I feel perpetually late to the party on just about everything these days; mirroring real life I suppose as I am always late to any party (because who wants to be first? Unless it’s a good friend and then I get there early to make sure I can talk to them before the party starts…
Category: reviews
The Falcon Takes Over (1942)
A loose adaptation of Chandler’s Farewell My Lovely with George Sanders as the Falcon instead of Marlowe, which more or less means the same plot but instead of Marlowe muttering we have Sanders kissing all the girls — almost literally! And he swans about in his white tie and tails about which I’ve no complaint….
Murrain (1975)
By the by: if you’re on Letterboxd, let’s connect: I’m here. Sometimes you just need a nudge to get something done. Andy Miller tweeted that he wrote about the challenge of ‘getting back to normal’ for the NYT and about heading to London to celebrate Kneale’s centenary. He’s come to same conclusion as many: ‘normal’…
Memoria (2021)
I am so glad pal Stephanie urged me to go out and see this when I was feeling tired and dispirited and short on time between returning from Scotland and heading to Michigan. Apparently writer/director Apichatpong Weerasethakul intends to only play this in theatres on tour (though the good news is it’s also described as…
The Screaming Mimi (1958)
I’m not sure why I never got around to seeing this until now — I blame No Context Noir for posting screenshots. I have had the Frederic Brown novel in a glorious paperback that I paid too much for to Hal the Bookie (RIP) because he could be so persuasive and because it was supposed…
Letty Lynton: Marie Belloc-Lowndes (1931)
On holiday so I am reading novels and watching fun things and yes, I was curious about the novel which (allegedly) inspired the film since they seemed a bit different — also there was that whole plagiarism case with the play that inspired the film Dishonoured Lady (1947) (again, I can only guess allegedly!). Having…
Only The Stones Remain
Before I was laid low with fever and dreams, I watched a couple of folk horror classics that I had often heard about but never watched. Being well-versed in 70s American television horror I remain sadly deficient in the British counterpart, though I have made great strides since the whole folk horror boom arose (mostly…
Spook Racket: Psychic Mafia
Oddly enough in the seemingly endless line of grifters and con artists in and around the spook racket, I had not read this volume. I first ran across the BBC radio series on it — part of their ongoing fascination with grifters like Anna Delvey. Lamar tells his story (with Spraggett’s help) with relish, albeit…
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…
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…