Paul C. Dobbs

That's a fascinating interview, really good on what it means to write. She's a wonderful voice

Big Thief: ‘We want to take the shame out of sex. It’s been trashed in our culture’ The alt-folk band say their latest album is 'a record about everything': birth and death, grief, love and longing – and reclaiming the gentler side of lovemaking

I sat down with my favourite writer, and her band. We talked about love and language and healing and sex. inews.co.uk/culture/musi...

Yeah, more roles like that would have been a better fit for him

What scenes. Dorothy Malone looked better with the glasses though

Lon Jr's tragedy was that he aimed for horror but had a really funny hangdog face. He didn't take after his dad at all in that department

Just spent a couple of hours on the drum pads. Trying to stay in that zone where you can't hear the metronome cos your beat is spot on. It's uncanny and weirdly lonely when you can't hear the clicks though. Think that's what keeps dragging me forward a split second

Man, The Hotspot is amazing. And that soundtrack! John Lee Hooker and Miles Davis, incredible stuff

Yeah, all good, Red Rock West too

Those two movies would be a great double bill. I might line them up myself. I haven't seen them either of them in 30 years and it'd really take me back

I have dabbled in drumming so I know how hard it is. Stuart Copeland knocks me right out

He's *clean* he's mean. Is that a typo?

YouTube video by ThePoliceVEVO The Police - Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic (Official Music Video)

Needed a bit of proper drumming after that. I listen to this record a lot purely for the drumming. The playout takes up about half the running time (bit like More Than This by Roxy) and the drumming on it is STRATOSPHERIC

youtu.be/aENX1Sf3fgQ?...

I couldn't believe what I was hearing. He sounds like he's on ket

YouTube video by hatleman2 Love Me Do (with Pete Best) - The Beatles -

This is incredible, never heard it before. Why The Beatles sacked Pete Best

youtu.be/JJ5RXX9n_Bw?...

Oh you should, I just did and loved it. 'Marvelous' and 'preposterous' sums it up pretty well! And you're right, Walter Huston playing it straight looks like he's dropped in from another film, but even that works, somehow

Gene Tierney looking pale and frightful, her hair a mess, and eyes wide as if she's just had an existential shock

By then Poppy has sunk so low she’s doomed. Von Sternberg painted her lips white for this, but he didn’t need to. The real change is in the eyes, what’s behind them, and even her bone structure somehow. Poppy ranges three different characters in this film and Gene Tierney gets right inside them all

A middle-aged dignified looking man, Walter Huston, looking stern and determined

A woman in yellow-face, Ona Munson. She has exotic makeup and a bizarre hairdo that looks a bit like curly snakes coming out of her head. She looks formidable

There's a sort of showdown at the end between Walter Huston as a Sir Guy Charteris and Ona Munson as Mother Gin Sling. You wouldn't bet against either of them would you

Gene, hair tousled, obviously drunk, perched on a bar and lifting her leg up to kick stuff off it

Gene later developed a sort of languid, less-is-more style. Film writer Dan Callahan called it an almost sleepwalking style. Here though, she turns it up to eleven as Poppy, the pristine society sunk down in the gutter, addicted to drink, gambling, and Victor Mature

Victor and Gene in a clinch. He's raising up his gown as a screen before going in for a kiss

I'm still not really sure what "the Shanghai gesture" actually is but I'm going to take a guess at Victor's crafty screen work here

Gene Tierney, still supernaturally beautiful, talking to Victor Mature, still in the fez and gown

Omar: I am related to all the earth, and nothing that's human is foreign to me.

Poppy: Do you come here often?

Victor is the perfect leading man for the von Sternberg dreamworld. I can never quite believe he’s real. He's so picturesque here, at home with the artificiality, and he clearly loves prancing about in this ridiculous getup. I can't see any other actor in this role

Victor Mature looking suave in a fez and some sort of fancy flowing gown over his white tie

I'll have the chef send you up a brace of thousand year old eggs. Do you like them soft or scrambled?"

Victor Mature as Doctor Omar, “a doctor of nothing”, given to spouting Omar Khayyam and bits of Terence.

Gene Tierney in close-up looking supernaturally beautiful

After losing Dietrich, how happy von Sternberg must have been to find Gene. The first half of the film is full of lingering loving close-ups like this and she deserves them all. Like Dietrich’s, that face is restless even when still, and you’re never sure where it’s going next

Poster for The film. Victor Mature in a few in a hot clinch with Gene Tierney. Tagline reads: Shanghai where almost anything can happen... and does

“It’s only someone trying to shoot himself. It’s Saturday night.”

The Shanghai Gesture (1941). Feverish melodrama set in a Shanghai casino. Tasty script, ace cast doing brilliant work, and all about as real as dolls in a dolls’ house. Which is just what you want from a von Sternberg joint

Thanks! I will have a look

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I couldn't disagree with this more. If you just have one big picture on each slide, PPT is brilliant, like the sort of old fashioned slide-show lecture Captain Mainwaring would do in the church hall

Yeah, absolutely top-tier. A horrifying performance

Poster for Palookaville

Palookaville is terrific and never got enough love. "They fought the law. The law didn't notice"

I haven't read this but I've read a few others by WSM. He explores his characters really well and you feel them as real people. I thought this adaptation never really got to the bottom of Larry though. I do have the book and have been meaning to read it for ages. Must bump it up