The Silver Screen Oasis

JackFavell wrote:You are on the road to ruin my boy. Pretty soon you'll be smoking and covering your breath with sen-sen.

oh, we got Trouble (trouble, trouble,), Right here in River City (trouble, trouble,)and it starts with T and that rhymes with P and that stands for POOL! (trouble, trouble,)

I'm sure this is true of a lot of places, but the town I live in is nicknamed River City. It seems half the towns in Kentucky are on the Ohio!

Red, that's because everyone wants to get to God's country, birthplace of Steve McQueen, James Dean & ChiO, aka Hoosierland.

Finished the Ruth Chatterton Bio by Scott O'Brien. A page-turner and a very enlightening read. I liked the woman. Recommended.

Currently I'm still reading Spencer Tracy's Bio and began last week "The Haunted Screen - Ghosts and Literature and Film" by Lee Kovacs. From its back cover: "This book traces the evolution of the cinematic-literary ghosts from classic Gothic to the psychological, sociological and political ideologies of today. Analyses of the literary and film versions of classic ghost stories -Wuthering Heights, The Ghost and Mrs. Muir, Portrait of Jennie, Letter from an Unknown Woman, The Uninvited, Liliom and Our Town are included- as well as interpretations of other modern films such as Ghost and Truly, Madly, Deeply." Most of the films included, save the ones released in the 1990s, are absolute faves of mine. Scholarly and well written.

During the hiatus, I read:

Sirk on Sirk (Jon Halliday) - Out-of-print and quite expensive on Amazon, I found a copy in a used-book store and so glad I did. The best of the "Director's name" on "Director's name" books that I've read. Luckily, this copy is the later edition because it includes portions of the interviews excluded from the first - he had asked that comments about his peers be excluded until either he or they had died because he didn't want to negatively impact their securing of future work. He was forthright and thoughtful about movies in general and his films specifically. He also made a comment that I'm going to try to research later this year: that the German emigres' in general didn't get work in Hollywood until after Pearl Harbor and the U.S. entry into WWII. My favorite statement: The studio loved the title All That Heaven Allows. They thought it meant you could have everything you wanted. I meant it exactly the other way round. As far as I'm concerned, heaven is stingy.

Pauline Kael: A Life in the Dark (Brian Kellow) - An interesting, detailed and seemingly evenhanded biography. Her sense that the role of the critic is not merely to report on film or to act as a filmgoer's guide, but to try to influence Hollywood to make better films, comes through in her apparently taking it personally when a director she admired made a movie she didn't like. Her dirty little secret is also apparent: deep down inside, she was really an auteurist.

In a Lonely Place (Dorothy B. Hughes) - The first of her books that I've read (Ride the Pink Horse is in queue). Amazing how little Nicholas Ray took from the book, but still kept its sense of dread and doom.

Dorothy B. Hughes wrote RIDE THE PINK HORSE? Cool! That's a movie that deserves to better known. Seriously under appreciated.

I finally got the Paul Henreid's book that Monika first mentioned earlier and I just started reading the first 3-4 chapters and I just been enjoying it ever since. My Public Library just acquired 5 copies of this book and I just happen to pick one up when I went to the Library the other day.

It's a delightful book, very informative, and has lots of good stuff in there. I should be done in a week and I just having a ball reading it.

I would highly recommend this book and its fast reading and fun!

I agree, RH. I put down Mr. Heinreid's autobio when the new book on AM came out. But now that I'm done with it, I'll be picking up his book again. Still have about half left to read -- I love it!

I'm reading some pretty good thrillers lately. But this is what I hate. "The software was XPXPSSQ. The security system was RPDW3. In order to hack into it, you'd need 37,000 gigabytes plus 190,000 megabytes." That's not storytelling! It's taking up space. Turning a 200 page story into a 300 page book. Still, the ones that keep this all too prominent tendency to a minimum are entertaining. I can't complain too much.

I have been reading a lot of Dashiell Hammett lately, mostly his stories featuring the Continental Op character. I find this character really unique for all the hard-boiled detectives of that time and now. It's always refreshing to have a character who is older, a bit on the fat side, and who bungles things sometimes!

The only bad thing about reading stories from authors in the 1920's is the fact that there will never be more. I dread the day when I finish my last Continental Op story.

I think the OP stories are the author's best work. I love that you never actually know his name!

Fernando, thanks for mentioning "The Haunted Screen - Ghosts and Literature and Film" by Lee Kovacs. It sounds like one I'd like to get my hands on.

ChiO - that Sirk quote about ALL THAT HEAVEN ALLOWS is wonderful.

And speaking of wonderful, I'm reading Anne Bronte's The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, which so far is more engaging and mysterious than any other Bronte novel that I've read. A very, very good read, it's a page turner. I can't put it down.

My dearest WEN,

You are very welcome. I have just finished reading it -well not completely, I did not read the two essays on the two contemporary films analysed: "Ghost" and "Truly, Madly, Deeply", because I did not see them and I'm not interested. This book can be really enjoyed if you have seen the movies that are profiled, because it analyses its plots in deep. The only one of the Classic Films included that I haven't seen and I want to see soon is Lang's "Liliom" (1933), but since I have seen Borzage's version, reading the analysis was not real giveaway of the plot.

As for Brönte's book, I saw the BBC adaptation and I think it's one of the best of its kind that I have ever seen. The story and its mise-en-scene has a kind of saudade and a certain unexplainable quality that made it irresistible to me.

Yes, it is definitely a saudade feeling in the book... I will definitely watch that series as soon as I am done reading the excellent novel. And then I will see if I can get a copy of that Haunted Screen movie book. I think you and I are closest as far as these films are concerned, they are my favorite sub-genre of classic film.

I can't wait for you to see Lang's Liliom, to hear what you have to say. It's very very different from the Borzage version.