The YouTube artist known as NASS has unleashed a new, wonderful example of his/her/they’s superb work–restoring footage of old urban environments, colorizing them (expertly), adjusting the frame rate and adding a realistic sound bed of background noise. I love these videos and have posted a number of the New York
Tomorrow, August 3rd, would have been my father Frank De Felitta’s 103rd birthday. (He passed away in 2016, age 94). To honor this milestone of not being alive for eight and a half years, I thought I’d post an exceedingly rare and culturally important documentary he made for CBS television
Yesterday’s behind the scenes post featured Sidney Lumet directing ‘Dog Day Afternoon’. Today, Sidney is back as we take a look at the making of the catastrophic 1977 musical adaptation of ‘The Wiz’. The film was co-produced by Universal Pictures and Motown Records and starred Diana Ross, Michael Jackson, Lena
As a young fellow wandering the streets of New York City in the late 70/early 80s I was always thrilled to stumble upon a movie shoot in progress. Since the New York filmmaking community was quite small then, it was more than likely to be either a Woody Allen or
Here is a British Pathe newsreel excursion to the exotic (to the British anyway) New York City neighborhood called Harlem. I leave it to you to have your own reaction to this footage–it seems to evoke strong responses from YouTube commenters many of whom are conflicted about how beautiful everything
Yesterday I posted a short film from 1935 called ‘Broadway Highlights’. The film was part of a series of short subjects produced by Paramount Pictures in 1935 and 1936. They purported to tell the viewer, newsreel-style, what was happening on the so-called Gay White Way. In this installment, we first
‘Broadway Highlights’–subtitled ‘Intimate News Of The Gay White Way’–was a series of several short subjects produced by Paramount Pictures in 1935 and 1936. They purported to tell the viewer, newsreel-style, what was happening on the Gay White Way (as the street was dubbed in the lyric of ‘Broadway Melody’). Much
No. He never appeared on ‘Hullabaloo’. But at least I got your attention. Above is an extraordinary short film about genius classical pianist Glenn Gould called ‘Glenn Gould–On The Record’. Shot in 1959 at Columbia Records legendary 30th Street Studios, it shows the then 27 year old Gould in the
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
Seeing how it appears to be ‘George Cukor Day’ on TCM (‘The Philadelphia Story’ is playing as I write this and I’m about to give ‘Her Cardboard Lover’, which I’ve never seen, a try) I thought I’d post this 1973 doc about him. It was made as part of an