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454,487 | 11,228,318 | 1,375,309 | 6 | Please Say Something was certainly something unusually compelling from animator David O'Reilly | This short , computer animated by David O'Reilly , was mentioned to me by Amid on Cartoon Brew as one that was given an award in one of those animation festivals . It depicts a mouse and a cat in a marriage that seems troubled and takes place in various times , past and future , that seems to be completely abstract concerning whether anything depicted in the entire 10-minute computer abstract designs are happening or not . The mouse is a writer so he , or maybe she since it's not too clear which gender is which animal , spends lots to times writing while the cat just walks to various places . There's also a hospital and a scarf that comes into play . Like I implied , not everything makes sense but by the end , you may get some inkling what is meant by all the random happenings depicted . So on that note , I'm giving Please Say Something a 6 . . . |
455,262 | 11,228,318 | 234,861 | 6 | This was a shortened version of " Our Gang " s Ten Years Old I reviewed from YouTube | This Hal Roach comedy short , Ten Years Old , is the fifty-eighth in the " Our Gang / Little Rascals " series . As his leaving mother tells Joe she can't afford a cake , he resolves to make his own with help from baby sister Mildred and dog Pal . Lots of not-so-suitable stuff is put in like carrot tacks . When the cake is done , it's as big as the oven it was baked in ! Meanwhile , rich boy Jackie also has a birthday party that day and invites many of Joe's friends to come also . So the rest of the gang resolves to eat Jackie's fancy refreshments before heading to Joe's . When only Farina and little sister Jannie arrive at Joe's a little late , Joe confronts Jackie at his house before Jackie suggests he bring his cake . With that , the kids all eat the unusual ingredient-filled wonder that has a bar of soap in one slice . It all comes to a close at the gift giving when Farina gives a " kitten " - actually a skunk . . . This short that I saw on YouTube was truncated from a two-reeler ( usually 20 minutes ) to about 12 minutes with the split at the six-minute cut . Also , all inter-titles were removed so some of what I wrote in the synopsis came from the book " The Little Rascals : The Life and Times of Our Gang " by Leonard Maltin and Richard W . Bann . Pretty funny short with plenty of sight gags concerning the cake that keeps rising and squirting at the gangs faces . My favorite scene comes from the beginning when Joe and Mildred keep hitting each other with a cabinet door as they're preparing the cake . I just wish it was the completed version I'd seen especially since , once again , the poster did a very good job in adding the familiar LeRoy Shield " Little Rascals " score as performed by the Beau Hunks Orchestra . The director here was not regular Robert McGowan but his nephew Anthony Mack . His name is actually Robert Anthony McGowan with his uncle being Robert Francis . Mack is not considered as talented as his uncle but here at least , the gags are well filmed . So on that note , I cautiously recommend Ten Years Old and hope another commentator will eventually review a complete version on IMDb . |
454,756 | 11,228,318 | 64,782 | 6 | Paint Your Wagon is an enjoyably uneven musical starring Eastwood and Marvin | Paint Your Wagon is one of the last of the big-budget movie musicals made in the late ' 60s after the phenomenal success of The Sound of Music . Like most of them , this one is a bit overlong but there are good scenes and performances throughout including the three leads of Lee Marvin , Clint Eastwood , and Jean Seberg . As in the Sergio Leone westerns , Eastwood is not given a character name , at least not until the end , referred to only as " Pardner " which is funny when Seberg looks for her two husbands and and asks for Ben and " Pardner " ! Not bad singing from the two male leads with " Wanderin ' Star " a highlight for Marvin . Good support from Ray Walston and Herve Presnell who sings the most memorable song , " They Call the Wind Mariah " . Uneven in the beginning and end but the scenes after a family of farmers arrive are some of the movie's best especially after the older son goes with Marvin to No Name Town . Director Joshua Logan doesn't always keep things together but it's not entirely his fault since the story seems to clash the styles of Paddy Chayefsky and Alan Jay Lerner . Still worth a look for seeing Eastwood and Marvin in a musical . |
454,648 | 11,228,318 | 829,482 | 6 | Superbad is an uneven teen-sex comedy that still entertains | After about a month of playing theatres , I finally got to see Superbad with my friend after seeing the other movies that had come out that we wanted to see . My friend liked it though he thought it had too much profanity . I didn't have a problem with the language but I did think the funny stuff came in little doses between several scenes that dragged . I liked the performances of Jonah Hill , Michael Cera , and Chris Mintz-Plasse as the high school seniors trying to get laid two weeks before graduation as well as the slacker cops played by Bill Hader and the movie's co-writer Seth Rogen . But their performances weren't enough to make this a hilariously funny movie like I usually expect from producer Judd Apatow who had no hand in writing this movie like he had in his previously very funny directorial outings , The 40-Year-Old Virgin and Knocked Up . Still , despite its unevenness , Superbad does get points for making the main characters ' growing pains seem real and for getting the potential girlfriends of Hill and Cera not seem like such sluts . . . |
453,954 | 11,228,318 | 4,707 | 6 | See first feature comedy in Mack Sennett's Tillie's Punctured Romance | First off , I must mention that I may have seen an edited version of Tillie's Punctured Romance because in the print I saw , there was no film-within-a-film scene here . Also , the score picked for this version seemed suited more for a melodrama than the slapstick comedy that this surely is . Now , while I admit that some of the falls done by Marie Dressler seemed to be a little overdone , considering this was her first feature that can be excused and I found myself laughing pretty loud despite that . Charlie Chaplin also does nicely in the physical department which makes his jerk of a character a little easier to take . And Mabel Normand can take care of herself with all the slaps and kicks she gives to Charlie . I just wish the characterizations were more subtle and pacing was a little more subdued but I guess producer / director Mack Sennett didn't believe in that . For those performances , however , and those of Chester Conklin , Mack Swain , and many of the others who played the Keystone Kops at the end I recommend Tillie's Punctured Romance to any fan of silent movie comedies who are curious about this first feature film played for laughs . |
454,359 | 11,228,318 | 152,262 | 6 | Sadie Hawkin's Day marked the first time " Li'l Abner " was brought to the silver screen | Sadie Hawkin's Day was the first of five Columbia cartoons to feature Al Capp's comic strip creation , " Li'l Abner " . To anyone who doesn't know about the title's reason for being , here's an explanation : Ms . Hawkin was a homely girl whose father , being somewhat near-sighted , was puzzled why no one wanted to marry his , to him , pretty daughter . So he had a contest involving all the unmarried men running to avoid Sadie's clutches with the one caught by her " winning " her hand . Since then , this became an annual thing with many unmarried women attempting to catch a bachelor for her own . Abner , as always , is trying to avoid Daisy Mae from her catching him ( though I find myself wondering why as she's quite a looker who would be great in the hay ! ) . Anyone who's read the comic strip knows their eventual fate but it's fun watching Abner and Daisy Mae , and many of the other contestants , running around like marathon runners trying to avoid / catch each other . This was a nice start for the short-lived series though I'm sure even then there were some limitations that prevented a long run for this comic-to-screen translation . Still , for all that , Sadie Hawkin's Day is worth a look for " Li'l Abner " fans as well as those interested in Columbia Pictures animation . |
454,693 | 11,228,318 | 824,241 | 6 | Vanished : The Tunnel is confusing but still intriguing | Last week , we found out the senator's missing wife , Sara Collins , was also missing 12 years before by a guy in a bar who saw her picture on television and recognized her as Nikki Johnson , a woman he had planned to marry at the time . There was also another woman named Amanda who was also missing several years back but just turned up dead . She was the wife of a former mayor who , because he has some secrets to hide , commits suicide in front of the FBI agent investigating Collins disappearance . The senator's daughter confronts boyfriend about his bloody sweatshirt . Her brother has been communicating with their birth mother by E-mail which the FBI now knows about . A search in a tunnel for Sara has turned up nothing but it's at the same tunnel that the bar guy shows up to give female tabloid reporter an envelope that proves Sara is not her real name . . . Part of this episode confused me with the various twists that seem to come out of nowhere and I still find myself wishing Ming-Na had more to do . Still , there's enough to keep me watching and hoping that what comes will eventually make a lot more sense . |
454,307 | 11,228,318 | 2,851 | 6 | Fatty Joins the Force has some amusing slapstick touches | Before I begin the review , I'd like to note that Dot Farley plays Fatty's wife here and that Edgar Kennedy played a cop in the beginning of this short . I'm noting this because Farley and Kennedy would later team up in a series of shorts for RKO in the forties in which Dot would portray Edgar's mother-in-law . With that out of the way , let me say this was a pretty amusing short in which Fatty joins the police force after saving the commissioner's pre-teen daughter from drowning in a lake . Now in uniform , he finds he's not so respected when he runs afoul of some teen boys who hit him on the face with mud pies and then take his clothes off when he goes for a swim . Cops find his uniform and think he is dead while Fatty , in just long underwear , attracts unwanted attention from ladies who call for help to other cops who arrest him . It all goes downhill from there . . . Pretty amusing slapstick involving the teen boys , other policemen , and subsequent humiliation from his " mourners " . Old hat today but worth a look for silent movie comedy fans . |
454,601 | 11,228,318 | 22,110 | 6 | The Male Man was another interesting Max Fleischer cartoon | Just found this obscure Max Fleischer cartoon on the Uncle John's Crazy Town blog . The author of it claims this is the greatest cartoon ever made . Well , like most Fleischer cartoons from the early ' 30s , there are lots of stream-of-conscious gags here . They are related by Bimbo's adventures as a mailman . Among the gags I liked : Seeing the face of a stamp lick his sticky bottom ( of the stamp ! ) on the envelope , having the envelope given to Bimbo by some skeletal ghouls ( don't ask ! ) enlarge as he keeps walking , and seeing a silhouette of a dancing lady underwater ( again don't ask ! ) which is revealed to be an octopus's legs ! Not too many funny gags other than those I just mentioned . So while I don't think this was the greatest cartoon ever , The Male Man still provides some amusement for a Fleischer cartoon . |
454,788 | 11,228,318 | 152,115 | 6 | I saw Quack-a-Doodle-Doo as a recent tribute to the departed Sid Raymond | In honor of the recent death of Sid Raymond , the voice of Baby Huey , Mark Evanier showed Huey's debut cartoon on his website . Huey's mother had been so desperate to have a child that she took a lot more than the prescribed amount of pills to induce pregnancy ( which only recommends one per day ) . So is born the enormously huge character that would star in his own animated series for theatrical company Famous Studios throughout the ' 50s . As in subsequent entries , Huey creates well-meaning chaos wherever he goes causing him and his mother to be banished from society . But then a fox comes and Huey , not knowing what he's dealing with , manages to defeat him with his own brand of " playtime " that exasperates his opponent . So Huey and his mom gets a welcome parade in their honor . The end . This is my second viewing of a Baby Huey cartoon and I'm still a little amused though I can see the creator's reliance on formula that usually marks a series blandness that also marked Famous ' other short series like Casper and especially , Popeye the Sailor . Still , undiscriminating kids should still be amused . . . |
453,915 | 11,228,318 | 4,766 | 6 | Cecil B . DeMille's The Virginian is interesting early silent | Cecil B . DeMille had made his film directing debut with The Squaw Man ( first feature film ) the same year as the film discussed here . While still a little on the primitive side , this first film version of Owen Wister's novel The Virginian does move along at a brisk pace and has a couple of humorous scenes before the drama involving the title character's friend Steve and thief Trampas . The first involves Virginian's ( Dustin Farnum ) attempts to get a hotel bed by himself by sleeping next to someone and shaking his leg bothering the other bed mates . The next one involves the title character and Steve switching babies in a separate bedroom from the parents celebrating in the dance hall . There's also a surprising scene where after Virginian hangs Steve , teacher Molly's schoolkids nearly reenact the event before she stops them . The person who plays Molly ( Winifred Kingston ) was married to Farnum in real life from 1924 until his death in 1929 and Dustin Hoffman later revealed he was named after this silent cowboy actor . Remade a few more times with the best known being the talkie Gary Cooper one from 1929 . Worth a look for Cecil B . DeMille completists . |
453,844 | 11,228,318 | 1,248,350 | 6 | Flu Shot was an okay episode of " 30 Rock " | In this episode , Liz ' beach vacation is canceled so she decides to support her crew-who are all working despite their flu-and not take her shot since Dr . Spaceman ( Chris Parnell , welcome back ! ) is rationing them under Jack's orders . Jack himself is trying to get Elisa to go out on the town with him despite her other job taking care of an older man named Douglas Templeton ( George Bartenieft ) . And , under also sick Kenneth's suggestion , Tracy and Jenna resolve to get the crew some soup but go shopping instead . They then resolve to cure them with laughter and dress as clowns to cheer them up . . . I liked the reappearance of Spaceman especially when he told Jack to pull down his pants as he puts the shot in his arm and when Liz betrays her promise to not get her shot , he makes her dance which is comically lame here . Those scenes with that old man in a wheelchair going with Jack and Elisa on their date were also good for a few laughs . And it was a hoot hearing Kenneth speak French when he confronts Liz with her shot arm and she tells him in his sickened state that he's hallucinating and is speaking to his French mother . The only scenes that didn't work were the Tracy and Jenna ones which seemed to be the result of the writers desperate to get them something to do . Speaking of desperation , Scott Adsit must be wondering if anybody even remembers him in the cast since his second or third appearance this season in this episode was only about a couple of minutes long . Overall , Flu Shot was a little uneven episode of " 30 Rock " but Parnell's return merits this at least a 6 . |
453,905 | 11,228,318 | 31,999 | 6 | Swing ! was a pretty entertaining musical revue from Oscar Micheaux | This movie , Swing ! , is one of two directed by Oscar Micheaux that's included in the 3-DVD set called Black Entertainment in Film . It starts as a melodrama about a woman whose husband is cheating on her with another woman whose own husband threatens to kill any man she's with . After the fight that results , two months pass and the woman that was cheated on comes to Harlem to visit and live with a young former neighbor woman who gets her a job as a seamstress in a show produced by her boyfriend . The temperamental leading lady singer-who resembles the woman that stole the other lady's husband-is constantly late and almost sabotages the show when she breaks her leg while drunk . But all is saved when the cheated woman replaces her . . . There's other details of the plot but never mind since much of the dialogue is pretty stilted with many of the performances adequate . There are two , though , that stand out : Alec Lovejoy-who I've previously seen in the shorts St . Louis Blues and Black and Tan and in Edgar G . Ullmer's Moon Over Harlem-playing two roles . One as that jealous husband and the other as that man who hits his temperamental star wife after she gets out of hand . And Amanda Randolph ( credited here as Mandy ) who tells the cheated woman about who she saw with her husband in an attitude that seems to imply " Watch out , sucker ! " Both became veterans on film . Of the women I alluded in the plot line , both Cora Green as Mandy Jenkins and Hazel Diaz in her double role of Eloise Jackson and Cora Smith are not much as actresses but they both can warble a tune . In fact , it's mainly the musical performances that make Swing ! get a little lively after the first 15 minutes . Among those highlights : teen trumpeter Doli Armena blowing hot on two numbers , Miss Harris doing her sexy dance , The Tyler Twins-one on piano and another singing and tap dancing , two more dance numbers by a group of women , Diaz ' one number , and Green's two , one of which I recognized as " Bei Mir Bist di Schon " . Add Dorothy Van Engle as Mandy's young former neighbor friend Lena Powell and Carman Newsome as her producer boyfriend Ted Gregory and you've got Oscar Micheaux's feature of Swing ! that's long enough filler for an hour of the black audience's entertainment time . No great shakes , this movie is enjoyable enough on a historical level concerning both black filmmakers and the entertainers making a rare film appearance here . |
