iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Farran Smith Nehme 🇱🇧 @selfstyledsiren.bsky.social · 11/10/2026

For a cold and rainy Sunday afternoon in NYC, here's a January 1968 photo of Broadway Joe Namath, NY Jets quarterback, watching TV with his left leg elevated. The leg was in a thigh-to-ankle cast to reduce strain on his chronically inflamed knee.

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Farran Smith Nehme 🇱🇧 @selfstyledsiren.bsky.social · 10/10/2026

Charles MacArthur and Helen Hayes, photographed as blissful newlyweds by Edward Steichen in late 1928. The Front Page was still playing to SRO houses, Hayes was still touring with Coquette, and she would be pregnant with daughter Mary in the spring of 1929. Hayes was #BornThisDay in 1900.

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Farran Smith Nehme 🇱🇧 @selfstyledsiren.bsky.social · 08/10/2026

What's the most beautiful horror movie you've ever seen? I would say Kwaidan, though I realize that's a pretty basic answer. But given Kwaidan as a benchmark, can you recommend a horror (or horror-adjacent) movie in that league, or even more gorgeous?

A hooded figure makes its way through a snowy nighttime landscape—and the sky is lit up by eyes. From Masaki Kobayashi's KWAIDAN (1965)

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Farran Smith Nehme 🇱🇧 @selfstyledsiren.bsky.social · 07/10/2026

Rest in peace, lovely Eva Marie Saint. As we pay tribute, let us remember how she once reacted to a bunch of compliments she thought went overboard. She was as down-to-earth as stars ever get. (Louella Parsons sternly told Saint to apologize; as far as I know, she never did.)

AP story, 1/26/1960: Actress Says Four-Letter Word Not Slip of Tongue
HOLLYWOOD (AP)-"I'm embarrassed only because of all the fuss," Eva Marie Saint said Monday.
The blonde actress said it wasn't a slip of the tongue Sunday night when she shocked a fancy, black-tie banquet of the movie industry's biggest names by using a four-letter word.
"The dinner was a private af-fair, and if I had thought for a moment that the newspapers would have reported the incident, I wouldn't have said it," said Miss Saint, one of the screen's favorite nice girls.
After a flowery introduction by Jack Benny at the annual Screen Producers Guild dinner, Miss Saint stepped daintily to the mi-crophone, smiled sweetly and said: "Aw, ----!"

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Farran Smith Nehme 🇱🇧 @selfstyledsiren.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

I love to spy on what people read on the subway. Last week, I had a first: I saw an older gentleman reading NO NAME by Wilkie Collins. About 1/3 through and deeply absorbed in it! What's the most interesting or unusual book you've seen someone reading in public lately?

This was the edition the gentleman was reading.

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Farran Smith Nehme 🇱🇧 @selfstyledsiren.bsky.social · 04/10/2026

Dolores del Rio with dog. Some kind of bull terrier? It looks happy. Del Rio was an animal lover.

Dolores appears to be on her front lawn with the dog on a leash. She is wearing a simple gingham-check dress, is giving vogue face to the camera and looks all kinds of fabulous.

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Farran Smith Nehme 🇱🇧 @selfstyledsiren.bsky.social · 04/10/2026

Every once in a while you wake up with an urge to search for Dolores del Rio photographs.

Studio publicity portrait, probably early 1930s although that is just a guess. Extreme closeup with hair falling slightly over one eye; hand under chin with a multi-strand bracelet on del Rio's wrist.

