Category: Cinema
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Beginning the week right
Imagine Christopher Walken in orange playing an orange and white tabby cat. And singing and dancing, to boot… As Puss ‘N Boots Yes, indeed, he’s just got his boots in this 1988 Cannon film of the fairy tale by Charles Perrault (attributed here to the Brothers Grimm) and now he’s doing a softshoe on the…
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Spacemen, Go-Go Girls and the Great Easter Hunt
I watched this movie in April of 2007 but am only now blogging about it in December of 2009 (but am retro posting this in April of 2007). What makes me sad is I don’t recollect anything about it other than it was really short, which was a plus, and had really bad production values.…
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George Pal’s "Tom Thumb"
[clear] Been watching the 1958 “Tom Thumb”, directed by Puppetoons’ animator, George Pal. Arrived today from Netflix. I’d assumed I’d probably seen it on television as a child but none of it strikes me as familiar. It’s not the traditional story. The movie is a combo of Puppetoons, slapstick, Hollywood Saturday matinée adventure…and a vehicle…
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The End of August at the Hotel Ozone
What a remarkable title for a film. Spoilers galore follow. Stop reading if you ever plan on seeing it. The story is post-apocalyptic. The film, made in Czechoslovakia about 1967, advances us 15 to 20 years after a day that the last newspaper reported there was unrest in the Middle East (I forget the exact…
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In case you haven’t watched it since you were a child, Jason and the Argonauts is really good
We’ve been watching the 1963 “Jason and the Argonauts” because of Ray Harryhausen’s special effects. We suspected H.o.p. would love them, and he does. What I didn’t expect is I’d enjoy the movie. I didn’t like “Jason and the Argonauts” when I saw it as a child. At least I don’t remember myself as being…
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Tiresome is one word for it
Tonight I’d rather comment on a not-good movie than a good one. “Lot in Sodom” by James Sibley Watson and Melville Webber is that not-so-good movie. Vintage 1933. It was the bonus film on the Nazimova “Salome” DVD. I read that Watson and Webber were supposed to have done a fine job with “The Fall…
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Those glorious glories of war
I do mean it when I said in the previous post that I’m surrounded by the nuts and bolts of it all as H.o.p. has watched Pal’s “Tulips Shall Grow” about 100,000 times in the past week and has been constructing potential film stars out of his erector set. In the meanwhile, I try to…
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Magical lint, secrets for cash – The Sanity of “All Quiet on the Western Front”
Of course I spent yesterday in bed, unable to move. But who didn’t know that would likely happen? Even I knew that would likely happen, I’m not a complete idiot. Though I must say I was hoping that I would be spared, mainly because I was the one doing all the cooking and I didn’t…
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The Most Startling Movie of the Century!!!
“The eternal wonders of space and time, the far away dreams and mysteries of other worlds, other life, the stars, the planets. Man has been face to face with this for centuries and barely able to penetrate the unknown secrets. Some time, some way, the secrets will be pierced. Why must we wait? Why not…
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Some thoughts on "The Bicycle Thief"
[clear] Rita, Antonio, and his bike I’ve never been to Italy and don’t know the history of the unpitiably blank, suburban residential highrises which appear, for example, in Fellini’s “La Dolce Vita” and with which Vittorio De Sica’s “The Bicycle Thief” opens. I don’t know whether they’re public housing or privately constructed; they appear new…
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Frankenstein's beautiful monsters
So the veil between the physical world and spirit world thinned for an evening and a jackpot of candy came pouring through, the majority in orange, brown and gold wrappings, which I take it has to do with pumpkins and decaying leaves. Doing his duty in honoring the dead, H.o.p. dressed up as a zombie…