Copying Beethoven

On the 250th anniversary of his birth, some are celebrating the life and music of Ludwig van Beethoven.

This is a film (2006) I first saw years ago, and liked very much. i watched it again tonight, and utterly enjoyed it. It has been criticized, yet I like this review’s point: this great composer deserves to have a good film made about his music, and this is a very good film.

Handmaiden to a Maestro and Midwife to His Symphony

“Copying Beethoven” takes place in 1824, toward the end of Beethoven’s life. Ms. Kruger plays Anna Holtz, a Viennese music student who through talent, ambition and happenstance finds herself summoned to transcribe Beethoven’s messy musical notations. Stone deaf, Beethoven initially rebuffs her services (you’re a woman, he all but shouts, as if her sex were a crime), but quickly relents. Time and life are running out, and he is too preoccupied with finishing his latest symphony to rout out someone new. So together, in a darkly lighted apartment where rats scuttle underfoot amid eggshells and overflowing chamber pots, he composes and she copies. In time, the work and the notes join forces until one evening, with Beethoven conducting, the Ninth Symphony erupts into a dazzled world. 

The presentation of the Ninth is reason alone to see the film. 

Ritchie Valens

Rumination led me to this musician (who died before I began listening to popular music, though two of his big hits were perennial favorites in “Oldies” stations), and his biopic, La Bamba. Lou Diamond Phillips starred as Ritchie, and was great in his first big, breakthrough acting role. Fifties rock and roll pervades the film, and Ritchie’s two big hit songs are prominent: La Bamba, and Donna.

La Bamba was a Mexican folk song that Valens made into a rock and roll hit. Donna was a song of unrequited love (I had a tangentially similar experience with a Donna in my neighborhood when I was thirteen).

The movie still works. Rooted in the late 1950s, it’s timeless because it was very well done, and because Ritchie Valens died at such a young age (frozen in time, as are James Dean and Janis Joplin), he will always be young.

I wondered whatever happened to the real Donna. Thanks to ubiquitous journalism and modern search technology, I found an article from the Washington Post, published September 4, 1987: The reveries of Valens’s Donna.

Disruptive force in car buying

Fired salesman disrupts car-buying industry with word-of-mouth 'concierge' business


It's about time. When I bought my Crosstrek in August of 2019, I felt I got taken advantage of, and bullshitted through and through. The process is so murky, and probably hasn't changed in half a century, despite the advent of technology. I did online research, used websites, and in the end it still came to my going to the showroom and trusting my bullshit radar: it went off, but I didn't have an alternative at that point.

Great ramen in Astoria

 Superb food, but parking is no picnic, in Astoria.

Manhattan at 7.11am

 

Films old and new

De-Lovely is an old favorite. Outstanding.
First Man was weird, and gazed into its own navel far too much. No better than just above average.
Leave no Trace was boring; stopped halfway.
Didn't watch the other two.

3 big ways that the US will change over the next decade

Dudley Poston, a sociologist and demographer at Texas A&M University, on the changes American society will undergo over the next ten years.

1. Population growth: Ten years from now, the U.S. population will have almost 350 million people. China and India will still be bigger, but India with 1.5 billion people will now be larger than China, with 1.46 billion.

2. Population will get older: The U.S. is getting older and it’s going to keep getting older.
Today, there are over 74.1 million people under age 18 in the U.S. country. There are 56.4 million people age 65 and older. Ten years from now, there will almost be as many old folks as there are young ones. The numbers of young people will have grown just a little to 76.3 million, but the numbers of old people will have increased a lot – to 74.1 million. A lot of these new elderly will be baby boomers.

3. Racial proportions will shift: What will the country look like racially in 2030? Whites will have dropped to 55.8% of the population, and Hispanics will have grown to 21.1%. The percentage of black and Asian Americans will also grow significantly. So between now and 2030, whites as a proportion of the population will get smaller, and the minority race groups will all keep getting bigger. Eventually, whites will become a minority, dropping below 50% of the U.S. population in around the year of 2045.

Which scares a lot of whites.

Same story, updated, still works

Girl loves boy, boy loves girl, music, romance wins in the end.

An American in Paris

An old favorite:

The music, dancing, and Oscar Levant. It still works for me.

Yesterday

Despite the critics, I found the film quite enjoyable.

What is there had been mo Beatles? No one would know all those songs. Their influence would not be. And John Lennon might live in a seaside cottage. Interesting concept, nicely done.

Three films

Watched City Island: a little dated, but still fun. Didn’t watch the other two, although they are old favorites I’ll get to later in the season.

Kookie was cool

Edd Byrnes, Who Combed His Way to TV Stardom, Dies at 86

He became one of television’s first teen idols as Kookie, the hair-combing, jive-talking youth on the hit series “77 Sunset Strip.”

Edd Byrnes in 1959. A self-taught actor, he became a star on the TV show “77 Sunset Strip.”Credit...Associated Press

 

Edd Byrnes, who became one of television’s first teen idols as Kookie — the hair-combing, jive-talking youth on the hit series “77 Sunset Strip” — but found ever after that he could not live the character down, died on Wednesday at his home in Santa Monica, Calif. He was 86. 

The video outtake is very much worth watching.

Broadcast on ABC from 1958 to 1964, “77 Sunset Strip” starred Efrem Zimbalist Jr. and Roger Smith as a pair of suave Los Angeles private eyes and Mr. Byrnes as the parking-lot attendant at the restaurant next door to their office.

 

Years later, he played Vince Fontaine in Grease , and did a good job of it