But I needed this:
Yes–it’s four years old, and everyone youtube-savvier than me has already seen it, but it’s still wicked awesome, and a temporary escape from all of that from which we crave escape.
And if we’re going to respite, let’s respite hard. Have some bonus Tikka:
And how about a redwing blackbird harassing a great blue heron at my local pond:
Over to y’all. Open thread.
BGinCHI
Hey film lovers, now showing on Amazon Prime is John Frankenheimer’s amazing, amazing film The Train (1965), starring Burt Lancaster and a terrific international cast (incl. Paul Scofield).
I’d never seen it.
It’s a masterpiece.
Eric S.
Good evening, all. Here a few blocks west of Wrigley Field I had a moment of Wild Chicago. I heard a screech outside my 3rd floor window. I looked out to see a hawk rising up with a small bird in its talons.
Omnes Omnibus
@BGinCHI:
Wha?!
Indeed.
Brachiator
Ah, respite. I thought this little item at the New York Review of Books was very sweet.
How We Met
tybee
i found this amusing: https://coming42.livejournal.com/479179.html?utm_source=fbsharing&utm_medium=social&fbclid=IwAR1otMeH8xYmkUfI5WcamJyr0_wkRKG1pzUPNNwBPAF6By5esFOkpWd27iw
zhena gogolia
@BGinCHI:
I’ve seen it 20 times! We love it.
Brachiator
@BGinCHI:
Great film. Lancaster does a number of his own stunts in the film. Also, he had so much clout as the star of the film, that he had the original director, Arthur Penn fired after three day of filming and brought in Frankenheimer.
Barbara
@Eric S.: Always shocking. I took my dog for a walk one rainy Sunday morning and heard a commotion and a squeal and looked over in time to see a hawk rising into the air with a squirrel in its talons.
zhena gogolia
We have a little marsh down the street. Redwing blackbirds and very loud frogs (or something). It’s our daily entertainment.
NotMax
For gentle (but not dull) respite, would again mention the first season of the Danish series Seaside Hotel is free on Prime, but only through May 31. Just six episodes of 45 minutes each, so can still binge all of them if your time permits.
All the other seasons (AFAIK) are available on Prime through the added subscription cost PBS Masterpiece channel, which has folded in all the offerings from the European streamer Walter Presents.
zhena gogolia
Mansfield Park (1999), on the other hand, is emphatically not a masterpiece. Alessandro Nivola is great in it, though.
J R in WV
OK.
That display of instrumental virtuosity was amazing. I have never seen anyone play two instruments at the same time, in a live performance. Reminded me of Django Reinhart and Stephen Grappelli and Quintette du Hot Club de France… Only better looking. Amazing music.
catclub
Rachmaninov had big hands
Geminid
@BGinCHI: Another good Burt Lancaster film is The Rainmaker. Aside from an introductory scene I think it followed the stage play word for word, scene by scene. Katherine Hepburn won an academy award for her Lizzie. Lancaster could have won the award for his Starbuck, but it was released in the 50’s and the Starbuck character is kind of subversive.
NotMax
@j R in WV
In the long ago, emceed a couple of concerts featuring the band JF Murphy & Salt, one of whose members played two saxophones at the same time, when that was deemed necessary.
satby
I’ve been binging on an old BBC series on Prime called Desperate Romantics thats been fun. Lots of Aidan Turner (Poldark) shirtless.?
Why yes, I am that shallow.
catclub
That is a LOT of bonus Tikka nose.
Tom Levenson
@catclub: careful. Cyrano de Tkkarac might take fatal offense.
The Lodger
@NotMax: Rahsaan Roland Kirk was famous for that.
zhena gogolia
@satby:
Ooh, that looks good! Great cast!
Delk
@Eric S.: there was a vulture in Rosehill Cemetery a couple weeks ago.
Amir Khalid
We don’t get to see Lee Van Cleef kitty often enough.
Ohio Mom
Brachiator: That’s a sweet story.
Both my college roomate’s mother and my favorite aunt met their second husbands through the NYRB personal ads. I guess that is what sophisticated New York divorcées did in the 1970s. They are all gone now.
Glidwrith
I had never seen that instrumental group before. A heartfelt thank you!
Amir Khalid
@NotMax:
That always happens when the bandleader is too cheap to hire two saxophonists. //
HumboldtBlue
I am reading about the Peninsular War (Portugal/Spain) and the author quotes a description from a contemporary historian describing Lord Liverpool who served as British Prime Minister from 1801-1804.
Liverpool was dominated by the Wellesley brothers and didn’t appear to be the sharpest bayonet in the scabbard and in fact, sounds an awful lot like a current bumblefuck in charge.
As described by contemporary historian Peter Brougham —
Amir Khalid
@HumboldtBlue:
I hate it when a Liverpool is a loser.