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Farran Smith Nehme 🇱🇧 @selfstyledsiren.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

Here is the entire schedule for the AFI Classic Film Weekend Nov. 12–15 in an easy chart:

(Alt text is slightly abbreviated but should include same information)
Thu, Nov 12
1:30: THE SMILING LIEUTENANT (DCP) + intro and welcome by David Pierce
3:45: WILD GIRL 1932 (DCP) + intro by Sheila O'Malley
6:45: Opening Night: DANCING LADY (35mm) + cut scene (1 min. in intro from ppt) + intro by Scott Eyman
9:30: MAN TROUBLE 1930 (35mm) starring Dorothy Mackaill + intro by Sheila O'Malley

Fri, Nov 13
11:00: LAW AND ORDER 1932 (DCP) + intro by Richard Koszarski
1:00: RAIN 1932 (DCP) + intro by Scott Eyman
3:30: In the Beginning - Animation’s Famous Firsts! (DCP) - Jerry Beck Program 1
6:30: THE PRISONER OF ZENDA (1937) 35mm + historical presentation by Craig Barron
9:15 THE BARKER (1928) in 35mm (UCLA 35mm print) starring Dorothy Mackaill (silent with sound sequences) + intro by Farran Smith Nehme

Sat, Nov 14
11:00 a.m.: More Pre-Code Cartoons (DCP) - Jerry Beck Program 2
1:15: THE MAN WHO CAME BACK 1924 (DCP) (Dorothy Mackaill) + intro by David Stenn, with live musical accompaniment by Makia Matsumura
4:00: EIGHT GIRLS IN A BOAT 1934 (DCP) + intro by David Stenn
6:45: HULA (DCP) + intro by David Stenn, with live musical accompaniment by Makia Matsumura (starring Clara Bow)
9:00: HOLD YOUR MAN (35mm) + intro by David Stenn (starring Jean Harlow and Clark Gable)

Sun, Nov 15
11:00 a.m.: More Lost and Found Cartoons (DCP) - Jerry Beck Program 3
1:30: THREE ON A MATCH (1932) (35mm) + onstage discussion by Farran Smith Nehme with Margaret Talbot
4:00pm: DAUGHTER OF THE DRAGON (1931) (DCP) starring Anna May Wong + intro by Farran Smith Nehme (4K restored DCP from Universal)
6:30: WHAT PRICE GLORY (1926) (DCP) (new MoMA restoration) + intro by Farran Smith Nehme, with live musical accompaniment by Andrew Simpson
9:15pm: LETTY LYNTON (1932) (DCP) + intro Sheila O’Malley

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Farran Smith Nehme 🇱🇧 @selfstyledsiren.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

For the Criterion Current, I wrote about the 1948–1951 trilogy of U.K. anthology movies based on W. Somerset Maugham short stories: QUARTET, TRIO and ENCORE. All three are on the Criterion Channel. I enjoyed them so much I spent all summer reading Maugham stories. www.criterion.com/current/post...

Dirk Bogarde and Honor Blackman in "The Alien Corn" episode of QUARTET (1948)

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Farran Smith Nehme 🇱🇧 @selfstyledsiren.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

Celebrating the arrival of autumn with the glorious Liv Ullmann, photographed by Philippe Le Tellier in 1969.

Liv Ullmann looks directly at the camera in this portrait; she's wearing a black turtleneck and a golden brown coat. She is standing next to tree branches with similarly gold-brown leaves.

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Farran Smith Nehme 🇱🇧 @selfstyledsiren.bsky.social · 20/09/2026

Three Sophia Loren favorites for her 92nd birthday: Too Bad She's Bad; Two Women; and Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow.

Sophia in a (rather transparent) striped top, tight skirt and bangle bracelets in TOO BAD SHE'S BAD

With Eleanora Brown's head on her shoulders in TWO WOMEN

Wielding a silk stocking in the unforgettable striptease scene in YESTERDAY, TODAY AND TOMORROW

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Farran Smith Nehme 🇱🇧 @selfstyledsiren.bsky.social · 07/09/2026

The great silent-film star Norma Talmadge at the Sea Spray Beach Club in Palm Beach, Florida. Circa 1950, which means she was about 56 years old. 📷 Bert Morgan

Norma has long dark hair in a snood, and very long, very tanned legs. She's wearing what my mother used to call a sunsuit (more like a swimming ensemble with a miniskirt and belt) and is barefoot. Norma looks beautiful, and happy.

