One of my favorite fanmail stories concerns a mother who wrote to Maurice Sendak following her’s son’s correspondence. After sharing his joy with WHERE THE WILD THINGS ARE the boy received from the author a personalized drawing. He loved it so much, the mother told Sendak, that he ate it. Maurice Sendak took it as…
Caroline, no.
One of the most emotionally grueling moments in a life of watching movies occurs at the end of Bruce Robinson’s brilliant comedy, WITHNAIL AND I. Marboe (I, played by Paul McGann) realizes Withnail, for all his passion and wit, is only going to drink himself to death sooner or later. Marboe cuts his hair (…
Hello Judy.
One of the most conspicuous qualities about David Lynch and the movies he made was his inversion of normalcy and weirdness. Everyday people were weird. You and I, the ones freaking out and making bad decisions, were perfectly normal. I can think of no greater tribute to the late storyteller than for us all to…
December’s children pt 1.
2024 in Music Robert Layton began his survey of Beethoven’s Late Quartets for GRAMOPHONE magazine with some words to live by: “The real criterion of the quality of any recording is not so much how much one admires it but rather how often one returns to it.” I’ll probably drop a line or so early…
The Devil’s Hand.
Tonight, THE DEVIL’S HAND (1961), Directed by William J. Hole, Jr. Robert Alda plays a lonely guy living in Los Angeles, who joins a Satanic death cult in order to have sex with a beautiful woman, played by Linda Christian, whom he met in a dream.
Corruption.
There is now, of course, a third notable NOSFERATU in the collective unconscious, which I haven’t yet gotten around to hate-watching. The plan, on Christmas, was to get up early, and begin with Murnau’s 1922 silent, in bed (which I did), then stay put and revisit Herzog’s 1979 remake (which I also did). Finally, I…
Chrysleriana 