Curiosities within Google’s search console (formerly Webmaster Tools)

  I took a peek at Google Webmaster Tools. Apparently there are a lot of noindex pages on the Lucire website that they want me to resolve. Well, folks, if you didn’t put tag index pages so high up for a site: search, I wouldn’t need to have so many. This is to help Google […]

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Remembering Nehemiah Persoff, 1919–2022

Nehemiah Persoff as a corrupt Latin American finance minister, Phillipe Pereda, in the Mission: Impossible episode, ‘The Vault’ (1969).   I read that the wonderful Palestinian-born character actor Nehemiah Persoff passed away this month last year, aged 102. I remember Nehemiah most from the third-season Mission: Impossible episode, ‘The Vault’, which is among the best […]

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A format so old, it’s new and radical

Above: I spy Natasha Lyonne and a Plymouth Barracuda. So the car is part of her screen identity? So it should be, it’s television. I might have to watch this.   Two very fascinating responses come up in Wired’s interview with director Rian Johnson on the Netflix release of his film Glass Onion. I’m not […]

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January 2023 gallery

Here are January 2023’s images—aides-mémoires, photos of interest, and miscellaneous items. I append to this gallery through the month.     Notes Rosa Clará image, added as I was archiving files from the third quarter of 2021. The Claudia Schiffer Rolling Stone cover came to mind recently—I believe it was commended in 1991 by the […]

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John Shaft beats Luke Skywalker hands down

I always had decent pencil cases at kindergarten in Hong Kong and then when I started school in New Zealand. Usually they were car-themed but the pièce de résistance was this one, far nicer than what my classmates in my new home country had.    While other kids were into Star Wars and things I […]

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John’s on first

  Bill Owen posted the above, and I replied in this thread on Twitter.   ‘John’s on first, John John’s on second, John’s on third.’   ‘Who’s on first?’   ‘John.’   ‘The guy on first.’   ‘John.’   ‘But that’s the guy on third.’   ‘One base at a time!’   ‘I’m only asking […]

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Title design in 1970: big geometric type rules

There is something quite elegant about title typography from the turn of the decade as the 1960s become the 1970s.    There is 1971’s Diamonds Are Forever by Maurice Binder, which apparently is one of Steven Spielberg’s favourites, but I’m thinking of slightly humbler fare from the year before.    I got thinking about it […]

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Rocketman’s most annoying scene

Originally noted at NewTumbl, this is the sort of stuff that can annoy me in films.    This is a scene from Rocketman, where Elton John (Taron Egerton) arrives at the Troubador in Los Angeles in 1970. Car people, spot the problems.    If you’re like me, you’re going: Elton’s in a 1978 Lincoln Continental […]

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Rotten sequel ideas, no. 1

I’m not a comedian by any stretch of the imagination (neither are a lot of the people on comedy programmes here in Aotearoa) but every now and then my mind goes to funny places. Such as this:    Since Coming 2 America was so uniformly awful (the best bits are in the trailer), this was […]

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My 10 favourite Don Black lyrics

  I’ve bought Don Black’s The Sanest Guy in the Room, which is a great read—you know that it’s piqued your interest if you can do 110 pages in a single sitting. There’s more to go, and it’s entertaining learning a bit about the backgrounds to his songs, ‘Born Free’ arguably his best known. (I […]

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