454,691 | 11,228,318 | 384,484 | 6 | The Insects ' Christmas is interesting early depiction of animated holiday season | The Insects ' Christmas is interesting in that this may be one of the earliest depictions of the winter holiday in animated form I've ever seen . Certainly of the stop-motion puppet version . The fact that Father Christmas invites both insects and frogs to the celebration shouldn't be surprising since filmmaker Ladislaw Starewicz made both The Cameraman's Revenge ( 1912 ) and The Frogs Who Wanted a King ( 1922 ) . Kids may by bored by both the silence and black-and-white photography but it's at least worth a look for animation enthusiasts and Starewicz completists . This and the other shorts I mentioned is available on Milsetone Film and Video's The Cameraman's Revenge and Other Fantastic Tales DVD distributed by Image Entertainment . |
454,232 | 11,228,318 | 85,384 | 6 | Curse of the Pink Panther was pretty entertaining despite no Sellers and the fate of his character here | Filmed right after Trail of the Pink Panther , Curse of the Pink Panther continues the storyline of finding both Chief Inspector Clouseau and the Pink Panther diamond . Since Dreyfus , however , would rather Clouseau was never found , he has someone from jail tell him how to fix it so a HAL-like computer finds the opposite of best detective in the world . That opposite would be Clifton Sleigh ( Ted Wass ) from New York City . Meanwhile , a Countess Chandra ( Joanna Lumley in her second consecutive Panther role ) has the diamond and , it seems , an affair with a certain police detective . . . All right , I'll just say this right now : I didn't like the way Clouseau ended up in this movie being an accomplice to the Pink Panther theft and changing his face as well . I can't believe this is the way he would have behaved considering his sworn oath to upload the law ( or luw ) . Having said that , I was very amused when he ended up looking like Roger Moore and how perfect was he when he did the Clouseau voice ! Okay , moving on-I wasn't crazy about Sleigh when they first showed him disguising as a hooker in New York . Then he showed up at a Chicago airport during a windy storm with his umbrella almost swept up in it and I laughed a little . What got me on his side was that hilarious scene with an inflatable woman provided by Balls ( Harvey Korman again ) taking place at an outside French restaurant with once again another hilarious performance by the versatile Graham Stark as a bored waiter who can't keep his eyes off of the doll and Sleigh's attempts at blowing her up . There was also a hilarious fight scene between Clifton , some gangsters led by Robert Loggia , and a woman he just met named Juleta Shane-real name Julie Morgan ( Leslie Ash ) who later tries to bed Sleigh . Oh , and Korman was only fitfully amusing as Balls here though I did like the way he said " ca-ca " . And besides David Niven and Capucine , it was nice to see Robert Wagner also show up as Niven's nephew George Lytton who's also from The original Pink Panther . One more appearance I was pleasantly surprised by was that of Pat Corley-best known to me as Phil the bartender on " Murphy Brown " - as Sleigh's frustrated superior in New York . He sounded different here but I recognized him just the same . Herbert Lom as Dreyfus still provides some laughs but Burt Kwouk as Cato was mostly wasted here especially when he wrestles with the American Sleigh at the now-Clouseau Museum apartment . So I guess overall , I really enjoyed Curse of the Pink Panther despite the absence of Sellers and what Edwards did with his character . Oh , and I wasn't crazy about the animated beginning credit sequence from Marvel Productions this time around though as always , the Henry Mancini theme is way cool . One more note : This was Niven's final film appearance as well as the final Panther stint for Andre Maranne as Sgt . Francois Duval . Since this movie bombed ( or buumbed ) , you'd think Edwards was through with the Pink Panther series once and for all . Once again , you'd be wrong . P . S . Edwards ' stepdaughter Emma Walton is an angry hooker here and his son Geoffrey ( who also co-wrote the screenplay ) is the voice of the computer Aldous . Next up , Son of the Pink Panther . . . |
454,342 | 11,228,318 | 50,692 | 6 | The Mark of the Hawk was a rare early Poitier performance | After months of keeping this on my DVD disc having taped it from the Family Net channel , I finally watched this rare Sidney Poitier movie a few hours ago . Taking place in Africa , Mr . Poitier plays a man recently elected to the legislature that had been previously white dominated . His brother , a radical activist , thinks Obam ( Sidney's role ) has sold out since that legislature hasn't been very sympathetic to the black cause of freedom there . It takes some convincing from wife Eartha Kitt , preacher Juano Hernandez , and white outsider John McIntire to keep Obam from completely surrendering to the more violent ways of the Communist-inspired cause of his brother though some of the British whites have their own racist agenda to fulfill . McIntire himself tells how he dealt with the takeover of China and how his adopted Asian son was affected . Poitier , as usual , has great presence throughout and seeing him with the other influential black actor in film at the time , Hernandez , seems inspiring here . I'm not sure how effective this movie was though it certainly made me think about how religion often plays a role in various movements . And how nice was it to hear Ms . Kitt , in her first starring picture , sing one of her hits near the end . So on that note , The Mark of the Hawk is certainly worth seeing once if you're a Poitier fan or one interested in Africa during the late ' 50s . P . S . In citing anyone who came from my birth town of Chicago , the woman who played McIntire's wife , Helen Horton , came from there . |
454,671 | 11,228,318 | 150,523 | 6 | The Fatal Note was an interesting animated intro to " The Little King " | In this , the initial animated version of comic strip artist Otto Soglow's " The Little King " , there's an outsider who seems to want to cause nothing but destruction in the palace but the childlike monarch and his dog do nothing but mischief on him . Loved the dolly on the round set of stairs that I remember from a later Van Beuren " Little King " cartoon called Pals ( or Christmas Night which became the title for a later home movie issued version ) . Pretty amusing , if not hilarious short for King Features ' mostly mute character . Recommend for animation fans of ' 30s talkie cartoons . I saw this on YouTube as linked from Matinée at the Bijou . |
454,681 | 11,228,318 | 970,153 | 6 | Ms . Applegate is enough for me on the " Samantha Who ? " pilot | As the pilot of " Samantha Who ? " opens , the intro of " Escape ( The Pina Colada Song ) " plays as we see a young woman in bed in a coma . Her mother ( Jean Smart ) has been calling " Extreme Homemaker " hoping to use her daughter's condition to get a new house . That daughter , Samantha ( Christina Applegate ) , wakes up with no memory of her previous life . She then gets told by many people like her former girlfriend from junior high , Dina ( Melissa McCarthy ) , her current girlfriend , Andrea ( Jennifer Esposito ) , and her boyfriend , Todd ( Barry Watson ) , how not-so-nice she was . So now Samantha is trying to find ways to not be THAT person as she moves back in her parent's home . . . Having discovered Ms . Applegate , like I'm sure many of you reading this have , on " Married . . . With Children " , many of you may be or not pleasantly surprised at how sweet she is after her amnesia and how convincingly mean she can still be as her old self . Loved her comic dithering at the AA meeting after finding out she was once an alcoholic . Jean Smart is probably the best of the supporting players in the pilot but both McCarthy and Esposito show some promise here as well . Not a great first episode but the show's premise and the presence of Ms . Applegate is enough for me to give this series a long leash to see where they go from here . I shall post next week so until then . . . |
454,998 | 11,228,318 | 150,632 | 6 | Frankenstein's Cat is an interesting early look at Terrytoons ' Mighty Mouse | When Mighty Mouse was first developed at Terrytoons , he was a much different character than the one who later had Pearl Pureheart and Oil Can Harry as supporting characters . In fact in many of them , he doesn't even appear until the last three minutes ! In this one , a community of mice and birds are living and playing peacefully until the arrival of the title character : a mechanical cat who wants to eat so he picks a bird to take to his castle . All of the bird's friends follow the victim there but many are given electrical shocks when they confront the cat . A mouse who lives in a supermarket hears a distress signal on his radio and , after eating Limburger cheese , turns himself into the costumed superhero Mighty Mouse ( though he was known as Super Mouse at the time ) . As he flies to the castle , Mighty fights and defeats the mechanical cat as the head falls off and the bird escapes making possible another happy ending . . . Action packed with some humorous touches like the cat's reflection in the water being scared by what he sees or Mighty talking in a Brooklyn accent demanding of the cat where the bird is . If the picture I saw on YouTube had better clarity , I'd say the colors would probably look bright and exciting . Worth a look for fans of Mighty Mouse or of any Terrytoons . |
454,370 | 11,228,318 | 11,938 | 6 | The Automobile Ride has an obnoxious Koko but it still has some charm | Max draws Koko on the drawing board . He then receives a call and leaves . Koko leaves after but not before taking some money from Max's wallet that he left behind . Max arrives to his date then comes back to his office to get his wallet . After recovering it , he drives with his date to get twelve gallons of gas . Koko arrives just as the pump is going and mischievously takes the hose from the car as the hose falls to the ground unknowingly to anyone else . Just as the wasted twelve gallons are up , Koko puts it back in the car before Max retrieves it ! He gets his wallet and finds his money gone so he excuses himself . After he gets some money from his staff and leaves again , the staff finds smoke coming from Max's closed desk ! After Max brings his car back , he finds Koko in his desk smoking a cigar as Koko asks , " How was your date , Boss ? " Although amusing , I couldn't find the point of Koko taking the gas pump from the car other than to play a joke on Max that has no payoff . Seeing the clown climbing a building must have been amusing enough for the astonished audience at the time but is old hat today . And Koko is a bit obnoxious to display any real charm here . Still , amusing enough to recommend to anyone interested in all things Max Fleischer . |
455,185 | 11,228,318 | 20,899 | 6 | Third to last Felix short is amusing | Forty Winks is the third to last Felix short made by the Pat Sullivan Studio . It starts with Felix conducting four other cats in a sing-along on the top of an apartment building . Two notes from the cats literally scratches the bald head of a neighbor . He wakes up furious and takes a bowling ball and knocks the cats out . The cats ignore him as Felix plays a flute with the other cats dancing . The flute notes now glide to the man's snoring mouth . The now awake furious neighbor takes a spray of either and aims them at the cats who quickly fall asleep except Felix who goes down the elevator which lands at a fireplace ! Felix gets out of the fireplace and finds a couch as he prepares to fall asleep . He gets awakened by a baby nearby who cries uncontrollably . Felix throws him his bottle which he swallows after drinking from it . Felix then spills a wine glass which turns into a trumpet . That and his flute calms the baby down and brings alive some toy soldiers who then take a toy cannon and sink the boat in the picture frame behind the baby ! The baby wants to play with toy cannon which Felix reluctantly agrees to . The baby hits Felix with eight cannons which become skate wheels that Felix uses to escape the house from . He then climbs the pole in the back yard to a clothes hanger with a pant that Felix prepares to sleep in . He's once again sound asleep until he dreams of a log getting sawed . That saw cuts the clothesline and Felix falls with the pants covering him while running . When he finally gets out , Felix kicks the pants ! He then comes to a doghouse that he once again tries to sleep in but gets chased out by its puppy owner . The cat blows through the chimney throwing and locking the dog out ! The dog cries causing a flood that takes the doghouse away . Felix climbs to the roof as the puppy swims to his home but Felix then takes two exclamation points above his head and uses them as a propeller to his tail with the roof as his wings ! Having escaped once again , Felix gets knocked by a cloud and once again falls . This time he ends up floating up and down while he hears snoring . It's a hippo who's blowing Felix while he's sleeping ! Felix once again falls asleep but suddenly the hippo stops snoring causing the cat to land in the hippo's mouth ! Hippo wakes up , spits Felix out , and chases him . Felix then runs to a cliff , takes a gun , and with way too many bullets , forms a bridge that the cat crosses to the other side . As he gets there , he tickles the hippo with the bullet bridge so hard , the laughing hippo causes his cliff to fall landing on a seesaw that knocks the other occupant , a kangaroo ( I think ! ) up to where Felix is . As Felix defeats the kangaroo , he pulls his nose and plays it like a violin ! He then throws him up and down until he resembles a cradle which Felix then proceeds to fall asleep in . Peace and quiet at last ! This short , while amusing , seems old hat both to the animators and the audiences who have watched Felix for eleven years now . More popular characters like Mickey Mouse and Betty Boop were entertaining audiences by this point . But Felix deserves a place in animation history as being the first character to really amuse people of all persuasions . As long as there are animation buffs who care about their history , Felix will live on in memory . |
453,847 | 11,228,318 | 142,072 | 6 | Alaska is an interesting early Walter Lantz Oswald cartoon with some material from Tex Avery | I discovered this rare Walter Lantz Oswald cartoon on a blog that was dedicated to the 100th birthday of Tex Avery whose milestone was sometime in late February . It concerns the lucky rabbit who was originally created by Walt Disney ( hence his resemblance to Mickey Mouse since he came before him ) looking for gold but soon becomes a gag fest with a singing waiter who ends his verses with someone " who cannot leave his mother " , a piano player who keeps chugging beer , and Oswald and his peg-leg buddy ( probably Peg-Leg Pete who eventually became Mickey's nemesis ) saying in unison " Pop Goes the Weasel " with the rabbit getting the better of this buddy after he keeps hitting him . Alaska was one of the early cartoons Avery had thought up gags for and they're pretty funny as presented here . Worth a look for any animation fans of Fred " Tex " Avery . |
