MOVIE NIGHT. I resigned myself to clean my place up for a family visit, but then I turned on the tube and now the place just won't be up to code. First, they had Visconti's The Damned. How'd I miss it before? It's like Shakespeare with all the poetry in your eyes. I suppose you could fault LV for letting some individual members of the damned Essenbecks get lost for a little too long, but that's all to one side when the true vice-grip of tragedy bites so hard. Then, hey! Duel in the Sun on PBS, every bit as silly as its reputation, but good fun all around -- especially when Walter Huston forces a dusky, blanket-clad Jennifer Jones (baring a lot of leg) to kneel with his hand in her hair. Boy, they knew how to make crap in those days. And now there's San Francisco with crackling Anita Loos dialogue -- and a religious angle, yet!

These movies were made between the early Thirties and 1969. Well, that speaks badly for my contemporaneity, or for movies today, depending on how you look at it.