Yesterday, I saw the Finnish movie “Fallen Leaves” at the local arthouse screening room, a theater I hadn’t been in before. $13 for a ticket. Ouch, when did that happen? I can get a monthly Criterion Collection subscription for less money. And my Epson projector throws a bigger picture on the wall.
The only reason I did this was because of the critical garlands heaped on the film from the usual sites. 98% Rotten Tormatos. Palmed Door invite. The director’s 20th film. And I wanted to check out the little screening room, which has about 26 seats but some with “stadium seating”. It was a perfectly good communal viewing experience.
My mistake was not viewing the Audience Score for the film, which at 51% seems about right considering that the movie had no spark, no story arc, and finished with a contrived ending. It was the longest 81 minute movie I’ve sat through.
For a long time, I’ve generally ignored movie and music criticism at the “professional” level. So many critics seem to be “on the take”, likely fearful of upsetting the internet hive, or they go along with the pack because they’ve made it a career out of it.
With new music, there’s a few people I’ll read, but most of the new music I hear arrives from the my weekly Spotify Release Radar playlist. It’s not perfect. I appreciate it more for alerting me to new releases by artists I follow than the extras it throws in.
In this week’s Playlisting:
Final story: For the past 19 days, I’ve been waiting for a power cord from MyVolts to get out of Den Haag so I can add a new effects box to my rig. Last night, the package arrived in Chicago:
Winter is supposed to arrive on Monday (January 8th) and extend into Tuesday, so I expect a further delay. That’s OK. I try to be patient. I like the MyVolts cables, which I’ve bought previously. They enable my chained effects boxes to run off battery power and making it fully mobile (and portable, it all fits in a laptop bag).
That’s it for now. A busy week ahead in the short days with bad weather followed by the deep freeze. Tis the season. Let’s try to find a creative way out.