New Air Conditioner

 

Latest Flint Ruin Porn

This was a long-abandoned building down by the old Central High (also abandoned) running track.  I just remembered that it used to have a giant satellite dish right next to it that disappeared years ago.

Plenty of free bricks, for them as wants 'em.  Part of a trend?

Green and lush

 

Film review: The Uninvited (1944)

I don't know what I was expecting, but this managed to surprise me.  It's certainly not a harrowing watch (a la Dead of Night) - more of a cozy ghost story, with a built-in love story (two, actually), but at the same time, as Jami said, if you saw this when you were little it would have scared the crap out of you.  Adding to the effect is the beautiful cinematography and effective acting (the only weak link to my mind was the rather over-the-top Miss Holloway).

I don't want to give away a couple of twists and turns, but the basic idea is that a brother and sister (they need not to be a couple because they're going to acquire their love interests in the course of the film) from London are holidaying in Cornwall (in May of 1937, we are informed) when they stumble across an abandoned house on top of a cliff 

that the sister, Pamela Fitzgerald (a very feisty Myrna Loy-esque Ruth Hussey) falls in love with (they have to chase their dog in through a window through which he has followed a squirrel) and persuades the brother, Rick (Ray Milland, who we noticed is like the Venn diagram of Cary Grant and Jimmy Stewart), a music critic and aspiring songwriter, to pool their resources to buy.  They find out that it is owned by a Commander Beech and that it has been vacant since the last occupants claimed it was haunted.  They visit the Beech household and are greeted (at first warmly) by his granddaughter, the lovely Stella 

(played by the tragic Gail Russell, whom I would have thought was English, but apparently was plucked by star-makers from Santa Monica High School), whose mood changes suddenly when she finds out they want to buy Windward House.  She claims that it is actually not for sale and is trying to usher them out when the Commander comes home.  He is a very cold fish but is willing to sell the house for £1,200, even though that is far below its value, because he wants money for his granddaughter, he says.  Stella and the Commander are at loggerheads on this, we discover, because she lived there until she was 3 and her mother died falling off the cliff out front, and she feels pulled there.  He, on the other hand, believes there are dark forces there that seek to do her harm and thus is glad to be rid of it.  What he does not bargain on, however, is Rick falling for Stella, and Stella inveigling her way into the house.  But this takes a while, and before this, we get this great creepy shot of her looking up at the house:

The next day. she runs into Rick in town (Biddlecombe or some such) and apologizes for her strange behavior before and he is charmed to the extent of inviting her for a sail.  He claims to have a stomach like the Rock of Gibraltar, but it is she who ends up taking the tiller while he huddles in the boat trying not to vomit.  Later that day he is to depart for London for three weeks, but he tells Stella she should visit Pamela, who is staying behind to decorate.  When he arrives back he finds first that their beloved dog has run off, and second that Stella has not visited because when Pamela sent an invitation she got word back that she was too ill.  That night Rick is woken by the sounds of a sobbing woman - at first he thinks it is their old Irish nanny (I assume, it's not explained) Elizabeth, but it's coming from downstairs, and Pamela informs him this is a regular occurrence, but will stop at dawn, as indeed it does.  That day, Rick goes to the Beech household and finds out that it was the Commander who blocked Stella's invitation, and she's healthy as a horse.  She finally confronts him and says that she's going, no matter what he says, and indeed that night comes to dinner.  While there, Rick plays her a tune he's written, Stella by Starlight (now a Jazz standard) up in his workshop, which has a whole wall like a greenhouse because it used to be the artist's studio of Stella's father.  

It is also a room that is prone to sudden chills (it withered some flowers the first time brother and sister went up there after buying it) and imposing a depressive mood on its occupant, despite which Rick uses it as his studio.  Stella, however, senses that the presence is her mother and is not afraid, but during her visit she suddenly bolts out the door and runs for the cliff, and Rick is only able to stop her from meeting the same fate as her mother (hasn't anyone heard of fences?) by sprinting.

Anyway, the town doctor (who, it turns out, has found their dog and is very fond of it) soon gets involved and helps investigate what actually happened lo these 17 years ago.  It turns out that there was a bit of a menage-a-trois, the third party being Carmel, a "no good" Spanish model who posed for the father.  The mother had tolerated their affair until becoming pregnant, at which point they found her employment in Paris.  But she returned, and was there the night of the fatal fall.  Commander Beech becomes so worried by Stella's fascination with Windward that he brings in an old friend of the mother's (Miss Holloway), who now operates a sanitarium on Bodmin Moor.  Stella is spirited off there after an unfortunate seance, 

during which the spirit informs them that she is there to guard her against Carmel, but then Stella becomes possessed and starts speaking Spanish.

Anyway, things come to a head when the evidently crazy (and probably infatuated with Stella's mother - that's her in the painting) Miss Holloway 

sends Stella to Windward when she hears that Rick and Pamela and the Doctor are coming to get her.  Clearly she wants something bad to happen to Stella.  There's also shenanigans with the notebook of the Doctor's predecessor, who believed that Miss Holloway killed Carmel, who caught pneumonia the night of the "accident".  Anyway, it all comes to a showdown at Windward, as a very enfeebled Commander Beech also heads there to try to save Stella when he finds out what's going on, and we finally get to see the spectral image of the mother.  

Will Stella survive?  Or will she join her mother in the crashing waves at the foot of the cliff?  Better watch it, hadn't you?  It's top entertainment, I promise you.  It would make an excellent double-bill with The Ghost and Mrs Muir.  Dab on some Mimosa and cue them up.

Swimming in Big Seven

 Yesterday and today - our air conditioner broke, so a cooling dip is a must.  And the water isn't really cold, which (me being me) worries me.

