February 5, 2022

Another cold day, so no photos for the late night café, where you can write about whatever you want.

I know it's not that late, but it's time for me to shut down the day's typing, and maybe curl up and watch a movie — probably something on the Criterion Channel — or another stretch of the Beatles documentary — which I'm more than halfway through watching for a second time. 

I think the documentary is much more enjoyable on the second watch because I'm not distracted by the narrative arc — will they or won't they be ready to do a live concert? — and I can pay attention to the random details of particular moments. 

As for Criterion Channel movies, the 2 most recent things we've watched are "Watermelon Man" and "Suddenly, Last Summer." Both were chosen quickly after they showed up in the channel's options, and both were appreciated. "Suddenly, Last Summer" falls into a category I would describe as: 2 people are crazy, and one is more crazy than the other, but which one? Some of my very favorite movies fit that description. "Watermelon Man" fits the category: There is one central character, but 2 versions of him, before and after a big transformation.

29 comments:

rcocean said...

Suddenly Last Summer is a hoot and Liz never looked lovelier. She was always better in B/W. The only drawback is Monty who looks like a drugged out zombie, because he was.

Hepburn didn't like the way she was treated by Herman mankiwitz or the way Mankawitz treated poor ol' Monty, so she spit in his face the last day of shooting and walked out. Lots of drama back in old Hollywood.

NorthOfTheOneOhOne said...

Surprise!

Whoopi Goldberg's fake Jewish past: The View host wrote 1993 recipe for 'Jewish American Princess Fried Chicken' then claimed SHE was a practicing Jew - as insiders slam 'decades' of 'disgusting' appropriation and anti-Semitism

Scott Patton said...

Joe Rogan on Gummy Bears.

Big Mike said...

I’ll ask again. If white people in blackface are bad, does that make black actors in whiteface good?

It’s been a long time since I saw “Watermelon Man” in the theaters, and the main thing I remember about it is that Godfrey Cambridge portraying a white man had a lot more verisimilitude than any white actor I had ever seen trying to portray a black man. Note that “Finian’s Rainbow” came out only two years before, and the enormously talented Keenan Wynn also portrayed a white man turning into a black man, but IMO Cambridge portrayed a white man better than Wynn portrayed a black man,

Big Mike said...

A gummy bear (regular kind) pulled a temporary crown off one of my teeth about 25 years ago. I suppose it’s what I deserved for snitching a piece of candy from my son.

Lem the artificially intelligent said...

Joe Rogan is doing more apologies than podcasts these days. Somebody made a compilation of his use of the Nword. Looks like he's done. Sad.

Who's going to want to go on now?

Never-Biden Never-Putin said...

This this this

MadTownGuy said...

Who knew it would be the Canadians who reached peak mandate frustration first?

Bender said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Mark said...

Yep, Lem, looks like Rogan just lost a lot of potential guests ... as well as 100+ episodes that will never be heard from again.

Shit just got real for Joe after that video India.Arie posted.

Mike of Snoqualmie said...

This being Olympic season, I must tell about how our 11-lb Chiweeni, Sadie, participates in the supper bowl Olympics. Tonight she had Real Texas Beef for dinner in her 4-lobe supper bowl. RTB is a paste and sometimes she can't get all of it. In order to get all of it, she'll shove the supper bowl around and around, in a kind of drunken walk. Most of the time, each shove moves the bowl farther away from her starting point, next to the refrigerator. Tonight, she got the supper bowl past the sink. As she's moving in an easterly direction, we said that she was half way to Spokane. Another time, she'd gotten all the way down the kitchen island, so she'd reached Spokane. She really loves that Real Texas Beef.

Bender said...

Some Biden apologists are trying to excuse his use of the "N-word" at a Senate hearing, saying that he was just quoting from some report.

But others such as college professor have been fired for simply reading the word outloud from some transcript or text.

Clips of the leftist Cenk Uygur and The Young Turks repeatedly using the word in their shows are circulating on the Tweeter now.

Bender said...

- CORRECTED -
Movie tonight on Cozi - Columbo takes an ocean cruise. Someone gets murdered. Columbo gets sea sick and almost immediately knows who did it.

Rt41Rebel said...

"Who knew it would be the Canadians who reached peak mandate frustration first?"

Check out Small Dead Animals (if you don't already,) in-depth updates on all things Truckistan.

wildswan said...

I was looking for a great site I used to visit called the Future of the Past (about Europe, not America. But it's gone; had no future, I guess.

Bender said...

Seen just now -- John Robinson putting what looks like a cell phone antenna on the Jupiter 2 on Season One, Episode Two of Lost in Space.

Gospace said...

Going to an earlier thread:
Rabel said...
"The constitutional guarantees require, we think, a Federal rule that prohibits a public official from recovering damages for a defamatory falsehood relating to his official conduct unless he proves that the statement was made with 'actual malice'—that is, with knowledge that it was false or with reckless disregard of whether it was false or not."

