Huston, We Have Amalgam


Just imagine Humphrey Bogart playing Sam Spade as Sam Wilson — a 1941 version
of Sam Wilson, private eye turned Captain America’s unofficial and unorthodox partner.

Fake movie poster in vintage style: Warner Bros. and Republic Present / Humphrey Bogart / Dick Purcell / with Mary Astor, Peter Lorre, and Gladys George / a John Huston film / Captain America and the Maltese Falcon

That’s what I did in this mockup for the mashup Captain America and the Maltese Falcon. Ever since brainstorming the title a couple of years ago for a hashtag game on Twitter, I’ve found its Reese’s Peanut-Butter Cup potential hard to shake.

Don Pardo 1918-2014


Don Pardo at microphone
Photo: Al Levine for NBC © 1982.

What’s most surprising about Don Pardo’s passing on Monday is either half of
this sentence taken with the other: He was 96 and still working as the primary voice
of Saturday Night Live.

Lauren Bacall 1924-2014


Lauren Bacall standing by a piano as musicians and others look on
Cropped image from To Have and Have Not © 1944 Warner Bros. Pictures.

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Robin Williams 1951-2014


That was a really difficult post title to type.

Robin Williams as Mork
Original photo: Jim Britt for ABC © 1978.

I was introduced to Robin Williams, who died on Monday at 63, as Mork from Ork
— first on Happy Days; then, of course, on Mork & Mindy. Although I’m two decades younger, I aged with him, through his stand-up and dramatic roles and talk-show appearances and film comedies and, just this past year, his return to network TV.

Which I think is a big part of why his death hits so hard.

Mr., Mrs., Missing


As I think I’ve said here before, I prefer to have a nice buffer between reading books
and watching the movies on which they’re based — with the book, ideally, coming first.

The film adaptation of Gillian Flynn’s Gone Girl is scheduled to open in early October, so I’m glad to have finished the novel last week. I don’t want to spoil even a bit of it for those who haven’t, but I will say that it’s both a page-turner of a mystery and a surprisingly dark, incisive look at domestic partnership.

While I’m not sure whether the film attempts to evoke the book’s structure, I suspect
by dint of that alone they’ll be different enough works that you could pick up the book in the next few weeks and have the movie feel like its own thing when it rolls out. I’m still chewing on the controversial ending; I recommend the book, though, and hope to read Flynn’s previous novels sometime.



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