Ten movies, two seasons

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

Treasure of Monte Cristo (dir. William Berke, 1949). There’s a sailor, see, named, lol, Edmund Dantes (Glenn Langan). And a dame, Jean Turner (Adele Jergens). And the whole thing’s a set-up, I tell ya. And it’s filmed on location in San Francisco, which is probably its main redeeming feature. ★★ (YT)

*

Meet John Doe (dir. Frank Capra, 1941). When he answers what can only be called a casting call for a newspaper’s circulation stunt, Long John Willoughby (Gary Cooper), a jobless ex-baseball player, becomes John Doe, a desperate everyman who has vowed to commit suicide on Christmas Eve to protest the state of the world. As John Doe, Willoughby becomes a national hero, and then, when he defies his newspaper boss, a national disgrace, as Ann Mitchell (Barbara Stanwyck), whose column put this scheme into motion, watches from the sidelines, appalled at what she’s helped bring about. Here, as in Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, Capra’s depiction of the power of journalists and politicians to manufacture reality is eerily prescient. Alas, the John Doe movement’s plain, corny, hopeful ethic — be a better neighbor, look out for the other guy — now seems unattainable in a country so bitterly divided. ★★★★ (TCM)

*

The French Connection (dir. William Friedkin, 1971). I think I had last seen this movie when it was released. Gene Hackman is Jimmy “Popeye” Doyle, a brutal, reckless NYPD detective, hellbent on nabbing Alain Charmier (Fernando Rey), the suave Frenchman behind an enormous delivery of heroin to the city. Remarkable to see how the cops put together the pieces of the puzzle. Great action sequences, both automotive and pedestrian, as Doyle and his partner Buddy Russo (Roy Scheider) track Charnier and his associates, foreign and domestic, on the streets of New York. The greatest sequence pits Doyle against a henchman (Marcel Bozzuffi), car versus elevated train, racing through Brooklyn, where, yes, there are candy stores. ★★★★ (CC)

*

Holiday Affair (dir. Don Hartman, 1949). Canon formation: does it really become a “holiday classic” because TCM shows it? Janet Leigh plays Connie Ennis, a war widow and comparison shopper whose possibilities in life are subject to four male force fields: her dead husband, whose picture stares out from her nightstand; her young son Timmy (Gordon Gebert), whom she calls “Mr. Ennis”; her patient, lackluster suitor of two years, Carl (Wendell Corey); and a charismatic free spirit, Steve (Robert Mitchum). Try to guess who will win in the battle between ghost, boy, beta male, and alpha male. Weirdest moment: “Mr. Ennis” on top of his mom in bed. ★★ (TCM)

*

Take One False Step (dir. Chester Erskine, 1949). O contingency: an academic, Albert (William Powell), in Los Angeles to raise money for a new university, walks into a bar and discovers an old flame, Catherine (Shelley Winters, a young old flame). When Albert’s bloody scarf is found in Catherine’s apartment but she isn’t, Albert becomes the target of a police manhunt. And when he seeks treatment for rabies after being bitten by a dog, his situation becomes still more desperate. A Detour-like premise, but with odd touches of comedy, and one great, strange scene with Houseley Stevenson as a sloppy but surprisingly methodical doctor. ★★ (YT)

*

The Passionate Friends (dir. David Lean, 1949). Think of it as a variation on Lean’s Brief Encounter (1945): here too the story is one of desire and restraint. Mary (Ann Todd) loves Steven (Trevor Howard) but marries Howard (Claude Rains) for money, security, and a placid friendship, and Howard’s fine with that. But Steven appears and reappears in Mary’s life — brief encounters, plural, so what’s she to do? Three great performances, and the closing minutes are gripping and startling. ★★★★ (CC)

*

In the Good Old Summertime (dir. Robert Z. Leonard, 1949). It sits between The Shop Around the Corner and the second remake, You’ve Got Mail, and it’s the warmest of the three stories of love and hate and correspondence (and it was my mom’s choice on Christmas). Judy Garland and Van Johnson are wonderfully at odds as Veronica and Andrew, music-store employees; Spring Byington, Buster Keaton, and S.Z. “Cuddles” Sakall add to the movie’s gentle humor; and Marcia Van Dyke gets to play a Strad. The revelation for me, but it may already be obvious to you: Judy Garland was a great comic actor. Follow her facial expressions in any of her conversations of Johnson and see for yourself. ★★★★ (TCM)

