Edmund

Nightmares in hi-def

The inclement weather last Saturday forced me to stay indoors the whole morning, so that gave me the opportunity to finally to see all the recently-released Alfred Hitchcock classics in high-definition:

I was most excited about Rebecca. I wanted to see again the scene where the ever-creepy Dame Judith Anderson tempts Joan Fontaine to leap to her death. A frame from that scene was used as the Blu-ray’s front cover art. Dame Anderson’s eyes in it are quite Satanic.

Rebecca was only previously available as an out-of-print Criterion Collection DVD—and so were Notorious and Spellbound. But MGM must’ve been under an Ingrid Bergman fixation when they released these Blu-rays, since they didn’t release Suspicion (again with Joan Fontaine and Cary Grant) along with the others. In any case, I’m just thankful to see these great films again after so many years—and on a rather creepy day, too.

I’m not a huge Gregory Peck fan, but I’ve always loved him in Spellbound. There.

Day-off movie. Stephenville, 7.35 AM—Long before Mad Men there was Down with Love:

I’ve been wanting to see it since 2003, but I just couldn’t get hold of its widescreen version DVD. Well, I finally found one at the Wal-Mart bargain bin last week—for $5.00, plus HST, of course. It’d better be good. I’m putting it on the computer’s Blu-ray drive as soon as I’m done writing this.

“Consummatum est!” . . . of sorts

I decided to spray-paint the crown of thorns and make it metallic-looking. For one, “Jesus” has dark hair, and brown “thorns” just wouldn’t stand out when it’s on his head. Secondly, our Jesus Christ Superstar-inspired tableau will also be patterned after Lady Gaga’s Judas music video, so a metallic crown of thorns would add some edge to our presentation’s semi-futuristic look.

J____, who will play Jesus—a Max von Sydow/Enrique Irazoqui type of Christ (with a little Adam Levine thrown in)—tried the crown yesterday, and it really looked great on him. Only a handful parishioners have actually met him, and those who’ve only heard of him are now actually already referring to him as “Jesus”!

More “Latin” stuff. My secretary brought an almost-antique copy of Desiderata to the office, and memories suddenly came crashing through. A poster of the poem, with a painting of Rodin’s The Thinker as background illustration, was prominently displayed in our Grade 8 classroom—along with a beautifully-designed poster of Edgar Allan Poe’s Annabel Lee. But, to be honest, I’ve never read Desiderata in its entirety to this day.

Q is for “queen”

Yesterday the nice lady at the post office called my attention to the catalogue of Canada Post’s collectibles commemorating the Queen’s diamond jubilee:

I guess the jubilee, then, explains why I’m reading this—although I was not really aware of the jubilee when I picked it up last week:

Sally Bedell Smith’s Elizabeth the Queen: The Life of a Modern Monarch is not a coffee table book, but the pictures inside it and the book’s overall design and typography are simply beautiful. The Queen’s iconic image in the dust jacket is quite hypnotic. If I remember correctly, the picture for the word “queen” in one of my first ABC board books from Froebel-Kan was based on that same portrait.

Queenly. Ever After: A Cinderella Story was the parish’s movie night feature last week. We trust that Danielle de Barbarac and Prince Henry did live happily ever after—although the real Henry II of France was married to Catherine de’Medici, and he fooled around a lot with Diane de Poitiers. We also love to believe that Danielle did become queen eventually. The crown looked so good on her:

Thorny issue[s]

Preparations are underway for our parish’s Jesus Christ Superstar-inspired Passion tableau for Good Friday. The costumes have been bought—and some of them (especially Jesus’ loincloth) are being sewn as we speak. Among other things, I’m having difficulties casting the soldiers—it’s so hard to find tall Newfoundlanders. Our Jesus (to be played by an Ontarian) is a towering 6’3-tall hunk—I do not want the soldiers who beat up Christ to look puny and ridiculous beside Capital H-I-M.

I ordered a rather expensive crown of thorns prop from a Halloween shop in the States. It looked good in the ad, but I was utterly disappointed when it arrived last week. To me, it looked and felt like chocolate Twizzlers:

I’m gonna try to return it—if I find the return slip, that is . . . which I believe I have thrown.

I was going to order a handmade crown of thorns from a guy in YouTube who makes replicas of the props and jewelry from Lady Gaga’s Judas music video, but he suggested that I make it myself, since shipping would be quite expensive. Besides, he already made a nice video tutorial on how to make a crown of thorns. So I myself made one yesterday:

Wires: $1.12. Spiky twigs: free from the leafless trees in the backyard. The satisfaction you get in doing and seeing something better: priceless.

Proud and prejudiced (2)

In fairness to my childhood bullies, the fault wasn’t entirely theirs. A 7-year-old boy who plays with paper dolls—and who reads Jane Austen!—is understandably an easy target for teasing and ostracism. Being ridiculed never bothered me then, so it’s not gonna bother me now. I don’t play with paper dolls anymore, but I still love Jane Austen—and I finally got Dover Publication’s rather difficult-to-find Pride and Prejudice paper dolls:

Elizabeth and Darcy, Jane and Bingley, Lydia and Wickham, Mrs. Bennet and Lady Catherine are all there . . .

. . . with their many gorgeous “clothes,” of course . . .

This paper doll set is the type that is not used for playing at all. It’s the type that’s kept in the library—intact. And it’s definitely not meant for little children. If it were, Dover would’ve included the figure of at least one of the four cute Gardiner kids.