Jami Anderson, Attorney at Law!

 

Thomas says his is fancier:

(Frame courtesy of Michaels.)

Film review: Viridiana (1961)

Okay, I officially do not get Buñuel films.  Apparently this was the start of his second great phase, which include the other Buñuel film we've seen, The Exterminating Angel, which was surreal in a way this certainly wasn't, so I didn't get this one in a way I didn't not get that one (if you follow me), but still.  I mean, the story is straightforward enough.  Viridiana is a beautiful young woman (Silvia Pinal) 

training to be a nun and is just about to take her vows when her uncle (Don Jaime, who has paid for her education but kept his distance) calls for her to visit him in his rambling estate.  She doesn't want to go but is pressured into it by the mother superior.  When she arrives she bluntly tells her uncle that she feels no affection for him because he has never been in her life, but she is quite charmed by the estate, which has run to seed, and which appears to have only two servants - Ramona, a woman not much older than Viridiana but with a small (naughty) daughter, Rita, and Moncho, an elderly and very crabby farm hand.  Viridiana seems quite happy there at first, and warms to her uncle, but is still determined to leave to take her vows.  The only strange occurrence is when she sleepwalks one night and gathers ashes from the grate and dumps them on his bed, something about which she is mortified the next day.  On the night before she is to depart he persuades her to put on the wedding dress 

that her aunt (whom she greatly resembles) wore on her wedding night, the same night she died suddenly, breaking Don Jaime's heart and causing him to withdraw from the world and let his estate run amok.  Then he proposes to her, an act that repulses her.  He gets Ramona to drug her coffee, and they carry her to her room, and, after dismissing Ramona, Don Jaime tries to rape her but cannot bring himself to.  However, the next day he tells her that he has 

and that therefore she can't become a nun so she might as well stay.  Unsurprisingly, this does not win her over, so he breaks down and tells her that he didn't really.  She leaves, but as she's waiting for the bus in town, police come and bring her back to the estate because Don Jaime has hanged himself (with Rita's jump rope!), leaving a will that leaves the estate jointly to Viridiana and his long-estranged illegitimate son.  Viridiana decides that she cannot become a nun now, but will use the estate to do good, and rounds up all sorts of homeless and destitute 

and takes them in to the farm buildings. (One of them refuses to come because he doesn't like her pious charity, but he does take some change.  I suspect we are meant to remember him as taking the right course.)  Meanwhile the son, Jorge, a dashing but arrogant young man who brings along his reluctant girlfriend arrive.  He is smitten by Viridiana but also repulsed by her piety and disappointed that his usual charms are ineffective.  However, he does manage to drive off his girlfriend.  He is none too happy about Viridiana's do-gooding (although not as unhappy as Moncho, who absolutely despises the rabble and quits) but (rather wrongfooting those of us who had him pinned as the villain of the piece) sets about making the estate into a going concern, while letting Viridiana do her acts of kindness.  He also sets about seducing a very willing Ramona.  Things come to a head when Jorge, Ramona and Viridiana all head into town on the same day, leaving one of the more reliable paupers in charge, but they quickly break into the main house and stage a massive party, 

including shagging behind the sofa, staining beautiful linens and breaking tons of crockery.  The owners return unexpectedly early, and the poor scatter, except for a couple of the nastier customers, one of whom knocks Jorge out and starts to molest Viridiana at knifepoint, while the other, a man that Viridiana had been particularly kind to (he has a seeping arm that the others all take for leprosy and keep trying to drive him away, but she treats him and insists that he stay) just watches intending to "take his turn".  Jorge comes to (but is tied up) and tells this one that if he kills the rapist he will get money and he happily clonks the rapist over the head.  Just as he is getting the money, the cops arrive.  Then, a few days later, Jorge and Ramona are in Jorge's room when Viridiana, her hair now let down and no longer wrapped in a headscarf arrives.  He lets her in and the three of them start to play cards.  The end.

It was the first film that Buñuel made after coming back to Spain after exile, and he was under great constraints (apparently he wanted to end the film with a view of the bedroom door closing on Viridiana, and it was censored, so he replaced it with what he thought was even more salacious, a thinly-veiled reference to a ménage-a-trois.  It has since been voted the greatest Spanish film of all time, and is regarded as a bitingly satirical masterpiece, targeting the Catholic Church in particular.  Really?  Maybe I need my satire to be less subtle, because I don't see that the Church comes out that badly.  I'm not sure what we're supposed to think of the presentation of the poor by the lefty Buñuel.  I mean, I'm not saying there was really a false note, but I can't see how a conservative could have presented them less attractively.  I can imagine quite a few right-wingers could nod along saying "see what happens when you try to give them nice things?"  Is the point being that this is what happens when people have to rely on charity rather than the state providing housing, food and employment as a right?  And I can't say I appreciated the implication that it took almost (possibly actually - it's not clear) being raped at knifepoint to awaken Viridiana's sexual desires, that the church had repressed (perhaps?) This film also has a reputation as being a comedy, but to me the whole thing was suffused with dread.  Viridiana is innocent and good-hearted and gets abused at every turn - yuks a plenty!

Certainly it is a well-made film.  It's beautiful to look at, with excellent acting and striking images.  (Perhaps the most obviously blasphemous image is when the homeless people pose for a "photograph" at the height of their illicit banquet and it's a recreation of The Last Supper - only instead of taking a picture, the woman who had claimed to have a camera just lifted her skirts at them.)  

But the message I got from it is that everything is shit and you should just try to look out for number one.  What am I missing?  Here's one analysis.

Already feels like July

 

Goslings everywhere

 

Birthday boy!