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Farran Smith Nehme 🇱🇧 @selfstyledsiren.bsky.social · 07/09/2026

My husband Jad continues to chronicle what is happening in Lebanon to his family and his friends and his home town of Tyre. Latest self-explanatory title: "Shia Need Not Apply." Please consider subscribing. (photos ID'd in alt text) jadnehme.substack.com/p/shia-need-...

Text excerpt:
With a name like Jad Nehmé and a Parisian accent, I often enjoy giving deliberately ambiguous answers to questions designed to reveal my religious background. On Facebook, once, I found myself in a group of “friends” of a “friend” who were posting outright racist messages. When I say racist, I don't mean the twenty-first century neo-racist anti-immigration variety. This was a throwback to the uninhibited colonial and racialist language of another era. I posted: “It is my duty to inform you that Facebook sends me a notification for each of your messages on this thread. I must say that, as a good Muslim, I devour them religiously. That said, please — don't stop! I am learning things I would never have imagined!”

View of the Mediterranean from the terrace of my in-laws' apartment in Tyre (Sour), Lebanon. Photo taken the week I was married, June 2000. I doubt the view is like that anymore, as many of the buildings in the foreground have been destroyed by IDF bombs. But there is no way to tell. Israeli shelling has also made the building structurally unsound.

Jad and I on an observation point at Beaufort Castle, June 2000. The views from the castle are unparalleled; I believe that is the Golan Heights in the distance. It was a pretty arduous climb and hard to get around the site. The IDF had established a base there and they blew up parts of the castle in May 2000 ahead of their pullout.

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Farran Smith Nehme 🇱🇧 @selfstyledsiren.bsky.social · 07/09/2026

Have a relaxing Labor Day, Bluesky. Put your feet up. (Audrey Hepburn with her dog Famous on the set of The Unforgiven, Durango, Mexico, 1959; photographed by Inge Morath.)

Hepburn is stretched out at full length on top of a bench (?), shading her eyes from the sun with her hand. She is out of costume, in a trench coat, capris and flats. Famous, a Scottie terrier, is on a leash at her feet. There is a slate propped up on the bench.

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Farran Smith Nehme 🇱🇧 @selfstyledsiren.bsky.social · 05/09/2026

I like The Morning After a lot! This moment is nicely set up too. We just met Alex, she's definitely an alcoholic and possibly a murderer, but even with a hangover she's sweet to the kitty—so we're on her side.

Another angle of Jane Fonda, sitting on the floor with the lovely cat, in the opening scenes of The Morning After.

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Farran Smith Nehme 🇱🇧 @selfstyledsiren.bsky.social · 05/09/2026

Alex Sternbergen (Jane Fonda) nurses a hangover and pets a beautiful flame-point kitty, while she wonders what to do with the corpse in the bedroom in THE MORNING AFTER (1986). #Caturday (gif from Cinema Cats) Not all neo-noirs have cats, but they should.

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Farran Smith Nehme 🇱🇧 @selfstyledsiren.bsky.social · 03/09/2026

For what it's worth, Lauren Bacall's Hermès bag was a Maxibox. Hers was multicolor (but I can't find a photo, and I like the classic orange). This story leaves out another aspect of the Birkin, which is that it's verrrry MAGA-coded these days.

Square short-handled leather handbag, about 12" long and maybe 9" high, with rounded corners; color is classic Hermes orange

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Farran Smith Nehme 🇱🇧 @selfstyledsiren.bsky.social · 01/09/2026

Transfixed by the last two commas in this sentence: "The common welfare was my business; charity, mercy, forbearance, and benevolence, were, all, my business."

A fascsimile of the title page of the original manuscript of A Christmas Carol from the Morgan Library: "A Christmas Carol
In Prose
Being a Short Story of Christmas
by Charles Dickens"

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Farran Smith Nehme 🇱🇧 @selfstyledsiren.bsky.social · 31/08/2026

Reading (sort of) The Naked Truth by Jean-Pierre Dorleac, and I couldn't resist posting this to see how @bcdreyer.social and @kevinddaly.bsky.social react. Scene: Swank L.A. party, March 1975. June Lockhart is there with James "Jimmy" Kirkwood. Discussion turns to J-P's new "couture" business.