454,346 | 11,228,318 | 11,909 | 6 | Cecil B . DeMille's The Affairs of Anatol is one of his interesting " affairs of the heart " silents | Checked this rare Cecil B . DeMille silent at my local library intrigued by the premise of seeing a Gloria Swanson silent movie in its entirety for the first time . Turns out she's sort of a supporting character since Anatol is actually a man played by Wallace Reid . He's Anatol , a . k . a . Tony , Spencer whose marriage to Vivian ( Swanson ) is constantly tested by his involvement in three other women : Emile Dixon ( Wanda Hawley ) , Annie Elliott ( Agnes Ayres ) , and Satan Synne ( Bebe Daniels ) . Emile is an old school friend of Tony's who's now in the company of middle aged rich man Gordon Bronson ( Theodore Roberts ) . Annie is the wife of country pastor Abner ( Monte Blue ) whose church money she unknowingly stole to buy a dress . Ms . Synne is a nightclub entertainer whose World War I veteran husband is enduring a long hospital stay . About Emile : Tony's just wasting his time trying to get her away from pearls which she loves and is too possessive with her on that front especially since he won't do the same about his wife's picture . And his breaking the furniture that HE bought ! Tsk , tsk . That segment's too long anyway , though there's some amusement with Raymond Hatton as a violin teacher . About Annie : I can't believe his kissing her after saving her from a drowning which conveniently happens as his wife shows up with a doctor . And it's obviously a pre-Code movie when Annie gets to keep the stolen money with her husband none the wiser ! Short enough in my book . About Satan : This was the most touching segment in the movie with Tony intending to really cheat on his wife ( not completely realizing vice versa on Vivian's part ) and then finding out the truth about Ms . Synne's husband's illness as he then decides to let her keep the $3000 as charity . Also , Polly Moran is briefly amusing as an orchestra leader . Also liked Elliot Dexter as Max Runyon , friend of the Spencers and Theodore Kosloff as Nazzer Singh , a hypnotist who temporarily casts Vivian under a spell . Not a great movie but it certainly has its merits and DeMille provides some great close-ups in the final segment with some wonderful color tints that took my breath away a little . How " happy " the ending is depends on one's view of how trusting the couple really is but it was satisfactory to my tastes . Worth at least a look for anyone interested in old movies . P . S . Ms . Swanson was born in the same town I was : Chicago , Ill . And the writer of the original story , Arthur Schnitzler , would also pen " Traumnovelle " which would be the source of Stanley Kubrick's final work , Eyes Wide Shut . |
454,532 | 11,228,318 | 86,973 | 6 | Blame It on Rio is a slightly , enjoyably sexy movie | Having originally recorded this movie , Blame It on Rio , a little more than 20 years ago on HBO , I finally got around to seeing it a few hours ago . I have to admit that the reason was to see some nudity of young women like those of Demi Moore and Michelle Johnson . Johnson certainly filled up nicely considering she was about 17 at the time while Moore seemed a little awkward with her hair covering her breasts up . Loved the way Ms . Johnson keeps teasing Michael Caine at the dinner table after they made love on the beach ! Also loved Caine's covering his naked self with sand when a couple who are acquaintances with him meet him there . Ms . Johnson does reveal her amateurish acting skills when she attempts to confess her affair with a middle-age man ( without IDing him ) to Caine's best friend and her father , Joseph Bologna , but maybe she's supposed to sound like that . Anyway , this was a leisurely sex-romantic-travelogue comedy with some witty lines and visual touches provided by co-writer Larry Gelbart and director Stanley Donen . Also making the most of her part is Valerie Harper as Caine's wife who's considering a divorce . All in all , not hilarious except in parts but pretty enjoyable especially when focused on Caine and Ms . Johnson . I'm getting aroused just thinking about them . . . |
454,556 | 11,228,318 | 25,301 | 6 | Imitation of Life ( 1934 ) brings worthy performances of Colbert , Beavers , and Washington | First , I have a question : What's with IMDb listing Dorothy Black playing Peola at age 35 ? This version I saw ends with her at 19 crying at her mother's funeral and still played by Fredi Washington . Was there an extra scene missing ? Anyway with that out of the way , I found this movie interesting with the relationship between Claudette Colbert and Louise Beavers being nearly equal as being more friends as opposed to boss / employee even though Delilah kept calling Bea , Miss Bea , to the end of her days . Those scenes were so interesting and that of Beavers and Washington more so especially their last confrontation when Delilah still wants to be called Mammy and not some white woman's parent title ( no offense to Bea , of course ) , that Bea's scenes with her potential husband ( Warren William ) and grown daughter ( Rochelle Hudson ) are sappy and a little melodramatic by comparison . I'd also like to praise the child , Sebie Handricks , that played Peola at age 4 . She was really good . Ned Sparks as Bea's business partner is amusing with his sour disposition though a little of him goes a long way . I do wonder how many of the people at Delilah's funeral were her friends and how many were simply Bea's that simply came at her request because of Delilah's request of wanting a big one . I also wonder about the trailer that played on the VHS tape before the movie that emphasized Beavers and Washington in still frames with critical notices of them that probably played in segregated black theatres and how the intended audience reacted when their parts were small compared to the white actors . Despite those mixed reactions , I still recommend Imitation of Life . |
454,486 | 11,228,318 | 1,155,056 | 6 | I Love You , Man was a reasonably amusing comedy for me | Let me admit up front right now that during some of the middle section of this movie , I partly fell asleep . So it's possible I felt a little underwhelmed watching I Love You , Man . That said , while I felt some of the scenes might have been underplayed and the pace wasn't as up as I'd like it to be , there were plenty of funny lines and scenes that I got reasonably entertained during most of what I managed to see . Stars Paul Rudd and Jason Segel are perfect together as a groom and his potential best man so they alone make the movie worth seeing . It's just that not enough seemed to be done to make the rest of the cast like Andy Samberg , Jane Curtin , J . K . Simmons , Jaime Pressly , and Jon Favreau really stand out though each have their moments . And leading lady Rashida Jones does well with what she has . So on that cautious note , I Love You , Man is at least worth a look . |
455,084 | 11,228,318 | 64,002 | 6 | Arthur Penn's Alice's Restaurant is a product of its time | Alice's Restaurant is a time capsule of the attitudes of young people during the late ' 60s as experienced by folk singer Arlo Guthrie and his friends like the married couple Ray and Alice Brock , played here by James Broderick ( Mathew Broderick's father ) and Pat Quinn . Very much of its time , Arthur Penn's film tries to mix the humorous with the dramatic with uneven results . Some of the most touching scenes are those of Arlo with his father , folk singer Woody Guthrie ( played here by Joseph Boley ) and those of Ray and Alice after the drug death of a friend . There's also a nice musical duet with Woody's friend Pete Seeger and Arlo in Woody's hospital room . The most funny scene was the one concerning Arlo's attempts to get more urine for the draft board . Look for Shelley Plimpton , who had married Keith Carradine and gave him a daughter , actress Martha Plimpton , as Reenie who is a 15-year old girl who tries to seduce Arlo and M . Emmett Walsh as a Group W sergeant . Though nominated for Best Picture of 1969 , Alice's Restaurant seems dated now . Ray and Alice's remarriage at the end and the followup makes this one of the most bittersweet movies I've ever seen . . . |
454,984 | 11,228,318 | 791,845 | 6 | Dorothy Dandridge shines in her only number on " The Colgate Comedy Hour " | In continuing to mention African-Americans on film and television in chronological order for Black History Month , we're now at 1951 with singer Dorothy Dandridge making , according to co-host Jerry Lewis , her first television appearance on " The Colgate Comedy Hour " . She sings " Blow Out the Candle " . What a lovely voice ! This was her only appearance on that night's episode as well as that of tap dancers Bob and Eddie Mayo who appear in native costume for their jungle number . The other co-host , Dean Martin , sings " Solitaire " . Otherwise , it's mainly Dean and Jerry doing sketches on a museum dinosaur fossil , a start-in-show-biz segment with Jerry pretending to be a dummy with hilarious results , an escape-attempt-from-jail skit , and Jer lip-syncing to a record with mixed results before the finale with Martin and Lewis clowning with the pianist , also with mixed results , as they end with a wonderful tap dancing number . This being live television from November 4 , 1951 , there's some funny ad-libs that balances some of the not-so-funny stuff written by Norman Lear and Ed Simmons and Jerry's more frantic movements . Martin himself brings a somewhat relaxed vibe which bode well for his own variety show in the ' 60s after he split from Lewis . I watched this on a DVD collection of their ' 50s shows called " Colgate Comedy Classics " . If you're interested in Martin and Lewis ' early television work , that is as good a place to start . P . S . Vintage commercials from the Colgate-Palmolive-Peet Co . from the original NBC airing are included here . |
454,498 | 11,228,318 | 816,007 | 6 | Joan Davis is amusing in I Married Joan | Joan is going over her account with her husband who finds out she spent $600 on a pullover . He asks how she could spend so much on a sweater . She didn't . " I was stopped by a cop who told me to pull over ! " Husband is stopping Joan's account . After husband leaves for work , Joan and her aunt find a calender with a marking for a birthday so Joan plans to surprise her husband with a party . She goes to the court where her husband is judging to try to get some money from him . No dice . She then goes to a cheap dress shop where she sells a dress , after buying it , to another customer at half price before her husband calls to cut Joan's account there ! At home , Joan and aunt decorate house thinking husband won't be home until 9 : 30 because Joan called a friend of his for racquetball . Husband comes home early . Joan and aunt take decorations down . She convinces husband to go to a hockey game thinking he doesn't really like hockey , he'll want to go home when she tells him to . Turns out he's enjoying the game so they stay past 9 : 30 . At home , Joan finds everyone has left so she explains about the calender which husband says was a plan for her surprise birthday party as guests file in with her cake ! This is a silly sitcom premise make palatable by Joan Davis ' performance of milking whatever humor she can out of the contrivances whether arguing with her husband about money while in court with his client doing the same thing , talking a customer into taking her dress at half price , or convincing her husband to take her out by stomping and flinging her arms ! Jim Backus provides good support as her husband . This is the first episode I've seen on Family Net so I hope to see better ones down the road . It wasn't bad as a start , however . |
454,275 | 11,228,318 | 29,565 | 6 | Silver Blaze is a pretty entertaining Wontner-Holmes movie | This is the second Arthur Wontner-Sherlock Holmes movie I saw on a two-sided dollar DVD ( The first was The Sign of Four ) . Silver Blaze has Holmes and Watson ( Ian Fleming , no not THAT one ! ) visiting the Baskerville house to spend a little holiday there . The title character is a horse that a bookie doesn't want to win since he'll lose his shirt if that horse finishes first . Holmes ' nemesis Prof . Moriarty ( Lyn Harding ) , for a certain amount , will make sure that won't happen . A bit talky for my tastes until the end when Watson gets . . . Well , I'll just leave it to anyone who reads this to seek this movie out . The print I saw was a little better looking than The Sign of Four though it still could have used some improvements . Well worth seeing for any Holmes fans or even those who love ' 30s British pictures . |
454,700 | 11,228,318 | 22,913 | 6 | Tod Browning's Freaks is a fascinatingly unique early talkie | Freaks is one of the most fascinating movies made during the early talkie era . Director Tod Browning got the green light from MGM after his success with Dracula from Universal the year before . One of the little men is infatuated with the tall female trapeze artist making his fellow little woman a little jealous . The tall trapeze woman takes a shine on him after discovering he stands to inherit some money . She hopes to marry and then eventually poison him . When the other little people find out , they plot revenge . While the fate of the tall woman lends this film some horror elements , this seems mainly to be a melodrama about a gold digger trying to get away with murder only with a little person as the victim . Fascinating to watch so many " freaks " getting along and having fun with some regular-looking people in a spirit of community . While not a masterpiece , Freaks is certainly worth a look for its non-judgmental attitude toward people who look different from " conventional " folks . |
453,875 | 11,228,318 | 224,412 | 6 | Hiroshima Maiden is subtle family drama about a serious subject | In 1955 , an American family takes in a female teenage survivor of Hiroshima . Of the two male children , the adolescent older one is hesitant at first to greet her especially having previously played war games with his treehouse friends with the Japanese , whom they referred to as Japs , as the enemy . Johnny , the older son , tries to satisfy the curiously of himself and his friends by switching light off to see if Miyeko , the Hiroshima girl , glows in the dark , and attempts to take a picture of her to show them . Miyeko shows Johnny her pre-Hiroshima pic and her paper birds that she wants to make thousands of to remind people of the children of Hiroshima . Miyeko is in America for surgery of her half-burned face she suffered during bombing . Because this is a family drama with only a running time of 58 minutes , the prejudices that result with Miyeko's arrival is subtle but effective . Some goes for the performances though Richard Masur ( Johnny's dad Jim Bennett ) and Dennis Haskins ( bigoted neighbor Hal Latimer ) have an almost intense scene near the end . A previous reviewer mentioned what some of the players have done since this film , so I'll say that Stephen Dorff ( Johnny ) has recently been in Oliver Stone's World Trade Center and Haskins shortly after this became better known as Principal Belding in " Good Morning , Miss Bliss " and " Saved by the Bell " . And Tamyln Tomita ( Miyeko ) was in The Day after Tomorrow . I bought a DVD of Hiroshima Maiden at a church fair for $1 last Sunday because the subject matter interested me . Recommended for anyone interested in World War II history and its aftermath . |
454,968 | 11,228,318 | 71,679 | 6 | It's the Easter Beagle , Charlie Brown was a pretty amusing Peanuts special | While not as entertaining as many of the other Peanuts holiday specials ( Thanksgiving , Halloween , Christmas ) , there's still some amusing scenes that makes It's the Easter Beagle , Charlie Brown worth recommending . Like seeing Peppermint Patty get frustrated every time her friend Marcie cracks open the eggs ( to fry , waffle , or boil ) as Patty prepares to paint them . Or Snoopy botching some attempts at getting his bird friend Woodstock a bird house . Only a Peanuts cartoon would have a scene in a Discount Mart with a sign saying " Only 246 days till Christmas " with potential presents on sale ! Though while Linus ' belief in the Easter Beagle , unlike that of the Great Pumkin , comes true , isn't it a bit strange no one acknowledges that it's Snoopy doing the rounds ? And why is Schroeder's scene so brief here ? Otherwise , this was a pretty entertaining animated special with fine work , as always , by musician Vince Guaraldi on the score . |
454,909 | 11,228,318 | 445,934 | 6 | Blades of Glory is an amusing , at best , comedy | My friend was very excited to see this movie and since I was a fan of SNL and certainly of former cast member Will Ferrell , I was willing to come along on Blades of Glory's second day of opening . Too silly in the beginning , it picked up after Ferrell and Jon Heder started teaming up with Craig T . Nelson coaching . A subplot involving a rival brother-and-sister team played by real-life married couple Will Arnett and Amy Poehler and little sis Kate played by " The Office " star Jenna Fischer contributes to the most hilarious scene in the movie : A call to Kate from Heder's character in which each is coached to say certain double entendre lines that don't match their personalities . Amusing cameos by various skaters Nancy Kerrigan , Peggy Fleming , Dorothy Hamill , and Sasha Cohen partly makes the movie a little more tolerable than it really is though the funniest scenes come from Ferrell even though he seems to be trying a little harder than usual . Scott Hamilton and Jim Lamply also do well with deadpan lines as the announcers and when I read the credits , two of the stunt performers were Canadian Silver / Gold skaters David Pelletier and Jamie Sale . There's also an amusing scene between Ferrell and Fischer that plays sweet and a little sexual that almost-but not quite-crosses the line . I think I've said enough so I'll just say if you're willing to go with all the silliness , go ahead and watch . Just don't expect Mel Brooks or Zucker-Abrahams-Zucker hilarity . |
