I could never remember the name of the ‘The Inn Of the Sixth Happiness’ when I was a kid. I liked the movie but referred to it by several different variations when noting to somebody that it was soon to be on TV. ‘The Sixth Inn of Happiness’, ‘The Happy
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZvCkk6iAZxIhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pEDTuampIMg Decades may pass, styles of filmmaking may change, but the architecture of the Hollywood premiere/awards show remains the same. The stars get out of cars, stand on ‘the carpet’ to be admired and photographed, then go inside. That’s about it. Yesterday I posted the 1953 version of a premiere.
This past Saturday we screened ‘House Of Wax’ (1953) at the Directors Guild theater on West 57th street. I did the historical context intro and briefly discussed (i.e. jammed through) a mini-history of 3-D filmmaking. Some often cite ‘House Of Wax’ as the first 3-D movie released at the dawn
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3X9UEu1qJRo To my intense frustration, some self-important copyright upholder has removed all traces of the musical numbers from The Marx Brothers maiden cinematic effort ‘The Cocoanuts’ (1929) from the wilds of YouTube. Why? Why why why? Is it an Irving Berlin estate kind of thing? (Possibly). A DVD reissue kind
The generally accepted word on the Marx Brothers films is that they constitute a clear case of downhillism, with the first five Paramount films being their supreme achievements, the first MGM (‘A Night At The Opera’) being the most successful yet also signifying the beginning of the end, and a
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0syJQgFSzI4https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-uUTWLNBl2k “The Sandpiper” (1965) starring Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton is best known today for its theme song, Johnny Mandel and Paul Francis Webster’s immortal ‘The Shadow Of Your Smile’. The film has generally been dismissed as weak-tea soap opera with pretentious thematic references to the bird the film is
Here’s a funny little reel of outtakes from ‘The Patsy’, a 1964 Jerry Lewis vehicle starring and directed by Buddy Love–er, Jerry. This film, along with ‘The Bellboy’, ‘The Errand Boy’ and ‘The Ladies Man’ mark for me the peak of Jerry’s solo career as a comic and director. After
Yesterday I wrote about my fascination with lost films–movies of the 20s and 30s that have vanished into the ether seemingly with no explanation. The truth is that most movies of the time were considered largely disposable after their initial run in theaters and little effort was made to preserve
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4JzIhWg2R2chttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F2mvN9x_Egc The concept of a ‘lost film’–in other words a film that there is proof of having been made but no known print extant–is a terribly sad one. But the concept of a fragment of a lost film surviving is downright ghostly. Oftentimes these scraps of otherwise vanished films are
From the ridiculous (see yesterdays post about Curly Howard) to the sublime; today we are looking at color(ized) footage of the eternal city in 1940, brought to us by the YouTube artist known as NASS. As always, NASS has taken black and white footage documenting a city from the past,