, Film History: An Introduction, that he wrote with his partner Kristin Thompson and he was always a presence in the background.

Thompson wrote about his passing at his/their blog. And Grant Phipps has a nice tribute to Bordwell up at Tone Madison.

Piper likes German Expressionism

Piper enjoyed a little bit of Von morgens bis mitternachts with me last week. Unsurprisingly, it was the scene where the young man goes to the thrift shop that is home to a cat.

The Corona Diaries Vol. 102: Wherein I learn that they do tom yum differently in Indy

(early-August 2023)

(Watch this entry's prelude.)

Having constructed a prima facie case in my mind that the Masons' influence permeates Indianapolis, I made my way back to the convention as I had a game to play. On my way there, I passed the lovely old Deschler Building that dates from 1907. It is on the National Register of Historic Places.

My next game was a Call of Cthulhu adventure entitled “The Stone Gateway Mystery, Starring The Hardy Boys” and I played Iola Morton, Joe Hardy’s sweetheart.

We are in Bayport and the Hardy Boys’ dad, Fenton Hardy, must head out of town on business so he entrusts his sons with the responsibility to investigate a developer named Terrence Wall, er, Nolan Andrews who is to present his plans that very night for a big, new development which would gobble up precious shoreline and imperil the charming historical character of the town. This character is aided by a mysterious stone gateway adorned with eldritch carvings - or pictograms, perhaps…

I have never read any Hardy Boys stories but the guy running the game and the other player had. (Two people didn’t show up.) It was a blast investigating the evil developer's stratagems, fretting over Joe’s dangerous ("Oh, Joe! Be careful!") yet very manly (sighhhhhhh) actions to thwart the developer, and screaming occasionally because that’s what girls do, right?

It was a fun game and we managed to stop the mad developer from not only erecting ugly, out of character buildings that would tarnish Bayport's charm, perhaps irreparably, but also from summoning forth hideous, evil creatures that would destroy the world! We really dodged a bullet there.

When the game was done, I met up with one of my friends who, like me, was tired of bar food. I hadn’t had a bad meal, really, but I'd certainly had enough salads and Buffalo wings to last a week. And so we went to a Thai restaurant not too far from our hotel. Completely expectedly, many other gamers had the same idea we did and there were a dozen people waiting in line for the place to open at 4.

My companion had a fine curry while I went for tom yum soup, one of my favorite foods.

The soup was excellent though a bit different from what I’m used to. This stuff had no noodles but there were onion and tomato in it, which was a new twist for me. Also, I am accustomed to getting a plate on the side with Thai basil, bean sprouts, a few jalapeno slices, and a wedge or two of lime. Not here.

Still, not only was it a welcome change from the bar food that had largely been my diet so far, it was genuinely tasty stuff.

We went back to the hotel with full bellies to freshen up before heading out to a movie. We had tickets to see Oppenheimer on the IMAX and on film too at the Indiana State Museum, just a few blocks west of the hotel. We wandered over there and discovered that the museum was next door to another one, the Eiteljorg Museum.

It features art from Native Americans and from Western America. Indianapolis seems an odd spot for such a museum but it apparently got its start from the collection of a philanthropist for whom the place is named: Harrison Eiteljorg. We had some time before the show and were waiting on another friend of ours who was grabbing a quick bite after a game so we decided to do a little wandering.

There was a path leading behind the Eiteljorg and so we followed it.

This led through a small green area and out to the Central Canal.

It was a really nice spot with a park on the opposite shore and a trail to walk along the canal. We saw only a few people as we slowly strolled our way along the canal path. Did the threat of potentially having to navigate large crowds of gamers keep locals away? The area just seemed oddly quiet. I am not sure where the canal goes, exactly, but walking it to find out may just be in the cards for a future visit.

The museum was closed except for the IMAX cinema but it looked to be an interesting place. Many other people had the same idea we did as the theater was full when we settled in for 3 hours of celluloid goodness. I’ll be honest, though, it should have had an intermission. I guess the industry has to squeeze as many screenings in as they can, audience bladders be damned.

I really liked how director Christopher Nolan used the IMAX format for scenes depicting massive flames, ripples on the surface of water, and just any phenomenon that captures the scientist's vast imagination. The sheer size of the screen engulfs us and, just perhaps, instills a tidbit of awe in our minds as the man on the screen ponders the universe and its workings. I wish there were a few more of these scenes as I really enjoy this montage style where the film cuts to something that illustrates a character's thinking or feeling or perhaps just shifts the mood for us. Personally, I especially like it when a film cuts to something outside of the story world for a brief second before throwing us back into it so we can ponder how what we just saw relates to the story. I enjoy that act of trying to link seemingly disparate things.

The Trinity scene was just great. While we see various people taking shelter, donning goggles, and looking on in anticipation, we hear only breathing despite an atomic bomb just having detonated. And then the sonic boom hits them. But it also hits us with that IMAX sound system cranked up to 11. I felt the boom. Just fantastic cinema. Great credit must be given to Nolan for not making this the climax quickly leading to the end of the movie. It’s another element of Oppenheimer’s story, albeit a very important one, but it’s by no means the end of his tale.

I would really like to see Oppenheimer again but, alas, probably won’t be able to on an IMAX.

As was our custom, we retired to the Omni lobby for the night after the film where drinks and conversation flowed easily.

********

Saturday morning I had a date down the street from our hotel at this place, the City Market.

A friend and I walked down there and we discovered a small memorial for James E. O’Donnell, a native of Indianapolis who survived the sinking of the cruiser named after his hometown on 30 July 1945 just after it had delivered the uranium and other parts for the atomic bomb that would be dropped on Hiroshima, courtesy of one J. Robert Oppenheimer. You may recall the scene in Jaws where the grizzled old man of sea, Quint, tells of the ship being torpedoed and of how he and his fellow sailors found themselves at the mercy of the sharks who called the Philippine Sea home.

