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 · 21/09/2026

Very astute discussion! I like the comparison of Lee to Russell. The final exchange of looks between Garfunkel and Russell in Bad Timing, on the avenue in New York, absolutely slays me. Great film that, like FWWM and Bitter Moon, was trashed upon release; all these made people too uncomfortable.

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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 · 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 · 13/09/2026

Oh man, I needed a good laugh this morning. 👏

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Patrick Murtha @patrickmurtha.bsky.social · 16/08/2026

Great to read a review of an older book like this! It is available at both Project Gutenberg and the Internet Archive.

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Patrick Murtha @patrickmurtha.bsky.social · 16/08/2026

Excellent overview and appreciation, Brad! I have sometimes heard Maraini mentioned in Nobel Prize discussions, and it certainly sounds as if she is highly worthy.

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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 · 09/08/2026

He is truly a great favorite of mine.

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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

Wild to see Mary Boland, the giddy Countess De Lave of The Women, as a sleazy old hotel-keeper.

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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

I will admit that I can be very partial to run-of-the-mill, “flat” movies - I could offer countless examples - in part because I like to focus on the small peculiarities, and seeing journeyman actors do their stuff.

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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

I agree. I wouldn’t be surprised if there were some, and that it sells decently, because Koreans are readers. I taught there for a year and was delighted by that. Of course, Korean fiction is “hotter” on the international scene these days than Turkish, so that makes a difference.

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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

The Open Library is such a great resource. I use it all the time.

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

It is possible to borrow the scanned ebook version through the Open Library.

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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 · 31/07/2026

It is devilish to adapt. Jane Eyre is much easier.

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

Some of the television mini-series / films include the second generation, at least to an extent. Identified by Heathcliffs: 1967 (Ian McShane), 1978 (Ken Hutchison), 1998 (Robert Cavanah), 2009 (Tom Hardy). I have not seen these. The 1978 is the longest, and generally held to be the most faithful.

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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

It was indeed a fine adaptation of a challenging book.

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

The Welsh JMW was very much the professional wordsmith of his generation (born 1924): straight novels, thrillers, screenplays, popular history, biography, memoir, travel (including a book on Namibia), magazine articles, even poetry.

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

“For who owns that car, or that washing machine, or that apartment? Not the man himself.The banks own them, the insurance companies, ultimately the State. They are his only on credit, on sufferance...He is in thrall; and there is no foreseeable end to it.”

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

Got one for you! The Mannin made me think of it. Jon Manchip White, A World Elsewhere: Life in the American Southwest (1975).

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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

Podcasts and such are too loosey-goosey for me. It’s like editing is too much trouble. I have enjoyed thoroughly prepared audio lectures; I used to listen to those in the car.

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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

Writing forces you to DECIDE. I love conversation among friends, but 99% of it is not fit for for PUBLIC consumption.

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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

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.

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