iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Patrick Murtha @patrickmurtha.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

100% agree, this is the best article on Trump and Trumpism that I have read in a LONG time. A permanent, clarifying contribution to our understanding.

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Patrick Murtha @patrickmurtha.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

From your lips to God’s ears 🙏

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Patrick Murtha @patrickmurtha.bsky.social · 16/09/2026

Amid all the deserved tributes to Annie Dillard today, I have not seen anyone mention Living by Fiction, which is one of the books that has most influenced me, both in my thinking about literature and life, and in the way I try to write. I cannot pay more tribute than that.

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Patrick Murtha @patrickmurtha.bsky.social · 11/08/2026

This was an unused Get Smart script

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Patrick Murtha @patrickmurtha.bsky.social · 31/07/2026

“[Simon Raven] is known for his louche lifestyle as much as for his literary output.“ 😏 The bisexual Raven was far more uninhibited than his senior roman-fleuvists Anthony Powell and C.P. Snow, who are Victorian aunts by comparison. He should have more of a readership.

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Patrick Murtha @patrickmurtha.bsky.social · 31/07/2026

I always liked Don Murray (BOTD 1929-2024) . He overacted opposite Marilyn Monroe in Bus Stop, and somehow got an Oscar nomination for doing so; but he learned better fast, and was superb as the closeted gay Senator in Otto Preminger’s Advise & Consent.

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Patrick Murtha @patrickmurtha.bsky.social · 31/07/2026

Eddie Muller dissed Guilty Bystander in his most recent Ask Eddie video, but I have to disagree. It is definitely scuzzy, but among scuzz-noirs (such as Who Killed Teddy Bear?, which Eddie just showed on Noir Alley), it ranks high. I mean, you can practically smell the trash. [more]

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Patrick Murtha @patrickmurtha.bsky.social · 31/07/2026

A Life at Stake is not a great film noir by any means, but still, well worth seeing (7/10). Fun to see Angela Lansbury introduced in a swimsuit, and plenty of shirtless Keith Andes to balance that scale! [more]

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Patrick Murtha @patrickmurtha.bsky.social · 31/07/2026

@maorthofer.bsky.social The South Korean and Turkish peoples have long been very close. Turks fought in the Korean war and it is remembered. “Turks are our brothers,” a Korean student told me. I had a Turkish student who confirmed. www.koreajoongangdaily.com/lifestyle/tu...

koreajoongangdaily.com

Turkish readers write history as K-literature translation tops best sellers in 2025

Sales in Turkey of Hwang Bo-reum's 2022 novel “Welcome to the Hyunam-dong Bookshop' topped LTI Korea's list of translated works as Korean works fly off the shelves in the country.

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Patrick Murtha @patrickmurtha.bsky.social · 31/07/2026

The more you look at this crap, the more mind-boggling it becomes. One for the ages, really.

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Patrick Murtha @patrickmurtha.bsky.social · 31/07/2026

Absolutely appalling and (alas) all too characteristic.

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Patrick Murtha @patrickmurtha.bsky.social · 31/07/2026

Something I learned from shows like Flipper and Skippy the Bush Kangaroo when I was growing up in the Sixties was that animals are persons, with their own dignity, intelligence, and feelings. This has remained a key principle for me.

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Patrick Murtha @patrickmurtha.bsky.social · 31/07/2026

Lisa Kudrow was, by several orders of magnitude, the most talented member of the Friends cast.

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Patrick Murtha @patrickmurtha.bsky.social · 31/07/2026

He knew. It is all there in Night Flight. Intrepid aviators did not live long.

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Patrick Murtha @patrickmurtha.bsky.social · 31/07/2026

Gore knew where the bodies were buried, and for that alone would have have been valuable

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Patrick Murtha @patrickmurtha.bsky.social · 30/07/2026

First Sean Duffy’s family road trip thing, now this, as if to underline that we’re in a Reality TV Presidency. Next up: Lifestyles of the Rich and Semi-Famous with Scott Bessent. 🙄

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Patrick Murtha @patrickmurtha.bsky.social · 30/07/2026

Let me drop a tab and I’ll get back to you

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Patrick Murtha @patrickmurtha.bsky.social · 30/07/2026

Exceedingly hot together, these two

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Patrick Murtha @patrickmurtha.bsky.social · 30/07/2026

And the vast majority of Wuthering Heights adaptations leave out the book’s second half, the repetition of tragedy in the next generation, and thus a large part of the POINT.

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Patrick Murtha @patrickmurtha.bsky.social · 30/07/2026

Those credits make my head explode 😳

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Patrick Murtha @patrickmurtha.bsky.social · 30/07/2026

Although no one could be douchier than Joe himself… Have you ever noticed that all Morning Joe panelists are under strict instructions never to talk over The Man, no matter how flatulent and repetitive he gets?

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Patrick Murtha @patrickmurtha.bsky.social · 30/07/2026

Bogdanovich, gifted as all get-out, was also unquestionably an arrogant SOB; a lot of people wanted to see him take a fall. He was essentially playing himself (very well, too) in The Other Side of the Wind.

