Friday Holding Patterns - Random Ten, Cats, Whatever

Work proceeds on the four shows. Darius Stone has joined the cast of Harry in Love - waitaminit, Darius has the same name as a character Ice Cube played in some movie? Well, that's a pain for Google searches. I now have lists of the "preferred" casts for each of the four shows - each of which, apart from Harry, with its nice little six characters, has had to expand by two to four actors as I realize I need more performers and different types in the casts.

Emails are out, waiting to hear back for the next step. I have a handful of people to audition as well. Also been working out the calendar for both myself and The Brick for the rest of the year. Looks good. Looks busy, but not crazy.

There are now 22,998 songs in the iPod - let's see what comes up this morning . . .

1. "Besoin de la Lune" - Manu Chao - La Radiolina
2. "Just One Look" - Martha Reeves & The Vandellas - Beat of the Pops 16
3. "Shadows on the Very Last Row" - The Cleftones - For Sentimental Reasons
4. "Die Schlangengrube und das Pendel" - The Peter Thomas Sound Orchestra - Film Musik
5. "There's No Satisfaction" - Manfred Hubler & Siegfried Schwab- Vampyros Lesbos (Sexadelic Dance Party)
6. "Out Out Out" - Ice 9 - Out Out Out 7"
7. "The Third Man Theme" - The Don Baker Trio -Ultra-Lounge 11: Organs in Orbit
8. "Strawberry Letter #23" - Brothers Johnson - Jackie Brown soundtrack
9. "When I See Mommy I Feel Like A Mummy (live 1978)" - Captain Beefheart & The Magic Band - I'm Going To Do What I Want To
10. "Not Yet Remembered" - Brian Eno & Harold Budd - Ambient 2: The Plateaux Of Mirrors

I was thinking it was a pretty boring mix this morning - songs I'm glad to have in the iPod, but none that leapt out at me and made me really glad to hear them this morning - and then the Brothers Johnson track showed, and made me quite happy, though it's also a kind of overcast song for an overcast morning, and then the Beefheart just made all good. And the Budd/Eno matches the rain and light on the window.

What for cat photos today? Well, most of my photos are of the cats being hugged or lying around like meatloaves. Are they active? You bet.

As when Berit discovers that a fake flower lying around from old props has caught Hooker's attention, and she dangles it for him . . .

He goes for it, getting the brief attention of Moni, who has the attention span of a goldfish . . .

Causing her to make a leap at it, to his surprise . . .

Getting it briefly in her paws, she sniffs it and finds it uninteresting . . .

And she immediately moves on, forgetting the toy ever existed, and the more determined Hooker continues the assault . . .

Okay, I have a few things to do around here today (mainly descend to the dank prop storage in the basement and find some costumes I'm going to loan to Henry Akona for Hiroshima - some lab coats and a "radiation suit," which is actually Edward Einhorn's anyway, that I borrowed for the midget spaceman avatar in Symphony of Rats and put on The Brick's effigy of Santa Claus).

Go wake Berit now and get on with the day - amazing that the construction in the apartment next door hasn't woken her, it's unnerving me and scaring the cats. Don't know what they're doing, but it's sounded like they've had the bathroom wall out over there for weeks and weeks now. We can hear the conversations they're having in there as if we're in the same room, which makes it unnerving at times to use the john while they're over there yelling at each other about how best to do something - it sounds like someone who lives in the apartment doing the work with a friend or relative who either is a contractor, or has a lot of experience with remodeling, or at least thinks he does. As Berit says, after trips to the bathroom listening to their profane "discussions," "I've never learned so much about grout in all my life!"

And Special Guest Star Ian W. Hill as Bob Slebodnick!

Oh, hey, I forgot I'm making a Special Guest Appearance this weekend in a sitcom for the stage! And it's FREE!

The Welding Club presents

3800 ELIZABETH

by Aaron Baker & Frank Padellaro
directed by Aaron Baker

starring Michael Criscuolo, Peter Handy, and Iracel Rivero
With special guest stars Gyda Arber, Alexis Black, Bryan Enk, Ian W. Hill, Heath Kelts, and others TBA.

A "sitcom for the stage," 3800 ELIZABETH follows the absurd non-adventures of Germanophile bartender AJ, his hypochondriac ex-girlfriend Sonja, and his recently-moved-to-the-big-city-from-a-slightly-smaller-city childhood friend Mike. Week after week, Mike will make impractical life decisions, Sonja will think about Jane Eyre, AJ will offer up witty rejoinders along with Gibsons and Old-Fashioneds, and quite possibly we'll all learn a valuable lesson (or maybe not so valuable).

Will sparks fly when Mike moves in with best friend's ex, or will he hit it off with her younger sister instead? Does Sonja really suffer from bonelessness (or, at least, Mad Cow Disease)? Will AJ's new version of German catch on? Is that girl sitting at the end of the bar really the Devil? Is AJ really being followed by covert government agents? And how will all of this affect Mike's chances of becoming the starting center for the Knicks?

Sundays at 8pm
February 3rd to March 16th
At The Battle Ranch, 111 Conselyea Street - between Leonard Street & Manhattan Avenue - in Williamsburg, Brooklyn
(Take the L train to Graham Avenue, or the L/G train to Lorimer Street)

Admission is FREE

The performance schedule is as follows...

