Poster of the Week - Countess Dracula

Poster of the Week! - Inspired by Curt's fantastic work feeding us all sorts of '70s era Dracula artifacts this month at his Groovy Age of Dracula (or Groovy Age of Horror), I offer this modest image of a British poster for the 1970 Hammer horror, Countess Dracula.

The film has nothing to do with Dracula, of course. It has something to do with Elizabeth Bathory, the real life monster who ordered the killing of more than 600 women and girls and bathed in their blood. Author Andrei Codrescu, who is also a descendent of the countess, wrote his first novel about her. Another descendent, Dennis Báthory-Kitsz, has composed an opera on Elizabeth Bathory, and also runs a fairly comprehensive site about Bathory and about his opera. A whole host of Bathory links can be found on the same site. For reviews of the movie (which, I confess, I haven't seen), you can go here, here, and here.Click on the image on the left for a larger image. 373K

Poster of the Week - Jekyll and Hyde (1931)

Poster of the Week! -- The creepy image of Hyde as Jekyll's cubist shadow distinguishes this poster advertising the 1932 Swedish release of Rouben Mamoulian's Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. American Cinematographer has a great and very informative article about the making of this landmark film, highlighting the groundbreaking and sometimes experimental work of its director, Mamoulian, and the film's cinematographer, Karl Struss.

Struss himself had a career in cinematography that spanned 5 decades with close to 140 credits, from silent classics like the original Ben-Hur and Murnau's Sunrise (for which he earned an Oscar) to some of Chaplin's sound films (The Great Dictator and Limelight) to humbler efforts in the tail end of his career like Rocketship X-M, The Fly, and The Alligator People. Before his cinematographic career, Struss was an accomplished and recognized pictorial photographer who sold work to the top fashion magazines of the day (the 1910s), and was a member of Alfred Stieglitz's group. Here's a long essay excerpted from an illustrated exhibition catalog. Here's an eerie shot of a waterfront on the East Side of New York; a clash of modernity and tradition in a seemingly random shot of a Columbus Day Parade in 1912; a color shot of the Boardwalk in Long Island from 1910; some Struss shots here; some more shots here; some nudes from 1914 here (very tasteful, but the models are nude); also, a short article on Struss' work in stereo photography and in 3-D movies.

Gabriel Figueroa

Gabriel Figueroa is one of Mexico's greatest artists. Indeed, some have called him the "fourth muralist", after the three great ones, Rivera, Siqueiros, and Orozco. Figueroa was friendly with all three, and the cinematographer admittedly borrowed pictorial elements from the muralists, and, surprisingly, the painters admitted they borrowed from the filmmaker as well. As Figueroa's son revealed in an interview: "Whenever my father was invited to one of his exhibits, he would come in and Siqueiros would tell him, 'Now you come and see what I stole from you.' And my father would say 'Oh no. I come to see what I can steal from you.' Composition-wise and theme-wise.... The only time that my father recognized openly that he took a composition out of a painting, from a muralist, it was Orozco's. It was a water color that Orozco made of a funeral of Velorio. This water color is called The Requiem. And my father, in a picture called Flor Sylvestre with Dolores del Río, took this very same composition and interpreted it. So it happened that the day that the film was screened for the first time, Dolores del Río invited all her friends, and among her friends was Orozco. It happened that Orozco sat right next to my father. And when the scene came on, Orozco jumped out of his seat. My father said 'Maestro, I am an honest thief. I took that from one of your water colors'. Orozco said 'Of course, the depth and the volume you have in this composition is something that I didn't get in my water color. You must show me how you work so that I can see the magic of this scene.'"

Like the muralists, Figueroa's subject was Mexico itself, which he lit and photographed as the biggest, greatest movie star in the world. He made her landscapes gorgeous and, yes, even glamorous with a shimmering texture that rivaled the erotic; but also harsh, lonely, and sometimes cruel. But he was not merely a landscape photographer; he also explored the topographies of the human face, the luscious openess of smiles, the weight of centuries of sadness behind a poor woman's gaze, the grisly and grimmest gravity of a bad man's grin. Like the muralists, Figueroa took elements that seemed classically Mexican and made them universal.

There are many places where you can see some of the best of Figueroa's work. Here are a few: his official site, run by his son Gabriel Figueroa Flores, Jr., complete with a gallery of Quicktime video; a Spanish language site with plenty of images from the films and production shots as well; another Spanish language site with images and video; some erotic photgraphy by Figueroa (very tasteful, mind you); also, the odd apocryphal story that Figueroa had a hand in the creation of The Creature from the Black Lagoon; more trivia: he also helped shoot Johnny Weismuller's last Tarzan movie (along with Raul Martinez Solares, who photographed many of the Mexican horror and wrestling films from the '50s through the '70s)

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Poster of the Week - Belle du Jour

Poster of the Week! -- A stylish and striking Japanese advertisement for Luis Buñuel's Belle du Jour.
Buñuel on Belle du Jour (from the excellent book of interviews with Buñuel, Objects of Desire: Conversations with Luis Buñuel by Jose de la Colina and Tomas Perez Turrant:
Colina: Of course it's useless to ask you what is in the small box that the Asian client shows Severine.
Buñuel: (He laughs) I know the little box is upsetting, especially because of the buzzing noise it makes. After seeing the little box, one prostitute rejects the Asian, but Severine looks inside and accepts what the client proposes. I myself don't know what is in the little box. It must be something extraordinary, something used for an unheard-of perversity. It produced more curiosity than I expected. Once, Dr. Mendez, head of pharmacology at the Mexican Cardiological Institute, invited me to lunch at his home. The great cardiologist Dr. Chavez had also been invited because he wanted to talk to me. Chavez arrived late, hung up his Spanish-style cape, excused himself for being late... When he was seated, he suddenly asked me, "Listen, Buñuel, what is in the little box?" He surprised me: an eminent scientist, a savant, preoccupied with the contents of the little box.
...
Turrent: I have asked several friends about this and we all agreed that there must be some insect in box. A bumblebee, for example.
Buñuel: It could be, because there is buzzing. Now I ask you: what can I do with a bumblebee?
Colina: To me, it seems clear as day: the Asian wants to put the bumblebee into Severine's sex organ.
Buñuel: And the bumblebee would devour her sex: Zzzzzzzzz! (laughs) It's not a bad little depravity.
Some interesting reviews of Belle du Jour from Slant, and Mondo Digital. Also, a French Catherine Deneuve tribute site has some wonderful production shots and stills from the movie (I particularly like this shot of Buñuel and a radiant looking Deneuve) and some excerpts from interviews with Deneuve concerning the film.
As always, click on the image on the left for a larger version. 271K.

¡El Cine Mexicano en TCM!

A viewing tip for those of you with cable... As reported by Flickhead a couple of days ago, Turner Classic Movies will be broadcasting 5 (count them 5!) Luis Buñuel films: Los Olvidados, Nazarín, Viridiana , El Angel Exterminador and Simón del Desierto. Fantastic films all, and none available on DVD in the US.

