THERE'S A RIOT GOIN' ON UP IN CEL BLOC #10

This week's cartoon reviews on the Cinema 4: Cel Bloc -
Sunday, 6/18/06: Peg Leg Pedro (1939) Cel Bloc Rating: 7
Monday, 6/19/06: The King of Bugs (1930) Cel Bloc Rating: 4
Tuesday, 6/20/06: Joe Glow, the Firefly (1941) Cel Bloc Rating: 6
Wednesday, 6/21/06: Snowtime for Comedy (1941) Cel Bloc Rating: 6
Thursday, 6/22/06: The Curious Puppy (1939) Cel Bloc Rating: 6
Friday, 6/23/06: Dog Gone Modern (1939) Cel Bloc Rating: 6
Saturday, 6/24/06: A Fireman's Life (1933) Cel Bloc Rating: 6

RECENTLY RATED MOVIES #19

It's amazing the expectations that we carry into films when we watch them for the first time. A couple months of build-up for Nacho Libre, including downloading the wonderful preproduction podcasts, and an unfettered affection for the D. and J.B. and K.G. left me hanging a little bit when I watched the actual film. I still enjoyed it, and my laughter became unchained and wild in a few scenes, but I couldn't help feeling some disappointment over the final result. Still, thinking about getting some corn on a stick...

It's amazing how an old favorite like The Uninvited can show up on TV at the exact moment when you a) have some downtime, b) really need a relaxing plunge into familiarity, and c) have already watched three Ray Milland movies in the previous couple of weeks. Why not? And why is this seemingly dated ghostly creaker from 1944 still scarier than most of the films made since? I should actually make this one part of my Slipped Discs series of neglected films not on DVD (next one up on Wednesday, by the way), but the last one was Milland's It Happens Every Spring, so I want a little variety. Do keep your eyes peeled for this one as you navigate the ol' TiVo in the future. Bitter ghosts and warped family secrets...

It's amazing when even I can flit about the channels and run into a film that I have sincerely never heard of before. And it is a satire on the television advertising business and the marketing of old singing cowboy films in the early 50's. And it stars no less than Fred MacMurray as the scheming copywriter and Howard Keel as the "fake" version of an old cowboy star who has gone missing once his career's second act has come alive. Callaway Went Thataway isn't great, it's merely good, but with inventive direction and a snappy screenplay from The Court Jester masterminds Melvin Frank and Norman Panama, I am sore that I didn't change the "Keep Until" command on my Moxi so that I could give it a second go. Now I have to wait for it to air again.

It's amazing how you can watch a film, like The Weather Man, just before you go to bed and think "Well, that was OK", and then you zip through your nightly cavalcade of dreamland weirdness, some of which involves elements from the films you've watched recently, and when you wake up the next morning, you have a greater appreciation for what the film was trying to say. I still think, "Well, that was OK", but I must admit I have more respect for it than when I shut off the DVD last night.

It's amazing how you can watch a film like Scream 2 just a few years after its release, have the same exact problems with the film that you had when you first saw it, like the same things about it as that first time, and come out liking it even less than you once did. And not just for the gratuitously bad Jerry O'Connell segments (and not just for his Top Gun-referencing singing scene, which is supposed to be bad but which has the added emphasis of being poorly shot, and which is crime enough on its own for referencing that Cruise piece of crap in the first place). It all used to seem so much more clever, but even the first Scream left me a little colder than most people found it. Perhaps because I remembered when Wes Craven used to be truly shocking...

It's amazing how even after years of proof that Woody Allen is far more than a mere "comedy" writer and director, that I can get sucked into a film like Match Point and be shocked by the fact that there is hardly a provoked laugh in the entire piece. Seemingly reinvigorated by a change of location to London (for this and his next couple of films), Allen laces this with numerous neo-noir touches, and the film swerves emotionally at several sharp junctures. I was about an hour and a half into it before I reminded myself that this was a Woody Allen film, because while I found some of the things that the characters archly amusing, it's played almost as a straight semi-Hitchcockian thriller (though I hate the term, there is really no surer way to describe it but as such). As Allen dramas go, I find it light-years more interesting than something like September, but then, that film didn't have Scarlet Johannson. Perhaps some Zelig-like editing with her in place of Mia Farrow would change my mind?

