Big screen

I'm fascinated by the New York Times' take on the Blu-Ray release of How the West Was Won, the rare narrative film made in the original, three-strip Cinerama process. Dave Kehr writes: "The images are so crisp as to feel almost unreal; the depth of field seems dreamlike, infinite, with the blades of grass in the foreground as sharply in focus as the snow-capped mountains in the distant background."

I'm transported back more than ten years, when a friend and I made the 10-hour round-trip drive from Chicago to an art cinema in Dayton, Ohio to see This Is Cinerama, the first film made in the three-strip process, back in 1952. Some nut -- um, enthusiast -- had cobbled together enough equipment and film reels to reproduce the Cinerama process, which has three projectors going at once to create a giant, wide image. Like most three-strip Cinerama films (only a handful were made), This Is Cinerama is a travelogue, with scenes shot on a roller coaster; in Venice; and at a Florida water ski show.

I loved the experience, not least because the various bits of film had been gathered from different sources and had aged differently. So sometimes the image in the middle was, say, pinker than the others. Okay, that aspect was more interesting than I'm making it sound.

And 50 years later, old prints notwithstanding, the presentation looked simply wonderful -- as enthralling as Kehr makes it sound, except that I was looking at a huge movie screen, not a television. Widescreen TV is great, but you still can't beat moviegoing. I want the film of my life to be in three-strip Cinerama.

That's sure not to backfire!

An Obama proxy links Sarah Palin, tenuously, to the Nazis. Or Nazi sympathizing. Or something.

Good word

"When Republicans aren't complaining about someone's lack of experience, they are calling for term limits."

-- Michael Kinsley

Arugula-induced amnesia

I'm as effete a Blue Stater as you'll find, but I'm regularly dismayed to see members of my latte-sipping cohort willfully misunderstand their fellow Americans. I'm thinking most recently of today's Maureen Dowd column in the New York Times on Sarah Palin, the Alaska governor who's John McCain's vice presidential pick. Here's smug Dowd:

Obama may have been president of The Harvard Law Review, but Palin graduated from the University of Idaho with a minor in poli-sci and worked briefly as a TV sports reporter.

Now Dowd and I may be impressed by Obama's Harvard Law Review credential. (Especially Dowd, who went to Catholic University of America (where?).) But does she remember why Republicans took over the government some years back? Because Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan and a couple of generations' worth of Western and Southern Republican politicians mobilized a great many voters who either a) didn't care about Harvard or b) hated Harvard a lot, and either way thought a University of Idaho education was a fine thing.

If Obama wants to win, what he must do is expand his base beyond Prius-driving, Harvard-enthralled gays and lesbians and convince a whole lot of voters that he's a great guy despite having been president of the Harvard Law Review.

There's always YouTube

I skipped the Obama speech. Instead I watched Unfaithful with Diane Lane on Lifetime, where she cheats on Richard Gere with an impressively stereotypical French guy and manslaughter most foul is committed with a snowglobe.

Good word

"Who knew that Alaska even had a governor?"

-- David Blaska

Can you hear me

Even though Doris Lessing's shattering first novel The Grass is Singing is set in 1940s South Africa, I can't help imagining that in this paperback edition's cover illustration, Mary Turner is talking on her cell phone.