Hallmark Holiday Movie Bot

Some are funnier than others, but for some reason, they all follow a pattern: Hallmark Holiday Movie Bot.

A little Hallmark nonsense

[Click for a larger view.]

This dialogue took shape as Elaine and I sat at the kitchen table holding cups of imaginary cocoa with both hands, Hallmark style. I took it upon myself to improvise some more in writing.

To the best of my knowledge, “skyldig till anklagelsen” is good Swedish for “guilty as charged.” Looking at previous posts about Hallmark movies, I now see to my astonishment one from 2020 that quotes “Guilty as charged!” as a line of cringe-worthy dialogue. Did that line lodge in my memory for later use?

I have no idea what this scene may portend. But I fear that He and She are about to stumble onto something like the Swedish original for Shirley Jackson’s “The Lottery.” That’s not very Hallmark of me.

A few more Hallmark posts
“Double-extra whipped cream” : Hallmark hypercorrection : Hallmark and Prufrock : Hallmark rising : Hallmark trees : The Hallmark Zone : Instant Hallmark

Another Brooklyn candy store

[4302 12th Avenue, Brooklyn, New York, c. 1939–1941. From the NYC Municipal Archives Collections. Click for a much larger view.]

One block up and one block over from us, this candy store was still standing in the 1960s, when it was called Pup’s, or Pup’s Luncheontte. The Pup’s of my childhood seemed to be something of a dive, a hangout, a joint. I think the Horton’s privilege sign was then long gone. I have a vague memory of buying a pretzel rod from a container on the counter. By the 1980s, Pup's had been converted for residential use.

Thanks, Brian, for finding this joint.

*

December 12: A comment on the public Facebook group Old Boro Park mentions a story that the name was supposed to be Pops but was misspelled. Another comment mentions Pup’s as appearing in Saturday Night Fever (dir. John Badham, 1977). It doesn’t. But in the movie, a car crashes for revenge into the large building right next to Pup’s, 4304–08 12th Avenue. You can see that building in these two tax photographs: 1, 2. In the movie you can see the original PUBLIC MARKET lettering, covered up in the earlier tax photo, partly covered in the later tax photo, covered up again in recent years.

After the crash and the fight that follows, Tony and company drive off on 43rd Street, going the wrong way on a one-way street. (Hey, it’s a movie.) You can see the intersection of 12th and 43rd in Google Maps.

Four more candy stores
4417 New Utrecht Avenue : 4319 13th Avenue : 94 Nassau Street : 4223 Fort Hamilton Parkway

Barbie mit Fisch

[My first Barbie.]

My friend Fresca sent this image my way. Thanks, Fresca. The source is a museum exhibition, Busy Girl — Barbie macht Karriere, opening tomorrow at the Ostfriesisches Landesmuseum Emden, in Emden, Germany. The museum website describes a 1960 Barbie “im mustergültigen Designeroutfit und mit Skizzenmappe unter dem Arm” [in an exemplary designer outfit and with a sketchbook under her arm]. The museum has substituted a fish for the sketchbook. And thus Barbie has made eine berufliche Veränderung [a career change].

Why a fish? Emden is a port city, this year’s host for German Fisheries Day. I want to believe that’s a sardine under Barbie’s arm, but it could be a herring. Sardines are smaller members of the herring family.

There’s a book that must have some connection to this exhibition. I will ask Paul Drake to have his operative in Emden look into it.

Related reading
All OCA sardine posts (Pinboard)

Today’s Saturday Stumper

Today’s Newsday  Saturday Stumper, by Lester Ruff (Stan Newman) is an easy one. It is decidedly not rough. It speaks in the voice of a great recording by Louis Armstrong and His Hot Five: “I’m Not Rough.” A bit of difficulty in the southeast, but still a very easy Saturday. Unrough.

Some clues of note:

11-D, ten letters, “Rolling Stone ranked him just above Buddy Rich.” I wondered how far back the magazine’s list of the greatest drummers of “all time” extends. Answer: not very far. And I wonder if anyone had ever before thought of these musicians as adjacent. The difference between them as I see it: one plays the song; one played the drums.

25-A, five letters, “Op Art design.” Do you have to be able to explain an answer for that answer to count?

28-D, ten letters, “Kindergarten music maker.” I’ve been watching too much Peppa Pig.

35-A, seven letters, “Duffer’s putting impediment.” I read it too quickly as “implement” before setting myself straight. But I’m not sure the answer should be associated with duffers.

47-D, five letters, “Suffix denoting extravagance.” I know it well. Spoiler alert: this post explains.

52-A, nine letters, “Something Apollo 11 brought back.” My first answer was, I think, the likely one, and the wrong one. And that can be one mark of a good clue.

