The Norman conquest (Patreon)

Nothing influences poll results like a recently deceased director or actor, and I’m not at all surprised that Moonstruck ran away with this week’s showdown, receiving fully ⅔ of the vote opposite The Ides of March (which died over 12 years ago, too long for lingering sympathy). Loved it the last time I saw it, which was I’m gonna guess sometime in the early ’90s. Streaming or rentable lotsa places.

Someone asked about the Skandies, my annual survey (since 1995!) that in the old days before the pandemic would have kicked off its three-week-long countdown on Monday. I now tend to hold off until most of the films that got buried qualifying runs open properly, which this year probably means 26 February, as About Dry Grasses reappears (at least in NYC) on the 23rd. Not gonna wait until late March for La chimera, especially since there’s a screener voters can borrow if necessary. Anyway, you’ll start seeing those posts in a month or so; at this writing I haven’t even sent out the annual invite.

Still going through ancient letters I wrote to a friend, which have proved to be almost as useful, in terms of chronicling my original reaction to various films, as my ancient emails to another friend. Here’s the opening paragraph to one letter that I sent hard on the heels of another, because I was so excited about the movie in question that I just couldn’t wait. (Yes, this was my epistolary tone at age 24.)

So long ago that I felt the need to remind him who Tim Roth and Michael Madsen were! Bulk of the letter’s tedious (I was concerned that he’d heard about the ear-cutting scene, tried to persuade him that it’s not that bad), but here’s how it ends. (Apparently he had script and misogyny issues with GoodFellas. Definitely wasn’t me; I’ve always loved that.)