This cold has now officially progressed to the lying-on-the-couch-coughing-staring-at-movies stage. I don't know whether to forecast reviews or radio silence. Might depend on the movies. Angel Face (1953) by Otto Preminger was noir by the numbers to me until it opened into the perspective of its main female character, at which point the story of a spoilt seductress, the patsy who wants no part of her, and a murder gone wrong becomes much less familiarly nasty, much more unavoidably tragic—it has a killer ending and a performance that I hope Jean Simmons is remembered for, even if so much of it only becomes exemplary in hindsight. I had no idea the original live TV version of Twelve Angry Men (1954) had even been recorded, but the smutchy, irreplaceable kinescope runs exactly an hour, is very effectively less personal than the later stage and film versions, and proves that when I thought Robert Cummings was underpowered as a leading man in The Black Book (1949), he was probably just underwritten. I had the company of a very good movie cat and later my husband (who points out that Twelve Angry Men directly prefigures 1776 in its exploration of important civic issues through a male ensemble yelling at each other in a very hot room—it even uses the same device of counting down each vote toward consensus or catastrophe). Also the cold, but it is an unwelcome guest.
2018-09-21
I slept ten hours last night. That was great. I didn't even have much in the way of nightmares. That was nice. I woke up and still had this cold. That was disappointing. Have some links.
1. Courtesy of![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
handful_ofdust: a useful roundup of American voting-related links. I am very worried about the elections in November. In the sphere of things I can influence, I will be voting Jay Gonzalez for Governor because while I would have preferred to be able to vote Bob Massie, Gonzalez is still an ethical artichoke when compared with Charlie Baker and I am tired of the peculiar both-sides-ism of Massachusetts politics that seems to feel a Republican governor is a necessary counterweight to the overall progressiveness of the state, as if for the sake of some false equivalence of fairness we shouldn't be throwing our weight hard on the side of human rights and health and safety. As if I don't need to shout for Yes on 3 because in our present condition of but think of the bigots! the question of legally repealing trans rights in Massachusetts has actually made it as far as the ballot. The absolute best that can be said for Baker is that if you yell at him loudly enough about the wrong decision he's made, he sometimes reverses it. I want a governor who makes the right decision first.
2. Courtesy ofselkie: Autostraddle's 150 Years of Lesbians. Thanks to one of their photos, I have spent my afternoon happily listening to queercore riot grrrls Team Dresch. Thanks to another, I deeply regret that the silent film The Amazons (1917) appears to be lost.
3. Courtesy oflarryhammer: Current Affairs ranks their top ten paintings of Judith beheading Holofernes, Toast-style. I agree #8 deserves a higher ranking, if only for that hat.
(From the same source: the nameless but definitely female master potter of Eleutherna. I wonder if her pots came to light before she did. I wish there were some way to know them.)
4. I am made very happy by knowing that one of the Ediacaran fossils is now the oldest known animal.
5. The splendid obituary of Alan Abel, hoaxer extraordinaire: "Alan Abel, a professional hoaxer who for more than half a century gleefully hoodwinked the American public—not least of all by making himself the subject of an earnest news obituary in The New York Times in 1980—apparently actually did die, on Friday, at his home in Southbury, Conn. He was 94."
Because I keep forgetting to mention it: Forget the Sleepless Shores is now available from Smashwords as well as Amazon and Lethe. I hope that is of use to people who prefer e-books.
1. Courtesy of
handful_ofdust: a useful roundup of American voting-related links. I am very worried about the elections in November. In the sphere of things I can influence, I will be voting Jay Gonzalez for Governor because while I would have preferred to be able to vote Bob Massie, Gonzalez is still an ethical artichoke when compared with Charlie Baker and I am tired of the peculiar both-sides-ism of Massachusetts politics that seems to feel a Republican governor is a necessary counterweight to the overall progressiveness of the state, as if for the sake of some false equivalence of fairness we shouldn't be throwing our weight hard on the side of human rights and health and safety. As if I don't need to shout for Yes on 3 because in our present condition of but think of the bigots! the question of legally repealing trans rights in Massachusetts has actually made it as far as the ballot. The absolute best that can be said for Baker is that if you yell at him loudly enough about the wrong decision he's made, he sometimes reverses it. I want a governor who makes the right decision first.2. Courtesy of
selkie: Autostraddle's 150 Years of Lesbians. Thanks to one of their photos, I have spent my afternoon happily listening to queercore riot grrrls Team Dresch. Thanks to another, I deeply regret that the silent film The Amazons (1917) appears to be lost.3. Courtesy of
larryhammer: Current Affairs ranks their top ten paintings of Judith beheading Holofernes, Toast-style. I agree #8 deserves a higher ranking, if only for that hat.(From the same source: the nameless but definitely female master potter of Eleutherna. I wonder if her pots came to light before she did. I wish there were some way to know them.)
4. I am made very happy by knowing that one of the Ediacaran fossils is now the oldest known animal.
5. The splendid obituary of Alan Abel, hoaxer extraordinaire: "Alan Abel, a professional hoaxer who for more than half a century gleefully hoodwinked the American public—not least of all by making himself the subject of an earnest news obituary in The New York Times in 1980—apparently actually did die, on Friday, at his home in Southbury, Conn. He was 94."
Because I keep forgetting to mention it: Forget the Sleepless Shores is now available from Smashwords as well as Amazon and Lethe. I hope that is of use to people who prefer e-books.