Warren and Apple Intelligence

Adam Engst excoriates Apple for its new Apple Intelligence ads, and rightly so. One is about business writing:

In the first ad, Apple Intelligence enables a goof-off who wastes time and annoys his colleagues to surprise his boss with an unexpectedly well-written email. It’s not clear that the boss is impressed; he just can’t believe the guy would have written a professional message.

Is the message that Apple Intelligence is aimed at the perpetually lazy? Where’s the positive ad with a dyslexic child using Writing Tools to proofread a school essay or a businessperson using it to understand a complex report dumped on them minutes before a meeting?

What Adam doesn’t comment on is the writing itself. Here’s the before message:

Hey J,

Been thinking, this project might need a bit of zhuhzing. But you're the big enchilada.

Holler back,
Warren

I’ve omitted the flexed arms that frame Warren’s name — I cannot get that solid grey emoji on my Mac.

Warren has five Apple Intelligence options to choose from: Professional, Rewrite, Friendly, Proofread, and Concise (odd sequence there, Apple). He chooses Professional. Here’s the after message:

Hey J,

Upon further consideration, I believe this project may require some refinement. However, you are the most capable individual to undertake this task.

Please let me know your thoughts.

Best regards,
Warren

“Write smarter,” sez the ad. But is this revised e-mail an example of smart writing? I don’t think so. The language here is stilted and ponderous in the extreme: upon further consideration, may require, the introductory however, individual, undertake. And it’s all addressed to a boss, suggesting that the boss do the work. The smarter response to a boss might be to say “On it” — or to explain that you’re swamped and wonder whether someone else (who’s not the boss) might take on the task.

But wait, there’s more: Warren’s e-mail bears the (dumb) subject line “Project Stuff” (unchanged in the revision). There’s no “Re:” — it doesn’t appear that Warren is replying to an e-mail asking that he take on a new task, though he could be replying to a spoken request. But look again at the original e-mail: Warren was suggesting the need for further work on a project while acknowledging that the decision rests with the big enchilada. Warren was having second thoughts. Apple Intelligence appears not to have understood his words.

What might real human intelligence look like here? Maybe something like this:

Hi J,

I think that this project still needs improvement, and I’d be happy to talk about it with you. But I know that’s your decision to make. Let me know what you think,

Warren

The scary question: is the “Upon further consideration” e-mail an example of what Apple thinks good writing looks like, or is it an example of what someone at Apple thinks its customers think good writing looks like? I’m not sure which answer is scarier.

You can see the ad (and another one) at Adam Engst’s TidBITS post.

A related post
ChatGPT e-mails a professor

Hi and Lois watch

[Hi and Lois, November 11, 2024. Click for a larger view.]

“Ug! My back hurts this morning”: I don’t get it. Just yesterday, Hi was capable of complete exclamations: “Unhh!” “Arrgh!” And a complete grawlix. If you’re going to talk like a caveman this morning, Hi, you'll need to do better than this. Maybe: “Ug. Bak.”

Seeing ug for ugh reminds me of seeing pros for prose in student writing. What a difference one letter makes. Ugh.

Related reading
All OCA Hi and Lois posts (Pinboard)

Block that analogy

Alex Witt on MSNBC a little while ago:

“It is like an SAT question: North Carolina is to Democrats as Lucy is to Charlie Brown’s football. But is a strategy by the Harris campaign going to change all of that?”

I hope so. But first we need to fix the analogy. If North Carolina is what was within reach but then taken away, a proper analogy would go like so:

NC : Democrats :: the football : Charlie Brown

Related reading
All OCA analogy posts (Pinboard)

“Contempt, rage, parsimony, racism”

In The Atlantic, Jeffrey Goldberg writes at length about Donald Trump and the military: “Trump: ‘I Need the Kind of Generals That Hitler Had.’” Many familiar anecdotes, but also a new one about Trump’s offer to help the family of murdered Army private Vanessa Guillén with funeral expenses, and his response when he learned the cost: “contempt, rage, parsimony, racism.”

You’ll have to read the article to see what Trump said — I can’t bring myself to type it here.

