Insectoid moon dwellers in H.G. Wells's "The First Men in the Moon" / SAT 10-12-24 / Brother of Lech and Czech in Slavic lore / Texter's "off-line" / Online home services marketplace / ___ Thai (Vietnamese fruit cocktail) / Like Mount Terror and Mount Terra Nova / Lubricants used in oil drilling / Anna ___ first Italian to win an acting Oscar / First name in classic horror / Invite qualifier, for short / Zest for life: Abbr. /

Constructor: Katie Hoody

Relative difficulty: Medium to Medium-Challenging 

THEME: none 

Word of the Day: Anna MAGNANI (39D: Anna ___, first Italian to win an acting Oscar) —

Anna Maria Magnani (Italian: [ˈanna maɲˈɲaːni]; 7 March 1908 – 26 September 1973) was an Italian actress. She was known for her explosive acting and earthy, realistic portrayals of characters.

Born in Rome, she worked her way through Rome's Academy of Dramatic Art by singing at night clubs. During her career, her only child was stricken by polio when he was 18 months old and remained disabled. She was referred to as "La Lupa", the "perennial toast of Rome" and a "living she-wolf symbol" of the cinema. Time described her personality as "fiery", and drama critic Harold Clurman said her acting was "volcanic". In the realm of Italian cinema, she was "passionate, fearless, and exciting", an actress whom film historian Barry Monush calls "the volcanic earth mother of all Italian cinema." Director Roberto Rossellini called her "the greatest acting genius since Eleonora Duse". Playwright Tennessee Williams became an admirer of her acting and wrote The Rose Tattoo (1955) specifically for her to star in, a role for which she received an Academy Award for Best Actress, becoming the first Italian – and first non-native English speaking woman – to win an Oscar.

After meeting director Goffredo Alessandrini, she received her first screen role in The Blind Woman of Sorrento (La cieca di Sorrento, 1934) and later achieved international attention in Rossellini's Rome, Open City (1945), which is seen as launching the Italian neorealism movement in cinema. As an actress, she became recognized for her dynamic and forceful portrayals of "earthy lower-class women" in such films as L'Amore (1948), Bellissima (1951), The Rose Tattoo (1955), The Fugitive Kind (1960) and Mamma Roma (1962). As early as 1950, Life had already stated that Magnani was "one of the most impressive actresses since Garbo". (wikipedia)

A real up-and-down, high-and-low experience, this one. Those stacks are really nice—clean, crisp, clear, colloquial. Often, with stacks of long answers like that, the short answers holding them in place can get pretty dicey, but generally, I thought those (mostly) short answers held up. There's nothing that made me go "absolutely not!," at any rate. So just in terms of filling the grid, the top and bottom seem very nice. The middle of the grid is less flashy, less interesting, choppier, but it generally holds up. I could be very happy not seeing the word DECOCT ever again in my life, but we all have our burdens to bear, and I can bear that one. The middle does have the great "AM I NUTS?," so ... you take the good, you take the bad, as they say (in the theme song for The Facts of Life, among other places, probably). My problem today wasn't with the fill so much as the absurdly (at one point, literally laughably) trivial and technical cluing on some of these answers. Just arcane stuff from all these different areas about which my knowledge is not exactly deep. Areas like "Mountain biking moves" (they have "moves"?) and oil drilling (MUDS!?) and Slavic lore—that's the one that really got me. I have "RIDIC" written in the margin next to RUS (21A: Brother of Lech and Czech in Slavic lore). RUS is already bad fill, the kind you want solvers to just ignore, so your only good option there is some clue for the actual country of RUSsia. "Slavic lore," LOL. Sure, Jan. I watch so many (So Many) movies (~1/day since COVID made a cinephile out of me), but all my viewing did not prepare me for a character played by an actor I've never heard of (Kieron Moore?) in a movie I've never heard of (David and Bathsheba?). URIAH filled itself in easily from crosses, but yeeeeesh. ANTARCTIC mountains (3D: Like Mount Terror and Mount Terra Nova) ... non-Guevara CHEs (22A: ___ Thai (Vietnamese fruit cocktail)) ... Insectoid Moon Dwellers (!?!?) (11D: Insectoid moon dwellers in H.G. Wells's "The First Men in the Moon"). Trivia trivia trivia ... it was really really really leaning on trivia for the "difficulty." There's still a healthy dose of tricky wordplay, but this puzzle felt slightly old-fashioned in the amount of arcana it wanted you to come up with. RUS, LOL. It's like when you used to have to know three-letter European rivers of no note. Lots of love for the stacks today, but a handful of UGHS for some of these clues.