2 posts tagged “secret headquarters”

You may not think that rain is an auspicious start to the weekend, but if you lived in Los Angeles, you would.  You know what else is auspicious?  Getting to see Sam Peckinpah's The Wild Bunch for the first time in your life at the Egyptian Theater in Hollywood on a 70mm print.

Sure, the sound on the 1993 print was a little wonky in places and every other reel change, the projectionist overshot the frame, but who cares?  All those over-the-hill man's men trying to eek out one last score before calling it a career, and attempting to do so without losing their dignity or betraying their code of ethics.  If this movie were remade today (why isn't anyone doing that? I'm surprised...)  they'd cast a bunch of guys who were way too young and comely in the parts of Bill Holden and Ernest Borgnine.  Not to mention every single woman in the movie was, how to put this kindly, used up looking and past her prime.  (Maybe with the exception of one or two.)  The grittiness of the thing and the harsh realism of the casting lends the film a great deal of its '70s era charm.  (Yes, yes; I know it came out in 1969).  The make-up in the gun-play sequences is primitive, but the action set pieces are first rate, my favorite being the interception of the train with the shipment of U.S. army munitions.  That kind of train robbery scene harks right back to the earliest commercial cinema in this country, and Peckinpah delivers his version of it with tension and even emotion (!).  There's a level of male camaraderie in this picture that seeps out of every frame.  I almost felt like the undercover girl at a stag party, or in the room for cigars and cognac when I should've been discussing the latest fashions with the ladies in the drawing room -- and not just because the Cinematheque's audience tends to skew toward the older male.  It's the way Bill Holden and Ernest Borgnine look at each other.  It's the way Holden stands up to the more mutinous of his men when they want to ditch certain members of the team.  But Holden is all or nothing, and not afraid of commitment, at least not to his buddies or his sense of honor.

After the show, the rain was starting to come down.  I hemmed and hawed in my mind over whether or not to go to the Ben Templesmith show at the Secret Headquarters.  My compromise with myself, since I'd left my car umbrella in my gym bag at my apartment, was to swing by the comic store and if there was parking, I'd stay.  If not, I'd call it a night.  Well, there was a single rock star parking space right in front of the store, so I went in.  The party was in full swing, with original drawings of Templesmith's -- most from 30 Days of Night, but also from other works -- up on the walls.  I picked up the first trade volume of Fell, and chatted up Mr. Templesmith (& and his wife Lorelei) for a bit after he signed my copy.  Knowing absolutely nothing biographical about the man, I asked him what part of England he hailed from, only to be greeted with some faint grumbling.  He's from Australia, it turns out, but he cut me some slack because his dad's English, he said, and so his accent's a bit mixed-up.  He reassured me, adamantly, that everything I know about Australians from Crocodile Dundee and Steve Irwin is a lie.  He also gave me the unfiltered truth about how Australians truly felt about the death of the Crocodile Hunter.  Let's just say, not sad.  (Harsh!)  He says he's been in L.A. only a few days on this trip, but that he's planning to move to San Diego in the near future.  I asked if it was to be close to Comic Con.  No, he laughed, it's where his wife lives.  I asked Lorelei how they met.  At Comic Con, of course!  She was working for IDW back then, and pulled a late shift, covering for someone on a day she wasn't even supposed to work.  This one guy kept lingering around when all she wanted to do was close up her booth and go home.  Guess who it was?  Ben.   (Awww.)   I finished my complimentary Corona and headed home to hunker down with my comics and maybe a nice cup of tea. 

I didn't get Columbus Day off -- we don't do that on the West Coast -- but I did have last Thursday and Friday off, which afforded me a nice, long four-day weekend.  On Thursday, in addition to visiting the dentist for a check-up and cleaning and picking up my contacts at my eye doctor's office, I also did some shopping for vintage clothes at this great little store in San Pedro.  I scored key components of my Halloween costume there and also got some frivolous snow boots -- made in Italy -- and a one-of-a-kind hooded cape that I just fell in love with on first glance.  (Think little red riding hood.)  I can't wait for their semi-annual sale at Threads of Time (46 West 6th Street, San Pedro CA).  They have some great stuff there.

That

night, I went to the opening night gala of the Danish Film Festival in Los Angeles, held at the Egyptian in Hollywood where they were screening the original cut -- found after orig. print was lost, in a janitor's closet at an insane asylum -- of Carl Dreyer's Passion of Joan of Arc (1928) with the incomparable face of Maria Falconetti.  One of my favorite films from the '20s (and also featured in a chapter of my dissertation, it was a treat to see the thing on the big screen.  The print they had wasn't as clean as the Criterion restoration, but who cares?  A new score had been composed for the occasion, which was ethereal and electronic, emphasizing the dark side of organized religion, as the young composer put it.  The whole thing was great.  I'm sure I was surrounded by glitterati of the Danish film scene, but I didn't recognize anyone.  I admit, I'm weak on my contemporary Danish film, for the most part.

