Wildlife: Whitetail Deer cavorting around Big Foy's Lake and Middle Foy's Lake -- even with spotted fawns.



Visit: A Tale of Two Movies

Weather: High white clouds rolling through deep blue skies -- no rain today.

Charity Alert: The Animal Rescue Site Keep helping them -- let's feed some critters with your clicks.

In The Community: First Friday means the Hockaday Museum and some other downtown Kalispell art galleries are open in the evening. (I'm writing this at the desk.) Hockaday Museum of Art
We featured the U.S. Forest Service's video The Greatest Good, and had a reasonably full house!

Garage Sale Booty: Good Night, Sweet Prince -- A biography of early 20th Century actor John Barrymore (1881-1941) -- who was as much a character in real life as any dramatic character he played onstage. This looks like a wartime edition from about 1944. His films from the sound era are marred by the effects of alcoholism, but some of his fire still shows through in Grand Hotel, and in some episodes of the Bulldog Drummond series. His silent performances are living demonstrations of the term "histrionics."

Media Watch: Speaking of the Barrymore family -- Lionel Barrymore was over the top in The Mysterious Island from 1929. It was 25% talkie and 75% silent, with about 10% plot and charactarization subdued under 90% goofy special effects and laughable pseudo-science-fictional adventure. (Sounds like it could be made today, huh?) Jules Verne's Captain Nemo was named Prince Dakkar, but there WAS a submarine too.
The Ghost of Slumber Mountain -- A very early dinosaur movie by Willis (King Kong) O'Brien from 1917. It had NOTHING to do with ghosts at all, but that's how they sold it -- the stop-animation Allosaurus, Stegosaurus, Brontosaurus et al, were still fun to watch.


Winold Reiss, Artist of the Great Northern
Hockaday Museum of Art

Wildlife: We saw a full-circle rainbow over Middle Foy's Lake last evening, the bright, colorful, sometimes-doubled arc in the sky reflected by water.
(See the picture below -- there's a duck swimming, if ya' wanna quibble about wildlife.)



Visit: A Tale of Two Movies

Weather: Rained all night again -- June 2005 is officially the wettest month EVER here in the Flathead Valley.

Charity Alert: The Animal Rescue Site Goal: 2.7 million bowls of food this month -- keep helping them -- I don't know if they'll reach their goal, but let's feed some critters with your clicks anyway.

Media Watch: Dancing With The Stars on ABC -- down to the semi-finals! John O'Hurley and Charlotte Jorgensen did the best dances, and got the highest scores. (Mr. Hurley was dead-on correct in saying that Ms. Jorgenson was one of the best teachers there is.) The hard-driving Soap Opera actor Kelly Monaco, and her partner Alec Mazo, out-danced Joey McIntyre and Ashly DelGrosso, but the latter couple were GOOD -- even though they came in third.
TCM showed a number of Ray Harryhausen films last night -- real obscure short numbers from the 40's and early 50's. One of them was a strange thing called Guadacanal, inspired by the pivitol invasion of the Solomon Islands during WWII. There were no people represented in this stop-animated flick -- just buildings putting themselves up, pilotless planes sinking unoccupied ships, cannons firing on their own, and driverless jeeps -- lotsa explosions though!
Afterward TCM played other Harryhausen works: Mighty Joe Young from 1949 and Mysterious Island from 1961. (Which wasn't nearly as good as 7th Voyage of Sindbad a year or two earlier.)
Here's a site with some comments about this minor Harryhausen effort: Mysterious Island
I taped Lionel Barrymore's movie from 1929 -- THE Mysterious Island -- and I'll write something after I see it.
Jules Verne's book of the same name is only notable for it's attempt to fill-in the story of Captain Nemo (AKA Prince Dakkar), before and after 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea. Nemo (Latin for 'nobody') is one famous example of the rich hubristic super-inventor in literature, with Utopian visions beyond the grasp of his science. Verne re-used the archetype thirty years later, in the much less compelling Robur the Conquerer/Master of the World.
The schlockmeisters at American International Pictures made a Vincent Price movie out of Verne's rehash: 1000 Misspent Hours -- 'Master of the World'...20,000 Leagues Under the Sea in a zeppelin...
Robert Osborn announced they are going to show another one of their TCM specials soon -- this time about sci-fi flicks -- called Watch The Skies! Ahhhh -- sweet vindication for the beleaguered pleasures of my youth.


Rainbow on Middle Foy's Lake -- June 29, 2005

Wildlife: The Blue Heron took a leisurely flight over Middle Foy's Lake, and curved around the shore of Big Foys Lake before coasting back home to the west of us.