February 3rd - Episode 1 - "Knickerbockers"
February 10th - Episode 2 - "I Heart the Devil"
February 17th - Episode 3 - "Sonja the Boneless
February 24th - Episode 1 - "Knickerbockers" (re-run)
March 2nd - Episode 4 - "The Man on the Silver Mountain"
March 9th - Episode 5 - "Writ of Estoppel"
March 16th - Episode 6 - "The Rules"

Hope to see you there!

Judging What Maybe Shouldn't Be

This was interesting. Or at least an enjoyable waste of time.

Edward Copeland over at his blog does a little Oscar survey every year, asking the online film geek community to rank the five best and worst winners from the past in an Academy Award category. In 2006, he did the Best and Worst of the Best Pictures. In 2007, the Best and Worst of the Best Actress performances. I think I voted in the first, but not the second. It began to feel silly trying to judge one against another. Also, the "worst" always seemed to be about personal feelings toward the people involved, not any kind of actual attempt at judging the work itself (especially with the "Worst" actresses, where the criticism of younger, pretty actresses who have the TEMERITY to try to be RESPECTED as ACTRESSES headed well into misogyny). And it's still a small sample of actual cinema in any case, with what I would consider Best and Worst nowhere near being nominated most of the time.

This year, Edward turns to the Best Actor category. I looked over the list and wasn't bothering thinking about it after that - nothing made me feel like I wanted to try and decide one over the other with the actors. But from a few other posts around his and other blogs, it looks like the voting was really light this year - maybe a few others had the same feeling as me - and as I had nothing to do on a nasty rainy night, what the hell . . . I'll try and rank the Best Actors as seen by AMPAS.

I left off any performances I hadn't seen, or at least hadn't seen enough of to feel qualified to judge, which was a few - 15 or so I think. I was actually pretty interested in how this came out - I guess it says something about some kind of acting that I like. Quite a few performances I liked in movies I didn't, and really few performances I could knock at all, until we get to about the bottom 10 or so. You send in only your top five and bottom five to the survey, but in order to get those I had to cut and paste around a list of all of them, and since I wound up with the whole list for myself, here it is, from my favorite to least-favorite of the Best Actor Oscar performances, top to bottom:

Marlon Brando - On the Waterfront
Fredric March - Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
Alec Guinness - Bridge on the River Kwai
George C. Scott - Patton
Marlon Brando - The Godfather
Ray Milland - The Lost Weekend
Fredric March - The Best Years of Our Lives
Humphrey Bogart - The African Queen
Gregory Peck - To Kill a Mockingbird
Gene Hackman - The French Connection
Nicolas Cage - Leaving Las Vegas
Ben Kingsley - Gandhi
Daniel Day-Lewis - My Left Foot
Lee Marvin - Cat Ballou
Robert De Niro - Raging Bull
Clark Gable - It Happened One Night
Peter Finch - Network
Jack Nicholson - One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
Rod Steiger - In the Heat of the Night
Laurence Olivier - Hamlet
William Hurt - Kiss of the Spider Woman
Jamie Foxx - Ray
Ernest Borgnine - Marty
Jeremy Irons - Reversal of Fortune
Tom Hanks - Philadelphia
Gary Cooper - High Noon
F. Murray Abraham - Amadeus
Burt Lancaster - Elmer Gantry
James Cagney - Yankee Doodle Dandy
Rex Harrison - My Fair Lady
Victor McLaglen - The Informer
Broderick Crawford - All the King's Men
Paul Scofield - A Man for All Seasons
Jose Ferrer - Cyrano de Bergerac
John Wayne - True Grit
Dustin Hoffman - Rain Man
Maximilian Schell - Judgment at Nuremberg
Robert Duvall - Tender Mercies
Yul Brinner - The King and I
William Holden - Stalag 17
Cliff Robertson - Charly
David Niven - Separate Tables
Sidney Poitier - Lilies of the Field
Jack Lemmon - Save the Tiger
Philip Seymour Hoffman - Capote
Gary Cooper - Sergeant York
James Stewart - The Philadelphia Story
Michael Douglas - Wall Street
Tom Hanks - Forrest Gump
Ronald Colman - A Double Life
Jon Voight - Coming Home
Dustin Hoffman - Kramer Vs. Kramer
Anthony Hopkins - The Silence of the Lambs
Art Carney - Harry and Tonto
Wallace Beery - The Champ
Jack Nicholson - As Good As It Gets
Paul Newman - The Color of Money
Kevin Spacey - American Beauty
Bing Crosby - Going My Way
Russell Crowe - Gladiator
Charlton Heston - Ben-Hur
Roberto Benigni - Life Is Beautiful
Richard Dreyfuss - The Goodbye Girl
Henry Fonda - On Golden Pond
Al Pacino - Scent of a Woman

And if I had to pick my five favorite male/female performances from all of film? Never actually even thought of that before . . . and it's odd what comes up.

For men, Bob Hoskins in The Long Good Friday, Lee Marvin in The Killers, Brad Dourif in The Exorcist III, Richard Erdman in Cry Danger, and Marlon Brando in Last Tango in Paris.

For women, Naomi Watts in Mulholland Dr., Theresa Russell in Bad Timing, Agnes Moorehead in The Magnificent Ambersons, Julia Ormond in The Baby of Macon, and Sheryl Lee in Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me.

At least, that's what it all looks like tonight. Ask me again tomorrow and it could all be different . . .