My friend went on his way whereas I entered the City Market and found that it is now a public market. It was still early so no vendors were yet open.

I was here for a tour of The Catacombs, the subterranean ruins of Tomlinson Hall which stood next to the Market building until 1958 when it was consumed by fire. Both buildings were/are on Market Street and, true to its name, markets were held on this street as well as in the two edifices which were designed by a German architect whose name I cannot recall. While the first floor of Tomlinson Hall hosted markets and vendors hawking their wares, the rest of the building was more of a public event space.

Concerts and cotillions were held for Indy’s good and great and Benjamin Harrison celebrated his nomination for the presidency in the Hall’s ballroom. The Catacombs were the basement of Tomlinson Hall, with plenty of room for things such as produce for the markets that would stay cool underground.

The Catacombs were quite spooky and I dared not stray from the rest of the tour group lest I never return…Our tour guide was a member of Indy’s historical society and explained the history of Tomlinson Hall and its surroundings. While not as dramatic as Mrs. O’Leary’s Cow starting the Great Chicago Fire, local legend says a bird dropped a discarded, yet still lit, cigarette on the building's roof to start the blaze. Did a pyromaniacal pigeon really do the deed? Or was it a story concocted by an anti-smoking crusader? We shall never know.

In years past, The Catacombs were used as a haunted house on Halloween and Gencon held at least one session of Dungeons & Dragons here which sounds like it would have been a hoot.

With the tour over, I headed east. This area of downtown felt gentrified with lots of newer apartments. Since such buildings are about as interesting as watching paint dry, I headed north and again found myself surrounded by older homes and other buildings like this Catholic church.

I came to another beautiful and decidedly older building where I spied a Green Man on the side.

Don’t see these often. I discovered that it was affixed to a wall of The Athenæum, a gorgeous 19th century building that was originally a kind of community center for the city’s German immigrants and German-Americans. Back then it was named Das Deutsche Haus or "The German House” but World War I forced a change to The Athenæum lest community members be accused of being loyal to the enemy. Besides, a Latin name sounds all highfalutin, especially when it has that fancy a-e diphthong with the letters melded together.

My understanding is that German immigrants and their descendants were slow to learn English and adopt it as their primary language. I believe Milwaukee still had multiple German-language newspapers as World War I began. But, as the conflict progressed, these people scrambled to learn English, anglicize their names, eat hot dogs instead of frankfurters, etc. OK, so I am not sure about that last one.

Das Deutsche Haus featured a Turners Hall, a theater, and surely a bier hall too, amongst other things. Today there’s a German restaurant, concerts are held there, and I think some of it is office space.

Turning the corner to see the great architectural detail of The Athenæum, I found myself on Massachusetts Avenue which begins in the northeast part of downtown and continues in that direction.

I first discovered Mass Ave, as the locals call it, back in 2006 or so. It’s a bit like State Street here in Madison but with less emphasis on college students and more on young professionals. New apartments sit next to older ones with hip restaurants and bars to be found along much of the streetscape. Well, they looked all trendy to me, anyway.

The stretch closer to downtown seems to have more newer apartment buildings and more places that would appeal to a younger set who found it important to be seen at such joints.

Kitty corner from The Athenæum is another fantastic building but this one has a Middle Eastern look to it.

Are those minarets? It says “Murat Shrine Club” on one wall and it turns out that this was the local HQ of Indy’s Shriners, formerly known as the Ancient Arabic Order of the Nobles of the Mystic Shrine, hence the architectural style. I got this vision in my head of the front door opening and a bunch of old duffers donning fezzes zipping out on go-karts heading for some parade or other. Shriners are an offshoot of the Freemasons – Masons again! They're everywhere in this town.

I wondered if there was an Illuminati lodge somewhere. If I happened upon an Eye of Providence or any other esoteric symbol while traipsing around, I was going to get very paranoid.

I presume mystical, arcane rites used to be performed there but now the place is a theater called the Old National Centre where the only chants raised are drunk concert goers singing along to their favorite bands.

Just look at the marvelous detail!

I could have looked at all of the stained glass windows and the carvings and whatnot all day. But time was tight so I pushed onwards.

Another highlight I stumbled upon was an old fire station that had been converted into the local firefighters museum and memorial.

Across the street I found one of, if not the, neatest ghost sign I’ve ever seen. The wall of the building was covered in layers of ads - a veritable early 20th century advertising palimpsest. But it was the Quaker Oats sign that was the biggest and stood out from the rest.

A gentleman who was sitting on a bench flagged me down and introduced himself as a photographer and videographer. After introducing myself, he said that he had seen me walking along the street taking photos and was glad that I had traipsed by him. He inquired as to where my pictures could be seen online and if I considered myself a street photographer.

“No, I’m no street photographer,” I replied. “Just a tourist who likes old buildings and ghost signs. And no, I’m not on Instagram or Twitter or any social media like that. Just an old school blog where these photographs will be posted in a few months.”

It was a friendly little chat and I was appreciative that someone would think that I was even a remotely practiced photographer whose snaps would be worth viewing.

I found the storefront theater where I was scheduled to see a play that night and then checked the time. A game awaited so I turned around and headed back to the convention.

On the way, I passed a couple of murals. The first was of hometown literary hero Kurt Vonnegut. 

The second was of Mari Evans.

Evans, another Indy native, was an artist, writer, and poet who was associated with the Black Arts Movement of the 1960s. I am not familiar with this "Black Arts Movement" and so will have to investigate.

I was tempted to stop in at that ice cream parlor where they make it to order in a bowl resting atop a bath of liquid nitrogen but didn't want to be late.

********

Bonus photo. Here’s another one of Piper at the vet unsuccessfully hiding behind the doc’s laptop. Poor Pipey.

