I am still fighting off a sinus infection and have spent most of the day after an intense weekend flattened. I am not looking forward to leaving the house for appointments. My most sustained achievement seems to have involved running a mild fever and passing out on the couch.
I thought at first that the actor was nicely eliding his start in quota quickies, but it could be true that John Clements got his first screen acting job on Things to Come (1936), since it was in production from 1934. He's one of the most human parts of its inexorable march of progress, the downed enemy airman coughing out his life in the clouds of his own poison gas and blackly rueful amazement at his reflex of chivalry toward a child in the midst of total war: "I dropped the gas on her. Maybe I've killed her father and mother. Maybe I've killed her whole family. And then I go and give up my mask to save her. That's funny. That's a joke." Even with the semi-German accent, the bit looks forward to his equally self-sacrificing, even more scene-stealing turn in Knight Without Armour (1937), the clever young commissar with his demure cigarette papers and his explosive tears. It's incredible to me that I thought him bland in the early stages of The Four Feathers (1939) except that he was still hiding how much of that stolidity was his character's own mask, forcing himself into the tin soldier mold of his family's traditions until they compressed him past endurance and all at once he came visible as that live, wry, brazen and shamefaced, "difficult" hero per C. A. Lejeune who pulled me through his film's mélange of wickedly deconstructed and uncritical imperialism. Impelled by this train of thought to look for notes on what happened betwen the book and the film of South Riding (1938) to produce a screen transfer that is acceptably faithful right up until it fix-its the ending in a fashion demanded by none of the novel's fans, I found instead this review which answered none of my questions but planted its flag so firmly for Team Astell that I was delighted. With or without a hurt/comfort complex, what's not to love about the consumptive local socialist? It worked on me as far back as Westmark's Keller. I am picking on Once in a New Moon (1934), but casting Clements in a role without scope for humor might as well have settled for any other actor at the studio: it's one of his most attractive assets. He had such an odd floruit in the middle of the '30's and '40's. I can read multiple agreements that he just that much preferred stage to screen, but without a time machine it does me no good. "Well, you wanted to blow off steam." – "Yes, you're doing the blowing. I'm getting the wind up."
Chernaya Rechka's "Romance" (2023) and Heartworms' "Extraordinary Wings" (2025) both make miniature weird tales of their music videos, the one a haunting of modern urbex, the other a hazard in the wartime land. Joanne Borts doing "Fifty-Fifty" (2007) does not have a music video, but this ludicrously catchy song from a 1917 American Yiddish musical that escaped containment has run on and off in my head for a full month now. A nickel far zey, a nickel far mir, indeed.
I thought at first that the actor was nicely eliding his start in quota quickies, but it could be true that John Clements got his first screen acting job on Things to Come (1936), since it was in production from 1934. He's one of the most human parts of its inexorable march of progress, the downed enemy airman coughing out his life in the clouds of his own poison gas and blackly rueful amazement at his reflex of chivalry toward a child in the midst of total war: "I dropped the gas on her. Maybe I've killed her father and mother. Maybe I've killed her whole family. And then I go and give up my mask to save her. That's funny. That's a joke." Even with the semi-German accent, the bit looks forward to his equally self-sacrificing, even more scene-stealing turn in Knight Without Armour (1937), the clever young commissar with his demure cigarette papers and his explosive tears. It's incredible to me that I thought him bland in the early stages of The Four Feathers (1939) except that he was still hiding how much of that stolidity was his character's own mask, forcing himself into the tin soldier mold of his family's traditions until they compressed him past endurance and all at once he came visible as that live, wry, brazen and shamefaced, "difficult" hero per C. A. Lejeune who pulled me through his film's mélange of wickedly deconstructed and uncritical imperialism. Impelled by this train of thought to look for notes on what happened betwen the book and the film of South Riding (1938) to produce a screen transfer that is acceptably faithful right up until it fix-its the ending in a fashion demanded by none of the novel's fans, I found instead this review which answered none of my questions but planted its flag so firmly for Team Astell that I was delighted. With or without a hurt/comfort complex, what's not to love about the consumptive local socialist? It worked on me as far back as Westmark's Keller. I am picking on Once in a New Moon (1934), but casting Clements in a role without scope for humor might as well have settled for any other actor at the studio: it's one of his most attractive assets. He had such an odd floruit in the middle of the '30's and '40's. I can read multiple agreements that he just that much preferred stage to screen, but without a time machine it does me no good. "Well, you wanted to blow off steam." – "Yes, you're doing the blowing. I'm getting the wind up."
Chernaya Rechka's "Romance" (2023) and Heartworms' "Extraordinary Wings" (2025) both make miniature weird tales of their music videos, the one a haunting of modern urbex, the other a hazard in the wartime land. Joanne Borts doing "Fifty-Fifty" (2007) does not have a music video, but this ludicrously catchy song from a 1917 American Yiddish musical that escaped containment has run on and off in my head for a full month now. A nickel far zey, a nickel far mir, indeed.
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