Friday, I saw Michael Clayton at the ArcLight in Hollywood.  George Clooney in the title role gives a restrained and introspective performance as a disillusioned high-power attorney, working in much more subtle tones than his

disillusioned CIA agent in Syriana.  Sent in to pick up the pieces after a trusted closer, played by Tom Wilkinson, threatens to derail the case -- ostensibly because of his own psychic derailment -- Clayton's moral compass gets some fine tuning as he weighs the costs to his friend's mental well-being against the fiduciary dividends, never enough for a gambling addict, of his distasteful job as a fixer for a law firm rife with seemingly garden variety (but no less gross) mega-corp corruption.  Tilda Swinton plays the in-house counsel for U-North, a giant agri-business firm whose serenely "green" commercials belie a product that is known by in-house researchers to cause major tissue damage in humans.  In over her head with bosses who don't keep her as tight in the loop as they probably should, she is no match for Clayton.  However, not for the reasons we are given to believe -- that Clayton is a no-holds-barred mental giant in a negotiating room.  He's Odysseus to Wilkinson's Sysyphus, deviously clever rather than a nose-to-the-grindstone plodder.  Instead, Clayton will take U-North to the mat from the privileged position of moral authority.  The ethics of the narrative are not overwhelmingly complex, and if the film succeeds it is primarily on the performance of Clooney, with some help from Wilkinson and Swinton, along with the gorgeous camerawork and the minimalist score.  My movie-going companion felt there was too much vagueness in the central case and that the look of the film was too distanced and cold for his taste.  I, on the otherhand, thought every aspect of the atmosphere was pitch perfect and that the central case was meant to be labyrinthine and simultaneously fungible and vague.  Think of the way Bleak House works. The point of the film was the moment of newly achieved clarity and moral rectitude for Clayton, not the ins and outs of the impossible case.  The scenes with the kid were less finely tuned -- esp. all the emphasis put on the allegorical device of the fantastical novel (a story with clear-cut lines of good and evil, one truth-seer against the many still in the cave) that Clayton's young son is reading. Other than that, I thought the film engaging, well-conceived and deftly executed.

Friday night, Bar Keeper in Silver Lake hosted an evening of Sazerak's and absinthe at their monthly cocktail night.  I loved the Sazerac, which originated in New Orleans.  Made with absinthe, simple syrup, grenadine and rye with a curlicue of orange peel resting on top.  It was light, clean and crisp.  The absinthe, cut with water and sugar, was a sweeter concoction.  I didn't drink enough to experience that storied hallucinogenic high that comes with the wormwood based beverage.  On the other hand, I learned that in an effort to make the liquid appear more green, manufacturers in the 19th century used to add lead to their brew.  So, maybe the Alice in Wonderland-effects were more a function of that than herbal toxins.  I only had two drinks, mostly because I had to get up early the next morning because...

...on Saturday I went to Disneyland with my friends Josh and Amishi and their 16 mo. old daughter, Sonya along with

Dan.  Some five years ago, the four of us who walked the earth at that time (Sonya but a gamete in her parents' loins) visited Disneyland just before Josh moved to NYC after graduating from USC Cinema.  So, this was a kind of reunion / replay of that visit, though now Josh and Amishi, then betrothed, are married and parents.  I seem to have made less tangible progress in my own life.  Anyway, we all had a great time, going on the thrill rides and experiencing the slower-paced rides through the eyes of a toddler.  I kept wondering what Sonya was making of everything, esp. when we were on the Pirates of the Caribbean and cannonballs were whizzing by, flashing and making loud splashes in the water around our boat.  Then again, she could experience things only on a pure sensory level -- not processing narrative, as those of us with more advanced frontal cortices were wont to do.  Doubtless, she was far less troubled by the abrupt denouement and conclusion to the Snow White's Adventure ride and I don't think she give a rat's ass about whatever the narrator was babbling on about through the Haunted House ride, now bedecked in Nightmare Before Christmas fashion for the holidays.  She seemed to love it all, except for the giant Winnie the Pooh.  And really, can we blame her for being distressed by a giant yellow bear wanting to take a picture with her?  Probably not.  It's different going to the park with a small child.  Maybe we didn't get on as many rides, but there were other pay-offs.  Like watching Sonya gnaw at a chicken drumstick in the Blue Bayou Restaurant.  (Prob. my favorite eatery in the park, in spite of being hilariously over-priced.  But, maybe that's only because I've never been to the super secret restaurant upstairs from the Blue Bayou called, Club 33.)  We ended our day at the park with a go 'round on the Buzz Lightyear ride / video game (see photo) and ice cream sundae's on Main St.  The park looked gorgeous in its fall colors and all the lights in the trees.  I always enjoy Disneyland in the day, but I absolutely love it at night.  More pics here.  Also, USC lost to Stanford (24, 23) later in the day, which took the wind out of Dan's sails a bit.

Sunday was kind of a kick-back day.  I met up with Marci for lunch at "The Best Fish Taco in Ensenada" and then we had coffee / tea at Intelligentsia.  I hadn't seen Marci in a very long time -- probably a couple of months -- as she's been busy finishing up her dissertation, since she's defending on Nov. 1.  Way to go!  After lunch, I wandered around Sunset Junction a little bit, picked up the latest four issues (nos. 55-58) of Y: The Last Man at Secret Headquarters, because I'm impatient and I can't wait for Vol. 10 of the trade compendium to come out sometime next year.  I walked back to my apartment from Sunset Junction, enjoying the sunny day and hardly believing that another Monday -- not to mention a five-day work week (I've been spoiled the last two weeks) -- was just around the corner.  Before that, though, Devon and I did a little shopping in Echo Park, mostly at a vintage shop called Flounce that has the best stuff, including this amazing coat that I couldn't justify purchasing just now.  I did pick up a pair of faux-carnelian earrings -- little studs in the shape of full-blown roses and a silver cameo ring (again, faux) on a light green field.  Feeling very lady-like.  After chatting over a couple of cups of tea at Devon's place, I made my way home for the evening, in the afterglow of my fun-filled four days.

It was a fantastic weekend.  One for the books -- or at least the blog.