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Nov. 18th, 2023 10:03 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shadowkatDecided to invite Wales over for Thanksgiving, and she accepted. We're doing rock cornish game hen, baked potato, green beans, salad, and pumpkin pie. I think. Depends on whether I can find the hens.
We're going to watch Quiz Lady on Hulu.
**
Today?
Finished Alix E. Harrow's Starling House finally. Better than expected. The writer is fairly poetic with her prose, and does something interesting with narrative. The narrative weaves or collects several stories together about Starling House, and two points of view. We're told the story of the house via the motel manager and Opal (the lead protagonist) friend who acts as a kind of surrogate mother (she tells the town's perspective), Wikipedia's perspective, the perspective via the children's storybook - which is kind of dark fairy tale along the lines of Where the Wild Things Are meets Alice in Wonderland, the perspective of the current owner of the house, the perspective of the slaves who worked in the mines near the house years ago, the perspective of Eleanor Starling who built the house, and finally Opal's. Through each, at times contradictory perspective, the writer gets across how reality is a mismatch of various human takes or versions of it. Nobody perceives it the same way.
It is both a ghost story and a dark fantasy novel. Also a bit of a mystery.
I honestly think it's better to dive into it cold than know too much about it. So, I'll stop there.
I enjoyed it more than I expected - or rather it ended on an interesting note. It does get a bit preachy or heavy handed in places, the author has a bone to pick with coal companies (but honestly so does pretty much anyone who hails from Kentucky and has a soul, which the author does), also a bone to pick in regards to women's rights (but well, so do most women). Also the villains are kind of boilerplate and one dimensional - lending to the dark fairy tale aspect of the novel. But other than that - it's interesting. Neither lead character is beautiful - so much as intriguing. The hero is described as looking a bit like a haggard vulture, and the heroine as well, kind of plain? I honestly can't envision Opal much at all. But Arthur is clear to me. There's a romance between Arthur and Opal, that is awkward and kind of interesting?
I wouldn't call the book all that scary, thrilling maybe? It was slow in places and took a while for me to finish it.
Next up? I'm thinking "The Haunting on the Hill by Elizabeth Hand" - although I need to start Yellowface and Jeannette Winterson's Ghost Stories, if I intend on giving either to Wales for Christmas. The Bird Books are for her birthday.
**
Working my way through the Barbara Streisand audio-book, which is a fascinating tour of 1950s and 1960s Brooklyn and the NY theater world at that time. Barbara is the same age as my mother, and was born in 1942.
She describes late 1940s and early 1950s Brooklyn, and the theater world of the late 1950s and early 1960s. She saw Paul Muni in Inherit the Wind, and Susan Strasberg in Anne Frank. She also notes how much she loved movies, particularly foreign films and was determined to be an actress at all costs. To the point that she pestered people to death until they let her in the door. She didn't get in easily - she pestered them.
Apparently Dustin Hoffman was paying for his room and board at the Academy of Arts in NY, and the Actor's Studio by being their janitor. And when he finally won a role in a play - it went around town that the school janitor got a part, which meant anyone could. Barbara struggled to get roles - but loved it. She paid for her schooling via babysitting, and befriended one of the teachers to get into the school. She also auditioned.
At one point, she was making money picking up discarded receipts in stores and obtaining refunds - until she almost got caught swiping a pair of shoes, was overwhelmed with humiliation and terrified of being actually caught and truly humiliated, so swore never to try it again. Instead if she likes something - she'll ask where she can buy it.
And she describes one of her best performances was in an acting class where she was assigned to play an inanimate object - in this case, a chocolate chip. She imagined what it would be like to be rolling about in the dough, then melting in the oven (how excruciatingly painful that would be) then cooling, only to stiffen, become hard, and paralyzed waiting for someone to eat her. By the end of this description - I felt sorry for chocolate chips and wondered if I wanted to eat a chocolate chip cookie again. The woman can write - and more to the point, perform it. Apparently she's always written. She used to write letters to Lee Strasberg - the premiere acting teacher, who created the Actor's Studio with Uta Hagen, and the method. (I actually studied Strasberg and Hagen in Drama during High School - for three years. Enough to know - I am not cut out to be an actor - improve drove me nuts. You have to be good at improve to be an actor or a good teacher for that matter.)