And it's not just Buñuel -- TCM is also planning a month long tribute to the best of the Mexican cinema. Certainly, the Cinco de Mayo holiday provides a convenient placemat for this embarrassment of riches, but who cares? It's high time that Mexican films are receiving some mainstream recognition in the US, along with such great actors and personalities such as Cantinflas, Maria Felix, Pedro Armendáriz, Jorge Negrete, Pedro Infante, Silvia Pinal (who appears in several of the Buñuel films already mentioned) and Tin Tan, directors like Fernando de Fuentes, Emilio "El Indio" Fernandez and Roberto Gavaldon, and the ridiculously great cinematographer Gabriel Figueroa. I grew up on the border and saw many of these movies on Mexican TV, and for a lot of people of my parents' generation and older, these figures were stars that rivaled the brilliance of those coming from Hollywood. If your knowledge of Mexican films is limited to recent arthouse hits and horror and wrestler movies (great and fun as they may be), treat yourself to some of the best pictures of the Golden Age of Mexican Film, la Epoca de Oro. And for those of you without cable TV (like me), ¡la vida no vale nada!

Big in Japan!!!

Babelfish translates the title of this fantastic and cool blog from Japan as "Monstrous Beast", which may or may not be the best translation. At any rate, this site specializes in monsters from Japan, and even if reading machine translations from the Japanese is not your cup of tea, at least you can feast your eyes on a bunch of images of the most delirious creatures ever dreamed up by Nippon's most creative minds. Very cool stuff!! Via Filmtagebuch.

Poster of the Week! - Das Testament des Dr. Mabuse

Poster of the Week!-- Creepy German Expressionism illustrates this 1933 poster for Fritz Lang's Das Testament des Dr. Mabuse. This was the last film Lang made in Germany until the late '50s, when he returned to make his "Indian" films and one more Mabuse (the excellent The 1,000 Eyes of Dr. Mabuse, Lang's last film, and a blueprint for a lot of the pulp cinema of the '60s). Testament was also the film that Lang claimed to have placed Nazi slogans into the mouth of the raving madman and arch-criminal Mabuse (some historians doubt this). More Mabuse stuff: A review of the dubbed American version of Testament, The Crimes of Dr. Mabuse in Bright Lights Film Journal; a review of the 1962 remake of The Testament of Dr. Mabuse, known in the US as Terror of the Mad Doctor; Who is Doctor Mabuse?; images from a 1000 Eyes/Return of Dr. Mabuse double feature pressbook (Gert "Goldfinger" Frobe vs. Dr. Mabuse! - Dr. Mabuse is on the loose! His Evil and Fiendish Power Unleashes a Blood-Bath of Chemical and Electronic Terror!!); actually, a bunch of cool Mabuse content from Evilskip's Movie Joint. As always, click on the image on the left for a larger version. 306K.

More Drunks in Film

More drunks!-- Well not exactly, but a wonderful bit of conjecture from the fine folks at Hell On Earth (last updated 2003-10-20 --the prominence of their t.A.T.u story gives them away). Based on especially selected screengrabs, the authors surmise that the principal cast of that grand TV remake The Avengers were royally tanked during that film's production, which, of course, would account for that epic's spectacular failure (although I would suspect the ego engorging effects of devil cocaine, just like in the '80s). See Ralph and Uma with half lidded eyes and knotted brows straight out of the Foster Brooks School of Acting, and Connery's looking rightly disheveled. From the same site, you can also find evidence of more rampant dipsomania in the Bruckheimer classic Con Air, with cool macho drunk Americans like Cusack, Rhames, Cage, and Malkovich (?), rather than the effete (Long Island Iced?) tea-sipping Britishers from The Avengers.

Drinking on the Set!

Invariably, when you read enough movie production histories (particularly the low-budget genre kind), it doesn't take long before you come across a sentence like this: "... it was an open secret that [name your favorite down on their luck actor] was drinking on the set....". The drunk actor was practically a stereotype since the days of Barrymore, and that stereotype never flourished more than in the meatgrinder world of Hollywood filmmaking. Especially in the back stages of poverty row grade-Z productions, with their skimpy budgets and truncated schedules and their harsh and unreal expectations, many actors would find solace in booze, finding in the bottle either a kind and gentle anesthetic, or a fuel for bravura. And often these actors were once major stars, commanding fortunes and enjoying the adulation of millions. When they once were scented with the sweet perfume of success, they now wallowed in the shit stink of cardboard sets, six-day shooting schedules, the sweaty indifference of journeyman technicians, and the paltriest of paychecks. Call it a weakness, if you must, but who could begrudge them a sip or two.

One of the more vivid images I remember from reading Gregory Mank's excellent history of the Universal Frankenstein series It's Alive! more than 20 years ago was the sight of Lon Chaney Jr., in full Monster makeup and costume, taking a couple of nips from a pint bottle behind the sets of The Ghost of Frankenstein. It goes without saying that this was the pinnacle of Chaney's movie career (he was now Universal's leading horror actor). It was downhill from there. One of the more infamous examples of mixing liquor and acting was Chaney's appearance in the 1950s program Tales of Tomorrow's live production of Frankenstein, where Chaney once again played the Monster. His performance was erractic, even surreal at times. He often looked plaintively straight at the camera, as if looking for direction. Some say Chaney had a bit too much to drink before the performance, and was not fully aware that this was not a dress rehearsal but a performance being broadcast live to millions. At any rate, Chaney's performance made this Tale of Tomorrow the most memorable of the series.

Some more set boozing anecdotes:

Not Elvis! Q: How was Elvis on the set?
Stella Stevens: It was fine working with Elvis. He was nice, but he also was drinking on the set. Anything that Elvis said had to go through the Colonel. He was not allowed to speak for himself. If Elvis had a drink -- and believe me, in Hawaii he loved those rum punch drinks -- it would be swept away and a bottle of Coca Cola would be set there in front of him. He was drunk when he sang "Return to Sender" and not a really professional actor. When I left it after the 6th day, I said, "I?ll just forget about it." Did you ever try to forget about an Elvis Presley film? It totally is impossible. Totally impossible. (she laughs)

Mitchum vs. Otto... Director Otto Preminger had declared there was to be no drinking on the set of River of No Return. One day he saw an actor crossing the set with a glass of vodka. He lambasted the actor who said, "I'm just taking this to Mitchum." The director paused and said, "Oh, that's different," and allowed the actor to complete his mission. Preminger had learned not to cross Mitchum in the earlier Angel Face.

In like Flynn! Australian actor Errol Flynn was frequently banned from drinking on the set. Necessity being the mother of invention, the savvy star soon developed a solution: Injecting oranges with vodka and eating them during his breaks.

The short and tragic life of Superman... While George Reeves played the heroic role of a Superman, a dark side began to emerge. In an interview with Phyllis Coates, she recalls that, "Every day at four o'clock George had open bar in his dressing room on the set. And nobody could stop him." That apparently caused some friction with production manager Barney Sarecki who deplored drinking on the set and felt that George's antics brought shooting to a halt whether they were ready to stop or not. Coates also recalled that Toni Mannix was usually with George when shooting wrapped, keeping up with Reeves, drink for drink. It was not uncommon for Reeves to host parties and card games at his home at 1579 Benedict Canyon Drive in Beverly Hills which lasted late into the night. Reeves was also known to enjoy the nightlife of Los Angeles sometimes being seen with some very shady characters. In addition, Reeves continued his affair with Toni Mannix, whose husband, Eddie Mannix, was also said to have ties to the mob.

And not just in Hollywood... Writer-director Francis Veber has the highest respect for Gallic veteran Gerard Depardieu - with one qualification.
"I think he's one of the best actors in the world, especially when he doesn't drink," Veber says. "I love him and respect him, but some of my colleagues have had the bad luck of having him drunk on the set.
"I think it's very difficult to be Gerard Depardieu. He's a very big man, but at the same time he's a very fragile man.
"If he has problems at home, he can drink two bottles of wine then turn up on the set."

