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PLEASE NOTE: I’ve finally
fixed the problem of some of the images on this site
not showing up on Internet Explorer, a problem
traceable to a change that Microsoft made last December
in their code. triggering a bug in the way Quark --
which I use to build these pages -- exports GIF images.
I finally found out the cause of the problem and a way
to work around it -- no thanks to either Quark or
Microsoft, but to an IT tech friend, Mika Babcock,
whose company, foreseeing.com, designs websites for bookdealers). I have
some new articles to put up on the site and will do so
soon.
Why should you read books
you’ve never heard of? Find out why in this
introduction to a catalog of rare books on sale at lwcurrey.com, “Exceedingly
Eldritch: Rediscovered Rarities,” from the Melancholy Eskimo’s
antiquarian book business, Eldritch Books. Read an
introductory essay about this selection of books. [book review-essay]
“Dancing Lady”
(1933) has the spiciness we expect from a pre-Hays code
movie, plus the musical non-sequiturs we expect from a
pre-Oklahoma musical, plus Fred Astaire, plus the Three
Stooges, plus a sizzling Joan Crawford ... and more. [move review]
“Super Size Me”
brings up some of the main issues that are pertinent to
documentary films, which are in the midst of a boom
right now. Relieved of the strict expectations that
viewers bring with them to fiction films, documentaries
are free to move back and forth between presenting
information and telling a story, and Morgan Spurlock
exploits this freedom to compensate for weaknesses in
both of these areas. [movie
review/essay]
“Where the Moon Came
From” is a children’s story for adults.
When the world was young, everything on the Earth was
edible. The only living thing, a giant, ate so much
that he left behind huge canyons and valleys. He got
bigger and bigger until one night he floated off into
space. [short story]
Beware of re-watching favorite
old movies from your childhood. George Pal’s
“The Time Machine” (1960) made it to 802, 701 and
back but didn’t survive the trip to 2005. [movie review]
“Charade”
(1963) tries to give equal emphasis to comedy, romance
and suspense, but director Stanley Donnen, adept at the
first two, doesn’t quite bring off the third. But
then, who could have harnessed such a troika? If
Hitchcock had made this, he would have built up the
romance and the suspense and toned down the comedy. [movie
review]
Gender-related behavioral
differences show up in children at an early age, as
confirmed by experiments involving their choice of
toys. Now these differences have been observed in other
primates as well, according to a new experiment
involving infant vervet monkeys. Males like balls,
females like dolls. But does that mean that females are
gentler than males? [essay on The Battle of the Sexes]
The antithesis of The Virgin and
the Dynamo can be found in “Doctor Zhivago,”
despite David Lean’s omission of the Christian
subtext found in Boris Pasternak’s novel. All the
characters lose some kind of essential virginity here
as the red tide sweeps over the steppes. What is
gained? The film’s closing shot of a giant
hydro-electric dam offers an enigmatic answer. [movie review]
“Robots” is
gorgeous to look at. Wait for the DVD and watch it with
the sound turned off. Everything else about the movie
feels like it’s made from spare parts. [movie
capsule review]
Sidney Pollack’s new film,
“The Interpreter,” is good but not great. Was it
the director’s very lack of an auteur’s
passion that won him permission to film at the U.N.?
