The heatwave broke today in Wichita, following four or five days with high temperatures in the 106-109F range, including at least two all-time records. When I went out to a movie last night, after sundown around 9PM, it was still 102. Got up this morning and it was overcast and near 80. Forecast was for 98, but it looks like it only got to 83. Didn't even get the thunderstorms predicted.

In honor of the weather, we'll take a day off from the war -- a luxury we still have in Kansas, but one not available everywhere. In particular, I'm reminded that Gaza is if anything hotter, with no electric power available for air conditioning even for those few normally able to afford it. Much the same is true in Baghdad, which in three years has never managed to restore appreciable electric power. Trying to get some work done here, writing my Jazz Consumer Guide -- finally making some progress there -- and reading about peak oil. More on all that later. Meanwhile, let's take care of some movies.

Movie: The Notorious Bettie Page. Mary Harron's movie on America in the '50s and the nation's mass confusion over female skin -- one hesitates to say sex, although not for lack of confusion. The film was mostly shot in black and white: there are many strange and rather perverse things about the '50s, but one is surely that cinematographers feel obligated to use black and white. One wonders whether this will change once moviemakers are young enough not to remember the era's primitive television. I suppose one could also point to the prevalence of black and white photography in the light porn magazines of the day, before Playboy caught on as some sort of class act. Page was a fairly light, shallow character, which may be why she reflects the era so well. B

Movie: Don't Come Knocking. Wim Wenders movie of a Sam Shepard script about a cowboy actor who goes AWOL from a movie set to get away from who know what and/or in search of who knows what. Still, if it shows anything, it's that motivations are overrated. Far more interesting what he finds than what he might have been looking for, and it scarcely matters that Shepard's character himself may have no clue at the end as to what he found -- the idea behind watching is that we get to see. Terrific small parts: Eva Marie Saint as his bemused mother; Jessica Lange as a fling who bore an unknown son; Gabriel Mann as the surly, confused son; Fairuza Balk as the son's flapper girlfriend; Sarah Polley as the mystery presence who puts it all together; Tim Roth as a bounty hunter hired to track Shepard down. Fine scenery. Just gets richer and richer as it all adds up. A-

Movie: Water. Deepa Mehta's movie, set in India (Rawalpindi?) in 1938, a point of disjunction between old ways bound up in religion and caste and the coming revolution led by Gandhi. Reportedly the third installment in a trilogy -- haven't seen either of the others, so no idea how they fit. In this one, a 7- or 8-year-old child bride is packed off to an ashram after her unmet husband dies, to live a life of forced denial until she too dies. The ashram has other women of different ages but same fates, and four or five figure largely in the movie -- especially an attractive, fair-skinned young widow who is pimped to support the ashram. The child attaches herself to the woman, the woman is courted by a young Brahmin lawyer who himself is a follower of Gandhi; tragedy follows, ultimately providing a breakthrough for the child. It's all a remarkable thing to watch. Needless to say, between the river and the monsoon, there's no lack of water. The class sketches and religious binds are laid out precisely and elegantly. A-