I'm a Nuncle! Enzo J. tipped the scales at 5 pounds 11 ounces and was born at 10:11 p.m on the 14th of October. I meant to post this stuff up Sunday night after Ali got a few snaps, but I remembered that I had promised some film-related content. Hang in there, lads! It's coming up next. I just want to say that I'm gonna be the crazy uncle - the one who babysits once in a while and brings gelato for dinner and teaches Poisson distributions by playing Punchbuggy! or more probably by watching sexy sportscars pass through a particular intersection while we wear berets (black for me, red for Enzo J.) and have a choc or two or maybe a latte (decaf for Enzo J). Homework is important afterall.Ali and I drove out to the hospital Sunday afternoon and spent about an hour in there visiting Sissy. She didn't want to be in the hospital, but you can't always get what you want. I didn't want to hold the baby because I always feel like Lenny from Of Mice and Men feels around puppies. I was surprised at how quiet Enzo J. was, but Ali said frankly that Enzo was a polite baby. Then he pooped on her. That made me laugh a little. Enough baby.
Ali's past the whole Prison Break thing. She's not riveted to the telly every time the show is on now. I came out of the shower this morning and found her in the kitchen washing some tomatoes. "I love tomato!" I could tell by her exuberance that she really liked tomatoes, so as a joke I asked, "Why don't you marry one then?" I turned around to go back into the bath and put my contacts in but before I could make it through the door something whizzed past my shoulder and exploded onto the mirror in the bath. A tomato, evidently an overly ripe, perhaps slightly rotten one obviously meant for the back of my head just missed the strike zone. After I cleaned up the mess and put in my contacts, I went back to the kitchen to see Ali happily munching on a tomato with a little bit of salt. That might actually taste good, unlike carrots and salt, what Jimmy C., my best friend until second form used to eat. His mum would give him carrots as a snack but he wouldn't eat it unless she enrobed it in salt. She gave me one a couple of times, but I didn't like them. I can't say what became of Jimmy C. but illness related to a high-sodium diet wouldn't surprise me. I shouldn't complain about the tomato. To make it up, Ali prepared cold soba noodles and tempura for supper. Lotus tempura rocks!
Gay! Gay! Gay! These were my thoughts as I watched the opening credits of My Fair Lady starring Audrey Hepburn and Rex Harrison. "This is so gay that... well, George Cukor could have directed it!" And so it was. The triggers were all the flowers in the opening credits and the strings. For some reason, this triggered Cukor in my brain. You know, the guy who directed like 95% of Gone With the Wind and then got his ass fired? Yeah, him. Of course, the trigger might also have been the link to Hepburn. I heard somewhere that he liked working with her, so when I saw her name on the DVD case, that kind of set up the trigger. A little treat for fans of Sherlock Holmes too. Apart from a few seconds in the opening scene in Covent Garden, the late Jeremy Brett stays out of the film for the first half, but still manages to get final billing - the second best place to have your name in the credits. Even though his singing is dubbed in the high notes, he gave a good performance.
I was very pleased with the casting of Colonel Pickering. Wilfrid Hyde-White bore a strong resemblance, both physically and attitudinally to my Auditing professor. I'll have to break his heart in a few weeks when I tell him that his awesome teaching skills failed to help me pass the exam both times. I'm sure of it. The upside is that I'll get to have another ten weeks of listening to him make auditing as fun as it can possibly be. I'd seen Hyde-Whyte before, he's the kind of English actor you recognize, but cannot place because Hollywood never got its head out of its ass long enough to give him a lead role. I checked his work, and the only thing I can remotely remember seeing is Battlestar Galactica, (the original, not the one with Grace Park) but my memory of it is so feeble, I can hardly remember whether it was a series or a television movie. I want to say that he was in The Avengers at some point, but its just not so. The whole portrayal was made even stronger by the fact that my professor denied any interest in Formula 1, desite being from Northants., the home of Silverstone and the British Grand Prix off and on since 1950. Instead, he told me he preferred Ascot which is featured in the film. Of course, watching the hats file through the scene, I half expected Sasori to come waltzing through the picture. That would have been nice, but impossible since the character Sasori wouldn't be created on screen until many years later.