And Kiss Kiss Bang Bang? It's simply amazing...

The List:
Nacho Libre (2006) - 6; The Uninvited (1944) (TCM) - 8; Callaway Went Thataway (1951) (TCM) - 6; The Weather Man (2005) (DVD) - 6; Kiss Kiss Bang Bang (2005) (DVD) - 7; Match Point (2005) (DVD) - 7; Scream 2 (1999) (IFC) - 5.

FIVE DISCS OF DEATH #7

Nosferatu, eine Symphonie des Grauens (1922)
[Nosferatu, A Symphony of Horror]
Director: F.W. Murnau
Cinema 4 Rating: 8
The first vampire film that I ever saw, it, along with Keaton's Seven Chances and Cops and Chaplin's The Gold Rush, kick-started my fascination with silent film. Not only my first vampire film, but also the one that creeps me out the most, even to this day. Perhaps because its not about blood or cheap scares or insane special effects; like many Murnau films, it's about mood. This particular mood contains a virus that slowly rots away at your soul and your psyche. The mood works over you much like the plague represented in the film, and you are already half defeated with the sickness by the time that Orlock makes his way into the town of Wisborg. Sure, it's not half as erotic as its plagiarized source material, Bram Stoker's Dracula, but in some ways, I feel this version gets closer to the syphillitic nightmare that lies at the heart of Stoker's words, himself rumored to be consumed with the disease. Besides, I've never been into the "cool" vampire thing: the cape, the affected politeness, the romantic airs, the hypnotic longings -- poppycock. Orlock is my idea of a truly frightening vampiric figure -- nasty, ugly, rat-like, practically bursting with craving due to its narcotic addiction for its victim's blood. This is not to say that I discount Lee, Lugosi, Langella, Oldman and all of the other Draculas and knockoff vampires. I enjoy them all for different reasons, and Dracula is one of my personal favorite books. And I understand the whole disguised-horror aspect which allows Dracula to entrap his victims. I just happen to prefer the hideous Max Schreck, who has to really work to get close to the ladies. That's something that I can identify with, not the schemings of some pretty-boy lothario.

Yellow Submarine (1969)
Director: George Dunning
Cinema 4 Rating: 8
I am so happy that my nephew has been introduced to this film at the age of 5, because that makes him half the age his father (my brother Otis) was when he and I stayed up until 12:30 in the morning one summer weeknight to watch this on the CBS Late Night Movie. It was the first Beatles movie that I ever saw (I caught Help! for the first time about a month later on the same series), and though I was familiar with their music in a subliminal fashion, it was the one that made me crack open for the first time the Beatles albums that my cousin Brad had left behind when he disappeared to the Lower 48, and thus, I started the swift process towards my own personal Beatlemania. By the time that I saw Help!, I was fully hooked. What I didn't know at the time, and a fact of which many novice viewers of the film are not aware, is that outside of the music, the voices of the Beatles are not used in the film (they only endorsed the project as a way of fulfilling their contractual movie obligations). Didn't matter at the time, doesn't matter now; the film is bright, marvelous fun and brought to life through some wonderful, if limited, animation. What is important is that the charm of the Beatles shines through. And though I didn't get to see the sequence built around the song when I was a kid (it was deleted from the American release), via the soundtrack album I was introduced to the song Hey Bulldog, which has remained one of my favorite Beatles songs to this day.

Road Games (1981)
Director: Richard Franklin
Cinema 4 Rating: 6
An old favorite from the video rental days in the 80's, when you jumped on any new horror film that came out. All of the Italian giallos were cut to shit and retitled, nothing was letterboxed, and you didn't care what you saw (most of them were crap), as long as it was bloody as hell. Then, every once in a while, you ran into something different and got a nice kick in the boo-boo. From the cover, you'd think it was a generic slasher film, and it prominently features Jamie Lee Curtis, and at the time, that meant "slasher film". What I got was a different take on the sub-genre, with a good dose of Hitchcockian thriller ala Spielberg's Duel, and all set in the Australian outback with a gabby Stacy Keach trying to figure out some of the weird things that he has been noticing but that no one else believes has been happening. Some of it doesn't quite work, and I don't like it nearly as much as I once did, but there are enough memorable scenes and a quaint characterization from Keach to make it worthwhile. Once upon a time, Franklin was considered a talented up-and-comer in the Hitchcock mode (he did direct Psycho II right after this one, after all), and then it went to hell for him. He's still around doing TV series and the occasional movies, but some of them turned out to be huge stinkers (Link, anyone?). Check this one out for some of his early promise.

