Ice Man Rapsodia: 1

I am sure you think this is a posting about Andrea Bocelli singing some aria from an opera based on a play of Eugene O'Neil, or some ditty about the old man of the Alps found in a glacier. You are most definitely wrong.

 I cannot seem to recall the titles of my posts, so I have devised a mnemonic: create an anagram and you won't forget. Hence, the above name on this marquee. Of course, we all know that "Ice Man Rapsodia" is an anagram for CINEMA PARADISO ! (with - of course - Phillipe Noiret!)

I know it seems a bit Gold Rubebergish, but it works for me. So, to set the scene, I shall collapse the temporal line just a wee bit: Thanksgiving...tree...ornaments...yippee!...shopping...blast yer eyes! I'm in this lane!...feet tired...work...clean house...sleep of the just...Xmas...yah!...daughter at airport...world's worst airport...blast!...tired as hell...love,love,love...clean the house...allergy!...doctors...arghhh!...Xmas here!...Church...darn good sermon, padre...rest...read...renew...daughter to airport...worst airport in the whole damn world...flying sardine cans...third world transportation system!

nota bene: (Now, someone has decided to kick the Christmas season up a notch by a video-xecution. We will not go there.)
 nota melius: (The execution was a gift for those who could not get the new Playstation.)
nota optime: (You gotta admire the perseverance of the bloody-minded.)

After an afternoon of watching the first season of the Simpsons, talk turned to lighter things. My daughter and I discussed cinema. This usually consists of a template statement of the form " Didja see ...?" where the blank is filled by a film ( or ' flim' as I usually type it ) name.
We talked about The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari.
I told her how I was watching Fight Club by default one day. ( I was cleaning a room and the TV was on - just like in Calvin and Hobbes- it was bouncing on the top of the dresser, and motion lines and little stars were popping out of it.) Then when the film reached the point wherein we suspicion that Brad Pitt is some sort of alter ego or doppelganger for Edward Norton, I became fascinated in the extreme.
And all because the film began to become a memory of Caligari: the radical story line and how it was transformed by a enveloping story by Fritz Lang...and strange beings like Cesare the Somnambulist (played by Conrad Veidt) who are the weapons of the mad Doctor. (There is a technical term for the enveloping story; I tried to remember, but could not; instead of 'envelope' I tried 'ring', 'doughnut', 'torus', 'bagel', 'kugel', and-in desperation- 'Kegel', but nothing seemed to work.)
[n.b. the term is 'framing device' ]

I hesitate to say, but one of the reasons I live where I do is the hint of the Expressionist in the buildings set on a prominence, windy and wuthering as an English height, with sidewalks winding around hills like an M.C.Escher print. The Expressionist style was all the rage in Caligari. The Expressionist was all the rage during the building boom. You merely could not see it hidden under the brick facade. It's all there in its Minimalist Quality splendor.
Most recently we have viewed Miss Potter. This was totally charming. Even though I became momentarily disengaged at times, I sense it a film one has to see, lest one be seen to be socially inept. It was another good choice by She-who-must-be-obeyed. If it were up to me, we would be viewing action flicks and endless documentaries for the insomniac. This is not to say, however, that I would intentionally go to see a Rocky film. One has to draw the line somewhere, and that particular melange of the "junior high" and the "jejune" is where I draw it. I would go see Judge Dred AGAIN before I'd see the new Rocky.