Ryan and Charles came over with the intention of watching more Hitchcock in the form of To Catch a Thief. We watched Psycho (dir. Alfred Hitchcock, 1960) instead. We had a lot to say about it and co-star Martin Balsam (AAAAAAAAAHHHHHHH!). You might recall the previous excitement expressed about Balsam last December, but Charles said we couldn't scream this time. Lame.

We also watched Balsam last September in Breakfast at Tiffany's, where he thought the kid was a real-life phony.






























We also discussed how awesome Steve McQueen is.

On Saturday Ryan, Charles, Laura, and I watched Rear Window (dir. Alfred Hitchcock, 1954), one of the best movies ever made. Somehow it produced a lot of discussion over its length, which yielded a surprising surplus of haikus. These took a bit of extra time to scan but here they are, in full.

Charles started us off with an acute appreciation for Jimmy Stewart's voice. Who can argue?


Ryan got right to task with the film. Poor Lars Thorwald's wife!


Leave it to Laura to shock us all senseless. Not so innocent as she leads us to believe.


Ryan was on a roll with this thing and the whole system began to fall apart because of a joke that Charles told. He also became endeared towards actress Thelma Ritter, who played Stella.


I made an attempt to restore order but it was too late. The damage was done and order collapsed.


Though Ryan, in a last shining glimmer of hope, offered this tidbit.


Charles crosses the line.


I offer up my summation of the film.


Ryan and Charles became a tad too referential towards Angela Bassett and Tennessee Williams.




Charles had but one lingering thought about this movie.


At this point Ryan and Laura departed us for brighter skies, leaving Charles and I to twiddle our thumbs. We watched the launch of GOES-O at 6:51 and were joined by Felicity soon after. We played a game about zombies that, no matter how hard I tried, I just couldn't get the hang of and was probably more than a little frustrating to play with. We then tossed in the abysmal American film, Godzilla (dir. Roland Emmerich, 1998) because Felicity'd never seen it and I'd been waving it over Chuck's head for years.

It's not a good movie but that's okay since we took a break to go out on the roof to watch the fireworks down at Summerfest. Only we missed the whole show because we're slow, so we hung out on the roof for forty-five minutes taking pictures and worrying the neighbors. Some kids wanted to know if we were breaking into the house.

What next? A trip to Meijer for sparklers since the kids got all excited about the fireworks we'd missed and jealous of those previously-mentioned kids who had their own sparklers two houses down. I found some terrifying deer and tiger head gloves for golf clubs.

This is also the day I'm calling my camera officially dead and useless. What photos I got were only for brief periods between wrestling it back to life. It's just not worth it anymore. Time to start shopping for a new one.

But yeah, we finished Godzilla, Charles was nearly killed by a rogue spider (caught and released outside), and we denied Felicity a proper night's rest. There was only one thing left to do: Godzilla haikus.




It was much too late at this point when Charles penned this little ditty.


I retorted with this masterful execution of eloquent verbiage.


That was the point we threw in the towel. All in all, a successful day!

Because last weekend's Hitchcock Day sort of got cut a bit short, Ryan and I have decided to have a part II this Saturday. Rear Window for sure this time!

Ryan had never seen an Alfred Hitchcock film before, so we organized a day of it. Charles and I took a special shopping trip before hand so I could buy Vertigo (1958). He also picked up The Lady Vanishes (1938) and we joined forces to take advantage of a limited-time offer at Barnes & Noble to get a third movie for free, gaining The Lodger (1927) as a result. This last film is Hitch's fifth but the one he considered his first. Certainly it is the earliest film in his repertoire to have both been completed and survive to the present day.

For today's marathon Charles, Ryan, Katie, and Laura joined me for movie-watching. We started out with Vertigo, which only Charles and I had seen. I tried to start with Rear Window (1954), but we decided to go with the later film. It's surprising that every time I watch Vertigo I seem to have forgotten just how creepy Jimmy Stewart is in it.

Guess what? We wrote haikus again! Laura even shows off with a sketch of Kim Novak.








Katie's haiku is pending.

We had some debate about Kim Novak's age in this film. Her character was stated to be twenty-six years old, something we didn't feel was right. Later fact-checking reveals that she was born on February 13, 1933. Vertigo was released on July 21, 1958. That would make her tweny-five years old at the time of this film, though she looks several years older on screen. Oops. Don't tell Kim I said that.

After this Ryan and Katie left. Ryan needed to find a nap and Katie had plans to attend a play. The remaining trio of us pressed on, picking out The Lady Vanishes, which only I could rave about. It's a good movie that, while Katie and Ryan missed it, I don't think there'd be much argument about watching it again. Again, here's some poems about this movie:

Charles, Ryan, and I decided that tomorrow, Saturday the 20th of June, will be Alfred Hitchcock Movie Day. Between Charles and I we have a fair number of his films, so there's no lineup planned.

After all of Chuck's morbid in-your-face shock films, why not trust the subtlety of a film master for a change? If you're interested, we're starting at 4:00.