Did that permission influence him to pull punches in
this tale about liberators and dictators? The film
triggers some reflections on parallels between the
United Nations and the Tower of Babel that may subvert
the director’s intentions. [movie review]
In the waning days of the Cold
War, the Brits made yet one more espionage film as
elegant as a pocketless billiards game. See how “Cold War Killers” puts Britain, Russia and Germany on
some clever new collision courses. [move review]
“Hitler’s SS: A Portrait in Evil” is a misleadingly lurid title
for a detailed look at the rise and fall of the Third
Reich from the point of view of one German family whose
three sons fall into and escape its maelstrom of evil
in various ways. The move shows the seductive surface,
as well as the corrosive substance, of the Nazis. [movie review]
A beautiful Indian-American
woman’s account of her matrimonial quest prompted
the Melancholy Eskimo to pen an open letter to her in
reply. [essay]
The 2-DVD package of eight
“War Classics” for $5.50? How could I
resist? The first one I watched, “Waterfront”,
a B-movie with John Carradine from 1944, was uniformly
mediocre [movie capsule review] but stirred up some thoughts about
movie-making then and now. [essay]
Archetypal symbolism gives a
somber substratum to “James and the Giant Peach,” whose sheer beauty and inventive
zeal might otherwise obscure the hard and unchanging
psychological truths that exist at its core like the
rough stone that holds the sweetness of the peach
together. [movie review]
One of the great unsung
masterpieces of 2004 was “Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow.” In giving bittersweet tribute
to extinct aesthetic visions, it forges a brilliant
aesthetic vision of its own, a rare accomplishment
that, evidently, was caviar to the masses. [movie review]
The 2003 production of “Peter Pan”
is the best one to date, largely because it
doesn’t detach the story’s shadows from its
sparkling flights of fancy. A hundred years after this
play’s first production someone has finally
gotten it right: the Oedipal tensions, the Christian
allusions, and the family membership in a long lineage
dating back to the shaggy goat god of the Greek
woodlands. [movie review/essay]
The true star of “Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban” is the set, especially the
interiors and exteriors of Hogwarts, depicted in a
rich, warm, lush way that is almost erotic. This movie
is cheesecake for antiquarians. [movie review]
It's nighttime in the Brady
household and - wait a minute, here's Sam, the friendly
butcher, coming out of the bedroom of Alice, the
friendly maid.
“Oh, hi, Sam.
What are you doing here?”
Sam thinks fast.
“Delivering
some meat.”
“Oh, okay.
See you later.”
“House of Sand and Fog” is a study of how two very different
individuals react to loss. Kathy (Jennifer Connelly)
won't admit that it is a fait
accompli, a result of her
own fault. Behrani (Ben Kingsley) sees his loss
clearly, feels it deeply, blames no one, and moves on,
working with discipline and self-abnegation to repair
the loss. She survives, he doesn’t. [movie capsule review]
Robin Williams fixed the
too-many-clowns problem in 2002 with the release of
“Insomnia” and “One-Hour Photo,”
in each of which he plays a lonely recluse. Are these
weirdos also murderers? That question provides the
tension in both of these fine movies, though the latter
is ultimately more interesting. [movie
review]
Right from the start of “Unfaithful,”
we are made to feel that the Sumner's world of suburban
peace is fragile – not because it’s
superficial, but because it’s vulnerable. It's a
windy day, and one of the first shots shows the wind
tipping over a child's parked bicycle. There's the
whole movie right there. Uncontrolled passions come
into the lives of a nice quiet family and tip it over.
[movie review]
As played by Monica Bellucci, the
heroine of “Malèna” isn’t trying to be sexy
any more than the sun is trying to be hot. It’s
just the way she is. Sex radiates from her. Life
radiates from her. If there were any real men around
her, this energy would be reflected back towards her as
pure passionate love. She should be worshiped. Instead,
she is reviled. [movie review]
The paradox at the heart of
“Chicago” is that women, murderous though
they may be in their intimate relations, have a
life-affirming energy in public that is not only
irresistible but indispensable. [movie
review]
I’m not saying for sure
that Frank was faking it in “Far From Heaven,”
but it makes you wonder. And if he wasn’t, then,
considering our uncertainty about the causes of
homosexuality, it raises the possibility that one of
them might be bad interior decorating. [movie
review]
Ang Lee’s “The Ice Storm” belongs to that genre of American
film that depicts wealthy white suburbs as places where
evil and unhappiness – especially sexual
pathology – are lurking right
below the surface! [movie review]
In literary composition, the
non-linear narrative structure we see in “Pulp Fiction” is called periodicity. It is based on
an unusually prolonged suspension of both meaning and
syntactical resolution until the very end of the
sentence, and it is a confection for connoisseurs. [movie review/essay]
In these scenes of “The Party,”
the Indian removes his disguise of Loser and stands
revealed as The Fool, just as the elephant removes its
disguise of fraternity joke and stands revealed as
Ganesha, the elephant-headed son of Shiva, the
Destroyer, one of the three aspects of the Hindu
Godhead. [movie review]
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