Kyoikusenga Ubasuteyama

Kyoikusenga Ubasuteyama is a 1925 Japanese animated short film about a feudal lord who hates the elderly and so decides to exile each person once they reach their 60th birthday. On the island where they are sent there is a predatory bird that eats them. One young man tries to save his mother from her fate. (click the little CC in the bottom right corner of the video for English intertitles.)

An Inspector Calls (2015)

An Inspector Calls is a 2015 TV film adaptation of the J. B. Priestly play with the same name. David Thewlis plays the Inspector.

trailer:

It got excellent reviews and is well worth watching.

Broken Lance

Broken Lance is a 1954 western starring Spencer Tracy, Robert Wagner.Jean Peters, Richard Widmark, Hugh O'Brian, Earl Holliman, and E.G. Marshall. It's a western re-make (1880s Arizona) of the 1949 Edward G. Robinson film noir House of Strangers. They are both adapted from the same novel.

You can watch it online here.

trailer:

83% of Rotten Tomatoes critic reviews were positive.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Shimmer

Shimmer is a 10-page long story by Claudette Menalson about star-crossed faerie love ruined by human contact. I went into it expecting a book-length story and was surprised when it was just over. There's really not much to this, but it's a fine enough little story. I read it at ManyBooks.net.

They Live By Night

They Live By Night is a 1948 film noir directed by Nicholas Ray in his first feature film. Farley Granger stars.

Here's the young couple at the coffee shop:

as he looks over his shoulder at the neon "Weddings Performed" sign. I'll have a cuppa, too,

to join the T Stands for Tuesday blogger gathering.

This will even count as a Christmas movie as you look for something different for the holiday season:

The leader of this little gang insists the kid join them in another bank robbery as he pokes at the ornaments the kid has just put on his and his new bride's Christmas tree.

Here's another screenshot of the tree and one of the tinsel decorating the mantle:

Depending on how non-traditional you like your Christmas movies, this one might do.

The New York Times review from the time of the film's release praises it saying,

A commonplace little story about a young escaped convict "on the lam" and his romance with a nice girl whom he picks up and marries is told with pictorial sincerity and uncommon emotional thrust ... this crime-and-compassion melodrama has the virtues of vigor and restraint.

Slant Magazine concludes, "Simultaneously tough-minded and delicate, the film is an exquisite stage-setter for Nicholas Ray’s career". Time Out closes with this: "Passionate, lyrical, and imaginative, it's a remarkably assured debut, from the astonishing opening helicopter shot that follows the escaped convicts' car to freedom, to the final, inexorably tragic climax."

Variety says, "Underneath They Live By Night is a moving, somber story of hopeless young love. There’s no attempt at sugarcoating a happy ending, and yarn moves towards its inevitable, tragic climax without compromise." Senses of Cinema says, "They Live By Night is regularly cited as the most significant progenitor of the ‘outlaw lovers on the run’ narrative. Succeeded by films as diverse as Bonnie and Clyde (Arthur Penn, 1967) and Natural Born Killers (Oliver Stone, 1994), Ray’s film remains the standard bearer for the genre."

100% of Rotten Tomatoes critics like it.

The Legacy Human

The Legacy Human is yet another book I found free online via BookBub. I read it through Google Play on my laptop, and can't be happier with having had BookBub recommended to me. I can't remember who suggested it -several sources for free books were suggested, and this is the first one I've tried- but Thanks! This is an excellent way to try new-to-me authors. This is a young adult book, which I wouldn't ordinarily read. I am so glad I read this, though, and I never would have if I hadn't found it free. I recommend it, especially if you're looking for mind-expanding reading for teens. Books suitable for that purpose aren't as common as you might think. I wish this had been available when I had teens at home.

The Legacy Human, by Susan Kaye Quinn, is first in the Singularity series. Her website says,

What would you give to live forever? Seventeen-year-old Elijah Brighton wants to become an ascender —a post-Singularity human/machine hybrid— after all, they’re smarter, more enlightened, more compassionate, and above all, achingly beautiful. But Eli is a legacy human, preserved and cherished for his unaltered genetic code, just like the rainforest he paints. When a fugue state possesses him and creates great art, Eli miraculously lands a sponsor for the creative Olympics. If he could just master the fugue, he could take the gold and win the right to ascend, bringing everything he’s yearned for within reach… including his beautiful ascender patron. But once Eli arrives at the Games, he finds the ascenders are playing games of their own. Everything he knows about the ascenders and the legacies they keep starts to unravel… until he’s running for his life and wondering who he truly is.

The Legacy Human is the first in Susan Kaye Quinn’s new young adult science fiction series that explores the intersection of mind, body, and soul in a post-Singularity world… and how technology will challenge us to remember what it means to be human.

Murder She Said (1961)

Murder She Said is a 1961 movie based on an Agatha Christie mystery novel. It stars Margaret Rutherford as Miss Marple. Joan Hickson has a role in this one. They take many liberties with the plot of the book, but it's a fun film anyway.

