The recent books

During the cold snap I was looking for some new reading. Even though I do put lots of books on hold at the library, (one is available for pickup right now and another is in transit) I like browsing. I like walking through the library to see what's going on. It's a far cry from the tomb in the town where I went to high school. 

Our typical branch is the Fish Creek Library. It's the second biggest in Calgary, and busy all the time. During the recent renovation they installed some glassed in office spaces that patrons can book. Every time I walk past, they are full. I like to imagine what people are doing in there. Many are studying, buried in a book or laptop, or back and forth between both. Sometimes it's an animated meeting, one of which had the taint of an MLM sales pitch oozing out of the glass.

There's three floors, all open to each other. There's a huge children's section, including a decommissioned fire truck, and their happy noise fills the whole library. Usually I start browsingwith the photo books. I've read all the ones I'm interested in that are on the shelves there, so then I branch out. On the recent trip I found these.

The Art of Miss Peregrine's Peculiar Children, by Leah Gallo. We saw the movie mainly because I'm a fan of Eva Green (who isn't?) and Asa Butterfield (Ender's Game, which was an amazing short novel, then it got bloated with expansions and sequels.)

Movies are such complicated things that I'm sometimes amazed that they get made at all, and that's before Hollywood executive stupidity gets involved. I like reading about some of the back story and seeing photographs of the movie, or of the set, or of the actors relaxing or between takes. This is a good one for that if you enjoyed the movie, which I did. Now I want to see it again.

Film Noir by Alain Silver and James Ursini. I love me a good noir movie. For a long time I didn't really get black and white movies, thinking the colour ones were more modern and thus better. Well, better is a discussion best had with lots of beer. Don't get me started on the abomination of colourized black and white movies.

I've since come to realize that the story and characterization are much more important than the special effects.  Back in the day, the effects available to film makers were crude by today's standards. They did the best they could, but they weren't the focus of the movie. The story and the atmosphere of those movies is incredible. Much more immersive than modern CGI.

Many modern movies bore me. I don't care how elaborate or frenetic the chase scene is, if I don't care about the characters and the outcome of the chase, it's irrelevant. It doesn't matter what the characters are wearing, or not, if there's no chemistry it's all ho-hum. And yeah, I'll cop to saying that Bogart and Bacall is the standard for chemistry.

Don't get me started on frantic cutting between scenes. Maybe I'm getting old but I like to enjoy the scene, see who all is in it and what they're doing. Sometimes cuts add to the movie, like Snatch, and Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels. But often not.

Another recent book that isn't going to get discussed here is about James Cameron. He's done some amazing movies, but Titanic and Avatar were boring. Technically brilliant, yes, but I dozed off during Avatar.

 

Peter Jarver, A Life's work 1953 -2003, no author or editor name given.

Gorgeous, stunning photos of Australia. I got given this as a gift, and I drooled over almost every page.

Notice the dates. He died at only 49 years old. It makes me pause to think about that. He went out to places and captured images on film that are amazing, mostly using a large format camera. He had some adventures along the way, of course, going into wild places. 

But 49! A reminder that I'm still up and around, and I should get out there and see more of the world, and take more photos.

I look at some of his images, and it's easy to think they were digitally manipulated, except look at the dates. His work was printed and displayed before photoshop was a verb. I wonder what he would have made of modern digital cameras and AI image manipulation. 

Of the Day

Driftwood (NZ)

Driftwood (NB)

Film

I suppose I should talk about this one a bit. I was strolling along the river and found these amazing tufts of grass overgrowing a storm sewer outlet, waving in the breeze, in really interesting light. I wasn't sure how it would show up on film and how much flaring there'd be. That's part of the fun of film.

Linda

Newfoundland

New Brunswick

Why ever didn't I publish this, and maybe I did

90 days, or so ago

Flower

Landscape

Dino related