 

 

(Now watch the postlude.)

The Corona Diaries Vol. 102 - Prelude: IMAX

The Corona Diaries Vol. 96: She wore a kraanbere beret

(mid-June 2023)

(Watch the prelude.)

Leaving Trego after a couple hikes, I headed south to Spooner. I had been there many times but probably not since I was a boy in the early ‘80s. When my family owned an old resort a bit to the east, we’d visit Spooner on occasion. The women and kids did a spot of shopping and perused the library while the men, if I recall correctly, paid a visit to hardware store and/or lumberyard (and probably the tavern too) which was larger than the one found in Stone Lake, the town nearest our cabins.

Although my mother can rattle off various memories of Spooner, I drove in and found that nothing at all looked familiar, unlike Hayward. I suspect that, if Spooner had a candy shop with people making fudge in the front windows, I would have vivid memories of it.

Back in the day, it was quite the rail town with nearly 20 passenger trains stopping there plus many others carrying freight and logs aplenty. This was the pinery, after all. I suppose the mail came via the train back in the day as well. Sadly, the museum was not open when I was there so I had to make do with wandering around the grounds which included this out in front.

I presume that this behemoth cleared the tracks of snow, wayward cows, damsels in distress tied to the rails or just whatever happened to be on the tracks when it was cruising along.

My stomach growled so I went in search of lunch. On my way, I passed by this wonderful ghost sign.

Two different brands of beer and an "automatic laundry".

"Was that the phrase used before the word 'laundromat' was invented?" you ask?

Why yes, I did just consult my Compact OED on this matter. "Laundromat" was trademarked by Westinghouse as a name for a washing machine in 1943. Its first use as a word for a place with such washing machines for the public to go wash their clothes dates to 1951.

So, does "automatic laundry" = "laundromat"? Definitely maybe.

I ended up at a Mexican restaurant which was plenty fine and a nice change of pace from the more generic American/bar food I’d mostly eaten on the trip. It can get depressing looking for a meal in small town Wisconsin because it seems like 95% of the food on offer is either a pizza or a hamburger with much of the remaining 5% dedicated to Friday fish fries and deep fried cheese curds. And here I discount fast food. Nothing wrong with any of these foods, but they get old quickly. How about a venison chop or some kielbasa or Swedish/Norwegian meatballs or just about anything that isn't a pizza or hamburger?

For dessert I walked over to Big Dick’s Buckhorn Inn where I would have a refreshing glass of beer. Or two. It was, by this time, afternoon.

I walked in and found that it was a classic northern Wisconsin tavern and probably put some taxidermist’s kids through college as it was filled with mounted deer heads. It had a lovely pressed tin ceiling and a lot of wood making up in the interior. Unfortunately, the bright glow from a plethora of video poker machines cut through the rustic ambiance like a hot knife through butter.

Tucked away in a corner was a two-headed calf.

Whether this is some taxidermist’s joke or the real deal remains unknown to me. Like Mulder in The X-Files, I want to believe so I didn’t ask the bartender nor have I consulted the internet for an answer.

When the situation calls for a little lavatory one-upmanship, I can now brag that I have peed where John F. Kennedy peed.

In the late winter/early spring of 1960, JFK was campaigning in Wisconsin for the 1960 Democratic nomination for president against Hubert H. Humphrey. Their time spent shaking hands and kissing babies in the Badger State was captured in the landmark documentary, Primary. It’s been a while since I’ve seen it and I don’t recall a scene with JFK at Big Dick’s.

Primary is famous for being the start of direct cinema here in the United States. Direct cinema being that fly on the wall technique of the camera capturing events with no deep-voiced narrator to authoritatively tell us what’s going on nor any interviews with the subjects. The camera simply records what unfolds before it. Primary was made by a who’s who of American direct cinema: Robert Drew, Richard Leacock, D. A. Pennebaker, and Albert Maysles. These guys are giants of American documentary cinema, in general, really.

I recall a scene where Humphrey is standing out on a street in Tomah talking to passers-by and I do believe we see JFK speaking in Madison at the Stock Pavilion down on campus.

See! I have applied something I learned in college in real life.

I wandered Spooner a bit more and found that the old Masonic Lodge was now shops, including a nice little bookstore.

Surely there were Masons here during JFK’s visit and I don’t doubt they reported on his whereabouts to the Mafia/Castro/CIA or whoever it was that killed him. Ha!

As I was perusing the shelves in search of postcards, there was a knitting circle that had gathered in the back. I overheard some of their conversation which included one older woman talking about living in Costa Rica during her younger days, including the advantages and pitfalls of raising a family there. It was not the conservation I expected when I started eavesdropping.

I checked into my hotel, showered, and relaxed for a while. When I was younger, I felt that lounging around a hotel room was a waste of time. Why sit around when you're away from home when you can wander a foreign place and try to discover whatever it has to offer? I mean, Port and Kit Moresby didn't just sit around their hotel rooms, right? They cruised around Algeria where they met fellow tourists, engaged with, um, working girls, and fled from the local demimonde. (OK, it's been a while since I've read The Sheltering Sky.)

These days I am happy to spend a little time at a hotel to do some reading and/or writing and let my feet recuperate from hoofing it for several miles through the woods. Late evening rolled around and I went out for dinner to some diner that I had spied earlier. Like Chetek, I found no sign of a supper club in or near Spooner. Very weird. It feels like an unwritten law is being broken here or some Wisconsin taboo is being violated.

Although the waitresses at the restaurant were amongst the cutest so far on my trip, the food was the worst. My meatloaf was a Sysco special with gravy from a #10 can. The frozen vegetable medley had been sitting in a steam tray for hours and had taken on a dull, lifeless brown tint with every bite a mushy mess and all vitamins having been leached out. All those kernels of corn, carrots, and peas deserved a better fate.