Text:
There must have been half a dozen caterers for the variety of food displayed was everything one could imagine. Good champagne flowed continuously, poured by passing waiters even when your glass was only half full.
"With all the cleavage and skintight dresses I've seen," I noted with a laugh, "I now know that calling my corporation 'Tits and Ass' was a stroke of genius."
"That's the name of your business?" chuckled June. "You'll have them lined up around the block to get in." She thought for a second and asked, "But how did you
get it approved with those words?"
Giggling, I answered, "Oh, I found a way to get around it. There wasn't any problem really as I used the initials 'T' and 'A" with 'and' in between to come up with Tanda Inc."
"I love it," Jimmy chimed in. "It's catchy. Do you mind if I use it for a song in my show?"

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Farran Smith Nehme 🇱🇧 @selfstyledsiren.bsky.social · 27/08/2026

As summer eases into its last weeks, I offer this famous still of Sidney Poitier rocking a Hawaiian shirt in LILIES OF THE FIELD from 1963. Sending cool Poitier vibes to my friends in Southern California and Arizona and Nevada and anyplace else that's overheating right now.

Poitier is leaning toward the window of a parked car to have a word with a nun, as one does. He's wearing amazing sunglasses and has a matchstick in his teeth and he looks so handsome it's unreal.

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Farran Smith Nehme 🇱🇧 @selfstyledsiren.bsky.social · 24/08/2026

Happy 96th birthday to Vera Miles, surely one of the last living actors to have starred in masterpieces for both Alfred Hitchcock and John Ford.

Closeup of Vera Miles as Lila Crane in PSYCHO

Vera Miles as Laurie Jorgensen in THE SEARCHERS

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Farran Smith Nehme 🇱🇧 @selfstyledsiren.bsky.social · 21/08/2026

Vivien Leigh wraps her charisma in a simple long dress and printed sash with fringe. This still is from her role as Pamela in the 1937 London production of "Because We Must" by Ingaret Giffard; it seems to have closed pretty quickly. #FashionFriday

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Farran Smith Nehme 🇱🇧 @selfstyledsiren.bsky.social · 20/08/2026

Delighted to see Gina Telaroli, one of my favorite programmers/people, worked on NYFF Revivals this year. A feast as always, but I'm most excited for Visconti's L'INNOCENTE (never seen it) and the original cut of Powell and Pressburger's incandescent GONE TO EARTH. www.filmlinc.org/nyff2026/dai...

Jennifer Jones holds and caresses a black cat in GONE TO EARTH

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Farran Smith Nehme 🇱🇧 @selfstyledsiren.bsky.social · 12/08/2026

In this photo he is reminding me of Sebastian Cabot, who I adored.

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Farran Smith Nehme 🇱🇧 @selfstyledsiren.bsky.social · 11/08/2026

Beautiful Osa Massen, a Danish actress who did well for a time in supporting roles. Best known as the cheatin' wife on the receiving end of one of Joan Crawford's most memorable slaps in A WOMAN'S FACE (1941). Later moved to TV (incl. several Perry Mason episodes). Retired in 1962, lived to be 91.

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Farran Smith Nehme 🇱🇧 @selfstyledsiren.bsky.social · 09/08/2026

Cooper looks up from his catnip chaise longue to wish Bluesky a happy #InternationalCatDay!

Cooper, a blue-eyed seal point Siamese cat, looks up from a cardboard scratch pad shaped like an ornate sofa.

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Farran Smith Nehme 🇱🇧 @selfstyledsiren.bsky.social · 28/07/2026

I don't know why I took a screenshot of this some years back, other than the truth of the headline.

