Patrick Murtha
@patrickmurtha.bsky.social
Reading in retirement. Animal lover (numerous dogs / cats). Basically a pre-1990 guy, with all that implies. On some platforms as Mark R. Harris. Blog: https://areadingretirement.wordpress.com/ Patreon for my animals: patreon.com/patrickmurtha
“[Simon Raven] is known for his louche lifestyle as much as for his literary output.“ 😏 The bisexual Raven was far more uninhibited than his senior roman-fleuvists Anthony Powell and C.P. Snow, who are Victorian aunts by comparison. He should have more of a readership.
I always liked Don Murray (BOTD 1929-2024) . He overacted opposite Marilyn Monroe in Bus Stop, and somehow got an Oscar nomination for doing so; but he learned better fast, and was superb as the closeted gay Senator in Otto Preminger’s Advise & Consent.
Eddie Muller dissed Guilty Bystander in his most recent Ask Eddie video, but I have to disagree. It is definitely scuzzy, but among scuzz-noirs (such as Who Killed Teddy Bear?, which Eddie just showed on Noir Alley), it ranks high. I mean, you can practically smell the trash. [more]
A Life at Stake is not a great film noir by any means, but still, well worth seeing (7/10). Fun to see Angela Lansbury introduced in a swimsuit, and plenty of shirtless Keith Andes to balance that scale! [more]
@maorthofer.bsky.social The South Korean and Turkish peoples have long been very close. Turks fought in the Korean war and it is remembered. “Turks are our brothers,” a Korean student told me. I had a Turkish student who confirmed. www.koreajoongangdaily.com/lifestyle/tu...
Turkish readers write history as K-literature translation tops best sellers in 2025
Sales in Turkey of Hwang Bo-reum's 2022 novel “Welcome to the Hyunam-dong Bookshop' topped LTI Korea's list of translated works as Korean works fly off the shelves in the country.
koreajoongangdaily.com
The more you look at this crap, the more mind-boggling it becomes. One for the ages, really.
Adam@ams-ksu.bsky.social · 6d agoThey aren't simply mislabeled, none of the "countries" shown match any national borders.
Absolutely appalling and (alas) all too characteristic.
M.A.Orthofer@maorthofer.bsky.social · 6d agoAmazing story/incident that perfectly sums up: this administration's ignorance, ineptness, & laziness; Americans' general lack of awareness/understanding of the world at large (& specifically geography & Africa); and ... the dangers of relying on (hell: using) AI. www.reuters.com/world/africa...
Something I learned from shows like Flipper and Skippy the Bush Kangaroo when I was growing up in the Sixties was that animals are persons, with their own dignity, intelligence, and feelings. This has remained a key principle for me.
Lisa Kudrow was, by several orders of magnitude, the most talented member of the Friends cast.
Citizen Screen@citizenscreen.bsky.social · 6d agoA few celebrating birthdays today: Lisa Kudrow - Christopher Nolan - Laurence Fishburne - Richard Linklater
He knew. It is all there in Night Flight. Intrepid aviators did not live long.
Nathan Francis@nathanfrancis79.bsky.social · 6d ago"It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; What is essential is invisible to the eye." ✒️ #AntoineDeSaintExupéry, French author (The Little Prince), poet and pioneering aviator, #DOTD during a reconnaissance mission flight, 31 July 1944, aged 44. #Poetry #Literature #Aviation
Gore knew where the bodies were buried, and for that alone would have have been valuable
Nathan Francis@nathanfrancis79.bsky.social · 6d ago"Style is knowing who you are, what you want to say, and not giving a damn." ✒ #GoreVidal, American novelist, screenwriter, and critic, #DOTD 31 July 2012. #Literature #Filmmaking
First Sean Duffy’s family road trip thing, now this, as if to underline that we’re in a Reality TV Presidency. Next up: Lifestyles of the Rich and Semi-Famous with Scott Bessent. 🙄
Brandy Zadrozny@brandyzadrozny.bsky.social · 6d agoSomeone posted this in slack and I actually thought it was The Onion. www.usatoday.com/story/news/p...
And the vast majority of Wuthering Heights adaptations leave out the book’s second half, the repetition of tragedy in the next generation, and thus a large part of the POINT.
Beck Jones@beckjoneshere.bsky.social · 6d agoThe cinematic adaptations of Emily Bronte's Wuthering Heights see only the doomed romance, but it's so much more: A dark story of generational loss written by a young woman #botd, who understood the world beyond her sheltered life and died a year after publication. #booksky #writers #moviesky
Those credits make my head explode 😳
James Kenney@jfkenney.bsky.social · 6d agoObscure TV of the day: Based on his song, Barry Manilow stars in 1985's melodrama musical COPACABANA! Written by James Lipton (!) (INSIDE ACTORS STUDIO). W/ the great Annette O'Toole, Joseph Bologna, Estelle Getty. From Waris Hussein, director of QUACKSER FORTUNE! ok.ru/video/106909...