Boogie Nights (1997) Director: Paul Thomas Anderson Cinema 4 Rating: 8
To anyone that hasn't seen an actual Johnny Wadd film, you can't possibly find the Wadd knockoffs shown in Boogie Nights quite as hilarious unless you have seen the real deal. Until you have, John C. Reilly and Mark Wahlberg just seem to be doing a generic (though funny) version of good actors pretending to be bad actors. Once you see the evidence that what they are enacting was done in real life, and in the same crappy manner, the movie takes you to even higher levels of both satire and pain. The names and details have been changed to protect the not-so-innocent, for the film is pastiche and not meant to be biography in any means, but the world they inhabit was ever so real in those days: the "lucky" and highly untalented goofballs played by Reilly and Wahlberg get paid to bang hot women, achieve a certain level of low fame, party nonstop in a cloud of cocaine dust -- and then the bottom drops out. Reality hits, and like anybody, these "stars" have to learn to cope with a world that isn't necessarily not suited for their type, but instead they discover how very ordinary they are in the context of the rest of the world. A big dick might get you laid or get you cast in a porn film where you get laid and paid, but following that "dream" world, unless you are comfortable with them, there are relatively scant ways in which it can help you make a living. "How you gonna keep 'em down on the farm...?", indeed. Nobody is really happy in this film -- it might look like a party, but like all parties, it has to end sometime, and for some in the film, there is no next party. The cast is absolutely amazing, and, as the leader of this little "family", Burt Reynolds was robbed of an Oscar.

Cry-Baby (1990)
Director: John Waters
Cinema 4 Rating: 6
I like this movie slightly more in my head than I do watching it, but it is still fun to view again. I enjoy the soundtrack wholeheartedly, both the original music (James Intveld and Rachel Sweet do the fine vocals for the otherwise perfectly cast Johnny Depp and Amy Locane) and the 50's oldies that are perfectly matched to their scenes. Getting it on DVD was great, but I noticed more than ever that not everything comes off as well as it should. I'm hoping that the stage version will correct some of the glaring story problems, some of which were corrected by the "Director's Cut" version of the DVD. Like many modern movie musicals, I wish that there was a little more reliance on music and a lot less on action -- it is a musical, after all, and four or five set production numbers are not enough to sell me on it. But what is here is a lot of fun, provided that you are down with John Waters' "unique" vision. Luckily for me, I have been for a number of years, ever since my world was rocked by my first experience with Pink Flamingoes. In fact, I much prefer the younger Waters' ouevre, though he can still surprise every now and then. (As of this writing, I have yet to see his latest exercise in "bad taste", A Dirty Shame. It got pretty bad reviews across the board, so, of course, I am really excited to see it.) Even in PG-rating land, this film is still of a piece with his earlier work, though I've haven't grown comfortable with Waters' role as a culturally accepted flagbearer of bad taste. But now, nothing's truly shocking since the internet came along as the media of choice for provocateurs of outré visions. We are now all part of the same enormous worldwide freak show, and Waters' had to learn to evolve his unique talents to the new mainstream. I like that he is reaching the masses with his toned down but still subversive message, but I sort of long for the days of singing assholes, egg-sucking grandmas, Divine getting raped by a giant lobster or eating dog crap, and Babs Johnson and her incestuous son licking every inch of the horrible Marbles' household. Now, that's entertainment...

THERE'S A RIOT GOIN' ON UP IN CEL BLOC #9

This week on the Cinema 4: Cel Bloc -
Sunday, 6/11/06: The Village Barber (1930) Cel Bloc Rating: 7
Monday, 6/12/06: Betty Boop's Crazy Inventions (1932) Cel Bloc Rating: 7
Tuesday, 6/13/06: Hep Cat Symphony (1949) Cel Bloc Rating: 6
Wednesday, 6/14/06: A Coach for Cinderella (1936) Cel Bloc Rating: 5
Thursday, 6/15/06: A Ride for Cinderella (1937) Cel Bloc Rating: 5
Friday, 6/16/06: In My Merry Oldsmobile (1930) Cel Bloc Rating: 6
Saturday, 6/17/06: Balloon Land (1935) Cel Bloc Rating: 8

SLIPPED DISCS: IT HAPPENS EVERY SPRING (1949)

If you possessed a chemical substance that could gain you an edge in the competitive field of your choice -- say, baseball, for instance -- and you knew it could help you obtain large amounts of money and prestige, even for a single season, and you were reasonably sure that nobody could detect what you were using, would you use it? Or would your conscience weigh you down with guilt over your ill-gotten fortune and fame?