Her book is tailor made for folks like myself - she states at the beginning that she is writing it for people interested in the process of creating film and theater, and acting. Not to dish the dirt. And she doesn't dish the dirt. All she states about Warren Beatty - is they are still good friends, and she went to school with him. He tells a story about trying to hook up with her, and how she turned him down - but she doesn't really remember it, but thinks he's most likely right and it certainly didn't stop him from trying elsewhere. And the only thing she said about Hoffman so far was that he was working part time as a janitor and she thought he was cute.
**
Very loud booming noise - sounded like fireworks being set off next door, except no bright lights in the sky. Also not thunder.
Went on FB community page to check it out - and someone thinks it was Liberty Island, which was setting off fireworks.
FB: It is Liberty Island, they are having fireworks.
Me: Sounds a bit too close to be Liberty Island...it sounded like it was in my backyard? [Liberty Island isn't even visible, I can't get to it from here or even close...it's about a 35 minute ferry ride - or 14.5 miles with water in between, and water cancels sound, and it is not walkable at all. Would take me about an hour or two to get there.]
FB: As the crow flies, it's closer than you think. We are not that far away. Google is your friend. And there are maps.
Sigh. [I walked away and declined to respond in any way. The internet brings out SAS in people, of course it can be argued that for a lot of humans, SAS is their default setting? Headspace helps me not fall into SAS.]
***
Television..
* Tried to watch For All Mankind again - and kept losing interest, then mother called, and I gave up.
* Rented John Wick for $1.00 on Amazon Prime. It's a decent action film. Directed and written by Keanu Reeves stunt coordinator and stunt double on the Matrix films. They are best friends, and Reeves helped him get his own film made. It's a tightly written noir film with excellent and realistic stunts. Reeves doesn't use prop guns or real guns on these films - they are all CGI apparently. He does everything possible to keep his cast and crew safe.
I decided to try it - because it had been heavily recommended by various folks over the years - and I was curious. Reeves is not a good actor, but he makes up for it - by being a kind and considerate human being. He's also not narcissistic. (Basically he's the exact opposite of Johnny Depp. I wouldn't mind meeting Reeves, Depp, I do not want to ever meet and no longer watch his film.) So we'll give him a pass on the acting - besides these films don't really require much in the way of acting. And the type of acting he does - works for the role. Stoic. Dead-pan. And quick reflexes. He's also pretty. (He's aged better than ex-college boy-friend, so as a result no longer looks much like him and it's no longer an issue.)
John Wick is a noir film in the classic sense of the world. Reeves plays an legendary underworld hitman, who left the biz, lived happily with his wife, until she died of some illness. After her funeral - he inherits a basset hound from her, who he bonds with. Some entitled twenty-something Russian thug runs across him, his car, and his dog at a gas station - and decides he wants the car. Wick says know. The thug has no clue who Wick is - and decides to take the car, beat up Wick and kill the dog. (I warn you about the cute dog dying - because I was upset about it, and I'm not a dog person and don't own dogs.) This of course does not end well for the thug or anyone associated with him. It's your basic noir action trope - where if you mess with the wrong person, you are basically screwed. To give the writer and creators credit - it does not glorify this lifestyle, guns, or romanticize it. In fact at one point, the bad guy tells Wick that if you do the things they've done and live the life they have - you are cursed, it follows you.
And on that, Wick agrees.
Everything has consequences and a price - we just may not always see them up close and personal.
The film has a decent cast, rounded out by William Defoe, Adrianne Palecki, Lance Reddick, and Ian McShane.
* Watched another episode of The Fall of the House of Usher on Netflix which was having issues tonight. Each episode is named after an Edgar Allen Poe Short Story or Poem. The first was "A Midnight Dreary" and heavily referenced the Cask of the Armontildo. (Someone is buried alive and claws their way out and kills the person responsible.). The second episode is "The Masque of the Red Death" - where Prospero has an invite only party during a plague, and someone brings in the plague (that's the Poe story - Poe was living around the time of a pandemic or towards the end of a major pandemic, and hence the idea of the story. The story makes more sense now - that we've all gone through a pandemic - and people were having private parties in major cities and getting sick as a result. The second episode was good - but the series is slow-going. The problem? Too many characters. Flanagan is piling too much into each episode, and jumping around too much, so I don't care about anyone. I don't get to know them well enough to care.
For horror to work effectively, you have to be invested. I also think this series is more satirical or meant to be humorous than scary. It is gory though.