I returned to the hotel after taking a post-prandial stroll disappointed with dinner but at least I had a full belly. Had the local brewpub, Round Man Brewing, been open, I'd have stopped in for a nightcap but, alas, it was not. A bit more reading and writing was accomplished.

The next morning I stopped at a nice coffee shop and walked around town a bit more. I wanted to find the library to see if it jogged my memory as my mother always mentions it when Spooner comes up in conversation.

It didn’t but I did get to see a neat metal sculpture out front.

Sadly, this was the final day of my vacation. But I vowed to take my time getting home and made a couple of stops to savor every moment of not being at work that I could.

A brief sojourn at a rest area revealed a genuine working pay phone there. It wasn't clear to me if calls to numbers other than 911 would go through.

I eschewed the interstate and continued on Highway 53 south of Eau Claire. Just south of Osseo I went hunting for a geodetic survey marker. These markers are used to designate some kind of survey information such as an exact distance above sea level or a precise measurement of distance from the equator down to the arc second or whatever it is that surveyors need to know.

I heard of these in a blog post by Ryan Urban, editor of the Barron News-Shield whom I was Twitter pals with and met in real life on my trip up north last year.

The site detailing locations of these markers didn’t lie. I pulled my car over by the road sign specified and walked into the grass where 3 posts stood. In the middle was the marker. It was easy to find and had only a few years of dead grass on it instead of decades worth of dirt like the one Ryan unearthed.

Next stop was Black River Falls.

The downtown wasn’t looking good. Lots of empty storefronts and not much in the way of foot traffic. But that is where the post office is and I was there to take a picture of its mural.

Seeking out WPA post office murals is another thing that I discovered via Ryan Urban who is in the process of photographing all of the ones in Wisconsin.

This one is called "Lumbering - Black River Mill" and was painted by Frank E. Buffmire in 1939. The internet has little to say about the man, at least from my meager searches.

A stop at the Black River Falls rest area proved interesting as I learned from a historical marker that Wisconsin is the only state in the nation that commercially produces sphagnum moss. It can hold 20 times its weight in water so it’s used in the shipment of plants and hydroponic gardening, amongst other uses.

When I drive to Indianapolis, I am used to seeing countless billboards on Illinois-Indiana highways for law firms promising the wealth of Croesus to accident victims. Well, on this trip I noticed the Wisconsin equivalent.

I don’t recall seeing these billboards last year. Are they really that new? Or is my memory faulty? And who is this bald and bearded neo-Gerry Spence?

My final stop before home was at the Wisconsin Cranberry Discovery Center & Cranberry Country Café in Warrens. I can’t say I’d ever been to Warrens but have seen the billboards out on the interstate advertising the town’s cranberry festival that is held annually on the last the last full weekend of September. Not only are we the nation’s leader in sphagnum moss production but cranberries as well.

Warrens proper is just east of the interstate. It’s a nice little drive into town whereupon you notice that there isn’t much to it. With a population of just around 350 people, you’ll miss it if you blink while driving through. There’s a gas station, a post office (with no WPA mural), and the Cranberry Discovery Center. That is basically it.

I ordered breakfast at the café. The 2 waitresses were young black women, a sight I certainly didn’t expect in small town Wisconsin. Warrens lies in Monroe County which is (or was, anyway) Trump territory but, despite all the hoopla about Trump voters being a bunch of racists, if anyone cared about the color of their skin, they weren't at the café. A couple old ladies chatted with them as old ladies like to do with young folk.

My breakfast included wild rice-cranberry toast which was quite tasty. Wild rice-cranberry bread is one of the quintessential foods of northern Wisconsin. Hell, the Upper Midwest, really. A rye version would be the bee's knees, if you ask me.

After chowing down, I went downstairs to the Discovery Center. I learned that Warrens was originally – quelle surprise! – a logging town and was named after George Warren. When the pinery was all cut down, agriculture and diary became big in the area and this included the harvesting of sphagnum moss. Apparently no one knows for sure when cranberries were first cultivated in Warrens for commercial production but they date back to the 1870s.

Displays explain how cranberries are grown and harvested. They don’t grow in water but are harvested in it. In the photo below, you can see those hollow spaces in the cross section of a cranberry. The air in those little cavities allows them to float. So cranberry bogs are flooded so that the berries can be picked more easily.

On display were examples of the harvesting tools such as these hand rakes.

I also learned that early German settlers called the fruit a “craneberry” (kraanbere) because the blossom looked like the head of a sandhill crane to them. It eventually became “cranberry”.

As with most foods, I have always thought that a cranberry is a cranberry is a cranberry. Not so. If the packaging at the store doesn't specify a variety of a fruit or vegetable, it just become this single, nebulous food in my mind. There are various strains of the cranberry and my alma mater, the UW-Madison, devised one called HyRed which became available in 2003 for commercial use. Apparently, it turns red earlier than other varieties and has more pigmentation making for a deeper red hue.

There were also various advertisements to be seen.

"Eatmor". Now that's some fine marketing acumen on display there.

On the way out of town, I pulled over to check out the cranberry vines growing in their bogs. Come the fall, they’ll be filled with water and harvesters will do their thing and my local grocery store will have fresh cranberries ready for Thanksgiving. Unless, I suppose, they end up at some Ocean Spray factory.

********

Bonus photo. I found this one online. It’s an invitation to celebrate the 21st birthday of Christopher Tolkien, the youngest son of J.R.R. Tolkien, the author of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings books.

When I first encountered it online, people were commenting on the bits at the bottom about ambulances at 2 a.m. and hearses at daybreak. While it's quite funny and belies the image of Tolkien as this serious academic who sat around all day making up the Elven language for his novels, I took notice of how the Tolkiens called their son’s 21st birthday his “coming of age”. We don’t talk like that much anymore. Catholics have confirmation and Jews have bar and bat mitzvahs but such things are generally a thing of the past for us here in the United States.

