Baby and Babes.

Day after tomorrow, Suzanne and I will travel to Peoria for a morning of tests and scans to make sure all is well with our little sea monkey. I've taken to calling him/her Peach Baby after an animated short from the LDS Film Festival that I liked a lot. Maryn and Avery just refer to their future sibling as Baby X. (When they pray for the baby's continued good health at night, they ask, "And please bless Baby X." It makes them giggle every time.) I haven't heard Suzanne give the baby a nickname yet. Once Peach is out, she'll have all manner of food-related pet names though. For some reason, Suze always refers to our kids as food: Chicken, peanut, peanut butter, marshmallow, etc. I think it's hilarious. It's probably fitting because when the babies first get all chubby and rolly poly, I kinda want to eat 'em, you know? You just want to chew on their chubby little bodies. Maybe that's just a parental cannibalism thing. Maybe it's just me (and Suzanne).

Anyway, we'll go get the tests done, eat lunch at Qdoba no doubt, and then make it back in time to be home for the girls when they're through with school. A busy day - but it's supposed to be sunny and 72 so I'm looking forward to it.



I watched A Star Is Born and, while I don't "love it like a person" they way Tracy Medley does, I do think it's very good. Judy Garland just had a way of simultaneously conveying vulnerability and strength, optimism and fear in this really piercing, evocative way. James Mason couldn't have been better cast. He was the perfect combo of worn good looks, world weariness, and internal sadness. The moment late in the movie when he overhears Esther planning on ending her career for his sake is heartbreaking and every bit as visceral and powerful as anything any actor has done on screen, I think.

Visually, it's a beautiful film. Director George Cukor uses Technicolor to its fullest, giving everything a gorgeous, enameled sheen. Thematically, it shares some of the poison and anger of Sunset Boulevard, another film about the cutthroat inner workings of Hollywood. A Star Is Born isn't as baroque as Sunset Boulevard but, in many ways, it's a sharper knife. Rather than the overdone silliness of Norma Desmond, it gives us characters closer to reality and a climax that's more tragic than lurid.



I also watched The Postman Always Rings Twice with John Garfield and Lana Turner. I was interested in it because its plot and characters are often compared to those of my favorite noir, Double Indemnity. The stories are very similar - a dissatisfied wife using her sexuality to dupe a guy into killing her husband, a love/hate relationship with her dupe, betrayal, things ending badly, etc. Having seen them both, I still prefer Double Indemnity. Fred MacMurray is more interesting because of his outer appearance of being a regular joe and his inner moral emptiness. John Garfield is good - but he's a good-for-nothing drifter from the start. Not a lot of mystery there, you know? And yes, I know I've said it before and I'm verging on obsessive weirdness - but Lana Turner is no Barbara Stanwyck. She doesn't have the acting chops. She's effectively venal and lustful and all that but she just doesn't have the dramatic oomph that Stanwyck does. Anyway, it's worth seeing. If nothing else, Hume Cronyn makes an awesome oily, manipulative lawyer who gets Turner off of a murder charge toward the end of the movie. I only know Cronyn from his later work as a cute, old man. I didn't know he had snappy and crooked in him too.



I'm headed home early today so maybe I'll get to Roman Holiday before the results show of Dancing With The Stars.