#the book really is very touching

[frommybookbook]

#5: The Brasher Doubloon (1947)

This is probably the least well-known of all the Marlowe movies and certainly the hardest one to watch. I finally tracked down a full version on YouTube but it took some effort. That said, I'm really glad I did!

I liked this one a lot more than I thought I would. The plot stays really close to the source novel, The High Window, which I think is one of the more underrated Marlowe novels. Nancy Guild and Florence Bates really carry the movie, which is great to see any time but especially in this period. They’re decently well-rounded female characters with realistic motivations and actions.

George Montgomery’s (another Montgomery!) Marlowe is pretty decent—he balances the cynicism and reluctant hope pretty well, though he’s a bit too snarky and a bit too interested in romance with Guild’s Merle. One of the things that’s so beautiful in the novel is how gentle Marlowe is with Merle and how she feels safe with him in spite of her experiences with men and in spite of what a man like Marlowe seems he should be.

The thing that really knocked my socks off about this one is how important a roll of paper towels is. I had no idea paper towels were a thing in 1946!

Overall movie score: 4/5, this one follows the book plot really well and really is a pretty textbook adaptation of a hardboiled noir

Marlowe score: 3.5/5, I don't love how aggressively he pursues Merle and he's almost a touch too snarky, but he's a good investigator

Perry Mason score: 3/5, it has two supporting actors (Roy Roberts and Marvin Miller) who appeared in a total of 4 episodes

For a reminder of why I started this series and how I’m rating these movies, you can check out my master Marlowe post. I’ll be posting my reviews/rankings of the remaining Marlowe movies using the tag #Marlowe movies so if you’re interested, follow along!

[saintetheldreda]

you know how wendell gets all flustered and startled into silence after em finally fully kisses him. obviously thats cause hes in love but also i like to think its because i bet she must have looked SO beautiful right before she kissed him. she thanks him for the boots he made her with the messiest grin on her face that looks like "yes fuck yes this is something i can USE to get out of this place!" and its the opposite of a charming smile, its excited, but its the most beautiful one he has never seen because wendell has never felt like something useful before, has never known what it feels like to be used by someone he loves, because growing up in faerie land he has only ever been there just to look pretty and kingly, like the sort of whimsical spectacle that everyone irl expects fairytales and fantasy and faerie stuff to be

because like after all its her unyielding belief that the beauty of nature and the forests is animated, has sentience, contains rich inner life and minds, looks pretty only through precise deliberation and choices that MEAN something that is her calling as a folklorist. and of course outside of the novel is the same reason why anyone developed folklore in the first place. that same instinctual reaction to the beauty and the mysteries of nature that says it should be personified and interacted with as a person

so she thinks shes shitty with people cause shes bad at talking to them but all this time she was teaching herself how to love instead of how to talk

emily wilde being a book about a girl who wins and gets the guy by caring immensely about the kind of thing no one irl takes seriously or finds cool (fairies) is a major win for folk culture and im not emotional about it at all

[astarlightmonbebe]

the appeal of yeojeong as a normal guy who’s just a little bit off. not enough that you would notice when talking to him, of course, but it’s just there, under the surface. a disturbance. and i think it’s interesting because typically you have two types of guys somewhat adjacent to this: guy who seems totally normal but is secretly sadistic/a psychopath, and then guy haunted by a traumatic/troubled past, who has that secret layer of torment running beneath the surface of their image. but yeojeong breaks through these archetypes, and i think part of it is because he’s just so...calm. it’s not that he’s living a double life (kind doctor by day, killer by night) or hiding part of his past (everyone he worked with knew about what happened to his father, and watched his downward spiral during his college days). he’s not the typical male character who is, at every attempt, trying to outrun his tragic past (even though he does run once or twice); he’s not haunted by flashbacks, or suffer from PTSD in the way that is usually portrayed in dramas. and i think part of that is because the glory is a story about victims. it’s dongeun’s story, first and foremost, even though it is also yeojeong’s story, and hyeonnam’s story, and sohee’s story. but it’s a story about dongeun’s pain, and when it’s not about her pain, it’s just about the pain of victimhood - unlike other dramas, this isn’t a show where male pain outweighs the rest.

