Stanley Kubrick’s "Lolita"

Note: My thoughts on Lolita were originally posted in my sidebar and was written a few weeks ago.

I really enjoyed Kubrick’s 1962 version of Lolita. Shelley Winters blew me away as Charlotte Haze, Lolita’s mother. I’d seen Winters in The Night of the Hunter, another great movie, but she wasn’t onscreen for very long. Winters played Charlotte as both a disgusting and pitiful woman.

James Mason was also excellent as Humbert Humbert. His Humbert struck me as being a much more despicable than Jeremy Irons’s Humbert in Adrian Lyne’s version of the story. Now that I think about it, I would say the same goes for the two Lolitas. I could sympathize with Dominique Swain’s Lolita, but as far as I can remember, Sue Lyon’s Lolita was closer to the precocious brat depicted in Nabokov’s novel.

"Shiri" and "Lost"

I was rewatching the Korean movie Shiri last night, just the conclusion — so sad — and realized that the actress who plays the movie’s female protagonist is on the show “Lost.” Though Yoon-Jin Kim speaks with a foreign accent on “Lost,” she grew up on Staten Island, attended the High School of Performing Arts (the school in Fame) and earned an acting degree from Boston University. Anyway, I thought that was interesting how an Asian-American actress would end up playing a foreigner on an American show. At least “Lost” is careful with character development, and I appreciate the fact that two Asians feature so prominently on a primetime sitcom.

Munchkins

I’ve wondered before why one doesn’t see the amount of physical variation in domestic cats that one sees in dogs. Although domestic cats can have different kinds of coats and face shapes among other things, all the cats I’ve seen, in particular the domestic shorthair cats that dominate shelters, are about the same size.

Then I found out about the munchkin. A fairly new breed, the munchkin is relatively normal in size and appearance except for its very short legs. The cat kind of looks like the feline version of a dachschund. I’ve read that munchkins move quickly like ferrets and exhibit a similar playful nature. Apparently the shortness of their legs is due to a random mutation.

Odds and Ends

I’ve had to interview some children this week for two articles I’m writing. One child, a nine-year-old girl in Georgia, was flawlessly polite on the phone. She would say “yes, ma’am” and “no, ma’am.” When I finished questioning her, I asked her if her teacher wanted to talk to me. She answered, “I don’t reckon.” That’s not something one hears up in the North.

Today I talked to another kid, this one an eleven-year-old in Nevada. He also used “ma’am” at the end of his answers. It made me feel old; at the same time, I appreciated the fact that they were so well-mannered. I know I wasn’t that articulate when I was their age.

And people thought I was crazy with my big raver pants. Hammacher Schlemmer is selling upside-down Christmas trees this holiday season, which just seems wrong (even though it is an old tradition in some parts of the world). NPR did a story on it today.

Tompkins Square Dog Run Halloween Parade Photos

I’ve posted on Flickr another set of photos that I took. The photos are from this year’s Tompkins Square Dog Run Halloween Parade.