Spock??? Mind Meld plays like outtakes from Star Trek V: The Final Frontier's cheesy campfire bonding sequence until you realize Nimoy has started discussing being drunk on the set in 1967.

And not just in the old days... Terminator star Michael Biehn is being sued by a Russian production company, who are accusing him of being drunk on the set of a new movie. CTB Film claim Biehn - who played the man sent back through time to stop Arnold Schwarzenegger's Terminator character in the 1984 blockbuster - made sexual advances toward production staff while drunk on the set of Amerikanets. According to the suit, filed in Los Angeles, Biehn showed up drunk on the second day of filming in Russia and was "excessively intoxicated, his speech slurred and erratic, and he had trouble walking". He is also alleged to have carried a Pepsi Cola bottle containing vodka and made advances on female production employees - behavior which continued for several days. CTB claim scenes with Biehn shot in Russia were useless, forcing the company to suspend production. In Amerikanets, Biehn as an American stockbroker who loses millions when a Russian company he invests in declares bankruptcy, and then travels to Russia to seek justice.

Take this with a grain of salt... "It was OK when she wasn't drunk on the set. I think she's an alcoholic -- it was either that, or she was on cough syrup the whole time," Gallo allegedly said about Ricci.

The great ones can even use an actor's drunkeness as inspiration.... Fellini: It?s always satisfying when you can turn something that goes wrong into something that is even better. If I saw that an actor like Broderick Crawford was a little drunk on the set, I tried to make it part of the story.

And it's not just actors.... JM: You got to work with Stanton again on Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid [1973] for director Sam Peckinpah. In fact, you did two other movies with Peckinpah in the '70s [Convoy (1978) and Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia (1974)]. Tell me about working with him. The stories of his drinking on the set are legendary.
Kris Kristofferson:They're true, too. I had to take a pistol away from Sam once: He was lying sick in bed and took a shot at Harry Dean Stanton and my piano player, Donnie Fritts. I got a call about it and went over there and said, "All right, where is it?" He was heavily anesthetized with Mescal or something. Sam was a good man; he just needed turmoil around him.

And another cinema great.... Mickey Rooney recalls that Buzz [Busby Berkeley] was often drunk on the set and once almost fell from one of the girders where he had climbed to set up shots of the dancers. To avoid a serious accident, the grips put a rope around his waist, tossed it over a"strut" and held it while he crawled about from girder to girder. Then they picked out the biggest extra around to hold the rope. However, several times Buzz fell off and dangled up there while the big guy held on for dear life.

For some more drinking tales, here's a nice piece called Drunks On The Set.

Skidoo - Poster of the Week

Poster of the Week!-- Timothy Leary: "I was fooled by Otto Preminger. He was much hipper than I was." I haven't seen Otto Preminger's Skidoo, but I certainly want to. It undoubtedly belongs in that small circle of films that's more talked about than seen (movies like Salo, Singapore Sling, Myra Breckinridge, and The Cremaster Cycle). I first heard about Skidoo years and years ago in the Medved Brothers' Golden Turkey Awards (a book, I must admit, that became a core of my film education when I was a teenager because of it's concentration on little known genre films and obscurities, but which holds little value today because of its snarky condescension and middlebrow elitism, which is much more value than I hold for brother Michael's role as moral arbiter nowadays). Of course, the Medveds trashed it, but the film intrigued me then, and it intrigues me now. In case you don't know about it, Skidoo was Preminger's paean to LSD. Preminger had experimented with LSD under the supervision of Timothy Leary in the mid 1960s, and came away thinking the world of it. Now, he wanted to make a film about it. But instead of some overly serious investigation of the lysergic experience (which was the norm back then, especially in rock music), he made his acid movie a wacky comedy which featured the talents of Jackie Gleason, Carol Channing, Mickey Rooney, Frankie Avalon, and Groucho Marx as a mob boss named "God". It's this odd melange of old school gin-soaked Hollywood hipsterism and 1968 psychedelia that gives Skidoo it's unique place in movie history, or, at least, in the history of drug cinema. Will it ever be released on DVD? Chances are, sadly enough, not anytime soon.

Some more Skidoo stuff: The Smoking Gun has some FBI memoranda about Skidoo, mainly concerning how the FBI was portrayed in the film (not very well, apparently); Kempa has an mp3 of Harry Nilsson singing the end credits from the film; here's the cover and liner notes by Laugh-In announcer Gary Owens of the soundtrack album; also, a piece by Paul Krassner about tripping with Groucho Marx. Groucho, an intensely curious man, wanted to see what was the big deal about acid. One of his revelations that afternoon involved his role as "God" in Skidoo: "I'm really getting quite a kick out of this notion of playing God like a dirty old man in Skidoo. You wanna know why? Do you realize that irreverence and reverence are the same thing?"

"Always?"

"If they're not, then it's a misuse of your power to make people laugh"

Then, after that exchange, Krassner reports, Groucho's eyes began to tear.

As always, click on the image on the left for a larger version (550K). And if anyone knows where I can get a decent looking copy of Skidoo cheap, let me know.

Twin Psychos

Quick online viewing tip-- An effortless looking melding of the shower murder sequence from Hitchcock's and Van Sant's Psycho(s) from filmmaker Frank Hudec. It's interesting to note that most of the images in the Hitchcock version are flipped so we can see one shot as the mirror image of the other. It's also obvious how Janet Leigh is so much more expressive than Anne Heche, from the sensual abandon she exhibits in the shower leading up to her abject terror during the attack. It's a testimony to the acting chops of the late, great Ms. Leigh. Heche, on the other hand, seems to be phoning it in; or maybe it's just '90s post-ironic cool. Speaking of '90s cool, Van Sant's artsy inserts during the scene (a cow on the road, a tempetuous sky), were excised in favor of a more seamless sequence (I suspect some heavy duty and meticulous editing went into the making of this piece).

There are some other short pieces on Hudec's site worth taking a gander at, including a sort of dance remix of scenes from The Usual Suspects.

Yeah, I found this through Metafilter.

Introducing 'Tippi' Hedren

One morning in 1961, Alfred Hitchcock watched the Today Show on NBC and saw a commercial which would not only change his life, but irrevocably the life of the actress in the commercial. The actress' name was Tippi Hedren. She explains in an interview with Joe Bob Briggs:

And he saw one particular . . .
TIPPI: One of them was a Pet milk product called Sego. It was a diet drink. And it was a story line; it wasn't just holding up a product and talking about it. It was a story and apparently he saw it.
But what exactly did you do in the commercial to make such an impression?
TIPPI: Apparently, the action that attracted him was I'm walking down the street and a little boy whistles at me and I turn to react to him and smile, and that's what apparently caught his eye.
Really?
TIPPI: Yeah.
If you look at all his leading ladies, like Grace Kelly and Kim Novak and Eva Marie Saint and Janet Leigh, he had a thing for blondes didn't he?
TIPPI: Oh didn't he?

Some screenshots of that very commercial can be found in this elegant French 'Tippi' Hedren site (yet another tribute site!), which also has shots from some of her screen tests (directed by Hitchcock himself), along with plenty of production stills and publicity shots from The Birds and Marnie. If you're not familiar with the strange relationship between Hitchcock and Hedren, here's a recent interview with Hedren from the Times Online (the title of which, "The birds attacked me but Hitch was scarier". should give you a clue.

