So I'm on the lookout to buy or build a house out here in So Cal in the next couple years, maybe $5-10 million range I don't know. The only stipulation is that it must have a gallery and private movie theater. Found this poster tonight that would look perfect framed but ... it sold out in 30 seconds last month!





I don't know how people find out about **** like this so fast, but I'm hunting for this poster now.

This one is a must too:





And more:








or maybe this one instead

sheeeit, watched some Ozu and I can say that a few more scales have fallen from my eyes. Feels like a before/after moment, kinda like after I discovered Chekhov. My rankings so far:

1.Tokyo Story
2. Late Spring
3. Early Spring
4. Early Summer

Planning to Watch (what am I missing?):
Good Morning
A Hen in the Wind
Tokyo Twilight
Floating Weeds
Late Autumn

I also watched Paris, TX. Not amazing imo but solid. TBH I haven't been disappointed by a single movie in the Criterion Collection, and I've watched a pretty wide range of stuff.

Watch everything in your plan and rest up and then watch the greatest film of the 20th Century:

yessir




There are still a few Ozu I haven't seen yet, but I would rank Late Spring, Early Summer, Tokyo Story, and Early Spring all equally. Tokyo Twilight is dark mage Ozu, maybe one tier below his best (imo) but still top-250 on Letterboxd, and you will remember the scene at the train station.

Good Morning is another classic, much more lighthearted in tone. A Hen in the Wind is underrated, I think, really liked that one, just some different visual motifs and scenes (and one ending) that Ozu improved upon in his later films.

Some others:

I Was Born, But ... (one of the greatest silent movies ever made)
Dragnet Girl (super stylish, western-style gangster noir)
The Only Son (Ozu's first talkie and one of Roger Ebert's "Great Movies")
What Did the Lady Forget? (minor Ozu but so fun and breezy)
An Autumn Afternoon (Ozu's final film and 3rd highest rated)


Yeah I agree with Phat Mack, watch everything on your list and consider the ones I suggested (especially an Autumn Afternoon since that's major Ozu). Dragnet Girl is 1930s silent Ozu but mother ****ing hot damn it's so ****ing stylish, and the last 20-25 minutes are equal with Late Spring, Early Summer, Tokyo Story, and Early Spring among my favorites in all of Ozu.





I actually went and saw Dragnet Girl in theater a couple years ago with a live musical performance. That was one of the best nights of my life, except for the part when my date stood me up and then tried to reschedule. I had to tell her no, if you stand me up on an Ozu date, sorry, we're just not gonna work out.

Phat Mack, you need to stream Criterion Channel man. Not only can you watch those Yamanaka and Shimizu films I suggested to you, but they actually added some really great categories this month.

Black Westerns
New Korean Cinema
Japanese Noir

There's also some von Sternberg and Marlene Dietrich, and another category filled with foreign Oscar winners (Bergman, Fellini, Bunuel, etc). Pretty sure I'm the only person here who watched all 7+ hours of Sergey Bondarchuk's War and Peace.

I've thought about it. Unless I'm studying a movie and trying to figure out how it works, I don't like watching movies at home. But if it's a rainy day and I've got the house to myself, it is the perfect thing to do. I'm on the fence.

Always nice to get a call on a Saturday night from the apartment manager and find out that our building's first ever break-in was my car window getting smashed in the gated underground parking lot. The thief managed to steal a backpack. Boy do I run good, that's a few hundred dollars damage.

Damn, they're getting ballsy in Cali when it comes to thieving.
Listened to one guy talk about getting his catalytic converter jacked from his vehicle while he was camped out in it (I know they've been stealing those off cars in Cali for some time).

Is it more economic desperation, not charging criminals, or a combination of both ?

thanks for the recs phellas! I'll give Dragnet a shot for sure. Watched Late Autumn and Tokyo Twilight and enjoyed both. Taking a detour soon to watch Kurosawa's The Idiot b/c I'm intrigued to see Setsuko Hara play a character based on Nastasya Filippovna.

Yeah there are so many homeless and transient people all over the place. But this kind of thing happens everywhere, even people getting packages stolen off their front porch in the Midwest. The police and government don't care, and with everyone wearing masks because of Covid it's probably easy for thieves these days.



Cool, let me know what you think. Kurosawa's version of The Idiot was originally 4-5 hours long, but the studio said wtf? too long. Shochiku took the film away from him and hacked it down under 3 hours in editing. So the version you see was mutilated.


If you're into Russian, you might want to watch Sergey Bondarchuk's War and Peace on the Criterion Channel. It's available in 4 parts, over 7 hours long, has over 120,000 extras, and cost about a trillion dollars to make in today's money. What a spectacle, especially the battle scenes. No bigger epic has ever been made.

I like this Kathie Violin chick on Youtube. Happened across her Dragon Ball GT Dan Dan Kokoro cover last year. Cute girl, nice understated cosplay, love the insert shots and video editing.





