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- “Improvement makes strait roads, but the crooked roads without Improvement, are roads of Genius.” — poet/engraver/visionary William Blake
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- “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.” — Irish poet Derek Mahon
- Posters in Aki Kaurismäki’s Fallen Leaves (2023)
- “[I wish] to trace the gradual action of ordinary causes rather than exceptional.” — George Eliot
- “There were so many things I wanted to say, stream-of-consciousness things, designs and patterns while listening to music. I felt I might be able to say [them] if I had an unending canvas.” — pioneering experimental animator Mary Ellen Bute
- The (Fractured) Male Gaze
- “Being understood is not the most essential thing in life.” — Jodie Foster
- Happy Birthday, Graham Parker
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- Chris on “There were so many things I wanted to say, stream-of-consciousness things, designs and patterns while listening to music. I felt I might be able to say [them] if I had an unending canvas.” — pioneering experimental animator Mary Ellen Bute
- Mitch Berg on “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.” — Irish poet Derek Mahon
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- Jessie on Review: May December (2023)
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- Jessie on She’s not a bad person. Honest she isn’t: Kerry O’Malley in David Fincher’s The Killer
- Ginny SH on “There’s nothing you can tell me about guilt.” — Martin Scorsese
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- sheila on “I don’t like being approached by people who look at me too intensely, who needed something from me that I didn’t have. I don’t represent anything.” — Liz Phair
- SeanGiere on “I don’t like being approached by people who look at me too intensely, who needed something from me that I didn’t have. I don’t represent anything.” — Liz Phair
- sheila on She’s not a bad person. Honest she isn’t: Kerry O’Malley in David Fincher’s The Killer
- Melissa Sutherland on She’s not a bad person. Honest she isn’t: Kerry O’Malley in David Fincher’s The Killer
- sheila on “There’s nothing you can tell me about guilt.” — Martin Scorsese
- sheila on “There’s nothing you can tell me about guilt.” — Martin Scorsese
- sheila on Review: May December (2023)
- sheila on Talking 1953 movies with Jason Bailey and Mike Hull: A Very Good Year podcast
- sheila on Review: Holy Frit (2023)
- sheila on “Given as much to the gutter as to the gods” — Nick Tosches
- sheila on She’s not a bad person. Honest she isn’t: Kerry O’Malley in David Fincher’s The Killer
- sheila on She’s not a bad person. Honest she isn’t: Kerry O’Malley in David Fincher’s The Killer
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Tag Archives: England
“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
“I find that I cannot exist without poetry—without eternal poetry—” –John Keats
I was just beautifying him, don’t you know. A thing of beauty, don’t you know. Yeats says, or I mean, Keats says. – James Joyce, Ulysses Born in 1795 on this day, John Keats was orphaned at fifteen. Because his … Continue reading
Posted in Books, James Joyce, On This Day, writers
Tagged A.S. Byatt, Anne Spencer, Camille Paglia, Countee Cullen, Dorothy Parker, Elizabeth Bishop, England, Gerard Manley Hopkins, Harold Bloom, John Keats, Katherine Mansfield, L.M. Montgomery, Lord Byron, Louis MacNeice, Matthew Arnold, Michael Schmidt, Oscar Wilde, Percy Bysshe Shelley, poetry, Robert Burns, Robert Graves, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Seamus Heaney, Six Centuries of Great Poetry, T.S. Eliot, Ulysses, W.B. Yeats, William Carlos Williams, William Faulkner
19 Comments
On This Day: October 25, 1415: “We Few, We Happy Few.”
Happy Anniversary of The Battle of Agincourt Today is the feast day of Saints Crispin and Crispinian, cobblers by trade (and patron saints thereof, although Vatican II nixed them from the calendar), fierce warriors of their faith, martyred in 286. … Continue reading
Posted in Actors, On This Day, Theatre
Tagged England, Laurence Olivier, Shakespeare, war
9 Comments
“My thoughts bustle along like a Surinam toad, with little toads sprouting out of back, side, and belly, vegetating while it crawls.” — Samuel Taylor Coleridge
He looked at his own Soul with a telescope. What seemed all irregular, he saw and shewed to be beautiful Constellations: and he added to the Consciousness hidden worlds within worlds. –Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Notebooks It’s his birthday today. I’ll … Continue reading
Posted in Books, On This Day, writers
Tagged A.S. Byatt, Andrew Marvell, Anne Fadiman, Ben Jonson, Camille Paglia, Derek Mahon, Edmund Spenser, Elizabeth Bishop, England, Jane Langton, John Donne, John Dryden, John Keats, John Milton, Jonathan Swift, Lord Byron, Michael Schmidt, poetry, Rudyard Kipling, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, T.S. Eliot, Thomas Carlyle, William Hazlitt, William Wordsworth
29 Comments
“I rather like the idea of death.” — poet Stevie Smith
Born on this day in 1902, in Hull, Yorkshire England, Stevie Smith was christened Florence Margaret, but was called “Stevie” by her friends. (She was a very petite woman: “Stevie” was the name of a famous jockey of the time.) … Continue reading
Posted in Books, On This Day, writers
Tagged England, Michael Schmidt, Norton Anthology of Poetry, poetry, Samuel Taylor Coleridge
3 Comments
“I have often wished I had time to cultivate modesty… but I am too busy thinking about myself.” — poet Edith Sitwell
Born on this day. I don’t remember Sitwell being “read” in my poetry class in college, and I don’t remember her being covered in my English or Humanities classes in high school. She doesn’t seem to be one of the … Continue reading
Posted in Books, On This Day, writers
Tagged Edith Sitwell, England, Marilyn Monroe, Michael Schmidt, poetry
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“The reason we’re successful, darling? My overall charisma, of course.” — Freddie Mercury
It’s his birthday today. It’s hard for me to talk about my feelings for Freddie Mercury. When Freddie Mercury moved, he cracked open the atmosphere. He’s almost frightening. When he walked across a stage, or threw his body into a … Continue reading
August 2023 Viewing Diary
Oppenheimer (2023; d. Christopher Nolan) In general, I am not a Nolan fan (the only one of his I liked was Dunkirk), and I went into this hesitantly because I read an interview with him where he said the whole … Continue reading
Posted in Monthly Viewing Diary, Movies
Tagged animation, biopic, children's movies, coming of age, crime movies, drama, Elvis Presley, England, France, heist, horror, Kentucker Audley, King Creole, Michael Curtiz, Michael Mann, romantic drama, Sidney Lumet, South Korea, Western, women directors
30 Comments
Happy Birthday, drummer Honey Lantree
Even now, a “girl drummer” in an all-boy band is a rare thing. Back in the 1960s, it was unheard of. Which is why Honey Lantree, drummer for the Joe Meek-produced The Honeycombs, stands out. Still. When she joined the … Continue reading
Review: Scrapper (2023)
An amazing directorial debut. I loved it. A 21st century entry in the sadly-rare Tomboy Movie Pantheon! I reviewed Scrapper for Ebert.