Here’s a quirky little interview with John Huston shot on (or near?) the Irish location of ‘Casino Royal’, the sort-of James Bond movie which he co-directed with twenty other directors. This is ‘portrait of the artist as bullshit-salesman’ deluxe. Huston is charming, evasive, clearly perplexed by what he’s doing involved
Humphrey Bogart called him ‘the monster’ (with great affection, of course). Women found him wildly attractive (even though he treated them rather dreadfully, being proudly ‘multi-amorous’ long before the New York Times wrote admiring articles about threesomes buying and renovation multi-amorous brownstones in Brooklyn). But I digress. John Huston was
In the late 1940s and early 1950s it was generally accepted that Sir Carol Reed, the British filmmaker responsible for ‘The Third Man’, was Europe’s greatest filmmaker. This wasn’t just based on that beyond-classic noir. (Actually placing ‘The Third Man’ in a genre–like noir–is reductive; it’s many different types of
The Ferris wheel was the invention of a man named, well, George Washington Ferris. Come on, what did you think his name was going to be. Gustave Eiffel? It was designed for the 1893 Chicago Worlds Exposition, the first such exposition since the one in Paris five years earlier which
I’ve always hated everything Disney. Hated Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck. Hated Snow White and Pinocchio and Sleeping Beauty. Hated the song ‘It’s A Small World After All’ and especially hated the score to ‘Mary Poppins.’ Worst of all was Disneyland, a theme park I was subjected to several times
One of the distressing things about nerding-out on vintage airplane videos are the soundtracks one has to endure. Either the person who posted the footage of the lovely old planes plasters ‘Top Gun’ style junk-rock over the images or they err in the other direction, maintaining the ‘purity’ of the
Take a look (and read the accompanying explanation) at yesterday’s blog entry. It’s a World War 2 pilot training film ”Learn and Live With Joe Instructor’, absolutely one of the most entertaining war movies ever made. To my dismay, the film ended rather abruptly, halting just as a plane was
Years ago I remember my father recounting to me a training film he and his fellow flight school students were asked (forced) to watch in which Guy Kibbee played an angel who admitted dead student pilots to a special place in heaven/hell, without knowing why. The flight instructor showed up
Filmed in February 1929, when sound was well on its way in, ‘Double Whoopee’ was a defiantly silent entry and one of the best of all Stan and Ollie non-talkies. The hotel setting, characters and costumes are wonderfully evocative of the 20s, complete with ‘The Prince’, a Von Stroheim-esque character
‘Their Purple Moment’ (1928) is a fine (if not brilliant) example of the L&H silent era which showcases more slapstick than wit but which gives us a nice taste of the times it was made in. The restaurant/club set is a very 20s affair, and the chic and sexy Anita