I’m always conflicted before starting a Cormac McCarthy book. Although he’s one of America’s best writers, his world view tends toward bleakness and nihilism – to an extent that can be off-putting even for a natural-born pessimist like myself. Let’s just say his books have never left me whistling the theme from “Andy Griffith.” […]
‘The Passenger’
Floaters in the stream
Because everything else in the news is pissing me off, I’ll post these drive-by reviews of some shows I’ve been streaming lately: “Smile” (Amazon Prime). I love a good horror movie. The key word being “good.” “Smile” is not good. It is actually quite bad, but just short of bad enough to be enjoyed […]
A is for ‘Artificial’
You’ve probably heard about the New York Times reporter who was creeped out by his conversation with Microsoft’s new chatbot. The reporter kept pressing questions to which there was no factual answer, and the chatbot eventually started returning responses that, if uttered by a person, would seem kind of ominous. That includes professing love […]
The cold, hard West
Who’s the most famous writer you’ve never read? I can think of a few offhand, but now I can cross one off the list: Annie Proulx. A good friend sent me a book of her short stories the other day: “Fine Just the Way it Is.” I’m about halfway through it. I love that […]
One enchanted evening
We watched “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” last night, thus ending my 57-year streak of not watching it. When someone else grabs the remote, you sometimes end up viewing stuff you might not choose alone. Here’s the IMDb synopsis: “A bitter, aging couple, with the help of alcohol, use their young houseguests to fuel […]
Joan of dark
Film noir of the week is “Sudden Fear,” starring Joan Crawford and Jack Palance. You weren’t aware of Film Noir of the Week? Yeah, that’s something I just came up with. I fully expect to forget about it over the next few days. Anyway, “Sudden Fear” is a perfectly respectable noir, made in 1951 […]
Nope. Definitely not a masterpiece.
Thirty six years after it was made, the wife and I realized we had never actually watched “Heaven’s Gate,” the 1980 Michael Cimino film that pretty much burned everything it ever touched except, somehow, Christopher Walken’s career. The movie is now viewable on Netflix. I thought, well, it has a solid cast and that […]
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