Poster of the Week

Poster of the Week! The feast continues unabated. Continuing with the literary shenanigans,here's the 1966 French poster of Francois Truffaut's adaption of Ray Bradbury's novel Fahrenheit 451. It has a lot of faults but I love this movie. Nicholas Roeg's photography, and, above all, Herrmann's music makes it. "Thank you for giving my film a heart," Truffaut supposedly said to Herrmann. Truffaut was no slouch himself. The film's film's final sequence, with the serendipitous falling snow (it wasn't planned; it just snowed that day), the murmurs of the book people reciting their texts, and Herrmann's glorious music, is one of the most beautiful in cinema, a tribute to film and to literature.

Here's a cool looking Italian tribute to the film. Of course, click on the image on the left for a larger image. 798K.

Propagating the Meme

Propagating the meme... Is it anything like admonishing the bishop?

From a suggestion from Mr. BaliHai, he with the fantastic and bloodshot Eye of the Goof.

Okay, I'll play...

1) You're stuck inside Fahrenheit 451; which book do you want to be?

Because I'm a supremely lazy man, and because it's short and its simple and conversational style probably would make it an easy book to memorize, I would have to answer: Post Office by Charles Bukowski. Sure, Ham and Rye is a better book, but I really love Post Office. Such a caustic little thing. And it's extraordinarily funny, so I'll be a big hit at Book People parties and get-to-togethers. So, do I get to hang out with Julie Christie.

2) Have you ever had a crush on a fictional character?

Julie Christie (the short haired one) from Truffaut's Fahrenheit 451.

3) What are you currently reading?

Halfway through Neal Stephenson's Quicksilver. I like it, but it's slow going. It's dense as all fuck. Also: almost finished with Eduardo Galeano's Century of the Wind, a history of Latin America during the 20th Century in vignettes. Poetic and disturbing. It's the third volume of Galeano's Memory of Fire trilogy.

4) The last book you bought was:

The aforementioned Quicksilver. Also, on the same trip, Alfred Hitchcock: A Life in Darkness and Light

5) The last book you read was:

The aforementioned Hitchcock biography. Big revelations: Hitch was probably impotent. Consequently, Alma had a brief affair. Also, Hitchcock wasn't a big a freak as Spoto made him out to be. Consequently, it's not as interesting as Spoto's book. More McGilligan revelations: Hitch dug the new cinema coming out of Europe in the '60s: Godard, Truffaut (of course), Fellini, and especially Antonioni. Wanted to make artier films, but Universal wouldn't let him (also combined with Hitchcock's own timidity, fear of confrontation, and, striking him for the first time in his career -probably because of the younger filmmakers coming out of Europe, his own artistic insecurity). One of his favorite movies at the end of his life was Benji (he was a great dog lover).

6) Five books you would take to a desert island:

Probably Ulysses, maybe Faulkner's Novels 1930-1935 from Library of America (cheating somewhat, I know; then, Absalom, Absalom, otherwise), a volume of the complete works of Shakespeare, an athoritative guide to survival on a deserted isle, and, for entertainment's sake, a complete guide to psychotropic plants.

7) Who are you going to pass this stick to, and why?

It seems mightily presumptuous to foist this on anyone, and I'm reluctant to do so. On the other hand, with an internationalist bent in mind, I wouldn't mind reading Carmen's, Patricio's, or Thomas' responses to these queries.

Soon, a cinematic toss from M. Valdemar...

Filmprogramme

Here's something cool -a gallery of scans of German film programs from the '30s to the '60s. Another fantastic find from the wonderful folks at RetroGrafix , where you can also find complete scans of the programs of films like Von Winde Verweht (Gone With The Wind), and An einem Tag wie jeder andere (The Desperate Hours).

Along the same vein, here are two collections of vintageautographed pictures of mainly German filmstars.

Luis Buñuel is Still a Great Director (thank god)

Finalmente, Don Luis has made the cut. Not "slicing up eyeballs", I want you to know, but Luis Buñuel finally has an entry in the Senses of Cinema's Great Directors database. If you're not familiar with Great Directors: A Critical Database, it's quite possibly the best and most thorough historical, biographical, and critical survey of movie director you're likely to find on the web. Here, you're likely to find Bob Clampett elbow to elbow with Jean Cocteau, Lucio Fulci sitting next to Sam Fuller, Keaton right beside Kiarostami, just to pick up semi-random pairings from the database's alphabetical listing (and looking over these pairings again, I find that there may be more simularities between these pairs than may have met the eye --but that's for another time). Let's here it from the Senses people themselves: "Importantly, the database does not endorse any sort of classical “Director canon”. The profiles present Directors from across the intellectual spectrum: those praised, those reproached, those not considered, those unheard of. Common to them all is a unique vision and meaningful contribution to cinema."

Also this: "...the database is concerned with bodies of work and an auterist approach to experiencing cinema: that one can seek out films according to their directorial credit and that this endeavour results in an aggrandised fascination with the films – and subsequently cinema in general – as one encounters ideas, themes, statements, faces, gestures and formal devices repeated, augmented, reversed or illuminated by those in the Director's other works. The underlying principle is that such an approach yields a kind of cinephilic “multiplier effect”. For those lucky enough to be discovering cinema, the Great Directors profiles can provide a good structuring framework with which to manoeuvre through this most labyrinthine of artforms."

Get thee there now, if you've never been.

More Buñuel soon....

Poster of the Week!

Poster of the week! Alas, a bit late on serving the feast this weekend, so a Poster of the Week would have to suffice.

Charles Chaplin called him the "funniest man in the world", and his stage name became a Spanish verb (cantinflear - an act of doubletalk; a torrent of verbiage for a prolonged amount of time that fails to make any sort of sense at all). Of course, we are referring to the great Mexican movie comedian Mario Moreno Reyes 'Cantinflas'.

U.S. film fans are probably more familiar with Cantinflas' turns in Hollywood pictures like Around the World in 80 Days and Pepe, both in which he co-starred with the biggest stars in Hollywood. Although he was quite a remarkable physical comedian, it was his verbal acuity, wordplay and twisting of logic and syntax that made him the biggest comedy star in Mexico and throughout Latin America. Translating Cantinflas' unique brand of verbal humor into American English was close to an impossible task ("like translating Groucho Marx into Chinese," someone put it), so instead the American producer-directors (Mike Todd and George Sidney, the men behind 80 days and Pepe, respectively) insisted on a broader physical sort of comedy. If it worked at all, it was because of Cantinflas' talents and comic instincts solely. Pepe is a plodding nag of a picture that was intended as a breakthrough star vehicle for Cantinflas, but was so dull and ponderous (almost 3 hours long!) that it can almost serve as a textbook example in how not to make a comic film. Some consider 80 Days to be the worst film ever to win a Best Picture Oscar. Well... maybe. At any rate, Cantinflas is the best thing in the movie, and the only reason that I find to stick with long drawn out mess whenever it shows up on TV (which used to be often, but not so much anymore, except maybe on TCM.

There's not much Cantinflas' Mexican work on DVD, although you can possibly find copies of his early films with gray market dealers (like this one from Argentina, which has some pretty cool screenshots and title cards). There's also very little about Cantinflas on the web. There's some information from Answers.com (by way of wikipedia), a page on Cantinflas cartoons that were very popular in the '60s, a NY Times article about a one man show entitled "¡Cantinflas!" (which looks very good, by the way), and a poem by Victor Hernandez Cruz.

