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I stay under glass
Rabbit, rabbit! I saw a small pink-flowering tree when I left the house this afternoon to run my errands. I will return for it on a less overcast day.
It seems unfair that treating the infection which has been blurring the vision in one of my eyes should require repeated applications of glop which makes my vision even blurrier. I blame Rosemary Sutcliff and Mary Stewart for the persistent feeling that if I am going to put a medicinal salve in my eye, it should have been prescribed by a traveling oculist and an initiate of Mithras ideally.
Despite hearing their cover before the original—I brought a secondhand CD of Through the Looking Glass (1987) home from the Book Trader Café in New Haven and incidentally discovered Television and Sparks—I had never seen the video for Siouxsie and the Banshees' "The Passenger" (1987). It registers as '80's beyond belief and I seem to love it. It's something about the mix of sfnal images which give me vague vibes of Tanith Lee with the band goofing around. Not to be confused with the version filmed in Portmeirion for The Laughing Prisoner (1987).
Again I had to find out from an obituary, but I love that Christopher Hobbs whose contributions as sculptor, illustrator, and costume and production designer were essential to the films of Derek Jarman from Sebastiane (1976) through Edward II (1991) started his career with Ken Russell's The Devils (1971) and finished it with the BBC Gormenghast (2000). Criterion did a Top 10 with him in 2014. He wrote as wonderfully about movies as he dressed them.
Being particularly biased toward a couple of examples from 1949, I may not agree with the conceit of the Criterion Channel's 1950: Peak Noir, but I am delighted to see that the collection includes The File on Thelma Jordon (1950), which I loved so much when it came around last year on TCM's Noir Alley. Maybe it's experiencing a rediscovery. I have meant to write about Caged (1950) for something like six years now.
The hero of Appointment with Danger (1950) is a hard-edged postal inspector who defines a love affair as "what goes on between a man and a .45 pistol that won't jam." The heroine is a nun who trusts serenely in her "guardian angel" and has the street smarts not to confuse a drunk and a corpse. The action ends with road flares and machine guns and starts when a hitman is too polite not to open a nun's stuck umbrella in the rain. I had no idea Phyllis Calvert had ever made a movie in America, much less a film noir in which she was teamed non-romantically with Alan Ladd. I don't know if Paramount had some kind of bet on with RKO as to who could come up with the pulpiest, most lurid set pieces, but I have now watched Jack Webb beat Harry Morgan to death with a pair of bronzed baby booties, for God's sake. I am incapable of evaluating whether this film should be considered good or just extant, but the whacky-smacky levels its investigation against the clock of a heist ramped up to were not predictable from its opening civic paean to the United States Post Office. By the end, it's more "You can rob Fort Knox and live. But steal a dime and kill a post office man and they'll spend a million and a lifetime looking for you." Next thing you know, you'll be answering to the Coca-Cola Company. The location shooting of various urban vistas of Illinois and Indiana is impossible to reproach.
It seems unfair that treating the infection which has been blurring the vision in one of my eyes should require repeated applications of glop which makes my vision even blurrier. I blame Rosemary Sutcliff and Mary Stewart for the persistent feeling that if I am going to put a medicinal salve in my eye, it should have been prescribed by a traveling oculist and an initiate of Mithras ideally.
Despite hearing their cover before the original—I brought a secondhand CD of Through the Looking Glass (1987) home from the Book Trader Café in New Haven and incidentally discovered Television and Sparks—I had never seen the video for Siouxsie and the Banshees' "The Passenger" (1987). It registers as '80's beyond belief and I seem to love it. It's something about the mix of sfnal images which give me vague vibes of Tanith Lee with the band goofing around. Not to be confused with the version filmed in Portmeirion for The Laughing Prisoner (1987).
Again I had to find out from an obituary, but I love that Christopher Hobbs whose contributions as sculptor, illustrator, and costume and production designer were essential to the films of Derek Jarman from Sebastiane (1976) through Edward II (1991) started his career with Ken Russell's The Devils (1971) and finished it with the BBC Gormenghast (2000). Criterion did a Top 10 with him in 2014. He wrote as wonderfully about movies as he dressed them.
Being particularly biased toward a couple of examples from 1949, I may not agree with the conceit of the Criterion Channel's 1950: Peak Noir, but I am delighted to see that the collection includes The File on Thelma Jordon (1950), which I loved so much when it came around last year on TCM's Noir Alley. Maybe it's experiencing a rediscovery. I have meant to write about Caged (1950) for something like six years now.
The hero of Appointment with Danger (1950) is a hard-edged postal inspector who defines a love affair as "what goes on between a man and a .45 pistol that won't jam." The heroine is a nun who trusts serenely in her "guardian angel" and has the street smarts not to confuse a drunk and a corpse. The action ends with road flares and machine guns and starts when a hitman is too polite not to open a nun's stuck umbrella in the rain. I had no idea Phyllis Calvert had ever made a movie in America, much less a film noir in which she was teamed non-romantically with Alan Ladd. I don't know if Paramount had some kind of bet on with RKO as to who could come up with the pulpiest, most lurid set pieces, but I have now watched Jack Webb beat Harry Morgan to death with a pair of bronzed baby booties, for God's sake. I am incapable of evaluating whether this film should be considered good or just extant, but the whacky-smacky levels its investigation against the clock of a heist ramped up to were not predictable from its opening civic paean to the United States Post Office. By the end, it's more "You can rob Fort Knox and live. But steal a dime and kill a post office man and they'll spend a million and a lifetime looking for you." Next thing you know, you'll be answering to the Coca-Cola Company. The location shooting of various urban vistas of Illinois and Indiana is impossible to reproach.
no subject
Counterintuitive though the goopy treatment may feel, I hope your eye is getting better!
no subject
I would consider the novelty factor entirely worth it! I can't think of another example of nun noir and I don't think I even knew about this one until I dialed it up. (Cross-referencing Harry Morgan's filmography with other cast/crew/genres of interest has been working out for me.) Jan Sterling doesn't have much to do in the plot, but I am always glad to see her. I really think the production should have gone with one of its original titles of Dead Letter.
(Also, Dragnet nostalgia with Webb and Morgan, even if they're playing very different characters here.)
I find it inappropriately hilarious that in both films in which I've seen Webb and Morgan pre-Dragnet—this one and Dark City (1950)—their characters don't even like each other.
Counterintuitive though the goopy treatment may feel, I hope your eye is getting better!
Thank you!