Meatball And A Movie

Pasta with pesto, chicken and roasted red pepper. The hot, humid, smokey weather finally cleared so I decided to get some pasta at the University of Wisconsin Memorial and eat on the terrace. Beautiful day. The Lost Weekend, 1945, directed by Billy Wilder, starring Ray Milland and Jane Wyman.

Pasta with basil pesto. The Day After Trinity, 1980, a documentary film directed and produced by Jon H. Else. It is a compelling, film that shows the origins and progressions of the Manhattan Project, told through interviews with the many great minds that moved to Los Alamos to work on building the first atomic bomb. The interviews are tied together with narration, archival footage and photos - some from family scrapbooks. The timeline takes us through the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and the cold war that followed. I believe the documentary successfully told its story. I watched it on Criterion, where a commentary track version is also available. I finished the commentary track version this evening. The director's commentary is included. He discusses some of the nuts and bolts of the filmmaking and the structure of the documentary. Also, anecdotes about the moments of pure luck that took place during production. For instance, he talks about an interview with the man who func...

Chicken and spaghetti. A Sun, 2019, directed by Chung Mong-hong, starring Chen Yi-wen, Samantha Ko, Wu Chien-ho, Greg Hsu, and Liu Kuan-ting. This is the movie that will be discussed at the CineMadison Film Discussion Club meeting, Tuesday evening on the terrace of the UW Memorial Union.

Ravioli. I was going to have a brownie with some coffee during intermission, but I was too full from the ravioli. Maybe next time. Smithereens, 1982, directed by Susan Seidelman, starring Susan Berman, Brad Rijn and Richard Hell. This was Seidelman's first feature film and it was the film she made just before Desperately Seeking Susan.  Listening to an interview with Seidelman offers an exercise in naïveté. She leaves her suburban Philadelphia home to make movies in New York. What do you do after you make your first feature? Oh, there's the Cannes Palme d'Or competition, let's try that... All the things you wouldn't do if you knew better.