2014 — 22 December: Monday
My poor little IBM Security Trusteer weekly report1 has yet to notice that it's had nothing to report since I switched web browsers (and it sort of fell by the wayside). My web browsing habits are spectacularly dull (and, I trust, cautious) from the point of view of my occasional (but regular) pokes at either my online accounts or dear Mama's. In fact, if its little pop-up hadn't, erm, popped up while I was awake enough to notice it, I could easily have forgotten it was still (like a couple of my unwelcome but retreating cold germs) gently malingering around.
"E" for effort :-)
Meanwhile...
... it's already long past time for my next cuppa. Then there's the whole, tedious issue of some fresh food shopping. Somebody round here keeps eating the stuff... I enjoyed that latest "Parker" tale, by the way, and may well now seek out the others I'd missed in recent years.
And, if you've borrowed any of these three DVDs from me, drop me a line please!
"Bobby" — Emilio Estevez + many others "Recount" — Spacey, Balaban, Wilkinson, Begley "Religulous" — Larry Charles, Bill Maher
Oddly, they all arrived at some point in January 2011, and seem to have departed at some later date. Perhaps I was simply disorganised back then? I have watched, and enjoyed, all three films. Wonder if Junior's the culprit?
Alas!
The Grauniad's latest web design (it has finally switched over from the long-running Beta) is as irritating (to me, at least) as the unexpected new look given to El Reg last week. But I suppose you get what you pay for. In my case, nothing.
I shall not be changing 'molehole' any time soon :-)
Later
Well, I sailed delicately into a parking slot at Waitrose that was just being vacated by an over-size Chelsea tractor. Lucky. Then — after a pause while the busily re-booting hand-held scanner station got the round tuit needed to release a working device — trotted round the well-stocked shelves dodging nimbly around my trolley-wielding laden fellow hunter/gatherers while trying not to breathe too near any of them. I was thus back by noon, just in time to hear the new "Composer of the Week": Vivaldi, always a pleasure. Regardless of "Panic Saturday" there was no overt panic-buying on display, but the store was clearly rather a lot busier than normal.
I note my cold has left me with a somewhat raw throat. When my aunt's virus had reached that stage she thought she was no longer infectious. I think she may have been wrong. Wonder how the rest of my little family is faring.
Living my life...
... in a generally self-absorbed sort of way (that's to say, like a lot of other folk) I was blissfully unaware that William Friedkin had ever made a fresh attempt on one of those gritty 1950s black and white French films I've only ever needed to watch once, because once seen, it's simply never forgotten. Giving it a title faintly reminiscent of "The Exorcist" didn't help its case, and nor did releasing the thing in 1977 in the same week as "Star Wars".
Like "Looking for Kitty" last week, it also contains a letter to me from the director. Here's an extract:
Twenty years before, I had seen the classic French film The Wages of Fear, directed by H.G. Clouzot, a master of suspense. I thought the story was still relevant: four desperate men, driving two cargo trucks filled with nitroglycerine
to extinguish an oil-well fire.
It seemed to me a metaphor for the warring nations of the world, who had to find a way to cooperate or blow up in a nuclear disaster.
I wanted to change the characters and incidents from Clouzot's masterpiece and make a totally original scenario, not a remake.
Despite all the problems and setbacks, the cost overruns, bruised egos and shattered friendships, I felt then and still do that Sorcerer is the best film I've made. Basically "lost" for 36 years, seen only in truncated, butchered
versions, it has remained in the memories of many who saw it along the way, including influential critics and filmmakers.
Not that anything he says could ever induce me to watch "The Exorcist", much as I enjoyed "To live and die in L.A." and the guilty pleasure that was "Jade".