Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

It’s time for the GOP to dust off that post-2012 autopsy, completely ignore it, and light the party on fire again.

Let us savor the impending downfall of lawless scoundrels who richly deserve the trouble barreling their way.

Red lights blinking on democracy’s dashboard

Second rate reporter says what?

You can’t love your country only when you win.

I like you, you’re my kind of trouble.

Too often we hand the biggest microphones to the cynics and the critics who delight in declaring failure.

The cruelty is the point; the law be damned.

Let me eat cake. The rest of you could stand to lose some weight, frankly.

Good lord, these people are nuts.

It’s always darkest before the other shoe drops.

Proof that we need a blogger ethics panel.

I really should read my own blog.

You cannot shame the shameless.

Reality always lies in wait for … Democrats.

A thin legal pretext to veneer over their personal religious and political desires

Only Democrats have agency, apparently.

Not all heroes wear capes.

When someone says they “love freedom”, rest assured they don’t mean yours.

Teach a man to fish, and he’ll sit in a boat all day drinking beer.

If you are still in the GOP, you are an extremist.

Tick tock motherfuckers!

I see no possible difficulties whatsoever with this fool-proof plan.

Conservatism: there are some people the law protects but does not bind and others who the law binds but does not protect.

You are here: Home / Balloon Juice / Medium Cool with BGinCHI – Age!

Medium Cool with BGinCHI – Age!

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In case you’re new to Medium Cool, BGinCHI is here once a week to offer a thread on culture, mainly film & books, with some TV thrown in.  We’re here at 7 pm on Sunday nights.

As this Medium Cool is a few days after my birthday, it has me thinking of age (and, OK, mortality).

I’m reminded of William Maxwell, the great editor and novelist, who lived to be 91 (see this little essay of his: https://www.nytimes.com/1997/03/09/magazine/nearing-90.html), and who spoke so eloquently about aging and memory. He claimed that at his advanced age, he felt memories to be more real than reality.

Let’s talk about aging in literature and film/TV.

Reader Interactions

155Comments

  1. 1.

    BGinCHI

    This has me wondering whether Joe Haldeman’s The Forever War holds up.

    Also, enjoyed Scalzi’s Old Man’s War. Been a while since I read that too.

  4. 4.

    HinTN

    Ok, ageing… Endeavor is ageing in interesting ways as he grows into the Inspector Morse he will become, I look forward to the character development (ageing) of Jim Chee in Dark Winds and I’m enjoying my own observation of myself ageing. Does that count?

  5. 5.

    dmsilev

    The Father, either the original theatrical version or the film adaptation, is a pretty bracing look at that subject.

  12. 12.

    dmsilev

    @BGinCHI: I saw the live version (Alfred Molina in the title role) just before the pandemic shut everything down. Not exactly an uplifting view of the aging process, that’s for sure.

  13. 13.

    HinTN

    Ok, bizarre jump wrt ageing but Lyle Lovett’s catalog is an interesting take on “growing up”…

  14. 14.

    RSA

    It’s been a while since I’ve re-read Joyce’s short story, “The Dead,” but I remember first reading these not-very-important lines when I was a teenager:

    In fact right behind her Gabriel could be seen piloting Freddy Malins across the landing. The latter, a young man of about forty, was of Gabriel’s size and build, with very round shoulders…

    Earlier Gabriel was described this way:

    He was a stout, tallish young man.

    What? Forty is young? Now that I’m far past that age, I think, “Yeah, forty is young.

    ETA: Sorry, this isn’t really in the spirit of the blog post, in that it’s not really about aging.  Oh, well.  I’ll see if I can remember something more on topic.

  17. 17.

    SiubhanDuinne

    I know it’s kind of kitschy (haven’t seen it in decades, and don’t know how well it’s stood the test of time), but when On Golden Pond was released in — what? early ‘80s? — I remember being very moved by Henry Fonda’s portrayal of an old man fighting against, then somewhat accepting of, the vicissitudes of advanced years. In a way, his character kind of paralleled my own father’s last journey, so it was personal.

  20. 20.

