Next month my History Meetup is discussing the California gold rush of 1849, so I'm now reading HW Brands' The Age of Gold: The California Gold Rush and the New American Dream. It's a hugely entertaining book. The first chapter talks about California's state at this time (Mexico had just ceded it to the USA), then it's about the different ways people got to California--Panama, Cape Horn, overland--then how gold got mined, and the next section is about how the state of California got formed...
I've returned to the Bloor HotDocs for the first time since the pandemic started! I saw documentaries about Kurt Vonnegut and The Beach Boys' Brian Wilson respectively. (Wilson was a musical genius, writing songs that look simple at first glance, but are more complex when you think about them.)
I also went to the Paradise for the first time since the Festival Cinemas age over 15 years ago, and saw Charles Laughton's The Night of the Hunter yet again. It works on more than one level, both a film noir and a fairy tale. (Someone in The New York Review of Books suggested a subtext of sexual hysteria.) It occurred to me that the early shot of Robert Mitchum's first victim, showing her feet alone, is a (conscious?) reference to the witch under Dorothy's house in The Wizard of Oz! Great cinematography by Stanley Cortez.
We've been watching Stephen Frears' A Very English Scandal. Hugh Grant is a very creepy Jeremy Thorpe, especially his smile! (I recall the real Thorpe as a dour, unsmiling sort.)
Yesterday was mild and I went for a walk through the Distillery district with Camille, whom I met on ourtime.com . (I got her OK to mention her here.) I saw some statues and a fancy pond I don't think I'd seen before, and I got hot chocolate with whipped cream. Camille, I had a good time!
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