sovay: (Jeff Hartnett)
sovay ([personal profile] sovay) wrote2023-06-27 10:14 pm

I'll put it on a shelf and be somebody else

And then today my physical status took a turn for the miserable, but I was entertained by the number of people on my friendlists who wished one another a propitious Lottery Day, which I hope would have made Shirley Jackson happier than the people who famously wrote to her to ask if such a ritual really happened and if so, where. "As I say, if I thought this was a valid cross section of the reading public, I would give up writing."

I can't believe that TCM ran a bunch of films starring Eleanor Parker and then a bunch of films for Pride and did not include Caged (1950), which stars Eleanor Parker and is incredibly lesbian. When I finally got hold of Jake Hinkson's "All Kinds of Women: The Lesbian Presence in Classic Noir," it was the primary movie he wrote about and justly so; I saw it once before the last glaciation and in memory it still radiates an aura of Gold Medal Books, so much so that I am faintly sad that no one seems to have brought it out on home media with the trashiest of pulp covers. Come on, Criterion. Ask one of the artists from Hard Case Crime. The preorders will pay for themselves.

Flaxy Martin (1949) has a whole lot of actors I like in a plot that is nothing to write home or anywhere else about, but I was seriously impressed with Elisha Cook Jr. going tuchis over teakettle over a camp bed, his co-star, and a straight-backed wooden chair like some kind of professional wrestling move during a no-holds-barred fight on an apartment roof that did not end, inevitably, well for him.

I just ran into one of those internet equations of artistic taste with political orientation and all I can think of is the kid I knew in high school who once while we were all sitting at lunch in the senior quad declared complacently, "I am a true child of the Sixties," and even at the age of sixteen I experienced a wave of emotion which I would now render into words as "Dude, you're an entitled twerp who just happens to like Phil Ochs."
asakiyume: created by the ninja girl (Default)

[personal profile] asakiyume 2023-06-28 10:37 am (UTC)(link)
I like the idea of an incredibly lesbian film. (It reminds me of this meme re: the Heian period.) Bring on those twelve layers of lesbian!

"I am a true child of the ..." is one of those lead-ins like "I'm not prejudiced but..." that gets the dander up before you hear the rest of the sentence.

Sorry about your health -_- I've been wondering for a while, but does the state of things mean you won't be at Readercon?
gwynnega: (Leslie Howard mswyrr)

[personal profile] gwynnega 2023-06-28 05:25 pm (UTC)(link)
I am sorry you're not feeling well.

Omitting Caged is quite an oversight (especially since it's featured in The Celluloid Closet).

Elisha Cook Jr. never met a roof he didn't end up falling off!

"Dude, you're an entitled twerp who just happens to like Phil Ochs."

Oh wow. I have known far too many of those twerps.