454,150 | 11,228,318 | 53,344 | 6 | Terror Is a Man was a fascinating Drive-In ' 50s fare from the Philippines | Just discovered this Philippine ( My parents ' native country ) - made horror movie here on IMDb as linked from Hulu . Despite the bland romantic trappings between the triangle of Francis Lederer , Richard Derr , and the buxom blonde from Denmark named Greta Thyssen , this was a pretty effective chiller during the last 30 minutes as effectively visualized by Gerardo de Leon with I'm sure help from producer Eddie Romero . There's also some nice work from the natives like Oscar Keesee as the villain , his son Peyton as the innocent boy , and stunning Lilia Duran as the other hired help . And then there's the creature played by Flory Carlos who spends most of the movie wrapped in bandages . His mummy-like performance gets effective treatment due to the music by Ariston Avelino . May be most effective to maybe to those 12 and under who haven't seen anything gory yet . Certainly the " buzzer " that warns of a 15-second " surgery " scene was nothing that shocked my senses ! So on that note , Terror Is a Man is worth a look for fans of old-fashioned Drive-In fare . |
454,668 | 11,228,318 | 1,292,569 | 6 | A Muppet Christmas : Letters to Santa was an entertainingly adequate special for this holiday season | With the month of December almost over , I finally decided to watch this Muppet Christmas special that I put off for the last two weeks . In summation , A Muppet Christmas : Letters to Santa is no great shakes compared to the classic " Muppet Show " that I enjoyed as a kid of the ' 70s but these creations of the late Jim Henson can still entertain like nobody's business and it was very nice to see the whole gang from that show together again . The songs by Muppet veteran Paul Williams were nicely done though only the Fozzie / Gonzo duet about wishing to be Santa seems like a future classic . The celebrity cameos are hit-or-miss but do provide some amusements especially that of Williams and Nathan Lane . I recognized the kid from that Disney movie that starred Dwayne " The Rock " Johnson . It's too bad that Jane Krakowski and Jesse Martin weren't utilized more for their musical talents . Still , if you love the Muppets , you'll be glad to see them in A Muppet Christmas : Letters to Santa . |
455,140 | 11,228,318 | 64,135 | 6 | Carter's Army ( or The Black Brigade ) is an interesting account of a World War II event | In commenting on African-Americans in film and television in chronological order for Black History Month , we're now at 1970 with the TV movie Carter's Army ( a . k . a . The Black Brigade which is the title on my double-sided $1 DVD which has Bill Cosby's To All My Friends on Shore on the other side ) . A racist white army captain played by Stephen Boyd is assigned to recruit several black men to guard a bridge that the Germans want to take over . Of course , he changes through the course of the movie . Robert Hooks is the Leutenant who has among his men : Moses Gunn , Glynn Turman , Billy Dee Williams , Rosie Grier , and Richard Pryor . Susan Oliver is the German lady who brings out the worst in Boyd after he sees Hooks plant her a kiss in thanking her for advice and compliments . The other men have some good scenes and lines before their fates are revealed . I was amused at some of the comedy between Grier and Pryor with Pryor making us wonder after a while what kind of man he really is . Co-written and produced by Aaron Spelling , he does what he can in presenting a compelling dramatization of a World War II event in less than 90 minutes with commercial breaks . Worth a look for both as a depiction of a historical event and in seeing Pryor and Williams before their roles in feature films like Lady Sings the Blues , Hit , and The Bingo Long Travelling All-Stars & Motor Kings . |
454,694 | 11,228,318 | 135,672 | 6 | Tchin-Chao : The Chinese Conjuror is interesting for Melies enthusiasts | Georges Melies is dressed as a Chinaman in front of a Chinese background . Under his umbrella is some lamps he hangs up as they appear . He then puts the umbrella over a small table on his right side and a dog appears . He turns the dog into a woman in a quick cut method . He uses his umbrella again and a male assistant appears . All are wearing Chinese makeup . Melies takes two big box covers over both tables and makes the woman go from one side to another . The covers of both are split open when all three at various times go through them . By this time , the woman fades from one table to the other . Then Georges covers the woman in a blanket and when he opens it up some chickens come out ! The other man and woman at this point come from backstage as they all bow out . I saw this ( which was mistakenly identified as Imperceptible Transmutations on the box but has the correct French title on screen ) and other Melies shorts in an Arte Video DVD collection called Melies the Magician in a segment called Melies Magic Show that also includes his most famous film : A Trip to the Moon . If you're interested in early silent movie special effects , then this short and other Melies films are most highly recommended . |
454,608 | 11,228,318 | 943,798 | 6 | I found this music video on atom . com | Just saw this music video at atom . com . It's basically a silly pop-rock song about three boys in white jeans that drive the girls wild making them use brushes and soap to make their jeans the cleanest ever ! And they're in their bikinis too ! Done with some humor especially when a homeless guy appears as the three boys pass him a condom and the girls wash his ratty clothes on him too ! That's all the synopsis I can write about so to fill the 10-line requirement here at IMDb . com , I'll just say I found this short on atom . com under the category " Sexy short comedy " or something similar like that . I previously commented on another short there called The Babysitter . Like I said , Tight White Jeans is a pretty amusing episode of " That's My Daughter " on atom . com . |
455,225 | 11,228,318 | 64,332 | 6 | Fistic Mystic provides some amusement for the last Looney Tunes cartoon on a regular production schedule | Just watched on YouTube this cartoon that , according to IMDb , is the last Warner Bros . Looney Tune one from the series that began with the very first WB animated short , Sinkin ' in the Bathtub , in 1930 . This is a Merlin the Magic Mouse one with Larry Storch providing the voices of him and his sidekick , Second Banana . They're in a western town whose population is reduced by 2 ( as seen on the town sign when the numbers change ) after the bad guy shoots them ( off screen , of course ) . After a couple of scenes where Merlin " defeats " this bad guy , he has Second Banana challenge him to a boxing match . To ensure victory , Merlin provides some magic gloves . . . Director Bob McKimson provides some pretty good timed punches to the bad guy that gave me some chuckles when I watched this . So while the animation is not the greatest , there still are some good movements and poses for whatever limited means the animators had at their disposal . So on that note , Fistic Mystic is worth a look . P . S . The Bill Lava version of " The Merry-Go-Round Broke Down " that appeared in most of these ' 60s Warner cartoons is a bit different here and , also according to IMDb , was only used in this particular cartoon . |
454,043 | 11,228,318 | 44,735 | 6 | I Dream of Jeanie is pretty enjoyable old time musical | Just found out on this site that the man who portrays Stephen Foster here was the voice of the Prince in Disney's Sleeping Beauty and the singing voice of Freddie in Warner Bros . ' My Fair Lady . I recognized two names in the cast credits : Louise Beavers , who I knew from Imitation of Life , portrays another Mammy role , the kind that she became known for and Carl " Alfalfa " Switzer ( credited as Carl Dean Switzer ) who portrays a different Freddie here ( his character works at the same accounting office Foster works ) . Everyone else drew a blank though I also found out Rex Allan , who guests here in blackface , was also a narrator in films like the original movie versions of The Incredible Journey and Charlotte's Web . Mostly enjoyable musical despite the blackface number near the end that I just referred to . For that reason , more sensitive souls should proceed with caution . Made before the civil rights era came into full bloom . |
454,026 | 11,228,318 | 762,107 | 6 | I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry is partly offensive , partly silly , and pretty funny | I have a gay friend who doesn't fit the stereotype in that he loves the WWE and usually watches crude comedies like this latest Adam Sandler comedy . Many critics have called this movie offensive because of many homophobic jokes that abound as well as the Asian stereotype that Sandler's friend Rob Schneider plays as a Canadian wedding preacher . Well , since I'm Asian-American and I know Schneider is half so , I admit I wasn't very amused by his portrayal but I also decided maybe Rob thought so and decided , " What the hell ! " and went for it . But many of the homophobic jokes do work and is partly redeemed by some gay humor that seemed more silly than offensive and some were even hilarious . Besides Schneider , other former SNLers to appear include David Spade , Rachel Dratch , and original cast member Dan Aykroyd . All have some moments . Also appearing are Steve Buscemi , Ving Rhames in a performance you won't believe ( or maybe you will depending what you think he's capable of ) , and a couple of celebrities that recently came out , Lance Bass and Richard Chamberlain . And Keven James isn't bad either ! Overall , based on bad reviews , I dreaded this movie but I laughed enough and enjoyed enough to at least recommend this to anyone who can laugh at almost anything . P . S . My gay friend absolutely loved this ! |
454,875 | 11,228,318 | 143,000 | 7 | James Finlayson is good in Stan Laurel-directed Yes , Yes , Nanette | I found Yes , Yes , Nanette on a Platinum DVD collection of Laurel and Hardy films . James Finlayson plays a man who meets his wife's family for the first time . There's plenty of gags involving Fin's toupee coming off that's hilarious each time . Oliver Hardy plays a former suitor of the wife who torments Fin . The exchanges between them are a good indication of what to expect when they eventually team with Stan Laurel in several Hal Roach films . I also liked Fin's exchange with the family teenage girl . Yes , Yes , Nanette is indeed produced by Hal Roach with co-direction by Stan Laurel . Well worth seeing for fans of Hal Roach , Laurel and Hardy , and James Finlayson ! |
454,114 | 11,228,318 | 151,950 | 7 | Pots and Pans is another entertaining Van Beuren Tom and Jerry cartoon | Pots and Pans is another Van Beuren cartoon that stars a couple of humans named Tom and Jerry , years before a certain cat-and-mouse team from MGM inherited those titles after the human ones disappeared . They run a train diner with their name on it . Many of the food have faces and move . They also sing with various customers along with the leading duo . Typical ' 30s-style animation meant to mainly fill time before the big feature is at least a little more entertaining than any Saturday morning cartoon that has limited movement because of low budgets . Anyone interested in all eras of animation or at least all things Van Beuren should definitely check out Pots and Pans . I saw this on YouTube . |
453,751 | 11,228,318 | 860,289 | 7 | Vanished : Resurrection marks Gale Harold's final episode | Last week , there were blood stains on the wall of the cabin where we found Sara Collins held prisoner inside . As the investigation continues , enough evidence is discovered to confirm that Senator Jeffrey Collins ' wife is dead . Only the senator's family knows this information . After the breakup with the cameraman , reporter Judy Nash crashes in the apartment of an old flame and spends the night there . Kelton attends his daughter's communion with his ex-wife where he hears someone contact him confidential info that causes him to rush out of church . This was after he went on national television with the ID of the license plate of Sara's abductors . This gets him in trouble with his superior . When Kelton arrives in D . C . , he meets with the man who was Judy's flame and gets told he might be removed from the case . With his wife now dead , Senator Collins goes to the confirmation hearings with the intent to vote no . At this point , Lin Mei finds that the blood in the cabin was made to look like a violent struggle took place between Sara and her kidnappers . In other words , Sara is still alive ! After Kelton hears this , he rushes to the court before Collins can cast his vote . Through his FBI contact , he manages to fake a virus alert before the final vote from the senator is recorded . With the senator out of the building with everyone else , Kelton reports to him about his wife's survival and tries to tell him something else just as he gets shot and lays dead , blood now surrounding him . . . So we begin with one death that turns out to be faked and end with another death that is all but confirmed visually . This marks the last episode for the show's star Gale Harold after the first 7 . Eddie Cibrian who appeared as Nash's old flame will take over after three weeks . Campared with the others , this one episode doesn't have too many subplots to confuse the viewer with the connections to the Missing Sara case . Certainly the little girl's communion was a nice break to the how - can - we - keep - the - viewers - on - edge - angles of previous episodes . Having liked Cibrian on the much-missed Invasion last season , here's hoping he brings Vanished a much needed shot in the arm ! |
454,974 | 11,228,318 | 306,050 | 7 | Science Friction is a fascinating collage short from Stan van der Beek | This short is a collage of photo clippings from various newspapers . Most of them is of then-President Eisenhower . There are also landmarks of not only the Statue of Liberty but also of the Leaning Tower of Pisa and the Eiffel Tower . There's also some recorded music and many sound recordings from the real things as opposed to effects . I discovered Science Friction from YouTube as linked from Cartoon Brew by Amid . It had this and other Stan van der Beek shorts that are not listed in IMDb . Amid wrote that Terry Gilliam may have been influenced by these when he became the animator on " Monty Python's Flying Circus " and you can see how true that could be when watching this short . Perhaps a little long but I was fascinated by almost the whole 9-minute thing . Certainly worth a look for anyone wanting to see something a little unusual . |
454,518 | 11,228,318 | 1,054,849 | 7 | The Line was only a fairly good episode of " Heroes " | Peter and Kate vow to go to Montreal , Canada , with Kate especially wanting to " kill the bitch " who killed her brother , Ricky . Sylar , Maya , and Alejandro are crossing the U . S . border . The border patrol hold them up . Sylar tells Maya to go ahead and kill them . She does . Her twin brother tries to kill Sylar but Maya stops him and tells him he's going to take them to Mohinder . Alejandro agrees to let Sylar to stay but he tells Maya if she kills again he won't hold her hand . Noah and the Haitian are in Odessa , Ukraine , to meet with Noah's mentor in the Company to get info about where the rest of Issac's paintings are . Every time this mentor refuses , the Haitian removes a precious memory of his . He finally relents after Noah threatens to remove one of his late daughter . Noah then trashes the place and shoots him . Claire had called during this time to ask to borrow the car . Noah gives his permission and tells her to keep the door closed this time . Claire is having trouble getting on the cheerleading squad because the captain , Debbie , doesn't like her . So later at night while Debbie is drinking , Claire and West play a kidnapping scheme that frightens Debbie and brings the cops who discover her bottle which forces her resignation . Claire is now in ! After treating Monica , Mohinder is told by boss Bob to inject her with something that would take her new found powers away . Since Monica seems to enjoy what she had just discovered on herself , Mohinder eventually refuses and threatens to quit taking Molly with him . Since Bob really likes Mohinder and wants him to stay , he apologizes and gives Monica all the aid she needs when he takes her home . Mohinder is given a new partner in Niki . The way Niki speaks , she sounds like Jessica . Don't know about this one . . . As Ando and a scientist read about Hiro's adventures in 17th century Japan , we find out that after rescuing Tekzeo's girlfriend's father , Hiro's than teleports that girlfriend away from the battle scene to a forest space where despite knowing about the space / time continuum , Hiro and the girlfriend kiss after she realizes that Hiro did all the things she thought was Tekzeo when she was rescued . Tekzeo sees the kiss and betrays Hiro to the enemies as the girlfriend watches . Ando only knows up to when Hiro kissed the girl and wonder where he can be . Peter and Kate are now in Montreal at the door depicted in the painting Peter did last week . As they briefly hug , Peter is now teleported in New York which is barren . A flyer is then found on the ground with an evacuation notice and the date , June 14 , 2008 , the following year . . . Man , what is going on here ? I've tolerated some of the slowness of some of these episodes because I thought they might lead up to something big but this one seemed even more slow that usual . At least Noah is back in his tough-guy mode ! That was such a shock when he had to shoot his mentor ! I really hope Hiro goes back to present time real soon since his use in the 17th century has mostly been fulfilled . Oh , well , it does bring back David Anders back in Sark ( from " Alias " ) mode so that should provide a little more interest here . Now that the Wonder Twins , Maya and Alejandro , are in the U . S . their story should pick up considerably . Certainly with Sylar still around . Peter and Kate , well , maybe theirs will also pick up next week . Can't wait to get back to Matt and his father . So , in summation , this was pretty fair but please , let's up the excitement come next Monday ! |
