James Dalrymple
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jamesewand.bsky.social
James Dalrymple
@jamesewand.bsky.social
Teaching/lecturing in France. Occasional academic.

Cinema, books, music, vintage television, podcasts (usually while cooking for the family), teaching, life in France etc.

Film reviews at: letterboxd.com/jamesewand/
Reposted by James Dalrymple
Caligula: The Ultimate Cut (2023) A reconstruction of notorious porn epic Caligula, removing the hardcore sex spliced in by producer Bob Guccione without the knowledge of director Tinto Brass.

With no input from Brass, the project tries to get as close as possible to Gore Vidal's original script
November 25, 2025 at 10:47 PM
Reposted by James Dalrymple
Rewatch: LEAVE HER TO HEAVEN (1945)
Gene Tierney’s performance as an unstable, obsessively jealous woman is stunning and unsettling in a film that is beautifully shot in Technicolor.

Her turn as a monstrous villain is quite possibly my favorite of her roles, tonight at least.
#FilmSky #MovieSky
November 26, 2025 at 4:24 AM
Reposted by James Dalrymple
25 years since first watching it and Deliverance (Boorman, 1972) is still so captivating and nerve-wracking

Of course it centres around *that* horrific scene but it’s run through with tough questions around confused masculinity, man’s abusive relationship with nature and complexity of justice
November 26, 2025 at 6:58 AM
Reposted by James Dalrymple
Still incomparable. Still essential. Forever timely. "The Gaia hypothesis of James Lovelock, which states that the Earth self-regulates after destruction, swirls mysteriously through the plot and names a group with which Emma was involved."
Why Edge Of Darkness Makes So Much Sense in 2025 | The Quietus
Judge Rogers speaks to several key members of the team who made the ecologically-minded thriller for the BBC
thequietus.com
November 25, 2025 at 12:18 PM
First watch: Soylent Green (1973, dir. Richard Fleischer). Dystopian sci-fi that should probably be congratulated for putting global warming on the Hollywood big screen, after breakthroughs in climate science of the 1960s. 1/3
November 25, 2025 at 7:24 AM
Reposted by James Dalrymple
Guilty Bystander (1950) is a Criterion Blackout Noir, and you do wonder how much of it Zachary Scott will remember when it’s all over. He’s after his missing son, but still on a right old bender, stoically declining drinks here, greedily chugging them there, fumes coming off him through the screen
November 24, 2025 at 2:26 PM
What's the opposite of short-changed? Long-changed? I just got generously long-changed!
November 24, 2025 at 3:30 PM
Reposted by James Dalrymple
Rewatching Shane Meadows’ Made Of Stone for a thing. It’s more love letter than documentary and works within those parameters but, man, that 2012 Heaton Park version of Fool’s Gold is utterly astonishing.

youtu.be/jRswxxT3HQ8?...
The Stone Roses, Fools Gold Live at Heaton Park. Made of Stone DVD.
YouTube video by Jamie Hosey
youtu.be
November 23, 2025 at 2:11 PM
Reposted by James Dalrymple
Bad Day At Black Rock (1955) A train stops in a podunk town & a stranger steps off. They don't care too much for strangers round there

Spencer Tracy is the one-armed man who, almost despite himself, is going to get to the bottom of things, assuming that he doesn't get killed in the process

1/11
November 24, 2025 at 12:25 AM
lovely cover version:
Is My Living in Vain - Bonnie Prince Billy
www.youtube.com/watch?v=4M0x...
Is My Living in Vain?
YouTube video by Bonnie Prince Billy - Topic
www.youtube.com
November 23, 2025 at 5:21 PM
First watch: Certain Women. Another major Kelly Reichardt blindspot plugged, this 2016 anthology film based on three short stories by Maile Meloy. Although very loosely connected, these are in many ways standalone shorts linked by a mood, pace, and the wide-open spaces of Montana. 1/3
November 23, 2025 at 10:01 AM
Reposted by James Dalrymple
Enjoyed that most French of films noir, Lift to the Scaffold
November 22, 2025 at 11:28 PM
Reposted by James Dalrymple
Antonioni made charismatic actors look like idiots: in The Passenger, Jack Nicholson repeatedly struggles to improvise his way through conversations with strangers. The languages and contexts are alien to him; with a new identity and a new life come all-too-familiar communication barriers.
November 23, 2025 at 7:06 AM
Reposted by James Dalrymple
New on the blog today, I've written about LADY L. by Romain Gary.

