Nothing Is Easy and Killer's Kiss

Friday night I saw Jethro Tull: Live at the Isle of Wight 1970 - Nothing Is Easy. It's a mini-documentary with Ian Anderson commenting on Jethro Tull's performance on the 5th day of the Isle of Wight Festival 1970. Ian explains how the standing-on-one-leg-while-playing-the-flute came about.

Now...the really interesting thing for me is what I learn after watching a movie. In this case, I had no idea until after watching this, that the Isle of Wight Festival in 1970 was the largest musical event of this its time. I'd heard of the festival before, but I'd always thought..."Oh, that's nice. They probably had 10,000 people watching." Uh...no. I love it when I'm really wrong.

It was a 5 day (yes, 5) music festival with 600,000 in attendance! Much larger than Woodstock. I stand corrected. Bob Dylan was there! It was Emerson, Lake, and Palmer's second gig. Interestingly enough, Woodstock (at White Lake) and Isle of Wight (pronounced - White) have similar sounding names for locations.

I watched Stanly Kubrick's second film Killer's Kiss on Saturday night. This black-and-white film noir pulled no punches; I'm a sucka for bw film noir. Filmed mostly at night in some really seedy Manhattan locations, KK tells the tale of down-on-his-luck boxer who meets a pay-for-a-dance girl and decide to move to Seattle. The guy who owns the club where the girls dances has other ideas. Scrumptious camera work combined with peeking-at-ny-in-those-days locations makes this one of the most eye-candy films I've seen so far this year. There is a fight scene in a mannequin shop that would've worked in a 60's noir art film. Who doesn't like a good mannequin shop shot? Parts of this film were very contemporary.

Indy homeless must choose cold over shelter to stay with pets

 This is a very sad story. Only people with pets can understand the bond people have their animal buddies. The other important part of the story is that if you are a couple, you must be married in order to stay at a shelter. Really?

RTV6 - Indy homeless choose cold over shelter to stay with pets - Local Story

Ninotchka

Confession:I saw my first Greta Garbo movie Saturday night @ Kathy's house - Ninotchka. This was part of the Indy Film Buffs Meetup Group series. She play a Russian envoy sent to straighten out three Russian delegates sent to purchase some stolen jewels. She is all about the party...Russian party that is. It's not a film I would advise someone to watch, but I'm glad I saw it. Garbo is so attractive. She has timeless beauty. She could walk down the street today and turn heads.

I made some Ghirardelli chocolate brownies to take. I was pretty happy until I got to Kathy's house and Brian had brought a Hazelnut-Almond  Dacquoise - yep. Oh, btw, he's a professional baker. I'd never even heard of such a thing. He said he spent two days on it. Holy cow! The meringue ends up being sort of wafer like. My my, it was magnificent!

Frank Zappa: Over-nite Sensation and Apostrophe

I watched a short documentary last night - Frank Zappa: Over-nite Sensation and Apostrophe. I was exposed to Frank Zappa at a very young age. My brother and I delivered newspapers 6 days a week, all year long. The route was so large that part of it had to be done from a car. Grab papers from the back seat, walk several blocks, grab papers...rinse repeat. We always listened to WAKY  radio out of Louisville, KY. As an adult I realize was a truly hip radio station it was.  Bill Bailey was one of the main DJs - he rocked.

Every winter WAKY radio played Don't Eat the Yellow Snow on a regular basis.  As a kid, I remember thinking of Frank's music as Cosmic Jazz; it was too deep for me.

Several years ago I read America the Beautiful: A Novel, by Moon Unit Zappa. It's obviously somewhat autobiographical of her life growing up with Frank and trying to find her way as an adult living the shadow of a genius. In the documentary she comes off as sounding like her dad only thought about groupies, which is probably for the most part a perk of the job, but I'm guessing like Dweezil she realizes Frank was many things. Dweezil gives us a technical breakdown of some of the songs on both of those albums. Fellow musicians also give their account of working with Frank.

I used to have one of those Frank on the toilet posters long ago, but I have no idea what happened it it.

Frank Zappa played the bicycle on the Steve Allen show in 1963. Steve Allen is really annoying and Frank comes off as Mr. Cool.

Matru Ki Bijlee Ka Mandola

I'd watched the trailer for this movie at least 5 times and decided that I would be able to squeeze in a 2.5 hour movie last night. Matru Ki Bijlee Ka Mandola is a fun movie to watch! Here is an explanation of the title.

The story follows a wealthy entrepreneur named Harry, who has visions of using the farmer's land to build a huge factory. He as two personalities - one when his is drunk and one when he is sober. His daughter, Bijlee, is betrothed to a local politician's son, Baadal, who is a rude fool with no empathy. Early in the film as a show of his love and wealth, Baadal buys Bijlee a South African dancing troupe because she likes African music. The dance troupe ends up in all sorts of scenes where dancing is required. Harry's man Friday, Matru, tries to keep the drinking to a minimum while clearly simmering for Bijlee. Very appropriate dancing/singing scenes. Now that I do Zumba, I can really appreciate an athletic dance number. I was tapping my foot and wiggling in my seat to the music. I laughed out loud several times!

There is a scene where Matru accuses Bijlee of having the Meena Kumari complex. This is precisely why I watch movies; if I can learn something I previously didn't know, then it's all good.  

The Blood as Well as the Castle of Fu Manchu

Movie Night @ Gary's last night - The Blood of Fu Manchu and The Castle of Fu Manchu. In the first movie, Fu Manchu was an idea guy with a very attractive, equally evil daughter, and hot slave women. He clearly had some sort of empathy for them as he called them by name. I could not take my eyes off of Tsai Chin as Lin Tang. There were several scenes where she was wearing a very bright pink lip stick. The gem in this film however, was Richard Palacious as Sancho Lopez. I loved his hat and pistola.

In the second movie Fu Manchu has yet another idea for world domination, but alas, he has no time. And boy, did Fu let us know that. I lost count of how many times Fu uttered, "We don't have time" every time someone suggested that something wasn't quite getting done correctly/safely. Working in IT for so many years, you know that phrase is a death nell for what ever evil project is in the works. He needed a good project manager.

I should've counted the times I heard the name Nayland Smith and the number of times I heard a gong being struck (I like the sound of a gong being struct btw) in both movies. Aayye!

Speaking of gong, of course I think of T-Rex and Get It On. Some dapper bloke to Marc's right named Elton plays piano in a spiffy poddle print gladrag.

I like hanging out on a pirate ship!

I saw this album listed on Fistful of Culture. Holy Cow! Who doesn't want to hear these folks sing Pirate chanteys? Looks like the predecessor Rogue's Gallery was released in 2006. Who knew?