Movies 'Til Dawn BLOG

‘FAREWELL MY LOVELY’; ROBERT MITCHUM DOES MARLOWE

Behold the trailer of the 1975 remake of Raymond Chandler’s ‘Farewell My Lovely’ starring Robert Mitchum as Phillip Marlowe. Yesterday I posted the trailer for ‘The Long Goodbye’ made two years earlier with the decidedly more eccentric casting of Elliot Gould as Marlowe. I seem to recall seeing this one

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‘THE LONG GOODBYE’–A ROBERT ALTMAN JOINT

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kb-gAEx9GNU Today’s 70s trailer is ‘The Long Goodbye’, directed by Robert Altman starring Elliott Gould and featuring an eccentric supporting cast including Sterling Hayden and director (and sometime actor) Mark Rydell. The sampling of scenes is threaded by the theme song by John Williams, sung by the great trumpeter-singer Jack

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‘WHAT’S UP DOC’: A BOGDANOVICH META-TRAILER

Here’s another wicked-cool trailer for a Peter Bogdanovich movie (see yesterdays ‘Paper Moon’ trailer), this time for ‘What’s Up Doc?’ Once again PB is featured heavily and the general mood and tone gives us the sense of filmmaking actually being a pleasurable and amusing adventure, which in fact it rarely

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‘PAPER MOON’–A PETER BOGDANOVICH TRAILER

Behold this most eccentric of movie trailers. It’s a four minute theatrical trailer for ‘Paper Moon’ which features Ryan O’Neal, Tatum O’Neal and…Peter Bogdanovich. Indeed the wunderkind director is all over this, mugging with the cast, laughing off-camera, playing director with great enthusiasm etc. It reminds us of what a

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‘PAPER MOON’–THE SINGLE TAKE CAR SCENE

This past Saturday the Directors Guild of America gave a memorial tribute (via Zoom) to the late great Peter Bogdanovich. I was the moderator and the guests included Frank Marshall, Bennett Miller, Cybill Shepard, David O. Russell, Chuck Workman, Doug McGrath and –via tape (or whatever we call whatever captures

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SUNDAY MORNING CARTOON

Enjoy ‘Porky’s Cafe’ from 1942 directed by Chuck Jones (who was still young enough to be more stodgily credited as Charles M. Jones). The minimalism here is rather striking–the cafe is done all in shades of grey with nothing hanging on the walls. There is precisely one customer. Porky runs

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MORE 70s NYC

Today’s “whatever happened to the real New York” video comes in the form a gussied-up tourist public relations ‘video’ (ten years before their were ‘videos’) shot in the early 70s. Lightning fast cutting and annoying music take us through a whiz-bang tour of the city during the John Lindsey era.

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UPPER WEST SIDE TIME CAPSULE;1971

Here’s a few minutes of ghostly, black and white silent footage of the area around Broadway and 88th/89th streets in 1971. Nothing of any interest happens–which is what makes it oddly fascinating (to me at least). The everydayness of this portrait gives it an unintended weight–it achieves gravitas through its

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‘LEARN TO CROON’–ALFALFA VS. THE COMPOSER

‘Learn To Croon’ is a song written by Sam Coslow and Arthur Johnston for the movie ‘College Humor’ (1934) and was introduced by Bing Crosby. If anyone remembers the song today though, it’s because of the excruciating rendition given by Carl ‘Alfalfa’ Switzer in ‘Our Gang Follies of 1938’. If

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CARL ‘ALFALFA’ SWITZER, CROONER COMIC AND VICTIM

The actor Carl Switzer, popularly known as Alfalfa in the Our Gang comedies of the 1930s, was clearly a tortured man. He was perceived by George ‘Spanky’ McFarland as ‘cocky…a little antsy’ and other cast members recall him causing trouble on the set by creating pranks that hurt other people

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