It got good reviews, but Christie herself didn't approve of all the changes.

Night Train to Memphis

Night Train to Memphis:

sung by Roy Acuff, who was born in Tennessee and died there on this date in 1992 at the age of 89.

Nerves

Nerves is a 1919 silent German expressionist film.

Stranger on the 3rd Floor says,

Here’s what [German] Wikipedia has to say about Reinert’s depiction of a “nervous epidemic” sweeping the nation ...:

“Nerven opened in Munich in 1919. People were hospitalized after watching the movie and one woman, after seeing it, woke up one night, went out on the street in her nightshirt and screamed ‘Now I am going to die! Now I am going to die!’ About Nerven, one recent critic wrote ‘Nerven is a disorienting, highly experimental work. Released in 1919, before The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (early 1920), it might have become a prototype of German Expressionist cinema if it had been widely seen.’

Cambridge closes by saying, "Robert Reinert's largely unknown Nerven is notable for its role in recording the frenzy of illness following the First World War."

The Rowan Tree

image from Amazon.com

Several people have suggested options for free books online, and I'm exploring what seems to me to be a wealth of choices. The Rowan Tree, by Robert W. Fuller, is available free for now on Google Play, and I'm reading it on my computer. You can read it here while it's free. I found it searching for free books in the literary fiction category at BookBub.

from RowanTreeNovel.com:

Rowan Ellway is a young college president; Easter Blue, an impassioned student leader. Upon graduation, she takes a fellowship to Africa, and they lose touch. When, decades later, they meet again, they discover that their prior bond was but a rehearsal for the world stage.

The Rowan Tree reaches from the tumultuous 1960s into humanity’s future, encompassing the worlds of politics, sport, ballet, presidential leadership, and world governance. An international cast of characters personifies the catalytic role of love in political change.

Replete with illicit loves, quixotic quests, and inextinguishable hope, The Rowan Tree foretells a dignitarian world much as the story of King Arthur and the round table sowed the seeds of democracy.

It's quite the romantic, illicit affair-driven narrative and not my cup of tea. I won't seek out more by this author.

Captain Calamity

Captain Calamity is a 1936 pirate movie.

Still Life

A silver bowl, a lemon, a knife, a bottle and a glass on a salver on a draped marble ledge:

by Louise De Hem, who died on November 22, 1922, at the age of 55. How did she make that lemon look like a real lemon? It looks more "real" than some photos I've taken. The skill and eye of artists are awe-inspiring as I look at paintings I come across.

Please join me in a cuppa

while I admire the art in this painting and in the posts of folks participating in the weekly T Stands for Tuesday blogger gathering.

Some of you were kind enough to suggest sources for free books online, and I'd like to share one of my favorites: the University of Adelaide online books library. I also find good things at Online Literature, at the Internet Archive and at Project Gutenberg.

The Proud Rebel

The Proud Rebel is a 1958 western directed by Michael Curtiz and starring Alan Ladd and Olivia de Havilland. John Carradine, Dean Jagger, Cecil Kellaway, and Harry Dean Stanton co-star.

Variety says, "Warmth of a father's love and faith, and the devotion of a boy for his dog, are the stand- out ingredients of this suspenseful and fast-action post-Civil War yarn." TCM has information.

The Roman Hat Mystery

The Roman Hat Mystery is the first of the Ellery Queen detective/mystery series. This writer knows his stuff. It was written in 1928 but is still easy and interesting to read. The book was a birthday present.

from the Wikipedia article:

The novel deals with the poisoning of a disreputable lawyer named Monte Field in the Roman Theater in New York City during a performance of a play called "Gunplay!" Although the play is a sold-out hit, the corpse is discovered seated surrounded by empty seats. A number of suspects whose pasts had made them potentially susceptible to blackmail are in the theater at the time, some connected with the Roman Theater and some audience members.

The case is investigated by Inspector Richard Queen of the Homicide Squad with the assistance of his son Ellery, a bibliophile and author. The principal clue in the mystery is the disappearance of the victim's top hat, and it is suspected that the hat may have contained papers with which the victim was blackmailing the murderer. A number of suspects are considered, but nothing can be proved until Ellery performs an extended piece of logical deduction based on the missing hat and thus identifies the murderer.

You can read it online here.

Thieves' Highway

Thieves' Highway is a 1949 film noir directed by Jules Dassin and starring Richard Conte, Valentina Cortese, Lee J. Cobb, and Barbara Lawrence.

part 1:

part 2:

Slant Magazine says "Jules Dassin’s 1949 melodrama about long-haul truckers —the director’s final (and finest) film made in America before the House Un-American Committee exiled him to Europe— is ... a bleak portrait of post-WWII despair, corrupt capitalism, and idealistic disillusionment." The New York Times review from the time calls it "One of Best Melodramas of the Year". DVD Talk says it "bares some honest truths about making a living at the lower end of the entrepreneurial scale. Firebrand writer A.I. Bezzerides all but indicts the American system of business".

