SUB

If yesterday was quiet (and it was), today was quieter. To a certain extent I suppose I was aware of its being the quiet before the storm, with material certain to begin to come in tomorrow for the quarterly magazine, with the attendant prospect of a rough slog between now and the trip to Lisbon -- well, that's my excuse anyway, and I'm sticking to it.

The usual taking-it-easy routine, mostly -- TV, music, food -- but with the addition of a new element. I'm hosting a DVD screening of Wagner's Tristan und Isolde on Saturday instead of our usual music session (beginning at 4.00 pm, ending some time in the early hours of Sunday morning allowing for a half-hour break for refreshments after Act I and an hour and a half after Act II for sit-down food). It took me a while to choose the actual production to show, which meant that I've watched most of the opera more than once already in the process. I was having difficulties with the aspect ratio setting on my TV (auto was causing intermittent jumps between full-screen and letterboxed, while setting to 16:9 gave me letterboxed all the time and using Zoom 1 caused part of the subtitles to fall off the screen. Fortunately, Carl's new Blu-Ray player arrived at the perfect moment, since that meant I was able to borrow his DVD player which allows adjustment of the subtitle position.

I unplugged my own DVD player after lunch, switched to Carl's, and ran a test of the first half hour or so of the final act of the opera. Now I realise that there really is a difference between DVD players! With the TV's aspect ratio left at Auto, everything was perfect: proper full-screen 16:9, always visible subtitles, and no letterboxing even when the top of the opera house's proscenium came into shot and resulted in a strip of black along the top of the picture (which was what triggered the jump on my own player). I don't know if it was my imagination, but both picture quality and sound also seemed better with Carl's machine.

Indeed, it was all so good that I left the opera, satisfied that all will be well on Saturday, and decided to watch my long-neglected copies of Jean de Florette and Manon des Sources, back to back. It was great to come back to these after such a long while. Watching them again confirmed my feeling that Jean is cinematically considerably more successful than Manon (and it's also fascinating to see Gérard Depardieu looking so young).

Before settling down to that orgy of viewing I popped out for some essential grocery supplies. I walked rather taking the car, largely because it was bright and sunny and I hoped for a blip. I grabbed this in a laneway near home.