For those of you wondering why I didn’t post a Three Stooges short this weekend (or for those of you who wonder why I post Three Stooges shorts at all) let me explain. I began a re-reading of James Ellroy’s ‘The Big Nowhere’ on Saturday morning and more or less
Let’s closed ‘fight week’ with another George Stevens directed fight sequence. Earlier this week we watched his superb fight scene from ‘Shane’ (which took place in a bar). The day before we caught the fight from John Sturges ‘Bad Day at Black Rock’ (which took place in a diner that
In 1980 (or thereabouts) I saw William Peter Blatty’s ‘The Ninth Configuration’ on the Z Channel, LA’s now legendary first run cable channel which featured lousy prints of new-ish movies. I was perhaps fifteen at the time and was so perplexed and mesmerized by this one-of-a-kind film that I promptly
If you’re going to get into a fight, why not combine it with some drinking? It will certainly make the idea of fighting seem more rational than if you were sober. Which brings us to ‘fight week’. On Monday we watched a fight in a diner (which more than likely
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z4X24dPPg-8https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0U_jzOepc8o Yesterday we watched the excellent fight scene from “Bad Day At Black Rock” in which an aging, one-armed Spencer Tracy kicks martial arts ass. Today we’ll watch what I consider to be the Grandaddy of all fight scenes, George Stevens virtuoso bar fight from ‘Shane’. I first saw ‘Shane’
Much as I deplore seeing people physically fighting in real life–it’s always such a jarring and disgusting sight–I LOVE a good fight scene in a movie. Let’s watch a few this week. First up is this fabulous sequence from ‘Bad Day At Black Rock’ in which Spencer Tracy (who has
Here’s an immensely enjoyable short film starring Cab Calloway, his orchestra and the great and unsung black actress Fredi Washington called ‘Hi De Ho’. Directed by Fred Waller (who also directed the pioneering Duke Ellington short ‘Symphony in Black’ and was–get this–responsible for the development of the Cinerama process) the
Here is a British Pathe newsreel excursion to the exotic (to the British anyway) New York City neighborhood called Harlem. I leave it to you to have your own reaction to this footage–it seems to evoke strong responses from YouTube commenters many of whom are conflicted about how beautiful everything
At the University of South Carolina there is a collection of Fox Movietone Newsreels. It contains seven million feet of nitrate motion picture film and four million feet of safety motion picture film documenting the national and global politics and culture from 1919 through 1934 and from September 1942 through
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f1DTKhVlUMYhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R-z4L1-lEtU When exactly did James Cagney first appear on screen? According to IMDB, he plays the ‘handsy patron at Blackie Joe’s’ in the Al Jolson vehicle ‘The Singing Fool’, made in 1928 as the follow-up to the enormously successful ‘The Jazz Singer’ (1927) and shot at the Warner Brothers Studios