Vera Cruz & Sarita Montiel

I rented Vera Cruz (1954) from Netflix precisely because I knew my favorite Spanish chanteuse and actress, Sarita Montiel, had a role in it alongside Gary Cooper and Burt Lancaster. I liked the movie surprisingly well - the color is good, it was filmed entirely in Mexico with gorgeous scenery, Gary Cooper looks great, and Burt is pretty funny with his very toothy grin. And Sarita...Sarita is breathtaking and I knew again why I've always liked her so much.


The first LP I ever bought, while I was an under-graduate at Georgetown University in the early '60s, was on a whim at a record store while I was out wandering in Washington, DC, one day, I forget why. But there she was, breathtaking for the first time, on the cover of the soundtrack for her latest movie, La Reina del Chantecler. I had to buy the album for the cover alone, who cares what the music was like. But the music was alternately bouncy, funny, soulful, and sexy, and I've loved her music every since. My roommate, Keith McKeown, was from San Francisco and of course his fave was Edith Piaf. We had an ongoing debate about who was better, Sarita or Edie. And Sarita even sings in French on Reina del Chantecler. A couple of years later when I spent my junior year at the University of Madrid, I finally got to see the movie. I must say I was underwhelmed, but my captivation with her and her music was undiminished. I still have the album (somewhere) but nothing to play it on and it took me quite a bit of Googling to find an image of the original album. Recently I bought several of her albums on CD, including La Violetera, La Bella Lola, El Ultimo Cuple, and the 2-CD set Todas las Noches a las Once.

But I digress. Vera Cruz holds up rather well after 55 years. I give it a B+ - B for the movie and + because Sara is in it. The movie still above shows Gary Cooper, Sarita, Denise Darcel (who plays the shifty countess), and Burt Lancaster obviously having a good time. There was pretty good chemistry between Cooper and La Sara, and she really played up the part of the Mexican chili pepper. I was fascinated to learn that Sara was born in Campo de Criptana, "un lugar de la Mancha" where Don Quijote fought the famous battle with the windmills.


The photo at left shows Sarita in her heyday. She is still around and going strong at 81. I'm not sure when the picture below was taken, but you get the idea...

Flower Drum Song

One scene in The Flower Drum Song by C. Y. Lee, the 1957 novel on which the Broadway play and movie were loosely based, is set in a basement teahouse in San Francisco's Chinatown. Last Saturday while Lingling and Ouwen were having an upscale lunch at Postrio near Union Square (end-of-year luncheon with Lingling's Chinese American International School), I was happily eating Singapore chow fun in a basement teahouse on Sacramento Street in Chinatown that I like to think was the one in the book. I asked the waitress how long it had been there, and she said, "1920."

My revived Flower Drum Song odyssey began with a notice in the San Jose Mercury News last October that the American Musical Theatre of San Jose was going to put on a revival of Flower Drum Song with a new book by David Henry Hwang. Lingling and Ouwen weren't too enthused but I persuaded them to go with me anyway. I enjoyed the heck out of it, though I must say that Hwang's "improvements" didn't really change much except introduce a stronger emphasis on fleeing Mao's Communist China, insert a Beijing Opera theme, and make an unfortunate reference to bound feet, which made Lingling and Ouwen howl - they said bound feet hadn't been common in China for decades before the 1950s when Flower Drum Song was supposed to take place. For my taste, it was still very colorful, all the Rogers and Hammerstein music was intact (including the politically incorrect but still fun "I Enjoy Being a Girl"), and the cast was good - I, understandably, really enjoyed Emily Hsu as the sexy Linda Low (she also played Linda Low in the Broadway revival).

My interest stimulated, I ordered the 1961 movie version on Netflix and then ordered the C. Y. Lee novel in a beautiful new edition with a very interesting introduction by David Henry Hwang and a fresh author's note by the author. Hwang explained his own renewed interest in the musical and his efforts to locate Lee, whom he found in the nouveau Chinatown in Los Angeles's Monterey Park suburb.

