The excellent cinematographer John Bailey (click here for credits too numerous to mention) was also a fine film theorist. Witness this unusually perceptive break-down of the shooting style that John Huston and his cinematographer Harold Rossen (click here for credits too numerous to mention, although I will offer-up ‘Wizard Of
Here’s a one-hour doc about the making of John Huston’s 1984 adaptation of Malcolm Lowry’s ‘Under The Volcano’. Actually it’s less a doc than it is a collection of footage gathered on the set and put it into a semblance of order, as if it were the initial assembly of
Here is SCTV’s ‘Ricardo Montalban School of Fine Acting’. (The inclusion of ‘fine’ is very important, in an SCTV-ish kind of way). Every piece of this skit kills me but none so much as Joe Flaherty playing Terry Malloy as played by Ricardo Montalban. Oh, and Gene Shalit learning to
In Elia Kazan’s1989 autobiography he reflects toward the end of the book on the pain of failure and missed opportunity in show-biz. Of course he manages to work Orson Welles into the story, bemoaning the lost promise blah blah blah.Then he bitchily references a tale of Welles keeping a whole
There are very few Sidney Lumet movies I haven’t seen–and that’s saying a lot since he made so many movies. One is something called ‘Lovin’ Molly’ which he squeezed in between ‘Serpico’ and “Murder On The Orient Express’. (In his book ‘Making Movies’ he mentions in passing that he did
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=adSl_tRzrEQ In tribute to Catherine O’Hara (and in memory of John Candy, Harold Ramis and Joe Flahrerty) here is an SCTV parody of the Samuel Z. Arkoff women-in-prison genre ‘Broads Behind Bars’. Every second of this sketch is brilliant, targeted satire. They even get the low-rent look right. Just in
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XHOmBV4js_Ehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9EMfA5_tm8Y My go-to cartoon characters as a kid were Bugs/Daffy/Porgy (Warner Brothers) and Charlie Brown/Lucy/Snoopy/Linus Charles M. Schultz). Everything else was the bunk. I’ve written before–rather recently in fact–about my loathing for all things Disney. Ditto Hanna-Barbara and their cheap, flat animation which did nothing to enhance their cheap, flat
Here’s a clip of the majestic comedy duo Bob and Ray (Elliot and Goulding were their surnames) from what appears to be a mid 1970s Johnny Carson show. I can’t explain the condition of Johnny’s jacket in the intro but it doesn’t really matter. This is one of my favorite
I always enjoy discovering period industrial films explaining then cutting-edge technologies–how to process Technicolor film, how to record and press 78 RPM records etc. Above I’ve posted a 1937 mini-doc explaining the process by which a radio show transmits from the studio to homes across the country. It’s quite niftily
During John Huston’s ‘Lord Of The Manor’ Ireland years (mid-1950s to mid-1970s roughly) he was known locally as John Huston, MFH. Those letters stood for ‘Master of the Fox Hunt’, a loathsome tradition that he was happy to help perpetrate. Above is a short (five minute) doc showing the great