News

Despite a number of Millennial-and-younger Twitter users learning his name for the first time this week, animation legend Tex Avery’s influence can still be felt across the cartoon industry, having helped to create classic characters like Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, Elmer Fudd and Porky Pig. But that’s not all, folks.

It might be hard for a modern animation fan to imagine that, when the many Looney Tunes characters first hit the scene in the late 1930s, the antics of Bugs, Daffy and the gang were basically the burgeoning cartoon industry’s equivalent of a proto-punk-rock supergroup. As opposed to Walt Disney’s palatable, sentimental and exclusively kid-focused cartoons, the Warner Bros. shorts that Frederick Bean "Tex" Avery directed were more lively, outlandish and in-your-face than the usual Mickey Mouse affair of those early years.

Then, when Avery left the Looney Tunes world and signed a contract with MGM...

John Waters’s Cry-Baby is the ideal companion piece to the filmmaker’s 1988 hit Hairspray. That film takes place in the early ’60s, against the backdrop of the civil rights movement, and deals in a lighthearted fashion with thorny issues of racial segregation, while Cry-Baby uses its mid-’50s setting to poke fun at class conflict in staid Eisenhower-era Baltimore. And both films are perfectly realized period pieces awash with the music of their respective eras: Hairspray focusing on soul and R&b, Cry-Baby packed with catchy rockabilly and doowop numbers.

Cry-Baby focuses on Wade Walker (Johnny Depp), the leader of a redoubtable gang of “drapes,” a Baltimorean spin on the greasers of the time. Events begin to echo Romeo and Juliet once Cry-Baby, who’s known for driving girls crazy for the way he’s able to shed a single tear, makes a play for Allison (Amy Locane), the...

If Criterion24/7 hasn’t completely colonized your attention every time you open the Channel––this is to say: if you’re stronger than me––their May lineup may be of interest. First and foremost I’m happy to see a Michael Roemer triple-feature: his superlative Nothing But a Man, arriving in a Criterion Edition, and the recently rediscovered The Plot Against Harry and Vengeance is Mine, three distinct features that suggest a long-lost voice of American movies. Meanwhile, Nobuhiko Obayashi’s Antiwar Trilogy four by Sara Driver, and a wide collection from Ayoka Chenzira fill out the auteurist sets.

Series-wise, a highlight of 1999 goes beyond the well-established canon with films like Trick and Bye Bye Africa, while of course including Sofia Coppola, Michael Mann, Scorsese, and Claire Denis. Films starring Shirley Maclaine, a study of 1960s paranoia, and Columbia’s “golden era” (read: 1950-1961) are curated; meanwhile, The Breaking Ice,...

Roxy Cinema

Our 35mm presentation of Bertrand Bonello’s House of Tolerance screens on Saturday and Sunday; Jessica Hausner’s Hotel plays on Friday, as does a Frank Tashlin / Jerry Lewis double-bill of Hollywood or Bust and The Geisha Boy; The Bridges of Madison County and Lenny Cooke play on Saturday, while One Hand Don’t Clap shows Sunday; Red Rock West plays Saturday and Sunday.

Anthology Film Archives

Films by Jean-Luc Godard and more play in Afterimage.

Museum of Modern Art

The essential work of Ernie Gehr plays in a new retrospective.

Film Forum

The Japanese horror series continues with Ugetsu, Throne of Blood, Audition, Godzilla, and more; Chitty Chitty Bang Bang plays on 35mm this Sunday.

IFC Center

The End of Evangelion plays this Sunday; The Big Lebowski, Fight Club, Under the Silver Lake, and The Shining play late.

The post NYC Weekend Watch: House of Tolerance on 35mm...

The Notebook Primer introduces readers to some of the most important figures, films, genres, and movements in film history.Artists and Models.By rights, Martin and Lewis should have the kind of cultural footprint renders them permanent household names: the status that turns artists into Halloween costumes, as archetypal as cartoon characters and ancient gods. For ten years, from 1946 to 1956, Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis were a double act, and accurately describing how popular they were sounds like gross exaggeration. They were so big that the only fitting comparisons are to rock stars—and not just any rock stars, but Elvis Presley, or The Beatles. “For ten years after World War II, Dean and I were not only the most successful show-business act in history,” Jerry Lewis wrote with his trademark humility in Dean and Me: A Love Story (1984), “—we were history.” Their live shows were pandemonium. They reportedly made eleven million dollars in 1951 alone.

As Kenneth Branagh brings his third Hercule Poirot film to theaters with “A Haunting in Venice,” fans of the Agatha Christie character might debate: Who is the best actor to ever play the mustachioed Belgian detective? And which versions simply didn’t work?

We’ve compiled a list of the most notable actors to portray the famously fussy sleuth —from Tony Randall to PBS favorite David Suchet — and ranked them with both how true they are to Christie’s vision and how enjoyable their portrayal is to audience.

MGM

7. Tony Randall (1965)

The “Odd Couple” actor’s one outing as the detective in the Frank Tashlin-directed film “The Alphabet Murders” leans very hard into comedy. The result: Despite the mustache and bald cap and an occasionally passable accent, we get very little of “the little grey cells” character we expect and far more sight gigs and slapstick.

Prime Video

6. John Malkovich...

Mes enfants! A Haunting in Venice marks the third entry in Kenneth Branagh’s Agatha Christie movie series, finally giving us enough evidence to sift through in order to solve the present mystery: who is the best screen Hercule Poirot?

Taking into account appearance, accent, mannerisms, brilliance of mind, vanity, theatricality, humour, pathos, and of course the all-important moustache, here’s our ranking from most unfortunately disappointing version of the detective, to Poirot perfection.

A bit of housekeeping: only English-language screen Poirots have been included, so no radio, animated, international or videogame versions appear below, nor do bit-part sketch comedy Hercules. The nine actors in contention range almost a century in time, several inches in height, and vastly in their take on what makes a proper Poirot.

9. Tony Randall in The Alphabet Murders (1965)

A sense of humour is key to Poirot. His fastidiousness and affectations have always made him a...

