Un Chien Andalou

A 16-minute film from Spanish artists Luis Buñuel & Salvador Dalí. The movie is a bit weird perhaps even a little violent. The very first scene might even disturb you.

I just saw this movie in class last month and it was interesting. Indeed more interesting than what Hollywood puts out today. I hope that you'll find it interesting as well.

Read this review by Roger Ebert!

Here's a direct link to the film here.

More scenes from The Jazz Singer

Yeah I need to put this movie on the needs list. I'd like to see how "talking" scenes were effectively integrated into this film. There wasn't a lot of dialogue in the movie but there was a lot of singing. It almost looks like a modern film when ever we hear dialogue and singing.

Coffee Dan's



Mother of Mine



My Mammy

Previous post on The Jazz Singer here.

Introducing the talking movie

Well sound films have been around somewhat longer than the copyright year of this video. But the animation is interesting and this blog should be know for not only movie or TV soundtracks, but the science of motion pictures. Especially now in the early days sound was recorded onto films. Enjoy.

More scenes from The Jazz Singer is coming up on the 30th of the month.

Reefer Madness

Let me just preferace this to say that I'm not supporting or advocating drug use in anyway!

This is probably everything a movie shouldn't be. Something that was intended to be taken seriously, but eventually turned into a bit of a joke. Considered a joke by those who smoke the very substance this film sought to discourage its use.

Originally it was called Tell Your Children but what happens in Hollywood or the film industry (especially outside of the studio system) is that the film had difficulty getting distributed. Financed by a church group who wanted this film distributed to parents to teach them about the dangers of the use of "marihuana" (to us it would be marijuana). Eventually the rights to the film was bought by an infamous exploitation filmmaker who recut the film and renamed it Reefer Madness and distributed the film on the exploitation circuit.

The overacting, poor, and campy production gave it a cult following years after the film was made. It has a cult following among "marihuana" smokers and on college campuses starting in the 1970s.

Duration of this video is about an hour and ten mintues.

There was a colorized version released in 2004 by Legend Films. You can see a trailer for that here.

ADDITION: A reconstructed screenplay with commentary on some of the things this film originally hoped to accomplish.

The Dark Knight

Yesterday I saw probably one of the best Batman films I have ever seen.

The ending of the movie I saw as poetic in a way that I could imagine was written in the comic books. I also saw a little more Chicago than I would have liked but in other ways the film more than made up for that. A few interesting shocks in the film as far as what happens to some of the characters.

We in fact see three Batman villains in this movie. Of course only two play a significant role in this film. As a matter of fact if you know Batman canon, a movie goer probably knows what happens to a certain district attorney in this film.

If you notice I'm trying not to give too much away. I already noted on my original blog that the other actors to play The Joker (Cesar Romero, Jack Nicholson, and Mark Hamill) have nothing on the character as portrayed by the late Heath Ledger. It's very unfortunate that he won't play this character again. If The Joker is ever brought back to the big screen, the next actor will certain have a challenge on his hands.

At the movie theater where I was, someone called out, "Zeus!" Zeus being a man who at one point in time fued with Hulk Hogan during the original heyday of the WWF. He also made an appearance in Hulk Hogan's movie, No Holds Barred. And you may also know Zeus in the film Friday.

Zeus played a prisoner on a ferry where he saw prison officials were unwilling to activate the detonator in one of the Joker's schemes. He did what he thought prison officials should have done 10 minutes ago. The prison official let him take the detonator out of the box and threw it out of a window on the ferry. That whole scene involving prisoners and everyday citizens on two different ferries was a deep scene.

Also there was a lot of cheering in my theater for this film. Especially for the stunts such as Batman's use of his motorcycle and for Zeus throwing out the detonator. Laughter for some of the Joker's sillier scenes even if the Joker kills someone.

Almost like Batman Begins, this film is a little on the long side. Whenever I thought the movie was finally over it keeps going. I thought the Joker getting arrested was supposed to be the end but it was only the beginning. There was certainly a lot going on in this film.

Go see this movie when you get the first chance or if you don't like the theaters get this for your home enjoyment when it comes out! Don't get a bootleg copy either!

The Dark Knight!