    Ajabu

    There was a Stephen King story called THE GOLDEN YEARS that was adapted for a television series and apparently canceled mid story that fascinated me.
    An elderly man working as a janitor in some kind of nuclear facility is subjected to a chemical explosion that leaves him getting younger and younger. His wife remains elderly. He goes on the run from the government who want the secret (of course) I wish I could’ve seen the Denouement.

  21. 21.

    UncleEbeneezer

    @SiubhanDuinne: I look forward to it.  I know little about architecture beyond what looks cool to me and what doesn’t, so I’d be interested in reading the thoughts of people more knowledgable.  A friend of mine is an architect and he once took me on a walking tour of Downtown LA, and it was pretty fascinating.  I mostly remember him showing me the Biltmore (of course), the Bradbury Building, the Gas Company building, Disney Concert Hall and the DWP building.  Lots of neat stuff.  I’ve already told him that expect another tour when we eventually meet up in NYC (we are hopefully moving to Hudson Valley in October).

  23. 23.

    Yutsano

    Batteries Not Included. Theoretically a science fiction story, but actually a story about a man coping with his wife’s dementia. It helps the movie couple was in fact a husband and wife team in real life.

  24. 24.

    HinTN

    @Alison Rose :

    I feel like a Spring chicken

    Once, in an “all hands” meeting about discrimination, I was sitting in the back row and raised my hand. Upon being recognized I asked if it would would be ageism to self refer as a geezer. My boss, a direct report and sitting in the front row, turned around and said directly to me, “You are a geezer.” That got a laugh.

  25. 25.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @UncleEbeneezer:

    Heh, well, I’m not at all sure I’m any more knowledgeable than you or anyone else! If it’s to happen, I hope BGinCHI or WaterGirl or someone will give Suzanne, an Actual Architect, a heads-up. Her insights would be invaluable.

    Do we have any other architects amongst the Jackaltariat?

  29. 29.

    lowtechcyclist

    It’s been decades since I watched Atlantic City, but I enjoyed Burt Lancaster’s and Kate Reid’s portrayals of aging characters.

  33. 33.

    Ceci n est pas mon nym

    How about Same Time, Next Year? Alan Alda and Ellen Burstyn play a couple having an affair once a year over decades, which provides an excuse to watch them age and change fashions, attitudes, and relationships with their offscreen spouses over the course of those decades.

  34. 34.

    Sure Lurkalot

    Iris, biographical movie about the relationship between writer Iris Murdoch and husband John Bayley, as they age and she suffers from Alzheimer’s. Wonderful performances, touching but a tough watch for sure. On the lighter side, Cocoon.

  35. 35.

    Almost Retired

    I always loved those kitschy movies from the 50s and 60s in which formerly glamorous actresses go over the top to appear as washed up hags.  Sunset Boulevard, What Ever Happened to Baby Jane, etc.

    topical subject for me because today is my birthday, but we’re delaying the celebration because I am in the office gearing up for a …..wait for it…..AGE discrimination trial!

    ETA. I should add that this is the first age discrimination trial I have ever had where my client is younger than me (sigh).  Entertainment industry, though, so “old” is relative.

  37. 37.

    Ceci n est pas mon nym

    Anybody seen a show called This is Us? We just found out about it as it is apparently winding up or already concluded (typical for us) and watched the pilot episode. In the pilot we meet a young couple giving birth to triplets (one dies at birth but they end up adopting a third baby born on the same day in the same hospital), and we also meet those triplets at the age of 37.

    As I understand it, the show then follows the intervening 37 years of the family’s lives, and the mom is played by the same actress at every age, up to her funeral.

  39. 39.

    marcopolo

    Seconding the UP series recommendation from NotMax.  I remember seeing 21 UP in the movie theater. And all the ones afterwards.  63 UP came out in June 2019.  So that ages me a little bit, lol.

    The other thing I remember of the top of my head is the Brimley line: the age Wilfred Brimely was in the movie Cocoon were he played one of the old farts.  He was 51, lol.  The singer Tiffany (anyone remember her?) just crossed the Brimley line.

  40. 40.