Producer-director Michael Curtiz’s femme fatale noir has a lot going for it — high production values, VistaVision, and new film talent in Tom Tryon, Carol Ohmart, Elaine Stritch & Jody Lawrance. Excellent location shooting and a Nat King Cole song provide authentic Los Angeles atmosphere. But the storyline is ten years out of date. The advertising promoted Ms. Ohmart as a new ’50s sex symbol. She may have caught fire, but the show didn’t.

The Scarlet Hour

Region free Blu-ray

Viavision [Imprint] #152

1956 / B&w / 1:85 widescreen / 95 min. / Street Date August 31, 2022 / Available from Amazon Au / 39.95; / Available from Viavision / 39.95

Starring: Carol Ohmart, Tom Tryon, Jody Lawrance, James Gregory, Elaine Stritch, E.G. Marshall, Edward Binns, David Lewis, Billy Gray, Jacques Aubuchon, Scott Marlowe, Nat ‘King’ Cole, Richard Deacon, Benson Fong, Theron Jackson, Almira Sessions.

Cinematography: Lionel Lindon

Costumes: Edith Head

Art Directors: Hal Pereira, Tambi Larsen

Film Editor: Everett Douglas

Original Music: Leith Stevens...

The inarguably true cliché about Jean-Luc Godard was that the late filmmaker, who died this week at the age of 91, was a rule-breaker, an artist whose style changed the course of film history by revealing the medium for everything it had already been and pointing to the future of what it could eventually be. Obviously, his body of work has been influential — but that’s an understatement.

And not only for his extensive, time- and media-spanning filmography, ranging from his cucumber-cool debut, Breathless, to the didactic political experiments of the 1960s and 1970s,...

NYC Weekend Watch is our weekly round-up of repertory offerings.

Film at Lincoln Center

As the 4K restoration of Keane opens (read our interview with Lodge Kerrigan here) and Three Colors: Blue continues alongside Three Colors: White, the series “Animating Funny Pages” shows the inspiration of Owen Kline’s new feature—work by Robert Downey Sr, Frank Tashlin, and more.

Film Forum

To mark the great Alain Resnias’ centennial, a massive retrospective continues with Marienbad, Hiroshima, Je t’aime, je t’aime, and some of his lesser-seen (but no less great) features—Mélo, Stavisky, Love Unto Death, and Life is a Bed of Roses.

Bam

“Intimate Epics” continues with Happy Hour, Barry Lyndon, Andrei Rublev, and Sátántangó.

Museum of the Moving Image

Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, Licorice Pizza, and Sleeping Beauty all play on 70mm this weekend, while one of cinema’s most unsung heroes—women in Australian cinema—get...

Get in touch to send in cinephile news and discoveries. For daily updates follow us @NotebookMUBI.NEWSEnys Men (Mark Jenkin).The New York Film Festival announced its Main Slate. Highlights include new films from Park Chan-wook, Claire Denis, and Kelly Reichardt; a fiction feature from Frederick Wiseman; Mark Jenkin's Bait follow-up Enys Men; and much more.Hong Kong action director John Woo will reimagine his 1989 crime classic The Killer in a new remake due out in 2023. French actor Omar Sy (The Intouchables) will play the lead.Lars Von Trier has been diagnosed with Parkinson's disease, his production company Zoetrope has confirmed. The director is doing well, and is currently being treated for symptoms whilst continuing to work on The Kingdom Exodus.Artist and El Planeta filmmaker Amalia Ulman's visa is expiring, meaning she may have to leave the United States, where she is currently working on her next feature film.

If I ever meet an extraterrestrial who asks me to help shed some light on America in the 20th century, high on its modern Earth watchlist would be Frank Tashlin’s The Girl Can’t Help It. For my money, it is, not only the most joyous, but possibly also the coolest movie of the 1950s… and I am quite aware that this is the decade that brought us James Dean and Marlon Brando. This is largely because the film is an inspired live-action cartoon, though its director, Tish-Tash, as he was known in the loony toon circles, despite very much being an animation veteran with Porky Pig to his credit, resented anybody for making too fine a point on this… like those over-intellectualizing French kids over...

[Read the whole post on screenanarchy.com...]...

The Girl Can’t Help It

Blu ray

Criterion

1957 / 2.35:1 / 98 Min.

Starring Jayne Mansfield, Tom Ewell, Edmond O’Brien

Written by Frank Tashlin

Directed by Frank Tashlin

In 1957 it was commonplace for burlesque comedians to share the bill with a musical act or two, but in New York’s theater district one of those revues stood out from the rest—it opened on February 8th at The Roxy, a magnificent theater dubbed “The Cathedral of the Motion Picture.” But that cathedral had never held a service like Frank Tashlin’s The Girl Can’t Help It—for 98 minutes the congregation was cajoled, regaled, and set free by a parade of clownish mobsters, gyrating showgirls and hyperventilating rockers raising the roof in 4 track stereo—the only thing missing was 3D—and who needed that with Jayne Mansfield center screen and busting out all over. William Castle introduced the gimmicky Emergo for House on Haunted Hill...

2022 is, I guess, in something like swing, and if there’s any bit of normalcy we’re glad to retain it’s the monthly Criterion announcements. On the disc side of things they’ve just unveiled April’s selection, their 4K project advancing with For All Mankind. Few movies deserve that fidelity more than Al Reinert’s documentary about the lunar landings—the experience might induce a kind of hallucinatory bliss.

The colors and curves of Frank Tashlin’s The Girl Can’t Help It will pop in HD while the sounds of Bertrand Tavernier’s ’Round Midnight practically taunt you to upgrade your sound system. I’m thrilled Alex Cox (sort of) returns from semi-reclusion for a new restoration of his acid western Walker, long a glaring blind spot for yours truly; Vittorio De Sica’s Miracle in Milan and twin sibling Arie and Chuko Esiri’s recent...

It’s a very musical episode! Director and Tfh Guru, Allan Arkush, returns to talk about his favorite rock and roll movies with hosts Josh Olson and Joe Dante.

