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weekend update
Jan. 8th, 2006 11:36 pm.
This weekend, we found an indoor sport for Sarah. I took her down to our nearly empty basement and told her she could ride her Big Wheel around it. She zoomed happily around for a while. It's warm down there, and as long as she doesn't hit the furnace, everything's swell. I'm not sure that's going to last, though. She now seems to only want to ride around if I'm chasing her or she's chasing me. So much for my dream of sitting on a folding chair and watching her chase herself. How quickly things grow stale.
We also got another movie into rotation: Disney's Sleeping Beauty. She only has to skip one or two little sections of that. I'm working on the concept that since we know the evil fairy loses, we can laugh at her when she thinks she's winning. We'll see how that goes. She also sat with me and let me watch all of "Grand Canyon," the short that comes with S.B. It is, of course, a live-action music video for Grofe's "Grand Canyon Suite," which only takes one relatively small liberty with the source material, which is almost unheard-of for Disney. Sarah wasn't happy with the spider, but I told her it was only on the TV and not real. The snake came, and I said much the same, adding that if we opened up the set, we wouldn't find any snake inside; it was just a picture. After that we got into the interesting way the snake -- a sidewinder -- got around, and the tracks it made.
As with any weekend, there was other stuff, but these were the highlights.
Movie Viewing: Besides Sleeping Beauty, of course, which was on multiple times, I also watched Killer Diller, another "Black Cinema" flick from, hm, the middle 50s? Unlike the ones I'd watched before this, where they'd do a little plot, then a number or two, and a little plot, more music, and so on to the sudden resolution, this had more of the structure of a Paramount Screen Song cartoon. Plot, plot, plot, then suddenly musical numbers, then a brief return of plot that resolves into a punch line. The music was first-rate, with Andy Kirk's band and Nat "King" Cole headlining, and some super tap dancing from a duo whose names I didn't catch, not having known who they were when they were shown in the opening credits. Kirk's band was top-notch. Cole's trio was a joy to watch. Mr. Cole's solid musicianship and perfect projection of personality make him utterly watchable, and listenable. The last number the trio did was an instrumental, so I could just enjoy Cole's piano playing without being so dazzled by his singing that I fail to notice his playing. The story was a series of jokes, including jokes that demolished the movie utterly. The Keystone-style cops (seriously: they kept doing those little jumps-in-place that seemed to make more sense in undercranked silent comedies) and the crazy magician and Moms Mabley were all running around, up and down stairs and in and out of magic boxes for little or no reason. At one point the policeman in charge declares that the magician has run down the stairs -- he knows because he saw the movie before. The grand conclusion is that the magician opens a door and there's a sign inside that says "THE END." So it doesn't take itself too seriously, and neither did I, but apart from the over-Koppiness of the constabulary, it was mostly enjoyable.
.
This weekend, we found an indoor sport for Sarah. I took her down to our nearly empty basement and told her she could ride her Big Wheel around it. She zoomed happily around for a while. It's warm down there, and as long as she doesn't hit the furnace, everything's swell. I'm not sure that's going to last, though. She now seems to only want to ride around if I'm chasing her or she's chasing me. So much for my dream of sitting on a folding chair and watching her chase herself. How quickly things grow stale.
We also got another movie into rotation: Disney's Sleeping Beauty. She only has to skip one or two little sections of that. I'm working on the concept that since we know the evil fairy loses, we can laugh at her when she thinks she's winning. We'll see how that goes. She also sat with me and let me watch all of "Grand Canyon," the short that comes with S.B. It is, of course, a live-action music video for Grofe's "Grand Canyon Suite," which only takes one relatively small liberty with the source material, which is almost unheard-of for Disney. Sarah wasn't happy with the spider, but I told her it was only on the TV and not real. The snake came, and I said much the same, adding that if we opened up the set, we wouldn't find any snake inside; it was just a picture. After that we got into the interesting way the snake -- a sidewinder -- got around, and the tracks it made.
As with any weekend, there was other stuff, but these were the highlights.
Movie Viewing: Besides Sleeping Beauty, of course, which was on multiple times, I also watched Killer Diller, another "Black Cinema" flick from, hm, the middle 50s? Unlike the ones I'd watched before this, where they'd do a little plot, then a number or two, and a little plot, more music, and so on to the sudden resolution, this had more of the structure of a Paramount Screen Song cartoon. Plot, plot, plot, then suddenly musical numbers, then a brief return of plot that resolves into a punch line. The music was first-rate, with Andy Kirk's band and Nat "King" Cole headlining, and some super tap dancing from a duo whose names I didn't catch, not having known who they were when they were shown in the opening credits. Kirk's band was top-notch. Cole's trio was a joy to watch. Mr. Cole's solid musicianship and perfect projection of personality make him utterly watchable, and listenable. The last number the trio did was an instrumental, so I could just enjoy Cole's piano playing without being so dazzled by his singing that I fail to notice his playing. The story was a series of jokes, including jokes that demolished the movie utterly. The Keystone-style cops (seriously: they kept doing those little jumps-in-place that seemed to make more sense in undercranked silent comedies) and the crazy magician and Moms Mabley were all running around, up and down stairs and in and out of magic boxes for little or no reason. At one point the policeman in charge declares that the magician has run down the stairs -- he knows because he saw the movie before. The grand conclusion is that the magician opens a door and there's a sign inside that says "THE END." So it doesn't take itself too seriously, and neither did I, but apart from the over-Koppiness of the constabulary, it was mostly enjoyable.
.