- Justice Brennan in Times v. Sullivan


Hmmm... a federal rule that prohibits a public official from recovering damages relating to his official conduct.Interesting phrasing. Palin was defamed by lies about her campaign ad. Not part of her "official conduct". Whether you're running for election of reelection- it's not part of your official conduct. Has nothing to do, nada, with your official duties.

And another post: "Celeste Mohan and Zach Flynn did not set out to buy a farmhouse with a barn and two cows. But after they lost a bidding war..."

My better half grew up in a city, lived there for 21 years- in the same bedroom in the same house. Then, we married, and for 21 years lived in Navy towns. Said when I retired from active duty she wanted to live in the country. So for the last 25 years we've lived on 8.5 acres in the middle of nowhere NY. As my HS classmates reached retirement age. I warned them that if you own land in the country, unless it's desert or completely forested- the land owns you, you don't own it. All those pretty pastures and fields require lots of maintenance to keep them as pastures and fields. I haven't been able to keep up with cutting down the locust trees. In other areas, it's pine. Things want to grow on your land, and they're probably not what you want growing there.

Lem the artificially intelligent said...

Who knew it would be the Canadians who reached peak mandate frustration first?

In these video “who constructed the covid narrative?” there’s some speculation as to the closer people/countries are to the Fauci sphere of influence the more hardcore the mandates appear to be. 👉🏽 https://youtu.be/q_BmU8Pn6dQ

If Fauci wasn’t believed to be the savior, his hand in the creation of the pandemic would be abundantly obvious.

Lem the artificially intelligent said...

Shit just got real for Joe after that video India.Arie posted.

The result is we’re going to be denied an alternative source of information we need to make sense of what the hell is going on.

That video compilation works like the bullets that killed that woman on set.

Ann Althouse said...

"Note that “Finian’s Rainbow” came out only two years before, and the enormously talented Keenan Wynn also portrayed a white man turning into a black man, but IMO Cambridge portrayed a white man better than Wynn portrayed a black man"

Columbia Pictures had Jack Lemmon or Alan Arkin in mind for the lead in "Watermelon Man" but the director, Melvin Van Peebles, resisted. The character is white only for a relatively short period in the beginning, and it's important to see that he really becomes black and not that his skin turns quite dark and people mistake him for black.

Lem the artificially intelligent said...

Then again… maybe it’s an opportunity for Rogan, if we can believe, as this guy talking to Jordan Peterson does, Rogan is hosting Spotify and not the other way around.

https://youtu.be/ivegf9THOf8

Not Sure said...

I know of Godfrey Cambridge from The President's Analyst, in which he delivers a monologue that uses that word at least a dozen times a minute, to powerful effect. It sure as hell doesn't make anyone watching think it'd be a fine addition to his everyday vocabulary. In fact, I'd guess that in 1967 it helped more than a few people in the audience better understand the black experience of that time.

So if Rogan used it that way, he almost certainly used it for its shock effect, not as a weapon. Not saying it makes tactical sense for a white guy to do that, but if you're gonna be an iconoclast then you've gotta swing a sledge hammer.

Leora said...

I appreciate your Criterion Channel guidance. I find myself spending half an hour looking at the choices and then going to another site to watch an old TV show. Diary of a Mad Housewife was not as good as I remembered.

Rhonda said...

…noticed the reference to the Beatles doc on Apple, we just finished 2nd of 3 parts. You haven’t written at any length about it have you? Hope you do and that that may be the point of your rewatch…..just another case of the media narrative on them and why they split being way wrong, among other impressions I have.

Jersey Fled said...

Must watch

https://twitter.com/sunqueentrg/status/1489325606290411520

Stephen St. Onge said...

        You are not allowed to enjoy Watermelon Man. It features the n-word, and so is unclean.

TheOne Who Is Not Obeyed said...

So an antifa dude was instigated by Trudeau's posts to run his SUV into people peacefully demonstrating in favor of individual conscience in regards to experimental vaccinations in Canada. Castro's bastard son has blood on his hands.

Lurker21 said...

Suddenly Last Summer the play came along when Williams was losing touch and losing his touch. The movie came out at a low point for the studio system. I saw Butterfield 8, Liz's next big movie, the one she got an Oscar for. It wasn't that good.

I notice Gore Vidal had a hand in the script. Like Capote, he put down Williams's intellectual capacity. He also put down Capote. But that was what Vidal (and Capote) did. It was gossip and bitchiness and wit that got them on the Tonight Show. Williams's works will last longer than either Capote's or Vidal's, and Capote was probably a better writer than Vidal, but Vidal most likely did have a greater critical intelligence than Williams or Capote.

The New Criterion has an article about Raintree County (behind its paywall), the novel behind another Montgomery Clift-Elizabeth Taylor movie. I was intrigued by what I've heard about the novel, but I gather it didn't live up to the author's aspirations.

Heartless Aztec said...

Just finished the second season of "Why Women Kill. Wonderful dark comedy set in a vibrantly colored hurd 1949. Two big thumbs up from us.