I've slacked off quite a bit so far to-day, choosing to watch the 1939 Alfred Hitchcock movie Jamaica Inn at three on TCM--I can't tape movies anymore because the cable's gotten weird in this room.
Jamaica Inn's not bad at all. It has beautiful, expressionistic sets that look half Disney and half Murnau. Hitchcock's pitch perfect talent for editing and pacing was fully there, and Maureen O'Hara, in her first role, has never looked better. The best part of the movie, though, is Charles Laughton as Sir Humphrey, who comes off as a sort of corrupt and finally insane caricature of Oscar Wilde--or, perhaps, for the covetous yet cruel way he approaches Maureen O'Hara's character, a dark avatar for Hitchcock himself. The movie's based on a book by Daphne Du Maurier, and the story has the broad strokes favouring the female character, having her making rebellious decisions that often end up saving the day where no-one thinks it can be saved. But a lot of these decisions seem to come from only barely logical motives, while Laughton emerges as a charming and intriguingly complicated and corrupt nobleman.
I watched Keith Olbermann after that, who I think has accurately predicted the end of the Harry Potter books.
Well, I supposed I'd better go and do some grocery shopping before getting some writing done. But before I do, is anyone else irritated and perplexed by all the love a xenophobic, capitalist homophobe named Ron Paul has been getting?
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