(5/15/17 - 5/21/17) This week in:

[disgruntled_owl]

 

Movies

This week was mostly random Netflix and library grabs, but high quality ones!

Laura (1944, Preminger): I rewatched this one after snagging “The Rough Guide to Film Noir” from the library. This film is very classy, with only hints of seediness at its fringes, but the plot is still compelling--multiple men infatuated with the same woman a they investigate her murder. I liked that the most intriguing character is neither the hardboiled detective or the femme fatale, but the imperious, preening newspaper columnist trying to learn the fate of his protégé.

Rear Window (1954, Hitchcock): Rewatched this one after making my way through part of Thomson’s “How to Watch a Movie.” Would love to read the short story from which the screenplay was adapted (“It Had to Be Murder” by Cornell Woolrich) to see how the act of catching hints of a crime through windows did or didn’t work as prose. I also struggled a bit to make it through the hour-plus of slow build--one can only watch Jimmy Stewart cock block himself for so long--but damn if the payoff isn’t great. I must have rewound the moment where Raymond Burr looks up to catch Jimmy Stewart watching him six times.

Projects

At the halfway point of my Hunchback of Notre Dame (Disney, 1996) fic, which I expect to be 70K-80K words when it’s done. I’m anxious about posting pieces of it before I finish the first draft, because I'm not quiiiite sure how it’s going to end, though I’d love to get some chapters up later this summer. I think it’s about time I start learning how to fast-draft. Not a lot of writing got done this week (see “Life Stuff” below), but I’ve had some fun filling my search history with weird stuff (patron saints of necromancy, punishments for murder in 15th century France, etc.).  

Life Stuff

This week, I went back to Long Island for my maternal grandfather’s (“Papa”) funeral. He was 89 years old. I was lucky in that I was home the week before and was able to visit him in hospice a few times. While he was asleep during most of my visits, I was able to hold his hand and talk to him. He wasn’t a talkative person, but I like we had to think we had an affectionate, if conversation-light, relationship while I was growing up. My fondest memories of him are from when I was in college, when he began to share more about his life; including working on farms to escape the summers in Depression-era Williamsburg and sailing around the South China Sea around the time of the Korean War. The wake and the funeral were tough, and I expect that some melancholy is still on the horizon, but there were some wine-heavy family-gathering good times while I was home, too.

And, this week was not without bright spots, like Fannish brunch on Saturday morning, and a tasty fish dinner and a puppet slam with my husband on Saturday night.