Star Trek Music Re-recorded

I did it for the Doctor Who theme although that video is no longer available. Check out another rendition of a classic theme.

Plane Nuts

Featuring Ted Healy and his Three Stooges.

Here's a direct link.

Courtesy of In2TV.

Destruction of the USS Enterprise

When Star Trek hit the silver screen they did some daring stuff that most Trekkies couldn't even dream about.

Could they have dreamed of a redesigned version of the familiar Starship Enterprise? Of course it's likely that's something they're going to see in the new feature film coming out next year.

Could they imagine the death of a beloved character such as Mr. Spock, Kirk, or Data? Indeed could they expect that any of these characters could magically come back from the dead as Mr. Spock did in Star Trek 3: The Search for Spock.

Speaking of Star Trek 3 this is where this scene comes from. This begs another question. Could fans ever imagine that their favorite starship would be destroyed? Well that's what happened in this clip I provided.

Perhaps while I'm on my Star Trek trip I'll rank my favorite Star Trek movies.

The Great Train Robbery

One of the first narrative motion pictures that was made in 1903 over 100 years ago. Here's more info attached to this vid...

A milestone in film history was one of the first narrative film, The Great Train Robbery (1903), directed and photographed by Edwin S. Porter - a former Thomas Edison cameraman. It was a primitive one-reeler action picture, about 10 minutes long, with 14-scenes, filmed in November 1903.

Read more about it here.

The Flash TV series intro

There are a couple of other superhero movies coming out with Incredible Hulk and Batman with movies coming out. There was also Iron Man within the last two months. And this vid that I've posted here well there isn't likely a movie featuring him coming out anytime soon.

In the early 1990s there as a TV series based on the DC Comics character The Flash. I could tell it aired on CBS, it seems like that type of show. I'm sure you'll love the theme music and the action packed intro. It's too bad the program didn't last but a single season. If there is ever a movie for this character that they should use the theme composed by Danny Elfman.

The Wire

I have recently gotten into that former HBO series that recently ended its run this past March. The last time I ever viewed an episode of the series had to been almost five years ago. Most of the first season and some of the second.

At first the program was basically a look at the police investigating a drug dealing organization. The recent episodes airing currently on BET on Tuesday and Saturday nights involving looking at the police, criminals, schools, and politics. An interesting mix for a program that I always thought of as a cop show.

This program only lets me know that cop shows need not be glamorous. Not that they always were it's just that none have been as gritty as this program set in Baltimore, Maryland. The last few episode that I saw this past week, viewers saw detectives come to the realization that abandoned buildings in Baltimore were tombs to countless bodies laid out by a drug-dealing organization, the Stanfield Organization.

Also we see various young men in the educational system. Some drop out of school and become criminals and some are able to escape and may prove to have a future. One outright becomes a contract killer, another becomes a drug addict. There's this little boy, I can't imagine him being older that 10 years old out there in the streets already using a foul mouth and perhaps even dealing. Also the subject of a severe beating by the future contract killer.

I should also add, there was another kid. Apparently he's a snitch and snitching is bad to some people, he gets beaten by some other boys in his group home where he was placed. Unfortunately he's only there because the state had put rules into place where he's forced to live in a group home while they figure out where else they can place him. This is after his foster mother was killed when some thugs firebombed their home even though the home was under police surveillance.

This show is raw, and my only regret was this I didn't see this show develop properly. Oh now I remember what the second season involved, an investigation of a union working some docks in a harbor. So in that season there were three angles the police, criminals, and organized labor.

I think BET finally finished off season 4 perhaps I can finally watch the final season. The new twist in that season in the press. Let's see how that plays out!

The Wire from Wikipedia

Star Trek 6: The Undiscovered Country

When I get the first opportunity I'm going to watch this film all the way thru. For right now I want to wet your appetites.

This Star Trek movie is the last that would feature most of the original crew. Especially Capt. Kirk in command of the USS Enterprise. We'd see him again in Star Trek Generations, for those of you who've seen the movie, you know what happened. For those of you who haven't well watch the film when you get the chance.

