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Next time you want somebody ruined, call me up
I have no idea what happened with Livejournal yesterday, except it was out of sorts to the degree that I appear to have an extra day on my paid account. That's nice?
1. My story "The Boy Who Learned How to Shudder," originally published in Sirenia Digest #9, has been accepted for reprint by Aliens: Recent Encounters, edited by Alex Dally MacFarlane (Prime Books, June 2013). It is the only science fiction story I've ever had published and I blame![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
greygirlbeast for giving it a reason to exist. There are tentacles and storytelling. Everybody look surprised.
2. I remain amused and strangely pleased thatrushthatspeaks and I managed to see a special effects extravaganza on Monday night that had nothing to do with Peter Jackson. F.W. Murnau's Faust (1926) at the Coolidge Corner Theatre with a new score by the Berklee Silent Film Orchestra. As a version of the Faust story, it is nothing to write home about, but as a moving, three-dimensional realization of woodcuts and icons and medieval nightmares, it's almost unparalleled. Fantasia's "Night on Bald Mountain" stole shamelessly from this film. So did Ingmar Bergman, unless they were just working off the same church paintings. The opening image is straight out of Dürer, a grotesque hag-ride of demons on their skeletal, fire-snorting beasts through pitchy air. When plague comes to Faust's village, it is because the Devil with his great sky-blotting wings has opened them over the town and pestilence billows as choking black smoke from their shadow. (I do not know what Murnau's thing about plague was, but here as in Nosferatu he depicts it brilliantly.) Emil Jannings is nothing like the Mephisto I imagine, having been brought up on Marlowe before Goethe or any of his succeeding operas, but he's a gleeful devil of the folktale kind—the film's subtitle is Eine deutsche Volkssage—with very little of Satanic grandeur about him, instead a casual, sly, mocking malevolence that is often very funny (Faust flees from him at the crossroads only to find the demon sitting at every turn of the road home, tipping his cap with an impeccable, knowing courtesy as his eyes glow like mirrors above his wide, nearly frog-mouthed grin) without once passing for human. He is evil, actively as well as incarnate. He destroys Gretchen, as far as we could tell, simply because it irks him that Faust wants an innocent rather than one of the worldly seductresses Mephisto could fix him up with any day of the week. And it takes this Faust by surprise; he keeps forgetting that what he's made a pact with (the words writing themselves backwards on the parchment in scrolls of smoke, hell-scripted) is not honorable and has no interest in keeping its word beyond the letter of whatever will ensnare the former scholar deeper into damnation, since the dominion of the earth is at stake. No one in this version, in fact, keeps their promises, possibly not even Heaven. I should still like to see what else Gösta Ekman did before his death from irony (no one should ever acquire a fatal drug addiction while playing the title role in Faust) and Rush and I are agreed that we want to see Sunrise (1927) next. Maybe it will tell us how we were supposed to read that ending.
3. Onhandful_ofdust's recommendation, derspatchel and I have now seen and thoroughly enjoyed James Cagney in Picture Snatcher (1933). It's one of his pre-Code programmers, the American studio system equivalent of a British quota quickie—Rob accurately describes Cagney as "one of the great fast talkers of all time" and even a 77-minute movie can barely keep up with him as it rackety-bangs from one plot twist to the next with the same cheerful amorality as its protagonist, a newly paroled ex-gonif whose idea of going straight is getting himself hired as a reporter by the Weegee-lite scandal sheet whose city editor once drunkenly gave him his card in Sing Sing. He always wanted to be a newspaperman. Bullets don't faze him and he loves nothing better than finagling his way into somewhere he's not supposed to be. One smoothly conned victim and one sensational front-page photo later, Danny Kean's the darling of the New York City Graphic News, even if he does have to keep ducking into the washroom when angry members of the public come looking for him. Rather charmingly, the film never bothers to give him the expected crisis of conscience: when his latest coup (lifted straight from the infamous ankle-camera photo of Ruth Snyder) threatens his romance with a police lieutenant's daughter, Danny squares things with the old man by making him look good in the aftermath of his next star-making snap (the climax of a police shootout with his former associate Jerry the Mug, whom Danny thoughtfully pictures at the moment of ventilation. Jerry brought his wife and child to use as shields in a firefight, though, so I don't think we're supposed to grieve too much over that fusillade he takes in the back). It's a typically breezy solution to a question a Hays Code film would have felt compelled to answer with some moments of sober reflection and probably a comeuppance or two. Here, so what if crime doesn't pay? Take a picture: it won't just last longer, as a career choice it'll substantially decrease your chances of getting jailed and/or shot.
