Clash of the Titan

The Marshal has been annoyed with the neighbors lately. You see, Titanescu spends most of his evenings on the bed with us, and glares towards our front door whenever their baby can be heard or nails are hammered, like the other day.

Titanescu has paws of Russian bear
Titanescu has paws of Russian bear

He is generally cranky, and can go from 0 to Pissy in less than two seconds but he kept staring at the window with a look that said: “Твою мать!

And I made the mistake to reach out to pet him on the head.

It was like a scene from a bar fight: he spun round to stare at my outstretched hand with a pissed off look and smacked it with an audible “whap!”

Sounded like a handful of putty thrown hard against a wall, no sh*t. It echoed through the room.

Unfortunately for Rhuda-an, he was sitting on her chest as she started laughing.

When Titanescu gets mad, everyone needs to be real quiet for a while. Those guffaws pissed him off all the more and he snapped his jaws at her hand before rearing his head back, mouth wide open in the longest hiss I’ve heard since 1979, exhaling a cloud of fetid fish breath at her.
His lips curled, some spittle blew forth, some just dribbled out and it lasted so long he almost coughed at the end… Right in her face.

Because we couldn’t stop laughing uncontrollably, he jumped off and ambled into the kitchen with his weird walk, ankles together, feet kicking outward.

We followed him in there, but there’s one more thing about the old coot: when you piss him off, he shuns you. He turns his back to you and will ignore you completely. A little bit like this:

It took him maybe another 20 minutes to cool down enough that he could come back and be with us…

…and we love him.

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Roger Ebert (1942 – 2013)

Yesterday, this great film critic lost his fight against cancer. I grew up watching this man and it’s because of him that I learned to love great movies. I have no words that can do him justice so please go read this wonderful tribute by Chicago Tribune.

Roger Ebert dead: Film critic had the soul of a poet

File:Chaz Hammel-Smith, Roger Ebert, and Nancy Kwan at the Hawaii International Film Festival in October 2010
Left to right: Chaz Hammel-Smith, Roger Ebert, and Nancy Kwan at the Hawaii International Film Festival in October 2010

Roger will be greatly missed. Our condolences to his other great love…his wife Chaz Hammel-Smith.


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Jacky and the rest of them…

Ah. The movies. And to dream of being more than what we are, or less, maybe even other…

Hugo” – (126 minutes, USA – PG)

I had really been looking forward to watching “Hugo” because Martin Scorsese is one of my favorite directors and his latest film competed directly with “the artist” at the last Academy Awards.

Both films express a passion for movies at a time when much of the public shuns theaters for at-home viewing, like us here at JBoD. I frankly can only think of two films in recent memory which passed the “windshield rule”: “we are what we are“, Terrence Malick’s “the tree of life“, perhaps even Lars Von Trier’s “Melancholia“.

On my daily commute, especially in the summer months, I get to enjoy both sunset and sunrise, a benefit of working nights. And so I got to wonder just how many films are really worth watching on anything larger than a car windscreen. By and large, especially with high definition TV, I feel most movies fail the test.

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Fake Tales of San Francisco: Name That Movie

Over the years, the city of San Francisco has starred in quite a few books, movies and tv shows. Steve McQueen and Clint Eastwood have driven its streets. Dashiell Hammett also made San Francisco the stage of The Maltese Falcon. One can even take a 4 hour Dashiell Hammett walking tour. Contagion was one of the more recent movies that was filmed here. It is also the host of the headquarters and council chambers of the United Federation of Planets and Starfleet.

Not long ago we watched a movie starring our wonderful city.  Watching it, I realized that I had photos of almost every place that was important to the story and I decided to play a little game. I’m going to post the photos and maybe you can figure out which movie we watched. I don’t think it will be difficult for the movie buffs out there.

Lloyd Lake
The Pillars of the Past is the first landmark mentioned in the movie, though not shown
Lombard
900 Lombard was the home of the leading male character
Nob Hill
The Brocklebank building at 1000 Mason on Nob Hill was where the leading female character lived

The characters visited other places in and out of The City. I present them in no particular order.

Mission Dolores
Mission Dolores, the site of a mysterious grave
Legion of Honor
The California Palace of the Legion of Honor was home to a mysterious painting
Muir Woods
The two lead characters paid a visit to Muir Woods, North of San Francisco
Palace of Fine Arts
The movie couple took a stroll around the Palace of Fine Arts
Fort Point
Fort Point, the site of major drama. The chain link fence was erected after 9/11 and was not present in the movie

If you have figured it out already, good for you. For those still struggling, I have placed several photos below the fold that should provide the answer.

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A musical interlude and the content of things to come

I’ve been mulling over a review of the Mexican film “we are what we are“, finding it just about as difficult as reviewing, say, “rubber“. 2010 turned out to be a great year for quality films.

So as I’ve done in the past, I will do a sort of trifecta, in which I will use two other films which content helps gain an appreciation for the first one. These are Takeshi Kitano’s Yakuza movie “outrage” and Britain’s “Brighton Rock“, adapted from Graham Greene’s novel.

All three are terrific dramas well worth checking out. In the mean time, we hope you might enjoy a sampling of music we love. The first by French duo June and Lula: “I’m not going”.

Then from Brittany, Nolwenn Leroy’s “Tri Martolod”.

And from 1980’s Belgium, Front 242’s “welcome to paradise”…


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