Show Notes: Movies Referenced In This Episode

No Nukes (1980)

Amazing Grace (2018) – Dennis Cozzalio’s Oscar nominee reactions

The Magnificent Ambersons (1942) – Glenn Erickson’s Criterion Blu-ray review

Get Crazy (1983) – Allan Arkush’s trailer commentary

Rock ‘n’ Roll High School (1979) – Eli Roth’s trailer commentary

Blackboard Jungle (1955) – Allan Arkush’s trailer commentary

Rock, Rock, Rock! (1956) – ​​Jesus Treviño’s trailer commentary

Mister Rock And Roll (1957)

Go, Johnny, Go! (1959) – Allan Arkush’s trailer commentary

Hail Hail Rock And Roll! (1987) – Allan Arkush’s trailer commentary

The Girl Can’t Help It (1956) – Dan Ireland’s trailer commentary

Hellzapoppin’ (1941)

Innerspace (1987) – Glenn Erickson’s Blu-ray review

Almost Famous (2000) – Allan Arkush’s trailer commentary

Wayne’s World (1992)

The Graduate (1967) – Neil Labute’s trailer commentary, Glenn Erickson’s Criterion Blu-ray review

Scorpio Rising...

The Notebook Primer introduces readers to some of the most important figures, films, genres, and movements in film history.Velvet Goldmine (1998)Todd Haynes’ Velvet Goldmine (1998) opens with a confession that swiftly becomes a command: “Although what you are about to see is a work of fiction, it should nevertheless be played at maximum volume.” Those words, mischievously repurposed from Martin Scorsese’s concert film The Last Waltz (1978), herald one of the great pop music fantasias: a cinema à clef that reimagines ’70s glam rock in an alternate dimension, where fictional versions of David Bowie, Iggy Pop and others perform a parallel version of history as we know it. Embracing the period’s mutable personae and camp energies, the film evokes the spirit of its patron saint, Oscar Wilde—depicted as the original pop star, descended to Earth from outer space—treating “art as the supreme reality and life as a mere mode of fiction,...

The Little Rascals Volume 1

Blu ray – The ClassicFlix Restorations

ClassicFlix

1929-30 / 1.37:1 / 3 Hr. 43 Min.

Starring Allen Hoskins, Jackie Cooper, Mary Ann Jackson

Cinematography by Art Lloyd, F. E. Hershey

Directed by Robert F. McGowan, Anthony Mack, James W. Horne

An epic celebration of the American melting pot, E. L. Doctorow’s Ragtime ends with a beginning; an immigrant named Tateh escapes the tenements to produce a string of comedies about mischievous slum kids. It’s a fitting, if fanciful, origin story for Hal Roach’s own series of films featuring footloose small fry; visions of ethnic harmony as idealistic as Tateh himself. Roach’s world view was formed during his early adventures as a jack of all trades—mule skinner, iron worker, and miner. And though he ended up as a movie producer he remained a prospector—one day, thanks to some bickering children, he struck gold. The dispute was...

Yasuzô Masumura’s Giants And Toys (1958) Special Edition will be available on Blu-ray May 11th from Arrow Video

Giants and Toys is a sharp and snappy corporate satire revolving around the ruthless machinations of a group of admen working in the confectionary industry.

As a new recruit to the marketing department of World Caramel, fresh-faced graduate Nishi (Hiroshi Kawaguchi) is eager to impress his ambitious and hard-nosed boss Goda (Black Test Car’s Hideo Takamatsu), even if it strains his relationships with his college friend Yokoyama (Koichi Fujiyama) and budding love interest Masami (Michiko Ono), who work at the rival companies of Giant and Apollo. With World’s lead over its competitors slipping badly, the two spot a chance to get back in the race in the shape of the pretty but unsophisticated 18-year-old, Kyoko (Hitomi Nozoe). Goda and Nishi get to work polishing this rough diamond as their new campaign girl,...

Arrow Video’s May films include a superbly quirky comedy horror debut, a vintage Japanese comedy classic, the worldwide Blu-ray debut of a provocative Seventies masterwork, and a lavish edition of an offbeat, A-list sci-fi favourite.

As expected, the releases will be superbly packaged, featuring brand new restorations and audio commentaries, rare behind-the-scenes featurettes, revealing documentaries, beautifully designed booklets with new writing on the filmmakers, and reversible sleeves with striking newly-commissioned artwork, collectable limited edition O-cards and exclusive SteelBooks.

First in May, Arrow Video presents “A Ghost Waits,” an ingeniously unique and unpredictable combo of horror, humour and heart from first-time writer/director Adam Stovall and producer/star MacLeod Andrews. From its opening spectral assault to its achingly poignant conclusion – as well as a witty depiction of afterlife bureaucracy in the vein of “Beetlejuice” and “A Matter of Life and Death – A Ghost Waits” has shocked and surprised audiences around the world,...

As Disney quietly disappears huge swathes of film history into its vaults, I'm going to spend 2020 celebrating Twentieth Century Fox and the Fox Film Corporation's films, what one might call their output if only someone were putting it out.***Twentieth Century Fox didn't weather the 60s terribly well, but what American studio did? At least they hit the 70s running with M*A*S*H, which was more or less through luck (they execs were too busy having heart failure over the cost of Patton (1970) and Tora! Tora! Tora! (1970) to bother Robert Altman, who then became a semi-regular director for them during the next decade).George Axelrod's The Secret Life of an American Wife (1968) pops out as an endearing oddity in an output mostly divided between the last gasps of formerly reliable or even inspired filmmakers (try Frank Tashlin's Doris Day spy caper Caprice [1967]), weird experiments and cheap...

The Paleface

Blu ray

Kino Lorber

1948 / 91 min.

Starring Bob Hope, Jane Russell

Cinematography by Ray Rennahan

Directed by Norman Z. McLeod

In 1934 Al Christie directed Going Spanish, a 19 minute farce billed as “An Educational Musical Comedy.” The movie is notable only for the film debut of Bob Hope whose wisecracks about the movie’s incompetence provoked Christie to cancel the comedian’s contract. Another filmmaker made his mark with the irascible producer too—Norman Z. McLeod got his feet wet working as title cartoonist for a series of silent films known as Christie’s Comedies. Pretty soon McLeod would be dealing with funny men in the flesh; W.C. Fields, the Marx Brothers, Danny Kaye and Hope himself. He would direct—and with those particular artists, “manage” might be a more appropriate term—some of the greatest comedies to emerge from the studio system.

