Wednesday Wildflowerblogging

Corn Lily (Veratrum californicum) at Diamond Lake, Trinity Alps Wilderness. More Corn Lilies below the fold.
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New Jersey Trivia

Okay, actor trivia. Come see.

Quimby the Mouse

Quimby The Mouse from This American Life on Vimeo.

Monday Movie Review Rerun: To Have and Have Not

I just got back from Kentucky and I haven't got time to write a new review, so here's a review I wrote over three years ago, for one of my favorite films:

To Have and Have Not (1944 ) 9/10
Fishing boat captain Harry Morgan (Humphrey Bogart) and pickpocket Marie (Lauren Bacall) are reluctantly involved in helping the French Resistance. Directed by Howard Hawks.

When people say “They don’t make ‘em like that anymore" they mean To Have and Have Not. More... This movie has everything that distinguishes “classic" movies from the ordinary kind. It has enormous star power (including Walter Brennan, Hoagy Carmichael, and Dan Seymour), smouldering chemistry between the stars, hot sexual innuendo (“You know how to whistle, don’t you Steve?"), adventure, humor, and music. Also guns, drunkenness, hustling, and Nazis. So it’s pretty much perfect. Not for nuthin’, this is the movie that changed me from someone who watched movies when they were on TV, to someone who was a real movie buff.

This is the film where Bogie met Bacall. This is the one that put all the sex into the dialogue, the voices, the low-lid looks, and yes, the whistling. Early into filming, Bacall, 19, and Bogie, 45, were an item; they were married within a year. Bacall’s screen presence in this, her first film, is like a slap across the face. I can’t think of many modern actresses who can capture the screen and hold it in the way that forties stars like Bacall, Rita Hayworth, and Ava Gardner could. It’s a complex role; she is by turns dignified, playful, desperate, sad, and hopelessly in love.

Humphrey Bogart is wonderful as always, and lays back and lets his costars steal every scene. And steal it they do; not just Bacall, but the wonderful Walter Brennan, the villainous Dan Seymour, and Hoagy Carmichael as Cricket, the piano player who helps Bacall find legitimate work.

Okay, it’s completely and totally an imitation of Casablanca, but just let it go. Okay, the Resistance is made to seem the most singularly uninteresting Good Cause in the history of causes, but run with it. Just let the wonderfulness wash over you.

(To Cross-post and Not Cross-post)

Rockets' Red Glare

Happy Independence Day, everybody.

Big in Japan Shenandoah

Hicks and nitwits all over this great nation are grieving tonight for Sarah Palin's political career. Or, no, wait, they're happy. Yeah, that's it, they're happy:

Reached by CNN at her farm in the Shenandoah valley, Mary Matalin, a top Republican consultant, called Ms. Palin's move "brilliant" although she said she was initially taken aback by the news. But she seconded the notion that the governor's decision was smart in the sense that it will free her up [to do stuff...and things and whatnot].

[...]

Ms. Matalin joked that despite her own initial inside-the-Beltway reaction of surprise, shoppers at her local WalMart in the Shenandoah would be whooping "hoo-rahs" because of Ms. Palin's continued popularity among conservative voters.

Of course. Conservatives are celebrating...[enunciate here]...because conservatives are celebrating!

Well played, Sarah Palin. Well played indeed.

East Coast Friday Random Ten

Whiskeytown, "Dancing with the Women at the Bar" Strangers Almanac
Blue Mountain, "When You're Not Mine" Tales of a Traveler
Richmond Fontaine, "The Warehouse Life" The Fitzgerald
Johnny Cash, "The Time of the Preacher" No Depression: What It Sounds Like
Badly Drawn Boy, "Say it Again" The Hour of the Bewilderbeast
Tindersticks, "Sweet, Sweet Man Pt. 1" Tindersticks
Joe Henry, "Cold Enough to Cross" Scar
Pavement, "Cut Your Hair" Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain
Blood Meridian, "Good Lover" Kick Up the Dust
The Magnetic Fields, "Love in the Shadows" 69 Love Songs, Vol. 3

Bonus: St. Vincent, "Black Rainbow" Actor

Seems like I always pull the Fields and Joe Henry when I post on the front page. Weird. Anyway, please try your luck and play along in comments.

Two and a half videos of the best new band of the year below the fold:
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If that leaves you wanting more, pick up the superb Paranoid Cocoon.

Off to the Mountains Again

Leaving in a couple hours, back Monday. Don't do anything I wouldn't do.

Wednesday Wildflowerblogging

Ithuriel's Spear (Triteleia laxa) near Pan Toll on Mount Tamalpais.

Couple more (from Edgewood Park in San Mateo County) below the fold.
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