Text:
Dull Summer Season TV Viewers Get Lift From Old Movies
By CHARLES MERCER
NEW YORK UP-Some of the old movies are a boon to inveterate TV viewers in this dull summer season.
To be perfectly fair about it, there are some dreadful old movies. They don't seem to have quibbled much over authenticity when making movies in Hollywood back in the 1930s.
But there was plenty of fun and, thanks to TV, there's still fun.
Probably I'm getting old, or jaded, but it seems to me they don't make movies these days as uncritically comic as "Bringing Up Baby," starring Cary Grant and Katharine Hepburn (vintage 1938).

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Farran Smith Nehme 🇱🇧 @selfstyledsiren.bsky.social · 27/07/2026

I liked the Cyclops a lot — it was particularly intriguing that he has human(ish) flesh. But in my heart I'm with you, I'll always prefer something fanciful, something bursting with color and wit.

Rex Ingram as Djinn in The Thief of Baghdad

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Farran Smith Nehme 🇱🇧 @selfstyledsiren.bsky.social · 27/07/2026

If I may politely offer a defense of Władziu Valentino—Liberace's bedroom had no ticky-tacky stick-on gold dreck cluttering up every vertical surface. The design may have been over the top, but it was coherent. Trump's Oval Office is like a child drawing on the walls to get attention.

Liberace's bedroom, with Renaissance-esque ceiling painting, peach damask wallpaper and some candlelabra in the foreground. It's actually kind of cozy.

Trump's oval office. Gold all over the molding, gold on the fireplace, gold frames for the portraits of better men on the walls, and junky gold urns on the fireplace mantel. In the foreground is a big toy model of the plane he got from the UAE.

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Farran Smith Nehme 🇱🇧 @selfstyledsiren.bsky.social · 26/07/2026

The Internet Archive remains a place of wonder. If you wonder whatever happened to the series of books called "Whatever Happened to...?" — @archive.org's got 'em all. Sometimes with marginalia from prior readers, like this sad, startling note on a photo of Veronica Lake from the 1967 edition.

A black-and-white, somewhat fuzzy shot of a middle-aged, dressed-up and elegant Veronica Lake c. 1967. The book's caption is "In a New York theatre lobby recently." In blue ink, just above, is the handwritten note: "Deceased."

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Farran Smith Nehme 🇱🇧 @selfstyledsiren.bsky.social · 25/07/2026

The lineup this year is one masterpiece after another: THE NAVIGATOR, WHAT PRICE GLORY, the restoration of THE STUDENT PRINCE IN OLD HEIDELBERG, SHOULDER ARMS, 3 BAD MEN, and SUNRISE. Full schedule is available here: www.moma.org/calendar/fil...

The incomparable Buster Keaton with Kathryn McGuire in THE NAVIGATOR (1924)

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Farran Smith Nehme 🇱🇧 @selfstyledsiren.bsky.social · 22/07/2026

William Powell and Kay Francis wolf down lunch in a publicity photo on the set of ONE WAY PASSAGE, 1932. One of the best films either one of them ever made, and Kay's personal favorite. Posted in honor of dinner tonight with my BFF!

Powell is wearing a perfect light-colored suit and a panama hat; Kay is in her organdy dress from the movie. They are standing up in front of a car and posing as they prepare to bite into nice-looking hamburgers.

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Farran Smith Nehme 🇱🇧 @selfstyledsiren.bsky.social · 22/07/2026

Need to unwind so I'm watching a Columbo, "A Stitch in Crime." Marveling at the immensely likable Leonard Nimoy's skill as one of the show's nastiest villains—such a creep he even makes Columbo lose his temper (for a minute.)

Columbo in foreground with his back to the camera; grinning, self-satisfied Nimoy (as a murderous surgeon) seated at his desk.

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Farran Smith Nehme 🇱🇧 @selfstyledsiren.bsky.social · 21/07/2026

Youthful Joan Bennett, the Queen of the Pout. 📷 Preston Duncan, 1931

Bennett, still blonde, has on a ballgown with spaghetti straps and a very full skirt. She is resting her arms on a wooden rail of some sort and she sports a pout that Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen could only envy.

