The Watcher in the Woods (1980)

The Watcher in the Woods is a 1980 supernatural horror film starring Bette Davis and David McCallum. Produced by Disney, it seems viewers were shocked to see this film come from that company. It's atmospheric in a spooky kind of way.

Honeyboy

David "Honeyboy" Edwards was a Mississippi-born blues musician who made Chicago his home beginning in the 1950s. One of the last surviving links to Robert Johnson, he had many stories to tell. This concert is The Montreal Jazz Festival in 1998:

He died of congestive heart failure on this date in 2011 at the age of 96, having been scheduled to perform later that same day. It's a joy to hear of these artists who live long lives and are able to be active to the end.

The Alphabet Murders

The Alphabet Murders is a 1965 comedy film, a parody of Poirot. It's silly -oh, so silly. If you like that kind of thing you'll like this. It stars Tony Randall as Poirot, Anita Ekberg, and Robert Morley. I watched it through Amazon Prime on BritBox.

The Girl Who Did Not Know Fear

The Girl Who Did Not Know Fear is a short story by Kelly Link. You can read it online here. It begins,

A few years ago, I was on my way home to Massachusetts when bad weather stranded me in the Detroit airport for four days. I’d been at a conference in Iowa City—I travel rarely, but this was a point in my career when professional advancement required that I go. I was to receive a signal honor, one that conferred much benefit upon not only myself but also upon the university where I had tenure and no teaching responsibilities. My university had made it clear that it would be ungracious of me not to go. And so I went. I attended panels and listened to my colleagues discuss my research. Former students, now middle-aged and embarked upon their own careers, greeted me with more affection and warmth than I felt I merited; I bought them drinks in the bar, and listened to reports of their various successes. Some of them knew my wife. Others were Facebook friends, and remarked on recent photos of our daughter, Dido. How much she had grown. There was, of course, talk of politics and of the recent winter, how mild it had been. How wet this spring was turning out to be. I have never cared much for change, but of course change is inevitable. And not all change is catastrophic—or rather, even in the middle of catastrophic change, small good things may go on. Dido had recently learned to write her name. The children of my colleagues, too, were marvels, prodigies, creatures remarkable in their nature and abilities.

Nessun Dorma (2016 film)

Nessun Dorma is a Hong Kong psychological thriller film. I watched it on TubiTV. It's also on Amazon Prime. I didn't finish this one... Just not my thing.

trailer:

Hollywood Reporter calls it "an old-fashioned noirish thriller". Love HK Film says "this dark thriller" is an "OK potboiler".

Passing

Passing is a 1929 novel by Nella Larsen (pictured above). This book is on Huffington Post's list of classic novels that are so short you have no excuse not to read them. You can read it online here or here or listen to it read to you at the bottom of this post. It begins,

One three centuries removed
From the scenes his fathers loved,
Spicy grovey cinnamon tree,
What is Africa to me?

— Countee Cullen

It was the last letter in Irene Redfield's little pile of morning mail. After her other ordinary and clearly directed letters the long envelope of thin Italian paper with its almost illegible scrawl seemed out of place and alien. And there was, too, something mysterious and slightly furtive about it. A thin sly thing which bore no return address to betray the sender. Not that she hadn't immediately known who its sender was. Some two years ago she had one very like it in outward appearance. Furtive, but yet in some peculiar, determined way a little flaunting. Purple ink. Foreign paper of extraordinary size.

It had been, Irene noted, postmarked in New York the day before. Her brows came together in a tiny frown. The frown, however, was more from perplexity than from annoyance; though there was in her thoughts an element of both. She was wholly unable to comprehend such an attitude towards danger as she was sure the letter's contents would reveal; and she disliked the idea of opening and reading it.

This, she reflected, was of a piece with all that she knew of Clare Kendry. Stepping always on the edge of danger. Always aware, but not drawing back or turning aside. Certainly not because of any alarms or feeling of outrage on the part of others.

And for a swift moment Irene Redfield seemed to see a pale small girl sitting on a ragged blue sofa, sewing pieces of bright red cloth together, while her drunken father, a tall, powerfully built man, raged threateningly up and down the shabby room, bellowing curses and making spasmodic lunges at her which were not the less frightening because they were, for the most part. Ineffectual. Sometimes he did manage to reach her. But only the fact that the child had edged herself and her poor sewing over to the farthermost corner of the sofa suggested that she was in any way perturbed by this menace to herself and her work.

