After a year-long hiatus my podcast ‘Movies Til Dawn’ has returned to the ether-waves, with none other than Orson Welles as my first post-reboot guest. How did I make contact with Orson, you ask? Via Ouija Board perhaps? No. I won’t even pretend that I interviewed the man (the way
The YouTube artist known as NASS has posted another of he/she/they’s wonderful updated urban history videos in which, by use of colorization, frame rate adjustment and an added soundbed, an old piece of documentary film becomes a most convincing and seductive new journey through the past. This is New York
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9nFupfJk4T8 Yesterday we visited Vienna in 1896. (And on Monday we visited London in 1931. It’s been that kind of week.) Today we’ll watch an AI colorization of a few mintues of ‘Berlin–Symphony Of A Metropolis’, a documentary film by Walter Ruttman shot in 1927. Click here for an excellent
In June of 1896 (127 years ago this month!) the Lumière brothers recorded this footage of simple street life in Vienna when they travelled to that city to demonstrate their invention, the Cinématographe. No other information is needed to enjoy this transportive photographic record of a world that comes thrillingly
Above is a fascinating British Pathe newsreel covering a gala event of some sort (a charity ball perhaps?) held at the Cafe De Paris in London in 1931. The impossibly elegant crowd are clothed in white tie and gowns. The dance floor is so overcrowded as to make one squirm
The YouTube artist known as NASS–who specializes in taking old footage of urban centers and colorizing and updating them–has posted a splendid eight-plus minutes of various places in London in the 1930s. His/Her/They’s work with color is beyond impressive–it never feels colorized, only real and lush. This is the London
The history of RKO Pictures–how it began life as Radio Pictures before merging with the Keith-Albee-Orpheum Vaudeville theater chain (thus the KO appended to the R)–is a fascinating one, involving dirty deeds, unsavory mergers, forced stock liquidations and–to top it off–the manipulations of one Joseph P. Kennedy, who was in
Above is a reel containing all the various iterations of the RKO Studios logo over the years, including not only the opening logo but the different styles of the words ‘The End’ which naturally appeared at the finish of the films. Of all the studios in the heyday of Hollywood,
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.