Robert Mitchum

Oh, nothing.
Just felt my blog was incomplete without a photo of Bob. [Later: I forgot I'd already posted one here.]
I was looking for one of him smoking a cigarette, because he's a handy man with a Zippo, but couldn't find one I wanted. So you get an airbrushed pretty Valentine instead.
He makes me feel exquisitely dissatisfied with life...

If you want, you can read smart film-y things about Robert Mitchum, from the BFI.

I've spent a few hours today reading other people's film blogs and wondering why I didn't study film formally. In fact, I thought I would when I was a teenager in Madison, WI, where the U had a film studies program. But when I went to college here, there was no such thing. I ended up, eventually, with a BA in Religious Studies (at the time, a withering branch of the Classics Dept.), which is somewhat the same thing.
I mean, it's nothing new to say movies are stories we tell ourselves to make sense of existence, and the actors are our saints and sinners.

And now I'm off to see Up, which will make me happy if it's one-quarter as good as WALL-E.