DOCTOR X (Michael Curtiz, 1932)

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(Directed by Michael Curtiz from a script by Robert Tasker and Earl Baldwin adapted from the stageplay TERROR, by Howard W. Comstock; starring Lionel Atwill, Fay Wray, Lee Tracy, Preston Foster, Leila Bennett, and George Rosener. Released 03 August 1932; watched 2023w40 via Criterion Channel)

SYNTHETIC FLESH!

My passion for pre-code two-strip technicolor remains intact and, though I view DOCTOR X as the lesser of Curtiz's pre-code, Fay Wray-starring offerings (MYSTERY OF THE WAX MUSEUM is a masterpiece – and I prefer it to its 1953 remake), I can't help but love it. Will rewatch WAX MUSEUM before the month is out to cement that opinion – anticipate seeing DOCTOR X as trial run for things mastered in WAX: Atwill (one of my favorite actors) as the scientist; the globby makeup of the killer – SYNTHETIC FLESH!! –; Fay Wray screaming – no one was more luminous than she in two-strip technicolor; the newspaper reporter hero (barely Jimmy Olsen here in contrast to proto-Lois Lane in WAX); the fiery denouement in X being the inciting incident in WAX...

An entertaining romp that, if nothing else, kept me guessing and, unlike WAX MUSEUM, had a psychopath screaming SYNTHETIC FLESH! May revise my opinion accordingly.

anchorings

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As I paddle around across the shrinking pool in my little liferaft of me, plugging punctures and airholes as I go, I've come to understand that The Work – no matter how little time I get for it, no matter if it's now a minuscule part of my day – is my anchor which, I suppose, begs the question of whether it’s contributing to the sensation of drowning or if it’s what keeps me grounded for all the other things I have to do during the day – or feel threatened to have to do throughout the day.

(For purposes of sanity preservation, I’m going with the former until shown otherwise.)

What does contribute to the drowning is, however, any remnants of caring about a career, about reception, about anything outside my own control: all that’s in my control is showing up and being present with it and doing the best work with what little time I have and finishing it and throwing it to the world and starting something new because that rhythm, its pulse, its breath, that rhythm is my heartbeat through all of it and has been for the last 30 years. Lower the stakes / experiments / Rubin etc etc.

Related: never again will I underestimate the ability of the first movement of Gorecki's SYMPHONY NO. 3 to bring me a modicum of grounding and creative uplift but thenagain I've said this never again for the 20 years it's served that purpose so I won't hold my breath, especially when it comes to anything involving memory.