    Phylllis

    Nobody’s Fool, Jessica Tandy’s last movie. Paul Newman (still sexy as hell at 69 when the movie was made) is presented as the town bum, but when he goes to jail for a few days, turns out he was the one holding the place together. The final scene between him and Jessica is an acting masterclass.

  41. 41.

    Ceci n est pas mon nym

    Just thought of another. Lee Daniel’s The Butler, which follows the life of a White House butler (Forrest Whitaker, his wife played by Oprah Winfrey) from teenage years to old age. Excellent movie.

  42. 42.

    marcopolo

    @lowtechcyclist: Just remember Susan Sarandon and her rubbing lemons on her skin to get rid of fish stink in that movie.  Alas, her current incarnation has made it so much more difficult for me to enjoy her earlier stuff.  Another version of fish stink, I guess.

  43. 43.

    BGinCHI

    @RSA: “The Sisters” is probably a bit more on target, from that book, but you’re right that Joyce in the early writing is always thinking about the overlapping of generations. He’s doing history and trying to escape it, all at the same time.

  45. 45.

    BGinCHI

    @SiubhanDuinne: My close group of friends was just talking about the film at dinner, and we said the same thing.

    I think it was a bit ahead of its time in tackling the dementia issue. Yes?

  46. 46.

    BGinCHI

    @SiubhanDuinne: I have several friends who are architects, and one of the most enjoyable things is saying some provocative thing about a building or FLW (Saint Frank) just to wind them up.

    They can be a touchy bunch.

  48. 48.

    Narya

    @Phylllis: Jessica Tandy’s character is even more fun in the book; you get a lot of her internal monologue.

    my birthday is this week too!

  49. 49.

    oldgild

    An old timer hobbles into a bar supported by a cane.

    His color is ashen; his skin is paper thin; he has a wisp of gray hair; and, his eyeballs have a yellowish tinge.

    His false teeth rattle; he wheezes with each breath; his joints creak; and, his voice is raspy and thin.

    “Sonny, get me a shot of whiskey, a beer chaser and pack of Camel straights.”

    The bartender gets the order and says, ”Mr., you are by far the oldest man who has ever come into my bar, so the whiskey shot and beer chaser are on the house.  Do you mind sharing your secret as to how you have lived so long?”

    ”Well, Sonny, every day I drink a fifth of whiskey and a case of beer, smoke  4 packs of Camel straights and stay out late with wild women.”

    The bartender says, “Wow, that is amazing. Would you mind telling me just how old you are?”

  51. 51.

    HinTN

    @SiubhanDuinne: Now that’s both hard to imagine and amazing. Paid good money once to spend there nights over Christmas in the Penfield house near Cleveland. The fireplace was functional, which was a plus, but for long term living..

  55. 55.

    Ruckus

    Aging. Pffft.

    I know there are older folks on this here blog but in a couple of days I’ll be – 73 not so young years.

    There is a history of Alzheimers in my extended family, there is a history of some living with good faculties into their 90s. Granddad passed in his mid 40s but that was a time when medicine might be able to save you but a better chance was nope, not gunna happen. Given that I’ve been hit literally head on by the bumper of truck – I wasn’t in a vehicle at the time and walked away, I don’t think I’ve done too bad, just retired last year – that makes 6 decades of getting paid to do stuff. I’m looking forward to the next 27, kind of an extended vacation, I’d like to make 100, just to see if I can. But aging can get to be rather personal as bits and pieces tend to fall away or slow up operational speed, or are lost forever. The fun thing is that people that meet me think I’m at least 10 yrs younger. Never have acted my age……..

  60. 60.

    RSA

    @Phylllis: Nobody’s Fool, Jessica Tandy’s last movie.

    You’ve reminded me of Driving Miss Daisy.  Oscar controversy aside, Morgan Freeman and especially Jessica Tandy did a great job showing how age affects us.  Their scene together in the end at the nursing home touched me.

  66. 66.

    mrmoshpotato

    Does The Picture of Dorian Gray count? 1945 movie version – seeing as that’s the only one I’ve seen. :)

  68. 68.

    Mike in NC

    I never usually read the Sunday comics, but today I caught ‘Doonesbury’ and it was painfully close to reality in our society.

  70. 70.

