An evening pause: The premise of this scene from the 2018 movie Green Book is nothing new, and has been done innumerable times. That said, who cares? It is always fun to watch, especially if well done.
Hat tip Mike Nelson.
An evening pause: From the movie The Sound of Music (1965), a song about teaching children to face fear, to push past it, and live boldly and with courage. And to do it with humor. As Ray Bradbury wrote in his book, Something Wicked This Way Comes, you defeat evil and fear by laughing at it. The world needs to recapture this idea, or else we are doomed.
Hat tip Tom Wilson.
Ice Cube: now an unclean non-person
Original photo by Adam Bielawski
They’re coming for you next: Actor and rapper Icecube, who has throughout his career been linked to leftist and pro-black racial causes, has pulled out as one of the leads of a Sony film because he refuses to comply with the film company’s COVID shot mandate.
According to the Hollywood Reporter, which broke the story,
Ice Cube has departed Sony’s upcoming comedy, Oh Hell No, in which he would’ve co-starred with Jack Black, after declining a request from producers to get vaccinated, sources tell The Hollywood Reporter.
Apparently this decision has cost him a $9 million check.
The first link above notes this important point about Ice Cube:
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An evening pause: For the Halloween weekend, one of Hollywood’s best ghost films, Robert Wise’s The Haunting (1963), based on a short story by Shirley Jackson.
No blood. No gore. No violence. Only an overwhelming sense of dread and fear, evoked by brilliant filmmaking.
Capitalism in space: Roscosmos last week announced that the actress and director who plan to fly to ISS in October to film scenes for a science fiction movie are fit to fly.
Director Klim Shipenko and actor Yulia Peresild got the thumbs-up after a meeting of the Chief Medical Commission at the Yuri Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center near Moscow, Russia’s federal space agency Roscosmos announced last week.
Cosmonaut Anton Shkaplerov, who is scheduled to launch toward the orbiting lab with Shipenko and Peresild aboard a Russian Soyuz spacecraft on Oct. 5, also got final medical clearance. So did the backups for the mission: cosmonaut Oleg Artemyev, director Alexey Dudin and actor Alena Mordovina.
The movie script itself, about an astronaut who gets a heart attack while on a spacewalk and then has to have surgery in space before returning to Earth, actually sounds quite good and — most refreshing — well grounded in reality. American space films tend to go in absurd directions, often because the filmmakers are ignorant and have no interest in learning anything about the subject they are writing about.
So far, the schedule of upcoming space tourist flights appears on track to happen, as announced:
An evening pause: Performed by the Danish National Orchestra in 2017. It appears that in 2017 and in 2018 this orchestra did these movie-themed concerts a lot.
Hat tip Mike Nelson.
An evening pause: Performed by the Danish National Symphony Orchestra in 2018.
Hat tip Phill Oltmann.
An evening pause: The opening speech from the 1970 movie Patton that captured the character of one of America’s most unique and successful generals.
Patton was a difficult man with little diplomacy, but then, soldiers are not hired to be diplomats. (At least we didn’t when America was the sane country of courageous fighters, as described in this speech.) Yet, as difficult as he was, his philosophy of war was a direct descendant of the war strategy and tactics of Ulysses S. Grant. As Patton is believed to have actually said,
“Our basic plan of operation is to advance and to keep on advancing regardless of whether we have to go over, under, or through the enemy. We are going to go through him like crap through a goose!”
This was how Grant won the Civil War. It was how Americans fought every war that followed through World War II. Sadly, that philosophy was lost by the bureaucratic military that developed during the Cold War.
If only we had generals and political leaders today who understand this utterly essential approach for winning wars.
One note: The speech’s language at times violates my rules about obscenities. In the context of war and death however I think the use of such language wholly appropriate.
Hat tip Daniel Morris.
Banned: Comic book artist and movie screenwriter Frank Miller
Genocide is coming: Frank Miller, well known comic book artist and the screenwriter of several major Hollywood movies, was banned from a British comic convention recently because fifteen years earlier — only a few years after the destruction of the World Trade Center and during the American effort to defeat the Islamic terrorist organization al-Qaeda — Miller had penned a comic book whose main character fought those terrorists.
