Yesterday, saw "Never Apologize", Malcolm McDowell's one-man show about Lindsay Anderson. A lot of the information was already known, because so much of it was covered in Gavin Lambert's book "Mainly About Lindsay Anderson", and a lot of the information on the filming of the Mick Travis trilogy ("If...", "O Lucky Man" and "Britannia Hospital") was covered in the press notes that were handed out when Anthology Film Archives screened new prints of the trilogy last year. So there were no real surprises, and the "film" was actually simply a recording of the stage presentation. Nothing really tricky attempted by Mike Kaplan as director.

Today, saw Jacques Becker's "Goupi Mains Rouges"; saw it years ago... this time, the rural satire got a bit heavy-handed, but it was still amusing. One thing, though: we often see movies in isolation, and we don't realize that some people may have actual careers. In Dreyer's "Vampyr", the father of the two girls, the man who dies trying to protect his daughters, is played by Maurice Schutz. I never gave it much thought, but Maurice Schutz was a professional actor, and he was in a number of other movies, including "Goupi Mains Rouges", where he plays the patriarch of the family, Goupi L'Empereur.

Larry and i watched "Monk" and "Psych" tonight; "Monk" seems to have undergone a revival, the last two episodes have been very clever, and "Psych" remains consistently amusing, though Maggie Lawson has been underused this season. Sorry that i didn't see "Swingtown"; have seen two episodes, and found it intriguing, and there are a number of people in the cast (Molly Parker, Jack Davenport) who have proven themselves in other films or shows.

"The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants 2" is opening soon, and it's symptomatic of the vagaries of show business. Three years ago, when the first film was released, Blake Lively was almost totally overlooked, America Ferrara had been in the indie film "Real Women Have Curves", but Amber Tamblyn was in the midst of a big p.r. hype for the (short-lived) TV series "Joan of Arcadia" and Alexis Bledel was in the midst of the run of "The Gilmore Girls", so Bledel and Tamblyn were the ones attracting the publicity. Well: "Joan of Arcadia" went the way of all critically-acclaimed TV shows that attract a small audience, and "The Gilmore Girls" ended its run... but America Ferrara has been "Ugly Betty" for two seasons, and Blake Lively is now "Gossip Girl". It's not as if their talents have changed that drastically, it's just that the circumstances surrounding each young woman has changed. It's like "Project Runway", one day you're in, the next, you're out. During the first film, Amber Tamblyn and Alexis Bledel were in, and America Ferrara and Blake Lively were out, and with the sequel, it's reversed.