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Inspired by the discussion on John Hicks, I am seeing what iTunes has. Currently listening to Sonny Simmons Mixolydis -- nice so far... Then will follow up with David Fathead Newman Keep the Spirits Singing

That is pretty surprising, as the Canadian copyright is going to be much more closely aligned with US copyright (after all the renegotiations of NAFTA). Maybe it hasn't come in force quite yet but will soon. At any rate, so for this very brief window, Canada is the new Andorra? These CDs will be pressed here and then leaked across the border? I mean there are jazz fans in Canada, but not enough to make a lot of these pressings worthwhile...

The person who spoiled the vaccine was a pharmacist! who "told investigators he intentionally tried to ruin the vaccine because it could hurt people by changing their DNA." Presumably because this is the innovative mRNA vaccine, and it just scares him. Well, clearly he is in the wrong profession. His license has been suspended. Very likely he will be charged, but one never knows these days. https://www.thestar.com/news/world/us/2021/01/13/pharmacist-accused-of-spoiling-vaccine-has-license-suspended.html One of my college roommates went into pharmacy school. A generally nice guy, but he was absolutely convinced that there was proof that homeopathy worked... I guess as long as he doesn't shill for alternative medicines/doctors or try to convince people in his clinic to try homeopathy instead it probably is a harmless quirk. But wait, there's more. According to this story, he (the Wisconsin pharmacist, not my roommate) has been charged, and he is also a survivalist nut... https://www.ctvnews.ca/world/wisconsin-pharmacist-who-left-vials-out-thought-vaccine-was-unsafe-prosecutor-1.5253745?cache=yes He went to his ex-wife's house to drop off "a water purifier and two 30-day supplies of food, telling her that the world was "crashing down" and she was in denial. He said the government was planning cyberattacks and was going to shut down the power grid." Sounds like he is deep, deep down the rabbit hole.

I used to use Nero for my burning needs but in a recent computer upgrade I switched to BurnAwareFree, which free (for personal use) burning software. It has options for burning a standard music CD or a CD filled with MP3s. I assume it can translate .wma files.

Ironically, I just ordered a used LP of Turkish Women (but part of a bigger order so shipping cost wasn't really a factor).

I used to read his columns all the time and his blog or whatever. I was disappointed when the blog and extracurricular writing moved back under the Trib umbrella and it all went under a paywall. It wasn't worth subscribing just to read reviews of shows I couldn't see anyway...

Quebec under curfew. Ontario is going under mandatory stay-at-home order for at least 28 days -- https://news.ontario.ca/en/release/59922/ontario-declares-second-provincial-emergency-to-address-covid-19-crisis-and-save-lives Schools closed or rather going virtual at least until Feb 10. Quite a few loopholes, but this is going to be hard to take. All I can say is that the cases better start declining (and the vaccines pushed out faster). If this doesn't actually seem to bring things under control (because of continued outbreaks in essential workplaces for example), things will not be pretty. All things considered, I'd rather have the curfew...

That is very unfortunate, given that the pressure to cut costs was already pretty evident... The Trib went really big into paywalls a few years back and I basically lost touch with what they were publishing. I thought it was a shame that they couldn't work out a deal that arts reviews were more visible or that arts organizations could quote longer sections in their own publicity. Is Chris Jones, the theatre critic, staying on?

I think it depends what you mean by know. In terms of close friends of course not. But I've lived in five different metro areas and had 7 different jobs where I interacted with roughly 100-200 people (maybe more like 50 on a weekly basis). Now I also don't stay in touch with many people after I've moved on, but certainly some. The working together bit to me is a bit deeper than Facebook friends, and that is definitely close to 500. However, I would concede that some of my LinkedIn connections are not as close as they could be...

I would think probably a majority, esp. people living in cities who just interact with more people. For me the bigger question is how many people will have lost someone in their extended family. I remain very worried about my cousin in Brooklyn and my wife's parents in Chicago. So far, no one has caught it.

Absolutely, I've been astounded watching the shipping price from US to Canada go up (was always higher Canada to US). There can be a few deals to be found here and there, esp. with private sellers on Amazon, but I always pay attention to shipping prices now and I didn't before (10+ years ago) unless it was India to US or something otherwise unusual. Recently I managed to get quite good rates from Network and BFI (direct, not through Amazon.co.uk).

Not specifically Brexit-related but the shipping costs from Amazon.co.uk to Canada and presumably US have gone through the roof . Will probably never order direct from them again but some of the individual sellers have rates more in line with what I used to pay.

So very sorry to hear this, though am absolutely amazed at the caregiver! Will make donation later tonight.

I probably won't get to the actual film for another week or so, but I was watching the extras and was intrigued to learn that Jacques Demy's The Young Girls of Rochefort was simultaneously shot as a French version and an English version. There are some behind the scenes shots of the choreographer speaking to the principals in English! And quite a bit of dubbing during the songs. It doesn't appear that the English version is available anywhere, which seems quite unfortunate. It surely would have fit on the Criterion Blu-Ray as a bonus feature.

