"Forget it, Jake, it's Christmas."

picture courtesy of http://www.ernieputto.de/rew/reviews/chinatown.htm

"Chinatown" Screenplay by Robert Towne

That's the director, Roman Polanski, holding the switch-blade in Nicholson's nose. I've read that he used a real knife for this scene. Wouldn't surprise me.

I had very high hopes for the "Chinatown" sequel when I heard it was in production. This poster began appearing in film magazines such as Premiere late in '89. I couldn't wait.

picture courtesy of http://images.moviepostershop.com/the-two-jakes-movie-poster-1990-1020539840.jpg

Still, these days, I live in hope that there are more neo-noir films yet to be made. There's a slew of great hard-boiled noir fiction that would be ideal for the movies. One day, perhaps.

Thanks for reading!
Oh, and I hope your Whatever You Celebrate Today is treating you kindly!

***typecast on a circa 1937 Smith-Corona Standard***

Apocalypse Nah!

Not the most comfortable typing position, but the cool change had kicked in.

The world can't end on the 21st. I just got the car serviced.

Four Omega Wristwatches from the '50s & '60s.

Rather than do four individual write-ups, I thought I'd take the lazy way out and bundle these four watches together. They are all Omega wristwatches from the 1950s and '60s, the Golden Age of Watchmaking, as far as I'm concerned. They all share very similar case and dial designs, but to me, they're all completely different from each other.

"Dr No" (Dir: Terence Young, 1962) Picture courtesy of EON/Danjaq Productions.

Picture taken from "Bond On Set- Filming 'Casino Royale'" by Greg Williams
* Dear Miss Dench, thank-you for services rendered, Ma'am. Your involvement with the Bond films over the last seventeen years helped elevate the standard and your portrayal of M was a breath of fresh air.

Notice the domed plexiglas crystal? Easy to scratch, but easy to polish scratches out of.

And these old watches tended to have a low profile when on the wrist. Which in some ways actually makes it a little harder to accidentally knock it against a door frame as you walk along.

Richard Yates was a great writer. This book, "Eleven Kinds of Loneliness" contains a series of short stories about the despair and disillusionment among the upper middle-classes of America in the 1950s. Not one happy ending in any of them, but wonderfully written.

This one has seen better days, but it refuses to die.

The hands have no luminous tritium compound in them. This model had a thin black strip of onyx running through the hands.

Those strips are long gone, but I did buy a set of hands for this watch a few years ago and when the time comes to get this restored, those hands will get attached.

 

This one has been redialled. Notice the luminous dot markers on the cardinal points of the dial? Some of them look square while others are round. No biggie. I'll get the dots removed. And see the missing gold capping from the four o'clock lug? I'll get the rest of the gold capping removed. It'll look okay after that.

 

 

Some slight pitting on the dial, but such an exceptional timekeeper, this one.

I love the care and attention to detail that watch brands used to implement back then. The logo on the dials has been applied rather than painted, the date window-frame is bevelled, the entire dial is convex, with a gentle downward slope towards the edge.

Even the seahorse logo on the case-back was beatifully done.

Thanks for reading!



***typecast with a '56 Smith-Corona Silent Super and a '46 Royal Quiet De Luxe/ Pencast with a Pelikan M800 with Broad Bold nib, filled with Noodler's Red Rattler***