Sleeping Muse and Falling Rocket

    Early in The Godfather 2, Genco Abbandando takes Vito to see a play starring the woman he has fallen in love with. That woman was played by Kathleen Beller. Kathleen Beller is married to Thomas Dolby.

Whistler (1879). Rothko (1968). Chatting.      

It is easy to forget that Quincy Jones' Soul Bossa Nova, most famous now for its use as the Austin Powers theme, was first used onscreen in Sydney Lumet's somber The Pawnbroker.

In 1964 Beckett wrote a short text called All Strange Away, with illustrations by Edward Gorey! How perfect is that match?

The use of Vera Lynn singing We'll Meet Again at the end of Dr. Strangelove was apparently Spike Milligan's idea!

     Paul McCartney and Roger Ebert were exactly the same age. Born June 18, 1942.

Just heard James Brown described as 'the founding father of funk in general.'

Helen Mirren and Alan Rickman in Antony & Cleopatra (1998)

Kenneth H. Dahlberg, of Watergate fame, died in DEEPHAVEN, Minnesota. Because of course he did.

Just watched 711 Ocean Drive (1950), starring Edmond O'Brien. A mostly forgettable Film Noir notable for some stunning, Kafkaesque cinematography by Austro-Hungarian Franz Planer. Planer and Kafka were near contemporaries and clearly shared the same world view, though I cannot find any evidence that they ever met. Planer also did the cinematography for the magnificently Kafkaesque Dr. Seuss film The 5000 Fingers of Dr. T.

Nocturne: Blue and Gold, St. Mark's, Venice, 1880

I have always tried to test myself in museums. Trying to identify the artist or the subject of a work before reading the information card. Is it a Saint? Can I identify which one based on the Attributes the artist has included? St. Peter's keys. Veronica's napkin. Sebastian's arrows. Bartholomew's skin. Catherine's wheel. James' shell. The lion. The bull. The eagle. One day in the V & A, I came upon a small sculpture. A bearded head resting on the museum's display table. No visible attributes. Nothing overt to identify the subject. I looked at the card: "John the Baptist" How could that be? No hair shirt. No reed cross. It was just a head. It was just a head. It was just a head. Oh. Right.

In Star Wars, Leia (Carrie Fisher) says to Grand Moff Tarkin (Peter Cushing)  "I recognized your your foul stench when I was brought on board." In real life, Fisher said that Cushing smelled of "linen and lavender."