I hope you like Joan Rivers because I’m posting more of her today. On Friday we saw older Joan on a talk show circa 2005 (Joan 3.0). Yesterday we delved into Joan 1.0 with two appearances on TV in the late 60s. Today we witness Primo Joan in her ‘Tonight
I’ve been posting lousy musical numbers this week with the intention of connecting them to the lousy election but I’m tired of it. I’m tired of the election, I’m tired of this week and I’m looking to end things on a high note. (‘End things’ meaning the week, not my
I began this week with the idea of posting a curated list of the worst movie musical numbers as a tribute (of sorts) to what I assumed was going to be a long week of election accusations, recriminations, lies, falsehoods, violence etc. And lo, the whole thing ran out of
A train wreck of a number for a train wreck of a day. Enough said.
In commemoration of this unbearably anxiety-inducing, nausea-producing week, we’re watching the lousiest musical numbers ever filmed. We began yesterday with the dreaded Ritz Brothers doing a ludicrous number in ‘The Goldwyn Follies’ and continue today with the climactic number from the catastrophic 1984 sort-of-comedy “Rhinestone”, starring Sylvester Stallone and Dolly
Yesterday we looked at one of the earliest sound films made in 1908 by Thomas Edison’s company. The next big step forward in sound film was made by Dr. Lee De Forest in 1923/24, one of radio’s (then called ‘wireless’) great pioneers. ( I can’t go into the details of
It’s hard for us to realize from this distance how miraculous color television must have been when it finally arrived in the early 1960s–though why they used the term ‘living’ color has always puzzled me. After all, it’s not actually living…it’s being broadcast from another remote location. And does the
In this mini-survey this week of unusual credit sequences, I’ve been focusing on obscure and innovative ones as opposed to the more famous Saul Bass/Pablo Ferra/Pink Panther classics. On Wednesday we covered ‘The World In My Corner’ which featured a tabloid newspaper displaying the names of the film’s stars and
Preston Sturges brilliantly manic 1943 comedy ‘The Palm Beach Story’ begins with a credit sequence which interweaves several complex plot strands that make little to no sense to the viewer at the beginning of the film but which later on become clearly part of the intricate storyline. Shot and edited
Yesterday I posted a charming clip of legendary Portuguese filmmaker Manoel De Oliveira doing a delightful imitation of Chaplin dancing. He was was in his late 90s when it was filmed and it turns out it was not a one-off event. Above we see Manoel dancing with a group apparently