Throwing my meager penny into the pot, I offer a Cantinflas paper doll cutout from a program for the 1944 film Gran Hotel, which I have available as both jpeg and pdf, so you can print it, cut it up, and dress Cantinflas up as a bellboy, waiter, vagabond, or debonair man about town. But wait! There's more! As a special extra bonus, I've also thrown in the original poster from Gran Hotel

The Pursuit of Inner Peace Through Movie Stars

Certainly, movie star tribute sites are a dime a dozen on the wild and wonderful worldwide web, but I love them anyway for their inspired amateurism, dedication, and plain old obsessiveness. The Meeker Museum is a tribute site of sorts, looking on the surface like a digital salute to Ralph Meeker (star of Kiss Me Deadly , my all time favorite noir, and the most singularly unique film to come out of Hollywood in the '50s). Nothing truly odd about that; it has pictures, a brief bio, a filmography, synopses of important films -- everything you would expect (including the crawling marquee text). Dig a little deeper and you will find pages devoted to stars (or demi-stars?) you've either never heard of or at least haven't thought of in years. Diane Varsi, anyone? Old Sinbad Kerwin Mathews? As Jack Stalnaker, the site's proprietor, puts it:"Some were extraordinarily gifted and some are still working, still displaying their abundant gifts for generally unappreciative audiences. However, we don't preoccupy ourselves too heavily with questionable concepts like 'talent.' Maybe some of these people just looked good in the photographs, which is all that really matters anyway."

It's old school camp, the likes we haven't seen since (maybe) the days of glam, and a sort of sensibility that had its apotheosis in the mid-60s Factory days in New York. There's a lot of cool stuff here, including a then and now pictorial between scenes of Peyton Place and modern day Camden, Maine (not much has changed). A personal aside: my great-grandfather appeared in one of the last shots of Peyton Place (he's the old guy giving the Yankee staredown to Hope Lange as she descends the courthouse steps). My dad's family was from nearby Rockland (home of the Maine Lobster Festival). My dad used to tell me, "Hope Lange swam naked in our drinking water!" A point of obvious civic pride.

Online Viewing Fun

Some online viewing fun. First up, shades of The Brain That Wouldn't Die! Junior scientist attempts conversation with the comely Eva, a Nasa funded robot meant to mimic human emotions and interactions. The verisimilitude is amazing, as well as creepy. "What does the future hold, Eva?" the interrogator asks. "I will get much smarter and interesting over time," she replies. "Of this, I am sure." If only this was true for the rest of us.

Madonna consuming raw eggs and spitting them up back in Michigan many years ago, when she was broke, brunette and beautiful. Some proto-trangressive cinema shot on 8mm? A student film by someone who just saw Un Chien Andalou at the studnt union's experimental film nite? Or a really, really lame attempt at arty porn (a la Metzger or Borowczyk)? You be the judge. See it courtesy of the fine folks at WFMU.

...but also... Pretty grand clips of Peter Cook and Dudley Moore's 1960s British comedy show Not Only... But Also. If you're adventurous enough and don't mind the occasional F and C word (well, more than occasional I would venture), then listen in to some outtakes from Pete and Dud's 1970s Derek & Clive albums. Courtesy of the fine folks at The Establishment.

Here's the only film appearance of jazz era songstress Annette Hanshaw. She had an incredible voice that seemed really ahead of her time, and I am truly impressed by her. Here's a bunch of mp3s of some of her old sides (a caveat: the sound quality's not great), and you can find a lot of info on the great Miss Hanshaw here.

Weekend Poster Feast 10

Weekend Poster Feast 10. "The Hottest Exposure Since Man Created Film!" Such hyperbole was common when applied to the films of Brigitte Bardot back in the '50s as she was ascending to take her well appointed seat as the reigning international sex queen. Frankly, I haven't seen Les Bijoutiers du clair de lune (or, The Night Heaven Fell, as it was known in the US), but this French poster is a striking piece of movie advertising art. Here's an interesting comment from her co-star Stephen Boyd: "All I can say is that when I'm trying to play serious love scenes with her, she's postioning her bottom for the best-angle shots." A good BB appreciation here from Swinging Chicks. Also, a wonderfully specific gallery of Brigitte in opera gloves.

As always, click on the image on the left for a larger version. 237K.

A Separate Cinema

It's one thing for a "marginal cinema" to willfully want to exist on the edges of popular consciousness, quite another thing altogether for a cinema to be made by and for a people that have been pushed to the margins by racism and prejudice. Since 1976, The Separate Cinema Archives have been dedicated to collecting, cataloging and exhibiting the history of this latter brand of "marginal cinema". Their website contains a wide assortment of African-American movie posters, from "race pictures" from the early days of movies to '70s blaxploitation to current Hollywood hits. The Smithsonian has a cool collection as well. The Black Film Center/Archive is another excellent resource, which includes a fascinating (but also somewhat disturbing) collection of very early motion pictures (1890s) featuring African-Americans, or sometimes whites in blackface.

Meet the Monsters

No matter how incredulous the creature, or hamfisted the horror, poverty row moviemakers in the '50s knew that their audience dug monsters, sometimes the sillier and more ludicrous the better. How else to better explain the existence of the vegetable creature from It Conquered the World or the ridiculous giant buzzard from The Giant Claw, much less the killer tree from From Hell it Came ("...and to hell it should go!" was a common rejoinder by many a wag who reviewed the picture in newsprint). Although no one considers this films art, they are often recalled with some measure of fondness. It's almost as if these productions were, in the end, a shared joke between the makers and the audience, despite the fact that the movies were often played ramrod straight (dramatically, at least). Even without a self-conscious wink or elbow nudge, the audience roared (or at least tittered) at the appearance of these outerworldly beasts, and the producers didn't care. They knew they got away with it again.

Getting away with it was the secret to successful monster making back in those days. One guy who got away with a lot was Jack Kirby, especially in those days before he became "King" Kirby . Before the Fantastic Four took off, Kirby was busy grinding out monster comics for Marvel, all of which are detailed and celebrated at the Monster Blog. In the Meet The Monsters of the same site, you would glean through an index of Kirby drawn monsters such as Glob, the Menace from the Molten Depths, Gomdulla, the Living Pharoah (a giant mummy), Moomba, the Wicked Wooden Statue, and Shagg, the Killer Sphinx. And a whole lot more.

Lollywood Billboard Art

"Billboard painting takes place wherever there is something to advertise - but the best of the typical cinema style is created at the nerve centre, the heartbeat of Lollywood, - Royal Park within Laxmi Chowk in Lahore's busy old sector. This hub of narrow, overcrowded, filthy streets is a concentration of film trade offices and hardly an inch of wall space is to be found without some huge Technicolor superhero staring down at you, gun or dagger in hand!"

Lollywood is, of course, Pakistan's counterpart to India's Bollywood, and Lollywood movie advertising is as colorful, if not more so, than India's. Here's an excellent introduction to Lollywood billboard art, complete with two galleries. The site's proprietors (who include film historian Omar Khan, who provided the marvelous background and audio commentary to Mondo Macabro's excellent DVD edition of The Living Corpse, Pakistan's first and only vampire film) are also selling hand painted oil reproductions of the paintings. The site also includes an extensive collection of vintage printed Bollywood and Lollywood posters.