Anyway I was watching more of her vids yesterday and she does duets with another chick called Ru Piano (makes me want to change my name to Mark Guitar). Their cosplay is hit or miss for my taste, but somehow that got me down the rabbit hole to the page of their rival, a much more popular piano player with skimpy outfits, clickbait thumbnails and millions of subscribers and views. She played fast, but there was no soul to the music. I like Kathie's musical ear considerably more, even though she probably makes 95%-99% less money. Kinda sad.





Out of season, but this is maybe my favorite version of Jingle Bells @ 1:15. Jazz violin?





So there's not much content to this post tonight, stream of consciousness only, nothing more, but I like to just listen to the music I don't recognize without any previous connection and feel the vibes. Found a lot of inspiration tonight with this song called The Reason I Wanted to Die. Great song, I think you'll hear something similar but different from me in a few years.

The most interesting thing just happened. Fell asleep like this and woke up with the same pressure on the right side of my head, but instead of horrible nightmares I had been composing music in my dreams. Woke up and downloaded a recording app otherwise I would never remember. Now I have to go back through my playlist the last few days and make sure I'm not ripping off someone else...

I'm currently in the market for nice stationery, so if anyone has tips please send them over.

Tokyo Pen Shop
https://www.tokyopenshop.com/noteboo...cb9ffe0e69e6ff

Jet Pens
https://www.jetpens.com/blog/japanes...ig-deal/pt/930


Need quality paper and pens for letter writing. Everyone sends emails these days but I'm kinda over that except for trivial stuff. Most of what I can find online is for cards, notes, post-its etc. which I'm not really interested. Dedicated writing journals for organizing script work, novel work, songwriting are all cool too.

Also in the market for an undertitle, but only this one will suffice.

"plotting his return"

Yeah I'll go with whatever the community decides:

Hiru Andon
Daytime Lamp
Plotting My Return

As long as it's something to do with Ōishi Kuranosuke, that's good with me.



Meanwhile I have a few hundred dollars worth of stationery in my shopping cart right now. That's way too much, but there are Midori notebooks, Aprica notebooks, Rhodia, Blackwing, and Moleskin notebooks, A5 lined, A5 blank, A6 lined, A6 blank, 2 mm grid, A6 memo, slip covers, letter sets, matching envelopes ... heck I haven't even started on the pens yet.

We need some expert and amateur opinions in here, especially from the writers. I just want to try everything and see what I like. The notebooks will be in museums one day, they should look nice.

total fail

I write all letters on a lined yellow pad. But sometimes if I get a gift and like the wrapping paper, I save it and use it for a letter. Either way, I fold it into an origami envelope and save a coupla cents. I put a hand-cancel stamp on it but they can still get torn up.

Lately I've been writing with a Zebra Sarasa 1.0 mm gel pen (also works for kanji) or a Sumo .9 mm mechanical pencil.

Hope this helps

Yes now we're making progress from Top Flight notebooks with whiskey stains. I do love my velocity gel pens though.

Ordered:

Notebooks:
Hobonichi A5 plain
Midori A5 blank
Midori A5 lined
Rhodia A5 lined
Apica Premium A5 hardcover blank
Apica Premium A5 hardcover lined
Blackwing A5 lined
Leuchtturm1917 hardcover A5 ruled
Moleskin hardcover 5 x 8.25 ruled

Stationery:
Midori cotton letter pad
Midori cotton envelopes

Pens:
Uni Jetstream ballpoint 0.7
Uni Jetstream ballpoint 0.38
Sharpie 0.7
Sharpie 0.5
Uni-ball 207 retractable gel micro point
Pilot rolling ball 0.5
Pilot disposable fountain pens

Almost $400 of this ****, no idea what to expect from any of these pens or paper but they will all be in a museum one day.

Those ultra-fine sharpies are great pens and I can buy them at my local grocery store for next to nothing. Plus they work on papers that gel pens wont.

Back when I was attending university, I used a Pelikan fountain pen. It looks really classy. You can fill up the ink compartment simply by unscrewing the rear end of the pen and dipping the nib in a jar of ink. So you don't need those disposable plastic cartridges.

"up and deal"

Last time I went out I was told I look like Matthew Broderick. This time the waitress asked me if I'm Robert Downey Jr. I wonder if there's a hustle to be made saying yes and pretending to be celebrities in L.A.

I may be the least knowledgeable professional gambler in the history of professional gambling, but I didn't even know there was such a thing as The World Series of Mahjong. Silly me.





Watching this was like watching a foreign language. All I could think about was whether or not there are any professional mahjong players on 2+2 and all the mahjong games I've seen in Ozu films.

For those who haven't seen, the mahjong scenes in Tokyo Twilight are elite. There's regs, a whale, and one hot girl on a heater. Just like a poker game.

When the whale is gone, the regs all talk about how he basically paid for their clothes. Ozu knew everything.