    Uncle Cosmo

    @HinTN: ​Some years back I chauffeured a friend from Baltimore out to Fallingwater south of Pittsburgh as a day trip. On the way home we stopped for supper and ran into a fellow who said he’d done repair/replace work on the place. Supposedly when the original water heater went up, and he was tasked to replace it, he discovered that the doorway to the utility room was too narrow to remove the old unit or introduce the new one. Even since then I’ve referred to the “great architect” as Frank Lloyd Wrong.

    FTR some years later I toured the Villa-Muller in the western precincts of Prague and, impressed by the radically inventive and practical design, concluded that FLW couldn’t carry Adolf Loos’ pencil case. (YMMV)

  71. 71.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @HinTN:

    We had five fireplaces, but nary a fire the entire time our family owned the house. They sure were decorative, though!

  72. 72.

    kalakal

    Some that spring to mind

    Driving Miss Daisy

    The Sunshine Boys

    Tokyo Story

    My Favourite Year

    Up.    always makes my vision grow misty

  80. 80.

    Uncle Cosmo

    Just FTR I lost two longstanding friends last week to the effects of long debilitating illnesses. One was 70 and a mainstay of the swing-dancing set in town. The other was 73 – we met in line for freshman registration at Johns Hopkins in September 1967 and had been close until he moved to New Mexico for health reasons. Sic transit gloria mundi.

  81. 81.

    A woman from anywhere (formerly Mohagan)

    @SiubhanDuinne: I admire the way the houses look, but they weren’t really well designed for living in.  When I heard the “Falling Waters” house leaked, I was seriously put off by FLW.  Recently met a guy who grew up in a FLW subdivision in Michigan, and he says the building materials have finally caught up to the vision (like they can apply roofing on a flat roof house – where I grew up they were Eichlers – so they DON’T leak).  Also that because FLW didn’t consider the bathroom or kitchen (!) to be important, they are quite small.

  82. 82.

    Spanish Moss

    A couple of books come to mind:

    • The Last Days of Ptolemy Grey
    • Deacon King Kong

    Both books are about the last few months in the lives of some fascinating characters, and the impact they had on their families and communities. They are very different books, but both were moving, relatable, and sometimes funny.

  84. 84.

    Kristine

    @Ceci n est pas mon nym: 

    I’m 64. I’m getting all kinds of Medicare mailings as my period to sign up begins in less than a month.

    I ain’t old yet, dammit!

    I just turned 64 and I’ve received a couple of those. Still a ways to go before signing up, but damn.

  85. 85.

    NotMax

    OT.

    Watched a lesser noir movie from 1950 starring Robert Young and Betsy Drake the other day (“Second Woman”).

    In its ratings blurb are listed “sexual situations, foul language.”

    Somebody is pulling our collective leg with that description.

  86. 86.

    A woman from anywhere (formerly Mohagan)

    @Sure Lurkalot: Years ago my mother told me “you slow down after 80” (she lived to be 96).  At the time I (in my 50s) I thought that was hilarious, but as I get older (70), I think about what she said more.  And I also read Can We Talk About Something More Pleasant by Roz Chast, about her parent’s decline and death, and she points out that pretty much everyone starts to seriously go downhill after 90. So …

  89. 89.

    Sure Lurkalot

    @Ceci n est pas mon nym: I’ve got you by 3 years and I did find some truth in “my mother not feeling old until her 60th year” observation. Anecdotal, but I had few fitness regimen caused injuries until I turned 60. And just general aches and pains, nothing alarming, but not experienced much previously.

    I should probably share my mother was inactive to an extreme, smoked until she was 70 and died at 90. Go figure!

  91. 91.

    mrmoshpotato

    @SiubhanDuinne:

    We had five fireplaces, but nary a fire the entire time our family owned the house. They sure were decorative, though! 

    What sprawling mansion did you grow up in?

  96. 96.

    lowtechcyclist

    @marcopolo: 

    @lowtechcyclist: Just remember Susan Sarandon and her rubbing lemons on her skin to get rid of fish stink in that movie. Alas, her current incarnation has made it so much more difficult for me to enjoy her earlier stuff. Another version of fish stink, I guess.