Clare had known well enough that it was unsafe to take a portion of the dollar that was her weekly wage for the doing of many errands for the dressmaker who lived on the top floor of the building of which Bob Kendry was janitor. But that knowledge had not deterred her. She wanted to go to her Sunday school's picnic, and she had made up her mind to wear a new dress. So, In spite of certain unpleasantness and possible danger, she had taken the money to buy the material for that pathetic little red frock.

There had been, even In those days, nothing sacrificial In Clare Kendry's Idea of life, no allegiance beyond her own Immediate desire. She was selfish, and cold, and hard. And yet she had, too, a strange capacity of trans- forming warmth and passion, verging sometimes almost on theatrical heroics.

Irene, who was a year or more older than Clare, remembered the day that Bob Kendry had been brought home dead, killed in a silly saloon-fight. Clare, who was at that time a scant fifteen years old, had just stood there with her lips pressed together, her thin arms folded across her narrow chest, staring down at the familiar pasty-white face of her parent with a sort of disdain in her slanting black eyes. For a very long time she had stood like that, silent and staring. Then, quite suddenly, she had given way to a torrent of weeping, swaying her thin body, tearing at her bright hair, and stamping her small feet. The outburst had ceased as suddenly as it had begun. She glanced quickly about the bare room, taking everyone in, even the two policemen, in a sharp look of flashing scorn. And, in the next instant, she had turned and vanished through the door.

Seen across the long stretch of years, the thing had more the appearance of an outpouring of pent-up fury than of an overflow of grief for her dead father; though she had been, Irene admitted, fond enough of him In her own rather catlike way.

Catlike. Certainly that was the word which best described Clare Kendry, if any single word could describe her. Sometlmes she was hard and apparently without feeling at all; sometimes she was affectionate and rashly Impulsive. And there was about her an amazing soft malice, hidden well away until provoked. Then she was capable of scratching, and very effectively too. Or, driven to anger, she would fight with a ferocity and impetuousness that disregarded or forgot any danger; superior strength, numbers, or other unfavourable circumstances. How savagely she had clawed those boys the day they had hooted her parent and sung a derisive rhyme, of their own composing, which pointed out certain eccentricities in his careening gait! And how deliberately she had —

Irene brought her thoughts back to the present, to the letter from Clare Kendry that she still held unopened in her hand. With a little feeling of apprehension, she very slowly cut the envelope, drew out the folded sheets, spread them, and began to read.

It was, she saw at once, what she had expected since learning from the postmark that Clare was in the city. An extravagantly phrased wish to see her again. Well, she needn't and wouldn't, Irene told herself, accede to that. Nor would she assist Clare to realize her foolish desire to return for a moment to that life which long ago, and of her own choice, she had left behind her.

She ran through the letter, puzzling out, as best she could, the carelessly formed words or making instinctive guesses at them.

". . . For I am lonely, so lonely . . . cannot help longing to be with you again, as I have never longed for anything before; and I have wanted many things in my life. . . . You can't know how in this pale life of mine I am all the time seeing the bright pictures of that other that I once thought I was glad to be free of. . . . It's like an ache, a pain that never ceases. . . ." Sheets upon thin sheets of it. And ending finally with, "and it's your fault, 'Rene dear. At least partly. For I wouldn't now, perhaps, have this terrible, this wild desire if I hadn't seen you that time in Chicago. . . ."

Brilliant red patches flamed in Irene Redfield's warm olive cheeks.

"That time in Chicago." The words stood out from among the many paragraphs of other words, bringing with them a clear, sharp remembrance, in which even now, after two years, humiliation, resentment, and rage were mingled.

...

The Picture of Dorian Gray (1945)

The Picture of Dorian Gray is a 1945 award-winning screen adaptation of the book by Oscar Wilde. This version is directed by Albert Lewin and stars George Sanders (a favorite with me), Donna Reed, Angela Lansbury (another favorite), and Peter Lawford. We watched it on DVD.

trailer:

FilmReference.com says, "Lewin's film presents a fascinating mediation between Wilde's effete aestheticism and Hollywood's conventional realism." Classic Horror says it's worth watching but doesn't achieve greatness. Rotten Tomatoes has a critics consensus rating of 93%. Here's a screenshot from the trailer:

Shall we don hats and take tea? I'll be joining the T Stands for Tuesday blogger gathering hosted by Bleubeard and Elizabeth. Share a post with a drink reference and join us.

The Fiddler

The Fiddler is an 1854 short story by Herman Melville. You can read it online here at this link or listen to it read to you at the bottom of this post. It begins,

So my poem is damned, and immortal fame is not for me! I am nobody forever and ever. Intolerable fate!

