Merry Christmas!

 That is for you who follow the Gregorian Calendar - my church's calendar has Christmas on January 6.

Christmas Eve day was spent going to Payless in the morning, dealing with the pain in my side, scanning "One Dead Blonde", and a trip to the convenience store in the evening. I think the pain passed - the cramping bent me over. I talked to KH, but that was all.

It is warm, gloomy, wet outside. No bus, so not going far.

I figured out I could run movies in a window while scanning. Which is how I got to see Takeshi Kitano's Outrage trilogy. I started watching his movies before the turn of the century, and was glad to catch up with him. It amazes me that he is closing in on 80. I finished off the night by getting through most of John Wick 4. I have seen the other three, so it completed the series for me. It came to mind that the violence in both is over the top, but Kitano's does not shy from the ugliness of brutality. The Wick movies hides brutality in the choreography of spectacle.

Starting the day working on this blog with Midnight in Paris. Woody Allen is not a filmmaker who got me out to the theater, but one who I knew was important. It also seemed like his movies never stayed around my area for long. I am enjoying this one.

KH has problems with certain characters in "Chasing Ashes" - Captain Ahab and Edgar Allan Poe - and his solution is that the narrator is delusional. But what would he make of Midnight in Paris?

To work.

sch