January 20

It is David Lynch's 64th birthday today, and frankly, I wouldn't even know where to begin to talk about what Lynch's work has meant to me; friends will know exactly what I mean. David Cairns at Shadowplay offers a fascinating visual essay on Lynch's cinematic influences:

http://dcairns.wordpress.com/2010/01/19/the-naked-lynch/

IFC.com has prepared a helpful "cheat sheet" for the upcoming Sundance Film Festival:

http://www.ifc.com/news/2010/01/sundance-2010-guide.php

A few days after I mentioned Cecil Beaton's diaries, The Diary Junction has an informative post on the subject:

http://thediaryjunction.blogspot.com/2010/01/nerves-before-sitting.html

The blog Adelaide in Photos -- yes, there truly is a blog for everything -- brightened my day with a picture of a rare albino kangaroo. I am a sucker for cute animals:

http://adelaide-in-photos.blogspot.com/2010/01/abc-wednesdays-for-albino-kangaroo.html

RIP: Robert B. Parker, 1932-2010. Although I fell behind in my Parker reading a while ago and need to catch up -- he could write faster than I could read -- I have always considered him, as I think any reasonable crime fiction fan would, as one of the most significant of modern detective novelists, with a completely engaging voice and a terrific sense of place. I checked my files and noted that I had read the first 11 Spenser novels (from The Judas Goat through Valediction), and of those, the sixth and seventh, Looking for Rachel Wallace and Early Autumn, stand out as especially accomplished and affecting novels (and those two titles were specifically shouted out in some of today's obituaries). Parker was a fine author, his own man, and it is clear from the outpouring in the blogosphere that he will be greatly missed.

Among notables born on this date are novelists Eugene Sue (France) and Johannes Jensen (Denmark), Nicaraguan poet Ernesto Cardenal, choreographer Ruth St. Denis, pianist Josef Hofmann, violinist Mischa Elman, composers Ernest Chausson, Walter Piston, and David Tudor, astronaut Buzz Aldrin, trumpeter and big band leader Ray Anthony, comedian and commentator Bill Maher, actors Patricia Neal, George Burns, and DeForest Kelley, and film director Federico Fellini. Although Fellini is probably best known these days for his late, fascinating mannerist period, when there was no doubt the director was the star -- I once cheekily dubbed Intervista "Fellini's Fellini" -- there was another side to him in his early days: I Vitelloni remains one of the funniest, tenderest depictions of young adulthood and small-town life ever put on screen. It's no wonder that both Stanley Kubrick and Martin Scorsese have cited it as a favorite film and a formative influence.