Snatching my hat, I dashed down the criticism, and rushed out into Broadway, where enthusiastic throngs were crowding to a circus in a side-street near by, very recently started, and famous for a capital clown.

Presently my old friend Standard rather boisterously accosted me.

"Well met, Helmstone, my boy! Ah! what's the matter? Haven't been committing murder? Ain't flying justice? You look wild!"

"You have seen it then?" said I, of course referring to the critism.

"Oh yes; I was there at the morning performance. Great clown, I assure you. But here comes Hautboy. Hautboy—Helmstone."

Without having time or inclination to resent so mortifying a mistake, I was instantly soothed as I gazed on the face of the new acquaintance so unceremoniously introduced. His person was short and full, with a juvenile, animated cast to it. His complexion rurally ruddy; his eye sincere, cheery, and gray. His hair alone betrayed that he was not an overgrown boy. From his hair I set him down as forty or more.

"Come, Standard," he gleefully cried to my friend, "are you not going to the circus? The clown is inimitable, they say. Come; Mr. Helmstone, too—come both; and circus over, we'll take a nice stew and punch at Taylor's."

The sterling content, good humor, and extraordinary ruddy, sincere expression of this most singular new acquaintance acted upon me like magic. It seemed mere loyalty to human nature to accept an invitation from so unmistakably kind and honest a heart.

During the circus performance I kept my eye more on Hautboy than on the celebrated clown.
...

Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1941)

Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde is a horror film starring Spencer Tracy, Ingrid Bergman, Lana Turner, and Donald Crisp. It is a 1941 adaptation of the 1886 book Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson. That book can be read online here.

We have a DVD of this film, and I can't find it available free.

trailer:

A Conversation with Breeze Cayolle

A Conversation with Breeze Cayolle:

Cayolle is a New Orleans native who relocated to Memphis in the wake of Hurricane Katrina.

Valley of the Zombies

Valley of the Zombies is a 1946 horror film. It's less than an hour long, and there's not much to it.

The Pelican

The Pelican is an 1899 short story by Edith Wharton (pictured above), who died on August 11, 1937, at the age of 75 of a stroke suffered 6 weeks after she had a heart attack. I have always enjoyed her writing, and even now years later my taste for her work has not lessened. This story can be read online here, or you can listen to it read to you at the bottom of the post. It begins,

She was very pretty when I first knew her, with the sweet straight nose and short upper lip of the cameo-brooch divinity, humanized by a dimple that flowered in her cheek whenever anything was said possessing the outward attributes of humor without its intrinsic quality. For the dear lady was providentially deficient in humor: the least hint of the real thing clouded her lovely eye like the hovering shadow of an algebraic problem.

I don't think nature had meant her to be "intellectual;" but what can a poor thing do, whose husband has died of drink when her baby is hardly six months old, and who finds her coral necklace and her grandfather's edition of the British Dramatists inadequate to the demands of the creditors?

Her mother, the celebrated Irene Astarte Pratt, had written a poem in blank verse on "The Fall of Man;" one of her aunts was dean of a girls' college; another had translated Euripides--with such a family, the poor child's fate was sealed in advance. The only way of paying her husband's debts and keeping the baby clothed was to be intellectual; and, after some hesitation as to the form her mental activity was to take, it was unanimously decided that she was to give lectures.

They began by being drawing-room lectures. The first time I saw her she was standing by the piano, against a flippant background of Dresden china and photographs, telling a roomful of women preoccupied with their spring bonnets all she thought she knew about Greek art. The ladies assembled to hear her had given me to understand that she was "doing it for the baby," and this fact, together with the shortness of her upper lip and the bewildering co-operation of her dimple, disposed me to listen leniently to her dissertation. Happily, at that time Greek art was still, if I may use the phrase, easily handled: it was as simple as walking down a museum- gallery lined with pleasant familiar Venuses and Apollos. All the later complications--the archaic and archaistic conundrums; the influences of Assyria and Asia Minor; the conflicting attributions and the wrangles of the erudite--still slumbered in the bosom of the future "scientific critic." Greek art in those days began with Phidias and ended with the Apollo Belvedere; and a child could travel from one to the other without danger of losing his way.