Tom Levenson
@HumboldtBlue: great quote. What’s the book you are reading?
JMG
Redwing blackbirds occupy the pond on my golf course which is a hazard for the approach shot on the 8th and drive on the 9th. They are beautiful. So far this season, I have not disturbed them.
HumboldtBlue
@Amir Khalid:
Hah! That thought slipped in for a fraction of a second. “Why’s it got to be Lord Liverpool?” Of course, then we read about the big Liverpool slavers that built that city’s economy and I sit back down.
@Tom Levenson:
The War of Wars: Robert Harvey. Although I must confess professor, I skipped the first three parts detailing Napoleon’s rise and went straight for the Peninsular Campaign because it’s been on my front burner for about a year. So no quizzes until Part Four, please.
prostratedragon
Today we venerate Our Lady of Air Conditioning:
Steeplejack
I turned on the A.C. for the first time this season a while ago. Not the heat—it got up only to about 80° today—but the place feels very stuffy and very humid. Not getting any breeze from outside. And it’s going up to 87° tomorrow. I’ll turn it off after the place cools down and see how it goes.
And I got through my semiannual twinge of anxiety about whether the system would start up or just blow up. (Same in the fall when I turn on the heat.) Irrational, but there you are.
Took my friend to an appointment this morning and stayed off the computer pretty much all afternoon, so I feel like I’ve had a mini-vacation.
And I think I finally might be getting a new computer. I’m eyeballing a ThinkPad T480 at Tiger Direct for a pretty good price. Not as sexy as an X1 Carbon, but way cheaper and I can horse it up to 32 GB of RAM.
Now to catch up with the news. ?
Just One More Canuck
Tikka has a resting ‘fuck you asshole’ face
HinTN
@J R in WV: Rahssan Roland Kirk did it routinely. Three sometimes
ETA: Not that that wasn’t amazing!
prostratedragon
@BGinCHI:
Love that movie, watch every year or so. Frankenheimer was on some kind of hot streak during that time.
1966 Seconds
1964 The Train
1964 Seven Days in May
1962 The Manchurian Candidate
1962 Birdman of Alcatraz
1962 All Fall Down
1961 The Young Savages
And hardly a slouch afterward.
Amir Khalid
@HumboldtBlue:
I remember there was a bit of fuss when someone pointed out that Penny Lane is named after slavetrader John Penny. But being a port city, Liverpool has a history of diversity; apparently, Britain’s oldest mosque was established there.
HinTN
@The Lodger: l see you beat me to it. I saw him perform several times and the multi-instrumental thing was never gratuitous.
NotMax
Not at all taxing and kind of cute as light respite is the New Zealand series Step Dave on Prime. Works fine as an interlude of escapism and the kids, especially, are truer to real life youngsters than seen in many a sitcom.
Ditto as escapist fare for Little Coincidences (from Spain) on Prime. Takes a bit to warm up to as it finds its footing; much of the dialogue writing as it progresses is as sharp as a scalpel.
Geminid
@HumboldtBlue: Bernard Cornwell wrote a series of novels featuring British super soldier Richard Sharpe, mostly involving the Peninsular War. Lots of strategy, tactics, and blood. Good stuff if you like that sort of thing.
schrodingers_cat
Tikka rocks.
My musical contribution, Rahat Fateh Ali Khan sings and my second cousin once removed is on screen.
Tere Mast Mast Do Nain
(Your intoxicating two eyes)
Tom Levenson
@Just One More Canuck: These days, that covers most encounters.
Yutsano
Tikka is, as always, majestic.
There is a pond next to some apartments that has a walkway going to campus in Pullman. I used to walk that way getting to class because it was downhill from my place plus the corresponding uphill is a smaller grade. That pond was full of red winged blackbirds all through the warmer months. They never really bothered us but oh man were they noisy!
HumboldtBlue
@Amir Khalid:
Its ethnic diversity became its strength and remains so to this day if you listen to the locals.
And it’s home to the oldest expat Chinese community in Europe and it’s the most Irish city outside of Ireland.
I’ll find a wonderful series of videos about the history of the city that was hugely enlightening and informative.
And we haven’t touched the music yet.
London claims the oldest mosque built in Toxeth in 1889 but the Abdullah Quilliam Society was formed in Liverpool two years earlier in 1887 and it seems their “little mosque” wins the day.
BGinCHI
@Eric S.: That was me.
Sorry for the disturbance.
BGinCHI
@Delk: I live almost right next to it.
Vultures around occasionally, nesting there I think.
BGinCHI
@prostratedragon: He’s SUPER underrated.
And if not for Ronin, I don’t think a lot of people would go back to his films as much as they do.
He constantly astonishes me.
raven
My ancestors are buried in Rosehill.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@Geminid:
The books were made into a British TV series with Sean Bean as Sharpe.