so yeojeong is just a normal guy. he’s handsome. he has a good career. he’s a plastic surgeon, an interesting choice when both his parents were/are hospital directors, and his father seemed to have worked in the er or something of the sort prior to his death (or at the very least wasn’t a plastic surgeon). something could be said here of yeojeong choosing the ‘safe’ path as a doctor, a path where he cures pain and makes people happy without the added risk of being attacked by one of his patients. there’s no proof of that in the show - why he chose to be a plastic surgeon - but it’s an interesting thought path to travel. 

dongeun says he must have lived a good life. that he’s never had to worry about the path that he’s on. and that’s true, to a certain extent. to everyone, including her in the beginning, yeojeong is perfectly friendly. he’s perfect, but not the perfect that people perceive as too perfect (i.e. the guy who’s hiding things); he has his moments where he spazzes out, gets into fights, goes crazy over dongeun texting him back, teases his mom. he’s perfectly well adjusted (a perfect contrast to dongeun’s ‘maladjustment’). he wears flip flops to work and gets the same coffee order daily. he plays go with old men in the park.

he likes to listen to the fizzing of vitamin tablets in water because it calms him down. is this a strange thing? only because he thinks it’s important enough to mention to his therapist. he does it at work too - drops the tablet in, closes his eyes, rests his head. he does it at home - drops the tablet in, opens the drawer, draws a knife. it’s about the noise. bubbles rising to the surface, like bubbles rising from underwater. he stays underwater until the last possible moment, when he has to break the surface in order to breath. dongeun makes him feel like he’s at the eye of a storm - a deceptively calm center, while everything else rages outside. and i think it’s kind of important that he makes that comparison, when he’s someone always seeking that calm. the soothing noise, that makes him feel lonely.

so he’s just a normal guy. a normal guy who receives letters on a regular basis from the prisoner who brutally murdered his father. he doesn’t like letters, he tells dongeun. who knows what he does with the letters - does he keep them? does he throw them away as soon as he sees them? he must have read some of them; maybe you only need to read one to know what is in the rest. maybe he’s still reading them; maybe he keeps them without reading, an invisible torment. it’s not what he does with the letters that matters, but that he receives letters at all. 

can you still call it a haunting if you’ve almost made your peace with it? if you’re living with it? 

he’s just a normal guy, who looks his therapist right in the eyes and tells her that she couldn’t fix him. he diligently attends therapy for years on a regular basis, even though it doesn’t work. he finally abandons it when he moves to semyeong, because he chooses to embrace dongeun’s revenge. he chooses his own revenge, too, in a way. the dark part of him that he can’t escape. the one that makes him pick up the knife, who asks dongeun who to kill before she even tells him she wants any of them dead, even when he’s a doctor from a family of doctors, and doctors don’t kill - they save lives instead. 

you couldn’t fix me, he tells his therapist calmly. so calmly. as if there’s not a bloodied man sitting next to him, a man he dreams of killing. the man is just life to him, just like the letters are life to him to. a dulled numbness. an acceptance of it. 

is your son going through hell? can you even tell it’s hell, if it’s what you’ve become used to? is it hell when you’re a doctor dreaming of murder? is it hell to no longer be tormented by dead men and living murderers who send you letters? is it?

[iamthedevilsminion]

You mentioned you had thoughts on art in iwtv? Something about Louis and photography?

yes, i did! in this post, i had a brief aside about louis and photography in comparison to daniel. a quick warning, i'm pretty black and white about good and bad art in this, that's not something that works in life about art. for the sake of this though, bear with me.

art and vampires is a really interesting topic; almost all the main cast has some point of connection to the arts. marius and painting, lestat with acting and music, louis with photography, armand with directing the theatre. claudia and journalling. i'm going to count daniel's journalism here too, i'll come back to that a little later.

specifically, these are all ways to connect to the world around them, and almost all of them fail spectacularly. marius' works haven't really survived him, he is an unknown name among his venetian contemporaries. lestat is not perceived as being "a real vampire", instead someone running off the clout of daniel's book. louis is desperately trying to connect to the world, but the only "good" work of his portfolio is someone else's.

and a very specific aspect of their artworks are an attempt to mimic, capture, and connect to life and living. and even more specifically, they're all failing.

