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- November 2024 Viewing Diary
- “I have trouble working off things that are too preconceived, like storyboards.” — Terrence Malick
- “I thought girls in their teens might like to read [Anne of Green Gables], that was the only audience I hoped to reach.” — L.M. Montgomery
- “I have ever hated all nations, professions, and communities, and all my love is toward individuals.” — Jonathan Swift
- “Look in thy heart and write.” — Sir Philip Sidney
- For Busby Berkeley’s birthday: Remember My Forgotten Man and Sucker Punch
- “Well, if I can’t be happy, I can be useful, perhaps.” — Louisa May Alcott
- Exeunt, pursued by hundreds of beavers. Literally.
- “Improvement makes strait roads, but the crooked roads without Improvement, are roads of Genius.” — poet/engraver/visionary William Blake
- For Liberties: Edna O’Brien: Documentary of A Writer and A Star
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Category Archives: On This Day
“I have trouble working off things that are too preconceived, like storyboards.” — Terrence Malick
“When people express what is most important to them, it often comes out in cliches. That doesn’t make them laughable — it’s something tender about them. As though in struggling to reach what’s most personal about them they could only … Continue reading
Posted in Directors, Movies, On This Day
Tagged Badlands, Days of Heaven, Terrence Malick
6 Comments
“I thought girls in their teens might like to read [Anne of Green Gables], that was the only audience I hoped to reach.” — L.M. Montgomery
As with Sylvia Plath, my relationship with Lucy Maud Montgomery has spanned the entirety of my life. It graduated from a childhood voracious yearning to read all the books immediately to a longer period when I “grew out of them”, … Continue reading
Posted in Books, On This Day, writers
Tagged Anne of Green Gables, Canada, Emily of New Moon, L.M. Montgomery, The Blue Castle
1 Comment
“I have ever hated all nations, professions, and communities, and all my love is toward individuals.” — Jonathan Swift
“When a man of true Genius appears in the World, you may know him by this infallible Sign, that all the Dunces are in Conspiracy against him.” — Jonathan Swift I don’t have much time to read for pleasure these … Continue reading
Posted in Books, On This Day, writers
Tagged Alexander Pope, Charlotte Bronte, Dr. Samuel Johnson, fiction, Gulliver's Travels, H.L. Mencken, Ireland, Irish poetry, Jane Eyre, Jonathan Swift, Michael Schmidt, poetry, Rebecca West, Robert Graves, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, T.S. Eliot, W.B. Yeats
12 Comments
“Look in thy heart and write.” — Sir Philip Sidney
“[The poet] doth grow in effect another nature, as the Heroes, Demigods, Cyclopes, Chimeras, Furies, and such like: so as he goeth hand in hand with nature, not enclosed within the narrow warrant of her gifts, but freely, ranging only … Continue reading
Posted in Books, On This Day, writers
Tagged Chaucer, Edmund Spenser, England, Harold Bloom, John Aubrey, Michael Schmidt, poetry, Shakespeare
2 Comments
For Busby Berkeley’s birthday: Remember My Forgotten Man and Sucker Punch
I wrote a piece originally for the Musings blog at Oscilloscope (it was included in a book!), and now lives on my site (since it’s off the Musings blog). It’s about the similarities between Busby Berkeley’s Gold Diggers of 1933 … Continue reading
Posted in Movies, On This Day
Tagged Busby Berkeley, dance, Gold Diggers of 1933, Joan Blondell, Mervyn LeRoy, musicals, Sucker Punch, war, WWI
15 Comments
“Well, if I can’t be happy, I can be useful, perhaps.” — Louisa May Alcott
“November is the most disagreeable month in the whole year,” said Meg, standing at the window one dull afternoon, looking out at the frostbitten garden. “That’s the reason I was born in it,” observed Jo pensively, quite unconscious of the … Continue reading
“Improvement makes strait roads, but the crooked roads without Improvement, are roads of Genius.” — poet/engraver/visionary William Blake
“I mean, don’t you think it’s a little bit excessive?” “The road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom. William Blake.” Pause. “William Blake?” “William Blake!” “William Blake???” “William Blake!!!” — Bull Durham William Blake was a poet virtually … Continue reading
“You can’t dance in a long dress.” — Tina Turner
I pretty much said what I needed to say about Tina Turner in my review of this year’s documentary Tina. I saw her in concert. I was there, I was present for her rise to total dominance in the culture, … Continue reading
“What’s the difference between an exile and an expatriate? It seems to me that an Englishman in France is an expat, but an Irishman is an exile.” — Derek Mahon
“When growing up, my bunch of friends would have thought of ourselves as anti-unionist because we were anti-establishment. We would have been vaguely all-Ireland republican socialists. But then, when theory turned into practice, we had to decide where we stood … Continue reading
Posted in Books, On This Day, writers
Tagged Belfast, Derek Mahon, Ireland, Irish poetry, poetry, Seamus Heaney
5 Comments
“[I wish] to trace the gradual action of ordinary causes rather than exceptional.” — George Eliot
“What do I think of Middlemarch? What do I think of glory?” — Emily Dickinson I came to George Eliot late. As in, during the lifespan of this blog. I read Middlemarch (more like devoured it) in 2005, and wrote … Continue reading
Posted in Books, On This Day, writers
Tagged A.S. Byatt, Christopher Hitchens, Emily Dickinson, George Eliot, Jeanette Winterson, Joan Acocella, L.M. Montgomery, W.H. Auden
2 Comments