Gin & Tonic
So there are at least three baby groundhogs.
HumboldtBlue
@Geminid:
Oh, I’ve feasted to my fill on Cornwell. I have the Sharpe TV series as well as the entires series on e-book (one of the first downloads, came soon after Aubrey-Maturin) and as Cornwell put it in a series of excellent videos where he led guided tours of the campaign on the actual battlefields that has since been removed by YouTube, and I paraphrase, “the best thing to happen to Richard Sharpe was Sean Bean.”
One of the things I liked about how Cornwell presented Sharpe was his ruthlessness, he was a stone-cold killer when he needed to be and I think that underpinned the quality of the saga. He gave Sharpe real depth, both ugly and not.
I use this website as a resource and companion when reading about the campaign.
@Dorothy A. Winsor:
The man was constantly taking his shirt off. There was a lot of Sean Bean (and another time, can we talk about the absurdity of the English language when we break down two words — Sean and Bean?) nipple in the TV series.
Eric S.
@Delk: Really?!? I wouldn’t have predicted that. I had a hummingbird(s) visiting a flowering tree outside my window for the past week. That definitely paused my work productivity .
NotMax
@Steeplejack
Solid state drive? If not, pass on it. Also too, Tiger Direct’s business track record is somewhat … spotty.
If it’s at all in the neighborhood of your price range (or you find a decent sale), look at the Asus ROG Zephyrus G14.
Steeplejack
Just got done belatedly reading Larry Kramer’s obituary (NYT). Seems like a nuanced look at his career and “loudmouth” (his word) persona.
I was gobsmacked by this:
prostratedragon
@BGinCHI:
You know, I’ve read that cinematographers often found him infuriating to work with. What’s the German for too-bad-for-you-but-no-consequence-to-me? ;)
Bill Arnold
The US Consumer Product Safety Commission twitter account is a welcome respite (from e.g. DJT twitter):
BGinCHI
@raven: I didn’t know that!
I’ll keep an eye out.
LarryB
Blackbirds are badass. I used to work in a high rise office with a view out to a tree lined sidewalk. I kept seeing pedestrians running by wildly flapping their hands in the air. I didn’t understand until I walked out their and got dive-bombed by the birds who “owned” those trees. They peck!
BGinCHI
@prostratedragon: The German for that is “Otto Preminger.”
J R in WV
@HumboldtBlue:
We have friends who will dispute that claim, NYC, Bahstahn for two places. I dunno the actual statistics, but there are a lot of Irish in both places.
zhena gogolia
@prostratedragon:
The cinematography in The Train is unbelievable.
Delk
@Eric S.
Here He is
Eric S.
@BGinCHI: Just knock on the window next time. I’m sure I have something to eat in the kitchen. But if you are in bird form watch out for Ozzie The Cat.
raven
@BGinCHI: Some are in Cavalry too.
NotMax
@BGinCHI
Imperious on the set, so they say. Unable to speak to that but can vouch he was wickedly funny in person.
Steeplejack
@NotMax:
It does have an SSD (256 GB, which is plenty for me). Also Win10 Pro (vs. Home), 16 GB RAM and 1,920 × 1,080 HD display. Price is $949, which is pretty good for what I’ve been seeing lately. (Problem lately is not price but what do vendors actually have in stock.)
I have had success with Tiger Direct in the past, but your warning is noted.
Delk
@raven: wow! There’s a big Target across the street that I go to.
prostratedragon
@BGinCHI: Why, so it is! Thanks!
Dorothy A. Winsor
You say that as if it were a bad thing.
HumboldtBlue
@J R in WV:
I ain’t got no data, just two arms kept strictly to the side while we dance through the stories.
catclub
@Tom Levenson: I thought Cyrano was actually proud of his schnozzola.
prostratedragon
@J R in WV: Don’t forget that toddlin’ town, where if you’re running for office it still helps to have an Irish-sounding part to your name, even if it’s Muhammed O’Neill Ali.
NotMax
@Steeplejack
256 GB SSD is the bare minimum to squeak by. Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow but eventually the machine will struggle. Don’t recommend it if there is a 512GB (or even 1TB) option.
From PCmag:
Jeffro
OT (but this is an open thread, after all): just saw a couple of tweets about Clarence Thomas quickly retiring if trumpov loses and McConnell hustling to ram through a replacement SCOTUS judge before Biden is sworn in.
I know there has already been speculation about Thomas retiring this summer, in time for trumpov to make an appointment in the run-up to the November election.
Either way, this ain’t a bad hill for the Dems to plant a flag on: if Thomas retires any time between now and Inauguration Day, and trumpov/McConnell try to appoint a new SCOTUS judge, that’s it, we’re adding two more seats to SCOTUS*. Rubio can try all he wants with his dumb constitutional amendment to limit the number of seats to nine, but we’ve all seen how well THAT procedure works these days.