Thirteen movies

[One to four stars. Four sentences each. No spoilers.]

From the Criterion Channel feature Rebels at the Typewriter: Women Screenwriters of the 1930s

Working Girls (dir. Dorothy Azner, 1931). Sisters Mae and Hune (Dorothy Hall and Judith Wood) arrive in New York City, take up residence in a home for homeless young women, and seek work and romance. Paul Lukas plays a scientist in need of a secretary and a wife; Charles “Buddy” Rogers plays a lawyer in love with a socialite — at least for a while he is. Rigid class distinctions, enforced and overcome. Screenplay by Zoë Akins (friend of Willa Cather). ★★★

*

What Price Hollywood? (dir. George Cukor, 1932). The rise of Mary Evans (Constance Bennett) from waitress to movie star, “America’s Pal,” and the fall of Maximilian Carey (Lowell Sherman, who reminds me of Nathan Lane) from witty director to destitute drunk. This movie must have thrilled contemporary audiences with its scenes of work on movie sets. Some remarkable cinematography by Charles Rosher of Sunrise, particularly the desperate montage that comes late in the story. Screenplay by Jane Murfin, Ben Markson, and Allen Rivkin. ★★★★

*

Bed of Roses (dir. Gregory LaCava, 1933). Constance Bennett stars as Lorry Evans, a prostitute on parole who poses as a journalist in order to seduce a wealthy bachelor (Stephen Paige) and get herself set up in her own apartment, sleeping in, yes, a bed adorned with roses. But Lorry’s heart belongs to a lower-level capitalist, a cotton-barge owner (Joel McCrea), to whom she is afraid to reveal her past. A remarkably frank pre-Code story about sexual autonomy and class, with Pert Kelton (the first Alice Kramden) as Lorry’s sidekick and Franklin Pangborn as a floorwalker. Screenplay by Wanda Tuchock, Gregory LaCava, and Eugene Thackrey. ★★★★

*

Finishing School (dir. George Nicholls Jr. and Wanda Tuchock, 1934). Frances Dee is Virginia Radcliff, of the New York Radcliffs don’t you know, dumped by her mother (Billie Burke) at Crockett Hall Finishing School in New Jersey, where free-spirited roommate Pony (Ginger Rogers) revels in booze, cigarettes, and city weekends with louche Ivy League men. On one of those weekends, meek Virginia meets and falls for Ralph McFarland (Bruce Cabot), an interning doctor and all-around good guy who’s supporting himself as a hotel waiter. The relationship (which includes a night together in a boathouse) meets with the disapproval of mother Radcliff and the witch who runs Crockett (Beulah Bondi), but Virginia rebels, and Ralph tells off the classist authorities with the movie’s best line: “Maybe you don’t realize that the world’s too busy earning its three squares a day to worry about what fork to eat ’em with.” Screenplay by Laird Doyle and Wanda Tuchock. ★★★★

*

Rockabye (dir. George Cukor, 1932). Stage star Judy Carroll (Constance Bennett) is beset by trouble: with a former lover, an adopted toddler, an alcoholic mother, an agent who’s in love with her (Paul Lukas), and a married man she loves (Joel McCrea). A few moments of pre-Code eros, many moments of comedy (mostly via Jobyna Howland as Judy’s mother Snooks) and many moments of great pathos and stoic strength. This movie tears one’s heart out and then plays keepaway with it — just when it seems within reach, it’s gone again. Screenplay by Jane Murfin, from a play by Lucia Bronder. ★★★★

*

Midnight Mary (dir. William A. Wellman, 1933). Loretta Young as Mary Martin, a woman who from her orphan childhood has had nothing but bad breaks, with her life told in one long flashback as she awaits the jury’s verdict in her trial for murder. Ricardo Cortez and Franchot Tone appear as polar-opposite love interests in a pre-Code story full of mayhem and sex. Best scene: the dead body against the rattling door. Screenplay by Anita Loos, Gene Markey, and Kathryn Scola. ★★★★