    I deliberately omitted her name.

  97. 97.

    Brachiator

    @zhena gogolia: 

    Frank Lloyd Wright was a towering genius.

    I have read that he was 5 foot, eight, a not so towering genius.

    I love his Hollyhock House in Los Angeles. Simply beautiful.

  99. 99.

    Suzanne

    Funny you mention aging.

    Two thoughts: 1) I leaned into the coastal grandmother trend and I bought a cotton bucket hat. I got it because I am sun-conscious and I wanted something to cover my ears. My husband laughed at me when he saw it. SuzMom said I look like Henry Fonda in On Golden Pond, which I have never seen.

    2) Today is my pupper’s “12th birthday”, which is really the anniversary of her adoption from the Humane Society. I reshaped the first picture of her that I ever took, and then I took more today, trying to match the angle and expression. She’s getting old and it makes me a bit sad. I have been thinking back to that summer twelve years ago, and how great everything was and I was so hopeful about life, and now everything is shit and I’m scared all the time.

  100. 100.

    mrmoshpotato

    @NotMax: Oh the scandal of the Hayes Code era movies!

    (Yeah, it probably wasn’t subject to the code, but anyway…)

  101. 101.

    lowtechcyclist

    @Sure Lurkalot: My mother once told me she didn’t feel old until 60.

    I’m 68. I’m sure that someday I’ll feel old, but I’m in no hurry.

  102. 102.

    mrmoshpotato

    @Ruckus:

    You are all wrong. 

    Any month you can celebrate another year is a good month.

    Oh sure!  Take all (12) sides!

  103. 103.

    Wapiti

    @Uncle Cosmo: My mother studied Architectural Engineering in college. She explained it as the people who convert an architect’s ideas into a building that can function.

  107. 107.

    James E Powell

    @marcopolo:

    Not to defend Susan Sarandon, but I’ve managed to separate the art from more egregious artists. I still listen to Chuck Berry, Johnny Cash, and John Lennon. Though I can’t watch Woody Allen movies anymore.

    It helps that I think of Sarandon less as a prominent person who led people astray and more as a not very smart person with ridiculous opinions. I doubt that she influenced many voters who were not already predisposed to hate Hillary Clinton for one or more of the trivial reasons people usually hate Hillary Clinton.

  110. 110.

    Suzanne

    As for architecture in movies…. I am not actually a big movie buff, so I am not the best one to ask. I will note that I instantly thought of The Shining, with that carpet and those long, double-loaded corridors, and the axial camera angle, just iconic as hell. And scary. Corridors are actually really tricky to design, because they can feel really repetitive and dreary, but that movie used that repetition to terrifying effect. Another one that came to mind is Disclosure, which is a mid-90s Michael Crichton thing with Michael Douglas working in the tech industry, and the company offices are in this trendy Seattle old brick building that has been obviously renovated with a lot of glass. And the movie uses the glass as a visual metaphor for knowing secrets, sometimes you can see through the glass, and sometimes there’s too much reflection and glare. Observing and being observed. Minority Report, of course. One of the Mission: Impossible movies had an amazing set piece on the Burj Khalifa.

  111. 111.

    raven

    @Wapiti: My FIL was an architectural engineer, started at VPI and the war started so he entered the V12 program at Illinois. He was a SeeBee officer at the end of the war on Saipan and went back to Virginia to run a construction firm and hardware store. Good dude.

  113. 113.

    raven

    Memories and reality. . .people are amazed at the memories I have and think I need to write them down. As many of you know I also have thousands of photos to prompt them so maybe. . .

  116. 116.

    raven

    A friend just posted this

     

    BY MAGGIE SMITH

    Life is short, though I keep this from my children.
    Life is short, and I’ve shortened mine
    in a thousand delicious, ill-advised ways,
    a thousand deliciously ill-advised ways
    I’ll keep from my children. The world is at least
    fifty percent terrible, and that’s a conservative
    estimate, though I keep this from my children.
    For every bird there is a stone thrown at a bird.
    For every loved child, a child broken, bagged,
    sunk in a lake. Life is short and the world
    is at least half terrible, and for every kind
    stranger, there is one who would break you,
    though I keep this from my children. I am trying
    to sell them the world. Any decent realtor,
    walking you through a real shithole, chirps on
    about good bones: This place could be beautiful,
    right? You could make this place beautiful.

