I aten't dead, but I really got walloped by this cold. As of the last few days it finally, knock wood and other apotropaisms, seems to be passing off; I'm still exceeding the recommended daily allowance of cough drops, but I haven't had to skip any more rehearsals with A Besere Velt, which is a good thing because we had our final one last night. New York people! Or people just close to New York! Come hear us perform on Sunday at Yiddish New York! Partisan songs, socialist songs, anti-fascist songs, and the memory of the Warsaw Ghetto. Come for the resistance, stay for the ghosts. We need them.
This is a beautiful obituary for Ursula K. Le Guin by her youngest child, Theo Downes-Le Guin. Speaking of ghosts: "In my most vivid dream, she arrived at the house in which I grew up and she lived until her death. She was very much herself, apologetic about her absence but not making a fuss over being revenant. I followed her lead, as I do in my waking life. We didn't have a lot of time to discuss the odd turn of events, she explained, as she had returned to meet a commitment to a reading in China, and needed me to make her travel arrangements."
I wanted, once I started paying attention to film noir, to write about every example I saw, but that hasn't worked out for a variety of reasons including limited resources and the fact that I've just never gotten good at writing about movies I feel indifferent about; so I mention Cover Up (1949) and Kansas City Confidential (1952) more by way of tickybox than a promise of future reviews. The former is more of a semi-noir anyway, an insurance investigation with a Christmastime setting that baits the story's hook and then lets the characters off it in a way that left me exclaiming to![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
spatch, "This is why not everyone is Agatha Christie!" I am forced to conclude that I am more at home to holiday feel-bad movies than Dennis O'Keefe, who co-wrote and starred in this one that wasn't. The latter is noir from the minute it opens with the planning of a bank heist by a man later revealed to be a resentful ex-captain of police; it was directed by Phil Karlson and stars John Payne and while it is plottier and less emotionally rich than their follow-up 99 River Street (1953), its supporting cast is a miniature rogue's gallery—Jack Elam, Lee Van Cleef, Neville Brand—and it proves once again that Preston Foster makes a great heel. I hope to give The Asphalt Jungle (1950) a shot before it expires from the TCM buffer. It was on my watchlist on FilmStruck.
This is a beautiful obituary for Ursula K. Le Guin by her youngest child, Theo Downes-Le Guin. Speaking of ghosts: "In my most vivid dream, she arrived at the house in which I grew up and she lived until her death. She was very much herself, apologetic about her absence but not making a fuss over being revenant. I followed her lead, as I do in my waking life. We didn't have a lot of time to discuss the odd turn of events, she explained, as she had returned to meet a commitment to a reading in China, and needed me to make her travel arrangements."
I wanted, once I started paying attention to film noir, to write about every example I saw, but that hasn't worked out for a variety of reasons including limited resources and the fact that I've just never gotten good at writing about movies I feel indifferent about; so I mention Cover Up (1949) and Kansas City Confidential (1952) more by way of tickybox than a promise of future reviews. The former is more of a semi-noir anyway, an insurance investigation with a Christmastime setting that baits the story's hook and then lets the characters off it in a way that left me exclaiming to
spatch, "This is why not everyone is Agatha Christie!" I am forced to conclude that I am more at home to holiday feel-bad movies than Dennis O'Keefe, who co-wrote and starred in this one that wasn't. The latter is noir from the minute it opens with the planning of a bank heist by a man later revealed to be a resentful ex-captain of police; it was directed by Phil Karlson and stars John Payne and while it is plottier and less emotionally rich than their follow-up 99 River Street (1953), its supporting cast is a miniature rogue's gallery—Jack Elam, Lee Van Cleef, Neville Brand—and it proves once again that Preston Foster makes a great heel. I hope to give The Asphalt Jungle (1950) a shot before it expires from the TCM buffer. It was on my watchlist on FilmStruck.
