Lions, and Tigers, and Sick oh my
Its Monday evening and I've spent the bulk of the day in bed sleeping. When I got up this morning my gut was on fire and… well, the disgusting details don't need to be shared. Truth told, this was an extension of something I've been going through since last Friday.
When I finally woke up, and decided to stay awake for a while, I called around to see if financial aid had been taken care of, at the school I am currently attending, and a few other odds and ends. I even went online and started looking up possible apartments that I might get into when I move out to Utah in the very near future. It's about a month away. If number 8 ever gets back to me about his getting the time off (and now ability to get to the airport) I might breathe a little easier. The whole trip is going to be a little nerve racking regardless of what he does.
Beyond that I've not really done a whole lot today. Tried to avoid everyone I live with because what I've got is pretty nasty and tried to sleep a lot. When two p.m. rolled around and I was just waking up I was a little surprised. I didn't think I'd slept that soundly for that long. I must really not be feeling well (I already knew that part).
I did watch Notorious the other night. It was good. It was really good. An old black and white movie shot mostly on rear projection screens so that Hitchcock didn't have to find a way to shoot the movie from South America - even though a unit had been sent to South America to do the shots for the rear projection work.
I'm not really certain how to describe the movie. I liked it and at the same time felt that it was one of those movies I would need to watch again, and possible again, in order to get the full gist of what I'd seen. Ingrid Bergman played a part that, at one and the same time, I'd never seen before and felt as though I'd been through portions of this movie. After the movie was through I rather methodically went through the special features and there was an alternate ending, to the movie, that I thought I'd read before. It basically ended with three secretaries annotating a card for Ingrid Bergman's character stating she'd been married again, this time to her handler. They comment on it and suggest that if she gets married one more time they will have to start another card for her. Like I said, the whole thing felt way to familiar especially since I know I've never sat down and watched that movie before. This Alfred Hitchcock thing is somewhat new, to me, and the movies I first purchased were all the ones I'd seen and liked of his from the past.
Regardless, the movie follows a rather loose woman from Miami, where her father is convicted of treason and sentenced to twenty years in prison, to South America where the U.S. Government, in conjunction with the South American governments, are trying to weed out the old Nazi party members who are hiding and working to start a new Nazi movement. Her role is to get in good with the Nazi's and find out their secrets. Eventually, she marries one who's had a crush on her for several years.
The film ends, pretty much how most of Hitchcock's films end, the hero, or heroine, gets away, the bad guy gets it, and the couple ride off into the metaphorical sunset in love and ready to start a new adventure that doesn't include mistaken identity, intrigue, or death. That is one of the reasons I like Hitchcock, he's not trying to be something other than what he is. A storyteller. And he does it remarkably well in this movie.
Admittedly, I spent a little more on the film than I was expecting. It is a Criterion Collection copy of the movie that is digitally remastered from original or early film and recreated in such a way as to stand up for the directors original vision. Audio is kept in the format it was originally intended and everything is maintained in a way that would stand up to what, in this case, Hitchcock intended the film to be. ,
Hopefully, this will be my most expensive Hitchcock for a while. I plan to go back and purchase the less expensive, Signature Collection, versions of his films. They are good. He was good at what he did. Therefore, the outcome is, what many have said, what second rate directors strive for in their careers even with a movie that is considered a bust. They are all good.
Granted, I haven't seen any of his original movies, but I understand that come October, they will be re-released in a DVD collectors set and I may need to step in and get them then.