Mary Henry, Meet Betty Draper

Somewhere in the midst of our collective Mad Men madness (2007 to 2015), I happened to re-watch Carnival of Souls for the first time since I saw the 1962 film played on the 4:30 Movie in New York in the seventies. (The 4:30 Movie had the BEST little credit sequence and music ever.) In my 10...

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 Mapeel     10/31/2009     Film   

Reformation Sunday—From Both Sides Now

Religion seems to be on many minds recently. Lots of punditry about the Pope beckoning to disgruntled Anglicans to “come on over, it’s easy,” the best of which is A. N. Wilson in the NY Times. Maureen Dowd has written another one of her “gotcha” columns about the Catholic Church, which isn’t very hard...

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 Mapeel     10/25/2009     family   

More Birthdays--the Guggenheim, Mr. Monk, Tony Shalhoub, and Me

I’ve always liked the date of my birthday, October 21: 21 has often been a lucky number for me, and October is the best of the autumn months. But I did not know that I share this date with the actual opening date of the New York Guggenheim Museum on 5th and 89, until I did this Sunday’s NY Times crossword...

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 Mapeel     10/21/2009   

O Pythons, My Pythons

Happy Birthday, Pythons. Their birth is considered to be October 5, 1969, the day the Flying Circus first aired on the BBC, and I am glad that the show is a fellow Libran. IFC has started running a 6-part documentary this evening, which is Pythonesque in its absurd length. But the surviving five...

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 Mapeel     10/18/2009     television   

"A Jug of Wine, a Loaf of Bread, and Thou"

English majors the world over are well acquainted with Edward Fitzgerald’s 1859 translation of some of the Persian mystic genius’s thousand plus poems, which he published as the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam. Fitzgerald put the word “rubaiyat” into the English language; it’s a translation of an Arabic derivation...

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 Mapeel     10/16/2009     Steed   

A Shore Thing: The Music of The Lord of the Rings

Part of the greatness of great films is their score: who can imagine Gone With the Wind without that sweeping “Dah DAH, da dah,” or Lawrence of Arabia without “DAH, Dah, da da da da DAH da” or James Bond without that wild minor-key electric “Duh da da da da, duh duh duh, (modulate half-step) Duh da...

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 Mapeel     10/10/2009     Film, music   

It's Impossible!: Julie Andrews on TV

The incomparable Julie Andrews came to the day job this evening to speak about the work of her career that she did on television, which includes a short-lived variety series (1972 to 73); two acclaimed variety specials with Carol Burnett; several important appearances on The Muppet Show; and the only...

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 Mapeel     10/05/2009     television