Before Keith Olbermann ruined James Thurber for me forever, he did right by continually calling Glenn Beck "Lonesome Rhodes" Beck. And it was funny every single time.

I just finished watching A Face in the Crowd (1957), which I hadn't seen for at least 15 years, because I'm still pretty mad at Elia Kazan. As a picture, it's about 30 minutes too long and pretty heavy-handed. Andy Griffith could have been directed better (everything will be Kazan's fault, you'll see) and he shouts an awful lot, but otherwise is pretty good. As the woman who makes and breaks him, Patricia Neal turns in a terrific performance and kept reminding me, oddly, of Kate Winslet every now and then. She's a marvelous actress and plays Marcia Jeffries complicated and vulnerable. Oh and Walter Matthau is in it too.

You can't beat the picture for prescience and if you want to feel extra stupid about why Fox News is possible, you should watch it. But you can probably stop after you see Rhodes all alone at the big table.

Let me say one or two words about Lee Remick. I've been in love with her since The Omen, but I never knew she could twirl a baton. Golly.

Before there was IMDb and Wikipedia, there was my sister, Jennifer. I have called her from truck stops, cocktail parties, and faraway countries in the middle of the night to ask something like "Who was that guy, UGH, you know him he's been in every noir ever, wears a white t-shirt, always snarling a little, not really handsome but kinda sexy in a murderous thug kinda way... It's killing me." And she'd say, "Yeah, Robert Ryan, what about him?"

Well she's come through again with "Tired Old Queen at the Movies," which she's been telling me about for a while now and which I keep forgetting to check out. Today she sent me a link to Steve Hayes (the Tired Old Queen) reviewing Double Indemnity. He does a great imitation of Stanwyck at 2:41 and later a surprisingly accurate Fred MacMurray.

My sister is never wrong.