Comet Atomic
Author's posts
Mar 27 2024
Soviet Film Wednesday: The Cranes Are Flying
A young couple wander through Moscow before dawn. The streets are almost empty, the city seems to belong entirely to them, and cranes fly high above as Boris and Veronika imagine a future that still appears wonderfully open. Within hours, Germany will invade the Soviet Union, Boris will volunteer for the army, and the private …
Mar 13 2024
Soviet Film Wednesday: Tale of Tales
A small gray wolf sits beside a fire. A baby drinks milk. Couples dance beneath trees while music drifts through the night. Men leave for war and do not return. Apples fall. Snow appears. A child skips rope with a bull. Images disappear and then return slightly altered, as though a memory has surfaced for …
Mar 06 2024
Soviet Film Wednesday: Solaris
A horse moves through tall grass. Water plants sway beneath the surface of a pond. Rain falls outside an old country house while a father waits for his son. Only much later will that son leave Earth and travel to a space station orbiting a mysterious planet, yet Andrei Tarkovsky begins Solaris not with rockets, …
Feb 29 2024
Discover Hidden Gems on Your Route 66 Road Trip: A Comprehensive Itinerary
There are faster ways to travel from Chicago to Southern California, but speed has never been the point of Route 66. The Mother Road rewards travelers who leave the interstate, follow an old alignment through a nearly forgotten downtown, stop when an unexpected neon sign appears, and give themselves enough time to investigate the giant …
Feb 07 2024
Soviet Film Wednesday: Ivan’s Childhood
A boy wakes beneath a tree, walks through grass glittering with sunlight, follows a butterfly, and hears his mother’s voice. For a few moments, the world seems untouched by violence. Then the dream ends, and twelve-year-old Ivan is back in the darkness of war. That movement between childhood and destruction lies at the heart of …
Jan 24 2024
Soviet Film Wednesday: Stalker
A rusted railway track disappears into weeds. Water drips through abandoned buildings. Telephone poles stand in landscapes where nobody seems to need electricity. A dog appears without explanation. Three men walk toward a room that may grant their deepest desires, yet the closer they get to it, the less certain they become that they want …
Jan 03 2024
Soviet Film Wednesday: Nostalghia
A man carrying a lit candle tries to cross an empty thermal pool. He moves slowly, shielding the flame with his hand as though the survival of something much larger depends upon keeping this tiny light alive. Twice the candle goes out. Each time he returns to the beginning and starts again. Few scenes summarize …
Dec 21 2023
Shiny Brite: The Sparkling History of America’s Mid-Century Christmas Ornaments
Few Christmas decorations capture the look of a mid-century American holiday as instantly as a box of Shiny Brite ornaments. Their colors seem almost impossibly cheerful: cherry red, icy silver, emerald green, turquoise, pink, blue, gold, and combinations striped, stenciled, glittered, flocked, or molded into deep reflector indents. Hang them among strings of colored lights …
Dec 18 2023
Christmas Tree Bubble Lights: The Bubbling Glow of a Mid-Century Christmas
There is something wonderfully unnecessary about a Christmas bubble light. A tiny incandescent bulb heats a glass tube filled with colored liquid until bubbles begin rising through it, over and over, accomplishing nothing except making the Christmas tree more magical. That lack of practicality may be exactly why bubble lights have remained so memorable. For …
Dec 06 2023
On This Day: Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer Premieres
On December 6, 1964, American television viewers met a glowing-nosed reindeer, an elf who wanted to become a dentist, a prospector obsessed with striking it rich, an enormous snow monster, a collection of unwanted toys, and a talking snowman voiced by Burl Ives. Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer premiered on NBC as part of The General …