*

You and Me (dir. Fritz Lang, 1938). A charmingly loopy effort, with Harry Carey is a department-store owner and altruist who employs ex-convicts, among them, one Joe (George Raft), who falls for shopgirl Helen (Sylvia Sidney). All’s well until the old gang wants to bring Joe in on a plan to rob the store. With familiar faces old and new: Roscoe Karns, Barton MacLane, George E. Stone, and a young Bob Cummings, who might have been good for a mystery-actor post, save that he already looks like Bob Cummings. Screenplay by Virginia Van Upp, Norman Krasna, and Jack Moffitt. ★★★★

*

Blondie of the Follies (dir. Edmund Goulding, 1932). Marion Davies stars as Blondie McClune, who rises from a three-generation-crowded Brooklyn apartment to a Broadway career and swank Manhattan digs. There’s one problem: Blondie and her best pal Lottie Callahan (Billie Dove) are both after the same fellow, Larry Belmont (Robert Montgomery), and as with Betty and Veronica, the rivalry goes on and on and on, and on. Weirdest moment, Davies and Jimmy Durante spoofing Grand Hotel (which Goulding directed). Screenplay by Frances Marion, Anita Loos, and Ralph Spence. ★★

*

Hold Your Man (dir. Sam Wood, 1933). Ruby (Jean Harlow) and Eddie (Clark Gable) meet when he ducks into her apartment and bathtub to avoid the cops. Ruby and Eddie are instantly attracted to one another, though many complications will follow, and Ruby will be sent off to a reformatory before the story comes to its end. Wildly funny, with poignant moments, slaps and punches, and plenty of snappy dialogue: “I got two rules I always stick to when I’m out visitin’: keep away from couches, and stay on your feet.” Screenplay by Anita Loos and Howard Emmett Rogers. ★★★★

*

Sadie McKee (dir. Clarence Brown, 1934). “Every gal has her price, and mine’s high”: so says Sadie McKee (Joan Crawford), daughter of a maid to wealthy business owners, one of whom, lawyer Michael (Franchot Tone) has been Sadie’s pal from childhood. When Michael fires Sadie’s boyfriend Tommy (Gene Raymond), the young couple flee to New York City, where many challenges await. Wealth comes back into the picture when Sadie meets the kind, shambling alcoholic Brennan (Edward Arnold, in a brilliant performance), but the lasting images in this movie are of deprivation and want: a miserable furnished room for rent, an abandoned piece of Automat pie rendered inedible with a cigarette butt. Screenplay by John Meehan, Viña Delmar, and Carey Wilson. ★★★★

*

Hallelujah (dir. King Vidor, 1929). An all-Black cast in a story of transgression and redemption: Zeke (Daniel L. Haynes, in a role meant for Paul Robeson), the oldest son in a family of sharecroppers, falls in with bad company in the form of Chick (Nina Mae McKinney), shoots his own brother in a barroom fracas, and finds redemption as the preacher Brother Ezekiel — though only for a while. As a story, it’s hackneyed, full of stereotypes and improbability (two stars), but as a record of folk forms on film and with sound, it’s invaluable (four stars): we see dancing, dicing, praying, preaching, mourning, and baptisms. The best scene: the train to hell. Screenplay by Wanda Tuchock, Richard Schayer, and Ransom Rideout. ★★/★★★★

*

Tugboat Annie (dir. Mervyn LeRoy, 1932). Marie Dressler and Wallace Beery are Annie and Terry, operators of the tugboat Narcissus; she, a dedicated captain; he, a hapless alcoholic. Their son Alec (Robert Young) grows up to be a dashing young captain, engaged to the pretty cipher Pat (Maureen O’Sullivan). The comedy here is very thin — seeing someone drink hair tonic and stumble just isn’t funny — but the movie is partly redeemed by an exciting ending, when a storm rages and Terry risks his life to make repairs to the Narcissus. Screenplay by Norman Reilly Raine, Zelda Sears, and Eve Greene. ★★

