Tarzan’s chimp co-star Cheetah has died at his Florida sanctuary.
An evening pause: The same song, two versions, from the 1962 movie, and then from the 2003 television production.
Five ridiculous gun myths promoted by movies. I like this one:
It’s an old joke by now that nobody runs out of bullets in action movies (unless it’s suddenly convenient to the plot, that is). Hollywood shows some restraint with revolvers–usually no more than 10 or 11 shots per six-shot cylinder–but damn, do they go hog-wild with anything that fires full-auto. So much so that that most of us have wound up with an utterly ridiculous concept of how those guns work. They’re seriously depicting these things firing a hundred times more bullets than they can actually hold.
An evening pause: On the anniversary of the day the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor: “I bet they are asleep in New York. I bet they’re asleep all over America.” From Casablanca (1942).
An evening pause: On the anniversary of its first presentation, Charles Laughton gives his interpretation, from the movie Ruggles of Red Gap (1935).
An evening pause: In honor of this Armistice Day, the eleventh day of the eleventh month of the eleventh year: Montgomery Clift plays revelry, from the 1953 classic movie, From Here to Eternity.
An evening pause: Once again, for Halloween, this short but truly unnerving scene from Robert Wise’s The Haunting (1963), based on the story by Shirley Jackson. Captures what everyone imagines it would be like to sleep in a haunted house. And with no special effects at all.
Using Hubble Space Telescope images taken over a 14 year period, a team of astronomers led by Patrick Hartigan of Rice University have produced six very short time-lapse movies, showing the changes that have occurred to a variety of interstellar jets and bow shocks over time. The one below is my favorite. They are all worth looking at, as they illustrate forcefully how the changeless heavens are not so changeless.
An evening pause: This lovely and poignant scene from the 1945 film, A Bell for Adano, showcases the superb acting of Gene Tierney and John Hodiak. He is an American commander of Italian descent put in charge of an Italian village now under U.S. rule near the end of World War II. She is a local Italian girl longing to find her sweetheart who went off to fight for Italy and is now missing.
The movie was based on a short but profound book by John Hersey. And what I remember most from that book is this speech by the Hodiak character in trying to explain to the Italians the right way for government officials to act:
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The story of Hayabusa, the Japanese space probe that was the first to successfully return material from an asteroid despite serious technical failures, has now inspired three major movies.
An evening pause: To close out my Declaration of Independence celebration that I began two days ago, here is the vote and public release of the Declaration, as portrayed in the 2008 John Adams mini-series.
To all government leaders, you ignore these words at your peril:
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. [emphasis mine]
An evening pause: From the movie 1776 (1972). The actual vote and signing of the Declaration of Independence took place 235 years ago today, on July 2nd, not July 4th. We celebrate the Fourth of July because that was the date put on the Declaration itself when it was made public.
An evening pause: On Memorial Day, one short scene from the William Wellman film, Battleground (1949), to remind us why sometimes it is necessary to fight a war.
An evening pause: The finale from the movie 42nd Street (1933). Stay with it, as it gets better and better.
