November 2018
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In our tour of classic western movies, we watched Canyon Passage (1946), directed by Jacques Tourneur, who is famous for the noir masterpiece Out of the Past (1947). Canyon Passage is a good substantial film and it's got everything a frontier drama should have: a cabin raising, a saloon in which a poker game is…
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We watched Notting Hill, a cute 1999 "rom-com" or "date movie" with cute couple Hugh Grant and Julia Roberts. (It's hard to believe that the film is almost twenty years old. It's so slight and fluffy that I can't remember whether or not I saw it last millennium, but frankly, it wouldn't make much difference…
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Hey there, internet pilgrims, searchers, wanderers who might be googling their own name or a relative's. All of the following people are cousins of each other, cousins of mine. If you find yourself here, identify yourself on the comments page, and I'll tell you how I think you are related. Hint: you're all descended from…
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In High Wall (1947), an extremely noir-y noir, Stephen Kenet, played by an unusually glamorless Robert Taylor, suffers from a fully credible traumatic amnesia. Did he, or did he not kill his wife. He can't remember. So far so good. Happens all the time in such films. But he's cured of his affliction in a…
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Beginning at the northwest corner and preceding south — in the first brick house, a family of notably obese immigrant Syrian women who spoke no English; there were no children that I know of and no interactions with other neighbors. The house itself was not unusual but it was fronted by a wrought iron fence…
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The universal condiment in the ancient world, a staple of Roman, Greek and Byzantine cuisines, was garum. Garum was manufactured in enormous quantities and shipped in special amphorae all over the civilized, colonized universe. What is garum? It's a fishy sauce that any sensible modern apple-pie-loving American would avoid at all costs. Trust me, you would…
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If a widow and a widower form a relationship when they're both in their seventies, what is the proper and appropriate name for their relationship? Legally, they're married, because here in the state of Colorado, if you live together and represent yourself as married, you're married, even if you haven't sought governmental sanction. Yet "husband"…
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The Sons of Katie Elder (1965) — another film so awful that it's utterly, undeniably fascinating. It's packaged as a western, but underneath the arid mountainous scenery and the garish Technicolor, it's a film noir. What's it about? Well, a gang of crooks have been muscling in on the Elder ranch. Not an unusual circumstance,…