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Just a post-Kinsey girl who never made the graphs
1. The High Bright Sun (1964) is a political thriller whose necessary premise that the EOKA were a bunch of irresponsible terrorists is rather compromised by the fact that its British characters are almost all colonialist assholes. Dirk Bogarde's Major McGuire doesn't apologize to anyone in the movie nearly soon enough, the girl he's ostensibly falling in love with included, and the script seems to concur that she's a naive little fool for not siding with him immediately against her own family. (She's Cypriot-American, first generation, an archaeologist staying with her parents' oldest friends; when she comes downstairs accidentally into the middle of a clandestine meeting, a fanatic student instantly wants her dead and only intensifies his arguments when McGuire begins to pursue her romantically as well as for the information he thinks she's hiding about a shooting she witnessed. Eventually even her all-but-relatives agree to sacrifice her; their son only helps her escape the hit because he's had a crush on her since they were children; he's shot for it. For bonus deck-stacking, the seeming Samaritan who gives her a lift into town first rhapsodizes about the beauty of American girls and then tries to assault her sexually. Turning to the British for protection at this point fails to feel like the natural choice, however—just the only one left in the script.) Charlie Baker as played by Denholm Elliott is also kind of an asshole, but at least it has less to do with his Englishness than his tendency to drink all his friends' booze and sleep with their wives. He's introduced as a potential assassin, clicking an empty chamber at McGuire with a drawling grin; his first words are "I could have nailed you then, you stupid berk. Getting careless." With a five o'clock shadow and his hair combed straight back, he looks weirdly like Colin Farrell, just beginning his transition from aging juvenile to paramount scene-stealer of the next thirty years. He's onscreen for approximately ten minutes total. I cared way more about him than anyone else in the film. Susan Strasberg is stuck with wide-eyed exhausted pliancy and lines like "Because you love me." George Chakiris is actually Greek, which means he's a handsome murderer. Dirk Bogarde was much, much better in Victim (1961).
2. I dreamed last night my computer died and when it came back up, it had restructured itself like a game with chapters in a weird mishmash of dime-store Western novels and New England witch trials. The Hanging of Dana De Niro. The Burning of Sarah Grodsky. (The latter was being prosecuted for turning into a fox, which she had done. The scaffold was swarmed with sleek sharp-nipping bodies as she was sentenced, a fire-red wave of fur that left nothing but a woman's torn dress and a few smoldering sticks. I don't know if I should be paging Jeanette Winterson or![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
alankria.) I liked it a lot; it was written in a short-sentenced, simile-rich style, even if it made it difficult for me to find where I'd left my files. There was a strong autumnal feel and a lot of wide horizons.
3. Note discovered on my desktop, which I like too much to leave there: "O Brother, Where Art Thou? (2000) really isn't a retelling of the Odyssey so much as it's a shuffle-and-deal through archetypes of the Depression and the American South using the Greek epic as the configuration. (I've never been able to figure out whoRobert Tommy Johnson is supposed to correspond to, unless it's the epic tradition itself. If anyone's going to put this whole crazy caper into a song, it's him.)"
4. I wish I'd seen Matthea Harvey's "Telettrofono" in its original installation, but I am glad the text and audio survive. It is not a version of "The Little Mermaid" I'd read before. Whereas all primary sources for the previous intimation have gone missing, but murmurs persist in the sounds of the sea, and what is the sea if not primary?
5. The complete filmography of Val Lewton at the HFA in March is cinema's way of telling me it loves me and wants me to be happy.
Tonight I am meetingrushthatspeaks for our Valentine's Day Observed. We plan on Mei Mei and the MFA. I appreciate that the sky is not yet pouring snow for a change. Our shoveling situation is complicated these days.
2. I dreamed last night my computer died and when it came back up, it had restructured itself like a game with chapters in a weird mishmash of dime-store Western novels and New England witch trials. The Hanging of Dana De Niro. The Burning of Sarah Grodsky. (The latter was being prosecuted for turning into a fox, which she had done. The scaffold was swarmed with sleek sharp-nipping bodies as she was sentenced, a fire-red wave of fur that left nothing but a woman's torn dress and a few smoldering sticks. I don't know if I should be paging Jeanette Winterson or
alankria.) I liked it a lot; it was written in a short-sentenced, simile-rich style, even if it made it difficult for me to find where I'd left my files. There was a strong autumnal feel and a lot of wide horizons.3. Note discovered on my desktop, which I like too much to leave there: "O Brother, Where Art Thou? (2000) really isn't a retelling of the Odyssey so much as it's a shuffle-and-deal through archetypes of the Depression and the American South using the Greek epic as the configuration. (I've never been able to figure out who
4. I wish I'd seen Matthea Harvey's "Telettrofono" in its original installation, but I am glad the text and audio survive. It is not a version of "The Little Mermaid" I'd read before. Whereas all primary sources for the previous intimation have gone missing, but murmurs persist in the sounds of the sea, and what is the sea if not primary?
