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A couple of days ago The Boston Globe had an article about a new book that Christopher Tolkien has assembled, called Children of Húrin.  It’s based on fragmentary writings by his father, J.R.R. Tolkien.  If the link above doesn’t work, you can read the article by clicking here.

I have an LP that is unquestionably purely J.R.R. Tolkien.  His narration of “Riddles in the Dark,” from The Hobbit.  The recording provided here is from August, 1952 and it’s half an hour long.  It begins with the introduction of Gollum, and it ends with Gollum’s cursing of Bilbo (“Thief!”).

I mentioned the late British director Michael Powell again in a recent post.  Now I see another blogger has posted several items about Black Narcissus.

This inspired me to transfer two scenes from the movie and splice them together.  For myself, what makes Black Narcissus great is the always excellent Deborah Kerr and the absolutely breathtaking performance by Kathleen Byron.  A case can be made for this cat fight being melodramatic and over-the-top, but for me it’s mesmerizing.

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Click the picture to see an ad currently running in the local daily paper. I don’t know why Bob Weir of the Grateful Dead chose the name RatDog for his band, but the domain name rat-dog.com was registered six months before I bought DogRat.com in January, 2000. Some months after doing that, I received e-mail from a public relations firm in NYC asking to buy the name. I replied and said name a price, but I never heard back. Whether or not they may have been representing RatDog, I assume a certain percentage of hits my home page receives are from stoned Dead Heads who got it backwards.

The answer to the “Name the Actress” question is HELEN MIRREN.  The picture of Mirren at age 22 is from Age of Consent, one of the last movies made by director Michael Powell.

Laurel and Hardy don’t exist, I fear, for folks who are very much younger than myself.  And that’s a shame.  Let’s watch what is perhaps their finest silent movie, Big Business (1929).

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