*

Breezy (dir. Clint Eastwood, 1973). Rhymes with queasy and uneasy. We watched because it stars William Holden. He’s a craggy, cranky, divorced real-estate man who finds a young woman with a guitar (Kay Lenz) at the foot of his driveway. She’s Breezy, a manic pixie et cetera, and the relationship that develops between the two had us making faces (eww) now and then — indeed, often — and yet we could not look away. ★★ (TCM

[Chosen by TCM guest Paul Thomas Anderson, who recycles some of the movie’s dialogue in Licorice Pizza. So the movie’s prime-time slot on TCM was just a matter of commercial interests at work.]

*

Curb Your Enthusiasm (created by Larry David, 2021). The eleventh season is, I’d say, pretty, pretty, pretty good — not great, and lacking the kind of strong, loony narrative arc (Larry’s “spite store” vs. Mocha Joe) that held season ten together. As Larry and Jeff (Jeff Garlin) begin work on a new series, complications arise about a pool fence, a city ordinance, a daughter who cannot act, restaurant etiquette, Mary Fergusons, favors for favors, and a surprising final-episode cameo. As councilwoman Irma Kostroski, Tracey Ullman is a great foil for Larry. As Leon Black, J.B. Smoove has become all too reminiscent of Eddie “Rochester” Anderson (but with language). ★★★ (HBO Max)

*

Hacks (created by Lucia Aniello, Paul W. Downs, and Jen Statsky, 2021). Jean Smart is great as Deborah Vance, a Las Vegas stand-up comedian and almost talk-show host whose jokes and merching strongly recall Joan Rivers. A much younger (self-proclaimed “Gen Z”), improbably canceled writer, Ava Daniels (Hannah Einbinder), is given the unwelcome assignment to leave Los Angeles and help revitalize Deborah’s material. So: mismatched partners, fighting and bonding and fighting and bonding, with a good measure of smart (no pun intended) comedy, and a predictable, cringe-worthy montage or two (or perhaps they’re spoofs of predictable, cringe-worthy montages). Some plot twists come out of nowhere (before disappearing), and many ends are left loose, especially with the show’s secondary characters, so I look forward to the second season. ★★★ (HBO Max)

*

If Winter Comes (dir. Victor Saville, 1947). On the rebound from a former love, a writer of textbooks and newspaper columns (Walter Pidgeon) marries a miserable woman (Angela Lansbury). When a much younger unmarried pregnant woman (Janet Leigh) turns to the writer for help, he becomes the stuff of scandal. And meanwhile his former love (Deborah Kerr) comes back into his life. Great work by Lansbury, Leigh, and Kerr, but Pidgeon is absolutely wooden. ★★★ (TCM)

*

Designing Woman (dir. Vincente Minnelli, 1957). Mike, sportswriter (Gregory Peck), and Marilla, clothing designer (Lauren Bacall), marry on impulse, and — surprise — they turn out to be an odd couple, with a poker game on one side of the house and theatricals on the another. Even if it’s 1957, the movie is painfully coy: a major issue in the marriage is whether Mike and his previous lady friend Lori (Dolores Gray) ever, well, you know. (Peck was almost forty; Bacall and Gray, in their early thirties). The saving graces here: Mickey Shaughnessy as Mike’s punchy bodyguard, sleeping with his eyes open, and Jack Cole as a choreographer whose performance in the movie’s final minutes is worth the long wait — promise. ★★★ (TCM)

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At breakfast

[Reading the Grape-Nuts box: Whole grain wheat flour, malted barley flour — pause.]

“It’s like eating Scotch!”

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How to improve writing (no. 99)

Talking Points Memo makes it way too easy:

In your opinion, are Republican candidates in midterm elections who have received former President Trump’s endorsement more likely or less likely to win their primary races than Republican candidates who did not?