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Farran Smith Nehme 🇱🇧 @selfstyledsiren.bsky.social · 21/07/2026

"She found the request to stop recording triggering." 1. We should probably discussing whether the word "triggering" has run its course. 2. I thought sociopathy was something you're born with, but can it be acquired over time?

Photo of the attractive Ms. Chang, with text as follows: "At a work conference in Albuquerque, N.M., in May, Chang wore a small pin with a red light indicating it was recording. Someone who worked at the conference eventually approached Chang and told her the device was making people uncomfortable. She found the request to stop recording triggering.

“It’s my thing,” she says. “I’m not attributing who said what. It’s for my general knowledge.”

"Chang has also taken to recording most of her first dates, usually with Granola. She puts her phone out on the table or her chair and then once the date is through, she has the feed automatically sent to Anthropic’s Claude to report back on how she did."

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Farran Smith Nehme 🇱🇧 @selfstyledsiren.bsky.social · 19/07/2026

A rather famous photo of young cat person Edward Albee and his tabby (one of many cats he loved over the years). I'm especially fond of any photo where the human and the cat are looking at the camera in a similar way. #Caturday

Albee, seated, has short hair and is wearing a button-up shirt over a t-shirt. His left arm is curled around a big-eyed tabby. They are both looking deep into the camera lens.

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Farran Smith Nehme 🇱🇧 @selfstyledsiren.bsky.social · 18/07/2026

Another rainy day in Brooklyn, 1948. 📷 Rae Russel

A little girl, with a wool hat, a dress, galoshes and an unbuttoned coat, walks on a very wet sidewalk. In the background is a very 1948 automobile and a rain-slicked street.

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Farran Smith Nehme 🇱🇧 @selfstyledsiren.bsky.social · 17/07/2026

Lizzie Borden was #BornThisDay in 1860. Alexander Woollcott is chiefly known as a critic and Algonquin Round Table wit. But he was also a superb true-crime writer, and "The Theory and Lizzie Borden" is one of the best you'll read on this immortal case. archive.vanityfair.com/article/1927...

One of a handful of Lizzie Borden photographs that circulate endlessly, with Lizzie in a high-lace collar and showing off her major case of crazy eyes.

Alexander Woollcott, who was nothing if not a sharp dresser, on board the Bremen as he returned to New York from a trip to Russia. Beautiful three-piece suit, a magnificent woolly topcoat, and a silver-topped cane are much in evidence.

My favorite passage from "The Theory and Lizzie Borden": "But Lizzie was on the premises. Indeed as Bridget came through the hall to unlock the door for him, she had heard Miss Lizzie laughing all by herself upstairs. To some who turn from time to time the yellowing pages of this fathomless New England tragedy, that solitary and enigmatic cackle floating down the darkened stairway lifts the Borden legend to the plane of Shakespeare and Sophocles."

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Farran Smith Nehme 🇱🇧 @selfstyledsiren.bsky.social · 12/07/2026

Tod Browning, one of the most fascinating figures in American movies, was #BornThisDay in Louisville, Kentucky, in (most likely) 1880. To celebrate, I'm posting the essay I wrote for @criterion.bsky.social's box set in 2023. www.criterion.com/current/post...

Tod Browning, in an intriguingly loud houndstooth (? check, anyway) suit, consults with Lon Chaney (in costume as Alonso) on the set of their greatest movie collaboration, THE UNKNOWN.

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Farran Smith Nehme 🇱🇧 @selfstyledsiren.bsky.social · 12/07/2026

Gee whiz, I misspelled the mendacious warmongering motherfucker's given name.

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Farran Smith Nehme 🇱🇧 @selfstyledsiren.bsky.social · 12/07/2026

WAIT—you're not quoting Lindsay Graham for the fun of it, you say? Lindsay Graham has shuffled off this mortal coil, you say??? My goodness gracious. Guess I'll pour myself another cup.

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