Picture Snatcher is Cagney's show and he lights up every moment of it, jaunty, cocky, scrappy and just so damn pleased with himself—the laughter he can't keep down is a raucous, infectiously snickering hoot that's just this side of Woody Woodpecker, it has to be heard to be believed. Unsurprisingly, I am also charmed by his editor, who doesn't steal scenes so much as he knocks back his hat and slopes into them: he's played by Ralph Bellamy several years in advance of The Awful Truth (1937) or His Girl Friday (1940), which means that instead of a straitlaced second banana who can't compete with Cary Grant, "Mac" McLean is a lanky, cynical hard-luck case who owes his current presence at the Graphic News to the exact opposite course as Danny Kean. For Danny, it's the first step toward an honest living, or at least a more honest living than outright sticking people up for cash. For Mac, it's the last rag in town willing to keep him on staff after he drank himself out of work at every respectable paper. They make a nice double-act, Danny all irrepressible spring and boundless chutzpah (the raspberry salute he blows the rest of the press corps as he gets away with a literally stolen picture his first day on the job) and Mac the wearily resigned but not extinguished (making only the most token efforts not to be caught drinking on the job: I am rather fond of the way he actually pours himself a drink every time, then crumples the little cellophane cup as though no one's going to notice the litter around his desk at the end of the day) who'll back his friend on every hare-brained scheme and occasionally instigate few of his own. Visually, too: Bellamy has half a foot on Cagney, easy, and their one fight scene veers in and out of physical comedy (in filming, it was apparently something of a farce). I really want to see what else he's done that wasn't the usual screwball foil.
(I also think it is entirely possible this movie has the best trailer I have ever seen. I don't want to spoil anything. Just don't blame me if it gets stuck in your head.)
4. We also watched A Wish for Wings That Work (1992). I'd never seen it. Apparently Berkeley Breathed feels ambivalently at best about the adaptation, but I thought it was wonderful. Whoever was voicing Bill the Cat made exactly the right hacking sounds.
5. Have a fascinating article about opium smoking, courtesy ofrushthatspeaks.
This is not an organized year for Christmas desserts. The plum pudding was just started tonight and the fruitcakes have been chopped for, but not baked. There is a batch and a half of fudge cooling in the refrigerator. I'm going to bed anyway.
1. My story "The Boy Who Learned How to Shudder," originally published in Sirenia Digest #9, has been accepted for reprint by Aliens: Recent Encounters, edited by Alex Dally MacFarlane (Prime Books, June 2013). It is the only science fiction story I've ever had published and I blame
greygirlbeast for giving it a reason to exist. There are tentacles and storytelling. Everybody look surprised.2. I remain amused and strangely pleased that
rushthatspeaks and I managed to see a special effects extravaganza on Monday night that had nothing to do with Peter Jackson. F.W. Murnau's Faust (1926) at the Coolidge Corner Theatre with a new score by the Berklee Silent Film Orchestra. As a version of the Faust story, it is nothing to write home about, but as a moving, three-dimensional realization of woodcuts and icons and medieval nightmares, it's almost unparalleled. Fantasia's "Night on Bald Mountain" stole shamelessly from this film. So did Ingmar Bergman, unless they were just working off the same church paintings. The opening image is straight out of Dürer, a grotesque hag-ride of demons on their skeletal, fire-snorting beasts through pitchy air. When plague comes to Faust's village, it is because the Devil with his great sky-blotting wings has opened them over the town and pestilence billows as choking black smoke from their shadow. (I do not know what Murnau's thing about plague was, but here as in Nosferatu he depicts it brilliantly.) Emil Jannings is nothing like the Mephisto I imagine, having been brought up on Marlowe before Goethe or any of his succeeding operas, but he's a gleeful devil of the folktale kind—the film's subtitle is Eine deutsche Volkssage—with very little of Satanic grandeur about him, instead a casual, sly, mocking malevolence that is often very funny (Faust flees from him at the crossroads only to find the demon sitting at every turn of the road home, tipping his cap with an impeccable, knowing courtesy as his eyes glow like mirrors above his wide, nearly frog-mouthed grin) without once passing for human. He is evil, actively as well as incarnate. He destroys Gretchen, as far as we could tell, simply because it irks him that Faust wants an innocent rather than one of the worldly seductresses Mephisto could fix him up with any day of the week. And it takes this Faust by surprise; he keeps forgetting that what he's made a pact with (the words writing themselves backwards on the parchment in scrolls of smoke, hell-scripted) is not honorable and has no interest in keeping its word beyond the letter of whatever will ensnare the former scholar deeper into damnation, since the dominion of the earth is at stake. No one in this version, in fact, keeps their promises, possibly not even Heaven. I should still like to see what else Gösta Ekman did before his death from irony (no one should ever acquire a fatal drug addiction while playing the title role in Faust) and Rush and I are agreed that we want to see Sunrise (1927) next. Maybe it will tell us how we were supposed to read that ending.3. On
