ALMOST CHRISTMAS

Apropos nada.. and maybe some stuff.

Having a terrible time getting Blogger to publish this the way I like. Fingers crossed. 

I'm frustrated with spending a great deal of time going through my Facebook page and seeing all the political crap that permeates our current consciousness.  I take time to delete photos of a certain unpopular (to me) candidate for President, it seeps into my home and ... frankly.. to coin a term.. it's icky.  I used to tease a very conservative pal, Tom Hayden (in Colorado, not the California guy),  that Donald Duck could be the President and all would remain pretty much on course. When GWB stole the election and ruined our country, I had to apologize.  The Duck would have done a better job.  

All this is to say that I'm going to try to stop snarking or praising on Facebook and allow myself the comfort of just keeping my thoughts pretty much to myself and by expressing them here, may or may not get comments.  I really don't care. It's a vanity trip.

The ideas will be random and mostly inconsequential.   

I dialed around the TV dial just now to see a very young (22) Leonardo DiCaprio as Diane Keaton's son in Marvin's Room.  This after recently attending a screening of The Revenant which stars Leo (now 41) as a tracker / guide for fur trappers in the frozen north.  A grizzled Leo shows that a kid with talent can move through a career proving himself every step of the way.  The score of Leo's new movie is magnificent.. over powering in places. The cinematography is amazing.   Bloody and cold.  Emphasis on the bloody.. and the cold.   In recent movies, the director has chosen to mat in 'warm breath' coming from the actors' mouths.  It always takes me out of the story.  In The Revenant, sometimes it's cold enough to see the characters' breathing.. sometimes not.  It's much more real and authentic.  

This recalls The Notebook, a film that a good friend was in charge of at New Line.  The scene with two young kids in the middle of a street was supposed to be working in the summer time.  Because of scheduling problems it was the middle of winter when this "warm summer" scene was shot.  There are the kids in summer attire extolling their love... with their clouds of breath issuing forth.  That's real, too, but I felt sorry for the actors freezing their tails off in the dead of winter while playing a warm summer night. 

As I said.. random and apropos nada..  Stay warm. 

Odd and disparate thoughts.michaelsheehan