Some notes about the house of Henry Higgins: It reminds me quite strongly of the YHA hostel Bobby booked me in at Bath many, many years ago - the layout only. Don't expect to go there seeing a gramophone in every corner. To a lesser extent, it reminds me of the hostel Bobby and I stayed in at London on the same trip (East London, I believe (and not East London, South Africa, venue of the South African Grand Prix on multiple occasions) but London proper by which I mean Westminster). Also, I find myself appalled by the fact that this film somehow incorporates linguistics into its plot. I want to tell everyone, and by that I mean all three of you, that this type of linguistics has fallen from favour in the profession. This film deals with prescriptive linguistics not descriptive linguistics. Sorry, but I take that sort of thing a little too seriously, having dedicated two whole semesters to the study of language. Hopefully, Bobby takes it seriously too.
[Cue the film geek]: This is the part where I mention flaws in the film. At one point, Eliza comes home to bed and is singing. Between moving between the bath and the bedroom, she does not turn off the tap. For ecologically-minded people, this may have been enough reason to stop watching the film or to write a letter, but it did not bother me. I had lost interest in this film as soon as Higgins and Pickering made a bet out of Eliza's future. The taps reminded me of a friend who couldn't sleep unless he let the taps in the bath run. His wife told me that it reminded him of the surf in Barbados, where he lived as a young adult. I didn't buy it. How could water running from a tap equate the surf of Barbados? I took it as another cue for my friend's wife to drop hints that her husband had been independently wealthy in his earlier years, and was now only slightly less so. I hate people like that, don't you? George Cukor was awesome, but he wasn't that good that he couldn't conceal the gas piping laid in the fire. It's clearly meant to be a wood-burning fire, for Eliza is seen sifting through the ash for her ring and I'm quite sure that gas fire places didn't exist in the period that the film is meant to portray (pre-1930s). For further goofs, you may go here.
Why did I watch My Fair Lady? Ali brought it home. It's like she says - if you bought it at a dollar store, you didn't bargain hard enough. She was all ecstatic because she found a way to get DVD movies for free. From the library! It took me a few days to get through, but it was interesting. I wish that there was less singing and more dialogue so viewers could witness Doolittle's transition more closely. For example, that song that Harrison sings about why can't a woman be more like a man could go. If there is a gayer song in theatrical musicals, I haven't heard it. This movie was good though because it stole the fire away from the other movie I watched since Enzo J. was born.
And that movie was Sleepy Hollow starring Johnny Depp, and Christina Ricci among others. I thought it a bit funny that in the DVD features, the American actors kept referring to the tale as a classic American story, which it is, but that there were more English people in the cast than American. Michael Gambon, yes he of the Layer Cake, the very person who proclaims "Welcome to the layer cake, son" portrays Baltus van Tassel, one of the town elders. He's Irish actually, but the point is that he's making an American tale happen. Okay, so the English dudes included that guy from Pie in the Sky Richard Griffiths, Miranda Richardson though she plays an American character, Ian McDiarmid and Michael Gough (actually born in Malaysia but, you know). Oh yes, Christopher Walken plays the headless horseman. He's American.
I was all set to go on a rant about how certain Hollywood figures can get away with anything, but then I realized that the whole incident involving Jeffrey Jones happened AFTER Sleepy Hollow was made. Now, I'm not trying to say Jones did or didn't do anything, but I do tend to believe most things I read at thesmokinggun.com. To be honest, Jones portrays the role in Sleepy Hollow quite well, and I can't think of anyone better suited to play the hideously smarmy character of Reverend Steenwyck. Well done Jeffrey!
Oh, and the movie stars Johnny Depp as Ichabod Crane as the investigator sent from New York City to investigate multiple mysterious deaths. Depp's performance was very well done. I'm starting to appreciate his acting more and more, but in a way he'll always be Officer Tom Hanson from 21 Jump Street to me - and I can't take him completely seriously all the time. Before I forget, the movie also featured another English guy as the magistrate or whatever. Christopher Lee is a guy who did actually play in the Avengers on a few occasions, and apparently made quite a name for himself otherwise as a vampire or mummy. I almost had to pause the DVD and explain to Ali about Lee's career - more so than I wanted to pause My Fair Lady and whip out all my Sherlock Holmes' tapes starring Jeremy Brett. But I did neither. If an actor is older than 21, Ali doesn't care. Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen? She'll care. So there is a huge void between our interests in film, but we somehow reconcile that.
Tim Burton directs, someone I have to admit I've never paid much attention to. He's got the potential and the creativity to become my new favourite American director but I'll have to see more of his stuff before I can truly decide.