No spoilers; the answers are in the comments.

A fused participle in the comics

[Dustin, December 3, 2021. Click for a larger view.]

Should it be “you hitting on me,” or “your hitting on me”? Dustin’s hitting on this woman may not be okay, but her fused participle is. From Garner’s Modern English Usage:

H.W. Fowler gave the name “fused participle” to a participle that is (1) used as a noun (i.e., a gerund), and (2) preceded by a noun or pronoun not in the possessive case — thus Me going home made her sad rather than the preferred My going home made her sad.

Fowler declared the fused participle always wrong. Bryan Garner is more judicious:

A modern rule might be formulated thus: when the ‑ing (present) participle has the force of a noun, it preferably takes a possessive subject, especially in formal contexts. But when the ‑ing participle has the force of a verb, a nonpossessive subject is acceptable, especially in informal contexts. When the participle falls in the predicate — as it usually does when case selection is a subtle question — another key is to analyze what the proper direct object should be. Consider this exchange: Is John in the shower? / Yes, I heard him singing. / Is he talented? / Yes, I heard his singing. The object of the first reply may be John himself (him), but the object of the second is clearly John’s (hence, his) singing.

Here, hitting has the force of a verb. And this brief conversation is nothing if not informal. You hitting is fine here. But for extra-grammatical reasons, it’s not, as Dustin is about to find out. Notice in the second sentence of this post: “Dustin’s hitting on this woman”: there hitting has the force of a noun.

In other comics news today, Zippy is Sluggo.

Letter Boxed lines

I’ve been doing Letter Boxed for some time now. But it was only this week that I realized that the Congrats screen shows the lines made by the words you’ve spelled. Watch:

 
 

And now:

Command-Control-Shift-4

A few weeks ago someone taught me about how to use a different keyboard shortcut (command-control-shift-4) to "copy" your screenshot to clipboard (on a Mac) and it has been such a gamechanger

— Anne Helen Petersen (@annehelen) November 19, 2021

It works.

Found via Laura Olin’s newsletter.

“Y’all”

From the BBC: Why more people are saying “y’all.” [Or as a nearby restaurant once spelled it, “Ya’ll.” Ouch.]

Eleven movies, one mini-series

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

Totally Under Control (dir. Alex Gibney, Ophelia Harutyunyan, and Suzanne Hillinger, 2020). The story of the previous U.S. administration’s response/non-response to COVID-19. Much of what’s here will already be familiar, but to see it all at once, in the space of two hours, is overwhelming: the cynicism, the dishonesty, the ignorance, the utter incompetence (and now in 2021, there’s still more evidence, and still more). For me the most revealing part of this documentary is the account Max Kennedy Jr. gives of his volunteer work with a Jared-led task force that sought to purchase PPE and failed to secure a single mask (see also this short New Yorker piece). The previous administration committed crimes against humanity, and no one has yet been held responsible. ★★★★ (H)

*

Terror Street, aka 36 Hours (dir. Montgomery Tully, 1953). It’s a most unusual day and a half: an American pilot (Dan Duryea) sneaks into England for a quick visit to his wife — and the next thing he knows, he’s waking up in her apartment, next to her murdered corpse. He enlists the aid of a pretty neighbor (Gudrun Ure), who for some reason instantly believes in his innocence, which he now elects to prove by DIY methods, evading the authorities and finding the killer himself. A most improbable story, with echoes of The 39 Steps. But Duryea, wooden to the core, is no Robert Donat. ★★ (YT)

*

Dear Santa (dir. Dana Nachman, 2020). We didn’t know what to watch, so we made a desperation pick — and it proved a good one. The documentary’s subject is the USPS’s 107-year-old Operation Santa, which makes children’s (and adults’) letters to Santa Claus available to people interested in providing presents. Lots of postal scenes, lots of postal workers who identify themselves as elves, lots of kids talking about Santa and writing letters, lots of grown-ups (and kids) shopping for, wrapping, transporting, and delivering presents (but this year’s work will be all through the mail). Yes, we signed up, right after the movie ended: USPS Operation Santa. ★★★★ (H)

*

Across 110th Street (dir. Barry Shear, 1972). Duke Ellington liked to point out that Harlem had far more churches than bars, but there are no churches here, only bars, tenements, a dry cleaner’s, and a parking garage. The premise is simple: three Harlemites commit some very ill-considered crimes and find themselves hunted — by the police, the Mafia, and a Harlem crime boss. Anthony Quinn and Yaphet Kotto square off as dueling cops: a crusty old racist who breaks rules (and heads), and a college-educated younger Black man who refuses to play dirty. The bonus for our household: cinematography on location by Jack Priestly of the television series Naked City. ★★★★ (CC)

