SquallyShowers
@squallyshowers.bsky.social
Orphan, castaway, renegade from orthodox Christianity and the West, isolato. Formerly with VH1.com, Stop Smiling, Northshire Bookstore and Politics and Prose.
Orson Welles 's Moby Dick--Rehearsed, with Patrick McGoohan and a young Kenneth Williams!
August 3, 2025 at 1:04 AM
Orson Welles 's Moby Dick--Rehearsed, with Patrick McGoohan and a young Kenneth Williams!
William Friedkin went to visit Bateson after his arrest in 1977. He claims the conversation he had with the convict inspired him to make Cruising.
May 29, 2025 at 10:44 AM
William Friedkin went to visit Bateson after his arrest in 1977. He claims the conversation he had with the convict inspired him to make Cruising.
Hank Aaron with John Ford
May 21, 2025 at 8:50 PM
Hank Aaron with John Ford
I also love how Hitchcock introduces his heroine. She's an archetypal Hitchcock blonde whose sweet shell hides a mixed-up center. Hedren's face first emerges from a curtain of wet blonde hair ...
April 9, 2025 at 7:30 PM
I also love how Hitchcock introduces his heroine. She's an archetypal Hitchcock blonde whose sweet shell hides a mixed-up center. Hedren's face first emerges from a curtain of wet blonde hair ...
Hitchcock swamps the movie in motifs and symbols: suggestive purses, phallic keys, pistols, pokers, a tree falling through a window ... If you took a drink every time a scene opened on a closed door, you wouldn't make it through the movie.
April 9, 2025 at 7:30 PM
Hitchcock swamps the movie in motifs and symbols: suggestive purses, phallic keys, pistols, pokers, a tree falling through a window ... If you took a drink every time a scene opened on a closed door, you wouldn't make it through the movie.
Marnie (1964). Hitchcock's chamber drama gives us two psychos for the price of one--Hedren's frigid klepto and Connery's blackmailing "interested spectator." Hedren is good; the big what if is Grace Kelly's absence. Audiences shrugged even as the rape scene made them complicit in the crime.
April 9, 2025 at 7:30 PM
Marnie (1964). Hitchcock's chamber drama gives us two psychos for the price of one--Hedren's frigid klepto and Connery's blackmailing "interested spectator." Hedren is good; the big what if is Grace Kelly's absence. Audiences shrugged even as the rape scene made them complicit in the crime.
Afterglow (1997). Alan Rudolph flirts with disaster in this askew design for living, with Nolte, Christie, Boyle and Miller pairing off (or not). Its symmetries only become apparent at the last minute. Hard to recall the last time anybody onscreen was as deliriously horny as Lara Flynn Boyle here.
March 27, 2025 at 12:08 PM
Afterglow (1997). Alan Rudolph flirts with disaster in this askew design for living, with Nolte, Christie, Boyle and Miller pairing off (or not). Its symmetries only become apparent at the last minute. Hard to recall the last time anybody onscreen was as deliriously horny as Lara Flynn Boyle here.
I'll Do Anything (Musical Cut) (1994). The songs by Prince, Carole King and Sinead O'Connor far outshine the James L. Brooks dramedy, which mixes gummy movie biz satire (Albert Brooks toys with doing Joel Silver, then backs off) with actors struggling to breathe life into the overworked dialogue.
March 25, 2025 at 12:05 PM
I'll Do Anything (Musical Cut) (1994). The songs by Prince, Carole King and Sinead O'Connor far outshine the James L. Brooks dramedy, which mixes gummy movie biz satire (Albert Brooks toys with doing Joel Silver, then backs off) with actors struggling to breathe life into the overworked dialogue.
America America (1963). Personal cinema comes to Hollywood, with Elia Kazan's tale of how his uncle fled 1890s Turkey. The atmosphere is as keen as Kazan's disregard for women, loathing of socialist moochers (Lou Jacobi) and admiration for his ancestor's raw "hamal" cunning.
February 2, 2025 at 12:22 PM
America America (1963). Personal cinema comes to Hollywood, with Elia Kazan's tale of how his uncle fled 1890s Turkey. The atmosphere is as keen as Kazan's disregard for women, loathing of socialist moochers (Lou Jacobi) and admiration for his ancestor's raw "hamal" cunning.
The Pink Panther (1963). Audiences fell for Inspector Clouseau but the secret sauce here is French actress Capucine, playing Ginger Rogers opposite Sellers's Astaire. Unlike Astaire, he never makes it look easy. In the sublime last reel of madness, he doesn't have to.
February 2, 2025 at 12:16 PM
The Pink Panther (1963). Audiences fell for Inspector Clouseau but the secret sauce here is French actress Capucine, playing Ginger Rogers opposite Sellers's Astaire. Unlike Astaire, he never makes it look easy. In the sublime last reel of madness, he doesn't have to.
Le Mepris (1963). Godard's most seductive film--Bardot is as resplendent as Venus rising from the waves. Here she comes apart with hack Michel Piccoli as a film production of The Odyssey goes adrift. A meta- collage of quotation that never drowns the emotional brutality going on.
February 2, 2025 at 12:09 PM
Le Mepris (1963). Godard's most seductive film--Bardot is as resplendent as Venus rising from the waves. Here she comes apart with hack Michel Piccoli as a film production of The Odyssey goes adrift. A meta- collage of quotation that never drowns the emotional brutality going on.
Hallelujah the Hills (1963). Borderline obnoxious lark filmed in the snowy wilds of S. Londonderry, VT. Mekas is looking for a prelapsarian grammar of film and almost finds it, as Peter Beard et al toboggan, jump in frozen rivers and goof off with a anything-goes air that anticipates Pynchon.
