It’s pretty straightforward, in the end: you pitch me a noir movie featuring Peter Lorre and Sidney Greenstreet, I will drop everything else and watch the hell out of it, and then probably do a post about it.
Which is exactly what happened last night, when I spent one hour and a half with a bowl of dark chocolate ice cream and Jean Negulesco’s 1946 flick, Three Strangers.
And what a bizarre movie it was!
Today it was an anomalous day – I slept late, I went to the supermarket at lunchtime, and when I got back I made myself some sandwiches and I re-watched for the umpteenth time Charade, the 1963 “mock Hitchcock” movie directed by Stanley Donen and starring Cary Grant and Audrey Hepburn.
Set in Paris and featuring a great support cast (including Walther Matthau, James Coburn and George Kennedy), the film is an unusual mix of crime thriller, screwball comedy and romance, and it should not work, but it does.
Continue readingToday I took the afternoon off – the heat was insufferable, so I got me a big cup of ice cream and the first two Monstress collections (thank you, mysterious fan who had them delivered) and called it a day off.
And I must say I am absolutely impressed by both the quality of the artwork and the depth and fun of the story. Beautiful.
No better way to try and get some of my energies back.
The ice cream helped, too.
Here’s a short but excellent video that’s connected with my general interests and, possibly, with yours too.
Enjoy!
Perceptions are weird.
Various clues seem to point to the fact that, in the local business, I am considered a humorless, almost Vulcan-style, reptilian-like emotionless sort of writer. Or something like that.
Which is, as I said, weird.
Last night I was discussing a forthcoming project and I was told repeatedly
Yes, but it will need some pathos. You need to put some in.
Considering we were discussing a noirish, hard-boiled story, it is obvious that a certain amount of emotional involvement for the reader will have to be in but, as I tried to explain, it’s not like, I sit at the PC and go
Now I’ll do two heavily pathos-laden pages!
Pathos, the appeal to the reader’s emotions, is something that must emerge from the story, given the genre, the style, the themes.
And what the heck, I’m a writer, so that’s what I do.
But again, one year ago, an editor commissioned me a story and then repeatedly reminded me to
Be ironic! The story’s got to have irony!
Which was a given, considering the theme of the project. But there you have it – apparently I am perceived as some sort of word-churning machine, with no emotion, with only word-counts.
But then, just yesterday, an Italian Youtuber did a review of that anthology, and she singled out my story to say “it’s very atmospheric”.
And she did not complain for any lack of irony.
So there.
After all, it’s writing – the story will feature the required emotions and ideas, or simply I will not be able to write it.
As the man said, that’s what I do.
And yes, that’s a quote from Supertramp’s Breakfast in America – but I’m not going to talk about that (great record, incidentally, part of my growing up etc.).
It’s lunchtime, not breakfast time, and as I’m skipping lunch, I’ve caught a small bit of silly fluff on the socials that made me feel like writing a letter to the director.
As we old people do.
A local influencer posted on Facebook the reason he dislikes ebooks
how do I get an autograph from the author? Do I ask the guy to scrawl his name with a sharpie on my e-reader?
Now that’s a problem, ain’t it?
Continue readingIt all started because, while we were recording a podcast about the 1992 TV movie Ghostwatch, with my friend Lucy we started rambling – as we do – and ended up talking about dame Maggie Smith (yes, we tend to ramble far and wide). I mentioned how it always breaks my heart that most viewers know Smith as the old lady in the Harry Potter movies and in Downton Abbey.
I’ve always had a desperate crush for Maggie Smith, and after that chat, I decided to go back and re-watch the movies in which I first found out about this beautiful, extraordinarily talented actress. Travels with my aunt, of course, and Murder by death, the two Peter Ustinov Poirot movies, The Honey Pot, and also a small strange quirky thing called Hot Millions, that I had last seen in the mid ’90s, on the telly, on a long autumn afternoon, and I re-watched last night.
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Karavansara 