McLeod’s technique, a hands-off approach that was the opposite of showy,...

As Disney quietly disappears huge swathes of film history into its vaults, I'm going to spend 2020 celebrating Twentieth Century Fox and the Fox Film Corporation's films, what one might call their output if only someone were putting it out.And now they've quietly disappeared William Fox's name from the company: guilty by association with Rupert Murdoch, even though he never associated with him.***I believe David Thomson once said something about Fox's fifties output being "the antithesis of cinema," which is very slightly nuts if you consider the films of Samuel Fuller (Pick-Up on South Street among others), Nicholas Ray (Bigger Than Life), Frank Tashlin (The Girl Can't Help It), and more.But we sort of know what he means: the advent of CinemaScope caused aesthetic confusion, as technical advances often do, and we can all picture laundry lines of less-than-fresh 1940s actors eking out their remaining B.

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“Bob Hope’S 10 Gallon Hats”

By Raymond Benson

Sometimes a little Bob Hope goes a long way. There’s no denying that Hope was one of the more popular comic stars of the 1940s and 50s. His star began to wane in the 60s, and then most of the Baby Boomer generation knew him as perhaps the greatest host that the Academy Awards ceremony ever had.

During Hope’s most active years, he made many solo pictures that were truly funny. He was also established as Bing Crosby’s partner in the massively successful “Road to…” movies, which arguably launched Hope’s career as a leading or co-leading man in 1940. When the scripts and direction were good, then Hope’s solo films were superb. That was not always the case.

The Paleface (1948) was co-written by Frank Tashlin (with Edmund Hartmann), who would also...

The Art Directors Guild Hall of Fame will be induct William J. Creber – the production designer responsible for, among other achievements, the Statue of Liberty scene in the original Planet of the Apes – and frequent Cecil B. DeMille collaborator Roland Anderson into its ranks at the 24th Annual Art Directors Guild’s Excellence in Production Design Awards next month.

The announcement was made today by President Nelson Coates, Adg and Awards Producer Scott Moses, Adg. The 2020 Awards will be held Saturday, February 1, at the InterContinental Los Angeles Downtown.

Creber, who died last year, is best known for his work on the Irwin Allen disaster movies The Poseidon Adventure and The Towering Inferno as well as the first three Planet of the Apes movies. He was Oscar-nominated three times, for The Greatest Story Ever Told (1965), The Poseidon Adventure (1972) and The Towering Inferno (1974). He was Emmy-nominated for his work on ABC’s...

Inside the projection booth at George Eastman Museum’s Dryden Theatre.

It’s been nearly 70 years since Kodak manufactured their last nitrate film, but the appreciation for the highly flammable, stunningly vivid film stock lives on in more ways than one in Rochester, New York. The George Eastman Museum, home of photography and moving image collections, opened in 1949 and two years later in 1951, the 500-seat Dryden Theatre was unveiled. However, it wasn’t until 1996 that the museum’s nitrate collection found a more secure home. Located in North Chili, NY–about a 15-minute drive from the museum–the unassumingly adorned Louis B. Mayer Conservation Center is a safe haven for nitrate film stock.

With room for 40,000 reels of film (about 26 million-plus feet) amongst its 12 vaults–completely separated to prevent a total catastrophe if a fire breaks out in a single vault–the center houses some of the most precious gems in film history.

Great news for fans of Doris Day! The Glass Bottom Boat is currently available on Blu-ray from Warner Archives. Ordering information can be found Here

Doris Day entered her eighth consecutive year as a top-10 box-office star when she boarded The Glass Bottom Boat, a hilarious blending of romantic comedy and the era’s burgeoning spy-movie genre. Day plays Jennifer, a girl Friday at a hush-hush aeronautics think tank. When colleagues suspect she’s an espionage agent, Jennifer chaotically sets out to clear her name. Looney Tunes alumnus Frank Tashlin directs with a cartoonist’s sensibility – or zany insensibility – embracing everything from spy guises to push-button chaos in a futuristic kitchen. With top comedians Arthur Godfrey, Paul Lynde, Edward Andrews, John McGiver, Dom DeLuise and Dick Martin in tow, The Glass Bottom Boat is loaded top to bottom with see-through fun.

Frank Tashlin directs Doris Day as “the drip-dry spy...

The Road to Singapore, Zanzibar,

Morocco and Utopia

Blu ray

Kino Lorber

1940, 41, 42, 43, 46 / 1:33:1 / 85, 91, 82, 90 Min. / Street Date – March 26, 2019

Starring Bob Hope, Bing Crosby, Dorothy Lamour

Written by Frank Butler, Don Hartman, Melvin Frank

Cinematography by William C. Mellor, Ted Tetzlaff

Directed by Victor Schertzinger, David Butler, Hal Walker

Between 1940 and 1962, Bob Hope and Bing Crosby starred in seven “Road” pictures directed by such distinct talents as David Butler, Norman McLeod and Hope’s own gag-writer Norman Panama who would lead the comedian kicking and screaming into the sixties with How to Commit Marriage, a poison pen letter to the counterculture released in 1969.

Though produced during a World War, the first four Road films avoided the cynicism of that late 60’s farce – instead they were the essence of disposable fun – populist entertainments peppered with topical wisecracks, potshots at company brass and the occasional talking fish. Beginning with Road to Singapore, a...

It’s wacky, daffy and incredibly square, yet Frank Tashlin’s late career Doris Day romp has a certain gotta-watch interest factor: the male cast of clowns performs the sexist comedy well, and Ms. Day’s fantastic screen personality brightens everything. Space-age executive lothario Rod Taylor hires Doris just for romantic purposes, while Arthur Godfrey, John McGiver, Dom DeLuise, Edward Andrews, Paul Lynde and Dick Martin execute dated slapstick amid ‘futuristic’ gadgets from the days of Buck Rogers.

The Glass Bottom Boat

Blu-ray

Warner Archive Collection

1966 / Color / 2:35 widescreen / 110 min. / Street Date March 26, 2019 / available through the WBshop / 21.99

Starring: Doris Day, Rod Taylor, Arthur Godfrey, John McGiver, Dom DeLuise,

Ellen Corby, Edward Andrews, Eric Fleming, Paul Lynde, Dick Martin.