I watched the first half of the movie, was a bit disappointed, read a bit of the book, including Hwang's introduction and C. Y. Lee's tantalizing note, then had to put it aside while I struggled through a three-month Mandarin II class at UC-Berkeley Extension. Then one evening a few days ago I watched the rest of the movie and loved it, and watched the fascinating bonus shorts featuring Hwang, Lee, Nancy Kwan, and others. Lee, very spry in his mid-80s, recounted how he came to write the book and how it became a Broadway musical and then a movie. In the movie, the showstopper for me and my other favorite song is the "Grant Avenue" sequence. Nancy Kwan is sensational in this and in the "I Enjoy Being a Girl" mirror segment. Lingling, Ouwen, and I spend a lot of time in San Francisco Chinatown, and walking down Grant Avenue that song always pops into my head. It stands for San Francisco for me the way "On your left, Washington Square, right in the heart of Greenwich Village" from the Wonderful Town song, "Christopher Street," means everything Manhattan for me.

I immediately resumed reading the book, starting over from page 1. The cover is particularly interesting, as it is a painting by Hector Garrido "based upon his painting done for the original Dell paperback edition." I found the book quite different from the play and movie, simultaneously charming, gritty, realistic, and very moving. Most of the characters from the movie and musical are present but in a somewhat different context and embedded in quite a different story line.

I could see why Rogers and Hammerstein concocted a more colorful and romantic story line than the book to wrap their music around, and for their purposes I have no complaints. In the book, May Li doesn't appear until the middle and is feistier and cheekier than Myoshi Umeki's portrayal. Linda Low, called Linda Tung in the book, has a more confused and sinister persona than in the film, and Helen (Chao) is a truly tragic figure in the book. The movie's conflict between traditional and modern culture embodied in Old Master Wang and his eldest son, Wang Ta, is even more vividly explored in the book, and the final scenes had me tearing up.

I love immersing myself in these cultural artifacts dating back to my high school days. The movie came out the last year I was in high school, about the same time as we all sat around listening to the Broadway cast recording of Camelot and watching such movies as It Started in Naples. In this golden age of Netflix, iTunes, iPods, and the wonders of the Internet, it is possible to recreate all those sights and sounds like never before.

Olympics in Beijing

I was blown away by the opening ceremony of the Olympics last night then stayed up into the wee hours watching the beginning of the U.S. women's soccer match against Japan. I finally turned it off after a spectacular goal by Karli Lloyd for the U.S. team, knowing that our VCR was grinding away recording it.

Today after picking up Lingling's Sing Tao Saturday magazine at the Pacific East Mall down the block, I watched the end of the U.S. women's volleyball team's successful match against Japan, then the 3 U.S. female fencers taking all three medals. Since I missed the first 20 minutes of the NBC broadcast last night, I rewound the tape and began watching. I couldn't stop watching - it's playing behind me as I write this, with Zhang Yimou's production absolutely mesmerizing. Impressive last night, it is hypnotic today when I can appreciate more deliberately what Zhang has contrived. All the guys under the moving blocks just came out smiling broadly and waving, reminiscent of the opening gambit with the 2,008 drummers in perfect coordination drumming on magnificent drums, the 2,500-year-old prototype of which was discovered in a tomb near Shanghai only three years ago. They were told to smile so as to be less intimidating in this country of 1.3 billion, but I gotta say that those two thousand drummers in exact unison was unnerving, if not specifically threatening. Interesting that director Zhang Yimou cooked up the perfect combination of harmony, power, poetry, enormity, and smiling individual faces of people all seemingly at peace in the ancient culture in which they are living.

