July 2020
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The nation is in an uproar — the Covid-19 pandemic, mass unemployment, racial reckoning, disorder in the streets, Russians sabotaging our elections, ignorant authoritarian leadership. We ourselves are sheltering at home, and are healthy, thanks to the masks and the cooperation of friends and neighbors, but there's little hope of a getaway. We certainly can't…
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Mogambo (1953), directed by John Ford, is an eternal-triangle story in which earthy Ava Gardner and prim Grace Kelly compete for white hunter Clark Gable. Unfortunately, it's less engaging as a romance than as a travelogue — it offers spectacular footage of African megafauna (hippos, giraffes, lions, gorillas, etc.). Whenever I watch classic films set…
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Should I encourage my friends to seek out this film or should I warn them to steer clear? Stranger on the Third Floor is one of many works of art that are more historically important, more influential than they are good or pleasing. With a thin plot, obviously padded, it moves along as…
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I stand, like most in my cohort who have lived ordinary, conventional lives, at the midpoint of a continuum stretching from grandparents to grandchildren — at an imaginary apex looking backward and forward, Janus-like. I remember my grandparents, though only at the end of their long lives, and I know my grandchildren, though only at…
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The last time, a decade ago, that I needed a rug pad, I went hunting at various malls and shops that might stock such an item. After a few exhausting hours, I located an appropriate-size rug pad at one of those large import stores — it may have been Pier 1 or WorldMarket. The quality…
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Why was I surprised that this was such a fine film? I should have done some research before viewing. It was written by Robert Riskin and Jo Swerling. Riskin had It Happened One Night to his credit and collaborated with Frank Capra on Mr. Deeds Comes to Town. Swerling wrote It's a Wonderful Life and…
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It's Sir Richard Lovelace, born in 1617, perhaps in his late 'teens or early 20s (he survived only to the age of 40), but mature enough to have grown a splendid crop of rich black hair. Over his left shoulder is a motto that reads "prodesse non praeesse" which means something like…
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In this Our Life, the novel by Ellen Glasgow is richer, deeper, and less bound by convention than the film. Film Life follows the inherited story for its first forty-five minutes but then sharply diverges. In the film version, bad daughter Stanley is less conflicted and complicated a character and eventually devolves into a stereotypical…
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Talk about movie "bad girls"– here's one of the most sordid. In this Our Life is a doppelganger story of two sisters, one good and one evil. Roy (sic) Timberlake, played by Olivia de Havilland, is too good to be true. Stanley (sic) Timberlake, embodied by Bette Davis in an eye-popping, raucous performance, is wicked…
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I read Elizabeth Cleghorn Stevenson Gaskell's North and South (1854) on the Kindle. It's a long novel, but I don't know how long because when I don't have a book to heft, I don't know how many pages I've read and how many more are left. I can only say that I became impatient after…