Setsuled's Journal

Not feeling great. I think it was the breadsticks with Frappacino I had earlier. Perhaps it was the new Wal-Mart next door. In any case, gahk.

Last night I watched the absolutely wonderful Shanghai Express. A few minutes in, I realised I wasn't in the mood for a movie but I still loved it. I finally understand Marlene Dietrich's charm--before this I'd only seen her in Manpower (made in the early 1940s) and Witness for the Prosecution (made in the mid-1950s). Both were good movies. Dietrich was subtle and cool in the former and scarily, hideously thin in the latter. But in Shanghai Express, made in 1932, she was absolutely ravishing. The film, and Dietrich in particular, is beautifully shot.

It also was nice to see a Chinese movie star, Anna May Wong, in the 1930s. And playing a really cool, really deadly character, too. Reading up on her, I discovered she was in a mid-1930s production of A Study in Scarlett. It is a Sherlock Holmes movie, and A Study in Scarlett is the title of the first Sherlock Holmes novel but, of course, similarities end there. It's too bad a faithful adaptation seems destined never to be filmed, what with over-zealous political correctness. So what if it demonises Mormons? The Church of Latter Day Saints actually is kind of scary.

No offense to any Mormons reading. We're all of us kind of scary, after all.