I've spoken to Lingling and Ouwen by phone several times in the last couple of weeks, and as excited as she has been about the impending Olympics, her reporting has been mixed. Frustration at the pollution, the traffic jams, the extremely tight security mixed with anticipation and perhaps a little apprehension that China could pull this off. She even mentioned wishing she could post something to this blog. A family friend managed to procure a single ticket to an opening ceremony rehearsal last Monday evening (you have to have connections), and Lingling insisted Ouwen attend with her cousin. Ouwen gave it 3 out of 5 stars (we've seen way too many movies) and seemed ambivalent about the fact that is was all about Chinese culture and history - I guess he thought it should be more international. I assured him that was the usual approach. Yesterday after work I talked to them after they watched the real thing on TV the night before, which was Friday night China time (8-8-08 at 8:08 p.m. - eight [ba] is a lucky number in China). They seemed both impressed and perplexed at how it would be seen outside of China. Lingling thought Zhang Yimou went too far over the top. Many Chinese think he's gotten too commercial with films like House of Flying Daggers, Hero, and Curse of the Golden Flower. They like his older, more classical films like To Live, Raise the Red Lantern, and Red Sorghum, but I confess I prefer the new Zhang Yimou, including what he hath wrought at the Beijing Olympics.

Well, now I must find out what happened with that middle-of-the-night soccer game!

Update: Good news! The U.S. women's soccer team did beat Japan 1-zip, so now they're 1-1 after losing to Norway. I believe the U.S. men's basketball team plays China and Yao Ming tomorrow (Sun.) morning in real time (Sun. night Beijing time). That should be very interesting. Yao looked tired during the opening ceremonies but perked up when the cute little kid who survived the Sichuan earthquake and then rescued two of his friends showed up waving a couple of flags. Yao picked him up and carried him part of the way.

Richard Lester's 3 Musketeers ('73), 4 Musketeers ('74)

I don't know why I expected the Richard Lester versions of the 3 Mosquitoes to be serious (released in 1973 and 1974 as The 3 Musketeers and  The 4 Musketeers). Silly me, but I was shocked when I started to watch the first movie and saw that the plot was just a clothesline to hang pratfalls on. About 40 minutes into it, I shut it off, ripped the DVD out of the machine, and swore I couldn't watch anymore.

But then I started reading reviews on Netflix and MRQE, and with a couple of exceptions that sounded like my reaction, most of the reviewers got the joke and loved it, calling it the best version of the story ever. So a day later I put the DVDs back in the player and gave it another try.

It was all pratfalls at first with zero character development and joltingly austere Spanish locations including the Cathedral of Toledo and a bunch of Moorish architecture supposed to be Paris and the French countryside, but I confess it eventually started growing on me, especially in the second movie. At first I thought Faye Dunaway terribly miscast as Milady de Winter, but then her sexy, ethereal beauty kicked in and I decided she was perfect for the part. Contrary to the 1966 BBC version (see review below), I could believe that Dunaway could seduce any man that crossed her path.

Same with Charlton Heston as Cardinal Richelieu - possibly at his most handsome and regal and with an underplayed sense of humor. Christopher Lee was perfect as Count de Rochefort. Raquel Welch played Constance Bonacieux as a busty ditz, quite unlike the way she was played in the BBC production, but it works and she is one of the lights of this production. Michael York is no Jeremy Brett, but he was serviceable as D'Artagnan, Richard Chamberlain was a hoot as the dandified Aramis prancing around in his finery, and Oliver Reed and Frank Finlay were fine as Athos and Porthos. I didn't like Geraldine Chaplin as Queen Anne of Austria but it wasn't too big a part.

I wondered how Lester and producer Ilya Salkind would handle the violent second half of the story and was mildly surprised that they played it as written, bloodshed and all. Main characters begin dropping like flies in The 4 Musketeers as in the book. Ultimately the BBC production followed the book more religiously and took the proceedings more seriously, but the Lester version is far more colorful, often laugh-out-loud amusing (as when D'Artagnan and Rochefort attempt a swordfight on a frozen river), boasts weightier actors, especially the much more convincing female leads, and captures the look of the times much better, even if France is made to look like Spain, which it doesn't.

