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
Let’s take a break from the usual weekend Three Stooges two-reeler. Instead, we’ll listen to an audio-only interview with Moe Howard, recorded in 1973. I don’t know who the interviewer is but, aside from an awkward start, he does an admirable job of stepping back and letting the very friendly
Closing out this Cassavetes-centric week, here’s a very cool piece of film featuring Cassavetes in an unidentified environment (re: hotel room) anecdoting to an unidentified group of people as his adoring wife Gena Rowlands looks on about the making of his first two films ‘Shadows’ and ‘Faces’. The stories are
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pcgWO-hxZls Here’s an excerpt from an interview with John Cassavetes, taken from the documentary “Cineaste de notre temps” (1968). I feel like I’ve posted the entire doc before (long long ago) but am not finding it on YouTube currently. So this tantalizing bit, featuring Cassavetes driving a convertible along Mulholland
Continuing this weeks theme of Escargot-eating, croissant-chowing, Gitagne-puffing, Burgundy-swilling French guys interviewing tough-ass directors (see Monday’s Don Siegel post and yesterday’s Sam Fuller post) here is the great writer-director Richard Brooks discussing his adaptation of Truman Capote’s ‘In Cold Blood’. Back in the 1980s, cinema journalists Phillippe Garnier and Claude