Cinematography: Leon Shamroy

Film Editor: John McSweeney

Original Music: Frank DeVol

Written by Everett Freeman

Produced by Everett Freeman and Martin Melcher

Directed by Frank Tashlin

The great director Frank Tashlin is...

With his exaggerated visuals, eye-popping color and frantic characterizations, Frank Tashlin has been promoted to a genuine ‘fifties icon. This freewheeling comedy hits on the Top Tashlin fetish subjects: Hollywood glitz, Madison Avenue neurosis, dynamic women, wimpy men and… and… bosoms, dammit. As the bubbly yet calculating sex symbol Rita Marlowe, Jayne Mansfield places career issues way ahead of anything to do with sex. Tony Randall receives his first leading film role as a Mad Man who’ll jump through hoops to keep an account. But the surprise is Betsy Drake, who more than anyone represents the conflicts facing the pre-feminist ’50s woman: she defines success her own way.

Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter

Blu-ray

Twilight Time

1957 / Color / 2:35 widescreen / 93 min. / Street Date Feb 19, 2019 / Available from the Twilight Time Movies Store / 29.95

Starring: Tony Randall, Jayne Mansfield, Betsy Drake, Joan Blondell, John Williams, Henry Jones, Mickey Hargitay.

Cinematography: Joseph MacDonald

Film...

Thanks to some fancy cinematic footwork, Frank Tashlin and Jerry Lewis stay entirely within the confines of Hollywood for this 1958 farce set in Japan. Jerry is a down and out magician who takes a forlorn orphan boy under his wing (or is it vice versa) leading to the usual mishegoss of tomfoolery and schmaltz. A terrific score from Walter Scharf.

The post The Geisha Boy appeared first on Trailers From Hell.

Make way for the ribald, very non-pc adventures of the GI doofus Private Snafu — demonstrator of the wrong way to do everything. This alternative-press edition of Snafu delights contains all of his adventures and more — they’re mostly animated by irreverent Warners talent. Some have rhyming dialogue and narration by Theodore Geisel, aka Dr. Seuss.

Private Snafu Golden Classics

Blu-ray

Thunderbean Animation

1942-1945 / B&W / 1:37 Academy / 220 min. / Street Date November, 2015 (?) / 15.95

Starring: Private Snafu!

Presumed original music: Carl Stalling

Written in part by Theodore W. Geisel

Produced mainly by Leon Schlesinger

Directed by Chuck Jones, Friz Freleng, Frank Tashlin, Bob Clampett

I just learned a secret, it’s a honey, it’s a pip.

But the enemy is listening, so I’ll never let it slip.

‘Cause when I learn a secret, boy, I zipper up my lip!

Even us 1950s kids had to wait to find out about Private Snafu cartoons,...

The Marx Brothers – mustachioed, stogie-smoking ring-leader Groucho, chatty, Italian-accented con man Chico, silent skirt-chaser Harpo and, early on, relatively “normal” matinee idol Zeppo – first got their start as a vaudeville comedy act at the turn of the 20th century. They would go on to conquer the Broadway stage before landing in films when “talkies” took off.

Zeppo would drop out of the act after five films, becoming an engineer and a talent agent. But his older siblings would continue their frenzied verbal and visual hilarity on the big screen until 1949, when the medium of television beckoned and competed for eyeballs. Groucho would host a TV version of his radio game show, “You Bet Your Life,” for 11 seasons on NBC and appeared on Dick Cavett’s TV talk show in the late ‘60s. That is when their Marx Brothers’ anarchistic approach to humor and word-play takedowns of hypocrites and stuffy high-society...

As Ethan de Seife notes in his essential, just-published study of writer-director-cartoonist Frank Tashlin, (“Tashlinesque”, Wesleyan University Press), this final collaboration between Tashlin and Jerry Lewis accentuates the tension between their divergent comedy styles, one of “the most vexing cases in the Tashlin/Lewis authorship question.” Wacky cartoon gags alternate with rampant sentimentality in a film that anticipates Lewis’s upcoming directorial canon. If you’re curious about the semiotic fun phrase “diegetic rupture”, de Seife’s long-awaited examination of Tashlin’s well hidden career is for you.

Screwball director Frank Tashlin jumps feet first into the chaste world of Doris Day comedies and emerges with his gonzo cred intact. The 1966 film, co-starring Rod Taylor, features sufficient Tashlin-inspired sight gags and winsome Day crooning to keep fans of both artists satisfied. Featuring a supporting cast of able TV vets including Paul Lynde and John McGiver, the movie lit up the box office leading to another Tashlin-Day collaboration in 1967’s Caprice (with diminishing returns).

Part of the Jerry Lewis tribute A Mubi Jerrython. While I am relatively new to the Jerry Lewis’s work as actor and director, it’s pretty clear how his dynamic with Dean Martin functions—Martin is charismatic and street-wise, Lewis is the sympathetic goofball. This contrast is accentuated in Frank Tashlin’s Hollywood or Bust (1956), since the film is an emphatic (or should I say cartoonish?) erotic fantasy. By the end of the film, Lewis’s clumsy, childish protagonist ends up with his Hollywood crush, Anita Ekberg. If this, by itself, requires a great effort in suspending disbelief, it’s also worth mentioning that before the Martin & Lewis characters settle into their monogamous relationships, they get a lot of female attention. Literally dozens of women wave to them as Martin & Lewis drive through the USA smiling and singing, and in their every scene that’s set in a populated space (backstage,...

Hampton Fancher at the reflecting pool with Henry Moore's Reclining Figure (Lincoln Center) 1963–5 Photo: Anne-Katrin Titze

Hampton Fancher, the beguiling subject of Michael Almereyda's Escapes and co-screenwriter of Ridley Scott's Blade Runner and Denis Villeneuve's upcoming Blade Runner 2049, shared some memories of Jerry Lewis, who died at the age of 91 this past Sunday, August 20, at his home in Las Vegas, Nevada.