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Patrick Murtha @patrickmurtha.bsky.social · 30/07/2026

I hear that the John Woods translation is much better…but I would be excited to read even the Lowe-Porter because, hey, I am down with ponderous. 😏

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Patrick Murtha @patrickmurtha.bsky.social · 30/07/2026

Bergman’s films were more his children than his actual children, whose names it is said he sometimes forgot. He had nine that we know of - I’ll bet there were more - so I can believe it.

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Patrick Murtha @patrickmurtha.bsky.social · 30/07/2026

Since reading the novel is perforce slower than seeing the film, you have time to notice and contemplate what utter idiots these four men are. It makes for a very different experience.

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Patrick Murtha @patrickmurtha.bsky.social · 30/07/2026

“more freedom and time” I generally find podcasts (and things like BookTube videos) excruciating because they take endless amounts of time to gurgitate stuff that has not been completely thought out, not whittled down to crisp coherence. Give me a blog post or indeed a tweet over that. [more]

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Patrick Murtha @patrickmurtha.bsky.social · 30/07/2026

By far my favorite Fellini film. Those shots of the beds in the final seconds, OMG, genius.

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Patrick Murtha @patrickmurtha.bsky.social · 30/07/2026

Peter Boganovich’s 1971 book on Allan Dwan, including a lengthy interview with the director, is a gem, especially illuminating on the silent film era, although I do suspect that some of Dwan’s anecdotes got a little fictionalized over the years.

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Patrick Murtha @patrickmurtha.bsky.social · 30/07/2026

Those realities make more of an appearance in C.P. Snow’s Strangers and Brothers series, and way more, with actual bodily fluids!, in Simon Raven’s sorely neglected Alms for Oblivion series. I do recommend all three series; I have scarcely met a roman fleuve I didn’t like. 🙂

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Patrick Murtha @patrickmurtha.bsky.social · 30/07/2026

Reading Anthony Powell underscores my sense of how tight the London social scene was. Everyone knew everyone else. One needed a degree in genealogy in order to converse at those parties. I get dizzy with the “my second cousin’s first husband who went to my school but in a different year” stuff. 😏

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Patrick Murtha @patrickmurtha.bsky.social · 30/07/2026

I love Powell, but that is a fair observation.

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Patrick Murtha @patrickmurtha.bsky.social · 30/07/2026

Feeling melodramatic that day? On this standard, most writers would be dead by 30. 😳

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Patrick Murtha @patrickmurtha.bsky.social · 30/07/2026

The most common ratings for me at the IMDB are 10 and 9, and at Goodreads, 5 and 4. I am easy to please and am not a nitpicker. I always try to meet the work halfway. I greatly respect intentions even when perhaps not fully achieved. The effort matters.

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Patrick Murtha @patrickmurtha.bsky.social · 30/07/2026

I have always found it hard to imagine a young Casey Stengel, but here he is, and really a nice-looking chap.

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Patrick Murtha @patrickmurtha.bsky.social · 30/07/2026

It is only a slight exaggeration to say that everyone in Chicago knows Buddy Guy. He is so beloved. Buddy Guy’s Legends is like the Wrigley Field of blues clubs.

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Patrick Murtha @patrickmurtha.bsky.social · 30/07/2026

Just stay away from the rest of us, OK? 😏

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Patrick Murtha @patrickmurtha.bsky.social · 30/07/2026

Nichelle was always the coolest person in any room she was in. Her seemingly effortless charisma made Uhura an even bigger presence than she would otherwise have been.

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Patrick Murtha @patrickmurtha.bsky.social · 30/07/2026

Exciting to see a Rubbra symphony programmed! I had not heard this one (No. 10, of 11), so I immediately listened to the Richard Hickox recording at YouTube, and 👍 @grahamrickson.bsky.social @aquilanebula.bsky.social @bernardhughes.bsky.social

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Patrick Murtha @patrickmurtha.bsky.social · 29/07/2026

This sounds great. There is an ebook edition available at Amazon for $1.99 (different than the one pictured, which is higher priced). So I picked it right up.

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Patrick Murtha @patrickmurtha.bsky.social · 29/07/2026

Die Tote Stadt is now, I would say, firmly ensconced in the standard repertoire; productions have been proliferating for a couple of decades, and very understandably so, since it is a modernist opera that one can confidently recommend to newbies.

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Patrick Murtha @patrickmurtha.bsky.social · 29/07/2026

Reading Gibbon right now, and the parade of mostly failed Roman emperors is dizzying.

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Patrick Murtha @patrickmurtha.bsky.social · 29/07/2026

Very little of Theda Bara’s filmography survives; most of the movies were lost in the 1937 Fox vault fire.

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Patrick Murtha @patrickmurtha.bsky.social · 29/07/2026

The Colin Davis Les Troyens was a recording that had a profound effect on my listening life as a teen!

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Patrick Murtha @patrickmurtha.bsky.social · 29/07/2026

My favorite Whit Stillman film. Love the suits. I wore mine all the time, and miss that. It was just normal.

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Patrick Murtha @patrickmurtha.bsky.social · 29/07/2026

A dangerous woman, she would slice you with a shiv as soon as look at you 😳

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Patrick Murtha @patrickmurtha.bsky.social · 29/07/2026

Favorite Schumann (among many): Overture, Scherzo, and Finale.

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Patrick Murtha @patrickmurtha.bsky.social · 29/07/2026

Tom Pynchon deputized Corey to accept his National Book Award for Gravity’s Rainbow.

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