Sun, Snow, High Wire
Sunrise in Scotland. Photo from the guardian.com:
RIP Suzanne Somers, one day shy of her 77th birthday. Born in California, she did not allow a troubled childhood, an abusive alcoholic dad, dyslexia, pregnancy and divorce stand in her way. A single mom, she turned to modeling to support herself and her son before finding success as an actress. There are 45 titles under her name at IMDb, but that doesn’t begin to reflect her impact. Although she had no dialogue in American Graffiti (1975), she was memorable as the hot blonde in the sportscar. She charmed America as Chrissy Snow in 100 episodes of Three’s Company. She was in 45 episodes of She’s the Sheriff and 160 of Step by Step, and made many guest appearances on popular primetime shows. Heaven knows how many magazine covers she graced. In the 80’s she performed in Vegas. Her autobio, Keeping Secrets, was adapted into a TV movie in ‘91. While her first marriage lasted only three years, her second in 1977 endured until her passing. She was a mom of one. Well done, Madam. Photo from Google Images:
On Saturday night PBS ran The Walk (2015), a film I may have passed on because of its association with the World Trade Center. It is the story of high-wire artist Philippe Petit’s phenomenal feat of walking a wire attached to each of the Twin Towers. Joseph Gordon-Levitt was chosen for the role because of his fluency in French. He is excellent, as is Charlotte Le Bon as his supportive girlfriend and the great Ben Kingsley as the mentor. The special effects are incredible, seamless to my eye. I experienced the same sensation as from looking down from a great height. Another plus is the capturing of the logistics involved in setting the stunt up, the subterfuge. I was astonished to learn the budget was estimated as only $35 million. It returned more than $61 million worldwide, fine but not as much as it deserved. One would never guess it was filmed not in NYC but in Montreal. I am astonished that it received no technical or any Oscar nominations. 133,000+ users at IMDb have rated The Walk, forging to a consensus of 7.3 on a scale of ten. I’ll go with eight. It runs a shade more than two hours. Director Robert Zemeckis has given us so much first class entertainment. Thank you, Sir. I did a Google search on the flick’s historical accuracy, thinking the movie was exaggerating. Petit did spend 45 minutes on the wire, walking, saluting, kneeling and laying down — unfriggin’ believable! Here are the daredevil and the man who portrayed him. Photo from GI:
Rocktober continues for the floating book shop. My thanks to Cabbie, who did a swap and buy of paperback thrillers, and to the woman who bought three cookbooks; and to the gentleman who purchased Ultimate Visual Dictionary of Science by DK Publishing; and to the Latino restaurant worker, who took home a tome on Physics and a bunch of Russian DVDs — I have no idea why. Maybe he was just being nice, as he has always been to me.
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