The Thin Man, and Top Hat
This morning, John had many of us come in to work to phone TicketMaster to try to get tickets to the November Green Bay Packers-at-San Francisco 49ers football game. So we were there around 8:45 am. Sadly, all the phone lines to Ticketmaster seemed to be jammed - presumably people trying to get the tickets which were just going on sale - and after half an hour (!) we decided we were probably out of luck. So we gave up and went to lunch.
I'd originally planned to spend the bulk of the daylight sitting at home doing laundry, reading, and possibly going to a car dealership. Instead, on a whim, I decided to join Subrata (and other gaming buddies Rollie and Kelly) to see a couple of classic movies at the Stanford Theater in Palo Alto.
It involves an inventor who disappears for several months apparently to do research, and later ends up the suspect in a murder investigation. Retired Detective Nick Charles (William Powell) is a friend of the family, and is eventually brow-beaten to look into the case. Powell and Myrna Loy (playing his wife) are both terrific in their roles, and quite funny. The mystery itself is somewhat on the thin side, but it's a worthwhile movie. Hard to believe 'talkies' had only been around for about eight years when this one was released!
I am, though, rather mystified by the title. To whom does it refer? Nick Charles? He didn't strike me as especially 'thin'. Maybe it's a slang term I'm not familiar with.
Top Hat (1935) is another 30s film, a Fred Astaire/Ginger Rogers musical - with dancing, of course. In a sense, it's a classic Shakespearean comedy, with a case of mistaken identity, a moderately strong female lead, and various buffoonish supporting character. It's also got a number of song and dance numbers which are now a basic part of 20th century American culture. (I'm sure that many of these songs were parodied in Warner Bros cartoon shorts a decade or two later.)
The dialogue - especially among the principals - is at the forefront here, as are the typically over-the-top sets which characterized big Hollywood productions of the 30s, 40s and 50s (c.f. The Adventures of Robin Hood and Singing in the Rain for two other prominent examples).
I'd never seen these two films before; they're both worth seeing. The scripts, in particular, are so far above what we're used to seeing in films of the 80s and 90s. Sure, the dialogue and delivery sometimes seems artificial, but the speed, accuracy and wit of the banter seems to escape all but the best comedy troupes today.
Have I mentioned that on Thursday we'd played team Bridge? We had two tables, and the North-South pair at one table was teamed with the East-West pair at the other, both tables play the same eight hands, and the results are compared with the other team using a scoring system. It was pretty cool, and I'd like to do it again. Unfortunately, my team lost one match badly, and lost the other narrowly. I made several boneheaded errors; it felt like it took me three hands to really start concentrating.
Tonight, at any rate, I felt like I was doing better. My bidding is getting somewhat stronger as I'm getting more practice with the more unusual conventions, although I am still bidding perhaps a bit too conservatively. My play needs work, though. I have a few books on the play of the hand which I think it is time for me to crack open.
I finally departed around 1:30 am, and I guess the four people remaining kept playing for another hour. Zoiks!
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