I attended the bat mitzvah of the daughter of one of the Frau’s friends and it was wonderful. Coming-of-age rituals have simply gone out of fashion, sadly. I read or heard someone discussing this recently and they made an interesting observation.

This person opined that most cultures hold that womanhood is attained when a girl starts menstruating. Boys, however, become men not via a biological process, but rather through a ritual of some kind. Maybe by going out hunting with the men of your tribe/village/family and killing your first beast. Or perhaps through some kind of hazing. The interviewee offered the example of some culture that I cannot recall where boys become men by being beaten for a time. Not within an inch of their life, mind you, but they have to endure a prescribed amount of pain in order to be considered a man.

Since I'm no sociologist nor cultural anthropologist, I can't vouch for the veracity of these comments but I nevertheless find them interesting.

The Corona Diaries Vol. 96 - Prelude: Primary

 

 

(Continue to "She wore a kraanbere beret".)

The Corona Diaries Vol. 92 - Postlude: Malick-Almendros

(Don't forget to read entry #92.)

Do you fear this man's invention that they call atomic power?

While I was in Indianapolis for Gencon, I availed myself of the chance to see Oppenheimer on an IMAX screen and on film at the Indiana State Museum. To the best of my knowledge, director Christopher Nolan shot as much of the film using IMAX cameras as was practical. Plus, I know of him as a big fan of film as opposed to digital so it seemed that this was an opportunity to see the movie as the director intended, so to speak, and I couldn’t pass it up.

In the weeks leading up to the screening, I’d listened to Rush’s “Manhattan Project” countless times and one day coincidentally found myself a couple blocks from Stagg Field in Chicago, the site where Enrico Fermi and company became the first people to create a nuclear chain reaction – as part of the Manhattan Project.

The theater was near or at capacity and I remain amazed that a three-hour movie about J. Robert Oppenheimer is attracting large audiences. Are people really that interested in a story about this man? Or is Christopher Nolan’s name that big of a draw?

Let me get this out of the way: Oppenheimer is a three-hour movie and should have had an intermission. I wanted to pee and I bet a lot of other people in the audience wanted to as well without missing a frame like me. I guess the industry has to squeeze as many screenings in as they can, audience bladders be damned.

OK.

The movie has two storylines: “Fission” and “Fusion”. The former is where we follow Oppenheimer from student to “father of the atomic bomb”, more or less. The latter storyline is itself bifurcated into one in black & white with scenes depicting the Senate hearings for Eisenhower’s nominee for Secretary of Commerce, Lewis Strauss. This storyline shares time in the “Fusion” world with scenes from a hearing that was to determine if Oppenheimer would be able to keep his security clearance.

That Rush song is on an album called Power Windows and most of the songs on that album are about power and how it is wielded. The more I think about it, the more it seems that this is one of Oppenheimer’s themes. The power of atoms, the power that the bomb has to destroy, political power, the power we have in interpersonal relationships – all kinds of power are on display in this movie.

The power inherent in atoms and the ability to harness them in the form of a bomb are readily apparent. The “Fusion” line portrays political power as we get a glimpse of the inner workings of Washington and find out that Strauss, who says at one point, "Power stays in the shadows”, was responsible for initiating the investigations into Oppenheimer and his loyalties which resulted in the hearing we see which eventually resulted in the celebrated scientist losing his security clearance.

As far as power in interpersonal relationships go, the scenes with Edward Teller in the security clearance hearing come to mind first. Teller testifies against the father of the atomic bomb yet Oppenheimer shakes his colleague's hand after he finishes his damning testimony. This infuriates Kitty Oppenheimer, J. Robert's wife, who is deeply angered by her husband’s refusal to stand up for himself. Kitty goes on to defiantly stick up for her husband at the hearing and steadfastly refuses to shake Teller’s hand.

I really need to go see this movie again to get my thoughts truly in order but here are some other things that stood out for me.

Early on when Oppenheimer is lecturing, he asks his students how light can be a wave and a particle at the same time. This idea of duality/ambivalence continues throughout the movie and really embodies Oppenheimer. On the one hand, he sees the atomic bomb as something that will end the war and bring about peace. Yet on the other, he views it as an abomination, an existential threat to humanity that should be hidden away and never used.

I really liked how Nolan used the IMAX format for scenes depicting massive flames, ripples on the surface of water, and just any phenomenon that captures the scientist's vast imagination. The sheer size of the screen engulfs us and, just perhaps, instills a tidbit of awe in our minds as the man on the screen ponders the universe and its workings.

The Trinity scene was just great. The movie cuts to various people looking on as we hear only breathing despite an atomic bomb just having detonated. And then the sonic boom hits them. But it also hits us with that IMAX sounds system cranked up. I felt the boom. Just fantastic cinema. And great credit to Nolan for not making this the climax, the end of the movie. It’s another element of Oppenheimer’s story, albeit a very important one, but it’s not the end of his tale.

One thing that I am rather ambivalent about is how much shallow focus there is, how often the only thing on the screen for us to glean information from is a face. I wouldn’t doubt that part of this stylistic choice was made because of technical limitations of the IMAX format. I really don’t know what kinds of lenses those cameras can or cannot use. The characters seemed like isolated atoms all too often, where we see their faces but their surroundings seem almost irrelevant. 

Having said this, Cillian Murphy’s eyes and his facial expressions are amazing here. They go from wide-eyed wonderment at the workings of Nature to the sadness of carrying the burden of having fathered the most destructive weapon ever devised by mankind.

The last thing I want to mention here is Nolan’s use of cutaways. I mentioned one kind above – those of natural phenomena, whether on the macro scale like an ocean of flames or on a micro scale where we see what I think are meant to be elementary particles in motion. (As I said, I need to see the movie again.) These get us inside Oppenheimer’s head and demonstrate his fascination with the universe and the rules that govern it.