Weekend Poster Feast 9

Weekend Poster Feast 9. "Diabolical Vampire! More dangerous than Dracula!" You'd better believe it! Blacula's one of my favorite vampire films of the '70s, if only because of William Marshall's grand performance. Here's a classically trained actor giving his all in a cheap AIP vampire picture, lending the accursed Mamuwalde a pathos and nobility other actors (even the "classically" trained") rarely approach. No slumming for Mr. Marshall. Click on the image on the left for a much larger version. 537K.

Classic Experimental Films for Download

For your online viewing pleasure: while some of you may be familiar with the collection of Fluxus films at the Ubuweb (a repository of all things avant and all that), Ubuweb has now just launched a new section of classic avant garde films, including films by Buñuel, Man Ray, Kenneth Anger, Guy Debord, Jack Smith and many more. Dig the caveat: "We've mostly plucked these from file-sharing. As such, UbuWeb is not responsible for the quality of the films. Nor do we guarantee that each part will work. No complaints, please."

Also this: "If you have a better quality rip or other films that you'd like to donate to this collection, please contact us. We'd be happy to host it." All I have to say is, if you have 'em, share 'em.

Vincent Price at the American Cinematheque

A heads up for L.A. dwelling horror fans: Tales of Terror: The Films of Vincent Price begins tonight with two of Price's best (and campiest) films from the '70s, Theatre of Blood (1973), and The Abominable Dr. Phibes (1971). Saturday features two Price-William Castle collaborations, 1959's The Tingler, and The House on Haunted Hill (1958) (probably not featuring wired seats or a dangling skeleton, but I can't be sure). Also on Saturday is a Corman Poe double feature with Tales of Terror (1962) and, possibly the best of the Corman-Price-Poe films, The Masque of Red Death (1964). And the brutal Witchfinder General, directed by Michael Reeves, ends the series on Wednesday, featuring a new 35mm print and with actor Ian Ogilvy and producer PhillipWaddilove in attendance. If you can only go to one showing, see Witchfinder General, which is one of the best horror films from the '60s, and a real nasty piece of work. It's very atypical for Price, and it may contain his best performance. It has yet to be released on DVD in the U.S., which is a horrible shame.

Turkish Movie Posters

Movie Posters from Turkey. An interesting gallery of posters from both Turkish and international films. They're also for sale.

Movie Gun Gallery

Guns! You can't make a movie without them (along with the requisite girl, of course). Here's an interesting collection of cinema firearms from Bond's Walthers to The Wild Bunch's Browning machine gun (although the site's proprietor states that the film took place a few years before the weapon was manufactured). From Long Mountain Outfitters, who specialize in "Machine Guns - Silencers - Destructive Devices".

Join the fun at our Children's Matinee!

Here was the scheme: buy the rights to a bunch of foreign fairy tale movies really cheap, dub them into English at the Coral Gables, Florida Soundlab studio, and then furiously market the hell out of them, insisting to theater owners on strict "weekend only" matinee showtimes. Then you sit back and watch the money roll in --which is what happened in the '50s through the early '70s to old school showman and huckster K. Gordon Murray (whom many of you know as the man who brought Mexican horror to the USA, turning El Santo into Samson). So successful was Mr. Murray's children's crusade that others followed suit with the weekend matinees, including the behemoth Disney. By the '70s, the big studios enforced exclusive contracts with the major theater and distribution chains that forbade "weekend only" engagements (which not only killed the kiddie matinees, but the midnight spook shows as well).

Most of the films presented at these matinees have drifted into dusty obscurity (except for the perversely bizarre Mexican film Santa Claus, which was Murray's biggest hit). Kiddiematinee.com is trying to remedy that, with an extraordinary database of almost every kid movie exhibited in the US, including some gems as Hershell Gordon Lewis' Santa Visits the Magic Land of Mother Goose, the weird Italian The Seven Dwarfs to the Rescue, and one I remember seeing in the mid '70s (on a double bill with Godzilla Vs. Megalon), West Germany's Superbug (which also holds the dubious distinction of being the first movie I ever walked out of).

Weekend Poster Feast 8

Weekend Poster Feast 8. "Filmed in BLAZING TROPICOLOR! A NEW Kind of Jungle Drama - Actually Filmed in Guatemala and Featuring Members of the Savage Vicuni Indian Tribe!" Perhaps they should have thrown in "Filmed in South America, Where Life is Cheap!" if the publicists had the wherewithal. I don't know much about this feature, except that Something Weird released it as part of a "Primitive Triple Feature" DVD (a review of the disc can be found at DVD Drive-In). The poster's striking enough, though, with its white man vs. "savage" knife duel and the heaving bosom of the bound "virgin" towering above them. And people wonder why they don't make "jungle dramas" anymore. Click on the image for a much larger version. (800 K)

The Irish in Film

Happy St. Patrick's Day! Here's a fine database of Irish cinema, of films made by the Irish, Irish-Americans, about the Irish, about the island itself, and everything in between. In short, movies to watch while pouring the black stuff into ye. Slainte Mhath! as the Micks would say.

TV or not TV

More TV Movie Thrills-- Possibly the most frightening thing I saw on screen when I was very young was the first segment of the Night Gallery TV movie cum pilot. Perfect nightmare fodder: Ossie Davis, in abject horror, recognizing the thumping footfalls of a vengeful living dead Roddy McDowell and recognizing the dead man's progression in an ever shifting painting on the wall. Christ, that scared the bejesus out of me. Night Gallery was a fairly successful series (at least in my eye, due not so much for the stories --although some like the version of Lovecraft's "Pickman's Model" and that one with the giant white rat on the moon with the astronaut in the jumbo mousetrap gave me goosebumps-- but the very creepy paintings with which Rod Serling would introduce each story.

The Night Stalker was another TV movie that spawned a sequel and a series. The monsters weren't all that scary, but Darren McGavin pretty much carried the show. Strangely, two "movies" were compiled from four episodes of the Night Stalker series, Demon in Lace and Legacy of Terror, which were usually shown on late night TV.

Dark Shadows was another popular horror series (a daily half-hour soap opera). The series also inspired two films, House of Dark Shadows and Night of Dark Shadows, which were pretty gory drive-in and grindhouse fare back in the early '70s.

Extra bonus for you Dark Shadows fans! Here's an mp3 of Jonathan Frid's recorded thank you message for the Dark Shadows Vampire Fan Club in 1969. Also, a radio spot where we learn how the vampires "do it".

A tip of the hat to Mr. BaliHai for the post suggestion...

Made for TV

Due to Mature Subject Matter Parental Discretion is Advised: a common disclaimer in '70s' network television, particularly in the made for TV movies that popped up four or five times a week on a prime time schedule, and one that drew impressionable youngsters (like me) like the proverbial flies to dung. While '70s cinema was wild and wooly in the theaters and the drive-ins, that no-holds-barred sensibility was also mirrored (although toned down considerably) in the "World Premiere" productions that were broadcast.

While nostalgia can be a rosy colored thing, there was a certain quality to these films that warms the memories of those of us who lived through that era. I cannot forget the crazy surrealistic shock I felt watching Frankenstein: The True Story back on NBC in the fall of '73, when the Monster (played by Michael Sarrazin) pulls off the head of Jane Seymour (playing the Elsa Lanchester part), or the evil Polidori (James Mason), in the middle of a tempestuous storm, being hoisted onto the top of a ship's mast whimpering "I'm afraid! I'm afraid!" and then being struck by a bolt of lightning and turned into a skeleton! Or the slow-motion thumping and moans of the living Gargoyles. Or the voluptuous horror of the fantastic Zuni fetish doll that dogged Karen Black throughout her house in Trilogy of Terror. Or classic Shatner as a drunken ex-priest who regains his faith as he confronts a ancient Druid demon and is sent spinning into the glorious sunrise in The Horror at 37,000 Feet (a mash of possession/occult horror and Airport style disaster drama --both of which genres were extraordinarily popular in 1974, when this little shocker was done).