5. The complete filmography of Val Lewton at the HFA in March is cinema's way of telling me it loves me and wants me to be happy.
Tonight I am meeting
rushthatspeaks for our Valentine's Day Observed. We plan on Mei Mei and the MFA. I appreciate that the sky is not yet pouring snow for a change. Our shoveling situation is complicated these days.
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---L.
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The High Bright Sun. I'm still not even sure what it means.
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In a significantly better movie. This one has '50's gender roles all over it.
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Hi.
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I hope you will not take it as copyright infringement upon your brain if I attempt to write the story now that I'm awake, but I did want to say I'd thought of you.
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As does the complete Val Lewton at the HFA! I have seen most of those films, but none of them on a big screen.
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I think I'm going to try to write part of it. And just hope I don't screw it up.
I have seen most of those films, but none of them on a big screen.
I've seen Cat People, I Walked with a Zombie, and Curse of the Cat People, but none of the rest and never on a big screen. I am really, really looking forward.
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I'm really curious about both of those, although the latter especially. It looks like a dovetailing of two short stories without any supernatural elements at all. Either would make it interesting; I want to know how the combination works!
A Lewton version of The Horla would have been amazing, wouldn't it?
Time machine! Time machine! Netflix the next universe over!
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Enjoy the Day Observed!
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See above: I'm going to see what I can do.
1. for Eliott, maybe.
Just watch his scenes. It's what fast-forward is for. (Oh, God, does anyone fast-forward anymore?)
Enjoy the Day Observed!
It was wonderful!
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That dream you had definitely sounds like one for Alankria! And I wish the Cyprus movie didn't have the drawbacks you mention, because conceptually it seems like it would be very gripping.
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Oh, fantastic. Enjoy the film!
And I wish the Cyprus movie didn't have the drawbacks you mention, because conceptually it seems like it would be very gripping.
The same premise—not the one about the irresponsible terrorists, the one about the woman in her parents' country being asked to give evidence by the colonial administration—could have been used to fashion a fascinating screenplay about what it's like to return to a place you never quite came from, what it means to be involved in the past of a country rather than its present or future, loyalties and responsibilities, all sorts of tensions. It would have needed to take Juno (the archaeologist) as a real protagonist rather than a key piece in McGuire's investigations and treat the Cypriot paramilitary as an actual political movement, not just an indiscriminate threat. The film as it stands just erased so much ambiguity. That's why Elliot's character stands out, I think, aside from the fact that he was a brilliant character actor who could parlay two lines and a bit of business into an indelible little sketch—Baker is an ambiguous character, personally something of a heel, definitely a drunk, with a checkered resume, who nonetheless has McGuire's back at all times and protects Juno at the cost of his own life and doesn't seem to give two fingers for the political situation, which the film treats far more neutrally in his case than in Juno's. I don't know. Maybe there'll be a remake. I hardly ever say that about anything.
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Do you think this was deliberate?
I'm glad that you liked the dream. It sounds fascinating, especially the part with the foxes.
3. Note discovered on my desktop, which I like too much to leave there:...
That's a very good point. And maybe Tommy Johnson is the local equivalent of Homer, even though he's not blind and there's no reference to him writing a song about the Soggy Mountain Boys?
Happy Valentine's Day Observed to the both of ye. I'm glad for a day without snow as well.
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Not in the sense of undercutting the British, because they are otherwise very heavily positioned by the narrative as the good guys—the film validates McGuire's frustration with Juno by showing that none of the Cypriot characters can ultimately be trusted, except for the one who sacrifices himself for Juno's safety and then it's a personal motive, not any sense of independent honor (like, it's a huge breach of guest-friendship to order a hit on your best friend's daughter who's been living in your house). Chakiris' Haghios hates Juno from the moment he meets her for no other reason than that she's American, which is as good as British to him; he needles her about not being Greek enough after only a generation away, assumes she's a collaborator who's spilled everything to McGuire when she's still trying to protect the Andros family, steps in to handle her assassination himself when initial attempts fail. He looks unreasonable to the audience from the start. We're not encouraged to side with any of his colleagues. Therefore I'm skeptical that the British were supposed to come off as negatively as they do, but it's hard to deny. McGuire is their chief voice and he's rough with Juno as soon as he meets her, as convinced as Haghios that she knows more than she's telling. The only difference is, the film's on his side for it.
And maybe Tommy Johnson is the local equivalent of Homer, even though he's not blind and there's no reference to him writing a song about the Soggy Mountain Boys?
I don't think Homer, but then again I think in terms of Homeric epic, not an actual blind guy on Chios composing the very same hexameters I read for the first time in college. Tradition, though, I am totally behind.
Happy Valentine's Day Observed to the both of ye. I'm glad for a day without snow as well.
Well, it was snowing by the time we left the house, and then it rained, and then it snowed again, but it was still a very good day.
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Nine
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Thank you. I'm going to try not to lose this one.