Anyhow, it's late. Going to bed.
We're going to watch Quiz Lady on Hulu.
**
Today?
Finished Alix E. Harrow's Starling House finally. Better than expected. The writer is fairly poetic with her prose, and does something interesting with narrative. The narrative weaves or collects several stories together about Starling House, and two points of view. We're told the story of the house via the motel manager and Opal (the lead protagonist) friend who acts as a kind of surrogate mother (she tells the town's perspective), Wikipedia's perspective, the perspective via the children's storybook - which is kind of dark fairy tale along the lines of Where the Wild Things Are meets Alice in Wonderland, the perspective of the current owner of the house, the perspective of the slaves who worked in the mines near the house years ago, the perspective of Eleanor Starling who built the house, and finally Opal's. Through each, at times contradictory perspective, the writer gets across how reality is a mismatch of various human takes or versions of it. Nobody perceives it the same way.
It is both a ghost story and a dark fantasy novel. Also a bit of a mystery.
I honestly think it's better to dive into it cold than know too much about it. So, I'll stop there.
I enjoyed it more than I expected - or rather it ended on an interesting note. It does get a bit preachy or heavy handed in places, the author has a bone to pick with coal companies (but honestly so does pretty much anyone who hails from Kentucky and has a soul, which the author does), also a bone to pick in regards to women's rights (but well, so do most women). Also the villains are kind of boilerplate and one dimensional - lending to the dark fairy tale aspect of the novel. But other than that - it's interesting. Neither lead character is beautiful - so much as intriguing. The hero is described as looking a bit like a haggard vulture, and the heroine as well, kind of plain? I honestly can't envision Opal much at all. But Arthur is clear to me. There's a romance between Arthur and Opal, that is awkward and kind of interesting?
I wouldn't call the book all that scary, thrilling maybe? It was slow in places and took a while for me to finish it.
Next up? I'm thinking "The Haunting on the Hill by Elizabeth Hand" - although I need to start Yellowface and Jeannette Winterson's Ghost Stories, if I intend on giving either to Wales for Christmas. The Bird Books are for her birthday.
**
Working my way through the Barbara Streisand audio-book, which is a fascinating tour of 1950s and 1960s Brooklyn and the NY theater world at that time. Barbara is the same age as my mother, and was born in 1942.
She describes late 1940s and early 1950s Brooklyn, and the theater world of the late 1950s and early 1960s. She saw Paul Muni in Inherit the Wind, and Susan Strasberg in Anne Frank. She also notes how much she loved movies, particularly foreign films and was determined to be an actress at all costs. To the point that she pestered people to death until they let her in the door. She didn't get in easily - she pestered them.
Apparently Dustin Hoffman was paying for his room and board at the Academy of Arts in NY, and the Actor's Studio by being their janitor. And when he finally won a role in a play - it went around town that the school janitor got a part, which meant anyone could. Barbara struggled to get roles - but loved it. She paid for her schooling via babysitting, and befriended one of the teachers to get into the school. She also auditioned.
At one point, she was making money picking up discarded receipts in stores and obtaining refunds - until she almost got caught swiping a pair of shoes, was overwhelmed with humiliation and terrified of being actually caught and truly humiliated, so swore never to try it again. Instead if she likes something - she'll ask where she can buy it.
And she describes one of her best performances was in an acting class where she was assigned to play an inanimate object - in this case, a chocolate chip. She imagined what it would be like to be rolling about in the dough, then melting in the oven (how excruciatingly painful that would be) then cooling, only to stiffen, become hard, and paralyzed waiting for someone to eat her. By the end of this description - I felt sorry for chocolate chips and wondered if I wanted to eat a chocolate chip cookie again. The woman can write - and more to the point, perform it. Apparently she's always written. She used to write letters to Lee Strasberg - the premiere acting teacher, who created the Actor's Studio with Uta Hagen, and the method. (I actually studied Strasberg and Hagen in Drama during High School - for three years. Enough to know - I am not cut out to be an actor - improve drove me nuts. You have to be good at improve to be an actor or a good teacher for that matter.)