454,234 | 11,228,318 | 78,163 | 7 | Revenge of the Pink Panther is almost as funny as the previous two installments | With the consecutive previous two years of becoming popular again because of The Pink Panther movies , director Blake Edwards and star Peter Sellers waited several months before attempting one more . Revenge of the Pink Panther isn't as consistently funny as the previous two installments in the series but it still provides enough moments that make it as much worth seeing . For one thing , it's great to see Burt Kwouk finally have more dialogue and more of a part as Clouseau's faithful manservant Cato especially when he attempts a disguise at the end . And seeing former Chief Inspector Dreyfus attempting to stifle laughter when giving a speech at Clouseau's " funeral " not to mention his many fainting spells on seeing his former employee identify himself are some of the most hilarious things in the movie . My favorite line , however , comes from the versatile Graham Stark who , as Professor Auguste Balls , says after seeing that Chief Inspector Jacques Clouseau is still alive says , " When duty calls , you've got Balls ! " As the villains , Robert Webber and Robert Logia are adequate enough in their parts and as Webber's soon-to-be-ex-mistress who teams with Clouseau when her life is threatened , Dyan Cannon is more lively than previous Pink Panther ladies were concerning pacing of dialogue though she still doesn't have too much to do compared to her Oscar-nominated performance in Heaven Can Wait the same year . Incidentally , when she and Clouseau are walking at night talking about Jacques ' life and career , I wonder if the Chief Inspector ever mentioned his ex-wife whose name happened to be the same as the one he's talking to : Simone . Oh , and the opening animated title sequence , backed by a much more jazzy Henry Mancini Pink Panther theme , is once again by DePatie-Freleng with Art Leonardi and John Dunn providing the hilarious designs . That ending I just mentioned would have been perfect for the series as a whole , but despite Sellers ' death two years later , one more entry starring him would be released . Next up , Trail of the Pink Panther . . . |
455,100 | 11,228,318 | 403,064 | 7 | Getting There has an abstract-style imagination | A man is looking at a picture of a tropical island . He imagines himself going to the box office and buying a ticket for a bus , a train , and a plane as means to get there . None of them suit him , especially the plane . Instead , he strips to his full-bodied swimwear , leaves his regular clothes at the box office , and enters the picture he's been looking at as he relaxes tubing near the picture island ! The end . This is a very brief short entry from the Volume 5 collection of The International Tournee of Animation . Canadian Paul Dreissen does an interesting abstract version of imagination in depicting a man's ideal vacation . Worth a look for animation fans . |
455,164 | 11,228,318 | 50,659 | 7 | Loving You uncovers a lot of Elvis Presley's charm in only his second movie | In honor of The King of Rock ' n ' Roll's untimely death nearly 30 years ago , I've decided to check out some of his movies like this second one he made called Loving You . In this one , he plays Deke Rivers who was just making some deliveries when a woman ( Lizabeth Scott ) inquires if there's a singer around . Guess who gets picked ! Along the way , Deke meets her bandleader ex-husband ( Wendell Corey ) and the female vocalist ( Dolores Hart ) . The movie follows the road tours that lead to some big breaks despite some troubles with some teenage girls and their jealous boyfriends looking for a fight . Elvis shows great charisma throughout and has smoldering chemistry with Ms . Scott and a charmingly sincere one with Ms . Hart . It threatens to get corny at the end with a happy ending for all but it plays very believably for the more innocent time that it was filmed in . Certainly Loving You is more preferable to some of the more sillier movies he made in the 60s . Great songs like the title one and " Teddy Bear " abound . Look for Presley's parents , Gladys and Vernon , in the finale . |
454,290 | 11,228,318 | 21,964 | 7 | Hittin ' the Trail for Hallelujah Land was pretty entertaining for a " Censored 11 " cartoon | Just saw this , one of Warner Bros . infamous " Censored 11 " that will probably never be on regular television again and will probably be only available on public domain tapes or DVDs from bargain basement companies or the internet , on Thad's Animation Blog . It begins with a sequence inspired by Steamboat Willie with whistles and dancing , continues with another one with an " Uncle Tom " character at a graveyard with skeletons dancing possibly inspired by Skeleton Dance , and ends back at that same steamboat with the " Tom " character getting his butt nicked by a giant saw ! Yikes ! That last scene , along with a couple of characters laughing at it , disturbed me more than any " stereotyping " in here that might be offensive to some viewers today . Other than that , this was a pretty entertaining musical cartoon made by Hugh Harmon and Rudolf Ising long after leaving Walt Disney before he created his famous mouse . |
453,883 | 11,228,318 | 862,274 | 7 | My Little Margie : Trapped Freddie is another contrived but amusing episode | Margie and Freddie arrive at Margie's apartment at 2am , two hours after Margie's curfew as set by her father Vern ( isn't Margie old enough to set her own curfew ? and why is she still living with her father ? ) . Margie arrives in her father's room while he was sleeping and sets his clock two hours before but Vern was awake at that point unbeknownst to Margie . So when Margie comes back and wakes him up , she shows father clock to prove she arrived on time when she sees it was set back ! Since Margie wants a convertible so bad , Vern agrees to give her one on condition she has no contact with Freddie for a month . That is broken a day later so , with the help of Charlie the doorman and neighbor Roberta , Margie keeps trying to hide Freddie out of sight of her father who has just been to the doctor and is required to take a certain number of pills . Vern takes them when he drinks some coffee that Margie laced with . Vern wakes up in the middle of the night when he hears some snoring : Freddie slept in the shower stall ! As Vern takes Freddie to his bed , Margie passes by and catches her father unbeknownst to him . Roberta passes by and she and Margie make a last ditch effort to fool Vern . As Vern reminds Margie of his condition of her getting a convertible , he takes her and Roberta back to his bed to find Charlie lying there leaving Vern with a surprised look on his face ! Another contrived episode but the way it's performed is so wacky that I found myself laughing in spite of myself ( the fact that there is no laugh track probably helped ) . Certainly it was nice to see Willie Best and Hilary Brooke again in an episode though Best didn't seem to do too much this time . Worth seeing for anyone with an interest in vintage ' 50s sitcoms . |
454,289 | 11,228,318 | 184,523 | 7 | Give a Man a Job is an early Public Service short with Jimmy Durante and Moe Howard | Having been checking on the Matinée at the Bijou blog , I've been discovering quite a few curiosities from the Golden Age of Movies . Like this Jimmy Durante musical short produced by M-G-M that touts the National Recovery Administration as part of President Rooselvelt's New Deal . One of the people in the audience that The Great Snozzola warbles to is Moe Howard-with his hair slicked back-who , as an exterminator , wonders aloud " who's going to get rid of all the rats " if Durante says to give his employers vacations . Durante says to hire several more who need the jobs . He goes on like this for the whole two minutes until the short ends with a close-up of Roosevelt on frame . Pretty entertaining and worth a look for anyone who's a fan of Durante and lead Stooge Howard . |
454,373 | 11,228,318 | 153,942 | 7 | Wot a Night is the first ever Tom and Jerry cartoon ( though they're different T & Js ) | The stars of this cartoon are Tom and Jerry ( no , not the cat-and-mouse team from MGM . This is a Van Beuren one starring two humans , one tall-Tom and one short-Jerry ) . This is their first cartoon . They are taxi drivers who accept a couple of passengers who have long beards . It is stormy outside as they arrive at a castle which they all come in since T and J have been stiffed . Various skeleton gags follow including an unfortunate one of four blackfaced people being defeated by a crap game ! Otherwise , great use of storms and skeletons to create atmosphere . Well worth seeing for ' 30s animation buffs . Some of the animation may remind you of the Walt Disney / Ub Iwerks Skeleton Dance . |
454,356 | 11,228,318 | 422,881 | 7 | This Japanese cartoon I found on Cartoon Brew linking YouTube was pretty fascinating for its views on America and Mickey Mouse in particular | This is a bizarre cartoon from ' 30s Japan I just discovered on YouTube as linked from Cartoon Brew . It's basically about an island with peaceful citizens ( one of whom resembles Felix the Cat ) dancing to music before being invaded by a giant Mouse that resembles Mickey flying on a giant bat with a mouse-like head with others looking like them following . Then the islanders contact legendary folk-hero Momotaro from a giant book to battle " Mickey " . After defeating " Mickey " in a sword duel , the giant mouse falls through the clouds and grows very old after one of the doll inhabitants releases some spirit from a box . Also defeated are some snakes that spit bullets and many of the bats with mouse heads that also have ammunition in their mouths . Then at the end , the sun god makes blossoms appear on trees as the islanders ( which ounce again includes " Felix " ) dance happily ever after . . . Anyone who knows about Japanese history could probably tell that " Mickey " represents America which the country with the rising sun on their flag thought was about to attack them . On that note , I found this cartoon fascinating for its political-point-of-view . I was also entertained by the way this partly resembles many of the musical cartoons that we Americans made plenty of during much of early talkie era . One more bizarre scene was when " Felix " hit the turtle's head during the beginning dance sequence . Did he not realize he might be hurting that turtle physically ? With all that , this was one of the many fascinating Japanese cartoons I discovered on YouTube . By the way , although IMDb doesn't say so , this was directed by Komatsuzawa Hajime . P . S . The title translates into " Toybox Series # 3 : Picture Book 1936 " . |
454,254 | 11,228,318 | 26,362 | 7 | The Fixers Uppers is a pretty funny Laurel and Hardy holiday comedy short | This is one Laurel and Hardy short that I found even remotely relates to Christmas since the boys here are selling Christmas cards . One of their potential customers is a woman who's trying to make her husband jealous so she won't feel neglected . Stan makes a suggestion and all hell breaks loose ! That's all I'll say except that while the subject matter is a little outside of L & H territory , there's still some good laughs , both verbal and visual , that kept me satisfied . And the supporting cast of Charles Middlton , and especially , Mae Busch and that frequently drunk Arthur Housman are in fine form here . So on that note , I highly recommend The Fixer Uppers for Laurel and Hardy fans everywhere . |
455,105 | 11,228,318 | 152,007 | 7 | The Plot Sickens was another cynical adult carton from Famous / Paramount | Just watched this Paramount Modern Madcap cartoon on YouTube as linked from Cartoon Brew . In this one , a nebbishly henpecked husband is trying to do away with his shrewishly heavyset wife who spends most of her time laughing at her TV and drinking her wine . When he gets sold some poison that the salesman tells him will " kill an elephant " , this man goes to the zoo and puts his purchase in the pachyderm's water . Guess what happens . But when he puts it in his wife's drink , she just burps ! He then puts an alligator in her wading pool but she ends up sitting on the reptile and smashing him dead ! Finally , he puts a bomb in her car just before she goes off . After forcing him to go with her , the explosion comes but while she's okay , he's flying over New Jersey ! Stuck in the hospital for three months , this man is treated by a pretty nurse who kisses him every visit . So when he goes back , he threatens his wife with a machine gun . Scared , this wife leaves for good . So he and the nurse get married . When they settle down , this new wife displays the same characteristics of his old one ! Poor guy . . . Boy those people at the Famous / Paramount cartoon studio sure have cynical views on marriage , don't they , with first Harry Happy and now this ! The leading man really feels stomped on with this harridan of a wife . Despite this , this was even funnier than the previous short even though I could guess the ending a minute or two away . So on that note , I recommend The Plot Sickens for anyone not expecting a children's cartoon from this era . |
454,262 | 11,228,318 | 122,402 | 7 | The Black Network is another entertaining musical short | This is another musical short from Warner Bros . - Vitaphone that showcases Nina Mae McKinney and the Nicholas Brothers . In this one , Harold and Fayard sing as well as dance and they do it well . Ms . McKinney has one number before the sponsor's wife ( Amanda Randolph ) forces herself on the air and asks in song , " What is Wrong with Me ? " before she decides there's nothing wrong with her . Of course , her face and attitude tells us something different ! There's also a forgotten musical group called the Washboard Serenaders that has one member playing the kazoo behind a glass that must have amazed the theatrical audience back then . Another forgotten singer named Emmett ' Babe ' Wallace sings at the end with him and Nina in their Sunday best as the short ends happily . Well , except for Amanda who's stuck watching from a window . While many of the musical numbers are cut to many scenes of contrived plot devices , The Black Network is still entertaining enough for me to recommend it . |
454,282 | 11,228,318 | 50,622 | 7 | The Land Unknown is a compelling ' 50s sci-fi flick | All I'd like to say about Universal-International's The Land Unknown is that three navy men and a woman reporter land accidentally in a warm spot in Antartica with their helicopter stuck for 30 days during which time they encounter some dinosaurs and another man who had survived there for 10 years from another expedition after his three crew members died there . Jock Mahoney is the commanding officer Harold ( though I could have sworn he was called " Alan " here ) who tries to keep everything together . I recognized him from the TV western " Range Rider " on America One a few years ago . Shirley Patterson ( credited here as Shawn Smith ) is the reporter , Maggie , he falls for . Henry Brandon ( best known as Silas Barnaby in Laurel and Hardy's Babes in Toyland where he was then known as Harry Kleinbach ) is 10-year survivor Dr . Carl Hunter who initially tries to make a deal for the 3 men to escape in exchange for the woman to stay with him . Great conflict results . The dinosaur scenes are a combination of actual footage of close-up lizards and a man wearing a tyrannosaurus outfit . The outfit makes this movie a little cheesy but they worked with what they had at the time on whatever budget was allowed . Otherwise , a mostly compelling entertainment for anyone interested in ' 50 sci-fi movies especially of the Universal-International kind . Wonderful atmospheric score by Joseph Gershenson . P . S . Jock Mahoney was Sally Field's stepfather . |