A charming, hugely enjoyable story of love, long-held secrets & railing against the establishment, in which personal desires are pitted against political principles & beliefs. I loved it! 💙📚

jacquiwine.wordpress.com/2025/11/23/l...
Lady L. by Romain Gary
Twice winner of the Prix Goncourt (once under a pen name), Romain Gary was a French writer, diplomat, film director and WW2 pilot of great repute. His highly engaging memoir, Promise at Dawn, is by…
jacquiwine.wordpress.com
November 23, 2025 at 7:15 AM
Reposted by James Dalrymple
52 Pick-Up (1986) John Frankenheimer adapts Elmore Leonard on a Cannon Films budget

Roy Scheider's life goes sideways when he's caught in a honey trap & blackmailed by 3 small-time scumbags

If Spencer Tracy & Henri-Georges Clouzot made a sleazy 80s exploration flic, this would be that movie

1/7
November 21, 2025 at 9:52 PM
I've just had a doze that failed all the basic criteria of power napping, which is why I now feel like I've been shot with a tranquilizer dart
November 22, 2025 at 5:04 PM
Reposted by James Dalrymple
de l'influence de la lune sur les barreaux des grilles

Timo Lemmetti
#moon #science #sky #freedom #photography
November 22, 2025 at 6:41 AM
Reposted by James Dalrymple
oh, that's... that's not... you can't call it that
November 21, 2025 at 7:48 PM
Reposted by James Dalrymple
“But we are émigrés, and for émigrés all countries are dangerous. Lots of ministers make speeches against us and no one wants to have us in their country, even though we’re not at all harmful and in fact just like other people." #BookSky 💙📚

jacquiwine.wordpress.com/2025/11/18/c...
Child of All Nations by Irmgard Keun (tr. Michael Hofmann)
Born in Berlin in 1905, the German writer Irmgard Keun rose to prominence in the early 1930s with her striking novels Gilgi, One of Us (1931) and The Artificial Silk Girl (1932), both of which I lo…
jacquiwine.wordpress.com
November 22, 2025 at 10:04 AM
Reposted by James Dalrymple
Found this sentence, from a BBC News article about Poundland stores, viscerally uncomfortable to read. Please do not alternate things you put in your mouth with things you absolutely should not put in your mouth.
November 21, 2025 at 11:18 PM
Reposted by James Dalrymple
The excellent @birminghamdispatch.bsky.social (which has done such great reporting on the flag epidemic over the last few months) delivers the goods again today with this deep dive into the Midlands mythology of Penda's Fen.
Penda’s Fen reinvents Mercia for the modern age
How an experimental British 1970s television play pioneered a folk horror revival
www.birminghamdispatch.co.uk
November 22, 2025 at 10:13 AM
Reposted by James Dalrymple
Pure bloody magic on screen. So many viewings and it still fills me with joy…
#FilmSky

boxd.it/bN2cmB
A ★★★★★ review of Mirror (1975)
Resnais and Tarkovsky - the two masters of examining memory on screen. Fickle, fragmentary, irrational. The dream sequences are my desert island scenes - I could watch them again and again and again. ...
boxd.it
November 21, 2025 at 8:07 PM
a few brief thoughts on Kelly Reichardt's Wendy and Lucy, which I enjoyed very much last weekend
letterboxd.com/jamesewand/f...
A ★★★★ review of Wendy and Lucy (2008)
Kelly Reichardt is rightfully considered one of the best working American directors, and yet I still have a few major gaps. Wendy and Lucy is a sad, lyrical film about living on the margins, shot and ...
letterboxd.com
November 22, 2025 at 9:56 AM
Reposted by James Dalrymple
Here's a🧵about the San Francisco Egg Wars of the 1800s. It has bloody gunfights, marauding pirates, a bunch of (literally) batshit deaths & some nasty looking eggs...
November 22, 2025 at 2:18 AM
Reposted by James Dalrymple
- He wanted to kill you
- It would have hurt less that way

Framed (1947), a Criterion Blackout Noir. The jaw-dropping opening gets its hooks into you toot sweet. It looks like trucker noir, almost becomes The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, then settles into classic sucker-getting-played-by-bad-girl
November 21, 2025 at 8:31 AM