Jude, Carlyn, Lana & More
Central Park: Hong Kong dragon boat festival, photo from the guardian.com:
Recently, I caught a bit of Black Sea (2014) on one of the Spanish stations. With my Netflix list at zero, I added it and am glad I did. It’s a solid nautical thriller starring Jude Law, the only member of the cast I recognized, although Ben Mendelsohn is an Emmy winner and David Threlfall a nominee. Law plays a bitter divorcee who loses his job. A friend offers him a chance to make big money. He is commissioned to lead a crew, half British, half Russian, in search of Russian gold on a sunken submarine. The sub appropriated by their rich backer is rickety. The group reminded me of The Dirty Dozen (1967), down to a psychopath just as unbalanced but not as showy as Maggot (Telly Savalas). That is the film’s major flaw — who in his right man would allow such a guy in confined quarters. Still, it is a tense ride, well-acted. Dennis Kelly wrote the screenplay. Among his credits, an episode of one of my all-time favorite shows, MI-5. Kevin McDonald directed, an Oscar winner for Best Documentary, Features, One Day in September (2000), which details the murder of Israeli athletes at the ’72 Olympics. 40,000+ users at IMDb have rated Black Sea, forging to a consensus of 6.4 on a scale of ten. It did not fare well at the box office, returning a bit more than $4 million on a budget estimated at eight million pounds. There is violence and profanity, but less than in most modern genre fare. The accent is on suspense, and it is thick. Running time is less than two hours. Here is Law in character, photo from Google Images:
Rip Carlin Glynn, 83. Born in Cleveland, she grew up in Texas. A lifetime member of the famed Actors Studio, she made her Broadway debut in 1979 in The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas, playing the madam, winning a Tony for Outstanding Featured Actress in a Musical, which was directed by her husband Peter Masterson. She also did regional theatre and reprised her award-winning role on the London stage. There are 23 titles under her name at IMDb, including Three Days of the Condor (1975), Resurrection (1980), Sixteen Candles (1984), The Trip to Bountiful (1985), Gardens of Stone (1987). She played Lady Bird Johnson in the two part 1991 mini-series, A Woman Named Jackie. A mom of three, she was married from 1960 until her husband’s death in 2018. She is the mother of actress Mary Stuart Masterson. Well done, Madam. Photo from GI:
I hope this doesn’t happen on this side of the pond, headline from foxnews.com: “Brits skipping on soap to penny-pinch during cost-of-living crisis: report.”
Here’s an interesting item. Singer Lana Del Rey, 38, has been waitressing at a Waffle House in Alabama, motive undisclosed. Photo from GI:
Headline from nypost.com: “Power up: New Yorkers to pay double for Con Ed gas, electricity by 2025 — and will see a steep 9% increase next month.” And in the same vein, from NYP: “Democrats whine about Con Ed hikes caused by their own dumb policies.” And congestion pricing, a revenue grab posed as a curb on greenhouse gases, will soon be in effect in Manhattan.
The humidity was low for the first time in weeks. I put out about 80% of the floating book shop’s inventory. My thanks to the young woman who bought five books in Russian, and to the one who purchased The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson and The Thursday Murder Club by Richard Osman; and to Bill Brown, author of Words and Music: A History of Lou Reed’s Music and other fine books, who took a shot on The Assistant by Bernard Malamud.
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