Her book is tailor made for folks like myself - she states at the beginning that she is writing it for people interested in the process of creating film and theater, and acting. Not to dish the dirt. And she doesn't dish the dirt. All she states about Warren Beatty - is they are still good friends, and she went to school with him. He tells a story about trying to hook up with her, and how she turned him down - but she doesn't really remember it, but thinks he's most likely right and it certainly didn't stop him from trying elsewhere. And the only thing she said about Hoffman so far was that he was working part time as a janitor and she thought he was cute.
**
Very loud booming noise - sounded like fireworks being set off next door, except no bright lights in the sky. Also not thunder.
Went on FB community page to check it out - and someone thinks it was Liberty Island, which was setting off fireworks.
FB: It is Liberty Island, they are having fireworks.
Me: Sounds a bit too close to be Liberty Island...it sounded like it was in my backyard? [Liberty Island isn't even visible, I can't get to it from here or even close...it's about a 35 minute ferry ride - or 14.5 miles with water in between, and water cancels sound, and it is not walkable at all. Would take me about an hour or two to get there.]
FB: As the crow flies, it's closer than you think. We are not that far away. Google is your friend. And there are maps.
Sigh. [I walked away and declined to respond in any way. The internet brings out SAS in people, of course it can be argued that for a lot of humans, SAS is their default setting? Headspace helps me not fall into SAS.]
***
Television..
* Tried to watch For All Mankind again - and kept losing interest, then mother called, and I gave up.
* Rented John Wick for $1.00 on Amazon Prime. It's a decent action film. Directed and written by Keanu Reeves stunt coordinator and stunt double on the Matrix films. They are best friends, and Reeves helped him get his own film made. It's a tightly written noir film with excellent and realistic stunts. Reeves doesn't use prop guns or real guns on these films - they are all CGI apparently. He does everything possible to keep his cast and crew safe.
I decided to try it - because it had been heavily recommended by various folks over the years - and I was curious. Reeves is not a good actor, but he makes up for it - by being a kind and considerate human being. He's also not narcissistic. (Basically he's the exact opposite of Johnny Depp. I wouldn't mind meeting Reeves, Depp, I do not want to ever meet and no longer watch his film.) So we'll give him a pass on the acting - besides these films don't really require much in the way of acting. And the type of acting he does - works for the role. Stoic. Dead-pan. And quick reflexes. He's also pretty. (He's aged better than ex-college boy-friend, so as a result no longer looks much like him and it's no longer an issue.)
John Wick is a noir film in the classic sense of the world. Reeves plays an legendary underworld hitman, who left the biz, lived happily with his wife, until she died of some illness. After her funeral - he inherits a basset hound from her, who he bonds with. Some entitled twenty-something Russian thug runs across him, his car, and his dog at a gas station - and decides he wants the car. Wick says know. The thug has no clue who Wick is - and decides to take the car, beat up Wick and kill the dog. (I warn you about the cute dog dying - because I was upset about it, and I'm not a dog person and don't own dogs.) This of course does not end well for the thug or anyone associated with him. It's your basic noir action trope - where if you mess with the wrong person, you are basically screwed. To give the writer and creators credit - it does not glorify this lifestyle, guns, or romanticize it. In fact at one point, the bad guy tells Wick that if you do the things they've done and live the life they have - you are cursed, it follows you.
And on that, Wick agrees.
Everything has consequences and a price - we just may not always see them up close and personal.
The film has a decent cast, rounded out by William Defoe, Adrianne Palecki, Lance Reddick, and Ian McShane.
* Watched another episode of The Fall of the House of Usher on Netflix which was having issues tonight. Each episode is named after an Edgar Allen Poe Short Story or Poem. The first was "A Midnight Dreary" and heavily referenced the Cask of the Armontildo. (Someone is buried alive and claws their way out and kills the person responsible.). The second episode is "The Masque of the Red Death" - where Prospero has an invite only party during a plague, and someone brings in the plague (that's the Poe story - Poe was living around the time of a pandemic or towards the end of a major pandemic, and hence the idea of the story. The story makes more sense now - that we've all gone through a pandemic - and people were having private parties in major cities and getting sick as a result. The second episode was good - but the series is slow-going. The problem? Too many characters. Flanagan is piling too much into each episode, and jumping around too much, so I don't care about anyone. I don't get to know them well enough to care.
For horror to work effectively, you have to be invested. I also think this series is more satirical or meant to be humorous than scary. It is gory though.
Anyhow, it's late. Going to bed.
no subject
Date: 2023-11-20 12:10 pm (UTC)