I looked up the other day: the air was full of bees! I tried to see where they were coming from but found instead where they were going to: this bush on the other side of the fence. It was absolutely astounding to see. I kept my distance but I couldn’t stop staring. All the…
Saturday Matinee: The Clairvoyant (1935)
Apropos for Derby Day (no, the other one, my American friends) I can recommend the early Gainsborough film starring Claude Rains, Fay Wray and Jane Baxter. Rains and Baxter are music hall performers with a mind reader act very familiar to Nightmare Alley fans. It’s a family tradition and they seem happy on the circuit…
Film Noir Friday: Fallen Angel (1945)
FALLEN ANGEL (1945) Dir Otto Preminger Attempting to capture the magic of Laura the year before, Preminger got Dana Andrews back into a fedora and Joseph LaShelle lensing but no Gene Tierney, alas. Instead we have a ripe Linda Darnell as the bad girl Stella (she shines at night of course) and Alice Faye as…
Scoundrel for a Sunday
THE PRIVATE AFFAIRS OF BEL AMI (1947) I’m a bit mystified how I never got around to this film until recently. I adore George Sanders and no one plays a better scoundrel than he does. Add to that a luminescent Angela Lansbury at her very dewiest beauty and some great women’s roles, and — well,…
#Folklore Thursday: In Search of Voodoo – Roots to Heaven
Belatedly catching up on episodes of Pam Grossman’s Witch Wave podcast, I heard the always fascinating Lilith Dorsey mention this film, available streaming on Az. Award-winning actor Dijmon Hounsou returns to Benin to follow the roots of this often misunderstood and generally maligned magical system and along the way examines how colonialism, racism and Christianity…
Matinee: The Magnificent Dope (1942)
Farran Nehme (@selfstyledsiren) started a wonderful thread of golden recommendations on Twitter the other day, so I bookmarked a few things for when I had a spare moment. This came up first early Sunday morning because it was a the first time I could fit something in (yeah, back on dad duty) because I thought…
Surreal Noir: 17 May 22
Tonight, it’s SURREAL NOIR at NoBounds Radio. Episode Ten: Last episode was so talky I decided to double the listening pleasure this time around. Deep Listening from the 21st century back to the 14th—immersive sound to stop time and feed your ears! Musical selections include: Pauline Oliveros: Big Slow Bog (Mills Tape Center 1966-7) —…
Classic Crime: The Witch’s House
Taking the day off is a good time to catch up on some fiction reading as I have almost no time for reading lately except work which is mostly non-fiction. I can forget what it’s like to read without making notes or checking footnotes and sources, stopping to make notes of what else I need…
Blithe or No
BLITHE SPIRIT (2020) An impulse purchase this week: I suspect it was the subliminal effect of the tarot spread in the cover image. And I like Judi Dench. And Dan Stevens. And I love Coward, the snap and crackle of his dialogue. Certainly the play could use an update — like removing all the casual…
Surreal Noir: 19 Apr 22
Tonight, it’s SURREAL NOIR at NoBounds Radio. Episode Nine: My text for this episode is Leonora Carrington’s ‘My Mother is a Cow’ which you can find in the collected stories. It features surrealism, ritual, goddesses, sacrifice, skin, magic, and a bit of Graves’ The White Goddess. If this sounds familiar, it’s adapted from the talk…
K. A. Laity 