*

Dinner at Eight (dir. George Cukor, 1933). It’s a big picture, à la Grand Hotel: “MORE STARS THAN HAVE EVER BEEN IN ANY PICTURE BEFORE,” screamed an advertisement, with John Barrymore, Lionel Barrymore, Wallace Beery, Billie Burke, Marie Dressier, Jean Harlow, and many others on hand. But I found it dreadfully dull: a strained, stagey examination of the problems of the rich and the formerly rich, with some bright moments from John Barrymore, Dressler, and Harlow. Sometimes I felt that I was watching a 111-minute-long New Yorker cartoon: “I particularly wanted the aspic — it’s so dressy!” Screenplay by Frances Marion, Herman J. Mankiewicz, and George S. Kaufman. ★★

*

The other movies in this feature: ‌Back Street (dir. John M. Stahl, 1932), Make Way for Tomorrow (dir. Leo McCarey, 1937), and Red-Headed Woman (dir. Jack Conway, 1932). I’ve seen and can recommend them all. Make Way for Tomorrow is the movie that Orson Welles said “would make a stone cry.”

Related reading
All OCA “twelve movies” posts (Pinboard)

Noisy macOS, noisy iOS

Did you know that you can get distraction-covering noise from macOS (Ventura and above) and iOS (15 and above)?

In MacOS, go to System Settings > Accessibility > Audio > Background Sounds.

In iOS, go to Settings > Accessibility > Audio & Visual > Background Sounds.

You’ll find the same choices for each: Balanced, Bright, and Dark Noise; and Ocean, Rain, Stream, Night, and Fire. That’s a campfire — no sirens.

In macOS, you can add Background Sounds access to the Menu Bar or Control Center. Go to System Settings > Control Center > Hearing and and choose Show in Menu Bar or Show in Control Center. In iOS, adding a button to the Control Center offers similar ease.

I’ve used a variety of noisemakers on Macs. And a dozen years ago, I relied on an hour-long .mp3 of pink noise. I will quote myself from my teaching days: “Without pink noise, I’d get nothing done in my office.” Times change. The need for noise remains.

Eric Adams, defending himself

Donald Trump, in one variation on a theme: “They are coming after me because I am fighting for you.”

I hear that same narcissism in Eric Adams’s words: “I always knew that if I stood my ground for all of you, that I would be a target, and a target I became.” Here’s a man who in 2023 proclaimed,

“I am the symbol of Black manhood in the city, in this country, and what it represents. I’m the mayor of the most powerful city on the globe, and people need to recognize that.”

And now, charged with multiple serious crimes, he’s taking up the Donald Trump cry of victimhood.

The Trump/Adams defense makes me wonder: can narcissistic injury be converted into narcissistic supply?

Four Corners (fun)

🟡🔵🔵🔵
🔵🔵🔵🔵

🔵🔵🔵🟡
🔵🔵🔵🔵

🔵🔵🔵🔵
🟡🔵🔵🔵

🔵🔵🔵🔵
🔵🔵🔵🟡

If you share your Strands results as a foursome, trying for Four Corners adds an element of tension to the play. The corners need not be in order. Good luck to the person who ends up with the challenge of getting Corner No. 1.

I will cite Annie Black, the bookstore owner (Rebecca Pidgeon) in State and Main (dir. David Mamet, 2000): “If you don’t make it yourself, it ain’t fun — it’s entertainment.”

The New Grown-Ups: “Treehopper”

By now The New Grown-Ups need no introduction. The tune is by our son, Ben Leddy.

Related posts
“Cumberland Gap” : “My Heart’s Own Love” : “The Devil’s Nine Questions” : “William Blake’s Dead” : “Lonesome Pine” : “Tom Paine’s Bones” : “You Were on My Mind This Morning” : “The Hills of Isle au Haut” : The New Grown-Ups at Bandcamp

“We have created this hellscape for our children”

Dr. Annie Andrews, pediatrician and senior advisor to Everytown for Gun Safety, on MSNBC a few minutes ago:

“My heart is broken for this community, for every child that was in that building today, for the children whose lives were stolen by this public health crisis of gun violence. And I have a pit in my stomach, as I do every time I see these headlines.

“This is a public health crisis, and what is so infuriating about it is we have created this hellscape for our children. Every child in this country goes to school and sits in a classroom where they should be learning how to read and write, and they're also learning how to hide from a bad man with the gun. And for far too many children in this country, that reality grows even darker when an active shooter incident happens.

