More Than True

Review

Movies for the seeing impaired

April 23, 2014 Movies Writing

Jodi: Sometimes your facial expressions don’t match the situation. At all.
Me: Oh, no, they are always correct expressions. We are just out-of-sync.
***
Seeing a movie at the Capitol theater a week or so ago. The movie starts. WB logo comes on screen. A woman’s voice says, “LOGO, CENTER SCREEN.” It is a strange choice, I think, esthetically. The voice reads the text appearing on screen. “In space, survival is impossible.”
The voice starts to describe the action on screen. People float in space. One dances to music. One is frustrated. I am pleased the voice will be explaining facial expressions as we go.

The film stops cold. The blackness of space is replaced with the blackness of nothing. Two completely different blacknesses.
Someone says, “They are fixing the sound. It was playing the soundtrack for the visually impaired headsets.”
The film begins again at the beginning.

I watch the film regretting what could have been. As the film passed the previous stopping point I am left to wonder what the narrator would say. Probably information to enrich my moviegoing experience. In space narration is possible, but optional and limited.

***
By the way, I prefer the version of Charles Chaplin’s “Gold Rush” that he re-released after sound came in. Chaplin narrates the silent film all the way through. Critics revile this version. I love it.

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Yesterday I saw…

February 4, 2014 Info Personal Vegan food Writing

I saw a man with a giant afro. At a distance it looked like a giant cowboy hat. It is impossible to express the joy of this sighting.
Blame psychogenic alexithymia, if you must.

A sign at a rest stop stating “You cannot be forced into work” translated into many languages. Whoever hangs these posters are unfamiliar with the peculiarities of capitalism in society. Also they hang these signs over the sinks, showing they are unaware that 90% of men do not wash up in the bathroom. And that is another reason to avoid shaking hands.
Or perhaps they do know these things. I enjoy a good conspiracy theory.

I thought: “People don’t ride trains enough because there aren’t enough trains. There aren’t enough trains because there isn’t enough track. Society has gone off track.”

I ate at a vegan restaurant. I like to eat at vegan restaurants because they have a wider selection of food I want to eat. I ate at Papa G’s vegan organic deli. It looked like this:

Tempeh, corn, mashed potato with mushroom gravy. Papa G's Portland, OR.
Tempeh, corn, mashed potato with mushroom gravy. Papa G’s Portland, OR.

A cat tried to steal my love.
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Hats off to Michael O’Donoghue

February 1, 2014 Books Info Links Movies

Michael O’Donoghue semi-famously said:

Making people laugh is the lowest form of humor.

He also said:

A kangaroo walks into a bar. He tells the bartender, “Blood is the lipstick of all wounds.”
The bartender does not know how he said this, or why.

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