But there are also cutaways that demonstrate Oppenheimer’s growing unease with the idea that there are now what we’d call weapons of mass destruction around and that he played a pivotal role in creating them. One of these cutaways is that big IMAX frame full of fire which sits in both realms. It’s a fascinating natural phenomenon yet it also symbolizes death and destruction.

Another takes place after Hiroshima and Nagasaki have been bombed. Oppenheimer is either walking to a stage to address the denizens of Los Alamos or away from it having already spoken to them and he zones out and imagines stepping on the charred corpse of an atom bomb victim. His foot goes right through it and his shoe emerges covered in ash.

In a scene that takes place in the cramped conference room where a panel of modern day Torquemadas question him, Oppenheimer appears nude before them. A cut shows him from another angle and his lover, Jean Tatlock, is on his lap, her hips thrusting in ecstasy.

As a stylistic device, I like these impressionistic cutaways. Done well, they get you into a character’s mind on a basic, emotional level. And I enjoy that feeling of being taken out of the story’s “real world” and placed somewhere different, perhaps somewhere “unrealistic”. These kinds of scenes just work on my brain in a different way that is fun and interesting.

I liked Nolan’s use of these cutaways here in Oppenheimer but I wish that there had been more of them, that they were used in something of a rhythmic pattern. There didn’t need to be a whole lot more of these cutaways but I think a few extra would have done the trick. But the ones we did get were great and paired well with a dynamic soundtrack. Again, just a few more to give that really visceral impression to punctuate the plot and illustrate our protagonist's state of mind.

At three hours, Nolan gives us a lot of food for thought. I really need to watch it again if I am to piece things together, to get a better view of the whole megillah. As it stands, I very much enjoyed this film, with an emphasis on film. It looked fantastic. I am, however, ambivalent on the whole Strauss storyline. It’s not that it’s bad and I think I understand its importance in helping give shape to Oppenheimer’s post-war life. It gives you an idea of what he did and of the powers aligned against him.

But I can’t help but think that more of Jean Tatlock would have been interesting. I don’t know anything of their real-life relationship but she is a clever and formidable woman. The scenes with her show us an Oppenheimer distanced from his work, the bomb, and all of the horrible implications.

Regardless, this was a very good film, flaws and all, and I am keen on seeing it again though, sadly, it likely won’t be in IMAX.

P.S. - at the screening I attended, a notice was shown before the film that there were no additional scenes to be found in the middle of or after the credits. Was this an Oppenheimer thing? A peculiarity of the venue? I'd never seen that before.

P.P.S. - Martin Scorsese's latest film, Killers of the Flower Moon, looks to clock in at just under three and a half hours. This is Ben Hur territory. Surely there will be an intermission.

I got tickets for Oppenheimer on 70mm

I now have tickets to see Oppenheimer at an IMAX on 70mm film. I'm really looking forward to this. No wonder I've been listening to this song a lot lately.

A giant never found, a murder never solved

Thanks to the fine folks at UW Cinematheque, I got to see Twilight, the 1990 film by Hungarian director György Fehér, last week. Fehér was a consort of fellow Hungarian filmmaker Béla Tarr whom I know by reputation only. Twilight received little, if any, distribution here in the States, upon release so it's had lost classic status amongst cinephiles. But it's been resurrected with a shiny new 4K print and it looks like it got a bluray release as well.

The story concerns a detective who, shortly before retirement, lands the case of a murdered girl out in a rural area. We begin with an aerial shot of seemingly endless forest stretching out to mountains in the distance and this along with the premise of a dead girl brought Twin Peaks to mind but that's where the comparison ends. That the detective, whose name I don't recall ever being mentioned, is near retirement, made me think of Danny Glover's Murtaugh from Lethal Weapon. But that's just free form cinema association in action.

After the arboreal opening, we see two men in the back of a car as it rumbles on its way to the scene of the crime. Lovely black and wide photography has the men's faces shrouded in shadow while the view out the rear window provides light but no clue as to the setting. The detective gets out and into a good soaking rain where he is informed that the body of a girl was found up the hill near a cross. Rather than cut to the car's exterior, the camera remains in the front seat so we get a view of everyone's torso, but no faces nor legs, as seen through the passenger door window.

I have read that cinematographer Miklós Gurbán supervised this 35mm to 4K digital transfer and that details in darker spaces that film could capture were largely lost when going digital. Score one for analog. I wondered if the men's faces in this scene were more visible on film and if something was lost in the 4K realm.

Anyway, this is a fairly long take with a generous amount of time devoted to the car ride itself. We then see the crime scene from afar with a crowd presumably gathered around the girl's body. The detective emerges from the mass of people and ambles towards the camera which is slowly - very slowly being lowered down to meet him at eye level as he passes it.

This opening sequence provides a template for the rest of the film with its long takes, a camera that often moves slowly and gently, and characters that are usually never in a hurry to provide grist for the plot mill, to justify going from scene A to scene B. The detective doesn't say, "Let's go talk to the family" or "I am going to go to the girl's school". Fehér just moves us from one spot to another and leaves it to us to figure out where we've landed and exactly why.

Several scenes stand out such as one early on when the detective approaches what we learn is the home of the dead girl's family. As he creeps closer, we hear a woman's wailing which is hard to distinguish from forced laughter. He hovers outside a window and we peer inside as his partner informs the parents of their daughter's death. The distraught couple grab onto the guy issuing their emotional demands of wanting to see their daughter's body and that the policeman find the killer. It's an emotionally charged scene but one we witness only by an act of voyeurism, essentially - through that window.

One of the girl's friends from school is interviewed and this provides a clue. However, it's a rather usettling scene with the boy's face in closeup, looking at his interlocutor uncomfortably, and whispering that the dead girl would meet "the giant" by the cross. The detective then breaks into the school and finds a drawing of this giant.