  120. 120.

    Suzanne

    @Wapiti: Back before accreditation and licensure, architects often didn’t get formal education and it was an apprenticeship profession. So architectural engineering became a thing to bridge that gap. Now, most states don’t even license architectural engineers anymore because that body of knowledge has been transferred to formal education for architects (all states accept a Master’s degree for licensure, some states will also accept a Bachelor’s). Buildings also used to be much less complicated.

  122. 122.

    James E Powell

    Novels that deal with aging, among other things:

    Love in the Time of Cholera, Gabriel Garcia Márquez

    Remains of the Day, Kazuo Ishiguro

    These Foolish Things, Deborah Moggach (film Best Exotic Marigold Hotel was based on it.)

    Movie:

    A Man Called Ove – Swedish, streams on Amazon Prime

    Going to be an American version starring – who else? – Tom Hanks

  124. 124.

    Ruckus

    @raven:

    It always is how you look at it.

    It’s going to get you down on some days, it’s going boost you to the moon on others.

    You get one shot at it, and no one else makes you look at it any better or any worse than yourself.

    You can drink yourself into a stupor, or you can decide to enjoy it.

    You can hate the bad days, you’ll still have them.

    You can love the good days, there still won’t be enough of them.

    You get up because you can, you sleep because you need to.

    You find love because it’s great, you lose it because you aren’t, or for no rational reason at all.

    Some live to well over 100, a cousin lived 6 months, his mom lived to 45 and left 4 kids.

    It’s life. It’s great, it’s bad, it’s fun, it’s anything but. It’s life.

    We get one of them, although for most of human existence we’ve written about what comes next, to make the end not quite as painful.

    It’s life. Enjoy what you get, enjoy each other.

  126. 126.

    Tom Q.

    @Phylllis: Pretty much everyone I know who discovers Make Way for Tomorrow instantly wonders how they could never have before heard of such a wonderful movie.  It’s incredibly/brutally honest, in a studio era where selling the beauty of the American dream was far more the norm.

    Another movie from the time that people are usually amazed by when they run across it is Dodsworth — maybe not so much about old age as about the retirement years (though, 80 years ago, those two were closer to synonymous).  A great Walter Huston performance, some beautiful dialogue, and a startlingly adult approach to the limitations of a marriage that it’s hard to believe got past the Production Code.

  130. 130.

    pajaro

    I never saw a performance of King Lear until I was 55 or so.  I’ve seen it a few more times since then (I’m 75 now), and it’s never failed to move me.  I wonder what it would have been like to see it as a young person.

    This Old Man:  All in Pieces,  is a set of essays by the magnificent Roger Angell, who just passed away earlier this year.

  131. 131.

    Sure Lurkalot

    @Suzanne: I make cotton bucket hats and have a small but loyal following of one peep, my SIL.

    So much for the other donee ingrates but I get compliments every time I wear one of my prodigious collection.  Cheap thrills.

    I would be happy to send one in the paint colors you most adore.

  132. 132.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @BGinCHI: I’m a big fan of Russo, even if I thought Bridge of Sighs could’ve used some pruning. Empire Falls is probably my favorite, and the one I can’t name right now that is his satire of academia

    I think every novel of his I’ve read fits the topic

  135. 135.

    CaseyL

    @Ceci n est pas mon nym: Oh my goodness.  This is Us is mind-blowingly good, but have an entire case of kleenex handy.  (The show has gotten some criticism for over the top emotional twists, but ignore all that.)​

  138. 138.

    Chetan Murthy

    137 comments, so I’ll go OT: does anybody have any advice on how to tell if a tomato is ripe, before cutting into it?  I consistently seem to buy heirloom tomatoes that aren’t ripe, and even after a week of sitting-out, they’re still not ripe when I cut into ’em.

    which is …. disappointing.

  139. 139.