Although no one could be douchier than Joe himself… Have you ever noticed that all Morning Joe panelists are under strict instructions never to talk over The Man, no matter how flatulent and repetitive he gets?
Bill Geerhart@conelrad6401240.bsky.social · 6d agoMORNING JOE douche Donny Deutsch appeared on THE MATCH GAME and had some weird energy with panelist Debralee Scott (R.I.P.). www.youtube.com/watch?v=yq6Q...
Bogdanovich, gifted as all get-out, was also unquestionably an arrogant SOB; a lot of people wanted to see him take a fall. He was essentially playing himself (very well, too) in The Other Side of the Wind.
MidCenturyCinema@midcenturycinema.bsky.social · 6d agoBOTD Peter Bogdanovich!! MCCT5: 5)Paper Moon 4)Targets 3)St Jack 2)Cats Meow 1)Picture Show More: PB talking Hitch w/ @realgdt.bsky.social: podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/e... @glennkenny.bsky.social: decider.com/2022/01/06/p... @tnyfrontrow.bsky.social: www.newyorker.com/culture/post...
I hear that the John Woods translation is much better…but I would be excited to read even the Lowe-Porter because, hey, I am down with ponderous. 😏
Gerald Howard@ghoward1950.bsky.social · 6d agoOkay, I gave up after fifteen pages. Ponderous beyond belief, without a single trace of Mann's godlike irony. It reads like one of those novels by Gustave Aschenbach alluded to in DEATH IN VENICE that no one has ever imagined reading. On to LOTTE IN WEIMAR.
Bergman’s films were more his children than his actual children, whose names it is said he sometimes forgot. He had nine that we know of - I’ll bet there were more - so I can believe it.
Citizen Screen@citizenscreen.bsky.social · 6d agoIngmar Bergman (July 14, 1918 – July 30, 2007) 🎥
Since reading the novel is perforce slower than seeing the film, you have time to notice and contemplate what utter idiots these four men are. It makes for a very different experience.
MidCenturyCinema@midcenturycinema.bsky.social · 6d ago7/30/72: John Boorman's Deliverance [DP Vilmos Zsigmond] w/Burt Reynolds, Jon Voight, Ned Beatty More: @aadowd.bsky.social: www.theguardian.com/film/2022/ju... @kphipps3000.bsky.social: www.avclub.com/deliverance-... @kimmorgan.bsky.social: thenewbev.com/blog/2019/02...
“more freedom and time” I generally find podcasts (and things like BookTube videos) excruciating because they take endless amounts of time to gurgitate stuff that has not been completely thought out, not whittled down to crisp coherence. Give me a blog post or indeed a tweet over that. [more]
Neglected Books@neglectedbooks.com · 6d ago“A ‘love for books’ does not have to mean a choice between weird parasociality and excruciating dryness.” So true. Which is why I choose both. From www.currentaffairs.o...
By far my favorite Fellini film. Those shots of the beds in the final seconds, OMG, genius.
@davidc1935.bsky.social · 6d ago"The director, Federico Fellini, observes the farce of their lives without condescension; his tone is satirical, yet warm and accepting―the distinctive Fellini tone in his first fully confident piece of direction." Critic Pauline Kael on "I Vitelloni" (1953).
Peter Boganovich’s 1971 book on Allan Dwan, including a lengthy interview with the director, is a gem, especially illuminating on the silent film era, although I do suspect that some of Dwan’s anecdotes got a little fictionalized over the years.
Those realities make more of an appearance in C.P. Snow’s Strangers and Brothers series, and way more, with actual bodily fluids!, in Simon Raven’s sorely neglected Alms for Oblivion series. I do recommend all three series; I have scarcely met a roman fleuve I didn’t like. 🙂
Neglected Books@neglectedbooks.com · 6d agoI enjoyed leading the Dance to the Music of Time reading group last year, but it's clear that Anthony Powell's works most appeals to folks as comfort reading. Nothing against comfort reading, but the brutalities of the real world are infrequent intruders in A Dance.
Reading Anthony Powell underscores my sense of how tight the London social scene was. Everyone knew everyone else. One needed a degree in genealogy in order to converse at those parties. I get dizzy with the “my second cousin’s first husband who went to my school but in a different year” stuff. 😏
I love Powell, but that is a fair observation.
Rob Tyers@thexclaim6.bsky.social · 6d agoJG Ballard on Graham Greene “His fiction is generated by his experience of the world outside England. He couldn't be further apart from someone like Kingsley Amis or Anthony Powell, whose fiction is entirely generated by the closed world not just of England but of a very small part of” #booksky
Feeling melodramatic that day? On this standard, most writers would be dead by 30. 😳
Ray E. Boomhower@rboomhower.bsky.social · 6d ago“I have reached the point where, if the integrity of my manuscript is violated, I have no wish to go on living. It sounds vainglorious, I know, but I am ready to die for this book.” William Manchester to his agent Don Congdon regarding his manuscript for his book "The Death of a President"
