'Cause living it up, it's a big deal, it's good for you
I started the afternoon by sitting under the shade of some kind of ornamental cherry while my godchild pruned and weeded the sprawling twenty-one-gourd salute of a vine that has taken over the lawn, but then the sun moved to reflect itself directly into my eyes and I relocated to the fire lane on the grounds that technically I was not parked in it.
Highlights of the later afternoon included napping for at least an hour, Japanese-style egg salad sandwiches with the crusts cut off, and![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
fleurdelis41 notifying me of the identification of the Sanday Wreck and its four decades of service in the Royal Navy and the Arctic fishery. My godson spent most of the evening repainting and rebuilding a chair, partly by lantern-light out on the deck where he looked like some DIY Tarot draw of the Star.
Wildcat Bus (1940) is the definition of a programmer in that its premise of a small commercial bus line suffering a mysterious string of sabotage is reasonably disposable and in execution it is a thorough delight, starting with third-billed Paul Guilfoyle for once not playing a sleaze, a stooge, or any kind of crook at all, but the steadfast and sarcastic, textually acknowledged heterosexual life partner of the hero, the former oil heir played by Charles Lang who cracked up so badly in the wake of personal tragedy that the film opens with his spectacular eviction from the penthouse he couldn't afford on an installment plan, burrowed avoidantly into his bedclothes until spilled out onto the floor blinking at the receiver like the repossession of Bertie Wooster. Technically the chauffeur even when that 1937 Packard Twelve represents the totality of their possessions, Guilfoyle's Donovan is generally the person in the room with the brain cell, although Fay Wray gives him fair competition as the mechanically minded general manager of Federated Bus Lines who if she has a more feminine given name than "Ted" is never once addressed by it, while Leona Roberts' Ma Talbot does almost as good a bait-and-switch as Why Girls Leave Home (1945) as a criminal mastermind camouflaged as a little old charlady. What looks like a comic bit with a voluble Mexican turns into the lesson that if you want to drive a bus in southern California, you had better be fluent in Spanish. When a Chinese-American passenger sounds like a houseboy, he's doing it to razz Lang's Jerry Waters. There's some sweet if rear-projected footage of the Golden Gate International Exposition, a climactically left-field donnybrook, and the breezily Code-blowing demurral, "Why, no, Mr. Casey, I do my entertaining at the Athletic Club." It's not quite the full Only Angels Have Wings (1939), but when asked point-blank by Ted about the man he's pulled through more than one wipeout, "You really like him, don't you?" I'll take Donovan's thoughtfully frank, "Yeah, I guess I do." He has eloquently mordant eyebrows and an absentminded habit of tidying any office he's left to his own devices in. The whole thing came off the shop floor of RKO in a month and barely clears an hour in runtime and its attractions are unpretentious but satisfying, especially where character actors are perennially concerned. Guilfoyle may always have had a case of resting hangdog face, but come on, it worked for Walter Matthau. "I've taken an awful lot of guff from you for six years, you can take ten minutes from me."
Highlights of the later afternoon included napping for at least an hour, Japanese-style egg salad sandwiches with the crusts cut off, and
fleurdelis41 notifying me of the identification of the Sanday Wreck and its four decades of service in the Royal Navy and the Arctic fishery. My godson spent most of the evening repainting and rebuilding a chair, partly by lantern-light out on the deck where he looked like some DIY Tarot draw of the Star.Wildcat Bus (1940) is the definition of a programmer in that its premise of a small commercial bus line suffering a mysterious string of sabotage is reasonably disposable and in execution it is a thorough delight, starting with third-billed Paul Guilfoyle for once not playing a sleaze, a stooge, or any kind of crook at all, but the steadfast and sarcastic, textually acknowledged heterosexual life partner of the hero, the former oil heir played by Charles Lang who cracked up so badly in the wake of personal tragedy that the film opens with his spectacular eviction from the penthouse he couldn't afford on an installment plan, burrowed avoidantly into his bedclothes until spilled out onto the floor blinking at the receiver like the repossession of Bertie Wooster. Technically the chauffeur even when that 1937 Packard Twelve represents the totality of their possessions, Guilfoyle's Donovan is generally the person in the room with the brain cell, although Fay Wray gives him fair competition as the mechanically minded general manager of Federated Bus Lines who if she has a more feminine given name than "Ted" is never once addressed by it, while Leona Roberts' Ma Talbot does almost as good a bait-and-switch as Why Girls Leave Home (1945) as a criminal mastermind camouflaged as a little old charlady. What looks like a comic bit with a voluble Mexican turns into the lesson that if you want to drive a bus in southern California, you had better be fluent in Spanish. When a Chinese-American passenger sounds like a houseboy, he's doing it to razz Lang's Jerry Waters. There's some sweet if rear-projected footage of the Golden Gate International Exposition, a climactically left-field donnybrook, and the breezily Code-blowing demurral, "Why, no, Mr. Casey, I do my entertaining at the Athletic Club." It's not quite the full Only Angels Have Wings (1939), but when asked point-blank by Ted about the man he's pulled through more than one wipeout, "You really like him, don't you?" I'll take Donovan's thoughtfully frank, "Yeah, I guess I do." He has eloquently mordant eyebrows and an absentminded habit of tidying any office he's left to his own devices in. The whole thing came off the shop floor of RKO in a month and barely clears an hour in runtime and its attractions are unpretentious but satisfying, especially where character actors are perennially concerned. Guilfoyle may always have had a case of resting hangdog face, but come on, it worked for Walter Matthau. "I've taken an awful lot of guff from you for six years, you can take ten minutes from me."
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We will continue with the no-brassica, cancel-that-anemia, dust-the-clowns-with-DDT protocol, unless you particularly want tatties and neeps or something.
*hugs*
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IT'S HAPPY.
We will continue with the no-brassica, cancel-that-anemia, dust-the-clowns-with-DDT protocol, unless you particularly want tatties and neeps or something.
Not January! Would preferentially eat the haggis anyway!
*hugs*
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The movie sounds like something that would have had to sneak into the theaters in 1940, and a lot of fun.
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Nice! I think I would have to be in New England for one of those to happen in October, or we'd need to enter a little ice age.
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Thank you! The film was a delight and the picture accurately reflects me being happy, which I am really enjoying right now.
*hugs*
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You are quite right that you were not parking. You might have been waiting, also sometimes forbidden; but quite arguably not that either.
P.
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They are the best. Everything has been a little wilder than planned and it has still been incredibly good.
The movie sounds like something that would have had to sneak into the theaters in 1940, and a lot of fun.
B-movies can get away with so much! I love them.
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Thank you!
You are quite right that you were not parking. You might have been waiting, also sometimes forbidden; but quite arguably not that either.
There were no signs against loitering!
*hugs*
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Today I got to see Frankenstein (1931) in 35mm for the first time (even though I know it basically by heart)!
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Thank you! The movie was a no-expectations charmer.
Today I got to see Frankenstein (1931) in 35mm for the first time (even though I know it basically by heart)!
That's awesome! I don't think I have ever seen Frankenstein on 35 mm. Where was it?
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Nine
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I do love a good garden path sentence.
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Thank you!
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*hugs*
I have to return (to see a doctor in person, otherwise I would have changed my tickets an extra day) but it has been a damn near panacaea. They are wonderful people.