Mrs. Amyot had two fatal gifts: a capacious but inaccurate memory, and an extraordinary fluency of speech. There was nothing she did not remember-- wrongly; but her halting facts were swathed in so many layers of rhetoric that their infirmities were imperceptible to her friendly critics. Besides, she had been taught Greek by the aunt who had translated Euripides; and the mere sound of the [Greek: ais] and [Greek: ois] that she now and then not unskilfully let slip (correcting herself, of course, with a start, and indulgently mistranslating the phrase), struck awe to the hearts of ladies whose only "accomplishment" was French--if you didn't speak too quickly.

*******

The Tunnel

The Tunnel is a 2019 award-winning Norwegian short film based on the science fiction short story The Tunnel Ahead which was written by Alice Glaser. Watch it here at this link or below:

You can read the short story online here.

Still Life, Corner of a Table

Still Life Corner of a Table:

is an 1873 painting by Henri Fantin-Latour, who died on August 25, 1904. I don't know much about art, but I enjoy looking at artists' works and reading about their lives. Ever curious, there's alway more to see and learn. You can see more of this artist's paintings online here and here.

I'm sharing this with the T Stands for Tuesday blogger gathering, where you should feel free to participate. A warm welcome awaits you.

King Creole

In memory of Elvis Presley on the anniversary of his death in Memphis on this date in 1977:

King Creole is a 1958 musical drama directed by Michael Curtiz, an excellent film and Elvis' best.

trailer:

Rotten Tomatoes has a consensus critics score of 100%.

The Stainless Steel Rat

image from Wikipedia

The Stainless Steel Rat is the main character in a comic science fiction book series by Harry Harrison. Harrison died on the date in 2012 at the age of 87. You can read the first three books in this series through the Internet Archive loan program, a wonderful service in these days. They are quite clever. The first book begins,

When the office door opened suddenly I knew the game was up. It had been a money-maker —but it was all over. As the cop walked in I sat back in the chair and put on a happy grin. He had the same somber expression and heavy foot that they all have—and the same lack of humor. I almost knew to the word what he was going to say before he uttered a syllable.

“James Bolivar diGriz I arrest you on the charge—”

I was waiting for the word charge, I thought it made a nice touch that way. As he said it I pressed the button that set off the charge of black powder in the ceiling, the crossbeam buckled and the three-ton safe dropped through right on the top of the cop’s head. He squashed very nicely, thank you. The cloud of plaster dust settled and all I could see of him was one hand, slightly crumpled. It twitched a bit and the index finger pointed at me accusingly. His voice was a little muffled by the safe and sounded a bit annoyed. In fact he repeated himself a bit.

“ … On the charge of illegal entry, theft, forgery—”

He ran on like that for quite a while, it was an impressive list but I had heard it all before. I didn’t let it interfere with my stuffing all the money from the desk drawers into my suitcase. The list ended with a new charge and I would swear on a stack of thousand credit notes that high that there was a hurt tone in his voice.

Stroszek

Stroszek is a 1977 German tragicomedy directed by Wernor Herzog. I watched it here on TubiTV. I tried, but I just couldn't get into this one. I left it and came back to it several times but finally gave up. trailer:

 

It's listed in the book 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die. Roger Ebert considers it a Great Movie. Rotten Tomatoes has a critics consensus score of 95%.

42 T Shirt

A T shirt design:

There are an amazing number of designs focusing on 42.

The Lady from Shanghai

The Lady from Shanghai is a 1947 film noir directed by Orson Welles and starring Rita Hayworth and Orson Welles. You can watch it online here.

trailer:

FilmSite begins its article with this:

The Lady From Shanghai (1948) is an imaginative, complicated, unsettling film noir who-dun-it thriller, with fascinating visuals and tilting compositions, luminous and brilliant camerawork (by Charles Lawton, Jr.), and numerous sub-plots and confounding plot twists.

It is listed in the book 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die. Rotten Tomatoes has a critics consensus score of 82%.

Health and Fitness

My last doctor visit showed increased blood pressure and increased cholesterol. Bummer. I thought I'd post a bit monthly about the steps I'm taking to deal with this and see if anybody else might have some advice.

I've had high cholesterol scores before, and usually just giving up cheese is enough to bring it down. I've never had high blood pressure before and am placing part of the blame on my persistent insomnia over the past year and seeing a new-to-me doctor. But I'm going to try and take a fuller approach to improving my health before my re-check in December.

The Husband's health insurance offers suggestions and the ability to track good habits online, and I'm using that right now. They want me to eat more calories, which is ridiculous since I'm only 4'9" tall and weigh 98 pounds, but these online apps just won't provide info on a plan that's under 1200 calories. It does look like I need to eat more protein. I do eat protein every day, just not enough to satisfy this app. 

