I was treated yesterday to a little beaver alternately swimming and scampering around on the banks of a pond I pass by fairly often. I've previously there seen mum and dad beaver who have always tried to scare me away by diving and whomping their tails on the water. Of course I leave when they do this because I…

Are people still making movies like that? There are certainly cameras being pointed at every sunset and at every sandwich, but is anyone really documenting cities just going about their daily business? It is hard to watch Berlin casually passing a day in the late 20s and not wonder if we are today similarly passing…

That is something I like also about very old movies is knowing everyone in them is a ghost. In a dark room an old movie, particularly when its cast by a projector, is a sort of seance. Although when there's a baby in a scene I always do some quick figuring to see if its possible that baby is still alive.

That is very true! I love looking around at the stuff in the corners of the frame of old movies. Old lamps, saplings that today might be huge trees, whatever. I suppose in the future historians will be ignoring the giant gawking heads in the middle of selfies to study all the stuff caught incidentally in the…

I'm not German, but these movies did fill me with the irresistible urge to climb a mountain! So I scaled the highest point around here which while technically called a "mount" sadly did not very often require me to put my hands on the ground. And since its all forest at the top I can't say for certain that I ever…

Arnold Fanck made a whole bunch of really beautiful mountaineering movies. They have very little story, they exist mostly to show images from up in the clouds that are among the most remarkable that you will ever see. You will find yourself continually disbelieving a camera could ever find itself in a position to…

Mine is Silver and Gold! It wasn't Rudolph that stuck it permanently in my head, though, it was a waltz class that played it on a loop. Day after day, Silver and Gold, Silver and Gold. Just the melody, no lyrics. Its been years but I can't shake the song, it pops into my head at least once a day.

The two stories listed there set in India sound very interesting! I wonder what they would have made of the Black Hole of Calcutta? Have you seen The Phantom Ship? Its a Hammer movie I think by some slim thread, made by perhaps the company that would become Hammer? Its from the mid 30s, about the mystery…

Do you know Hammer nearly remade King Kong in the 60s with Ray Harryhausen? I'm not sure if this was before or after Million Years BC. I think at the time Harryhausen turned them down because he considered it a fool's errand and perhaps also a bit blasphemous to remake Kong. It is too bad the movie wasn't made…

Your username is truly a work of art.

I was certain I had seen one of these, because I remember Christopher Lee in questionable makeup, but I think now it was Terror of the Tongs. I can't remember it very well, was Tongs a Fu Manchu ripoff? Of the books, I mean, the movie seems to have been a few years earlier.

Wages of Fear takes at least that long if not longer to get its sweaty desperados into the trucks!

Are we allowed to discuss other movies here? Because I have nothing to add about the Lamb movie but my fingers are cold and I need to type something to warm up.

A very good latin lover movie that is neither mawkish nor too long (its about 40 minutes long) is the last segment of the omnibus I tre volti, titled "The Latin Lover", I think. Alberto Sordi is the latin lover and he is as funny as you can imagine as a seemingly self-assured escort who provides visiting clients…

Viridiana and Nazarin are a perfect pairing for consecutive movie nights. They both exist in a world ruled unapologetically by vice, but that is precisely the world described in the New Testament. Paul's letters describe the Christian life as one of pain and constant loss, which is exactly what is experienced by…

One other thing I've done differently lately is to switch off continuous play. After the last track, silence. What I've found is it forces me to respect what I'm listening to, and to not allow it to become background noise. I have to keep returning to the stereo and selecting what to listen to next. This must be…

What we have now is just one of those basic sets of surround speakers and subwoofer. But now I am thinking of goosing the sound even more and digging out an old pair of speakers that are buried somewhere in the attic. There's nowhere I can put them where they won't look out of place, but I don't care! I'm sick of…

First of course there's Eleanor and George. They're well placed in the register, do their best to keep the crawlspace in order. Big family, starting with the twins, Gertrude and Helen. Then Dorothy and Andrew. Percival, Bradley, little Oswald and Patricia. And then Francis and Justine and Tristan. If you're…

Thank you! Is even longevity an issue with cables? Unless mice are gnawing it, is there any reason why either the metal insides or rubber outsides of a cable would break down?

Thank you, I'm really glad to hear that!