February 2, 2025 at 12:04 PM
Hallelujah the Hills (1963). Borderline obnoxious lark filmed in the snowy wilds of S. Londonderry, VT. Mekas is looking for a prelapsarian grammar of film and almost finds it, as Peter Beard et al toboggan, jump in frozen rivers and goof off with a anything-goes air that anticipates Pynchon.
Lord of the Flies (1963). With nods to both documentaries and the underground film-making, Peter Brook took 30 children to Puerto Rico to adapt Golding's allegory. Hacked from 60 hours of footage, Flies is rough and genuinely terrifying in its relentless march from "civilization" to fascism.
December 17, 2024 at 2:20 PM
Lord of the Flies (1963). With nods to both documentaries and the underground film-making, Peter Brook took 30 children to Puerto Rico to adapt Golding's allegory. Hacked from 60 hours of footage, Flies is rough and genuinely terrifying in its relentless march from "civilization" to fascism.
McCabe and Mrs. Miller (1971). Hot off M*A*S*H, Altman flees to the Pacific Northwest to build his own kind of cinema. The consistent reinvention of how cameras, editing and sound should work is as radical as Breathless, while Beatty's gambler endures the life and death of all such revolutionaries.
December 17, 2024 at 2:17 PM
McCabe and Mrs. Miller (1971). Hot off M*A*S*H, Altman flees to the Pacific Northwest to build his own kind of cinema. The consistent reinvention of how cameras, editing and sound should work is as radical as Breathless, while Beatty's gambler endures the life and death of all such revolutionaries.
Le Joli Mai (1963). Chris Marker and Pierre Lhomme take the temperature of Paris as peace with Algeria is made. The method is cinema verite but the results are Paris as imaginary city ("the loveliest set in the world") whose citizens' anxieties still resonate today.
December 17, 2024 at 2:11 PM
Le Joli Mai (1963). Chris Marker and Pierre Lhomme take the temperature of Paris as peace with Algeria is made. The method is cinema verite but the results are Paris as imaginary city ("the loveliest set in the world") whose citizens' anxieties still resonate today.
Flow (2024). Had the goosebumps from the opening frame and this Latvian-French animation didn't let up until the wheel of time completed its revolution. An adventure in compassion at the end of the world, as wondrous and terrifying as its fragile sylvan setting.
December 12, 2024 at 12:02 PM
Flow (2024). Had the goosebumps from the opening frame and this Latvian-French animation didn't let up until the wheel of time completed its revolution. An adventure in compassion at the end of the world, as wondrous and terrifying as its fragile sylvan setting.
It Happened at the World's Fair (1963). It's alarming that Norman Taurog in his dotage helming an Elvis-fronted commercial for Seattle cares more about camera placement and pace than Ridley Scott does in Gladiator 2.
December 12, 2024 at 11:58 AM
It Happened at the World's Fair (1963). It's alarming that Norman Taurog in his dotage helming an Elvis-fronted commercial for Seattle cares more about camera placement and pace than Ridley Scott does in Gladiator 2.
Unforgiven (1992). The revisionist Western for those who have never seen a revisionist Western, with a repetitive screenplay and Eastwood juggling classical and modern modes. Maybe not so much about the end of a genre, as the '92 vibe shift from Reagan to "Little Bill" Clinton.
December 12, 2024 at 11:54 AM
Unforgiven (1992). The revisionist Western for those who have never seen a revisionist Western, with a repetitive screenplay and Eastwood juggling classical and modern modes. Maybe not so much about the end of a genre, as the '92 vibe shift from Reagan to "Little Bill" Clinton.
La Punition (1963). Ethnographer Jean Rouch draws on his Chronique d'un été stock company for "three bad encounters" between teen Nadine and others goofing off during a Parisian afternoon. Crisp, improvisatory, inconclusive, with Nadine enduring an inordinate amount of mansplaining.
December 10, 2024 at 3:00 PM
La Punition (1963). Ethnographer Jean Rouch draws on his Chronique d'un été stock company for "three bad encounters" between teen Nadine and others goofing off during a Parisian afternoon. Crisp, improvisatory, inconclusive, with Nadine enduring an inordinate amount of mansplaining.
The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas (1982). A candidate for "how did this get made?" if ever there was one, but there's chemistry between Burt 'n' Dolly even if they hated each other IRL. Charles Durning's rendition of "The Sidestep" isn't exactly a one-scene wonder--he was Oscar nomm'd anyway.
December 10, 2024 at 2:53 PM
The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas (1982). A candidate for "how did this get made?" if ever there was one, but there's chemistry between Burt 'n' Dolly even if they hated each other IRL. Charles Durning's rendition of "The Sidestep" isn't exactly a one-scene wonder--he was Oscar nomm'd anyway.
L'immortelle (1963). Robbe-Grillet's debut feature is as maddening as one would expect as signified becomes unmoored from signifier, but the overall effect of alienation in Istanbul is impressive. A missing link between the Burroughs of the 1950s and the Ballard of the 1970s.
December 10, 2024 at 2:47 PM
L'immortelle (1963). Robbe-Grillet's debut feature is as maddening as one would expect as signified becomes unmoored from signifier, but the overall effect of alienation in Istanbul is impressive. A missing link between the Burroughs of the 1950s and the Ballard of the 1970s.
A Child is Waiting (1963). Cassavetes disowned his (excellent) film about a school for the mentally disabled, but there's signposts for the future here: the use of nonprofessionals, the sly casting of troubled Garland, the autobiographical casting of Rowlands, and grace via a climactic performance.
December 2, 2024 at 4:33 PM
A Child is Waiting (1963). Cassavetes disowned his (excellent) film about a school for the mentally disabled, but there's signposts for the future here: the use of nonprofessionals, the sly casting of troubled Garland, the autobiographical casting of Rowlands, and grace via a climactic performance.