Dragonwyck (1946) **

Typical old Hollywood melodrama elevated a bit by Joe Mank's dialog and a sturdy Mr. Price.

The Lost Daughter (2021) **

Unsettling character study leaves a bit too much unsaid, but that's preferable to the alternative. Excellent cast.

The Fugitive Kind (1960) **

Typical Tennessee southern gothic melodrama made watchable by the lovely Ms. Woodward.

Francis Ford Coppola’s $100 Million Bet (GQ)

Okay, I said. The Godfather started off as a studio project that had nothing to do with you. Did it become personal to you in the end?

“Well, I believe that. I believe… I'm going to have to say this fast. I once read a Balzac article—I wish I could find it, but it's not published, and I don't know where the book is.” (I think this was Coppola's way of telling me he owns, or once owned, an unpublished work by Balzac.) “But people said, ‘Oh, these young people are stealing your stuff.’ To Balzac. And Balzac said, ‘That's why I wrote it. I want them to take everything, whatever I have, they're welcome, these young authors. Take all you want. One, because it can't really come out like me because each one of them is an individual and it's going to come out like them, so they can't steal it. They can appropriate it, but it's going to come out through them. And number two, it gives me immortality, so whatever I do, if young people take it, are influenced by it, and so and so, it's great. Because that then makes me part of their work. And I go on.’ So what was your question?”

Homicide (1991) ***

Terrific cop procedural that really isn't. The kind of film that cannot get financed any more.

Suddenly, Last Summer (1959) **

Extremely talky Williams potboiler relys on psycho-babble, an emaciated, rickety Monty Clift, another regal turn by Kate and the lovely Liz. The actors make it watchable.

Spencer (2021) **

Stewart carries the picture as it attempts to use real historical people as characters in an imagined scenario. Multiple viewings might make this attempt more successful since we're still a little too close in time for our knowledge of those people to be re-imagined.

All About Eve (1950) ***

Opulently written, stylishly cynical look at the world of "The Theater" and its inhabitants. Lots of elegant speeches and performances.

Early ‘lab-grown’ Covid virus found in sample lends weight to Wuhan theory (telegraph.co.uk)

An early version of Covid-19 that appears to have been grown in a laboratory has been discovered in samples from a Chinese biotechnology firm. The finding lends weight to claims that the virus may have started life as a lab experiment that accidentally leaked out. Bioinformatics experts from the University of Veterinary Medicine and Lorand University in Budapest, Hungary, made the discovery by accident while examining genetic data from soil samples collected from Antarctica in late 2018 and early 2019.

The samples were sent to Sangon Biotech in Shanghai for sequencing in Dec 2019, where they became contaminated with a previously unknown variant of Covid-19. The variant has mutations that bridge the gap between bat coronavirus and the earliest Wuhan strain, so it may be an ancestral version of the virus. The samples also contain DNA from hamsters and monkeys, suggesting that the early virus may have been grown in animal cell lines. Viscount Ridley, author of Viral: The Search for the Origin of Covid-19, said: “The unique mutations hint at it being an ancestral variant. So if it was sequenced in say mid-December, before anybody had identified the virus in people and started trying to grow it in labs, then it points to secret samples in labs in 2019.”

Written on the Wind (1956) **

Sumptuously produced and magnificently photographed, yet basically a bonkers melodrama that has no relation to how human beings actually live their lives. (Not that that's always necessary in a film.) Malone and Stack are a hoot.

Deconstructing Harry (1997) ***

Funny if jarringly crude at times, and once the experimental editing style calms down this is almost up to Stardust Memories level in quality.