handful_ofdust's recommendation, derspatchel and I have now seen and thoroughly enjoyed James Cagney in Picture Snatcher (1933). It's one of his pre-Code programmers, the American studio system equivalent of a British quota quickie—Rob accurately describes Cagney as "one of the great fast talkers of all time" and even a 77-minute movie can barely keep up with him as it rackety-bangs from one plot twist to the next with the same cheerful amorality as its protagonist, a newly paroled ex-gonif whose idea of going straight is getting himself hired as a reporter by the Weegee-lite scandal sheet whose city editor once drunkenly gave him his card in Sing Sing. He always wanted to be a newspaperman. Bullets don't faze him and he loves nothing better than finagling his way into somewhere he's not supposed to be. One smoothly conned victim and one sensational front-page photo later, Danny Kean's the darling of the New York City Graphic News, even if he does have to keep ducking into the washroom when angry members of the public come looking for him. Rather charmingly, the film never bothers to give him the expected crisis of conscience: when his latest coup (lifted straight from the infamous ankle-camera photo of Ruth Snyder) threatens his romance with a police lieutenant's daughter, Danny squares things with the old man by making him look good in the aftermath of his next star-making snap (the climax of a police shootout with his former associate Jerry the Mug, whom Danny thoughtfully pictures at the moment of ventilation. Jerry brought his wife and child to use as shields in a firefight, though, so I don't think we're supposed to grieve too much over that fusillade he takes in the back). It's a typically breezy solution to a question a Hays Code film would have felt compelled to answer with some moments of sober reflection and probably a comeuppance or two. Here, so what if crime doesn't pay? Take a picture: it won't just last longer, as a career choice it'll substantially decrease your chances of getting jailed and/or shot.Picture Snatcher is Cagney's show and he lights up every moment of it, jaunty, cocky, scrappy and just so damn pleased with himself—the laughter he can't keep down is a raucous, infectiously snickering hoot that's just this side of Woody Woodpecker, it has to be heard to be believed. Unsurprisingly, I am also charmed by his editor, who doesn't steal scenes so much as he knocks back his hat and slopes into them: he's played by Ralph Bellamy several years in advance of The Awful Truth (1937) or His Girl Friday (1940), which means that instead of a straitlaced second banana who can't compete with Cary Grant, "Mac" McLean is a lanky, cynical hard-luck case who owes his current presence at the Graphic News to the exact opposite course as Danny Kean. For Danny, it's the first step toward an honest living, or at least a more honest living than outright sticking people up for cash. For Mac, it's the last rag in town willing to keep him on staff after he drank himself out of work at every respectable paper. They make a nice double-act, Danny all irrepressible spring and boundless chutzpah (the raspberry salute he blows the rest of the press corps as he gets away with a literally stolen picture his first day on the job) and Mac the wearily resigned but not extinguished (making only the most token efforts not to be caught drinking on the job: I am rather fond of the way he actually pours himself a drink every time, then crumples the little cellophane cup as though no one's going to notice the litter around his desk at the end of the day) who'll back his friend on every hare-brained scheme and occasionally instigate few of his own. Visually, too: Bellamy has half a foot on Cagney, easy, and their one fight scene veers in and out of physical comedy (in filming, it was apparently something of a farce). I really want to see what else he's done that wasn't the usual screwball foil.
(I also think it is entirely possible this movie has the best trailer I have ever seen. I don't want to spoil anything. Just don't blame me if it gets stuck in your head.)
4. We also watched A Wish for Wings That Work (1992). I'd never seen it. Apparently Berkeley Breathed feels ambivalently at best about the adaptation, but I thought it was wonderful. Whoever was voicing Bill the Cat made exactly the right hacking sounds.
5. Have a fascinating article about opium smoking, courtesy of
rushthatspeaks.This is not an organized year for Christmas desserts. The plum pudding was just started tonight and the fruitcakes have been chopped for, but not baked. There is a batch and a half of fudge cooling in the refrigerator. I'm going to bed anyway.
no subject
I am writing in lieu of boiling my manuscript in a Christmas pudding. I am a little sad that the mincemeat didn't get made this year, must say. (Instead: a grapefruit-curd-and-ganache tart.)
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There will be fudge with his name on it. Or at least I will hand it to him, which is possibly even more useful.
I am writing in lieu of boiling my manuscript in a Christmas pudding.
I approve of this alteration in plans. It's hard to read pudding.
(Instead: a grapefruit-curd-and-ganache tart.)
Oh, well, how will your reputation ever recover!
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Fudge?
*SEAL EYELASHES*
no subject
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I'm so glad it's become a tradition!