Most of my recent viewings will be television as things have been rather wearying of late, but Bertie was kind enough to get tickets for Death of a Salesman with Laurie Metcalf and Nathan Lane. Rounding out the central cast was Christopher Abbott as Biff (quite impressive) and Ben Ahlers as Hap (whom I knew…
Tag: writing
No Other Choice/The Ax
Today is the day my late friend Adrean Darce Brent chose as her birthday; she told me once that the process took long enough that she had more than one day that could be considered so, but having to choose she went with that date. She died before her last birthday which I didn’t find…
Swedenborg House: Elective Affinities
SWEDENBORG HOUSE, LONDON Taking inspiration from the term coined in early chemistry, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s 1809 novel, and a celebrated painting by René Magritte, Elective Affinities explores the mysterious connection between objects, ideas and inner experience. At its core lies the thought of Emanuel Swedenborg (1688–1772), whose philosophy of correspondences proposed a resonance between objects, places…
Þæs ofereode, þisses swa mæg
How to describe the feeling when you see loads of people sharing a meme about how far back can you understand English, which goes all the way back to Old English. People having fun and delighted to realise they can get through Middle English pretty easily, early Middle English somewhat and a bit of Old…
‘Stars & Screen’ Virtual Symposium
I’m pleased to be giving a presentation on the borderline between Gothic and Noir using the films Ivy and Bedelia at the Cinema & Media History Virtual Symposium, 16 May 2026. Good news: it’s online and free to attend this whole day of presentations on a wide variety of films starting at 10am Eastern Time…
Mold, Moss, and Fungus
I am always grateful when Carol Borden of The Cultural Gutter tells me I should check something out. She knows my tastes pretty well and when she said I had to see Rabbit Trap, I knew I would need to do so (see her write up at the link). It hits a lot of my…
Hallucinations
I received an email requesting an essay I wrote in 2011. Not unusual: while publishers charge lots of money for academic journals, most of us are happy to give away copies for free of our own publications. Print journals used to give (maybe still do?) extra offset copies for precisely that purpose. What was odd,…
Shenanigans, Generally
19 January 1596: Walter Hay, a goldsmith, brought up on charges per the Elgin Kirk sessions for playing bowls and golf (obviously an athletic enthusiast) on a Sunday when he should have been attending to the sermons in the kirk. Five pounds and a promise never to do it again. The eldership of the church…
Noir: Flicka och Hyacinter (1950)
This film was mentioned on #filmsky and did not disappoint. A little Laura and a bit of The Seventh Victim, so like the latter should have cautions about it dealing rather grimly with suicide. We’re thrown in media res with people at a sort of party and then we see Dagmar (Eva Henning) leave to…
Reading into the New Year
I’ve been doing a lot of reading since I got here before Xmas and I wanted to try to keep track of as much as I can. A few books were waiting for me: some because shipping to the US was too much especially for contributor’s copies (why punish the publishers?). So very happily reading…