“This is a public health crisis, and we know the solutions. The solutions include commonsense gun laws, like expanded background checks, secure-storage laws so that adult gun owners cannot allow access to children to their firearms, and red-flag laws. What we lack in this country is elected leaders with the moral courage to pass the laws that the majority of Americans know that we need and that the children in this country so desperately need and deserve.

“We have robbed every child in this country of a sense of physical and psychological safety in their classrooms, and as a mother, it breaks my heart.”

Related reading
Everytown for Gun Safety

[Context: yet another school shooting, this one at Apalachee High School in Winder, Georgia. My transcription and paragraphing.]

Today’s Saturday Stumper

Today’s Newsday  Saturday Stumper is by the puzzle’s editor, Stan Newman. Its distinctive feature: five (count ’em, five) fifteen-letter answers. Yow!

Some clue-and-answer pairs of note, including those five:

2-D, fifteen letters, “Graze, say.” Hilarious, at least to me.

3-D, five letters, “King’s claim to musical fame.” I like that.

6-D, three letters, “Tall character in Son of Godzilla.” Quite a stretch.

11-D, fifteen letters, “‘Finally...’” I imagine a meeting going on and on. And on.

12-D, six letters, “Becomes a waiter, with ‘up.’” Didn’t fool me.

16-A, fifteen letters, “Kicks back, as boxes.” The first two words misdirect nicely.

21-A, four letters, “Capital consonants resembling two vowels.” I got it, but I need an explanation.

22-A, five letters, “Where rock bands hang out.” See 12-D.

26-A, five letters, “Multination org. named for its first five members (its ’23 summit included da Silva, Lavrov, Modi, Xi, and the ANC leader).” I suspect that the prolix clue is an acknowledgement that most solvers will have no idea what the answer is.

31-A, fifteen letters, “PVC product.” I didn’t see this answer coming.

34-D, eight letters, “Candide’s mentor.” I hadn’t thought of him in years.

49-A, fifteen letters, “‘Old Ironsides’ is the Army’s oldest.” Note: Army.

My favorite in this puzzle: 27-A, five letters, “Possible response to ‘Don’t know.’” Coming after 26-A, it’s appropriate.

No spoilers; the answers are in the comments.

Doones

We were in the cookie aisle, where the Nabisco man was bent down stocking the shelves. “Oh, you’re right where we’re need to be,” one of us said — something like that. And the Nabisco man reached up and handed us two boxes of Lorna Doones.

“That’s exactly what we need,” said I.

“Really?” he asked. “Two?”

“Yes,” said I. And I added that while Lorna Doones seem to get little attention, they are excellent cookies. He agreed, and he added that Lorna Doones are the cookies he has on the shelf at home.

It’s four little Lorna Doones a day for me. “I’ll fly to the moon for a Lorna Doone.”

How to improve writing (no. 125)

Another sentence in need of repair, this one from The Washington Post, about Donald Trump’s repeated references to Hannibal Lecter:

He typically mentions the fictional serial killer in the context of immigration, claiming without evidence that migrants are coming in from insane asylums and mental institutions and often using dehumanizing language.

I tried out this sentence in the Orange Crate Art test kitchens, where it met with puzzlement. The false parallelism of coming and using is the problem. It’s so easy to fix:

He typically mentions the fictional serial killer in the context of immigration, dehumanizing migrants and claiming without evidence that they are coming in from insane asylums and mental institutions.

Related reading
All OCA How to improve writing posts (Pinboard)

[This post is no. 125 in a series dedicated to improving stray bits of professional public prose.]

Mystery actor

[Click for a larger view.]

That’s not Ida Lupino. So, then, who?

Leave your guesses in the comments. I’ll drop a hint if appropriate.

*

10:26 a.m.: No need for a hint. The answer is now in the comments.

More mystery actors (Collect them all)
? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ?

[Garner’s Modern English Usage notes that “support for actress seems to be eroding.” So I use actor.]

Ten movies, two series

[One to four stars. Four sentences each. No spoilers. Sources: Criterion Channel, Max, TCM, YouTube.]