And what prompted Miller’s banning by the convention, dubbed the Thought Bubble festival? Apparently, it received a single complaint from one very unknown Islamic cartoonist.
Miller was dropped after Zainab Akhtar, whom The Mix describes as an “award-winning cartoonist and small press publisher ShortBox founder,” said that she would “no longer be attending Thought Bubble festival this November” because Miller was set to be there. Akhtar explained: “As a proud Muslim woman, I cannot in good conscience attend a festival that deems it appropriate to invite and platform Frank Miller, a person who is responsible for the propagation of abhorrent anti-Muslim hate, particularly via his work.”
Akhtar in her complaint never actually cites any specific examples of Miller’s anti-Muslim hate, thus forcing everyone to guess what Miller’s specific crime might be. The only possible example is that earlier work, which very specifically attacked a terrorist group, not all of Islam.
But then, for the oppressive left, which includes radical Islamists like Akhtar, any criticism of their allies or agenda must always be labeled as “racist.”
As usual, what makes this story most appalling is the obsequiousness of the convention management, which immediately bowed to Akhtar’s slanderous complaint, begging forgiveness in the most cowardly way.
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An evening pause: This song, from the 1954 MGM classic musical, was one of the first evening pauses I posted back in 2010. As Diane and I recently rewatched the musical, I think it time to repost it. As I said then,
This haunting song from the movie Seven Brides for Seven Brothers is notable not only because of the beauty of the music and dancing, but because the entire number is shot as one take, no cuts. Everyone, from the actors with their axes to the crew moving the camera on its dolly and crane, had to be right on cue for everything to work.
Having spent almost twenty years in the movie business, I can promise you that this is not easy.
The 2010 evening pause uses the original voice of red-haired Matt Mattox, which was dubbed for the movie.
An evening pause: Sung by Shirley Jones, from one of the greatest American musical films ever made, The Music Man (1962).
Diane and I have been watching a lot of those ’40s, 50s, and 60s American musicals. To today’s bitter and cynical youth, these films might seem to portray a too-perfect world filled with too much happiness and wealth. And while there is some truth to that cynical view, it is mostly wrong. The America portrayed in these films was actually quite like this. People were free, they were generally happy, and they lived a life of prosperity that no one before had ever seen. Nor are future generations likely to see such a life again during the coming dark centuries. These musicals provide a window into that time.
These musicals as well as most of the Hollywood movies prior to the 1960s are also quite unique in the history of literature and art in that they told stories not of kings or rulers or nobility, but of ordinary people. Such stories were rarely told before the coming of America. This fact also tells us much about the culture that then existed. It was ruled by those ordinary people, and thus the art and literature catered to them.
Which is why the Marxist power-driven culture that now dominates this country is desperate to ban the viewing of such art and the learning of that history. It tells a tale they cannot stomach.
A evening pause: On this day, July 2nd, the day the Founding Fathers actually signed the Declaration of Independence, I think it appropriate to once again watch this wonderful song from the 1976 movie version of the 1972 musical, 1776. As I said in earlier posts of this song on Independence Day, “not only did the musical capture the essence of the men who made independency happen, it is also a rollicking and entertaining work of art.”
And despite the hate being spewed against America and its founding principle that all humans are created free with the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, that truth still shines. As John Kennedy said of himself, ourselves, and these founding fathers. “We stand for freedom.”
A banned race in Hollywood.
Blacklists are back and Hollywood’s got ’em: Warner Brothers has decided its next Superman will be super-woke and must star a black Superman.
More important, the studio has decided that in order to make the film the “super-woke” concept they envision it must only hire blacks to make it. Not only has the studio hired a black writer to write the script, it is insisting that the director and crew must be black also.
The Hollywood Reporter proudly makes note of the fact that they are looking for only black people to do it all, and are looking for a black director. The piece unabashedly excludes the film’s producer J.J. Abrams as a candidate purely because it would be “tone-deaf.”
Nor is that all. Hollywood also wants the focus for all its future superhero films to be “diversity” and racial oppression rather those evil and quaint old concepts of “truth, justice, and the American way.”
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An evening pause: Some funny silliness from the silent movie era. And if you don’t know who Buster Keaton was, it is time you found out.