I already wear a weight vest and do Yoga daily, do strength training with dumbbells 3 or 4 times a week, do Tai Chi and Qi Gong several times a week using Youtube videos, among other things, so "exercise more" isn't really a helpful idea. I'm not currently walking, though, so I'm adding 30 minutes a day of walking to my schedule 5 days a week. I was surprised and disappointed my first day when it took me 25 minutes to walk a mile. I'm down to a mile in 19 minutes now, so I'm pleased I'm making some progress.

I tend to like good-for-me foods and eat those every day, but I also like bad-for-me foods. I'm cutting back to once a month for hamburgers and pizza and cutting out cheese except for cottage cheese and the monthly pizza. I'm not interested in diets that limit carbs, but limiting red meat and processed foods is part of my plan. I've heard increasing potassium helps lower blood pressure, and I'll be adding bananas and raisins, which are the foods I see recommended that I don't already eat.

I've tried everything I know of aside from prescription meds for the insomnia and nothing worked. I'm trying a different app on my phone (My Life) for short calming and directed breathing activities and hope that using it twice a day will relieve some of the stress I honestly didn't realize I was feeling.

We'll see.

Laura

Laura is a 1944 film directed by Otto Preminger and starring Gene Tierney, Dana Andrews, Clifton Webb, Vincent Price, and Judith Anderson. I have this on DVD. It's a treasure, and that's no exaggeration. In fact, I think I'll take an hour and a half and watch it again...

via Internet Archive:

Here's a screenshot from the film for the bloggers participating in the T Stands for Tuesday gathering:

Join us?

The Case of the Irate Witness

image from Wikipedia

The Case of the Irate Witness is a Perry Mason short story by Erle Stanley Gardner. It is the only short story he wrote that featured Perry Mason. You can read it online here. It begins,

Perry Mason refused to believe the proof against his client. The district attorney was too smug. The evidence was too good.

The early-morning shadows cast by the mountains still lay heavily on the town's main street as the big siren on the roof of the Jebson Commercial Company began to scream shrilly.

The danger of fire was always present, and at the sound, men at breakfast rose and pushed their chairs back from the table. Men who were shaving barely paused to wipe lather from their faces; men who had been sleeping grabbed the first available garments. All of them ran to places where they could look for the first telltale wisps of smoke.

There was no smoke.

The big siren was still screaming urgently as the men formed into streaming lines, like ants whose hill has been attacked. The lines all moved toward the Jebson Commercial Company.

There the men were told that the doors of the big vault had been found wide open. A jagged hole had been cut into one with an acetylene torch.

The men looked at one another silently. This was the fifteenth of the month. The big, twice-a-month payroll, which had been brought up from the Ivanhoe National Bank the day before, had been the prize.

Frank Bernal, manager of the company's mine, the man who ruled Jebson City with an iron hand, arrived and took charge. The responsibility was his, and what he found was alarming.

Tom Munson, the night watchman, was lying on the floor in a back room, snoring in drunken slumber. The burglar alarm, which had been installed within the last six months, had been by-passed by means of an electrical device. This device was so ingenious that it was apparent that, if the work were that of a gang, at least one of the burglars was an expert electrician.

Ralph Nesbitt, the company accountant, was significantly silent. When Frank Bernal had been appointed manager a year earlier, Nesbitt had pointed out that the big vault was obsolete.

Bernal, determined to prove himself in his new job, had avoided the expense of tearing out the old vault and installing a new one by investing in an up-to-date burglar alarm and putting a special night watchman on duty.

Now the safe had been looted of a hundred thousand dollars, and Frank Bernal had to make a report to the main office in Chicago, with the disquieting knowledge that Ralph Nesbitt's memo stating that the antiquated vault was a pushover was at this moment reposing in the company files....

Some distance out of Jebson City, Perry Mason, the famous trial lawyer, was driving fast along a mountain road. He had planned a week-end fishing trip for a long time, but a jury which had waited until midnight before reaching its verdict had delayed Mason's departure and it was now eight thirty in the morning.

...

How Green Was My Valley

How Green Was My Valley is a 1941 directed by John Ford and starring Walter Pidgeon, Maureen O'Hara, and Roddy McDowall.

