Went the Day Well?
I doubt there will be a more amusing headline today than this one from nypost.com, although it Depends (rimshot): “SpaceX astronauts forced to wear diapers on ride home due to broken toilet.”
Let’s beat the dead horse again, from an NYP editorial: “In Europe, emissions in 2020 were 26% below 1990 levels. In the United States, emissions in 2020 were 22% below 2005 levels.” And this from another editorial: “A century ago, ‘almost half a million people died on average each year from storms, floods, droughts, wildfires and extreme temperatures.’ Now, ‘global annual deaths from these causes declined 96%, to 18,000. In 2020, they dropped to 14,000.’ And in 2021, only ‘5,500 people have died from climate-related disasters. Incredibly, almost 99% less than the death toll a century ago.’” Of course this will be ignored by the mainstream media and politicians who use climate change as a ploy to redistribute wealth.
And on the Covid front, gleaned from an article by Caitlin McFall at foxbusiness.com: future Hall of Fame QB Aaron Rodgers of the Green Bay Packers is being criticized not only for not having been vaxxed but for comments he has made since testing positive. He has also been taking Ivermectin, which the FDA has advised against. He said: “I’m not an anti-vaxx, flat-earther…I have an allergy to an ingredient that’s in the mRNA vaccines. I found a long-term immunization protocol to protect myself, and I’m very proud of the research that went into that.” He has been dropped by Prevea Health, for which he had been a spokesman since 2012.
Friday night’s movie fix, Went the Day Well? (1942), courtesy of Netflix by mail, fooled me, as I thought it may have been a historical event I’d missed. It’s actually a rousing work of propaganda adapted by three writers from a story by Graham Greene. The title comes from an epitaph to those who died in battle, written by classical scholar John Maxwell Edmonds, first published in The Times in 1918: “Went the day well? We died and never knew. But well or ill, Freedom, we died for you.” The story is simple. A group of German paratroopers posing as Brits plan to pave the way for a large invasion of the country. Once they are found out, brutal Nazi behavior comes to the fore. Eventually, the townsfolk answer in kind, gleefully vicious in some instances. It is a neat microcosm of WWII, directed by Alberto Cavalcanti, a Brazilian who emigrated first to France, where his film career began, then to the UK. I recognized none of the actors. 3500+ users at IMDb have rated Went…, forging to a consensus of 7.5 on a scale of ten. Shot in black and white, it takes its time getting going. Once it does it’s entertaining, although the action isn’t as crisp as in modern films. There is very little bloodletting, but the mayhem is captured perfectly, especially the shots in darkness. It runs 92 minutes. Cavalcanti is best known for his direction of one of the segments of Dead of Night (1945), The Ventriloquist’s Dummy, which influenced future flicks using one. Here’s a still from Went…?:
Great weather returned, and the floating book shop did well thanks to the gentleman who settled his rather large tab, and to the woman who did a swap and buy of Russian books; and to the young woman who bought The Giver by Lois Lowry; and to the guy who purchased The Aeneid by Virgil and The Trial and Death of Socrates by Plato; and to Bill, who took home The Cat Inside by gonzo journalist William S. Burroughs.
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