*

Street of Sinners (dir. William Berke, 1957). A rookie cop, John (George Montgomery), is paired with a beaten-down oldtimer, Gus (William Harrigan), on “the street,” whose undefined boundaries define life for its denizens. The king of the street is Leon (Nehemiah Persoff), whose eponymous bar is the gateway to alcoholism and worse for all who enter. On the one hand, this movie is bad; on the other, it’s so bad that it’s almost good — without, as they say in Ghost World, going past good and back to bad again. The best moments come from Geraldine Brooks as Terry, a beautiful alcoholic who invites John to dinner and offers frantic drunken assurances that she can be fresh and clean. ★★ (YT)

*

Nazi Agent (dir. Jules Dassin, 1942). It’s Conrad Veidt’s movie. He plays not two but three roles: a courtly stamp and rare-book dealer, Otto Becker (in the United States illegally); Otto’s twin brother, German consul Baron Hugo von Detner; and “Baron Hugo von Detner” — in other words, Otto poses as his brother to get the goods on Nazi plans for sabotage. Frank Reicher (Captain Englehorn in King Kong) has two great scenes as a loyal servant. The best moment: the glass of milk. ★★★★ (YT)

*

Johnny O’Clock (dir. Robert Rossen, 1947). The plot is not much, or too much — difficult to follow, but who cares? Just soak in the noir atmosphere. O’Clock (Dick Powell), a junior partner in a casino, is at the center of things, with Thomas Gomez (his boss), Lee J. Cobb (his police nemesis), and Ellen Drew, Nina Foch, and Evelyn Keyes (the ladies) all orbiting around him. Great ultra-noir cinematography by Burnett Guffey. ★★★★ (TMC)

*

Heat Wave, aka The House Across the Lake (dir. Ken Hughes, 1954). An America lead or two (Alex Nicol and Hillary Brooke) and an English cast: the same premise as Terror Street, and the same producer, Anthony Hinds. Nicol is Mark (heh) Kendrick, an American writer abroad; Hillary Brooke (passing for English) is Carol Forrest, a wealthy married woman who collects additional partners. Sidney James is the actor of real distinction here, as the long-suffering Mr. Forrest. With strong top notes of Double Indemnity and The Postman Always Rings Twice. ★★★ (YT)

*

The Picture of Dorian Gray (dir. Albert Lewin, 1945). Great performances from George Sanders (top billing) as Lord Henry Wotton, dropping epigrams at rapid pace; Hurd Hatfield as Dorian Gray, for whom every gain or sorrow is merely “an experience”; and Angela Lansbury as the doomed Sybil Vane, gamely singing her specialty, “Goodbye, Little Yellow Bird.” Opulent sets, great black and white (Harry Stradling), and an air of decadence and corruption whose details are never made clear. “It’d kill her,” Dorian says of the letter he threatens to send to a friend’s wife. The wonderful thing about this movie, for me, is its naturalization of the supernatural: Dorian’s perpetual youth is just a fact of London life that people accept. ★★★★ (TMC)

*

The Beatles: Get Back (dir. Peter Jackson, 2021). It’s John, Paul, George, and Ringo — or Paul, John, George, and Ringo — or Paul and John, and George and Ringo — and Billy Preston. It’s a wonder that the Beatles put up with their director, Michael Lindsay-Hogg (not for nothing was he rumored to be Orson Welles’s son). A rare opportunity to see the work of creating music. I’ve already written a long post. ★★★★ (D)

*

The Last Laugh (dir. Ferne Pearlstein, 2016). The limits of what can be considered funny, with Mel Brooks, Carl Reiner, Joan Rivers, Sarah Silverman, and many other figures in comedy. Among the topics considered off or within limits: Hitler, the Holocaust, rape, the n-word, and September 11. The most compelling parts of the documentary: conversations with survivors of the Holocaust about the role humor played in their survival and the role it plays or doesn’t play now. With the comedians, though, a sameness sets in. ★★★ (T)
*

Assignment Paris (dir. Robert Parrish, 1952). Cold War intrigue in Hungary, as reported by the intrepid journalists of the New York Herald-Tribune’s Paris bureau. Cocky, persistent Dana Andrews and Ingrid Bergman-like Märta Torén are reporters; George Sanders is their editor; Audrey Totter has an Eve Arden-like turn as a hard-drinking, wisecracking also-ran. Dig Andrews’s cryptic communique from Budapest and the way his colleagues work it out. The best moments in the movie are the extraordinary scenes with Sandro Giglio. ★★★★ (YT)

Related reading
All OCA movie posts (Pinboard)