An evening pause: The first Max Fleischer Superman cartoon, The Mad Scientist (1941), from a time when Americans believed that all things were possible, and that our nation stood for the best of those possibilities. When evil men try to destroy skyscrapers and kill innocent people, you don’t stand idly by, you fight them, and stop them.
Leslie Nielsen Dead at 84. R.I.P.
An evening pause: “Many a New Day” from Oklahoma (1955). It is the dance choreography here that is surprising and original.
An evening pause: What was happening while Thomas Jefferson was writing the Declaration of Independence, according to Broadway and Hollywood.
An evening pause: Charlie Chaplin, making glorious fun of Hitler and all egomanical dictators, in The Great Dictator (1940).
The Baikonur space port: a movie set.
An evening pause: From the film, The Haunting (1963), based on the story by Shirley Jackson. Stay for the closing scene in this clip.
An evening pause: As it is the Halloween weekend, how about an appropriate clip from Hayao Miyazaki’s surreal masterpiece, Spirited Away (2001).
An evening pause: This scene, from Stage Door (1937), is considered by many to be Katherine Hepburn’s greatest film moment: “The calla lillies are in bloom again.” Though powerful on its own, in the full context of the movie the scene is even more heart-breaking, and a true tour de force for Hepburn.
Talk about stupid: New Zealand might lose $700 million in movie production business due to a boycott by an Australian-based actors union. Fun quote:
Fifteen hundred workers, including directors, technicians and crew who [oppose the actors union], met at . . . Miramar Studios at 5pm for an emergency meeting this evening. By 7pm, they were storming the Actors Equity meeting in the city.
An evening pause: Henry Fonda and John Wayne in Fort Apache (1948).
“Sergeant, pour me some scripture.”
An evening pause: Though this sequence of shots from a 1922 Kodak test of Kodachrome film (possibly the earliest in existence) is hardly the stuff of drama, it is fascinating nonetheless, as it gives as an honest glimpse into the culture of its time. As you watch the different women pose for the camera, ask yourself: Has anything changed?
An evening pause: The Westerner (1940). Gary Cooper is wonderful, but it is Walter Brennan as Judge Roy Bean who steals the show.
An evening pause: The opening from the 1964 film, Robinson Crusoe on Mars. Though quickly dated by real events in the 1960s space race, this entertaining and surprisingly rational film shows how a determined man can survive, if he simply uses his brain.
An evening pause: Lawrence of Arabia (1962). One of the greatest epic films ever made. And though the story is heavily dramatized, it captures quite accurately the substance and reality of T.E. Lawrence’s time in the Middle East during World War I. Sadly, I wonder if anything has changed.
An evening pause: Bugs Bunny in Water Water Every Hare. “In my business you meet so many interesting people.”
An evening pause: The Snake Pit (1948). The story of the rescue of an insane woman (played by Olivia de Havilland). This scene expresses the longing for sanity by all the patients in the insane asylum.
An evening pause: A clip from The Time Machine (1960). Though not a completely accurate adaption, this enchanting film captured the essence of H.G. Wells’ novel. As Wells wrote,
But to me the future is still black and blank — is a vast ignorance, lit at a few casual places by the memory of [the Time Traveler’s] story. And I have by me, for my comfort, two strange white flowers — shrivelled now, and brown and flat and brittle — to witness that even when mind and strength had gone, gratitude and a mutual tenderness still lived on in the heart of man.
An evening pause: A concert performance of Ennio Morricone’s theme from Cinema Paradiso (1988), one of the best films ever made. Even if you don’t speak Italian, see it in Italian with subtitles, rather than the dubbed version.
An evening pause: Forbidden Planet (1956). Almost a half century after its creation, this science fiction film is still one of the best every made. The story is supposingly inspired by Shakespeare’s The Tempest. This is also the film that gave Gene Roddenberry his inspiration for Star Trek.
An evening pause: Thomas More, played by Paul Schofield, explains why he would allow even the devil his due in law, from A Man for All Seasons (1966).
An evening pause: From Kevin Branagh’s 1989 film of Shakespeare’s Henry V, the battle speech “upon Saint Crispin’s day”.