Hat tip Cotour.
An evening pause: This will not mean anything to my younger readers, but this song and commercial seared itself into the brains of everyone who went to the movies or watched television in the 40s, 50s, and 60s. The first version, shown here, was produced by Disney for the United Fruit Company.
I can think of no reason not to sear this song into some new generations.
Hat tip David Nudelman.
An evening pause: I think this video well illustrates the range of human imagination, as well as the real possibilities for the future, if we only have the courage to match.
I played this at 1.5 to increase the pace, but that’s not necessary.
Hat tip Jim Mallamace.
An evening pause: A very detailed look at some of the behind-the-scenes history for one of John Ford’s best westerns, The Searchers (1956), starring John Wayne.
This isn’t my favorite Ford film. I prefer My Darling Clementine (1946). Nonetheless, The Searchers is still one of the best, and this short documentary will also give you a feel for the actual American culture of the time, a culture that cared about the truth and tried to treat people with respect.
If you want to watch but save time, you can set the playing speed at 2X normal and understand everything completely.
Hat tip Tom Biggar.
An evening pause: This sequence from the animated film Robots (2005) is a very typical scene from almost every modern Hollywood film, whether real or animated (though the difference is getting harder to see as they put more and more CGI in every film). Regardless, it is fun, and takes the idea of a Rube Goldberg device to a very strange extreme.
Hat tip Bob Robert.
An evening pause: From the 1955 film, The Seven Little Foys, with Bob Hope playing Eddie Foy, and James Cagney reprising the role of George M. Cohen, first played by him in Yankee Doodle Dandy (1942).
Hat tip Thomas Keener.
An evening pause: People tend to forget that great actors really are ordinary people.
Hat tip Tom Biggar.
An afternoon pause: As I have done for several years on Christmas day, I bring you the classic 1951 version of Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, starring Alastair Sim. To my mind this movie is still by far the best adaption of the book. It is also a truly wonderful movie.
As I wrote last year,
Dickens did not demand the modern version of charity, where it is imposed by governmental force on everyone. Instead, he was advocating the older wiser concept of western civilization, that charity begins at home, that we as individuals are obliged as humans to exercise good will and generosity to others, by choice.
It is always a matter of choice. And when we take that choice away from people, we destroy the good will that makes true charity possible.
Enjoy, and have a Merry Christmas!
An evening pause: Actually, the song is the least interesting thing about this dance number from Ship Ahoy (1942). Stick with it to see the dance interplay between dancer Powell and drummer Rich.
Hat tip Tom Biggar.
A evening pause: For Halloween, one of best low budget spook films ever made. No blood, no gore, no boring killer. Just style and atmosphere producing a creepy experience and a sense of dread.
And it was produced and directed by Herk Harvey for an estimated $33,000!
An evening pause: From the 1936 movie adaptation of the Jerome Kern & Oscar Hammerstein Broadway musical Showboat. While some of the visuals are a bit overstated and feel a bit preachy, this is still the best movie version of this song I have seen. Rather than strut about with big visuals, the film focuses on Robeson, who sings the song introspectively, as if it is something he is thinking.
A bit of trivia: The film’s director was James Whale, the man who made the 1935 classic The Bride of Frankenstein.
Hat tip Edward Thelen.
An evening pause: Ebsen is joined by Eleanor Powell, Jimmy Stewart, Una Merkel and Sid Silvers in this dance number from the 1936 film, Born to Dance.
Ebsen is remembered most for playing Jed Clampett in the tv comedy series, The Beverley Hillbillies, but he started out as a dancer in movies.
Hat tip Phill Oltmann.
An evening pause: Another movie pause tonight, this time showing the films themselves. This clip includes two performances of this song, from two different Astaire & Rogers films. The first, from Shall We Dance? (1937), has Astaire singing the song, knowing that the Rogers character is leaving him. Of course she ends up not going.
The second clip is from The Barkleys of Broadway (1949), their last film together and done after a split of ten years. They knew then this would be their last film, and now the words have a meaning far greater than the story in the film. When they exit at the end of this song, they know it is pretty much for the last time.
Hat tip to Phil Berardelli, author of Phil’s Favorite 500: Loves of a Moviegoing Lifetime.