☐ More likely
☐ Less likely
☐ Just as likely
☐ I’m not sure
☐ Other / No opinion

Richard Lanham’s paramedic method for revising prose can work wonders with this question. Lanham details the method in his Revising Prose (2007). A page from the Purdue Online Writing Lab summarizes it. What the paramedic method might help a writer notice in TPM’s question: the slow windup (“in your opinion,” not needed when the question is prefaced by the header “What do you think?”), the ungainly repetition of the preposition in, the use of a form of to be (are ) as the main verb, the lack of agency (who does what?). Better:

Will Donald Trump’s endorsement help or hurt a Republican candidate in a midterm primary race?

☐ Help
☐ Hurt
☐ Neither
☐ Undecided

From thirty-two words to fifteen. I’ve changed the answers to fit the new question and have removed the mysterious “Other / No opinion.”

I have no idea whether Trump**’s endorsement will help or hurt Mary (“Hitler was right on one thing”) Miller.

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[I’m keen on Revising Prose, hugely helpful for teaching writing but ridiculously expensive. The publisher, Pearson, does itself no favor by setting a high price ($66.65!) for a cheaply made, poorly designed, 166-page paperback. Why Trump** ? Two asterisks for two impeachments. This post is no. 99 in a series dedicated to improving stray bits of public prose.]

Today’s Saturday Stumper

Today’s Newsday  Saturday Stumper, by “Anna Stiga,” Stan Again, Stan Newman, the puzzle’s editor, is a good one. Not much trickiness, but a reasonable degree of difficulty (twenty minutes’ worth for me). Some clues I especially liked:

1-A, six letters, “Today, for the first time.” I hadn’t thought about how strange it looks.

12-D, nine letters, “Word from the Latin for ‘attendant.’” Huh.

18-A, eight letters, “Woman with a unisex nickname.” Okay, but if I were a woman and bore this cool name, I’d never use a nickname.

30-D, eight letters, “Surprising to see.” Surprising, to me anyway, to see this word in a puzzle.

32-D, nine letters, “Some show stoppers.” POWERCUTS?

48-D, five letters, “Zorro’s secret identity.” He makes the sign of the Z, as I know from a childhood spent in front of the television. But I did not know this answer. I made a good guess.

60-A, six letters, “Much of the OED.” Yes.

61-A, six letters, “More than ready.” Will I never get out of high school?

The two clues that gave me fits: 42-A, six letters, “Roof in your head.” and 47-D, five letters, “Kitchen covering.” The former taught me what a 42-A is. The latter is my favorite clue in the puzzle.

No spoilers; the answers are in the comments.

New Year’s Eve 1921

[“Drys Usher In 1922 with Many Raids.” The New York Times, January 1, 1922. Click for a larger view.]

Here’s to a new and improved year, with less disease, more sanity, and better prospects for democracy. Happy New Year to all.

[“A certain high sign”: the OED dates high sign to 1888. Am I the only one who had no idea that it wasn’t just an Our Gang thing?]

Last call

A 2022 calendar in Gill Sans, three months per page, with minimal holiday markings (MLK Day, St. Patrick’s Day, Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas). It’s a PDF, free, right here for downloading. I’ve been making calendars since 2009 with the Mac app Pages (using tables) and Gill Sans.

[Looming.]

A fish-dish fish dish

[Maine Sardine Recipes (Augusta, Maine: Maine Sardine Council, 1975). Click either image for a larger view.]

A kind reader with great research skills left a comment on this post with a link to the pamphlet Maine Sardine Recipes. The pamphlet led me in turn to the website of the Penobscot Maritime Museum and a page about its Maine Sardine Council collection. The sardine industry is long gone from Maine, which once billed itself as “Vacationland & Sardineland,” as that page will attest.

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Critter

[Click for a larger view.]

Beaver? Walrus? I’m not sure. But when I picked up this sweet potato last night, I knew it was also something — or somene — else.

[Thanks to the Mac app Acorn, whose Blur Brush and Vignette Effect helped me dispose of a kitchen table.]

Sardine art

Behold: images from a facsimile edition of Glynn Boyd-Harte’s Les Sardines à l’huille, described by the publisher as “one of the outstanding auto-lithographed books of the 20th century.”

Thanks, Fresca.

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[Autolithography : “lithography in which an artist draws directly on the printing surface.”]

Recently updated

Words of the year Now with one from The Economist.