Sigh. I'm not sure Mom is happy here, but I'm doing my best. I'm sleeping so "hard" and so long it worries me; I don't want to be inattentive to her. She eats a few bites of toast, a few spoonfuls of soup. Last night she did eat more than usual, but of course James was cooking (he made stir-fry beef bits with carrots, celery, mushrooms, and onions). Right now she's upstairs watching her soaps. I really need a baby monitor or some sort of intercom so I can hear her call me, though.

Between bouts of housecleaning, since yesterday, I have begun dubbing off more tapes. Yesterday I did one of my favorites for years, Good Morning, Miss Dove, starring Jennifer Jones as a strict small-town schoolteacher. When she is taken ill, the town rallies around her. I can't believe this has never been out on any type of video; my copy was taped off American Movie Classics before they went to that proverbial hell in a handbasket.

When I rewatched it, I realized how much the movie suffers from pan and scan, as it was originally filmed in Cinemascope. People are offscreen when spoken to a lot, which is very aggravating.

I also copied off a Hallmark Hall of Fame production called Face to Face with Elizabeth Montgomery and Robert Foxworth as, respectively, an archaologist and a meerschaum miner in Africa. The plot is rather slight. To be perfectly honest, I recorded it because Lou Antonio is in it; it's the last movie/television credit he has because he's been sticking to directing. I'd rather have copies of The Snoop Sisters for a Lou Antonio role (or maybe Dog and Cat), but one can't be fussy.

This morning I copied off one of my favorite science fiction movies of all time, Gene Roddenberry's The Questor Tapes. This is another Robert Foxworth vehicle; he plays Questor, the android with growing awareness of his human state, perfectly. The movie co-stars Mike Farrell as Jerry Robinson, Questor's mentor in all things human and his friend and the late John Vernon as Geoffrey Darro, the acerbic and straight-laced head of Project Questor, and features classic film star Lew Ayres in a cameo role as the creator of Questor, Professor Vaslovik.

This film has special meaning to me since it was through this story I was introduced to many friends via Mary Bloemker's fanzine "The Vaslovik Archives."

Right now I am dubbing off the Danny Kaye film Me and the Colonel, co-starring Curt Jurgens. Kaye and Jurgens are a Polish Jew and an anti-Semetic Polish colonel trying to escape from Paris before the Germans invade. I was lucky to get both Questor and Colonel off Cinemax (and I do mean lucky; Cinemax only showed Colonel once).

(Also crossed some Christmas stuff off my dub list: John Denver & the Muppets: A Christmas Together and A Muppet Family Christmas. I would like to put Mr. Willowby's Christmas Tree on there as well, but not sure if it will fit.)

----------------------------------------------------------------
. . . . . noted and logged by Linda at 1:00:00 PM

Comments: Post a Comment