D.W. Griffith's Birth of Nation 1915

This is a very controversial movie. I've yet to actually watch it. The duration of this video is supposed to be 3 hrs. In 1998 this film made the 100 Years, 100 Movies list but the list was revised in 2007 and Birth of a Nation didn't make this cut. Anyway I'm sure after you watch this film, you will have an opinion so have at it.

BTW, I have enabled comment moderation for the first time on this blog. When I posted last night, I got a comment right quick and it gave me some trouble. Such as spyware trouble and I don't want any more comments with links to anything other than safe websites that doesn't cause my brower to disappear unless I click on anything to send me to a spyware site. Beyond that just leave your impressions of this film, positive or negative anything resembling racism won't get published, guaranteed.

Part 1


Part 2


Part 3


Part 4


Part 5


Part 6

Those vids were provided by TVDays.com. The combined duration of these vids is about 164 minutes just over two full hours.

I posted this earlier in April however I you want to see this movie in it's entirety but of less viewable quality go here.

Since this blog appreciates old films

This video had to have been from the late 1920s to early 1930s when they started attaching soundtracks to films is series of scenes from Broadway in New York City. The music goes from optimistic fanfare to more calm and serene then an ending cadence. And the sound surely some of it were dubbed the whistle of a policeman, the honk of a horn, or the bells of a streetcar. I wish that we can see similar films or vids of how a city would look in the modern day. It wouldn't matter if it was Chicago, New York or even Los Angeles.

Vid provided by TVDays.

Clint Eastwood aims to revive Dirty Harry in new movie

I bought the very first Dirty Harry film a couple or so years ago. I enjoyed it although I thought by maybe the third film it was starting to lose its punch. Though I have to imagine Dirty Harry Callahan as a 77 year old man. Dirty Harry being the same age as Clint Eastwood, the man who brought him to life. Daily News:

Clint Eastwood's gun-slingin', smack-talkin' tough guy, Dirty Harry, is rumored to be returning to the big screen, but - spoiler alert! - he may not live to see a sixth sequel.

Britain's The Sun newspaper reports that Eastwood, 77, wants his Dirty Harry character - immortalized in five movies - to go out in style.

The ruthless policeman, who uttered the infamous "make my day" line, was first seen in 1971 and made his last appearance in 1988's "The Dead Pool."

In March, Ain't It Cool News reported a rumor that 'Gran Torino,' Eastwood's lastest production for Warner Bros. and Village Roadshow, was indeed this sixth installment in the Dirty Harry series. 'Torino' is slated for a December release.

This should be interesting!

The first film appearance of The Three Stooges

In the 1930 film Soup to Nuts. In the early years of their act they were associated with Ted Healy. Curly isn't in this movie and Moe is not the dominant stooges with Shemp in Moe's role. And there was a mute fourth stooge whom we would never hear from again!

Here's more on The Three Stooges and here's a Wikipedia article on Soup to Nuts.

Oh I just have to admire how they made movies back then. It seems like the late 20s and early 30s made for an interesting time for filmmaking. Almost makes me long for some of the techniques that were used in that era. Of course we can never go backwards in time and use the buildings from that era that were torn down and the automobiles or the technologies that were used back then.

Enjoy!

How 'Dallas' Won the Cold War

I barely remember this series and I became a fan much later on when this show aired on the network now called SpikeTV when they used to be TNN (The Nashville Network). Anyway apparently this show played a role in beating back Communism in the 1980s...

Let us now pause in somber tribute to the 30th anniversary of a momentous -- and shockingly unremembered -- turning point in the long twilight struggle between communism and capitalism. An event every bit as important as the Nixon-Khrushchev Kitchen Debate, Ronald Reagan's "Tear Down this Wall" speech and Yakov Smirnoff's defection to the West.

We write, of course, about the debut of "Dallas," the 13-year soap opera that shook the world.

Yes, April 1978 was the first time our nation turned its lonely eyes to Southfork Ranch, the winningly diabolical genius of J.R. Ewing (as played by Larry Hagman) and Victoria Principal's high-waisted pantsuits. It was the booze-and-sex-soaked caricature of free enterprise and executive lifestyles that proved irresistible not just to stagflation-weary Americans but viewers from France to the Soviet Union to Ceausescu's Romania.