453,971 | 11,228,318 | 23,830 | 7 | Bosko in Person is pretty entertaining musically | Bosko in Person takes place entirely on a stage where he and Honey perform songs , musical instrumentals , and singing celebrity impersonations . I recognized Bosko's Jimmy Durante but I don't know who Honey was impersonating when she sang in a big , brassy , voice . Music director Frank Marsales keeps things moving to a nice jazzy beat throughout with a fine patriotic finish and a nice illustration of President Franklin Roosevelt on drums at the end . Bosko in Person is one of many Harmon-Ising ( harmonizing , get it ? ) cartoons made for Leon Schlesinger starring the monkey-like character for Warner Bros . in the early thirties before they left for greener pastures at MGM . When they took Bosko there with them , he would emerge into a different character . . . |
454,480 | 11,228,318 | 23,831 | 7 | Bosko the Musketeer is a highly amusing musical cartoon short | Since the previous reviewer mentioned many of the things I was going to describe , I'll just mention two things : 1 ) Before the sword fight starts , the swords are shaking hands . 2 ) The little mice all look like Mickey ! Maybe not so surprising at all since Hugh Harmon and Rudolf Ising were previously animators for Walt Disney when he created Oswald the Lucky Rabbit ( Oswald looked like the Famous Mouse with long ears and a fluffy tail ) . Another highly amusing early Warner Bros . Looney Tunes short with tuneful music and singing throughout though that tends to get repetitious after a while . Good thing when Tex Avery arrived several years later , gags would be more important than music . Still , highly worth a look for anyone interested in early Warner Bros . cartoons before the arrival of Porky , Daffy , and Bugs . |
455,153 | 11,228,318 | 153,980 | 7 | Yelp Wanted is an interesting debut for the now obscure Scrappy | Since the plot summary tells you everything about Yelp Wanted , I'll just say this is as good a beginning for the Scrappy series for Charles Mintz with distribution by Columbia as I've seen for any character that is now obscure here in the 21st century . Both amusing and heartwarming , Scrappy the little boy goes through a lot , including going through Rough House Alley , in order to cure his sick little dog Yippy . But if you're familiar with this story then you'll probably not be surprised by the ending that happens here though at the time this was made in 1931 , it was probably pretty fresh . Still , for anyone interested in any early animation efforts made in the early talkie era , I highly recommended Yelp Wanted . |
454,554 | 11,228,318 | 30,696 | 7 | Room Service is no Marx Brothers classic , but still enjoyable nonetheless | 30 years ago today , Groucho Marx died at 86 , three days after Elvis Presley . For the occasion , I'd thought I'd view some of his movies of which Room Service is one of them . Unlike the others he made with his brothers , this one wasn't especially tailored to their talents since it was originally a Broadway play starring other people . So the action is mostly confined to the hotel and the pace slows down a little bit . Nevertheless , there's still some witty lines and visual humor concerning Harpo that makes this one of the more enjoyable latter day-Marx Brothers films . And there's a wonderful supporting cast with Frank Albertson as the playwright and , especially , Donald MacBride as the hotel manager who keeps exclaiming , " Jumping Butterballs ! " Also of note is the fact that a couple of young players named Ann Miller and Lucille Ball appear here long before their established personas . So while not the classic of their five Paramount and first two MGM pictures , this RKO production was nothing the Marx Brothers should be ashamed of . |
454,661 | 11,228,318 | 21,872 | 7 | Burns and Allen are Fit to Be Tied | George encounters two talkative salesgirls who won't stop talking to each other even after he keeps saying , " I want to buy a tie . " He then encounters a salesman who cuts the tie he's wearing to match the one he wants to buy ! Then he encounters Gracie and the conversation turns from wanting to buy a tie to asking to guess a word that starts with " W " to George asking Gracie for a date with Gracie replying , " Not tonight , I'm expecting a headache ! " He then encounters another saleswoman who mistakes his request for a tie for a towel ! He then encounters Gracie at another counter who then sings about how tame people think she is but really how wild she is ! Just then George and Gracie break character and mention they don't have much time to go . Gracie suggests telling the pineapple story but George says that would get them off forever so they simply wave to the camera and say goodbye ! Amusing first ( I'm guessing ) short for Burns and Allen . If they seem nervous during their first film , they hardly show it . Allen , especially , seems fine here . Worth seeing for Burns and Allen fans . |
454,191 | 11,228,318 | 6,449 | 7 | Bobby Bumps Starts a Lodge starts cruel then becomes amusing | During much of the cartoon , I thought Bobby was pretty cruel to both the goat ( I didn't like it when he jacked him up like that ) and the black boy who is supposed to be his friend ( when he blindfolded him and was going to have the goat butt him ) . But by the time the black boy was stuck on the tree with the bear between cliffs with Bobby on the other side and then Bobby was then stuck on a rope hanging on that same tree with the bear on top of him with each making truces , I forgave Bobby and was amused by the rest of the cartoon and the ending where they both get initiated into a lodge . You'll have to watch the cartoon on YouTube to see how it all ends . Worth a look for any silent animation buffs out there . |
453,785 | 11,228,318 | 1,339,367 | 7 | The Social Side of Health is an interesting educational Disney cartoon | Just watched this educational short cartoon from Walt Disney Productions on YouTube as linked from Cartoon Brew . In this one , the narrator tells of the three sides of health represented by a triangle with the physical side at the bottom , the mental side on the left , and the social side-the subject of this film-on the right . There's a song about how we all need people that begins and ends this short that has some politically incorrect lyrics like how an Indian who makes beads needs tourists ! Still , it makes its points effectively and entertainingly when it focuses on a couple of teens-one male and one female-and how different they looked in various eras with fashions and hair not to mention the emergence of certain clicks in separate circles . There's also some mention about how sex and drugs can be destructive-complete with some psychedelic imagery-so obviously this short isn't meant for small children . So on that note , I'd recommend The Social Side of Health as an interesting Disney curio . |
454,046 | 11,228,318 | 122,580 | 7 | Burns and Allen make their film debut in the amusing Lambchops | This being the film debut of the comedy team of George Burns and Gracie Allen , it's fascinating to watch a vaudeville act that had been formed just a few years earlier provide their pretty amusing banter that they use here to fill seven minutes . Among the many amusements from them : George - " What man in the army has the biggest hat ? " Gracie - " The one with the biggest head . " or George - " What sings with four legs ? " Gracie - " Two canaries . " George , tired of having Gracie steal his punchlines then asks and answers , " What gives more milk than a cow ? Two cows ! " They also go into a song and dance routine with more amusing patter before they realize they have a few more time to fill . If you're familiar with Burns and Allen , you can probably guess what happens . So on that note , I recommend Lambchops for anyone interested in these vintage shorts . |
454,728 | 11,228,318 | 32,667 | 7 | King for a Day is an amusing Gabby cartoon from Fleischer | If you read the synopsis provided elsewhere here , you know what happens . Mostly amusing with Gabby running frantically everywhere trying to avoid getting shot even though those banging noises come from other objects like the suitcase that quickly closes on the back of his shirt that gets stuck on him when he runs . There's also some gags about being chocked and getting hanged that probably wouldn't ever pass muster on Saturday morning cartoons even today . Made when the Fleischer Studio was in financial decline , only eight Gabby cartoons were made before Paramount fired Max and Dave and changed the name to Famous Studios . Worth a look for any Fleischer completists out there . |
453,764 | 11,228,318 | 38,937 | 7 | Shock is worthy of interest for Vincent Price fans | This movie , Shock , is noted by one thing : It's Vincent Price's first starring role after years in compelling supporting parts for 20th Century Fox . Here , he plays a psychiatrist whose murder of his wife is witnessed by a young woman ( Anabel Shaw ) across another hotel window as she waits for her returning soldier husband to come soon . The woman fainted from shock when the killing happened so when Price becomes her doctor , he and his mistress nurse ( Lynn Bari ) , try to fix it so everyone would be convinced she's crazy . I'll stop there and just say this is such a subtle suspense thriller that anyone expecting the kind of shocks today's horror / suspense fans get would be very disappointed in this one . Since this was made early in Price's career , his character has something of a conscience here . In fact , Ms . Bari steals her scenes from him as something of a Lady McBeth character . Ms . Shaw is also good in her constant frightfulness as she struggles to be heard and believed . By comparison , Frank Latimore as Shaw's husband is simply adequate as someone constantly trying to see his wife . Price himself handles his part capably . Also worth mentioning are John Davidson ( not to be confused with the singer who once co-hosted " That's Incredible " ) as crazy mental patient , Mr . Edwards , ( Loved the lightning sequence that involves him ) and Reed Hadley as D . A . O'Neill who's questioning of Price's Dr . Richard Cross threatens to drive Cross over the edge . I'd also like to note that the voice of Mrs . Cross , Ruth Clifford , was also that of Minnie Mouse at this time . While she's not noted on the DVD audio track by John Stanley , many of the leading and supporting players are of their lives , interests , and other roles . Not great but pretty good for anyone who's a fan of Vincent Price . |
454,117 | 11,228,318 | 140,980 | 7 | Eats Are West is another Felix the Cat cartoon that was pretty amusing | Felix is starving . He goes to The Tea Room where-with the help of the question mark over his head-he drinks some tea from the restaurant sign which is in the shape of a tea bowl ! That gets him chased out by the owner so he next encounters a billboard sign that advertises Mammy's Flap Jacks with the Mammy showing her plate of such on there . Felix takes those literally from there leaving the woman to chase him ! The cat-through an exclamation mark and using the flap jacks as wheels-then rides an escape from her before then using an exclamation point from his head and using one of the gate wood he crashed in to fly away . Still hungry , he finds a Pony Express rider and steals the food from there which doesn't make the cowboys happy as they find him in the bag which results in a violent skirmish . He then takes a rope and makes it into a horse which then deteriorates into just string from being ridden so much ! Having now gotten away he runs into some Indians ( the Native American kind ) and is now a target for food as one of them is tired of just soup ! During the fight , Felix uses his guns to literally take one squaw man to pieces ! After escaping there ( by an arrow that hit his tail ) , he finds a wooden store Indian and shoots holes in it before getting arrested . The end . The beginning with the tea drinking and the taking the flap jacks from billboard was pretty amusing before the not-so-funny action sequences abounded . Then there was the rope-becoming-horse and Indian-cut-to-pieces bit that wonderfully surprised me near the end that saved the cartoon for me . So for that , I'm recommending Eats Are West for Felix fans . |
455,117 | 11,228,318 | 91,178 | 7 | Haunted Honeymoon is enjoyable for Gilda Radner's final movie | Having heard for years how awful Haunted Honeymoon was and long wanting to see Gilda Radner in her last movie , I taped this last night while the Emmys were on . Now that I've seen it , I can now say nobody in the cast and crew have anything to be ashamed about . I love the performances in the radio studio with Radner and Gene Wilder playing characters in a show with the same title as film . Dom DeLuise is amusing as Aunt Kate . But I want to really praise the hard-of-hearing butler Pfister ( Bryan Pringle ) who , because Wilder tells him his fiancée is slightly deaf , keeps shouting at Radner . And , yes , like many other comments here , I love Wilder's using someone else's legs as his in front of policemen . I also loved the " Ballin ' the Jack " number between DeLuise and Radner and Radner's joke about the bug on the windshield . So in short , if you're a fan of all three stars , seek this out by all means ! |
454,531 | 11,228,318 | 337,978 | 7 | Live Free or Die Hard was an enjoyable first experience with Bruce Willis ' John McClane | Before I review Live Free or Die Hard I have a confession to make : I've never seen the other Die Hard movies that were made in the last 19 years before this one . So I only know about John McClane's most famous line by reputation ( and I'm not going to quote it here ) . Having just said that , I enjoyed most of the action set-pieces ( the one with the fighter jet is the only one that seemed too ridiculous to me ) and many of the supporting characters and villains . Justin Long and Maggie Q deserve special mention for their entertaining turns as Bruce Willis ' sidekick and fight nemesis , respectively . I previously saw Ms . Q in Mission : Impossible III as part of Tom Cruise ' team and she's in better use here with her sexy voice , body , and overall kick-ass stance . It's also nice to see that Mary Elizabeth Winstead as McClane's daughter Lucy isn't a complete doormat here . So since I highly enjoyed this latest entry in Willis ' highly successful movie series , I may just check one of his previous entries soon maybe starting with the very first one . . . |
453,738 | 11,228,318 | 832,071 | 7 | Quaranteened is another amusingly funny episode of Meet Corliss Archer | Corliss has the measles and has to stay in bed . Against his mother and Mrs . Archer's advice , Dexter comes in Corliss ' house as the health inspector comes and quarantines it . Not good news for Mr . Archer especially when he has to share the bathroom with Dexter when they wash their faces ! And certainly not at night when a robber is suspected of prowling the neighborhood ! Just as Corliss gets better but before the quarantine is lifted , Dexter devises a " buglar trap " to catch him . It only catches Mr . Archer when he comes home late from work ! As the health inspector comes to take the sign down he notices something wrong with Mr . Archer and discovers he now has the measles so the sign goes back up another week ! Another amusing episode of this now forgotten family sitcom from the ' 50s . I liked some of the physical comedy involving Dexter and Mr . Archer . They're the best parts of the show . So if you like good clean comedy from a bygone era , I suggest you seek out Meet Corliss Archer . |
453,791 | 11,228,318 | 61,421 | 7 | The Box was an amusing Oscar-winning animated short by Fred Wolf | Just watched this Oscar-winning animated short directed by Fred Wolf on YouTube as linked from Cartoon Brew . It's basically the story of an old bearded man sitting at a bar drinking with a box on the counter . First a man and then a woman have drinks with this bearded man as they try to find out what's in the box . Both times-after a few minutes-the bearded man allows each one to look in the box with neither pleased to have found out and with both leaving indignant . Then another woman arrives . . . Scored with just drums , The Box is an amusing animated short with an ending that may make you think if the bearded man is who one may think he is . This director Wolf ( who is different from a recent former SNL writer with the same name ) , I've recently found out , is the same person who made those " Puff the Magic Dragon " specials with Burgess Meredith as the voice of Puff as well as the feature film The Mouse and His Child which I reviewed last fall . All of those I mentioned were pretty enjoyable and so it is with this short . So on that note , I recommend The Box . |
454,543 | 11,228,318 | 832,067 | 7 | Meet Corliss Archer : Harry's Cold is pretty amusing | Harry has a bad cold that keeps him from work that day . Dexter offers to take care of him while Corliss gets some hand-me-down clothes and her mother also does some charity work . Somehow this all goes down to Dexter's parents that the Archers are low on money . Vice versa for the Archers . All is cleared out in the end though Harry still has his cough . . . Amusing ' 50s sitcom about teens Corliss and Dexter and their parents . Some amusing visual gags like Harry's shaking hands mixing Dexter's milk-and-syrup drink or Harry's pain from Dexter's taking on and off some kind of adhesive at various places on his back ! Worth seeing for what people would have liked family life to have been like in the ' 50s . Was originally a radio show . |