This film is included in the book 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die. FilmSite has an article which begins,

How Green Was My Valley (1941) is one of John Ford's masterpieces of sentimental human drama. It is the melodramatic and nostalgic story, adapted by screenwriter Philip Dunne from Richard Llewellyn's best-selling novel, of a close-knit, hard-working Welsh coal-mining family (the Morgans) at the turn of the century as a socio-economic way of life passes and the home-family unit disintegrates. Episodic incidents in everyday life convey the changes, trials, setbacks, and joys of the hard-bitten community as it faces growing unemployment, distressing work conditions, unrest, unionization and labor-capital disputes, and personal tragedy. Domestic life, romance, harsh treatment at school, the departure of two Morgan boys to find their fortune in America, unrequited love between the local preacher (Walter Pidgeon) and the only Morgan daughter (beautiful 19 year old Irish actress Maureen O'Hara), and other events are portrayed within the warm, human story.

It has a critics consensus score of 89% at Rotten Tomatoes.

The Judgement

The Judgement is a short story by Franz Kafka. It involves the relationship between a man and his father. You can read it online here or listen to it read to you at the bottom of this post. The two translations differ. It begins,

It was a Sunday morning at the most beautiful time in spring. George Benderman, a young merchant, was sitting in his private room on the first floor of one of the low, poorly constructed houses extending in a long row along the river, almost indistinguishable from each other except for their height and colour. He had just finished a letter to a friend from his youth who was now abroad, had sealed in a playful and desultory manner, and then was looking, elbows propped on the writing table, out of the window at the river, the bridge, and the hills on the other shore with their delicate greenery.

He was thinking about how this friend, dissatisfied with his progress at home, had actually run off to Russia some years before. Now he ran a business in St. Petersburg, which had gotten off to a very good start but which for a long time now had appeared to be faltering, as his friend complained on his increasingly rare visits. So he was wearing himself out working to no purpose in a foreign land. The exotic full beard only poorly concealed the face George had known so well since his childhood years, and the yellowish colour of his skin seemed to indicate a developing sickness. As he explained it, he had no real connection to the colony of his countrymen in the place and also hardly any social interaction with local families and so was resigning himself to being a permanent bachelor.

What should one write to such a man, who had obviously gone off course, a man one could feel sorry for but could not help.

...

*******

The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert

The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert is a 1994 Australian film starring Terence Stamp, Hugo Weaving, and Guy Pearce. I watched it on Tubi, but it's not there any more. I don't see it available right now on any of the services I subscribe to. It's definitely worth looking for. I loved it!

trailer:

It's included in the book 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die. The Guardian calls it a "smart, lovable gem".

Roger Ebert closes his review with this:

At the beginning of the film we're distracted by the unexpected sight of Terence Stamp in drag, but Stamp is able to bring a convincing humanity to the character, and eventually we realize that the real subject of the movie is not homosexuality, not drag queens, not showbiz, but simply the life of a middle-aged person trapped in a job that has become tiresome.

Rotten Tomatoes has a critics consensus score of 96%.

Train Kept a Rollin'

Train Kept a Rollin':

by Tav Falco's Panther Burns, a band formed in Memphis in 1979 and still active. This video is of their 1979 performance and interview on a local TV show. Marge Thrasher is a judgmental bitch in this interview in my opinion.

This is from 12/2019:

The Ghosts of Berkeley Square

The Ghosts of Berkeley Square is a 1947 comedy film in which the ghostly occupants are condemned to haunt the house until a British monarch crosses the threshold. Embedding is disabled, but if you click on the "watch on Youtube" link below you can watch it there.

Afternoon Tea on the Terrace

Afternoon Tea on the Terrace:

by Henri Lebasque, who died on August 7, 1937.

Please join the T Tuesday blogger gathering hosted by Bleubeard and Elizabeth where we share a post with a drink in it and visit with one another.

Gold Diggers Of 1933

Gold Diggers Of 1933 is a 1933 pre-code musical directed by Mervyn LeRoy and Busby Berkeley and starring Warren William, Joan Blondell, Aline MacMahon, Ruby Keeler, and Dick Powell. You can watch it online here.

Here's a trailer:

It's listed in the book 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die. Rotten Tomatoes has a critics consensus rating of 100%.

Only Yesterday

Only Yesterday is a 1991 animated drama film intended for an adult audience. It's a sweet story about a young woman, city-born and lifelong Tokyo resident, who is traveling to the countryside to help with the safflower harvest. She reminisces on the journey. I watched it on HBO Max.

trailer:

Roger Ebert's site calls it "breathtakingly beautiful and quietly but devastatingly moving". Rotten Tomatoes has a critics consensus score of 100%.