Blood is sugar from an open wallet

[sovay]

The doctor listened to me cough explosively for a bit and I explained that it was much worse last night when I was trying to sleep and now I have a bottle of cough syrup with codeine, which I keep forgetting didn't go out with the rest of the patent medicines. I am supposed to take it at bedtime. So that should be exciting.

I got weirdly shouted at in Harvard Square. A man in a car kept addressing me as "sir," escalating in volume when I didn't respond—I thought he must have been trying to get someone else's attention, but there was no one else on the immediate stretch of sidewalk unless you count some swirls of violet-crystal road salt and the potted ornamentals outside Tatte Bakery and Café. I kept walking. Otherwise I did not find any of the used books I was looking for, but I enjoyed moving around outside and not freezing my face off. I may be paying for it in the amount of coughing I'm doing now. This is a stupid cold. Have a couple of links.

1. TCM's Noir Alley has announced its schedule starting next month and I am pleased to see it contains a number of movies I'd like to see, a number of movies I'd like to see again, and a number of movies I haven't even heard of. I meant to write about Border Incident (1949) last spring and this will give me another chance. I'm in favor of Johnny Eager (1942) and especially Jeff Hartnett getting all the love they can. I deeply approve of Cash on Demand (1961) as their Christmas movie.

2. I am braced for the plot to have more to do with Iain Glen and marriages than with Fiona Shaw and MI6, but this gifset has nonetheless sold me on seeing Ruth Wilson in Mrs Wilson (2018) whenever it airs on PBS.

3. Why on earth has no one used Julo Levin's portrait of Ernst Deutsch as a punk album cover? Are we sure no one has?

Comments

[sovay]

Cash on Demand is an excellent noir Christmas movie choice.

This year they had something called Cover Up (1949), which I watched but failed to write about because it fell into the category of film noir about which I mostly felt well, that happened. It starred and was co-written by Dennis O'Keefe and it had several good lines and nice cinematography, but I felt afterward that I would have liked it much better if I had believed that Christmas really is such a special occasion that it justifies the titular cover-up of a murder so as not to disturb the good townspeople's peace of mind at this most wonderful time of the year. We hit that point in the finale when the conspiracy the protagonist's been chasing all movie is revealed as sentimentally benevolent and I just felt like I'd been smacked in the jaw with a fistful of tinsel.

That portrait would be a perfect Bauhaus album cover.

It's not just me!

[moon_custafer]

I somehow missed that the actor you were talking about last week, playing the nazi captain, was the same performer who’d been the lead in The Ancient Law per your earlier post.

Have you ever encountered Kim Newman’s anthology Famous Monsters? It’s hard to find these days, but you might like it — Newman’s love and knowledge of movies is on full display, but he doesn’t quite give in to the need to fit in *every* historical and fictional character that he indulges to the full in his Anno Dracula books. Anyway, I bring it up because of the title story, in which an old Hollywood character actor looks back on his career. He’s an H.G Wells-style Martian.

So basically, during the periods when Earth and Mars weren’t actually at war, his roles were mostly stereotypical comedy-sidekick parts; during the Earth-Martian wars, he played villainous representatives of the Martian regime his parents had fled. By the end of the story, he’s stepped into a low-budget horror film as a replacement for his old pal Lon Chaney, Jr., who died midway through filming (the scriptwriter hastily added a plot twist to cover this— the mad scientist turns himself into a Martian.)

“It’ll probably be a piece of crap,” our protagonist admits cheerfully; but he just can’t give up show business.

[sovay]

I somehow missed that the actor you were talking about last week, playing the nazi captain, was the same performer who’d been the lead in The Ancient Law per your earlier post.

I'm sorry if I didn't make it clearer in the review. It was very striking to me, still having Ernst Deutsch on my mind from writing about him and then finding him under the name of "Ernest Dorian," in twenty-year flashforward from the last time I'd seen him, a Jewish Austrian actor playing a Hollywood Nazi. I feel kind of like I have an obligation to rewatch The Third Man (1949) now. Or track down some more Expressionist film.

[ETA 2019-02-04 14:12:00] The Third Man is actually in the TCM buffer right now. So I am going to rewatch it, because I know when the universe is throwing an actor at me.

Have you ever encountered Kim Newman’s anthology Famous Monsters?

I have not. I have a kind of intermittent tolerance for Newman's fiction based on the literary in-joke/crossover density you mention; I tend to enjoy his stories when encountered separately and the time I took Professor Moriarty: The Hound of the D'Urbervilles (2011) on a plane as a trip book was a mistake.

So basically, during the periods when Earth and Mars weren’t actually at war, his roles were mostly stereotypical comedy-sidekick parts; during the Earth-Martian wars, he played villainous representatives of the Martian regime his parents had fled.

Okay, I recognize the metaphor here, but I also do want to read that.

[gwynnega]

Wow, that movie sounds sort of demented, but not in a good way.

[sovay]

Wow, that movie sounds sort of demented, but not in a good way.

It was a pretty decent small-town noir until the third act and then my idea of reasonable behavior and the film's screechingly parted ways.