Wednesday, April 8, 2009

Day #21,295

Today's walk: Burrard/Georgia/Thurlow/(bus)/10th/MacDonald

flowers are blooming
aprox km1683 10th Avenue

Today's Song: Diamond Head
Written by Danny Hamilton of The T-Bones. Originally recorded by The Ventures and their version was the first record to sell 1,000,000 copies in Japan. Danny Hamilton went on to be the Hamilton in "Hamilton, Joe Frank & Reynolds" of "Don't Pull Your Love" fame.
The cover versions are by Impala (Memphis, 1995) and the Royal Guitar Ensemble (unknown, probably a UK studio group, 1967).
The Royal Guitar Ensemble LP can be found here.
And zip-your-rip has just put up a T-Bones LP.

Since it's a surf instrumental, there must be a video with the world's cutest guitar player, Chicchi. Actually, there's a bunch of them and here's one:


Today's Movie: Flight (1929,Frank Capra)

Well, it just goes to show, even the great ones need a script in order to make a movie. I've been pleasantly surprised by the pre-"It Happened One Night" Frank Capra movies that TCM have been showing. It shows that Capra was making great movies long before his academy award bonanza of 1934. But, here we've gone back too far. This was made in 1929 and the plot is based upon a gimmick that was probably pretty old even in 1929: the misunderstanding. And Ralph Graves in the lead role doesn't help. Then I looked at the writing credits: story by Ralph Graves. It almost makes you think that this Ralph character may have come from a rich family who put up the dough as a vanity project for little Ralphie. However, his credits show that he goes back to 1918 as an actor and even directed in the 20s.

Today's Movie #2: Masques(1987, Claude Chabrol)

The career of Claude Chabrol is an odd one. In the late 50s he was a leader of the "novelle vague". In the 60s he made crap. Then he began work on perfecting the style of Alfred Hitchcock. And it worked - he has been churning out wonderful replicas of the Alfred Hitchcock movie for at least the last quarter century. And this is one of those. If you like Hitchcock, you like Chabrol. In this one Philippe Noiret plays the smarmy host of a TV talent show for seniors. His TV show's theme song? The theme from the Alfred Hitchcock TV show.

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