In a very interesting "making of" feature on the DVD set, Salkind allowed as how his intention was to play up the comedy of Dumas's original work. Well, the original Three Musketeers wasn't all that funny, and I don't think comedy was Dumas pere's intention, but I suppose Salkind/Lester's "Monty Python Meets the 3 Mosqueteros" works in any case.

If you're interested, there is a very nicely packaged 2-DVD set available on Amazon containing both movies released as The Complete Musketeers.

BBC's The Three Musketeers (1966) - Jeremy Brett makes it worth seeing

Last year I read Alexandre Dumas's The Three Musketeers for the first time, as best I remember, which got me interested in seeing the best film version(s). After checking various online sources I concluded the best two were the 1966 ten-part BBC television series starring Jeremy Brett as D'Artagnan (available on Netflix), and the two-movie version released as The Three Musketeers and The Four Musketeers. 

I finished watching the BBC series tonight, and despite being in black and white with rather low production values and some suspect casting, it is nevertheless quite enjoyable. Jeremy Brett dominates the production. I've always thought he was the best Sherlock Holmes, so I was interested to see what he looked like at the age of 33. He is dashing, passionate, and a credible D'Artagnan. YouTube has a nice clip of Brett as D'Artagnan.

The other actors are competent but unfortunately rather forgettable, except for Pauline Collins as Kitty, who was deliciously memorable in a lesser role, and perhaps Mary Peach as the deliciously nasty femme fatale, Milady de Winter. But Peach, while appropriately psychotic, isn't as believable as a femme fatale. It may be that a 16th century French or English male would find her attractive, but besides oozing evil she didn't do much for me.

I read on the Internet Movie Database (IMDb) that this production was filmed live with no special effects, which does indeed add to the stature of this version, and I must agree with a reviewer on IMDb that character development is one of its strong points.

Let's hope Milady is better cast in Richard Lester's 1973 version I will watch next. 

Buying an iPod on eBay

eBay is the greatest. I've bought a number of things on eBay, especially things I've really wanted but couldn't afford to buy new, like upgrades to the Mac OS and Microsoft Office, a Palm Pilot, and today, at long last, an iPod Video. Lingling has had one for some time, and I just got word that Ouwen now has one as well (he and Lingling are currently in China for part of the summer), so I thought it's about time I had one too.

My justification is that there are times on my 100-mile-a-day commute that I could use one (like for my Chinese lessons, which I currently listen to on my CD player) as well as when exercising in the fitness room of our building.

I figured out a long time ago that it doesn't pay to bid until the last minute. I can't figure out why people bother to place bids several hours or even several minutes before the end of an auction. The only strategy that makes any sense is to (1) decide how much you are willing to bid, (2) set up the bid ahead of time by entering your maximum, (3) wait until about one minute left (this requires a bit of timing and a couple of open browser sessions), and (4) with one minute to go, place your bid. eBay will immediately bid you against anyone else waiting in the wings with a last-minute bid. If you're lucky, no one else is willing to exceed your minimum bid, or they underestimated and don't have time to place a new bid before the auction ends. 

Today I missed my first attempt, which ended higher than I wanted to go. I was willing to bid up to about $125 (new 30GB iPod Videos sell for about $250). On my second attempt I got it for $112 plus $5 shipping, for a total of $117. Pretty good deal.

Update: (Sat, 2Aug) my iPod arrived yesterday in perfect shape, a gorgeous glossy black. While charging it I synched it up with the playlists Lingling and I have created in iTunes. We reportedly have 2,675 songs occupying 10.68GB, which is pretty astounding. I did a rough count of albums, which totals about 163 (for 2- or 3-disk sets I only counted 1 each). This is why I needed a 30GB iPod Video, not a 4- or 8GB Nano. I wandered around listening through earphones and was totally blown away by the sound quality. It's fun also having the album cover art for about half of the albums, which is easily downloaded through iTunes.