Visit: A Tale of Two Movies

Weather: Rained all night, took a break, and started raining after lunch. There was a wildfire near Walla Walla, Washington, about five hours drive away from here. I'll take rain over fires anytime!

Charity Alert: The Animal Rescue Site Goal: 2.7 million bowls of food this month -- keep helping them -- they were at 2.4 Million last time I checked.

Media watch: It Came From Outer Space was on TCM last night -- fairly sober for a 50's Sci-fi film, but crazy enough to be fun. Hollywood "Teen" Movies Site
Here's a hyperlinked review! 1000 Misspent Hours
I always heard the name of Ray Bradbury associated with this flick, but never knew which story it was. That's because the original was unpublished! A Matter of Taste seems to have been rejected by the Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction before Bradbury wrote four treatments of it as a movie. Read about it HERE
Hmm -- it looks like it was finally printed as The Meteor.
They also showed Mars Attacks by Tim Burton (Save us, Slim Whitman, save us! Oh yeah, you -- Tom Jones -- give him a hand.) and Forbidden Planet's Robby the Robot starring in The Invisible Boy.

Another Photo Update (06/30/05) The Bald Eagle from last Friday:

Wildlife: I woke up Friday to the sound of ducks quacking loudly -- uncharacteristically loudly. When I looked outside, the Bald Eagle was perched on the log right next to our bedroom. (I got a picture of it taking off.)



Visit: A Tale of Two Movies

Weather: Today the clouds are pouring down rain, after gathering their strength all morning. We certainly want no part of the wildfires that are flaring up over the Western USA.

Charity Alert: The Animal Rescue Site Goal: 2.7 million bowls of food this month -- keep helping them with a click a day please -- they are at 2.1 Million as of this morning.

Garage Sale Booty: Two early paperback books by Ram Dass. A Mickey Mouse push-button telephone/lamp combination from the 70's. (Gotta figure out what kind of lamp shade it needs.) A kitty-cat tape dispenser. A flower pot that might finally be large enough for the Christmas Cactus we rescued from death at a church rummage sale. A classic chrome Osterizer blender!

In The Community: These Power Point presentations are becoming all too common! I had to scramble to set up a computer and data projector at the Hockaday Museum of Art for a meeting of Montana museum directors (MAGDA). I also set up a conventional slide projector next to it -- they were looking at potential traveling shows.
One lazy presenter sent un-optimized photos of their artwork, which made a file over 170MB in size -- I had to reset the virtual memory in the machine before the blasted thing would open.
Hockaday Museum's Website
MAGDA's Website

Media Watch: Thunderstorms interfered with my satellite TV. I watched a tape of Willis O'Brien's The Lost World from 1925. It was the FIRST time stop-action dinosaurs and people co-existed on film. It had a freshness that only comes from original ideas -- Arthur Conan Doyle's story was only 20 years old, and the filmmakers' idea of a monster rampaging through a major city was brand new. Even in silent films, Wallace (Prof. Challenger) Beery was a fabulous actor.
O'Brien refined his techniques further with the incomparible King Kong in 1932, and later introduced his apprentice, and future special-effects master, Ray Harryhausen to the movies with Mighty Joe Young.
Disney Corporation's CGI version of the later flick is a snore-generator. (Sorry Mr. Baker) Dino DiLaurentis' version of the former film is not only a horror, a horror, but only a third-rate horror movie. I have NO expectations for Peter Jackson's upcoming version, except to say that the idea of redoing Kong with CGI isn't original in the least.

Theatre/Theater: I got an email from Stephanie H. Monseu, Vice-President and Booking Coordinator of Bindlestiff Family Variety Arts / Bindlestiff Family Cirkus. She's better known in her role of Ringmistress Philomenia, and is one of the most electrifying performers in the world!
We "spoke" about the uncertain future of Coney Island -- sitting in the gunsights of unscrupulous property developers right now -- and how it would be a shame to lose over 100 years of cultural history for un-needed malls and unaffordable condos.
The Bindlestiffs have fought several losing battles to preserve theaters around over-gentrified Times Square, so I'm hoping for divine intervention in their favor around Brighton Beach.
Bindlestiff Family Cirkus Website
We also mentioned NYU's circus master Hovey Burgess, who chairs the Bindlestiff's board, and my friend, the now-named Crimson Rose, who may (or may not) be lead coordinator of the magnificent Burning Man festival. (There's more than ONE lady named Crimson Rose.)

Thanks to Blogger.com's new photo-feature, here's Motorcycle-Philomenia in motion.


She says: I'm off to Atlantic City to ride a motorcycle on a highwire as part of a thrill show operated by The Fabulous Miss Una, aerialist extraordinaire. (Added 6/30/05)