Invitation (dir. Gottfried Reinhardt, 1952). Dorothy McGuire is Ellen Bowker Pierce, a rich young newlywed with a respiratory ailment that’s soon to end her life. Her greatest happiness is to see her husband Dan (Van Johnson) off to work (he’s “doing beautifully in business”) before planning the evening’s dinner. The couple’s happiness is threatened not only by the future but by what lies in the past: the machinations of Ellen’s father (Louis Calhern) and Dan’s inconclusive relationship with the venomous Maud Redwick (Ruth Roman). Soap opera with a difference, so weird and so good. ★★★★ (TCM)

*

23 Paces to Baker Street (dir. Henry Hathaway, 1956). A recently blind playwright (Van Johnson) overhears bits of a shady conversation in a London pub, and he, his ex-fiancée (Vera Miles), and his butler (Cecil Parker) join forces to figure it out. The police, of course, aren’t interested. Amateur sleuthing at its finest, with some clever deductions (Baker Street, get it?), a dip into Burke’s Peerage, echoes of The Lady from Shanghai and Rear Window, and a scene that must have influenced Wait Until Dark. Look for the indefatigable Estelle Winwood as a barmaid. ★★★★ (YT)

*

Make Haste to Live (dir. William A. Seiter, 1954). The backstory is daft: when a mobster’s wife (Dorothy McGuire) discovers what he’s all about and disappears to make a new life with a new name, the mobster (Stephen McNally) ends up taking the rap for her murder. And now the mobster is out of prison and making his way into his wife’s new life. The movie’s end is telegraphed early on, too early, and it’s difficult to think that anyone is ever really in danger here. The creepiest element in the movie: the mobster’s interest in his daughter (Mary Murphy). ★★ (YT)

*

Man in the Attic (dir. Hugo Fregonese, 1953). Another take on Jack the Ripper, with a real Jack (Palance) as Mr. Slade (ahem), a pathologist who rents a room to live in and an attic in which to conduct unexplained experiments. The house in which he’s renting is owned by the Harleys, a pleasant couple (Frances Bavier and Rhys Williams) whose niece, the beautiful actress Lily Bonner (Constance Smith) comes to live with them. Did I mention that Mr. Slade’s mother was an actress who ended up a prostitute, and that he has removed all the pictures of actresses that graced the walls of his room? Lots of atmosphere, lots of fog (a “London particular,” as Dickens called it), and lots of menace. ★★★★ (YT)

*

From the Criterion Channel’s Neo-Noir feature

Night Moves (dir. Arthur Penn, 1975). “I saw a Rohmer film once. It was kind of like watching paint dry.” A faded movie star hires a private eye (Gene Hackman) to find her runaway daughter (Melanie Griffith), and he uncovers a criminal scheme that will end up taking several lives. Some exciting moments, but an awful lot of painful dialogue, and I’m aware that I used up two sentences to give an example. ★★

Obsession (dir. Brian De Palma, 1976). I’m a Vertigo obsessive, so I’m surprised that I’d never heard of this movie before finding it at Criterion. It’s a brilliant homage, recasting Hitchcock’s Orpheus-and-Eurydice premise in novel and outrageous terms, with many deft touches to please a Vertigo fan. Cliff Robertson, Geneviève Bujold, and John Lithgow are the principals. A bonus: Bernard Herrmann’s last score. ★★★★

Eyewitness (dir. Peter Yates, 1981). When janitor Daryll Deever (William Hurt) discovers a dead body in the office building where he works, he claims more knowledge of the murder than he has in an attempt to establish a relationship with local-television reporter Toni Sokolow (Sigourney Weaver), the object of his long-standing obsession. Meanwhile, Deever suspects and fears that his friend and fellow janitor (James Woods) is the killer. Capable performances (the leads, Morgan Freeman, Christopher Plummer, Irene Worth) and some moments of genuine suspense, but also a considerable number of inanities (fleeting attempts to give minor characters more depth), plot holes, and a bonkers conclusion that might be meant to echo Strangers on a Train but feels laughable. And the movie never seems to allow that there’s anything stalker-y about Deever’s obsession. ★★