Certainly horror was a popular TV movie genre. Indeed, one can make the argument that TV movies were merely tamed exploitation films, and that the TV screen was just a surrogate drive-in screen. One can point to the panoply of teenage alcoholics, runaways, prostitutes, rentboys, dope fiends and bulimics that crawled and staggered across American TV screens in the mid-seventies. There was even a Women-in-Prison (WIP) entry in 1974's Born Innocent in which a post Exorcist Linda Blair (who was only 14) is subjected to all sorts of degradations including a graphic toilet plunger rape. Try making a film like that for television nowadays (not that anyone should).

But even in the harshness of the subject matter, they were not necessarily cynical. On the contrary, these films were quite earnest in their twisted way. These were "problem films", movies that dealt with social issues and tried to call attention to them as a call to action. The political climate in the '70s was such that such an undertaking seemed almost noble. Today, in our cynical and selfish age, taking such a tact seems quaint, even naive, wrongheaded, and foolish.

As an aside to this sketchy discussion of TV movies, it's interesting to note that the opening to ABC's The Movie of the Week (which you can see in real media in TV Party along with some vintage promos) was designed by none other than Douglas Trumbull, who designed the slit-scan process utilized in the stargate sequence in 2001: A Space Odyssey. It's quite easy to see the similarities.

Weekend Poster Feast 7

Weekend Poster Feast 7. Better late than never! This time we enjoy the cool, elegant, and sexy lines of an Art Deco fuselage in a sheet advertising the 1937 British thriller Non-Stop New York, which deals with the intrigue and hijinks in an 18 hour transatlantic flight. Apparently the plane in the movie doesn't resemble the one shown on this poster, but is instead the height of opulance and luxury, complete with two levels, sleeping berths, a dining room, and even an outside balcony in order to take in the sights. Quite unlike the comfort we take for granted in air travel today! The film stars the pretty and livacious Anna Lee, who later was featured in the soap opera General Hospital. Click on the image on the left for a larger version. (204K)

Bunny Buzz

Hey there googlers! I may have what you're looking for... The German blog Sin Alley has put up a bunch of screen shots from Vincent Gallo's The Brown Bunny. Yes, some of the images may not be worksafe, but there's nothing graphic from that scene with Chloe Sevigne, at least I don't think so. You regular movie mavens may want to check it out just to dig on Gallo's grimy and grainy mise-en scene. I haven't seen Brown Bunny yet, but it looks like Gallo wants to harken back to early '70s zoom lens, flattened washed out look (Buffalo '66 had the same), which is refreshing in this age of films that look like video games -sharp and shiny to the point of no return (or pointlessness, for that matter).

Romy Schneider (1938-1982)

"I am nothing in in life, but everything on the screen," admitted Austrian film actress Romy Schneider in a moment of heartbreaking candor. Never a marquee player in Hollywood (she is possibly best known in the states for her roles in What's New, Pussycat, Otto Preminger's The Cardinal, the 1964 Jack Lemmon vehicle Good Neighbor Sam, and her turn in Orson Welles' production of The Trial), she was huge in Europe. She began her career playing royalty in German language films, and garnered her greatest fame and adulation playing Princess Elisabeth of Bavaria in the "Sissi-films", a series of three films made in the late '50s, a storybook history of the romance of young 'Sissi' and the dashing Emperor Franz Josef of Austria. With this stardom also came the freedom to try more challenging projects, such as working with Luchino Visconti on film with Boccaccio '70 and also on the Parisian stage, where she receives some critical kudos. Her work with Visconti will also allow her to reprise her "Sissi" role in Ludwig. Romy Schneider becomes a much in demand actress. In 1971, Paris Match emblazons this headline: "Forty years after Greta and Marlene, fifteen years after Marilyn, the cinema discovers a new star."

But this success belied a deep personal dissatisfaction and profound sadness. After a series of failed marriages and relationships, compounded with the accidental death of her son in 1981, Schneider reached this horrible conclusion: "It seems to be impossible for me to live with myself - let alone for anyone else." Also this: "Sissi ? I?ve not been Sissi for a long time now ? I am an unhappy 42-year-old woman and my name is Romy Schneider." She smoked three packs of Marlboros a day, drank heavily, and popped barbituates and stimulants. In May of 1982 she died in her Paris apartment at the age of 43, officially due to "natural causes".

There are plenty of interweb shrines celebrating this enigmatic and beautiful actress. The best is Das Romy Schneider Archiv (in German), which collects a ton of images, including portraits, posters, and an excellent collection of German magazine covers. Plus, an assortment of wallpapers for your desktop.

There's also the Romy Schneider Bilderseite, which has a lot of images not found on the Archiv, including a gallery of cardboard picture discs and 45rpm picture sleeves (like most stars of the time, Romy tried her hand as a pop songstress). Also this series of screenshots from The Trial, especially those of a young Romy babying a prone Welles. You go, Orson!

The Magnificent Ambersons

Here's a fantastic resource for images and info on Orson Welles' The Magnificent Ambersons. The site includes the requisite posters and lobbycards, but also included are magazine ads and scanned articles from fan magazines, including one entitled "Is Orson Welles a Menace?" There's also a trailer that gives us just a taste of the footage that was ultimately edited out (the final scene where Joseph Cotten visits Agnes Moorehead in a cheap boarding house --a scene that Welles thought was the best in the film and possibly the best he ever directed).

Cinema Diabolico

Very cool collection of Mexican horror and wrestling movie posters and lobby cards, part of Pulp Morgue, a repository of pulp art and ephemera. One of many wonderful finds divined from Bibi's Box.

Death at Disneyland

The Happiest Place on Earth? A detailed and sad history of fatal accidents at the Disneyland theme park in Anaheim by John Marr, publisher of the zine Murder Can Be Fun.

Weekend Poster Feast 6

Weekend Poster Feast 6. Not a movie poster, per se, but what looks like a crazily hyperbolic newspaper ad for a double feature of Keep Talking, Baby (Cause toujours, mon lapin) (1961), and Ladies' Man (Lemmy pour les dames (1961), both starring the great Eddie Constatine. Constatine is best known as tough guy Lemmy Caution in Godard's Alphaville, the craggy faced throw-back alpha-male pitted against the cruelly efficient Alpha 60 supercomputer, the Tarzan against IBM, as it were. Constantine made his name in Europe as a cabaret singer and then moved on to play hardboiled American heroes like Lemmy Caution and Nick Carter in French films in the '50s. Constantine's new bride said, in an interview in 1977 (when Eddie was 62, mind you): "I've had five husbands, and Eddie is the best lover of them all." Who needs James Bond or Our Man Flint? Yes indeed!

Online Viewing Tips

Some online viewing tips. A series of five minute cartoons from Cartoon Network Mexico featuring masked wrestling superhero El Santo. Pretty nicely done, in a sleek Batman and Teen Titans sort of way. Santo battles mummies and clones in Mexico, D.F. In Spanish (as if that would stop you).