marius as a painter, had to stage his references. each painting is a facsimile of a staged moment. it's noted that his works are often references to other, more esteemed painters. he has the skill, but is missing the eye required. marius is only ever creating imitations. there is no connection there, no understanding. his work is beautiful, certainly, he loved his aesthetics and maintained them through painting, but it is, at the end of it, a failed connection. he isn't actually interacting with the world, with life and humanity, he's still locked away in his tower crafting an idea of life that he thinks looks beautiful to the eye.

lestat, as an actor, is always performing; all the world's a stage. there is a struggle for genuine connections because he cannot move beyond the role he's assigned himself. his interactions with humans is coloured by the the person he is attempting to be within those interactions, and it leaves him unable to be genuine. we get little flashes of him being honest, such as the conversation with louis' family in early s1, with big emotions, but there is always an element of public performance. when he becomes a rock star, his attempts at honesty are twisted on him because of the book. it's not the vampire lestat, it's lestat the vampire from the book interview with the vampire. it's twisted into another role to play. a chance at connection lost.

armand is interesting, as he's been the subject of paintings, never true manifestations of himself, but as a role, an aesthetic. then, of course, he also directs -- and sometimes performs -- at the théâtre des vampires. he structures the performance in the same way that he leads conversations. there is an ideal outcome, a way that allows the audience the best experience, that portrays the right themes. his interactions with everyone are played like this. he pulls the strings; once more with feeling. there is no connection there, he sees players, not people. even the way he hunts has a script; gentleman death. armand also seeks this in other people. i've spoken about it a lot here, how he tries to live vicariously through other people, and i think this is only exemplified by his attitudes as a director.

louis' photography is the most literal translation to completely missing the point of his form. photography is meant to capture moments; there is something about photography as a medium that works so well in a connecting with humanity and life. to take a photo, and make the moment live forever. however for louis, it isn't. the best shot he captures in the show is a moment of vulnerability from armand, a spur of the moment shot that does successfully capture him. but he captured an immortal, his subject is going to live forever. and he walks each night looking for photographs to take. his camera is up at all times, he is not living in the moment, not living life. he's put a literal barrier between him and the world at large.

another little aside, but there's also something to be said about the way louis views art, as a dealer. he isn't viewing artwork for arts sake, he is looking at it for profit, and i think this is also a big tell about how he views the world.

daniel is an interesting aspect of this. he has spent his life succeeding at connecting with life. looking for stories about people who have slipped through the cracks. he knows people, how they live, how they love. he's seen the worst and best of humanity, and how complicated people are, and i think that while he has a distance between him and his subjects, there is a connection there that the others cannot make. this makes his transition into vampirism really interesting; will he maintain this level of connection? will he keep living? can he?

[benevolenterrancy]

*glances at svsss' vol 4 worth of extras, aka 'the whump and smut pile'* you haven't seen anything yet

You guys are seriously taking an axe to my self-control;;; I'm trying to make this series last longer than a single month!! I'm trying to savour things!!! I'm trying to read something else and give the series a bit of breathing room before I pick up the last book but I want the "whump and smut pile" I want that so much I feel like a dog that's getting a treat waved in front of its face .·´¯`(；´д｀)´¯`·.

[deoidesign]

Guys you're not gonna believe this. The books are wrong again

At least this time I didn't even get half of them and half of what I did get was damaged...? So I only have another 70 books to deal with... This time they're soft touch......

I've got so many of book 2 it's not even funny

[dangerous-advantage]

(Image description below 'read more' line.)

[Image ID: A four-by-four alignment chart on a white background with text descriptions to the left and to the top of the squares.

The top left description reads, "seems like they'd be good at parenting." The top right description reads, "seems like they'd be bad at parenting."

Then, from the top down, to the left of the squares, the other set of descriptions reads: "excellent child rearing instincts," and "never trust them with a child in your life."

Each of the four squares contains an image of a different character. At the top left is an image of Lan Wangji of the Mo Dao Zu Shi donghua. He sits between the descriptors "seems like they'd be good at parenting," and "excellent child rearing instincts."

In the top right square sits an image of Wei Wuxian, also of the Mo Dao Zu Shi donghua. He sits between the junction of "seems like they'd be bad at parenting" and "excellent child rearing instincts."

