Happy Birthday, Mikaela Hoover

Hey!  It's a second Super Birthday today!  

Happy Birthday to Mikaela Hoover!  She played Cat Grant in our most recent Superman film.  You will remember her in that movie with blonde hair and glasses.  She absolutely nailed the character in her few scenes, so... hats off!

Hoover also played Floor the Rabbit in Guardians of the Galaxy, Vol. 3.  

May Ms. Hoover have a terrific b-day and a fabulous trip around the sun.

Melodrama Watch: Written on the Wind (1956)

Watched:  07/11/2026

Format:  Criterion

Viewing:  First

Director:  Douglas Sirk

I've been pretty plain that - while I rarely think a Sirk movie is aimed at me - I think he's a good director and makes some interesting films.  He was considered the master of a certain kind of melodramatic "woman's film", and I don't generally mean the term melodrama in the derogatory sense.  They're simply dramas contained to the character's lives, focusing on the emotions they experience.  Rarely do the conflicts that drive the stories have consequence outside of the sphere of the main characters. 

But Written on the Wind (1956) is both the most melodramatic of his films I've seen in the way we mean the term these days.  It is big feelings playing out in a way that feels like an alternate pilot for TV's Dallas as much as anything.  

It is also the horniest of Sirk's movies I've seen thus far - a movie entirely about sex that cannot say the word "sex" and instead relies on cloaked language and imagery as subtle as a 95 mph fastball to the noggin.  For example:  when a certain character is in flagrante delicto at a motel room, in the foreground of the frame, an oil pump is hard at work.  

WWI Watch: Hell's Angels (1930)

Watched:  07/11/2026

Format:  TCM

Viewing:  First

Director:  Howard Hughes

Even back in film school I remember hearing or reading that Howard Hughes' production of Hell's Angels (1930) had been kind of out of control.  It took years to make as Hughes was, ahem, a tad OCD and then The Jazz Singer happened during the already lengthy shoot,  sound suddenly available during the middle of production - of course Hughes wanted in on that.  They had to fire one of their leads - who had a serious Swedish accent - and replace her with Jean Harlow, effectively locking Harlow in as sort of the first blonde bombshell.  I also knew a few people died making the movie - and having watched this thing, I can see how that could have occurred.

What I did not know is that Hell's Angels is actually a very watchable movie and was not really what I was expecting.  

The plot sounds fairly simple on paper - a pair of brothers at Oxford, one a rule-follower and romantic, the other a bit more of a rake and nihilist - find that WWI has broken out.  One brother volunteers for the Royal Flying Corps, and the other is voluntold he's in the RFC.  Meanwhile, their German pal Karl is drafted into the Zeppelin corps.  

Happy Birthday, Rachel Brosnahan

Happy birthday to Rachel Brosnahan, our current Lois Lane, upon whom we can all agree is a pretty good idea.

We've been so lucky with our string of Lois Lanes over the past twenty years, and I love what Brosnahan did with the role, making it her own.  

Here's hoping she has a great year ahead of her.