Lunar year 2023 is a Year of the Cat on the Vietnamese zodiac, from January 22, 2023 to February 9, 2024. Cat is the fourth sign in the ancient Vietnamese Zodiac. Did Al Stewart see this as a convenient title for his song in the late 1970s??
I had no idea these celebrations were so widespread in the USA. The congregation of St. Mother Teresa of Calcutta Parish at St. Therese Chinese Catholic Church in Chinatown-Chicago. watches as a lion dance is performed down the aisle to begin a Lunar New Year celebration before Mass on Sunday. It marked the beginning of the Year of the Rabbit.
Al Stewart was born in Greenock, Scotland and has resided in Santa Monica, CA since the 1980s. The other Stewart tune I like to spin is Broadway Hotel.
Greenock reached its population peak in 1921 (81,123) and has been in the 40K range for a while. The French Vauquelin class destroyer Maillé Brézé blew up off Greenock with a heavy loss of life following an accident involving two of her own torpedoes.
Feb 18, 2023
I watched a good bit of Cleo from 5-7, a French new wave film(1962), which featured Corinne Marchand as a model wondering around Paris pondering her mortality. I was more intrigued by her buddy played by Dorothee Black. Photography of Paris was great.
March 13, 2023
A Flight to Berlin(1984), is a quirky, so-so flick, but Tusse Silberg as Susannah maintained my interest with her looks and her mannerisms, plus she was given solid lines. Susannah, who signed the hotel register as Marianne, may or may not have pushed a woman down the steps in England and flew to Berlin to see her sister. No answers given to the audience on the possible crime. Plenty of Berlin street scenes shown including.
May 7, 2023
I was caught off guard yesterday while flicking though the channels and found, The Sunset, a movie about milliners and more in 1913 Budapest. Lazlo Nemes, the director, filmed it in a style that reminded me of silent films with a heavy focus on facial expressions. Irisz Leiter, a milliner, returns to Budapest with the intention of learning more about her family, who once owned Leiter, a women's hat store. The dialogue is minimal, but you sense that the Austro-Hungarian Empire is nervous about it 's future.
1) Is Irisz' newly discovered brother Kalman, an anarchist?
2) Did he kill Count Redey whose wealthy, drug-addicted widow now hosts musical soirees for the cream of society? Yes, I would have liked more focus on the Countess played by Julia Jakubowska
3) Is the Leiter store a grooming ground for courtesans?
I didn't get many answers but remain intrigued by the flick.
July 3, 2023
After watching a WW1 doc yesterday, I'm calling it a tie between Italy and Bulgaria for changing partners during the decade of 1910-1919.
July 9. 2023
Watching Vienna Blood and loving the outside shots that were filmed in Vienna and Budapest. The Vienna basin was a nodal point of ancient trade and military routes. It linked north and south along an ancient road that ran southward from the Baltic and linked east and west along the Danube.
July 29, 2023
Keeping it light: wooden nickels were common advertising tools in the 19th and 20th centuries that could sometimes be redeemed for a beverage, etc.
Sept 18, 2023
Four 1,900-year-old Roman' swords were discovered in a remote cave near the Dead Sea. They were possible stash from rebels in Judea.
Oct 5. 2023
Not sure what to make of Saint Laurent promoting the jumpsuit. Models paraded in sling-back heels, modeling pencil skirts, and roomy-legged trousers-cinched at the waist.
Oct 28. 2023
Pagan Peak, Gedeon Winter character remains intriguing. The sub plots of clashes between Winter(Austria) and Ellie(Germany) is over the top at times. Ritualistic murders in the German-Austrian borderlands and the frequent convening of a cross-border Soko provide a taste of slightly different TV possibilities. Some are great and some fall back into TV cop-show cliches.
Nov 19, 2023
I watched an episode of Paris Police 1900 on Amazon Prime and was intrigued by the wealthy ladies carrying small boxes with a syringe and a vial of heroin. The main themes are Police corruption and the rise of anti Semitism.
Evelyne Brochu portrays Marguerite Steinheil, a well-paid police informant.
Eugénie Derouand portrays Jeanne Chauvin, who eventually became a lawyer during a time period when women weren't allowed to become lawyers.
Dec 5, 2023
Pumpkin regattas- news to me. Tualatin, Oregon, Kasterlee, Belgium.
Dec 14, 2023
Parsa, a city in modern day Iran, was the capital of the Persian empire of kings Cyrus, Darius and Xerxes. It was eventually destroyed by Alexander the Great, and the once majestic city fell into ruin, known by locals only as “the place of the forty columns” for over 1000 years before being rediscovered in the 1600s.
March 10, 2024
Intrigued by Natalie Madueño in the Danish TV series, Those Who Kill. She's a profiler and her interactions with her dad feel extremely cold.
April 7, 2024
Kari Sorjonen, played by Ville Virtanen, is an interesting detective in the Finnish TV series BorderTown. The show reminds me just how thin the Russia/Finland border is.
Matleena Kuusniemi plays his wife.
June 2, 2024
Hanne Mathisen Haga plays Maya Angell, a profiler in Outlier, a 2021 TV series set in Norway. She battles to solve a serial murder case, and it was refreshing to see her portrayed warts and all.
Saddest part was when she was having a booze pity party ,and the character Elle brought her info that was helpful to solving the case and she never gave her the chance to state it. Elle left her house and later got in a car with the killer and became his last victim.
Aug, 4, 2024
The Riddle of the Sands, a 1971 flick about Germany's naval plans to invade England near Harwich in 1901 is amusing.
British yachtsman Davies stumbles on a German naval plot to attack England while touring the Frisian Islands
He and Carruthers manage to derail the plans far too easily, but it's only a movie.
I enjoyed seeing a young Jenny Agutter.
Aug 11, 2024
Jim Carrey as a Polish cop(Tadek) ,whose need for justice leads to his death ,was a bit over the top at times, but Dark Crimes(2018) is worth watching . Particularly for Charlotte Gainsbourg(Kasia).
Tadek notices similarities between a cold case murder of a businessman and a best-selling novel by Marton Csokas (Kozlov) and is hellbent to nail him. However, he gets it wrong , loses his family, and drinks a concoction that kills him while Kasia is telling him she is the killer .
Aug 18, 2024
Life in the Czech Republic or Austrian -Hungarian Empire was an occasional topic of The Prague Mysteries TV series set in the 1920s.
Inspector Budik , a city cop gets a top job on the outskirts of Prague and is not happy trading in his dress shoes for tall boots.
Decent plots. Great photo shoots of Prague. Sabina Rojková, who plays the step-daughter of Chief Inspector Budík is an intriguing actress.
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