454,287 | 11,228,318 | 70,605 | 7 | Rhinoceros marked a welcome re-teaming of Zero Mostel and Gene Wilder | When I went to my local library to check out DVDs , this one caught my eye because of the two stars pictured on it with their names prominently displayed : Zero Mostel and Gene Wilder . Anyone who's watched Mel Brooks ' The Producers knows who they are and what a great team they made . So I included it among four others and brought it home with me . I must say while the movie itself is a little uneven ( that scene in Wilder's accounting office with his coworkers was a little too frantic for my tastes ) , whenever Gene and Zero are on screen together they're nothing short of hilarious especially when Mostel does his transformation . Karen Black is also on hand as Wilder's love interest providing a sweet and sexy presence to the proceedings . In adapting Eugene Ionesco's play to the big screen , director Tom O'Horgan does a nice transition from farce to serious drama in the last 30 minutes that made me think about how conformity can be enjoyable if stifling after a while vs . how individuality can be liberating if lonesome because of not-as-many takers . Of course , anyone expecting a conventional slapstick comedy would probably be disappointed with the whole thing but despite some unevenness , I highly enjoyed and recommend Rhinoceros . |
455,150 | 11,228,318 | 21,812 | 7 | Down South is an obviously Steamboat Willie-inspired Toby the Pup cartoon | I just saw this Toby the Pup cartoon mistakenly identified as an Aesop Fables short from Van Beuren on YouTube . Down South seems to have been inspired by Walt Disney's Steamboat Willie which isn't surprising since the lead character seems to be a Mickey Mouse ripoff developed by Walt's former boss , Charles Mintz . Of course , Mickey himself is a steal from Oswald the Lucky Rabbit that Walt created for Mintz . Oswald by this time was given to Walter Lantz by the studio that owned the character , Universal . Moving on , Toby is a steamboat captain who has to keep smiling when welcoming passengers . A monkey with a long tail on a tightrope helps keep that smile coming ! His girlfriend , Cathy , keeps things entertaining when she does her rendition of " Mississippi Mud " , a song I learned for a musical play about the south as a kid . Many wonderfully surreal gags abound that kept me amused if not laughing . Worth a look for anyone interested in early animation . |
454,846 | 11,228,318 | 141,010 | 7 | Felix All Puzzled pretty good Felix the Cat entry | Felix won't get fed by his owner until he solves the last word in his crossword puzzle which is vertical , a seven-letter word for something found chiefly in Russia . Felix gets himself kicked by another animal in order to get to the Soviet Union and immediately is thought of as a spy when he sneaks into a house of a couple of cossacks . He gets chased constantly until he manages to get kicked back to his homeland where his owner asked if he found the crossword answer . " Nope , " replies Felix , " all I found in Russia was trouble . " " Trouble " turns out to be the answer as Felix and his owner both laugh . The End . Pretty amusing and very short entry in the Felix canon . Worth seeing for the cat completists . Update / 08 : I found a more uncensored version on Matinée At The Bijou as linked to YouTube . It might have been some stereotypical Russian gags that was edited out when I first saw this two years ago . Anyway , the ratings the same . |
453,787 | 11,228,318 | 1,339,298 | 7 | The Fight was an interesting curio of Walt Disney's " What Would I Do ? " educational cartoon series | Just watched this entry in Walt Disney's " What Would I Do ? " cartoon series of educational shorts on YouTube as linked from Cartoon Brew . In this one , a small boy is tripped by a much taller one so they start fighting while another boy watches . The rest of the film has the narrator asking the question I just mentioned with " You " in place of " I " with all three boys thinking of what would be the result of taking certain actions . Interesting handling of a subject meant to make young boys think about the consequences of whatever happens during and after a fistfight . Limited animation was good for the era and makes the thought provoking subject interesting . So for anyone curious about these Disney rarities , I recommend The Fight . |
454,823 | 11,228,318 | 1,031,325 | 7 | Pilot of " Bionic Woman " should fill genre slot for Wednesday until " Lost " returns | As a child of the ' 70s , I was somewhat familiar with " The ( original ) Bionic Woman " that starred Lindsay Wagner with occasional appearances by Lee Majors as Steve Austin of " The Six Million Dollar Man " which " TBW " spun-off of . Maybe one of these days , I'll re-watch them on DVD . This version , starring Michelle Ryan , was pretty imaginative with Jamie having a boyfriend whose father happens to have invented the parts that replaced those of her after the accident and previously also replaced those of another bionic woman played by Katee Sackhoff who's no good . Nice to see Miquel Ferrer here having known him previously from RoboCop and " Twin Peaks " . Can't make up my mind if he's a good guy or bad guy . Not a great pilot , but interesting enough that I'll keep watching . Since " Lost " won't return until February , " Bionic Woman " should fill the genre need on Wednesday until then . . . |
454,228 | 11,228,318 | 442,662 | 7 | The Curious Case of Inspector Clouseau was a fascinating find for this Pink Panther fan | Having seen all the Pink Panther movies the previous week , I looked at the Therapeutic Pink Message boards and discovered mention on one of the blog links a documentary called The Curious Case of Inspector Clouseau . On that link was one to YouTube that allowed me to watch this doc in six parts . In this one hour television special from England , we get brief pertinent info about Peter Sellers ' pre-Pink Panther life before that movie and its sequel , A Shot in the Dark , catapulted him into stardom . We also get glimpses of his relationship with director Blake Edwards and some of the fights they got into when working . Among the interviewees : Herbert Lom , Graham Stark , Elke Sommer , Dyan Cannon , William Peter Blatty who co-wrote A Shot in the Dark , and Edwards producing partner , Tony Adams . Host Burt Kwouk also provides his own insights on both Sellers and Edwards . What's discussed besides that director-star relationship is how tormented Sellers was after his stardom concerning his weight and the heart attacks that resulted . Also how tired he seemed to be with Clouseau especially the repetition of some gags . There's also some interesting interview footage of Peter himself just being himself discussing some jokes and certain characterizations . As well as a brief scene of his marriage to Britt Ekland in 1964 . And then there's footage of Edwards ' laughing on set of some of the Panther movies . Quite fascinating , this documentary , though because of its short one hour length , it also seemed abrupt concerning the segue from one Panther movie to the next especially when the time came to discuss Peter's last proposed Panther script which one of the interviewees who's not mentioned above says would have been a disaster especially since Sellers was thinking of directing it himself with Blake nowhere near it . Despite the limited running time though , The Curious Case of Inspector Clouseau was still worth my time as a die-hard Pink Panther fan . |
454,495 | 11,228,318 | 233,271 | 7 | Oliver Hardy has amusing cameo in Our Gang's Baby Brother | Joe Cobb is a wealthy child who longs for a baby brother . His nursemaid takes him to the other side where he meets some kids his age ( the rest of Our Gang ) where Joe offers three dollars for a baby . Farina finds a fellow African-American neighbor woman who lets him mind her infant which he then paints white and sells to Joe . The rest of the gang has set an assembly-line system that washes , dries , rocks , and feeds male and female babies . As Joe puts his through , the paint comes off but since it calls him papa he is still overjoyed . Then the real mother arrives making Joe put the child in his mother's lap at home . To get him over losing his " kid " , his parents announce in advance that he's getting a pony for Christmas ! This short is pretty amusing from beginning to end although one may get slightly uncomfortable at how the infants are treated in the name of " fun " . Historically , this was the first appearance of Bobby " Wheezer " Hutchins , so rebellious that he already does his first Bronx cheer here ! Also , look for Oliver Hardy just before his fateful teaming with Stan Laurel . As Joe embarrasses his girlfriend Anita Garvin by asking if she can find him a baby brother , Ollie does his famous camera look , then smiles bashfully before falling down in hilarious fashion ! I saw this in a Cabin Fever VHS with three talkie Little Rascals issued around 1994 . Well worth seeking out if you're an Our Gang and / or a Laurel and Hardy fan ! |
454,676 | 11,228,318 | 1,031,333 | 7 | Face Off is a pretty good episode of " Bionic Woman " | Jamie goes with Antonio to Paraguay to find this doctor . When there , Antonio has themselves arrested which results in them meeting the man . Because he knows something he's not suppose to , Antonio tries to have him killed but Jamie stops him as she takes a bullet . This doctor later treats Jamie and tells her she may die soon . Meanwhile , Sarah , held back in a chair , takes a psychological test under Ruth which leads nowhere . She manages to break free as she nearly chokes her ex-boyfriend . After Becca finds out older sister Jamie lied about going " away " with a friend , Jamie tells her she can't say where she's going but she'll always look after her . I'll stop there and say while this episode wasn't as exciting as the one before , at least nothing seemed out-of-place either . Michelle Ryan seems to grow into her role and Katee Sackhoff is excellent as usual . Will review again next week . . . |
454,433 | 11,228,318 | 1,031,330 | 7 | The List is another exciting episode of " Bionic Woman " | In this episode , Jamie is assigned to Paris with a CIA operative . Jonas lets her pick Tom from her last assignment to be her partner . They continue their flirting in the French city just before Tom gets in big trouble . Jamie gets pulled before she can rescue him but once again gets Jonas to cooperate . Jonas himself gets a call from Jamie's younger sister Becca as she gets in trouble with the police having just left a potential boyfriend caught with another girl at a party . . . Once again , some of the fun that wasn't in previous episodes is in this one mostly due to the banter between Jamie and Tom . Miquel Ferrer is also more of a benevolent figure here in the way he treats Jamie and Becca . While the backstory of the caper didn't interest me that much , I loved the gradual quick chases that made this episode so much exciting . Can't wait for the next episode so until then . . . |
453,981 | 11,228,318 | 47,673 | 7 | Irving Berlin's White Christmas is wonderful holiday fluff for the ages | To celebrate Christmas and to pay respects to Mr . Bing Crosby who died a little more than 30 years ago , I decided to watch for the first time in its entirety , White Christmas . This movie made of Irving Berlin songs both old and new , also stars Danny Kaye , Vera-Ellen , Rosemary Clooney , Dean Jagger , and Mary Wickes with some familiar bit players like Herb Vigran and Grady Sutton . Also , George Chakiris , best known as Bernardo in West Side Story , is a dancing extra here . The story of two former army buddies - turned - musical - partners who meet a two sister singing act that's on their way to a lodge owned by the general of the former army pals is just a contrivance to put together various songs to fit in certain segments . Good musical performances abound with some of my favorites being " Choreography " with Kaye and Vera-Ellen making fun of Jazz-Ballet and the " Count Your Blessings " duet with Crosby and Clooney . While I said the story is pretty contrived , I also was mostly willing to go along with most of it as the performers made it all go down easy with director Michael Curtiz lending a brisk pace throughout . The now-classic song " White Christmas " was probably better handled in Holiday Inn by Bing some 12 years before but still , it's a good way to both begin and end this wonderful showcase to Mr . Berlin that's become a holiday classic for the last 50 years . P . S . - The picture that Vera-Ellen show of she and Clooney's brother that served with Bing and Danny is that of former Our Ganger / Little Rascal Carl " Alfalfa " Switzer ! |
454,451 | 11,228,318 | 147,277 | 7 | Room and Bored is another funny Fox and Crow entry | As Room and Bored begins we see the Fox in his apartment at peace playing the violin . We then pull back to an Apartment for Rent sign that says , " Quiet , refined tenant preferred " signed by the Fox . Screeching through the door a few minutes later is a van occupied by the Crow who accepts the offer before the Fox could refuse it ! Crow then throws out the classical piano and tears down the refined wallpaper and puts out various street signs and pinup posters as the Fox brings the player piano and other of the Crow's stuff . Fox's last nerve later gets worked out when the Crow overflows his bathtub and he throws him out . Crow gets sympathy from him , however , when he dresses as a hobo , cries , and shows him the blizzard out the window ( revealed outside as Jivory Soap Flakes pouring above ) . This confuses the Fox as it's July . So as the Crow keeps playing his music , the Fox keeps putting coal in the furnace , gets hotter , and eventually pours coffee in one ear and out the other . . . Loved the shaking animation during the Crow music sequences . While one feels sorry for the Fox character , the way he deals with his lot can be so hilarious especially in scenes like when the piano falls on him . Worth seeing for fans of ' 40s animation and anyone curious about the Columbia animation output of that time . |
454,457 | 11,228,318 | 39,003 | 7 | Swing Parade of 1946 was a nice showcase for The Three Stooges and Louis Jordan and His Tympany Five | In honor of Black History Month , I've been making comments on films that featured African-Americans . We're now in 1946 with Swing Parade of 1946 . In this one , Louis Jordan and His Tympany Five perform " Don't Worry About the Mule " and " Caldonia " in segments that could easily be edited out by Southern theatres of the time without ruining the plot-what there is of one ( which easily explains why he and his group are nowhere near the musical finale ) . Both performances bring a rollicking attitude that lifts the movie above the norm . The main reason I , and I'm sure many , would want to watch this movie today is because of The Three Stooges with Curly , especially , in fine form months before his stroke forced him to retire . The singing leads here are Phil Regan and Gale Storm . Ms . Storm displays some comic talents that served her well in her later TV shows , " My Little Margie " and " The Gale Storm Show " . She also sings a wonderful rendition of " The Sunny Side of the Street " and " Oh , Brother " . There's also Connee Boswell singing the third version of " Stormy Weather " I've heard this month ( following Ivie Anderson and Lena Horne ) that again takes my breath away . Ed Brophy provides perfect blustery segue from the plot to the Stooges as their boss " Moose " . And Windy Cook provides some amusing impressions of boat motors and plane engines though the movie becomes a bit long by that point . And there's another player from my favorite movie , It's a Wonderful Life , here-Mary Treen who plays Marie Finch and does a nice duet with band leader Will Osborne on " A Tender Word Will Mend It All " . No great shakes , but with the presence of the Stooges and Louis Jordan , Swing Parade of 1946 is definitely worth a look . |
454,338 | 11,228,318 | 26,182 | 7 | A Cartoonist's Nightmare was an amusing early Warner Bros . cartoon | Just found this rare Warner Bros . - Looney Tunes cartoon on YouTube . " Supervised " by ex-Disney animator Jack King ( though he'd later return there as the new resident Donald Duck helmer ) , A Cartoonist's Nightmare is one of the few that starred a now-forgotten character named Beans the Cat who was first seen in Friz Freling's color Merrie Melodies short , I Haven't Got a Hat , which also introduced Porky Pig . In this one , with all the other animators having gone home , one particular cartoonist stays on trying to finish his drawings on time . As he draws bars on Beans to protect him from a monster , the animator goes to sleep and dreams of getting attacked by other villains he created . It's up to Beans to rescue him . . . Lots of clever creative ways of drawing and erasing escapes abound here and while nothing hilarious happens , I was constantly amused at this early version of Duck Amuck that Chuck Jones made with Daffy Duck 18 years later ! On that note , I recommend this for any Warner cartoon completists out there . |