This interview is echoed in a later one with a girl. It's a very disturbing scene that creepily bordered on 9½ Weeks as it felt like a seduction as much as an inquiry as the detective - not the detective - caresses the girl's face and feeds her chocolate.

Aside from the detective, no one puts any stock into the giant character. Everyone is fingering the village peddler who was busted previously for attacking a girl or attempting to seduce one - I cannot recall exactly. He is interrogated and there's this ominous shot where the camera shows us the scene inside the building where the cops are doing their work and then it slowly tracks left to a window where we see a crowd of people outside, presumably come to seek justice.

But instead of wielding torches and pitchforks, they just stand there in the rain, silent and unmoving like zombies. They're almost as dead as the girl they mourn.

At one point, a fellow who is the region's coroner, I guess you'd say, tells our detective that his search is futile. "...you will never find him." Prophetic words as he never does. The killer remains an enigma.

The striking black and white cinematography was complemented by an equally stunning soundtrack. There's this low, cthonic rumble in the background in many scenes. It was perturbing and made me feel as if the world of the film was beset by a primal evil, that malice flowed through the ley lines there. Choral sounds provided an ethereal counterpoint that was no less moving.

I'm not sure what to make of Twilight. Fehér's Hungary was moving away from Communism at the time he made this film and I highly suspect that there's something of the anxiety Hungarians surely felt then here as well as some kind of reckoning with the country's Communist past.

Guesswork on my part? To be sure. Regardless, Twilight is an intriguing film. It is beautifully shot and its slow pace imbues a sense of realism to it while other elements, such as some of the characters' actions, betray a sense of exaggerated unreality. Twilight felt very contemplative but it never became dour for me. There is passion here but it's not always presented in a way we are familiar with. While I don't doubt I am missing a lot not being Hungarian, I still appreciated the detective's steadfastness when bowing to futility was all too easy. Just as he never conceded his duty because of a sense it was useless, I never felt lulled into tedium because of the movie's slow pace and lack of helpful clues that would lead to an arrest. It is a beautiful, moody puzzle that was a joy to fail to piece together.

R.I.P. Kenneth Anger

 

 

It came out today that experimental filmmaker Kenneth Anger passed away earlier this month. He was 96.

I finally got around to watching Lucifer Rising a couple years back.

The Corona Diaries Vol. 85: The Longest Film I've Ever Seen

(Don't forget to watch the prelude.)

(mid-February 2023)

A couple entries or so ago I relayed how I helped a friend of mine brew a red mole table beer. Having brewed or helped brew beer a few times now, I am convinced that 90+% of the brewing process can accurately be described as moving water around.

"Put water in here so we can heat it up."

"Now put the water in here so it drains into this other vessel."

"Here, turn this valve on so the water flows through this contraption to cool the other water."

And so on.

Well, the day to sample came and I made a return visit. For the occasion, I got some Mexican takeout from Taqueria El Jalapeño.

On the drive over, I was desperately hoping that I hadn’t ruined the beer. Even if it turned out to be mediocre because there was too much of this or not enough of that, I just didn’t want to be at fault for an infection that produced an off flavor and thusly a ruined batch of beer. I swear that I cleaned with the sanitizer as instructed!

When I arrived, I found out that my friend had already sampled our creation and thought that it turned out well. As did his wife. Whew! Even before I had my shoes off, I was handed a glass for sampling. Taking a sip, I found that I agreed. It was delicious. The cinnamon and chocolate were mainly accents and he wants to add more cocoa bits to the next batch. (I think this was the 4th or 5th time he’s brewed it.) It had a nice spicy chipotle flavor with a moderate amount of heat that went away quickly. If I recall correctly, it turned out to be around 4.5% A.B.V. so, while not a table beer in the older, more traditional sense, it was still a fairly low alcohol brew for an American beer in 2023.

That 6 hour brew day was worth it. Success!

********

My gaming friends and I have started playing a new game called Twilight:2000. 

The premise is that, in the mid-1990s while Bill Clinton was having fun with Monica Lewinsky, the Soviets lifted the Iron Curtain and Ivan marched west. And so World War III breaks out with Western powers uniting against the Russians. There are limited nuclear engagements and the Russkies manage to gain territory. The starter kit we have has scenarios that take place in Sweden and Poland. We played the latter.

It is now the year 2000. The Western allies launch Operation Reset in an attempt to push the Russians out of Poland. The results are disastrous and Western forces are making a strategic advance to the rear.

My friends and I are all that’s left of a platoon and we are heading west in our Humvee towards the German border where we are to meet up with the remaining troops and, well, formulate Plan B, I guess. But Ivan lurks with his explosive devices at the side of the road. Plus, there are friendly stragglers here and there and then there are the locals whose allegiances are not always clear or who are, perhaps, just looking to survive.

In one instance, we were driving down a highway and saw smoke ahead. We already felt unsafe as there were cars in the opposite lanes heading towards the Russkies. Would they turn around and attack us from the rear?

We got closer and found the smoke to be from an overturned Humvee at the side of the road on fire. A pickup truck was farther off in the ditch surrounded by corpses. Do we rush in to help our fallen comrades? Or do we approach with caution in case this was the bait for an ambush?

We ended the session just south of Ostrów Wielkopolski with some injured comrades in back and a need to find some water and fuel.

********

A friend of mine who is also a big fan of the cinema occasionally sends me links to Youtube videos by another cinephile who pontificates with the best of them on all things movies. One video was entitled something like “The Top 10 Movies You’ve Never Seen”. Well, it was true. I’d never even heard of these movies, much less seen them. And so I threw the ones that looked interesting onto my To-Watch list only to find that they’re not exactly easy to come by. I didn’t see any of them for rent at Madison’s best (and only?) video rental store, Four Star. No copies at the library. Searches on our Roku either came up empty or informed me that I needed to pay for yet another streaming service.