Absence of Malice (dir. Sydney Pollack, 1981). Sally Field is Megan Carter, a Miami journalist who writes a story asserting that liquor distributor and bootlegger’s son Michael Gallagher (Paul Newman) is under investigation in the disappearance of a union official. Yes, he’s under investigation; that much is true. Many complications follow; the plot becomes increasingly convoluted; and the movie struggles to make Carter and Gallagher’s off-and-on relationship appear plausible. That this movie has garnered so much praise amazes me. ★★

*

Ten Cents a Dance (dir. Lionel Barrymore, 1931). Taxi dancer Barbara O’Neill (Barbara Stanwyck) has a wealthy admirer in Bradley Carlton (Ricardo Cortez), but she falls for her luckless boarding-house chum Eddie Miller (Monroe Owsley), gets him a job with Carlton, and marries him, only to learn that he’s stolen from Carlton’s company to cover stock-market losses. Stanwyck gives a terrific performance — kind, seductive, desperate, indignant, and fiercely assertive by turns. Cortez and Owsley are, well, adequate. Fun to think about how the story might have developed post-Code. ★★★ (YT)

*

State and Main (dir. David Mamet, 2000). A struggling film production (“I need eight hundred grand”) comes to a small town in Vermont to shoot, but the old mill that was to give the movie its title burned down decades ago, and comic complications and a crisis of conscience ensue. I suspect that many a viewer watching this movie will think of Gilmore Girls (which began in 2000), but the inspiration there and here is Preston Sturges. A spectacular ensemble cast, with William H. Macy as an addled director, Alec Baldwin and Sarah Jessica Parker as troublesome stars, Philip Seymour Hoffman as a writer-naif in the world of pictures, and Rebecca Pidgeon as an adorable bookstore owner. My favorite line is about making your own fun, something anyone living in a small town should understand: “If you don’t make it yourself, it ain’t fun — it’s entertainment.” ★★★★ (CC)

*

Empire Falls (dir. Fred Schepisi, 2005). An adaptation of Richard Russo’s novel about life in a Maine town whose mill has shut down, with three generations of characters present and past. At the center of things is Miles Roby (Ed Harris), a divorced father with a daughter (Danielle Panabaker), an indentured servant of sorts presiding over the Empire Grill, a George Bailey who’s never broken away from Empire Falls, nor from Martha’s Vineyard, where he takes a modest vacation every year for reasons he cannot (yet) admit. Yes, he’s borne back ceaselessly into the past, a point made abundantly clear. This two-parter is more than slightly disjointed as it begins, with a considerable amount of exposition, but it gets better and better as it goes on, with considerable darkness and ample light. With Philip Seymour Hoffman, Helen Hunt, Paul Newman, and many more, including Joanne Woodward as town matriarch Mrs. Whiting, the Mr. Potter to Miles’s George Bailey. ★★★★ (M)

*

Olive Kitteridge (dir. Lisa Cholodenko, 2014). A four-part miniseries from Elizabeth Strout’s stories, set in a town in Maine, focused on twenty-five years in the lives of a junior-high math teacher, Olive Kitteridge (Frances McDormand) and her pharmacist husband Henry (Richard Jenkins). Olive is no-nonsense truth-teller who seems (seems) righteously devoid of self-doubt; her husband Henry is the incarnation of kindness and patience, even if his kindness is at times colored by other impulses. Familial tensions, accusations, regrets, and, sometimes, the possibility of happiness. The best line: “It baffles me, this world; I don’t want to leave it yet.” ★★★★ (M)

Related reading
All OCA “twelve movies” posts (Pinboard)

What did I think about Kamala Harris?

I searched these pages to see what they (I) have said about Kamala Harris. Her name appears in thirteen — and now fourteen — posts. From a January 2, 2019 post:

The last thing Democrats need to do is to turn the 2020 presidential election into a battle between oldsters. Such a battle will do little to spark voter interest and much to spark parody. Joe Biden, Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren: no. What the Democratic Party needs is a candidate who offers a sharp contrast to Donald Trump not only in policy but in affect. Sherrod Brown, Kamala Harris, Amy Klobuchar, Beto O’Rourke: yes.