Via WFMU's blog, a preview of The Found Footage Festival, a compendium of stupid home videos, foul mouthed outtakes and tantrums, and incredibly violent training tapes. Entertaining and enlightening.

And lastly, one definitely not for the kiddies. Via Warren Ellis, a cheaply and crudely animated version of a Tijuana Bible, featuring a third-rate Bugs Bunny rip-off, cartoon animals as sailors and pirates, naked cartoon women, moronic racial sterotypes, and a whole bunch of squishy sex. Who the hell made this cartoon? It looks like it was made in the '60s or '70s, probably made for stag parties or smokers. Despite its crude look and sub-Hanna-Barbara animation, it looks somewhat professional -perhaps a lark produced by easily amused (or bored) animators in between jobs. An interesting cultural artifact, I suppose. Probably not worksafe.

Up the Academy!

Henceforth, let it be known (at least by me) that the Oscar known as the Academy Award for Best Achievement in Direction has no grounding in even the most objective criteria of what can be considered "good direction". This so-called "award" shall not be considered in any way a yardstick of cinematic quality or artistic vision, but instead something akin to a Hollywood Chamber of Commerce "Good Citizenship" award. Considering the background of many of the recipients in the past 20 years, perhaps it should change its name to the "Actor Does Good" Award.

Let it also be known that for a filmmaker to be shunned or snubbed by the so-called "Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences" is not a detriment, but, instead, a credit to an artist's worth. Let it also be understood that the collective work of those not worthy enough to be so "honored", by any qualitative measurement, is far, far superior to the collective work of those who have won (and in this case -if it's close at all- it's because of the heavy lifting of a few: like Ford, Wilder, Huston, maybe Coppola, Bertolucci, and Polanski, and maybe Spielberg on a good day).

While all this may painfully obvious to many of you, this bite-sized piece of rancor was mainly created to assuage those (like myself) who had hoped against hope that perhaps this was the year the Academy would bend to finally honor America's Greatest Living Filmmaker. That Martin Scorsese, despite his outsider status, used every culinary trick and ingredient in his filmic kitchen to appeal to Academy tastes in his last two outings (historical feasts: grand, epic, sweeping, with big stars, and even bigger budgets), still he fell short of garnering the prize. Maybe it was a cynical attempt by Scorcese to rig the game, knowing that a movie like The Aviator had Oscar written all over it, and that this was his best shot. All the undeniably great films he made that had never won were much too raw, violent, and strange for the Academy, so he may have tried to smooth this wrinkles out in The Aviator. It could have worked, but, the problem remained: he's still Martin Scorsese. The Aviator, grand mess that it is, still had as its core, a morally ambivalent and somewhat unsympathetic main character. Howard Hughes is a classic Scorsese hero in much the same vein as Johnny Boy and Charlie, Travis Bickle, Jake La Motta, Rupert Pupkin, or even Jesus Christ. And the Academy doesn't like weird characters... give them a gruff old boxing trainer with a heart of gold anytime.

Like the scorpion in Welles' Mr. Arkadin, it's in Scorsese's nature to have such uncompromising aspects in even such a compromising effort. And it's also in the nature of the Academy (the Hollywood elite, if you like... dull and conservative to a fault) to shun such irregularities, to turn their heads away from the weird and the colorful. If you're going to have to have a kink in the proceedings (such as euthunasia), at least let it be stately. One thing Scorsese is not, is stately.

So, once again, the asthmatic kid from Little Italy is uninvited to the big party. Well, Marty, if they don't let them play in their yard, fuck 'em. There's nicer fields all around.

Deutsche Kinostars

More film ephemera... Photos and info on Postwar German movie stars(in German). I've always been fascinated by this kind of international pop cinema that flies under the North American radar (our cultural NORAD?), and ends up in the sad margins of recollection, barely on the tip of the tongue of dumb memory. Most of the films featured on the site appear to be melodramas or comedies, movies that would not have easily translated to American tastes (unlike the fantastical Krimis, which at least showed up as second features at drive-ins or downtown fleapits or on late night television). The stars themselves were attractive enough, although they didn't seem to make much of a splash outside West Germany (or German speaking environs), unlike, say, Curt Jurgens, Hardy Kruger, Gert Frobe, or Karin Dor (although a lot of these aforementioned actors made their transatlantic bones on Bond films, oddly enough). Another chapter in the secret history of cinema.

Batman The TV Show

KAPOW! occurs 50 times, which makes it the most often used sound effect graphic used in the old 1960s Batman TV series. Coming in second on this wonderfully compiled list is that old standby POW! with a respectable 49 times. Not far behind is ZAP! with a 42 count. There's also a list of cameo celebrity appearances, plus a whole bunch of bat-details and minutiae for your surfing pleasure. A bunch of batvideos can be seen here, including Burt Ward's screen test with Adam West in a Batman Year One style insignia on his chest.

Weekend Poster Feast 5

Weekend Poster Feast 5. Have Negligee...will travel...! Meet Mari Lou... the blonde on fire! Meet Mari-Lou...Once she starts she can't stop... Mari-Lou...Hiway Pick-Up...She Couldn't Resist Men...Any Man! Kathy Marlowe...That Girl on Fire Who Starts In Where Mansfield and Monroe Leave Off!

Just some of the taglines for the wonderfully titled Girl with an Itch (1958), a tawdry potboiler of a b-movie taken from a paperback from the bottom of a squeaky book rack. I really don't know anything about this movie, except that it features Robert Armstrong, who played Carl Denham in King Kongand Robert Clarke, whose been in tons of cheap horror flicks from The Astounding She Monster, The Hideous Sun Demon, and Frankenstein Island. And I really haven't any information on the aforementioned Kathy Marlowe, except that she apparently came out in Phil Karlson's The Phenix City Story, which I remember as a pretty good gritty film about a totally corrupt city in Alabama. The poster has a certain old school prurience that seems innocent nowadays, almost sweet. You can get a fridge magnet with the poster's image. If you're really interested, Something Weird is selling the film in VHS.

Click on the image for a larger version. 326K.

Chess In The Cinema

What do the films The Seventh Seal, 2001, An American Werewolf in London, Monkey Business, and The Abominable Dr. Phibes have in common? They all feature scenes with chess playing. These films, and many, many more, are featured in the Chess In The Cinema site, which exhaustively tries to list every movie with a scene featuring either chess playing, or even a chessboard. They have a count of 604 so far, and I'll be damned if I could find one that they've missed.

R.I.P. Simone Simon

Another loss in the film world. French actress Simone Simon died today in Paris at the age of 93. She is best known for her role as the enigmatic and troubled Irena Dubrovna in Val Lewton's 1942 production of Jacques Tourneur's Cat People. It's an intriguing film, cast in pools of light and shadow, thick with mystery, and handling the subtexts of female frigidity and sexual awakening with a deftness that films of that time just didn't approach (unless it was a low-budget horror movie). Simon's performance was a key part of the movie's success. Her Irena is soft, vulnerable, perhaps ingenuously earnest; but behind her pretty and exotic eyes, as she melts into the shadows, we can sense her rigidly held surface melting as well, failing to keep the beast in check.

Hollywood was just a small part of her career. Simon starred in Jean Renoir's La Bête Humaine in 1938, and in Max Olphuls' La Ronde and Le Plaisir in 1950 and 1952 respectively. She retired from the movie industry in 1956 and, for nearly 50 years, presumably never looked back.