Thank you, I will remember Dream of Light!

I haven’t read the story, but I suspect parts of it make up the narration in the short movie M. Frenhofer and the Minotaur. I might be wrong. The single remaining foot is mentioned. Which is of course all we see of the finished painting in the movie! I’ll tell you my theory, although it is somewhat contrary to the…

I watched this week in two parts La Belle Noiseuse. I’ve waited a decade! I had seen about an hour of the middle of it on TV ten years ago but stopped watching on the assumption it would be on again soon as I obviously prefered to see it from the start. Well it never did come on again! But it was finally released on…

What an excellent article that is! This is a topic I previously knew practically nothing about. I have some very old family photos that were taken against elegant backdrops, but nothing fanciful like this, nothing that demanded a costume. No great great granny as Ophelia, unfortunately. I guess it is in a…

Yes! That is exactly what I thought, he definitely would have been prosecuted for the nun! That seems like the sort of thing even Hammurabi would have accounted for, so perhaps its a peculiarity of Mexican law at the time? In El, when the villain thinks he has caught his fiancee in a tryst, he deliberately chooses to…

I revisited this week a tombstone that I had stumbled upon a year or so ago in the forest. I had started to wonder whether this old obelisk was real or whether I had dreamed it! That I was able to find it again was remarkable, it was well off the beaten path and I had last time made no note of waymarkers. I’ve decided…

You nearly always find them upside down. I was told they flip over from contortions as their bodies dry out and die. Ghastly way to go. I call them morons for leaving their safe damp habitat to explore the house, but are they really any different than Scott of the Antarctic? Or maybe Scott was also a moron.

If you search ‘spider catcher’ at Amazon, the green one is the one I have but they all look similar. Its an invaluable invention! I’ve never dealt with a june bug, here I am cursed with sow bugs. After a rain they take over the place. Without moisture they seize up and die, so in the morning there will be little…

I’m glad the movie wasn’t extended to include supposed further scenes of Simon’s journeys with Satan because the truncated ending is unexpected, hilarious and perfect! He makes such an awesome beatnik. And the way he half-heartedly mutters “get thee behind me!”

Yes, we wouldn’t need Divine Command for us to tend to the needy if the needy were adorable and gracious like they are in melodramatic movies! And besides, adorable and gracious people tend to get by in life just fine, its the grubby ungrateful weirdos who need the help. The perfect charitable act I think is one done…

I agree that Simon is not made of the same stuff as the novice, let alone Viridiana and the Nazarin priest. Last night I read of Bunuel’s loathing of the new pop music and how he yearned for an age before radios. The ending makes sense in this regard: the stuff that the Devil is offering never appealed to Simon in the…

Rey, I would never hurt a bee! Relocating bugs is a regular part of my day. I have this wand, its like one of those grabber things, except with a brush at the end that gently opens and closes. Its meant for catching spiders, but it works for flies and wasps and bees, too. You catch the villain in the brush and then…

My two movies this week were on a Christian theme: DeMille’s King of Kings and Bunuel’s Simon of the Desert. King of Kings was about what I expected, a series of Gospel tableaux. DeMille doesn’t get enough credit for his ability to fill a frame; the Crucifixion is one unforgetable image after another.

I love mummy movies, so this week I watched two that I had never before seen: Curse of the Faceless Man and Eyes of the Mummy. As it turned out, neither movie had a mummy! I had been led to believe the faceless man was going to be an Etruscan mummy, but he was in fact a wad of hardened ash, or something like that. He…

I brought home with me today from the forest two woodticks. Horrid things. Since then I’ve been feeling phantom ticks crawling all over me, burrowing into me, turning me into a living pencil holder.

I’m glad to say the picturesque cows that I daily pass by have had their pasture expanded! They now have a big field to roam as well as a shady grove. I’m very happy for them! Unfortunately, this means that they are nearly always further apart from each other and are consequently no longer forming attractive figural…

My life has intersected with the lives of three picturesque cows: a mum, a dad, and a calf. They appeared from nowhere, in a small, otherwise unremarkable pasture. They’re the majestic sort with the white heads like you see on corned beef tins. I hope they don’t wind up inside one. I’m certain these animals are posing…

My favourite image from that movie is Laughton with the trident, keeping watch over the others. He didn’t get a lot of chances to play the hero, did he?

I wasn’t ready to leave India, so I watched this week A Throw of Dice and Renoir’s The River. The River can be only reduced by my mutterings, so I will simply recommend it to everyone as worthy of your time. To let it settle in I’d have not watched a second movie this week but that I only allow myself Koolaid on movie…

I haven’t seen Candy, but I have seen other awkward old shows and movies making misguided attempts to relate to the hippie crowd. At their best, you get Bob Hope in a poncho. Can’t go wrong with Bob Hope saying “peace, man.” At their worst, you get that Star Trek episode! What irks me the most is that they had to drag…