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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...

I would say Greg Osby is often lumped in with the Young Lions, though he was musically all over the place in the 90s and 00s. St. Louis Shoes may be his most traditional album.

A Touch of the Blues showed up crazy fast - it was mailed out on the 26! I'm a little sorry I didn't add another CD or two to see about combined shipping, though my wallet thanks me for my restraint... Anyway, I'll be checking this out this afternoon.

While it wasn't a complete artistic success for me, I thought Rushdie's Quichotte had a lot going for it. Probably the best book I read was Camus's The Plague and the best book I reread was Atwood's The Edible Woman. I did reread some key Thoreau essays, and I have to say I get more conflicted each time. The strain of extreme individualism that Thoreau embodies is ultimately extremely corrosive. I also feel he comes across as cold-blooded and somewhat provincial (trying to be an island and proving Donne wrong) in his famous bit in "Where I Lived, and What I Lived For": "And I am sure that I never read any memorable news in a newspaper. If we read of one man robbed, or murdered, or killed by accident, or one house burned, or one vessel wrecked, or one steamboat blown up, or one cow run over on the Western Railroad, or one mad dog killed, or one lot of grasshoppers in the winter,—we never need read of another. One is enough." Now this essay tries to reclaim Thoreau by saying that he didn't really mean it that way (and he was mostly against the commodification of the news), but I find the apologists wrong-headed: https://www.neh.gov/humanities/2018/summer/what-would-thoreau-think-our-24-hour-news-cycle I see no reason to believe he didn't mean what he actually wrote, and he simply wasn't that interested in other people and their fates. I do agree he would be completely aghast at today's society.

I agree with Dan. I've never found KK remotely appealing -- to the point that I would pass up free KK donuts left in the lunch room. (This was somewhat common when KK was just breaking into the Chicago market.) Somewhat ironically there are still a handful of KK outlets in Toronto, though vastly outnumbered by Tim Hortons', while, sadly, there are no Dunkin Donuts franchises anywhere in Canada at all. There was one hanging on in Montreal as late as 2018, but its franchise was not renewed...

Agreed. I put in an order and will likely have it in early Jan. Looking forward to it.

Watched Gilliam's "Final Cut" of Brazil for the first time in many years. I forgot that it is a Christmas movie, much like Die Hard... I did remember the gifts/bribes for officials, but forgot that they were presents. I definitely didn't remember one of the chief officials dressed up as Santa Claus! In my defense, I think this was in the European & Final Cut, and I have only seen the Final Cut twice (counting tonight). Growing up I saw the US theatrical release several times, and I don't think that particular scene is in there, though I could be mistaken. Never taken the time to watch the upbeat "Love Conquers All" version, but there are supposedly quite a few differences and it is much, much shorter (though with a marginally expanded role for DeNiro). Maybe I will one of these days.

I probably should have specified unissued at the time of recording. It's great that BGO has issued/reissued so much material, and this all seems available on the streaming sites. This was very much not the case in the early 2000s.

I came to this material a different way around - through the UK reissue house Whatmusic.com. What was a bit peculiar about them is that they only had a few British jazz titles. They mostly were reissuing Brazilian music, and I was turned on to some amazing stuff at very reasonable prices in the early 2000s. The CD and LP version of Deep Dark Blue Centre are both sold out, but there is a nice mini-essay by Collier still archived on the site - http://www.whatmusic.com/info/productinfo.php?productid=169&menulevel=catalogue&returnurl=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.whatmusic.com%2Fcatalogue.php I don't know if I still have my CD copy. Probably so, but it would be hard to put my hands on it right now. I am pretty amazed at how much unissued material by Collier is on iTunes and Spotify, and I'll be listening to a lot of that over this week thanks to being prompted by this thread. The most intriguing is a suite that Collier wrote inspired by Lowry's Under the Volcano!

My kids have aged out of Pixar films, but I saw the trailers and was completely underwhelmed. This is not a movie that appeals to me on any dimension.

It does appear that there is a bit of a sale on at Record Store Merurido, but I am just not able to navigate the menus even with Google Translate. I gave up and migrated to Amazon.co.jp where they had a few copies of Waldon's A Touch of the Blues left. In the process of doing all this, I found out that Waldron's What It Is is available for pre-order (shipping on or around Jan 27), so I decided to get that as well. Kind of an expensive day, but that's sort of par for the course around here... I assume there will be another large batch coming out at the same time, but I promised myself not to even look...

I held off for the longest time but finally got a Blu-Ray player. I needed to make sure I found one that would play Region A and B. I've been hanging onto Criterion's Tati Blu-Ray set for some time now and finally broke out some of the discs. Some of the bonus features are incredible. There is a slightly different version of Jour de Fête from 1964 with hand-colored elements, which is what I watched tonight. And then back in 1995 they were able to print a color version of the entire film! (Tati shot the entire film with two cameras but the color version (very experimental) couldn't be developed into viable prints at that time.) It's not quite as earth-shattering as if they found true color negatives of a Chaplin or Keaton film (rather than Ted Turner's colorization process) but pretty close. I'll probably watch the color version over the weekend.

That was definitely Organissimo.

Sending good vibes your way. Feel better soon!

Quite literally from an airport recycling bin! Quite an interesting (if brief) tale with a happy ending. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/340000-surrealist-painting-was-found-recycling-bin-180976542/

The lockdown in Toronto and Peel is being extended and "tightened" in unspecified ways that we find out on Monday. I know that people are very weary and are longing for their old lives back. I've heard that office workers may be told unilaterally that they need to stay home, but I hope that doesn't happen. The city of Hamilton is entering lockdown on Monday as well. Very glad and still a bit amazed that the vaccines have arrived so early. This came at a truly ground-breaking pace, but it will still be a long winter, even with light at the end of the tunnel (late spring maybe when a reasonable number of people have been vaccinated and we can do a few outdoor social things again?). Please don't listen to this "expert": https://www.ctvnews.ca/health/coronavirus/brazil-s-bolsonaro-warns-virus-vaccine-can-turn-people-into-crocodiles-1.5237678 The vaccine will not turn you into a crocodile... As hard as it is, I think it is still best not to travel to see loved ones over the holidays and just celebrate twice as much next year. Hoping that everyone can stay safe and still enjoy the holidays (in moderation)...

Thinking I might catch the Sat. Kenny Barron show.