Professor Popinjay's Compendium of Perspicacity

A Non-Review by Prof. Popinjay

[To adhere to the author’s original vision, this article is purposefully presented in black and white.]

(A sad saxophone plays)
I’ve been working this job for sixteen years. It’s the kind of job you can turn your brain off and just do; the kind of job I like. My mind tends to wander. Most would go crazy enduring this kind of repetition. I don’t care for balls out of left field. I like the routine. It’s a carefree life knowing what needs to be done and how to do it and once it’s done I won’t have to do it again for a while. Doesn’t matter how hard the day gets or how tired I am. Five o’clock always rolls around. The weekend always shows up. Sure, some weekends it’s my turn to take the kids out on the town and other weekends the ex-wife takes them and hoses them down, washes off all the Yoo-Hoo and marmalade.
When my mind gets tired of entertaining itself, I like to catch a film at the cinema and let some actors do the job for me. In this case the cinema is my den. It has more spilled Yoo-Hoo and marmalade sandwich crusts on the floor than your average theatre but I can wear my pajamas and eat my meatloaf TV dinner while I watch.
The film tonight? Mulholland Falls. It’s a gritty 1950’s crime drama that wasn’t filmed in black and white but may well have been. Nick Nolte grumbles his way through his lines as usual; a point I don’t hold against him. The dames were some nice lookers with a hot set of getaway sticks on the both of them; the kind of gals you’d want to bring home and introduce to mom. Okay, so it was Melanie Griffith and Jennifer Connelly, both accomplished actresses in their own right, but I’m trying to maintain a theme here so bear with me.
It was a sad tale as most film noir is. Grittier than what you might expect from a film made in the 40’s or 50’s. That might be because Mulholland Falls was released in 1996. My modern sensibilities noted one moment that dates the film a bit and that’s the indifference paid toward the death of an inconsequential side character. I think we might be slightly more reverent in similar circumstances today. To say we were a little insensitive in the 1990’s might be an understatement. All in all this is a good mystery. I recommend it if you’re into this sort of film but then again, I could say that of any film.
Anyway, if you’ll excuse me, there’s a mysterious woman silhouetted against my office window and I think I know what she wants.

(Cue sexy trombone)