Well, I finally got a hold of one of these movies: the “documentary” As I Was Moving Ahead Occasionally I Saw Brief Glimpses of Beauty by Jonas Mekas.

According to Wikipedia, Mekas was a notable experimental filmmaker in New York City where he “mentored and supported” a variety of filmmakers, helped launch the writing careers of some notable film critics, co-founded Anthology Film Archives, The Film-Makers’ Cooperative, and the journal Film Culture. And, of course, he made experimental/avant-garde films.

A man of no small accomplishment in the world of cinema, yet I’d never heard of him.

As I Was Moving Ahead Occasionally I Saw Brief Glimpses of Beauty was released in 2000 and is the exact opposite of a big budget narrative film full of actors with perfect coifs and tons of makeup doing 14 impossible things before breakfast. It’s a documentary, I guess, insofar as it documents things, but this is no film with talking heads imparting their expert knowledge of a subject.

Instead, it’s a compilation of Mekas’ home movies shot on 16mm over the course of 30 or so years, roughly 1970-1999. Instead of big, grandiose events that shake the world, he chronicles his life – the quotidian rhythms and routines punctuated by trips away from the city or visits from friends and family.

The audio is sometimes the sounds of the scenes we witness while at other times we hear music. Occasionally Mekas plays accordion and sings. And there are long periods where he narrates and philosophizes as the images go by.

At one point he admits that his images are banal, that he introduces no suspense. He says it's all just daily routines and that life is basically the same stuff over and over.

We watch his as his children grow up – we even see the birth of one – over the course of the film.

We also get a lot of scenes of New York City, including many taken during winter as people go about their business as others shovel the sidewalks.

Mekas occasionally throws in title cards with a handful being repeated. One says “this is a political film” while another concedes “nothing happens in this film”.

The best way I can describe this movie is that it’s a lot of personal rumination and reflection with a large dose of city symphony thrown in for good measure. Mekas was 78 when it was released so it is difficult not to view it as an old man simply looking back on his life as death creeps nearer. (He would live another 19 years or so.) At one point he intones, “Some of the memories - no they never really go away. Nothing ever goes away.”

While there were some neat elements here such as a series of shots that begins with his wife’s face and then goes to his face to his cat’s face to his daughter’s face. I also really enjoyed the times he sang whether he accompanied himself on accordion or not. He may not have been the most technically gifted singer and musician, but I found these passages to be very genuine, very moving.

My biggest gripe was that the movie is nearly 5 hours long. Obviously an extremely personal endeavor, I suspect the film’s length had more to do with its creator feeling a sense of satisfaction with having reckoned with his life than any accommodation of audience expectations. I watched it all, partially out of respect for the work that Mekas put into it, but also to be able to consider that Youtube guy’s argument for the film’s greatness. In the end, I just cannot share that opinion.

I was quite surprised when the movie cut to a scene from right here in Madison.

I anxiously waited for the title card to disappear to reveal where he had shot the snowball fight. When the shots appeared, I did not recognize the area.

One building looked a bit like the old Longfellow School but I quickly disabused myself of that notion. I just didn’t recognize any of the buildings in that scene and, having seen a lot of old photographs of Madison, didn’t think those shots were filmed here. Mekas had mislabeled his film canisters, methinks.

Another movie on that guy’s rarely seen greatest of all-time list is a documentary that chronicles the Chinese equivalent of a Rust Belt city called Tie Xi Qu: West of the Tracks. It runs over 9 hours. That will have to wait for another day.

********

I am happy to report that construction on my neighbor’s house has begun.

Now why those 2 walls were kept instead of just building the whole thing from scratch is beyond me. Still, I am pleased that there is no longer a ruin nearby to harbor critters and that our neighbor will once again have a home.

********

I have bought 2 albums so far this year. Here is the first:

The Latin means “Today Christ is Born”. The Boston Camerata is an early music ensemble from – quelle surprise! – Boston. It is comprised of 5 women. Two contribute voice, another voice, hurdy-gurdy, & bells, and two who don’t sing but instead between them play the harp, woodwinds, & a couple proto-violins – the vielle and rebec.

I first heard the song “Uterus Hodie Virginis Floruit”, which I think is Latin for “Today the Womb of the Virgin Blooms”, on a Canadian radio program. It comes from 12th century Aquitaine courtesy of an unknown composer. It’s a beautiful, reflective piece of music with the voices of the 3 performers and one of those medieval predecessors of the violin that I think is a vielle.

At some point in the past I took a shine to the wonderful drone of the hurdy gurdy and, so far, most of my favorites here feature it. “Adest Sponsus (The Bridgeroom is Here)” has a lovely, almost lilting, melody established by the hurdy gurdy and picked up by voices. The liner notes say it’s part of the Sponsus miracle play from the mid-11th century which dramatizes the Parable of the Ten Virgins. In “Gregis Pastor (The Shepherd of the Flock[?])" each singer gets a chance to sing solo and their vocal melodies mirror the hurdy gurdy but with a little tweak here and there. This is apparently an adaptation of a Gregorian chant. 

While I understand that Easter was the big Christian holiday back in the Middle Ages and Christmas rather minor in comparison, it’s interesting how the songs here that reference the birth of Christ in their titles generally sound contemplative instead of being upbeat party tunes. I can only imagine that medieval Easter hymns must all be dirges full of somber singing and melancholy music. Or were Easter tunes actually the party songs, celebrating salvation?

Regardless, the music on this album is just beautiful. Highly recommended and the folks at Madcity Music would be happy to get you a copy.

********

Bonus photo. Here’s a picture of Piper taken on a beautiful, sunny winter day as she was hanging out with me while I was working from home.

 

 

(Now listen to the postlude.)