Movies 'Til Dawn BLOG

HOWARD HAWKS–SPEED DEMON

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x2itmdeH0nQhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aEn3tjbYO8M Howard Hawks was what used to be known as a ‘man’s man’. He was a sportsman (another defunct term) who raced cars and motorcycles, flew planes, hunted, fished, rode horses, the whole shmeer. His love of flying was well documented in several movies–‘The Dawn Patrol’, ‘Air Force’ and the

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FUN AND GAMES IN BIPLANES

I mentioned on Monday that we flew in a Biplane this past weekend and experienced one of life’s must-do activities. (Cheap is wasn’t. But I’m happier paying for that than I am for a theater ticket to a Broadway musical I’m sorry that I wound up buying a ticket for).

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AVIATRIX EXTRODINAIRE; MEET GLADYS INGLE

This past weekend we attended the Rhinebeck Aerodrome,  an amazing outdoor (and indoor) display of vintage aircraft, which not only serves as a museum of flight but which also offers an air show consisting of stunt flying of vintage planes by some very very very brave, well trained pilots. As

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SINKING OF THE ‘TITANIC’: IT REALLY KILLS YA’

Yesterday we looked at a scene from an episode of “Friends’ sans laugh track. It revealed itself to be something entirely different than intended–an innocuous sit-com scene with a few laughs instead turned into a Bergman-esque study of faces, mute interactions, intense but silent emotions etc. Today we’ll see what

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JOHN GILBERT SPEAKS–KIND OF…

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3jIeUm2KAqYhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rlb7WNwcs_I The transition silent stars had to make to sound movies was a treacherous one, the main problem being not that they sounded funny but that their voices didn’t always match their on-screen personas. This could work in two different ways. On the one hand, the voiceless William Powell was

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‘SALOME’ PT. 3;

Laaving no turn unstoned in our look at various strange cinematic attempts at telling the story of ‘Salome’, here’s a reel of selects from one of the strangest–and most eerily lovely–of all silent films. I speak of the Russian actress Alla Nazimova’s 1923 ‘art’ version of the tale. It isn’t

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‘SALOME’ PT. 2; A RITA HAYWORTH JIG

Yesterday we saw fragments of the lost 1918 version of ‘Salome’ starring Theda Bara. Today we jump ahead thirty-five years (it feels like thirty-five centuries) to the 1953 version starring Rita Hayworth. Above I’ve posted the ‘Dance of the Seven Veils’ scene which was choreographed by Valerie Bettis, a well

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SALOME: A THEDA BARA MYSTERY

The story of Salome, her father King Herod, her passion for John the Baptist, his rejection of her which somehow leads her to do a suggestive dance that arouses her stepfather (I think) to grant her whatever she wishes which turns out to be John the Baptist’s head on a

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BARNSTORMING

Did you know that there were no regulations in place for flying airplanes until 1926? And that pilot’s liscences, control towers, flight plans, flights schools and the FAA didn’t exist? You did? I don’t believe you. I didn’t know this until watching the above very nice short doc on what

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THE HAL ROACH SCHOOL OF FLYING

Our semi-deep dive into vintage aviation continues with the extraordinary 1931 Hal Roach comedy ‘Air Tight’. The film is one in the series of short comedies known as ‘The Boy Friends’, which starred Mickey Daniels, Grady Sutton, Mary Kornman and other Roach-trained veterans of the silent incarnation of ‘Our Gang’.

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