I have my first pair of new shoes in something like six years! They were the last pair of Rockports in the store, but they were in my size. Hestia sniffed them all over as soon as I got home. Clearly they smelled like very strange cat. Have some links.
1. Mike Donahue's Troy (2023) is a nicely sketched, slightly absurdist, fortunately not cringe comedy slice of very New York life about the nonetheless universal experience of having far too much information about a neighbor without actually knowing them at all. Dylan Baker in just about sixty seconds of knocking on the wrong apartment door almost steals the sixteen-minute film.
2. Either Wendell Corey did less radio than I would have expected from his voice or less of it has survived onto the internet, but he's terrific in Inner Sanctum's "Strange Passenger" (1952), unraveling steadily over twenty-two minutes without ever flatlining into hysteria, just a constant erosion of nerves culminating in the wonderful hopelessness of a little gulp of breath as he catches himself singing with relief at having rid himself of his persistent phantom hitch-hiker, because it's the same tune that's threaded itself through the night's haunting and if it's coming out of his mouth, it's not over yet. It makes an instructive contrast with something like McGarry and His Mouse's "To Catch a Counterfeiter" (1946), where his eponymous rookie detective audibly couldn't outsmart a bag of rocks.
3. Over on Bluesky,![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
spatch has compiled a trucker film festival inspired by tracking the pop-cultural fallout of Smokey and the Bandit (1977). I had no idea it was such a specific subgenre. I am better versed in its predecessors like Hell Drivers (1957) and Thunder Road (1958).
I knew Iceland was preparing for a major eruption, but I just found out about the increased activity under the Campi Flegrei. Where I have been, on account of both of my trips to Italy centering around Naples. Bacoli was where a fellow classics student and I stalled out on the side of a hill and had to be rescued by a stranger on a motorcycle, which almost certainly would not have happened if we had been driving in a less ludicrous fashion than him steering and me shifting, but in our defense it worked great until we encountered a stop sign on an upward grade.
1. Mike Donahue's Troy (2023) is a nicely sketched, slightly absurdist, fortunately not cringe comedy slice of very New York life about the nonetheless universal experience of having far too much information about a neighbor without actually knowing them at all. Dylan Baker in just about sixty seconds of knocking on the wrong apartment door almost steals the sixteen-minute film.
2. Either Wendell Corey did less radio than I would have expected from his voice or less of it has survived onto the internet, but he's terrific in Inner Sanctum's "Strange Passenger" (1952), unraveling steadily over twenty-two minutes without ever flatlining into hysteria, just a constant erosion of nerves culminating in the wonderful hopelessness of a little gulp of breath as he catches himself singing with relief at having rid himself of his persistent phantom hitch-hiker, because it's the same tune that's threaded itself through the night's haunting and if it's coming out of his mouth, it's not over yet. It makes an instructive contrast with something like McGarry and His Mouse's "To Catch a Counterfeiter" (1946), where his eponymous rookie detective audibly couldn't outsmart a bag of rocks.
3. Over on Bluesky,
spatch has compiled a trucker film festival inspired by tracking the pop-cultural fallout of Smokey and the Bandit (1977). I had no idea it was such a specific subgenre. I am better versed in its predecessors like Hell Drivers (1957) and Thunder Road (1958).I knew Iceland was preparing for a major eruption, but I just found out about the increased activity under the Campi Flegrei. Where I have been, on account of both of my trips to Italy centering around Naples. Bacoli was where a fellow classics student and I stalled out on the side of a hill and had to be rescued by a stranger on a motorcycle, which almost certainly would not have happened if we had been driving in a less ludicrous fashion than him steering and me shifting, but in our defense it worked great until we encountered a stop sign on an upward grade.