In the bottom left square is an image of Xie Lian from the Tian Guan Ci Fu manhua. He occupies the square with the captions, "seems like they'd be good at parenting" and "never trust them with a child in your life."

Finally, in the bottom left square, sits an image of Hua Cheng from the Tian Guan Ci Fu manhua. He occupies the junction between "seems like they'd be bad at parenting" and "never trust them with a child in your life". /End ID]

[the-eclectic-wonderer]

I mean, who hasn't lovingly grabbed their best friend's hips while reassuring them of their innocence

[invinciblerodent]

hang on, this was a very out of pocket thought I had in like, tags on a thing, but fuck, it's actually very sweet to think about the PC early on in their relationship picking and pressing flowers for Karlach

like as a "I saw this and thought of you, but I couldn't give it to you then, so I saved it for when you can enjoy it too"? adorable.

I'm kind of really into this idea of Mara keeping a journal in her attempts to recover her memories, and also pressing flowers between the pages. I'd have to work out the specifics of how their relationship is going to work out once I get there in act 3 (I tried not to spoil myself, but something tells me a romanced Karlach is gonna be pretty upset about Gortash greeting her lover so warmly so maybe an apology gift will be needed), but the idea of the two of them going through a book-bouquet together, almost as kind of a "the person he knew is not who I am anymore, this is who I am, this is the me who loves you" thing is really sweet

like.

"this one is from near where we first met- look, this leaf is even singed where your heat had touched it, like it touched me."

"this one is from just outside camp, and I picked it the night I told you I liked you, because I was just so happy."

"this is from near Rosymorn, when I looked at you just enjoying the breeze, and thought that you looked particularly beautiful."

"this is the prettiest flower I could find near Reithwin, and it may be a pathetic, wretched little thing, but it still grew stubbornly where it wasn't supposed to, and it reminded me of how your love took root in my heart."

"this one is my favorite color, and I wasn't sure why I thought that until I realized it's the same color as your eyes."

and so on and so on.

i'm about to chew gravel istg

[yoonyia]

should i read ender’s game

did you just ask the enders game fanatic if someone should read enders game

seriously

what the hell do you expect me to answer

no????

I dont know it depends on what type of media you like and how much time and energy you have????

it depends on how much resources you're willing to devote to the books since it's about 20 books for the entire enderverse, and even if you only want to read enders game itself it still is a big commitment????

probably not cause you gotta either pirate the books, get em second hand or suffer the guilt of supporting someone who compared Obama to Hitler?????

I mean obviously the answer is yes you should read enders game

[siflshonen]

Katsuki Bakugo, I miss you so much.

[aroaessidhe]

2024 reads / storygraph

Màgòdiz

post-apocalyptic dystopia set in a dying future world where people are subjugated and controlled by a spiritual power

a group of 6 Indigenous two spirit & queer people traveling across the land to save one of their own who’s been kidnapped & attempting to free their people from subjugation

the last storyteller who keeps stories on her skin on the run with her lover, a healer and their firekeeper partner, a rebel who takes care of orphan children in the city and the brainwashed enforcer xe captures & eventually deprograms

navigating relationships and family & cultural history

[bumblingbabooshka]

Live Fast & Prosper

[wonder-worker]

J.L. Laynesmith taking the 'Buckingham Did It™' route for the murder of the Princes in the Tower AND the rumors of Edward IV's bastardy ... I have to laugh

[tittysuckersworld]

pinning so its seen-

sorry for not being as mentally ill on here/posting as much art/finnishing the peices i promised- i sadly have gotten myself a life for the next few weeks and am dieging. please send curses and blights my way so i can stop existing-

[july-19th-club]

there's a guy who i dont work with but who works from my building as a consultant for a job-center type organization, and whenever he comes in he like. sets such a good example of patience, compassion, good manners, and...i dont know, gentleness that it makes me try harder not to be irritable or impatient with patrons. two totally different jobs, we never even speak unless he's asking for the stapler or we're saying hi and bye on his way in and out of the building, but every thursday good old boring average chris shows up to set up his laptop at one of our public tables and meet clients, and he's so goddamn nice i'm like okay i have to be nice too . so thanks chris