late to the party...

Reviews, essays, intermittent Tumbl-ing on telly, film, books and the occasional bit of fiction.

[robinshcerbatsky]

[skylarsheldonsidneygracie-deact]

Shadows and tunnels and film noir, oh my.

[rottentomatoes]

The Third Man (1949) - Certified Fresh at 100%

[back-then]

Hello?

[maysamh]

"...something rather tragic about James Bond. In advance of seeing Spectre, the latest instalment in the super-spy sex-murder franchise, I watched several of the old films again. The experience was like having your forebrain slowly and laboriously beaten to death by a wilting erection wrapped in a copy of the Patriot Act: savage and silly and just a little bit pathetic." Yep. So much I relate to in this from The New Statesman.

[dialnfornoir]

[rottentomatoes]

Sunset Blvd. (1950) - Certified Fresh at 98%

[maysamh]

Why, why...

...WHY would anyone entrust their precious mental health to a psychiatrist as awful and creepy as Bedelia DuMaurier? (Fabulous name. And yet, she's another horrific TV doctor. This without eating anyone.)

[sams-film-stills]

L.A. Confidential (1997) Dir. Curtis Hanson

[rottentomatoes]

Certified Fresh at 99%

[maysamh]

Murder Husbands, for like, EVAR...

Or, tumbling over that cliff while I screech at the screen for the last hour. (Binge watching Hannibal for Halloween, obviously) Frustrating, stylish, camp, opaque and utterly ridiculous. But hugely entertaining.

[larmoyante]

Violence does not always take visible form, and not all wounds gush blood.

Haruki Murakami, 1Q84  (via fragilis)

[howstuffworks]

“There is no such thing as a person that nothing has happened to, and each person’s story is as different as his fingerprints.” —Elsa Lanchester (born October 28, 1902)

[stuffmomnevertoldyou]

How else you might know ol’ Elsa…

[vintageanchorbooks]

A conscious attempt to fall asleep is sure to produce insomnia, to try to be conscious of one’s own digestion is a sure way to upset the stomach. Consciousness is a poison when we apply it to ourselves. Consciousness is a light directed outward. It’s like the headlights on a locomotive—turn them inward and you’d have a crash.

Boris Pasternak, Doctor Zhivago (via vintageanchorbooks)

[oupacademic]

Word of the Day: obmurmuration

n. The action or an instance of complaining or criticizing

GIF via giphy.com

[oupacademic]

The film ‘Back to the Future’ provides the OED’s earliest recorded example of a colloquial sense of ‘hello’, used to imply (sometimes disbelievingly or sarcastically) that the person addressed is not paying attention, has not understood something, or has said something nonsensical or foolish.

[1985 B. Gale & R. Zemeckis Back to the Future (film): “Hello, hello? Anybody home? Hey! Think, McFly. Think.”]

Image credit: Gif via motionlmags

[oupacademic]

Great Scott! It’s Back to the Future Day.

[theartofmoviestills]

Back to the Future Part II | Robert Zemeckis | 1989

[silentmovies]

Why Be Good? (1929)

[jennipoos]

Kissing and the spooning

[ryannorth]

THE kissing and THE spooning

[guardian]

Great Scott! It’s October 21, 2015 … and we have finally arrived. Happy BACK TO THE FUTURE day! 

Yes, we are live blogging this.

[ablogwithaview]

Guildenstern: It’s autumnal. Rosencrantz (examining the ground): No leaves. Guildenstern: Autumnal - nothing to do with leaves. It is to do with a certain brownness at the edges of the day… Brown is creeping up on us, take my word for it… Russets and tangerine shades of old gold flushing the very outside edge of the senses… deep shining ochres, burnt umber and parchments of baked earth — reflecting on itself and through itself, filtering the light. At such times, perhaps, coincidentally, the leaves might fall, somewhere, by repute. Yesterday was blue, like smoke.

Tom Stoppard, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead. (via inmilkwood)