Sunday, December 15, 2013

Joan Fontaine: Everyone's Favorite Second Mrs. de Winter, and Much More

December 15, 2013 was the last day on earth for two Hollywood legends, Peter O'Toole and Joan Fontaine. I felt a connection to the O'Toole because of my high school love of T.E.Lawrence Seven Pillars of Wisdom. My connection to Joan Fontaine is through my parents. Impressionistic memories...
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Peter O'Toole--a "dangerous man"--Leaves the Stage. Now for Eternity.

I wrote this post in 2007 when Peter O'Toole earned what would be his last Oscar nomination, for the role of Maurice in the film Venus, which he would not win. This looks at his deep affinity for that first role of Lawrence of Arabia and for T.E. Lawrence himself. Requiescat in Pace. “All men...
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Thursday, December 12, 2013

The New Yorker: Rea Irvin Covering the Season for Us.

"New York City is the capital of the American Christmas. The Puritan settlements to the north banned the holiday as Popish and pagan; and so it was, descended from the ancient Roman solstitial Saturnalia." Thus saith John Updike in his foreward to Christmas at the New Yorker, a compendium of thematic...
              

Tuesday, December 10, 2013

It's an Angry Life: Capra's Confounding Holiday Classic

Several years ago Dan Eisenberg of put out a call for a one-day Blog-a-thon, when those things were happening, on It’s a Wonderful Life. He wanted people to either explain what all the fuss is about, or agree that it could be added to Mary and Yale’s Academy of the Overrated, (joining Gustav Mahler,...
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Sunday, December 8, 2013

Two Murders of John, Across the Universe, That Changed the World

There’s a cosmic intersection between John Lennon and John F. Kennedy, besides both being named John and both being murdered by guns. I first noticed it during the Paley Center for Media’s documentary festival in 2010. Its October lineup opened with two films about John Lennon: the bio pic Nowhere...
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Thursday, November 28, 2013

Saturday, November 23, 2013

Happy Birthday Doctor Who: The Day of the Doctor Awaits

Remember Hugh Grant as the Prime Minister in Love, Actually? He gives an updated pop-culture version of the John of Gaunt “This royal throne of kings, this sceptr’d isle . . . This blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this England” speech: “We may be a small country but we're a great one, too....
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Tuesday, November 19, 2013

"A little town in Pennsylvania, a place called Gettysburg"

Rhett Butler utters this description to Scarlett when she asks how much longer the war will go on. He says it won't be long now, there's "a little town in Pennsylvania, a place called Gettysburg" that will pretty much do it. When you watch Gone With the Wind it's a moment of real historical connection...
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Saturday, November 9, 2013

"Venice. Streets filled with water. Advise"

This quip came via telegram from Algonquin wit Robert Benchley to the delicious David Niven, although I'm certain that had it been the 20-teens instead of the 1930s, it would have been a tweet.  [The quip has multiple permutations & attributions, all wonderfully tracked down by Quote Investigator] Earlier...
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Saturday, November 2, 2013

Lou Reed: Your Silent Night at Carnegie Hall Made Me Cry

I was saddened with much of the world at the death of Lou Reed last Sunday. A daughter of Long Island (Massapequa Park) by way of Brooklyn mourning one of its sons (Freeport) via ditto. I was not an intimate fan of the rocker outside of his classics that are ingrained in the soundtrack to life...
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Monday, October 21, 2013

Finally Meeting Keats on the Spanish Stairs

October 21 is a fateful date for John Keats and myself: he landed in Italy in 1820 in a last-ditched effort to find relief in the warmth of the Italian sun to cure his diseased body, and I landed on the earth (as did Coleridge).  “Oh, the streets of Rome are filled with rubble, Ancient footprints...
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Saturday, October 19, 2013

"Four in the Morning" :The Go-to Time for "It's Really Late"

I love this compilation, via Andrew Sullivan. And there's a Fourinthemorning.com with more. It's like a zoom-in detail to Christian Marclay's The Clock, which only spent a few seconds on 4:00 am. Now there are people giving the 'dark night of the soul' hour it's due. ...
              

Thursday, October 3, 2013

The L.I.R.R. Commuter Tales (with thanks to Chaucer)

I was born in Brooklyn, but grew up on Long Island, so I have Commuting in my DNA. My dad and brother worked in Manhattan, and there was no doubt I would too. I started commuting on the Long Island Railroad into Manhattan at 16 for an internship at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, and continued...
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PoetryDayUK: Hello John, from a Daughter of Your "fair defect of Nature"

 Reposting from 2008 in honor of PoetryDayUK 2017 John Milton would turn 400 years old today, if we lived in a Doctor Who universe and Doctor/Donna could take us to a planet where the 17th century is still thriving. This pillar of English literature, this oceanic talent of the English language,...
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