Sex and Indy

Last night Ouwen and his friend Boshi went to see Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull at the Bay Street Cinema in Emeryville while Lingling and I went to Sex and the City. LL, OZ, and I had already seen Indy last weekend, but Boshi, who is staying with us for three days while his mother attends a conference in Monterey, hadn't. Last week there was a line for Indy (and several sold-out showings), this week as we anticipated it was Sex's turn.

At 7:10 we got tickets for the 7:45 Indy and the 8:00 Sex through the kiosk and packed the kidlets into the theater while we waited in a line that stretched all the way across the outdoor "lobby" leading into the theater. We almost always go to the Bay Street Cinema for movies because it's only about 10 minutes from our apartment in Albany, there's a big parking ramp right in the complex (but hidden) that only costs a buck, next door there's a GameStop for Ouwen to play Playstation 3 NBA and a Barnes and Noble open till 11 p.m. for us to browse in, and a stone's throw down the block is the Elephant Bar Restaurant for dinner and perhaps some ice cream mud pie after the show.

The shopping center is on two levels with the theater tickets on the second level and an escalator up to the actual theaters. It's a hub of activity every weekend with throngs until midnight.

We really liked both movies. We're now on an Indiana Jones binge (Netflix, books at B&N and Amazon). Crystal Skull is a return to the style and fun of Raiders of the Lost Ark, complete with Karen Allen, who looks damned good at 50 and was dazzling in 1981 in her 20s. It's nice to see her and Harrison together again. It's hard to believe Harrison Ford is 65 - he looks a tad grizzled (but then he always does) but still handsome, agile, robust, and funny with that little smirk at the corner of his mouth. The story is typical Lucas/Spielberg, which is to say not very literary, cohesive, or profound, but it's something to hang all the excellent special effects and humor on. Cate Blanchett is amazing as the sinister Russkie and not wasted at all as some of the reviews would have it.

Now for Sex. Lingling went into the movie thinking it wouldn't add anything to the original series but was pleasantly surprised. The whole exploration about whether it is better to get married or not was interesting, the goils all looked good even as they get longer in the tooth, I personally bought the relationship between Carrie and Big for the first time (Lingling was less sure about that), Charlotte was as touching as ever, the Miranda's situation with Steve provided a good counterpoint to Carrie and Big, and Samantha was in particularly good mettle. Her sushi scene was satisfactorily over the top, her ogling of her next-door neighbor Dante was right in character, and she resolved her personal issues in a true-to-her-life fashion. Jennifer Hudson (Dream Girls) was surprisingly affecting - I had expected her to be mostly window dressing, but she played a key role in Carrie's story. There were just enough naughty bits to justify the premise of the movie.

I had to text-message Ouwen at the beginning of our movie to tell them to go to the bookstore when theirs was finished since ours was going to last an extra half hour. I felt pretty hip doing this as I had sent a total of about five text messages in my life before. 

After some pix of promos for the upcoming Wall-E and Kung Fu Panda, we found the boys in B&N about 10:30, browsed books related to the two movies, bought a couple, and headed over to our favorite ice cream parlor. Fenton's Creamery on Piedmont Avenue in Oakland, near where Lingling had her studio apartment when we met, goes back a long way. It was founded as a creamery in Oakland in 1894, later began making ice cream, in 1922 added the restaurant and soda fountain, and in 1961 moved to its present location. 

Lingling and I have been going there since we met and always have the same thing: a create-your-own sundae with two (sometimes three...) scoops in a boat. Our fave is mocha royale with blueberry cheesecake, but this time we strayed to black walnut and strawberry cheesecake. It was delicious as usual, and Ouwen and Boshi seemed to enjoy it as well.

That was last night - today we had some more adventures, including dim sum and an excursion over to Golden Gate Park in San Francisco. But that's another story...