Down in the cellar, you're getting into making poisons
Happy Monday! My day so far has chiefly contained a doctor's appointment, wrestling with health insurance, and a steep learning curve of WordPress. Have some assorted news.
1. Strange Horizons has a new look! Check it out.
2. On November 15th—that's in three weeks—I will be reading with Kij Johnson at the Brooklyn Commons Café as part of the New York Review of Science Fiction Readings. Probably from my most recently accepted fiction, maybe some poetry as well. If you are at all in the area, come and hear!
3. On January 7th—that's next year—I will be reading at the United Photo Industries Gallery as the part of the closing event for Viktor Koen's Bestiary: Bizarre Myths & Chimerical Fancies. That will very definitely be the poem I wrote for the exhibition catalogue. More information as we approach.
4. Reproduced from comments with![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
rydra_wong, because I never got around to it on my own journal:
I never reviewed Lady with a Past (1932) at all, but it's worth your time if you can catch it. It's almost a screwball comedy, except that the majority of its dialogue would not have passed muster post-Code; its pacing is a mess and it needed either a different ending or to get there much more smoothly; but it also contains the not-so-secret weapon of Constance Bennett as a bookish, socially awkward heroine who decides to jump-start her social life by pretending to a scandalous reputation and hires Ben Lyon's cheerfully upfront ne'er-do-well ("I'm careless, shiftless, and extravagant") to squire her around Paris with just the right balance of salaciousness and class. She got the idea from watching the skyrocketing popularity of a woman who was acquitted of poisoning her husband; to give you an idea of the film's tone, she muses quite seriously on whether she would have to get a husband herself in order to poison him or whether poisoning just anybody's husband would do. The central and charming irony is that she doesn't actually alter her personality a jot, but now she's perceived as mysterious and fascinating instead of gauche and unapproachable and soon she's got suitors of all nationalities swarming her at parties, including her best friend's brother (David Manners) who once jilted her without knowing it after drunkenly proposing to her the night before. The strongest stretch of the film simply has these three characters bouncing off each other: Bennett is delighted to find her lack of small talk taken for smoldering enigma, Lyon is as good as his word in both his ability to play her latest louche flame while being genuinely supportive of her and his tendency to run up staggering bills in liquor and clothes, and Manners, when he drops dutifully by to look in on the wallflower, is blown off his feet by her newfound popularity and then wickedly shut out when he tries to get a courtship in edgewise. It's not a lost classic, but I found it a lot of fun. I need to see more of Constance Bennett than Topper (1937) and I still like Ben Lyon, who on the strength of this movie and Night Nurse (1931) looks like a character lead to me. I keep forgetting what happened to him beyond marrying Bebe Daniels and moving to the UK. I really enjoy David Manners so long as he's not appearing in Dracula (1931).
There is no fifth thing; I am heading off to meet![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
nineweaving, sartorias, and skogkatt in Harvard Square. I leave you with some pre-Code people.
1. Strange Horizons has a new look! Check it out.
2. On November 15th—that's in three weeks—I will be reading with Kij Johnson at the Brooklyn Commons Café as part of the New York Review of Science Fiction Readings. Probably from my most recently accepted fiction, maybe some poetry as well. If you are at all in the area, come and hear!
3. On January 7th—that's next year—I will be reading at the United Photo Industries Gallery as the part of the closing event for Viktor Koen's Bestiary: Bizarre Myths & Chimerical Fancies. That will very definitely be the poem I wrote for the exhibition catalogue. More information as we approach.
4. Reproduced from comments with
rydra_wong, because I never got around to it on my own journal:I never reviewed Lady with a Past (1932) at all, but it's worth your time if you can catch it. It's almost a screwball comedy, except that the majority of its dialogue would not have passed muster post-Code; its pacing is a mess and it needed either a different ending or to get there much more smoothly; but it also contains the not-so-secret weapon of Constance Bennett as a bookish, socially awkward heroine who decides to jump-start her social life by pretending to a scandalous reputation and hires Ben Lyon's cheerfully upfront ne'er-do-well ("I'm careless, shiftless, and extravagant") to squire her around Paris with just the right balance of salaciousness and class. She got the idea from watching the skyrocketing popularity of a woman who was acquitted of poisoning her husband; to give you an idea of the film's tone, she muses quite seriously on whether she would have to get a husband herself in order to poison him or whether poisoning just anybody's husband would do. The central and charming irony is that she doesn't actually alter her personality a jot, but now she's perceived as mysterious and fascinating instead of gauche and unapproachable and soon she's got suitors of all nationalities swarming her at parties, including her best friend's brother (David Manners) who once jilted her without knowing it after drunkenly proposing to her the night before. The strongest stretch of the film simply has these three characters bouncing off each other: Bennett is delighted to find her lack of small talk taken for smoldering enigma, Lyon is as good as his word in both his ability to play her latest louche flame while being genuinely supportive of her and his tendency to run up staggering bills in liquor and clothes, and Manners, when he drops dutifully by to look in on the wallflower, is blown off his feet by her newfound popularity and then wickedly shut out when he tries to get a courtship in edgewise. It's not a lost classic, but I found it a lot of fun. I need to see more of Constance Bennett than Topper (1937) and I still like Ben Lyon, who on the strength of this movie and Night Nurse (1931) looks like a character lead to me. I keep forgetting what happened to him beyond marrying Bebe Daniels and moving to the UK. I really enjoy David Manners so long as he's not appearing in Dracula (1931).
There is no fifth thing; I am heading off to meet
nineweaving, sartorias, and skogkatt in Harvard Square. I leave you with some pre-Code people.
no subject
(And it's a fascinating example of the changed sexual morality that the Code stomped on so hard: when faced with his girlfriend having the chance to follow her piano potential, he declares variously that he doesn't own her and that she should do what's best for her, and seems sincere about this. And somewhat later in the film proposes to her even though it's clear that she's been a gold-digger along with the other leads, and the film treats it as entirely right and proper that he should want to marry her and she should end with him at the end of the fim.)
But it is still something of a Nice Handsome Young Man Generic Juvenile Lead supporting role.