    Uncle Cosmo

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist:  Empire Falls fan here as well. I’ve got the CD of the mini-series (but have yet to watch it) and – if I ever get back to seriously studying Czech – a copy of EF in translation on my shelf beside page-facing-page translations of Dubliners, The Great Gatsby, and some Mark Twain stories.​

  140. 140.

    TM

    A great BBC version of Lear, starring Laurence Olivier at around age 75.  If he wasn’t in failing health he sure acted like it.

    @pajaro:

  141. 141.

    Jean

    @BGinCHI: I agree So Long, See You Tomorrow is a masterpiece, but I love They Came Like Swallows just as much.  The latter is autobiographical (his mother dies in 1918 flu when he is 8) and it is recalled in So Long, See You Tomorrow.

  142. 142.

    eddie blake

    no country for old men
    the lion in winter
    red/ red2
    the adventures of baron munchausen
    star trek II: the wrath of khan
    top gun: maverick

  143. 143.

    opiejeanne

    @A woman from anywhere (formerly Mohagan): We nearly bought an Eichler when we moved to the SF Bay area in 1992, and then nearly bought a different one 2 years later. The first was potentially gorgeous but we were chicken because it was such a wreck, the second needed less work, but neither had a heating system. We discovered that while the roof didn’t leak, the floors might. They used hot water pipes in the floors to heat the houses, and the pipes tended to break after 30 years or so.

  144. 144.

    opiejeanne

    @Chetan Murthy: Try smelling it. A ripe tomato that is not a “designer” tomato has a definite tomato scent. It also shouldn’t be hard as a rock, nor squishy; somewhere in between.

  145. 145.

    opiejeanne

    @eddie blake: No Country still gives me nightmares, and even though I’m given the same answer every time I ask, I still don’t know if the assassin was behind the door in the motel room when Tommy Lee Jones opens it. He never looks behind the door, and every hair on my body stood at attention.

    Red and Red 2 are really fun movies, watching Malkovitch play crazy is a delight.

  146. 146.

    eddie blake

    @opiejeanne:  bardem’s chigurh is just terrifying; he’s like an implacable force of nature. everyone in that movie acts like their time has passed except him. he’s eternal and relentless.

  148. 148.

    El Muneco

    @TM:  The best _King Lear_ is still Akira Kurosawa’s _Ran_.

    The culmination of everything he had learned in 40 years of filmmaking combined with stealing the source material from the best source, and translating it into a cultural context where it would gently probe at some longstanding issues.

  149. 149.

    eclare

    @El Muneco:   I was lucky to catch that movie on the big screen at an art-house theater in ATL.  It is stunning, one of the best films that I have ever seen.  That last scene…

  150. 150.

    prostratedragon

    @Tom Q.: Dodsworth is great. I first ran across it several years ago and could scarcely believe that it’s rarely even mentioned despite the things about it you noted. At his best, few actors could top Walter Huston.

    Regarding architecture in movies, Hitchcock often made interesting use of it at various levels. Two of the three leading players in Vertigo were architecture-adjacent: Stewart by his own training, and Bel Geddes (herself an illustrator) through her father, Norman Bel Geddes. One might be surprised at some of the architects who did other things in the movies.

  151. 151.

    prostratedragon

    @pajaro: ​ King Lear, Shakespeare’s saddest play for me, and a few of them are really sad. I first read it in my twenties, and Cordelia’s predicament and fate resonated strongly with me. Fifteen years later viewing Ran, the pain of Lear’s loss and realization of his own folly got me.

  152. 152.

    debbie

    Too long after my bedtime, but the best writers get better by being more direct and succinct as they age: I’m thinking of William Trevor, Philip Roth, and many others I’m too tired to think of. I used to be disappointed, but now find that I enjoy the shorter books.

  154. 154.

    Brian

    @Suzanne: “Room 237” has a lot of cool info about the impossibility of the layout of the hotel. Not to mention the carpet pattern switching between shots of Danny.

  155. 155.

    Sure Lurkalot

    @Suzanne: No Etsy…feel free to contact WaterGirl for my email. Making a hat is a couple of hours of reality escape…I’m much obliged to have targets for my therapy.

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