To Sleep With Anger

Charles Burnett's "To Sleep With Anger" is a fucking masterpiece.

Lipstick on Your Collar, Part 2

Finished "Lipstick on Your Collar." 
I looked carefully at the credit sequence; I think this is early CGI, of the type REO Speedwagon and The Cars (if I remember what little MTV I saw) used to use in their music videos...
Upbeat ending for the younger generation, who are perfectly happy with the way things turn out (World War 3 is averted, Britain fades into the background of world politics).
Funny, but the Potter figure Pvt. Francis Francis (Potter doing a little Joseph Heller here) gets the biggest reward, a beauty (Kim Huffman) who's an intellectual equal and indescribably (in other words, American) rich. Ewan McGregor gets the working-class girl Sylvia (Louise Germaine, also gorgeous--Potter, who produces, knows how to cast his heroines), and they're perfectly content to listen to all the rock 'n roll that Potter skillfully (if with less depth and feeling than with his '30s songs) sprinkles all over the place.
The only note of nostalgia and regret is struck by Thomas and McGregor's boss, Col. Bernwood (Peter Jeffrey). He remembers when England was once great and he's the one champing at the bit to invade Egypt, perhaps face off with the ultimate enemy, Soviet Russia.  It's with the less ambitious and at the same time more practical and adaptable younger uns that hope for world peace lies (Thomas and Huffman love Pushkin and Chekov, while McGregor and Germaine would rather gyrate to rock).
No it's not one of Potter's best--which means it's only one of the more complex and witty and sophisticated recent musical comedies around, instead of an indescribable masterpiece (which "Singing Detective" was).

Lipstick on Your Collar

Am more than halfway through Dennis Potter's "Lipstick on Your Collar." Interesting effort, one of his late series (the last made before he died in 1994), and the debut performance of one Ewan McGregor.
You can tell, Potter's not as much into '50s rock and roll--his use of songs are clever, even funny, but only once does the song have the same intensity as in anything in "Singing Detective," or "Pennies from Heaven." Significant choice of setting: the nationalization of the Suez, which marked the end of England's reputation as a superpower, and is at one point thought to be the start of World War 3, or the end of the world (This series was made in 1993, seven years before the millenium's end).
Even more significant is Potter's view of women. He has at least one woman in his works that is well-sketched--I'm thinking Bernadette Peters' role in Pennies from Heaven, and Janet Suzman in Detective--but only in "Detective" is there a woman (Suzman) who is on equal footing with the protagonist. Most of the time they're whores or opportunists, usually both. Well-sketched, Potter's too good not to do otherwise...but Suzman makes you realize what he can do with women characters when he puts his mind to it.
It's much better produced than "Detective"--Potter wrote and produced this, and it's said that when he surrounded himself with yes men instead of collaborators his work suffered. You can see the sets are more elaborate, and they have a few optically printed (CGI?) special effects, but it works on only two levels--fantasy and reality--where "Detective" works on four: detective story, real life, childhood, and some meta-level where all three mix and play, with concurrently far more power.
Still, wonderful comedy, funnier and more complex than any recent musical I can think of ("Moulin Rouge," "Chicago," etc.).

Boiled beef

The wife did boiled beef with potatoes, parsley, whole peppercorns.  I took the bones, scooped out the marrow onto slices of toast, sprinkled a little fish sauce on em, and it was delish.

Angels in America, Part 2

Saw the second half of Angels in America.

Well, I liked this incarnation of the angel--no distracting fires, and Nichols actually seemed to have built a set and resorted to wirework to float Thompson. I'd have liked a fiercer angel--someone who looks as if she'd tear you to shreds as bless you. And the sex was annoying--onstage they just writhed in orgasm, no floating around or CGI nonsense, thank you (do I have to add that I found the flames on the aldder annoying?).

Nichol's directing I liked better, maybe because this part has more comedy setpieces; I especially liked the confrontation between Prior and Pitt and between Prior and Pitt's mother. I guess I've forgotten that Nichols is good at comedy...just don't ask him to do magnificence, or SFX, or subtlety, or large cast ensembles all talking in one shot.

Most critics find part 1 better, but I liked how part 2 developed...this is the payoff for a lot of what seemed pointless, and you know and like the characters that much more, even Cohn. Pacino was moving, annoying, funny, moving again--it doesn't have the intensity of a stage performance, but Pacino does it justice, I think.

Wilson's Joe Pitt is an interesting case. Kushner found it in himself to sympathize with all his characters, even a demon like Cohn, but Wilson is left practically in the dark--I guess you can be on the good side, or even on the wrong side, but magnificently, and he'd give you a measure of respect; it's the shirkers and the ones who fall short in their goodness or evil that are totally shut out.

Angels raises interesting thoughts about the differences and similarities between something like this and something like The Singing Detective, which is an obvious influence, and between someone like Kushner and someone like Potter, who use similar techniques to almost diametrically opposite ends--but I'd stop and leave it for further thought,,,maybe an article or two...

What film has the best special effects?

In reply to a thread with the above question:

That's an interesting question.  Effects make the impossible possible, of course, but sometimes it's not good enough that they do this realistically; they have to show beauty and imagination as well.

By that criteria, the all time greats for me would be the 1933 King Kong, Fritz Lang's Metropolis, Cocteau's Beauty and the Beast, Murnau's Faust, Orson Welles' Citizen Kane (the shots are mostly not photography, but SFX), of course 2001, and maybe as recent as Blade Runner.  I may be forgetting a few here.

Of recent examples I did like the effects in Coppola's Dracula, Spielberg's 1941, and the Coen's The Hudsucker Proxy. 

Of CGI films my list would be very very short: Master and Commander shows the state of the art in realistic CGI effects, I think, while Jackson's Heavenly Creatures show how they can be used to poetic effect.  Pretty much all else tends to make me shudder.

Marinara redux

How to do decent marinara sauce without any fresh herbs or other ingredients?

So I chopped up an onion and four or five garlic cloves, fried them in olive oil, immediately threw in four mildly spiced Italian sausages, sprinkled in some kosher salt and fresh-ground pepper, then sauted until toasty brown.  I didn't have ground beef or pork, so I tossed in a large eggplant, peeled and diced.  An Indian college roommate back in Michigan taught me how to cook eggplant--if you cook it the right way, it looks and tastes like sweet pork fat. Emptied two cans of tomato paste, three cans of water (or the paste cans filled with water three times), all of the remaining Chianti (about half a can, not much), two tablespoons of brown sugar for that "I don't know what, but it's good" quality, some dried basil and a lot of dried oregano.  Tore several Kraft cheddar slices into the mix (learned to tear them lengthwise, so they'd melt easier when you mix), then, in lieu of a fresh basil hit, spooned the last of the remaining bottled pesto we bought from the supermarket into the sauce. Now THAT smelled and tasted like fresh leaves, just chopped and dropped into the sauce, with the added bonus of crushed pine nuts and a bit of parmesan into the bargain.  Not bad at all.