I think there was some confusion in the thread. People were talking about both Ambersons and Touch of Evil (where at the time the Restored version had supplanted the theatrical version). I was focusing just on Touch of Evil. This is the 50th Anniversary version - https://www.amazon.com/Touch-Evil-50th-Anniversary/dp/B01M8PP7EV/ref=sr_1_2?dchild=1&keywords=touch+of+evil+50th&qid=1609996760&sr=8-2 This Blu-Ray also has all 3 versions - https://www.amazon.com/Touch-Evil-Blu-ray-Orson-Welles/dp/B07G2D87JH/ref=pd_sbs_74_1/146-4348742-9713367?_encoding=UTF8&pd_rd_i=B07G2D87JH&pd_rd_r=d21e9e01-9d9f-4465-87bd-c20813c2e60c&pd_rd_w=xChgZ&pd_rd_wg=kPzzY&pf_rd_p=3ec6a47e-bf65-49f8-80f7-0d7c7c7ce2ca&pf_rd_r=29GFN26WNQ744CYP47EB&psc=1&refRID=29GFN26WNQ744CYP47EB The Preview version was longer than the theatrical release. It was discovered in 1976. Some of the extra material was shot by Orson and some by a director the studio brought in for some reshoots after Welles was off the picture, but it is generally closer to what Orson Welles wanted. Then 20+ years later Rick Schmidlin tried to recut the film according to Welles infamous memo to the studio, using material from both versions (and perhaps additional found footage - you'd have to go through the documentary to get those details). That is the Restored version. Apparently the opening shot is quite different (not as much Mancini and no titles to interfere with the extra long shot). It does sound like the Restored version is in this case much closer to what Welles wanted. I'll try to at least get through the first few minutes of all versions over the weekend.

While I'm sure people that are interested found this out long, long ago (2013 to be exact), there is in fact a "50th Anniversary" 2 DVD set that has the theatrical release, plus something called the "Preview version" plus the "Restored version" (with completely different commentaries on all 3!). As well as some quite interesting documentaries on the film. It looks like the main Blu-Ray release from 2018 also has all three versions. I managed to pick up a copy of the DVD set recently and am debating where to start. The Preview version does seem to have the most interesting commentaries but I think I am still leaning towards watching the "Restored version" first.

Still on a bit of a Criterion binge. Had a chance to watch this dark comedy for this first time tonight - The Inheritance by Masaki Kobayashi. Really interesting. Pretty much everyone hatches a scheme to get part of the dying man's inheritance. There was one plot twist that I did catch but I missed whether another character was also plotting or was actually innocent, more or less.

This is the one on Bandcamp, I think. I kept meaning to pick it up on a Bandcamp Friday but kept forgetting. Will try to get to it soon in the New Year. Currently listening to Misty Thursday by Duke Pearson. In general, I've been revisiting a bunch of Whatmusic.com CDs I picked up back in the day (mostly Brazilian music but also Collier's Deep Dark Blue Centre). The label seems to have gone out of business. Most but not 100% of the catalogue has migrated to the streaming services.

I've had Chimes at Midnight as a Spanish import for some time, but finally had a chance to watch the Criterion version (which came out in 2016) where they really got it cleaned up and the sound synced a bit better. https://www.criterion.com/films/28756-chimes-at-midnight I'll probably have to watch it another time or two to decide if it really is up there with Citizen Kane and Touch of Evil, but likely so. Anyway, definitely worth checking out the interview with Beatrice Welles (his daughter who had a role in the movie though apparently they dubbed her voice...)

There are certainly a number of things that I bought for myself that could be considered self-indulgent, but I think probably the Complete Blu-Ray set of Monty Python's Flying Circus is probably right at the top, namely because I already had them all on DVD (on the old A&E set)! No question that the quality is much better and they have restored a handful of deleted/censored scenes. Sometimes this is integrated right into the main episode (the more satisfying way) but when the restored elements were notably lower quality, this is usually treated as a stand-alone bonus feature. Not only did Network remove the VAT from the price, but shipping was free! (Maybe this was because I ordered right before Christmas.) https://networkonair.com/all-products/3077-monty-python-s-flying-circus-norwegian-blu-ray-edition Happy to discuss if anyone wants to buy the DVD set (which is still quite fine all things considered) at a steep discount, though shipping (even to another part of Canada) is likely to be pricey!

While I didn't learn guitar or even banjo, and I didn't brush up on my French, I decided I could actually watch a few of the Great Courses now that Toronto is going into extended lockdown. It turns out that the library has quite a few of these courses on DVD (and they still do a kind of curbside pick up for the moment at least). I've gotten most of the way through Understanding the Quantum World: https://www.thegreatcourses.com/courses/understanding-the-quantum-world Super interesting (and spooky as Einstein said), though I wouldn't say I "understand" it much more than before. Next up is Black Holes, Tides, and Curved Spacetime: Understanding Gravity, which might be of a bit more use to my son as he heads into high school physics. (Somehow I don't think he'll need to know quantum physics for the time being.) It's even on sale, though I was happy just borrow it from the library. https://www.thegreatcourses.com/courses/black-holes-tides-and-curved-spacetime-understanding-gravity

Fair -- the story is still developing. Possibly a bit of both... There have been a handful of doctors, including in BC, that are on the verve of having their licenses suspended because of their aggressive anti-vaccine stance. But it really takes the cake that you would try to prevent this from going to others, even if you choose (foolishly in my view) not to take it yourself.

Apparently there are more anti-vaccers than we imagined among the medical community. This is truly infuriating: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/dec/31/wisconsin-health-worker-deliberately-spoiled-500-covid-vaccine-doses I'm glad this person was fired and hopefully will be severely prosecuted.

I do agree, but at some point someone (with questionable judgement perhaps) stuck Osby in such a list. He laughs about it in this interview: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:VE0KuENK5akJ:www.jazzweekly.com/interviews/ndpt1.htm+&cd=2&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=ca&client=firefox-b-d (I knew I wasn't completely imagining this.)

Grease would like to have a word with you...