*AND doubling the size of the federal judiciary while we’re at it!
Go for it, Dems. Tell American voters now, point out the hypocrisy with Gorsuch (again) and remind everyone of what’s at stake in November.
BGinCHI
@NotMax: C’est moi!!
HumboldtBlue
@Dorothy A. Winsor:
Lose the shirt, lose your life.
Mike in NC
@BGinCHI: Big Burt Lancaster. One of the greatest American actors of the 20th century and an activist Democrat all his life.
Gin & Tonic
@Jeffro: I dunno, could Trump find a nominee worse than Clarence Thomas?
NotMax
@Steeplejack
Newegg has some attractive prices on Lenovos at the moment.
YMMV but these days I’m a big fan of the AMD chips (Ryzen 5 or Ryzen 7) over any of the Intels.
Jeffro
@Gin & Tonic: C’mon, he doesn’t have to find “worse”, he just has to find “younger”.
BGinCHI
@Mike in NC: “Sweet Smell of Success,” still my fave. Especially the first half.
NotMax
@Gin & Tonic
Amy Cooper.
//
smedley the uncertain
@tybee: Thank you for sharing that discovery. Also another site in which become aimlessly and blissfully lost…
NotMax
@BGinCHI
Toss-up among Local Hero, Judgment at Nuremberg and also the all too ignored The Devil’s Disciple.
Tom Levenson
@catclub: Oh he was. But woe to anyone foolish enough to poke fun at it besides himself.
Tikka has a similar view of lèse-catesté.
prostratedragon
@Gin & Tonic: Dawson voice: “This is the Trump administration, sir.”
(Also what Jeffro says below about younger.)
Mike in NC
@NotMax: Also: From Here To Eternity, Seven Days in May, Atlantic City, Ulzana’s Raid, Go Tell The Spartans
I heard he made ‘Elmer Gantry’ because he hated evangelist preachers.
Brachiator
@Steeplejack:
I did not know that of his involvement with this film. I remember seeing the film at a screening at my college film society. Nothing about it felt like a quaint period piece. It was quirky, vibrant and the acting was just … wow.
satby
Sean isn’t English, it’s Irish Gaelic, so the phonemes aren’t the same.
Yutsano
@Jeffro: Please. He ain’t finding shit. He’ll get the nominee from Leonard Leo and the Federalist Society and act like he’s known him forever. Then Yertle will try to push him through as fast as possible. There’s a whole process and President Toadface only has to do the ceremonial parts.
Gin & Tonic
Been experimenting with making yogurt in the Instant Pot – I eat yogurt nearly every day. What I can’t figure out is why I might want to buy packaged yogurt starter like this as opposed to using a few tablespoons of a good organic yogurt as a starter. The latter approach has worked satisfactorily the last two batches.
prostratedragon
@Gin & Tonic: Does the flavor of the yogurt you make resemble the starter? I buy a couple of yogurts I like but do have an Instant Pot, which I might need to use now that the A/C is on, praise the Lord.
Cheryl from Maryland
@Mike in NC: what, no love for Lancaster in “The Leopard”?
HumboldtBlue
@satby:
Exactly!
prostratedragon
@Cheryl from Maryland:
Also good in 1900, if you’ve got 5 or so hours to spare (accept no abridgements).
Steeplejack
@NotMax:
Thanks for the info. I get Newegg’s flyers, but I’ll check out the link.
I’m using only 75 GB of disk space on my current antediluvian computer (vintage 2012), and if I need to go bigger I can get an SSD and install it myself for much less than the vendors want for one pre-installed.
The model I’m looking at is not that starter model at all. It doesn’t have a 1,368×768 display, and it doesn’t have a traditional hard disk. It’s equivalent to the “more moderate, in-between configuration with Core i5-8250U power, 8GB of RAM, a 256GB SSD, and a full HD (1080p) non-touch display [for] around $1,200.” But with 16 GB of RAM.
I’m agnostic on Intel vs. AMD, at least for this non-development machine. RAM is a bigger interest, and I can kick it up to 32 GB.
Brachiator
@HumboldtBlue:
How about Mr and Bean?
Jeffro
@Yutsano: Right…that was the main point of what I said, that he would go find Young Clarence himself.
Steeplejack
@Brachiator:
Yeah, I saw it in college very soon after it came out, and it definitely was a “shock of the new” thing. Alan Bates, Oliver Reed and Glenda Jackson were new faces (Bates a bit less so), and Ken Russell was years from turning into self-parody. It shows up on TCM occasionally and still packs a wallop. Kramer’s screenplay was nominated for an Oscar (if you didn’t read the linked Times article).
HumboldtBlue
@Brachiator:
That’s even better.