This includes the last two films I will ever mail back to Netflix. I got a couple more but they’ve given us the greenlight to keep them.
1950s SF film expert Bill Warren likes THE H-MAN (1958), though he prefers the edited-for-American-release version. I watched that one some years back and didn’t care for it but the Japanese version I watched recently isn’t much better.
After a man mysteriously vanishes in a drenching rain, leaving his clothes behind, several more people disappear, not necessarily in the rain, but also leaving their clothes. It turns out a petty crook was exposed to radiation at sea from American hydrogen bomb tests (this may have been inspired by the case of the Daigo Fukuryu Maru) transforming him into a gelatinous blob — he can take humanoid form occasionally — that dissolves anyone he touches. He’s out to settle some scores but the cops are determined to stop him, somehow. As Warren says, this version is much more of a crime thriller (though not very thrilling) with some monster elements mixed in. “Did he disappear using some ninja technique?”
Pedro Almodovar’s MATADOR (1986) opens with a retired matador (injuries forced him out) getting sexual relief from watching snuff films. Other equally messed-up characters include an aspiring rapist with crippling Catholic guilt and a female attorney who gets sexual satisfaction from murder during sex. This has the elements to make a twisted black comedy but it never comes to life and left me either bored or offended.“First they rape you, then they have to talk about it.”
I had high hopes for LEAVE HER TO HEAVEN (1945) in which Gene Tierney falls in love at first sight with novelist Cornel Wilde. He soon reciprocates but after they tie the knot it becomes obvious she’s hostile to anyone who can claim even a smidgen of his love, whether it’s her sweeter sister (Jeanne Crain) or Wilde’s paraplegic brother. This has one truly memorable moment, when Tierney coldbloodedly watches the brother drown but otherwise this didn’t work for me at all. Wilde’s bland in his role and Tierney is too glossy and reserved to make her neurotic role work (she’s much better in The Mating Season). And for the record, Wilde dedicating his first post-marriage book to Crain rather than to his wife strikes me as really bad form. Vincent Price plays Tierney’s dismayed ex-boyfriend. “Do you mean to say you got all that just from reading my book?”
A quartet of soldiers wander into A FIELD IN ENGLAND (2014) during the English Civil War where they talk, take craps, tug on a rope, trip on mushrooms and in general take up a lot of time with hollow artiness. In fairness, several critics loved this or at least admired it but I could have done without ever watching it.
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Snowdrop still freaks out if we shut the door on him so we let them nuzzle as much as possible without Wisp getting too close to the open doorway. It’s worked so far.
Nothing knocked off so far.
“A ‘field cannot reward truth if it does not or cannot decipher it, so it rewards other things instead. Interestingness. Novelty. Speed. Impact. Fantasy. And it effectively punishes the opposite. Intuitive Findings. Incremental Progress. Care. Curiosity. Reality.'” — a look at the 
Algae is killing coral reefs. In Florida, scientists are raising crabs to eat the algae.
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WHITE TRASH: The 400-Year Untold History of Class in America by Nancy Isenberg argues that America’s myth of being a class-free society was a lie from the first English colonization efforts, which sought to push “waste people” out of Britain to turn the New World’s virgin land into productive cropland and provide servants to the upper classes. This pattern repeated itself with the westward expansion where the real money and best lands went to speculators rather than the frontier farmers.
Damn, THE HISTORY OF TIME TRAVEL (2014) is the second time I’ve discovered a film I missed when writing Now and Then We Time Travel (the other being the Christian film 
We called in a handyman whose done work on that sort of thing before. He fixed the drawers but it took waaaaay longer than I (or he) expected. And required removing all the DVDs from all the drawers, then replacing them. As I budget a certain amount of task time into my planning, that doesn’t wreck my schedule — if everything goes smoothly, I’ll make it up later in the month.
And Wisp is still doing fine as an inside cat. As you can see, she’s comfortable napping in my lap.