455,193 | 11,228,318 | 141,040 | 7 | Felix Saves the Day is banned because of racial stereotypes | I just saw Felix Saves the Day on YouTube . com . It concerns Felix playing baseball with neighbor kids many of whom are visualized as black kids with big lips . But the main kid is white . During this cartoon , you occasionally see live-action backgrounds meant ( I think ) to represent New York City . The white kid catches a fly ball of Felix's by climbing the real ( I think ) Empire State Building . The kid throws the ball down the building and the ball hits the policeman who was chasing said kid ! The kid goes to jail as a result . There's a big game going in the nearby stadium . Felix watches the game and sees his team losing . He goes to the kid in jail to try to get him out to save the game . The kid tells Felix to go in his place . Felix goes to the game and strikes out saying , " Only rain will save this game . " The other teams player hits a ball so far outfield that it hits an angel in the sky who then says , " I will ruin this game . " So it rains and Felix and the boy dance for joy . The End . This was one of the earliest Felixs so the cat looks more like a wolf in some angles . While the black stereotypes is a little bothersome , it's a mostly an amusing entry with some good live-action shots ( both moving and still ) for Felix to play in . |
455,124 | 11,228,318 | 246 | 7 | An Up-to-Date Conjuror is interesting early Melies short | Georges Melies covers his female assistant with a blanket . When she is uncovered , she disappears . Melies lifts a barrel on a table to the left of him and the woman reappears . He carries her in his arms where she turns to confetti . He then covers himself with a blanket and disappears , then the barrel lifts and there he is ! He jumps off table and turns into his assistant when he lands . She goes back on table and becomes Georges again when he lands ! He then goes back on table where he disappears in a puff of smoke ! The end . Interesting Melies short which , in the version I saw , had vintage 1906 music by the Edison Concert Band . Worth a look if you're a Melies fan . |
454,053 | 11,228,318 | 587,539 | 7 | Mr . Big marks a very amusing beginning for the classic comedy series " Get Smart " | In this , the pilot episode of " Get Smart " , CONTROL agent Maxwell Smart ( Don Adams ) gets a call from the Chief ( Edward Platt ) to rescue a scientist who's invented something that's in the hand of the criminal organization called KAOS . He is to meet Agent 99 ( Barbara Feldon ) at a certain place . From there , the fun begins . . . With today being the general release day of the new movie version of " Get Smart " with Steve Carell in the title role , I thought I'd finally watch the very first episode of this classic television comedy series that Mel Brooks and Buck Henry created some 43 years ago . And yes , there's a " and " instead of a " with " in the writing credits when the two get credited here . This is where we first see the shoe phone and the cone of silence , hear Max's famous lines " And loving it ! " and " Would you believe . . . " ( while Smart says sorry a few times , there's no " . . . about that , Chief ! " yet ) And it's here that he-and we-first see 99 and though we know it's a woman , Max doesn't realize it yet since she's in uniform with a cap on . Plenty of funny lines abound with some of my favorites during the cone of silence sequence which turns into a " Who's on First ? " - type of confusion dialogue concerning the number " 57 " and " Hong Kong " . Also loved the code sentence being about the Mets winning so when Max hears a little boy say it , he asks if he's 99 . " No , I'm six and a half , " comes the reply . And then there's the meeting with Mr . Big . . . If there's some quibble here , it's that 99 seems a bit too kowtowed to Max for my tastes and the fights are soooo fake here . Still , this was quite an entertaining beginning for the beloved comedy series that lasted five seasons on the air . P . S . Was that female enemy agent called Zelinka named after executive producer Leonard Stern's former writing partner Sydney Zelinka when they wrote for " The Honeymooners " ? |
454,094 | 11,228,318 | 26,553 | 7 | Judge for a Day is pretty entertaining for a post-Code Betty Boop | Just discovered this post-Code Max Fleischer Betty Boop cartoon on YouTube . You can tell it's after the time the Production Code really went into effect since Betty is singing about being happy and not about sexuality . Also she's more conservatively dressed for work as a court stenographer and not as a nightclub entertainer with her garter on one of her legs . And the people that annoy her are not lechers but bus passengers of which two try to read her paper , one lady rudely takes her seat , and one man blows smoke in her face ! So when she arrives early in an empty courthouse , Betty imagines what would happen if she were judge . The next scene takes place in a zoo where many of these annoying people get what's coming to them ! That's all I'll say except there's actually something of a happy ending for Betty and the townspeople who cheer her on . So while this isn't the standard Betty Boop we all know and love , Judge for a Day does still provide some of her spark in this post-Code entry . |
454,965 | 11,228,318 | 1,039,337 | 7 | The List is another pretty good episode of " Miss Guided " | After counseling a female student who had a botched nose job to wear a hat so she wouldn't get noticed on her face so much , Becky finds out that face was exposed on a blog called " Lindsey Lopez " and that she's # 18 on most doable teachers . ( Rival Lisa is # 1 and hey , what's guidance counselor Becky doing there anyway ? ) To up her ranking , Becky dresses a little more attractively the next day but after looking at herself in Principal Huffy's mirror-like car window , Huffy himself opens the door which hits Becky and gives her a broken neck after she falls . Despite that , she still shows up at the car wash that Tim sponsored for his Spanish class hoping to show up Lisa and her cheerleader students . It's while cleaning the inside of one car that a male student takes her picture . When she looks it up on the Lopez blog , she finds out why she's now # 1 : she's shown " commando " ! At least some good came from it : the botched nose girl now feels better since Becky didn't let the thing bother her ( if only she knew the truth ! ) . Oh , and during most of what I've chronicled , vice principal Terry has been searching for Lindsey Lopez ' identity because of a wrestling photo of him and another that ID's him as gay . When he finds out who the person is , he makes him show his CD photos that prove otherwise . When we see them , the opposite seems to be the case . . . This was a pretty amusing episode that showcased the quirky talents of Judy Greer and Chris Parnell to the fullest . Some might question why they act the way they do here but I say , just watch and enjoy . Though I half wonder why Becky wasn't wise enough to cover her bottom during that particular day . . . |
455,098 | 11,228,318 | 124,043 | 7 | Breakdown is humorous East German animated short | A man is waiting near the road with a rope in his hand . He is hitchhiking . Car after car passes him by . This seems to go on for a long time . Finally , a little man in a small car stops by and ties rope to bumper . As little man starts to drive off , the hitchhiker disappears down hole where rope is . The rope pulls some motorcycles , then an open-air limousine which the hitchhiker is now inhabiting , then one where a German band is playing , and now a band of army tanks and so on as we hear German marching music playing in the background as the credits appear . Amusing punchline in this East German entry of Volume 5 of The International Tournee of Animation on videocassette . Worth seeking out for animation buffs . |
454,224 | 11,228,318 | 1,039,340 | 7 | Rebel Yell was another good episode of " Miss Guided " | When vice principal Terry throws a punk band off the school yard , Becky recognizes the leader as someone who used to wear Cosby sweaters ( " You're my ' Cos " ) . Since Spring Break is arriving , Terry and Principal Huffy want the teaching staff to stay the night on grading papers . Guidance counselor Becky was just going to " sponge-paint " her office during that time but decides hanging out with Lisa and , especially , Tim would be more fun . So during their time checking papers , all three have chips even though they're in a room where no outside snacks are allowed . Then they have pizza and beer in the cafeteria kitchen which results in a Breakfast Club dance reenactment complete with them running when Terry tries to catch them . In hiding from him , Lisa and Tim go one way while Becky uses her knowledge of Bruce's secret entrance code to vandalize his office . Bad idea as he found out from a stuffed animal monitor of his but promises not to tell if she supports his security proposal to Huffy . She initially does but changes her mind when the punk rock student is threatened with punishment by Bruce for " looking like one who would vandalize his office " . So with Bruce's bodyguard's help , Huffy watches Becky's mischief in the vice principal's office on computer and makes her take charge of the Saturday detention class . Since Becky didn't reveal Lisa and Tim's contribution and vice versa , Tim shows up at detention to keep Becky company . . . Another amusing episode of " Miss Guided " with nice dialogue between Becky , Tim , and Lisa and excellent reenactment of the Breakfast Club montage . Maybe a bit more contrived that usual , but hey , what a good " wishful thinking " scenario with the three leads getting along so well together for once . Looking forward to seeing the rest of the episodes so on that note . . . |
454,219 | 11,228,318 | 1,039,341 | 7 | Frenemies was a pretty amusing last episode ( so far ) of " Miss Guided " | Becky is substituting for Lisa when Lisa arrives crying . She later finds out from Tim that her divorce became final that day . Becky embraces her and tells her to love herself before deciding to try to love someone else . Lisa resolves to do this in one day what took Becky years to do . Lisa also tells Becky she plans to ask Tim out . Becky becomes even more chagrined when she finds out that date took place on the school roof the night after she and Lisa were bonding over past times there ( like during their senior year when Lisa threw water balloons on Becky unbeknownst to her ) . When she sees Tim and Lisa alone in her classroom , Becky starts the third " fire drill " ( after a couple of previous ones were mischievously started by student Shawna , played by Rumor Willis ) for distraction . Meanwhile , Bruce , taking over for the ill Huffy , gets in trouble with the school superintendent for trying to abuse his power by detaining Shawna for 6 months . Huffy eventually bails him out . . . A little better than the last episode of " Miss Guided " I watched with nice dialogue exchanges between Judy Greer and Brooke Burns . And some funny asides from Becky about Tim . Also thought Bruce and his teen assistant had some moments . Since this was the last episode completed before the writers strike , there won't be any more this season . Judging from the ratings , this is probably it . It was a nice run while it lasted . I hope at least better things are in store for Ms . Greer and Chris Parnell . |
454,585 | 11,228,318 | 147,101 | 7 | Nursery Scandal is entertaining musical Van Beuren cartoon | Some dwarfs walk out of a tree and encounter the book " Mother Goose and Fairy Tales " summoning Mother Goose and her goose out . She and the goose fly out to a scarecrow who comes to life and embraces Mother Goose . Gooes gives a raspberry as the mother and scarecrow kiss . As this odd couple start dancing we see other nursery rhyme characters such as the Three Blind Mice and Humpty Dumpty do so too ! When they all catch the scarecrow and Mother Goose alone together , Mother Goose chases them back to the open-ended book as she grabs her goose by the neck and we fade out . Good music keeps this short entertaining from start of finish . I especially love the Three Blind Mice number with the mice in sunglasses stepping up a storm ! Well worth seeing for Van Beuren enthusiasts . |
454,874 | 11,228,318 | 479,952 | 7 | Madagascar : Escape 2 Africa was a pretty enjoyable Dreamworks Animation sequel | Today , I went with my friend who works at a movie theatre to see this Dreamworks Animation sequel to Madagascar which he had seen twice before . I remember enjoying the first one a few years ago but I waited several weeks after when this one premiered sometime last month . It was pretty uneven in spots but many scenes where Alex ( once again voiced by Ben Stiller ) either fights or dances were very funny to me . And hearing the zebra pal ( Chris Rock ) listen other of his species look , talk , and act just like him was also good for a laugh . And how sweet it was to hear Gloria the hippo ( Jada Pinkett Smith ) and that giraffe ( David Schwimmer ) declare their love for each other . Then there's those penguins , that lemur and his sidekick , and that small one being chased by a shark that provided their own amusements . And finally , there's Alex's father which is voiced by the late Bernie Mac ( who like myself and the woman who voices his wife , Sherri Shepard , was born in Chicago , Illinois ) . Mac is simply both humorous and touching in the right places and what a nice dedication they put for him at the end credits . No great shakes here but for all that , I really enjoyed Madagascar : Escape 2 Africa especially when those penguins took over the Dreamworks logo . . . |
454,834 | 11,228,318 | 235,352 | 7 | Dog Days is an amusingly sweet " Our Gang " entry | This Hal Roach comedy short , Dog Days , is the thirty-sixth entry in the " Our Gang / Little Rascals " series . As the short begins , Jackie's dog is jumping over his owner and Mickey and Joe . Mickey's dog learns how to sit . Both Mickey and Jackie say to Joe afterwards , " Let's see your dog p'form that trick . " Joe tries to get his dog to fetch a stick but he runs the other way . Mickey's mother comes and makes her son keep an eye on his baby brother Mortimer who's laying on a blanket at the field the gang is playing in . After she leaves , Mickey gives that job to his dog who's on a leash . Instead , while Mickey goes with his friends to look at a gopher , the dog takes off his collar and drinks the milk bottle that's near the baby . The dog also drinks some of a cat's milk nearby . After Mickey finds out , he disowns him . In another part of town , society girl Mary is taking a ride with a horse pulling her open-air carriage . For some reason , the horse gallops quickly causing Mary to panic . The gang sees this and Mickey sends his dog to rescue her . He does by confronting the horse . Mary , grateful for the dog and his owner for saving her life , invites the whole gang to her birthday party . When they arrive , the mother does not approve of her daughter's new scruffy friends but reluctantly gives in after Mary causes a fit . After Mary blows out her candles and everyone has cake , Mickey asks Joe where his dog is . Joe goes to the room his dog is in and finds a litter of puppies ! After showing everyone what happened , Joe says to Mickey , " Let's see your dog p'form that trick ! " . . . This was a sweetly amusing " Our Gang " entry that brings more smiles than laughs but the kids personalities are so charming at this point that you get sucked in just the same . Of note here is the addition of Eugene " Pinapple " Jackson , who replaced Ernie " Sunshine Sammy " Morrison a few shorts ago . Eugene got his nickname from Hal Roach because of his clutch of hair . Speaking of Ernie , his father , Ernie , Sr . , plays the butler here . So on that note , Dog Days is not hilarious in the usual Hal Roach tradition but is a sweetly amusing tale that does not overdo the sentiment . P . S . Kudos to the YouTube poster for once again adding the LeRoy Shield " Little Rascals " score to this short . |
454,277 | 11,228,318 | 39,320 | 7 | Dick Tracy Meets Gruesome is worthy final series entry | I have long been familiar with Dick Tracy through first his comic strip when I was a kid in the ' 70s , then an Archie series that showcased animated comic strips , then an early ' 60s cartoon series from UPA , then Warren Beaty's 1990 movie and now from the last of four RKO Tracy movies from the ' 40s . As he had in some late ' 30s Republic serials and the previous RKO entry , Ralph Byrd plays the title character whose nemesis here is the other title character played by the legendary Boris Karloff . In involves a gas that paralyzes people for several minutes that makes it easy for Karloff and his cohorts to come in an rob a bank . Also in the bank is Tess Truehart ( Anne Gwynne ) who happens to be in a phone booth when the gas goes off so she isn't affected and calls boyfriend Tracy as the robbery takes place . Nicely dramatic and comedic use of freeze-frame throughout with subsequent action sequences an added bonus . Very good performances from Karloff and his cohorts Skelton Knaggs as X-Ray and Tony Barrett as Melody . The good guys aren't so bad either ! I liked Pat's line about doing business with Boris Karloff the best . Well worth seeing for fans of ' 40s series programmers . P . S . Jason Robards , Sr . plays the bank vice president here . |
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