Rotten Tomatoes has a critics rating of 100%.

Extended Advent

I'm trying a new-to-me thing this year. One of the earliest of Advent traditions has the observance beginning on the Feast of St. Martin, which is November 11, and there was no determined, consistent practice of shortening it to four weeks until much later and never in the Orthodox tradition. I'm observing Advent beginning with the second week in November, so this past Sunday was the first week in Advent in this practice. I'll be following what this United Methodist Church page calls Restorationist Advent. Their page says, "Advent used to be a season of seven Sundays until Pope Gregory VI shortened it to four in the eleventh century."

The Advent Project is "committed to working ecumenically to restore Advent from four (4) to seven (7) weeks". They have some resources, including O Antiphons for seven weeks and candle-lighting devotions for home use. (as of 5/5/2023 The Advent Project links have been compromised and flagged by Blogger, resulting in the unpublishing of this post. I've removed the links. Other extended Advent resources are available with a simple Google search. I invite you to look into that.) There's another service for home use here.

Yes, this made my Advent wreath useless, but I've made one with more candles, pictured above, that will serve. The color of the candles is irrelevant, except the Christ candle in the center -which I haven't added yet- should be white.

I have never found the time of preparation for Christmas to be stressful as some seem to, and I've always enjoyed a bit of the hustle and bustle that goes with this season, so my reasons for joining this movement have nothing to do with a reaction to commercialization or secular concerns. I'm interested in exploring this older tradition of a longer Advent as an end in itself, as a way of deepening my experience of Advent.

I'm finding an expanded Advent to be helpful in my personal devotions.

The Little Prince

The Little Prince is a 1943 book, which I read in French back in the days when I knew some French. I have read it several times in the English translation. This book is a treasure, and I'd recommend it to anyone of any age. You can read it online here.

I've seen two of the many adaptations. The 1974 version is a musical starring Gene Wilder as the Fox. I saw it when it was first released to theaters and love it dearly even now.

Here's a trailer:

I recently watched the 2015 adaptation on Netflix. It's quite different, being an animation, but every bit as delightful.

trailer:

The Tempest (1960)

The Tempest is a 1960 television adaptation of the Shakespeare play. Directed by George Schaefer, it stars Maurice Evans as Prospero, Richard Burton as Caliban, Lee Remick as Miranda, Roddy McDowall as Ariel, and Tom Poston as Trinculo. Edited for time, this is still the best adaptation I've found.

Ether Breather

Ether Breather (1939) is the first published science fiction story of Theodore Sturgeon. You can read it online here or here. It begins,

It was "The Seashell." It would have to be "The Seashell." I wrote it first as a short story, and it was turned down. Then I made a novelette nut of if and then a novel. Then a short short. Then a three-line gag. And it still wouldn't sell. It got to be a fetish with me, rewriting that "Seashell." After a while editors got so used to it that they turned it down on sight. I had enough rejection slips from that number alone to paper every room in the house of tomorrow. So when it sold -well, it was like the death of a friend. It hit me. I hated to see it go.

It was a play by that time, but I hadn't changed it much. Still the same pastel, froo-froo old "Seashell" story, about two children who grew up and met each other only three times as the years went on, and a little seashell that changed hands each time they met. The plot, if any, doesn't matter. The dialogue was -well, pastel. Naive. Unsophisticated. Very pretty, and practically salesproof. But it just happened to ring the bell with an earnest, young reader for Associated Television, Inc., who was looking for something about that length that could be dubbed "artistic"; something that would not require too much cerebration on the part of an audience, so that said audience could relax and appreciate the new polychrome technique of television transmission. You know; pastel.

As I leaned back in my old relic of an armchair that night, and watched the streamlined version of my slow-moving brainchild, I had to admire the way they put it over. In spots it was almost good, that "Seashell." Well suited for the occasion, too. It was a full-hour program given free to a perfume house by Associated, to try out the new color transmission as an advertising medium. I liked the first two acts, if I do say so as shouldn't. It was at the half-hour mark that I got my first kick on the chin. It was a two-minute skit for the advertising plug.

A tall and elegant couple were seen standing on marble steps in an elaborate theater lobby. Says she to he:

"And how do you like the play, Mr. Robinson?"

Says he to she: "It stinks."

Just like that. Like any radio-television listener, I was used to paying little, if any, attention to a plug. That certainly snapped me up in my chair. After all, it was my play, even if it was "The Seashell." They couldn't do that to me.

*******

I've been enjoying looking for short stories to read online as I try to spend less money on books, and I always have a cup of coffee in hand:

as I sit with my patio view, raining here:

and do my googling.

Please join me as I visit the folks who participate in the T Stands for Tuesday blogger gathering hosted by Bleubeard and Elizabeth.

Birthday 42

What a delightful birthday present for my recent special day!