We started out with Michael Pfleghar's film Romeo Und Julia 70 where Hampton interviewed Jerry Lewis, went onto the connection to Joan Blackman and Hal B Wallis for Norman Taurog's Visit To A Small Planet, Rainer Werner Fassbinder's In A Year With 13 Moons (In Einem Jahr Mit 13 Monden) and You're Never Too Young with Dean Martin and Lewis, a gurney in Frank Tashlin's The Disorderly Orderly and a rabbit in Geisha Boy, meeting Jack Benny and Buddy Hackett,...

The spirit of Frank Tashlin hovers over Jerry Lewis’s first auteurist triumph which‚ came at the height of his power at Paramount, allowing him to construct a huge set, add video tape (which he’d been using since The Bellboy)‚ and fill the stage with a large number of microphones‚ a decade‚ before Altman did the same. Mel Brooks contributed a number of gags, but his original script wasn’t used.

I annoyed Jerry Lewis once by asking him about The Day the Clown Cried, a movie he starred in and directed in 1972, and then refused to release. "It's awful," said Lewis of the Holocaust drama in which he starred as a circus clown who entertains Jewish children as he leads them to their deaths in Nazi gas chambers. Why not show it and let the world decide? "I'm ashamed of it," Lewis told me flatly. When I pressed him, he flashed a look that could be subtitled "End of Discussion.

Tony Sokol Aug 21, 2017

Versatile, innovative and controversial, Jerry Lewis leaves a legacy of laughs and charity work.

Jerry Lewis, the legendary comedian, actor, singer and philanthropist, has died at the age of 91.

Lewis is as well known for starring and directing films like The Nutty Professor, Cinderfella, and The Bellboy as he is for his marathon fundraising telethons on Us TV for Muscular Dystrophy. He first found fame with his legendary ten-year partnership with Dean Martin.

Lewis paired with Dean Martin in 1946. Starting in nightclubs, Martin and Lewis moved their way through almost countless radio shows and made 16 movies. The pair costarred in such films as My Friend Irma (1949), At War With the Army (1950), Sailor Beware (1952), The Caddy (1953), Living It Up (1954), You’re Never Too Young (1955), and Artists And Models (1955). The last movie they made together was Hollywood Or Bust (1956).

After the partnership ended, Lewis teamed with director Frank Tashlin...

Jerry Lewis, an actor and auteur who was one of the most influential forces in American comedy, died Sunday morning at his Las Vegas. He was 91.

"Legendary entertainer Jerry Lewis passed away peacefully today of natural causes at 91 at his home with family by his side," his family said in a statement to the Las Vegas Review-Journal writer John Katsilometes. No cause of death was announced.

In a career that spanned vaudeville, radio, television, film and philanthropy, Lewis established the persona of a manic, juvenile jokester, which belied darker, more self-lacerating elements below the surface,...

You pick up a lot of baggage when you live to be 100, a sentiment confirmed by the long, long movie career of Bob Hope. His unofficial status as the preeminent entertainer of the 20th century is open to debate but he was without a doubt that era’s most conspicuous comedian. Marlon Brando’s infamous dismissal, “He’ll go to the opening of a market to receive an award”, was mean-spirited but it had the sting of truth; for over eighty years Hope was everywhere, for better or worse.

Living up to his nickname, “Rapid Robert”, the 31-year old Hope shot out of the gate in 1934 with a series of quick-on-their feet comic shorts revolving around his unique presence as a leading man and comical sidekick rolled into one. It wasn’t long before he was starring in pleasantly prosaic musicals like The Big Broadcast of 1938 and handsomely mounted...

By Lee Pfeiffer

Olive Films has released the 1963 Jerry Lewis comedy "Who's Minding the Store?" on Blu-ray. The film was made at the peak of Lewis's solo career following the breakup of Martin and Lewis some years before. The movie was directed by Frank Tashlin, who collaborated with Lewis on his best productions. It can be argued that, with the exception of Lewis's inspired "The Nutty Professor" (released the same year as "Store"), his work never reached the heights that he achieved by working with Tashlin, a talented director and screenwriter who never quite got the acclaim he deserved. "Store" is one of Lewis's best movies because it's also one of his funniest. He plays Norman Phiffier, a nerdy manchild who fails at even the most elementary of careers. When we meet him he's trying to make ends meet by running his own dog-walking service, which provides some amusing sight...

Commentary Commentary“There’s no number in this movie that we didn’t try cutting at some point.”

La La Land may not have won Best Picture at the Academy Awards, but it’s still a delightfully mesmerizing experience with one of last year’s best endings. It hits Blu-ray/DVD next week, and along with an 80 minute making-of documentary the disc features a commentary with the film’s award-winning writer/director and composer.

Keep reading to see what I heard on the commentary for…

La La Land (2016)

Commentators: Damien Chazelle (writer/director), Justin Hurwitz (composer)

1. Chazelle wanted his Cinemascope opening to replicate the widening aspect ratio he recalled seeing in Frank Tashlin’s 1956 film, The Girl Can’t Help It.

https://medium.com/media/9380e26eac8c1822373ef72457dcfef7/href

2. The opening scene is modeled in some ways on 1932’s Love Me Tonight which “begins with a cacophony of street noises, Paris...

Broadway’s delightful — but wickedly accurate — satire of big business was brought to movie screens almost intact, with the story, the stars, the styles and dances kept as they were in the long-running show that won a Pulitzer Prize. This is the place to see Robert Morse and Michele Lee at their best — it’s one of the best, and least appreciated movie musicals of the 1960s.

How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying

Blu-ray

Twilight Time

1967 / Color / 2:35 widescreen / 121 min. / Street Date March 14, 2017 / Available from the Twilight Time Movies Store 29.95

Starring: Robert Morse, Michele Lee, Rudy Vallee, Anthony Teague, Maureen Arthur, Sammy Smith, Robert Q. Lewis, Carol Worthington, Kathryn Reynolds, Ruth Kobart, George Fennemann, Tucker Smith, David Swift.

Cinematography: Burnett Guffey

Film Editor: Allan Jacobs, Ralph E. Winters

Original Music: Nelson Riddle

Art Direction: Robert Boyle

Visual Gags: Virgil Partch

From the play written by Frank Loesser, Abe Burrows,...

Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown

Blu-ray

The Criterion Collection 855

1988 / Color / 1:85 widescreen / 89 min. / Mujeres al borde de un ataque de nervios / available through The Criterion Collection / Street Date February 21, 2017 / 39.95

Starring Carmen Maura, Fernando Guillén, Antonio Banderas, Julieta Serrano, Rossy de Palma, María Barranco, Kiti Manver, Guillermo Montesinos, Chus Lampreave, Yayo Calvo, Loles León, Ángel de Andrés López, José Antonio Navarro.

Cinematography: José Luis Alcaine

Film Editor: José Salcedo

Original Music: Bernardo Bonezzi

Produced by: Augustin Almodóvar

Written and Directed by Pedro Almodóvar

Connected film festival attendees learned about Pedro Almodóvar before everybody else, especially if they had an understanding of new developments in Spanish cinema. Film school had shown us nothing but the very exceptional work of Luis Buñuel, most of which is really from Mexico and France. In the 1980s we Angelenos were just getting access to films by the old-school ‘traditional’ rebel Spaniards Carlos Saura and Juan Antonio Bardem.

As we head into the holiday season, Wamg brings you our list of the Best Non-Traditional Christmas Movies to watch after the Holiday ham, pretty presents, and multiple viewings of White Christmas, Home Alone and Miracle On 34th Street are a thing of Christmas Past.

Our choices are filled snarky mistletoe carnage and crafty comedy – Geek style. Santa Claus is coming to town in these “More Naughty Than Nice”. films.

We’ve made a list and checked it twice with our lineup of not just the 20 Best holiday films but the Top 21 Non-Traditional Christmas Movies. After the success of Krampus, we just had to add it!

We kick off our list with our Honorable Mention –

Jingle All The Way

Christmas; It’s the most magical time of the year. High powered businessman Howard Langston (Arnold Schwarzenegger), is hard at work taking last-minute orders from customers to whom he just can...

Dreyer on the set. Courtesy of Dfi.Located in Glostrup, a quiet suburb of Copenhagen, the Danish Film Institute’s Archive is where a great portion of Danish film history, but also some unique prints of world cinema heritage, have entered a pleasant dormancy of minus 5°C. The mundane looking front building is at the back attached to vaults, sheltering thousands of films and film objects. Inside, there is nothing as ear-pleasing as the silence of a film archive, where the continuous and vague hum of ventilators is the closest thing to the murmur of celluloid.Mikael Braae, film historian and curator of the feature films at the Dfi, generously took me on an tour of the Archive which, after passing through freezing vaults, arrived at a huge storage room where on a temporary platform my attention is brought to a wrapped object: the editing table of the spiritual father of Danish cinema,...

The Fourth Wall is broken early and often in Frank Tashlin's wacked-out followup to The Girl Can't Help It, which bears little resemblance to the Broadway play it's based on but is still a heck of a lot of fun. 1950s "culture" is skewered mercilessly, especially television--at times it looks like this was produced directly by The National Association of Theater Owners. Jayne Mansfield's career highlight.

Dirty cops were a movie vogue in 1954, and Edmond O'Brien scores as a real dastard in this overachieving United Artists thriller. Dreamboat starlet Marla English is the reason O'Brien's detective kills for cash, and then keeps killing to stay ahead of his colleagues. And all to buy a crummy house in the suburbs -- this man needs career counseling. Shield for Murder Blu-ray Kl Studio Classics 1954 / B&W / 1:75 widescreen / 82 min. / Street Date June 21, 2016 / available through Kino Lorber / 29.95 Starring Edmond O'Brien, Marla English, John Agar, Emile Meyer, Carolyn Jones, Claude Akins, Herbert Butterfield, Hugh Sanders, William Schallert, Robert Bray, Richard Deacon, David Hughes, Gregg Martell, Stafford Repp, Vito Scotti. Cinematography Gordon Avil Film Editor John F. Schreyer Original Music Paul Dunlap Written by Richard Alan Simmons, John C. Higgins from the novel by William P. McGivern <Produced by Aubrey Schenck, (Howard W. Koch) Directed by Edmond O'Brien, Howard W. Koch