On January 27, 2019, I was happy to see that Harris was running. And on August 12, 2020, one day after Joe Biden named Harris as his running mate, I wrote, “she will (almost certainly) make a great nominee for president in 2024.”

[And, yes, there was a “How to improve writing” post about campaign e-mails, which were certainly not written by Harris.]

“Black jobs”

“Folks, I know what a ‘Black job’ is: it’s the vice president of the United States. I know what a ‘Black job’ is: the first Black president in American history, Barack Obama”: Joe Biden, on fire this afternoon, addressing the NAACP convention in Las Vegas.

[Context, if you need it: Donald Trump’s claims that undocumented immigrants are taking “Black jobs” and “Hispanic jobs.”]

Mystery actor

[A television screen within a movie. Click for a larger view.]

Though I knew this fellow was in the movie, I didn’t recognize him at first. Do you?

Leave your guesses in the comments. I‘ll drop a hint if one is needed.

*

No need: the mystery is now revealed in the comments.

More mystery actors (Collect them all)
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“Leftist broadcasters” (Project 2025)

Here’s another excerpt from the Project 2025 Policy Agenda, from Chapter Eight, concerning media agencies. The document calls for ending taxpayer fundng for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. And what then?

Stripping public funding would, of course, mean that NPR, PBS, Pacifica Radio, and the other leftist broadcasters would be shorn of the presumption that they act in the public interest and receive the privileges that often accompany so acting. They should no longer, for example, be qualified as noncommercial education stations (NCE stations), which they clearly no longer are. NPR, Pacifica, and the other radio ventures have zero claim on an educational function (the original purpose for which they were created by President Johnson), and the percentage of on-air programming that PBS devotes to educational endeavors such as “Sesame Street” (programs that are themselves biased to the Left) is small.

Being an NCE comes with benefits. The Federal Communications Commission, for example, reserves the 20 stations at the lower end of the radio frequency (between 88 and 108 MHz on the FM band) for NCEs. The FCC says that “only noncommercial educational radio stations are licensed in the 88–92 MHz ‘reserved’ band,” while both commercial and noncommercial educational stations may operate in the “non-reserved” band. This confers advantages, as lower-frequency stations can be heard farther away and are easier to find as they lie on the left end of the radio dial (figuratively as well as ideologically).

The FCC also exempts NCE stations from licensing fees. It says that “Noncommercial educational (NCE) FM station licensees and full service NCE television broadcast station licensees are exempt from paying regulatory fees, provided that these stations operate solely on an NCE basis.” NPR and PBS stations are in reality no longer noncommercial, as they run ads in everything but name for their sponsors. They are also noneducational. The next President should instruct the FCC to exclude the stations affiliated with PBS and NPR from the NCE denomination and the privileges that come with it.

Ads, yes. (And why? To bring in revenue as federal support diminishes.) But noneducational? All Things Considered? American Masters? Finding Your Roots? Fresh Air? And even if you’ve already restricted “educational” to programming for the very young, it’s extraordinarily dishonest to assert that the percentage of programming is small: PBS runs several hours of kids’ shows every day, and there’s a separate channel, PBS Kids, all kids, all the time.

And what about this claim that Sesame Street (italics, please) is biased to “the Left”? Because it shows urbanites in all their human variety?

Fred Rogers, we need you. That link goes to his 1969 testimony before a Senate subcommittee considering a large cut to Corporation for Public Broadcasting funding. Mister Rogers, by the way, was a registered Republican.

Related posts
Relative frequency of words in Project 2025 : Project 2025 on marriage and parental roles : Names in school

Crazy weather

We watched some local news last night, and I ended up transcribing some of the weatherman’s patter:

“Grab them shades on the way out the door. Precip cast? Fuggedaboudit! I mean, we still need a tall drink of water. I just ain’t happening tonight nor tomorrow.”

[The suspect is a white male, late fifties or early sixties, tall, wearing a toupee, glasses, tight-fitting sport jacket, and sneakers.]