An evening pause: The theme song from Goldfinger (1964) might have been one of the best theme songs among all the Bond films. This live performance by the voice from that original film is from 2011, when she was 78 years old.
An evening pause: The visuals here have a very nice documentary feel, even those shots which were clearly staged. They all invoke the highway world of travelers, almost anywhere in the U.S.
An evening pause: Without question Hanks has been one of the world’s best actors in the past three decades. And his choice of scripts has always been excellent. From Forrest Gump (1994).
The Puttin’ On The Ritz music video is a creative collaboration between Alpert, artist Glenn Kaino and filmmaker Afshin Shahidi with choreographers Napoleon & Tabitha D’umo from So You Think You Can Dance and produced by Kerith Lemon. One long camera shot follows the lead dancer, Vincent Noiseux on a musical journey and features musicians Lani Hall, Bill Cantos, Hussain Jiffry and Michael Shapiro as well as corps dancers like Kherington Payne and others that have been seen on So You Think You Can Dance, America’s Best Dance Crew, Dancing with the Stars, This is It, Step Up and more.
Hat tip Tom Biggar, who notes that Albert makes some cameos, which I think includes both the bus driver and the bartender.
An evening pause: Sadly, I think this short film captures well the cold inhumanity of the coming future, even if it also shows us a technological society capable of routine tourist travel to the stars.
An evening pause: On this day of remembrance, this song seems fitting. And as the lyrics boldly state,
I won’t be made to ever feel ashamed
that I’m American made
I got American parts
I got American faith
In America’s heart
Go on, raise the flag
I got stars in in my eyes
I’m in love with her
And I won’t apologize.
The image that best reveals what America represents, as a messenger of freedom, is that photograph of the American soldier gently cradling a baby refugee from war. Or as said in the 1993 movie Gettysburg, “We are here for something new. This has not happened much in the history of the world. We are an army out to set other men free.”
An evening pause: Hat tip to Thomas Biggar, who wrote, “This piece was written by Michel Colombier and released in 1971. Emmanuel was written to honour the memory of his son who died when he was only 5 years old.”
An evening pause: Two songs on this appearance on the Tonight Show on December 7, 1987, plus a bit of their interview afterward with some interesting tidbits.
An evening pause: I like this far better for Labor Day than anything else I’ve thought of. It’s cute, sweet, nice, and hopeful. And it somehow seems fitting as we close out the summer of the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 landing.
An evening pause: Wells made one of the greatest films ever, Citizen Kane (1941), and then spent the rest of his life failing at finishing almost anything. Along the way he met some interesting people, and in this short clip during an interview on the Dick Cavett Show from July 27, 1970, he tells some of those stories.
His story about Churchill fits the gracious and humorous personality of that man to a “T”.
An evening pause: A breath-taking collection of crashes and failures during the 2018 National Hot Rod Association race season One could call this a collection of engineering failures, but I don’t see it that way. For one, absolutely no one was seriously hurt, proving the design of their safety features. For another, the engine failures show how they are pushing the engineering to the max to win.
An evening pause: There is a lot of modern art blarney in this artist’s view of the depth of this work, which is both literally and figuratively very shallow. Nonetheless, attention must be paid to the brilliant engineering and beauty of the work.