January 26, 2022: Not only am I not a Charlotte, but I am also not a fan of the Sex and the City reboot, And Just Like That… But I am a fan of Charlotte, and today I explain why in my second piece for The Cut (see here). While And Just Like That… is pretty bad, I confess that I will keep watching it, in part to feed my curiosity about how much more abuse the franchise will heap on David Eigenberg’s aurally challenged, mono-testicled Steve “Skid Marks” Brady in order to move the plot along.
January 2, 2022: I’ve already written about how wild I am about Desi Arnaz. Well, I’m even wilder about him now that Being the Ricardos is out and Salon is letting me remake my case today (see here) for the woeful short shrift that he’s gotten, which I predict will mirror the short shrift that Javier Bardem (as Desi) will get during awards season given all the praise being lavished on Nicole Kidman (as Lucy) and her fake eyebrows. (I swear I saw something in the closing credits about “prosthetics assistant to Ms. Kidman.” Did you see it too?)
December 31, 2021: Last year you probably didn’t care that I listed the five best books about old Hollywood that I read in 2020. This year I’m assuming you don’t care about the five best books about old Hollywood that I read in 2021. Well, I care, so I am once again providing links to the swell things that I wrote about the books I’ve selected, this time after an arduous winnowing of six titles down to five. They are here, presented alphabetically and with needless tetchiness:
Colorization: One Hundred Years of Black Films in a White World by Wil Haygood
Forever Young by Hayley Mills
Sinatra and Me: In the Wee Small Hours by Tony Oppedisano with Mary Jane Ross
When Women Invented Television: The Untold Story of the Female Powerhouses Who Pioneered the Way We Watch Today by Jennifer Keishin Armstrong
Windhall by Ava Barry
December 26, 2021: In my review of Kat Rosenfield’s “No One Will Miss Her,” which runs today in the Portland Press Herald (see here), I compare aspects of the book to the classic crime movies Blue Velvet, The Big Lebowski, Psycho, Dial M for Murder, and Sunset Boulevard, mainly because this gives me an excuse to run a Norma Desmond picture. What’s that? This isn’t the Norma Desmond you had in mind? Oh geez, I’m really sorry…
December 12, 2021: Aw…don’t they look like a classic-movie pair in this shot? After I finished watching season two of Succession, I had high hopes that Gerri and Roman would become an item—wouldn’t that be a neat inversion on the older-man/trophy-broad trope? Well, season three, while otherwise stupendous, has shredded my fantasy to bits, and today I share my disappointment at Salon (see here).
November 28, 2021: It’s me! It’s me! After several decades of being straight edge, I wrote a cheerful little screed on the subject, “Why I’m (Still) Straight Edge,” and Salon kindly ran it earlier today, which I guess technically means yesterday (see here). I guess I won’t know if anyone likes it because I’ve learned not to read the comments, but I’ve also learned that worse than hateful comments is no comments at all, so by all means, hate away, haters!
September 26, 2021: The problem with romantic comedies is that you already know the ending, so what’s the point? Having said that, any movie that Doris Day and Rock Hudson ever touched is okay by me, and so is the novel Super Host, which I review in today’s Portland Press Herald (see here). I like it because although author Kate Russo harvests the rom-com for parts, she subverts the genre now and then by kicking it—doof!—right in the Hugh Grant.
July 2, 2021: You know how you were always rooting for Jerry Hall for some reason, but you didn’t know why? Well, I figured out why, and I write about it in a piece (see here) that Salon is running on the occasion of Jerry’s sixty-fifth birthday, which, as I’m really hoping you’ve figured out by now, is today.
May 9, 2021: Oh, hello. Today I review a fine novel by Eleanor Morse called Margreete’s Harbor for the Portland Press Herald (see here), and while the book doesn’t touch on Alfred Hitchcock or film noir or Doris Day or any of my favorite subjects, I did manage to shoehorn in a reference to Abbott and Costello. Well played, right? Yes, it was.
April 5, 2021: Oh yes: That’s Eve Plumb in a scene from 2013’s stellar indie neo-noir Blue Ruin. Say, did you know that she expresses her noir love in another way? For the past decade or so, Plumb has been painting choice moments from black-and-white noirs that she stumbles upon on TCM. In December I had the pleasure of interviewing her by phone about her noir paintings, and today a good chunk of our talk is posted here in issue 31 of the Noir City e-magazine, in case you’d like to listen in and support a swell cause. (Disclaimer: My intro to the interview was partly rewritten without my consent, so please don’t judge me by its wording. Gotta say, a couple of my questions were rejiggered without my consent as well…)
Oh, and while you’re there, you can read my review of the ravishing Film Noir Style: The Killer 1940s by Kimberly Truhler. It may not convince you to ditch the sweatpants that you (and I) have been wearing since March of 2020, but at least it will make you feel lousy about wearing them.