"Dallas" wasn't simply a television show. It was an atmosphere-altering cultural force. Lasting nearly as long as recovering alcoholic Larry Hagman's second liver, it helped define the 1980s as a glorious "decade of greed," ushering in an era in which capitalism became cool, even though weighted with manifold moral quandaries. Beginning with the famous "Who Shot J.R.?" cliffhanger at the end of Season Two, "Dallas" was either the highest or second-highest rated show in the United States for a half-decade, showing up in Abba songs and Ozzy Osbourne videos, spinning off the mega-hit "Knots Landing" and inspiring such book-length academic analysis as French academic Florence Dupont's "Homère et 'Dallas': Introduction à une Critique Anthropologique."

After a long hip parade of unironic countercultural icons such as Luke of "Cool Hand Luke" and Randle Patrick McMurphy of "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest," "Dallas" created a new archetype of the anti-hero we loved to hate and hated to love: an establishment tycoon who's always controlling politicians, cheating on his boozy wife and scheming against his own stubbornly loyal family. But no matter how evil various translators tried to make J.R. and his milieu ("Dallas, you merciless universe!" ran the French lyrics added to the wordless theme song), viewers in the nearly 100 countries that gobbled up the show, including in the Warsaw Pact nations, came to believe that they, too, deserved cars as big as boats and a swimming pool the size of a small mansion.

Read the whole thing! Via Instapundit.

Matrix Brothers to open a studio in Chicago

From the Sun-Times today...

The reclusive Wachowski brothers, two of Chicago's creative sons best known for their Matrix movies, have found an equally unassuming North Side spot to edit their projects.

City officials say a post-production studio will open in what has been known as the Ravenswood Studio, 5645 N. Ravenswood, just north of Bryn Mawr.

Late last year, Andy and Larry Wachowski, who grew up in Beverly Hills -- the South Side neighborhood -- approached Ald. Patrick O'Connor (40th) about the vacant North Side building in his ward.

"Actually, they came in to see me. [They] wanted to talk about what their plans were and that there were no impediments or prohibitions to putting it there," O'Connor said.

"They did say that they had had a fairly good search going on and this place fit their needs very well, and that they wanted to be in Chicago and on the North Side in general. . . . They said they loved the idea of doing work in Chicago and being in Chicago, and that was enough for me," he said.

"I did ask for a small part in one of their upcoming projects, but I don't think that will happen," the alderman quipped.

The brothers couldn't be reached for comment. But the city's building department records show that permits were pulled in recent months for interior renovations, a new roof, roof-mounted equipment and window replacement, according to agency spokesman Bill McCaffrey.

It is not clear whether the Wachowskis were able to use the studio -- where crews continue to work -- to finish their upcoming film "Speed Racer," an update of the 1960s cartoon out next month.

Perhaps Chicago can be a media mecca of sorts as New York and LA are at this moment.

I don't know how this is possible

Movie Reviews

I didn't think this blog could be anywhere near post-grad, but then some of these trinkets online doesn't always reflect the quality of the content. lol!

Another film on the needs list

Cooley High.

I don't think I have ever seen this movie all the way thru. Just now on Turner Classic Movies, a channel I don't normally get at home, I saw the last two or three scenes of this movie. The one actor you might know from this film is Lawrence Jacob Hilton who many of you might know from Welcome Back Kotter.

Anyway, this movie was set in 1960s Chicago. I started paying attention when I saw a scene on the Chicago L. Dude was on the train with some girl and then he tells her that he had to get off the train. He's frantically trying to find his buddy it turns out.

Just one this, his buddy was getting beaten by some thugs. Beaten within an inch of his life literally. The number 1 thugs kicks him telling him to get up, but then realizes this "turkey" ain't gettin' up. After the other two hoodlums run away so does the number 1 thug. And dude finds his friend, the beating occurred under some dark L tracks.

Anyway I don't want give away too much of the ending. But I enjoyed the retro (at least for that time) soundtrack full of 1960's MoTown hits. Well this film was based in the 1960s. Surely this movie was a departure from 1970s blaxploitation.

If I don't find this film, perhaps you will!