Reviewed by Glenn Erickson

Here's the kind of '50s movie we love, an ambitious, modest crime picture that for its time had an edge. In the 1950s our country was as blind to the true extent of police corruption as it was to organized crime. Movies about bad cops adhered to the 'bad apple' concept: it's only crooked individuals that we need to watch out for, never the institutions around them. Thanks to films noir, crooked cops were no longer a film rarity, even though the Production Code made movies like The Asphalt Jungle insert compensatory scenes paying lip service to the status quo: an imperfect police force is better than none. United Artists in the 1950s helped star talent make the jump to independent production, with the prime success stories being Burt Lancaster and Kirk Douglas. But the distribution company also funded proven producers capable of putting out smaller bread 'n' butter movies that could prosper if costs were kept down. Edward Small, Victor Saville, Levy-Gardner-Laven. Aubrey Schenck and Howard C. Koch produced as a team, and for 1954's Shield for Murder Koch co-directed, sharing credit with the film's star, Edmond O'Brien. The show is a smart production all the way, a modestly budgeted 'B' with 'A' ambitions. O'Brien was an industry go-getter trying to channel his considerable talent in new directions. His leading man days were fading but he was in demand for parts in major films like The Barefoot Contessa. The producers took care with their story too. Writers Richard Alan Simmons and John C. Higgins had solid crime movie credits. Author William P. McGivern wrote the novel behind Fritz Lang's The Big Heat as well as Rogue Cop and Odds Against Tomorrow. All of McGivern's stories involve crooked policemen or police corruption. Shield for Murder doesn't tiptoe around its subject matter. Dirty cop Detective Lt. Barney Nolan (O'Brien) kills a hoodlum in an alley to steal $25,000 of mob money. His precinct boss Captain Gunnarson (Emile Meyer) accepts Barney's version of events and the Asst. D.A. (William Schallert) takes the shooting as an open and shut case. Crime reporter Cabot (Herbert Butterfield) has his doubts, and lectures the squad room about the abuse of police power. Barney manages to placate mob boss Packy Reed (Hugh Sanders), but two hoods continue to shadow him. Barney's plan for the money was to buy a new house and escape the rat race with his girlfriend, nightclub cashier Patty Winters (Marla English). But a problem surfaces in the elderly deaf mute Ernst Sternmueller (David Hughes), a witness to the shooting. Barney realizes that his only way forward is to kill the old man before he can tell all to Det. Mark Brewster (John Agar), Barney's closest friend. Once again one of society's Good Guys takes a bite of the forbidden apple and tries to buck the system. Shield for Murder posits an logical but twisted course of action for a weary defender of the law who wants out. Barney long ago gave up trying to do anything about the crooks he can't touch. The fat cat Packy Reed makes the big money, and all Barney wants is his share. Barney's vision of The American Dream is just the middle-class ideal, the desirable Patty Winters and a modest tract home. He's picked it out - it sits partway up a hill in a new Los Angeles development, just finished and already furnished. Then the unexpected witness shows up and everything begins to unravel; Barney loses control one step at a time. He beats a mob thug (Claude Akins) half to death in front of witnesses. When his pal Mark Brewster figures out the truth, Barney has to use a lot of his money to arrange a getaway. More mob trouble leads to a shoot-out in a high school gym. The idea may have been for the star O'Brien to coach actors John Agar and Marla English to better performances. Agar is slightly more natural than usual, but still not very good. The gorgeous Ms. English remains sweet and inexpressive. After several unbilled bits, the woman often compared to Elizabeth Taylor was given "introducing" billing on the Shield for Murder billing block. Her best-known role would be as The She-Creature two years later, after which she dropped out to get married. Co-director O'Brien also allows Emile Meyer to go over the top in a scene or two. But the young Carolyn Jones is a standout as a blonde bargirl, more or less expanding on her small part as a human ashtray in the previous year's The Big Heat. Edmond O'Brien is occasionally a little to hyper, but he's excellent at showing stress as the trap closes around the overreaching Barney Nolan. Other United Artists budget crime pictures seem a little tight with the outdoors action -- Vice Squad, Witness to Murder, Without Warning -- but O'Brien and Koch's camera luxuriates in night shoots on the Los Angeles streets. This is one of those Blu-rays that Los Angelenos will want to freeze frame, to try to read the street signs. There is also little downtime wasted in sidebar plot detours. The gunfight in the school gym, next to an Olympic swimming pool, is an action highlight. The show has one enduring sequence. With the force closing in, Barney rushes back to the unfinished house he plans to buy, to recover the loot he's buried next to its foundation. Anybody who lived in Southern California in the '50s and '60s was aware of the massive suburban sprawl underway, a building boom that went on for decades. In 1953 the La Puente hills were so rural they barely served by roads; the movie The War of the Worlds considered it a good place to use a nuclear bomb against invading Martians. By 1975 the unending suburbs had spread from Los Angeles, almost all the way to Pomona. Barney dashes through a new housing development on terraced plots, boxy little houses separated from each other by only a few feet of dirt. There's no landscaping yet. Even in 1954 $25,000 wasn't that much money, so Barney Nolan has sold himself pretty cheaply. Two more latter-day crime pictures would end with ominous metaphors about the oblivion of The American Dream. In 1964's remake of The Killers the cash Lee Marvin kills for only buys him a patch of green lawn in a choice Hollywood Hills neighborhood. The L.A.P.D. puts Marvin out of his misery, and then closes in on another crooked detective in the aptly titled 1965 thriller The Money Trap. The final scene in that movie is priceless: his dreams smashed, crooked cop Glenn Ford sits by his designer swimming pool and waits to be arrested. Considering how well things worked out for Los Angeles police officers, Edmond O'Brien's Barney Nolan seems especially foolish. If Barney had stuck it out for a couple of years, the new deal for the L.A.P.D. would have been much better than a measly 25 grand. By 1958 he'd have his twenty years in. After a retirement beer bash he'd be out on the road pulling a shiny new boat to the Colorado River, like all the other hardworking cops and firemen enjoying their generous pensions. Policemen also had little trouble getting house loans. The joke was that an L.A.P.D. cop might go bad, but none of them could be bribed. O'Brien directed one more feature, took more TV work and settled into character parts for Jack Webb, Frank Tashlin, John Ford, John Frankenheimer and finally Sam Peckinpah in The Wild Bunch, where he was almost unrecognizable. Howard W. Koch slowed down as a director but became a busy producer, working with Frank Sinatra for several years. He eventually co-produced Airplane! The Kl Studio Classics Blu-ray of Shield for Murder is a good-looking B&W scan, framed at a confirmed-as-correct 1:75 aspect ratio. The picture is sharp and detailed, and the sound is in fine shape. The package art duplicates the film's original no-class sell: "Dame-Hungry Killer-Cop Runs Berserk! The first scene also contains one of the more frequently noticed camera flubs in film noir -- a really big boom shadow on a nighttime alley wall. Kino's presentation comes with trailers for this movie, Hidden Fear and He Ran All the Way. On a scale of Excellent, Good, Fair, and Poor, Shield for Murder Blu-ray rates: Movie: Good Video: Very Good Sound: Excellent Supplements: Trailers for Shield for Murder, Hidden Fear, He Ran All the Way Deaf and Hearing Impaired Friendly? N0; Subtitles: None Packaging: Keep case Reviewed: June 7, 2016 (5115murd)

Visit DVD Savant's Main Column Page Glenn Erickson answers most reader mail: dvdsavant@mindspring.com

Text © Copyright 2016 Glenn Erickson...

You see what you’ve done with your ironic hipster love of terrible movies? I was 26 when Space Jam was released to theaters in 1996. I’m a big fan of the classic Warner Bros. animation. I’ve purchased Looney Tunes collections on laserdisc, DVD, and now Blu-ray, and I love revisiting the work of Tex Avery, Bob Clampett, Maurice Noble, Friz Freleng, Chuck Jones, Frank Tashlin, and Robert McKimson, among others. If you to ask me what televised sport is my favorite, I’ve always preferred basketball to anything else because of the pace and because of the simplicity of the game itself. It’s very pure, and even the worst NBA game is entertaining. And when it comes to Bill Murray… well, he’s on that very short list of my favorite things. Not just favorite people, and not just favorite movie stars, but overall favorite things. That’s...