Unfortunately, such moral questions are barely touched on in 20th Century Fox's 1949 horsehide fantasy, It Happens Every Spring, but that doesn't diminish its entertainment value. Yeah, I've got my favorite baseball movies: Bull Durham, Pride of the Yankees, Eight Men Out, Bingo Long's Traveling All-Stars and Motor Kings. And I could name a few more of which I am enamored, but none more so than this ridiculous, highly improbable goof-fest starring Ray Milland as a mild-mannered and low-paid college professor named Vernon Simpson who wants to earn enough money to be able to support his socially superior girlfriend, who just so happens to be the daughter of the college dean. To do so, he takes advantage of a lab accident: Vernon's experiment to create a formula that repels wood is devastated by some timely smashing from a baseball clobbered from the school ballfield adjacent to his lab. As he goes to clean up the mess, he rolls the ball which has fallen into the leftover fluid across the desk, and it skips over a ruler on the desktop. He rolls it again, and it takes great effort to go completely around the ruler.

Since we already know that Prof. Simpson is a baseball nut, it is a logical step for him to pitch the ball a few times to a couple of underachieving players (including the future Skipper from Gilligan's Island, Alan Hale, Jr.) from one of his classes. They can't touch the ball, as it flips and zings and seems to contort reality itself to avoid touching the bat. (It is a marvelous thrill each time this occurs.) Because he wants to marry his girl but is ashamed at his low social status, he runs away and convinces a big league team to take him on (incognito, with the pseudonym of Kelly), and bargains a contract where he promises to win over 30 games, and he only gets paid $1000 a game if he actually wins the game. (The title refers to both romance and baseball; in my world, there is little difference.)

I'll let the movie take it from there, but be warned. The baseball played in the film is horrible. Milland is no pitcher (though his character is supposed to be an adequate enough pitcher without the stuff, which is never named in a "Flubber"-like fashion), and his delivery is so awkward that I doubt he could make it to the plate, let alone throw a no-hitter. And Paul Douglas as Monk, Vernon's roommate and catcher (none of those jokes, please) fares almost as bad in regards to his ballplaying abilities. At least, in the original (and far better) version of Angels in the Outfield, Douglas played the lead character of the manager of a baseball team, so he didn't have to do any ballplaying. Though he does have a good catcher's build (at least, for the times). But the ballplaying in this film is not the point; the fact that no one can touch one of his pitches is... and that they show in spades. Once that awkward pitch floats its way to the plate, and then goes through all of its contortions, Milland's painfully odd style looks like genius, because no one else could ever duplicate it. If only they knew his little secret...

Without ever meaning to, how prescient is this unassuming flick? You could remake this film now with the intent to satirize the painful conflict now brewing in Major League Baseball due to the Barry Bonds steroids scandal (which is only going to get bigger and worse over the next few years). You would also probably have to make the film without the expressed written consent of Major League Baseball, so touchy are its overlords on the subject. It is both the triumph and the downfall of this film that Vernon, who loves baseball so much that he interrupts his classes to listen to radio broadcasts, never really considers the fact that he is cheating on a scale larger than anyone has ever cheated in the history of the game. It actually becomes such a small concern that it disappears from the film until near its end (and that gives away nothing).

Of course, baseball has had spitball-throwing pitchers since the beginning of the game's origins, and I, for one, applaud that fact. It is as ingrained in the sport as the three bases and home plate. And umpires should continue to check every now and then to try and catch one of these would-be despoilers of the National Pastime. How dare they! And Fox should check their vaults every now and then and release films like this on DVD, so that I can watch them without commercial interruptions and with a pristine print. (And don't write me and tell me that it is still available on VHS. VHS is sooooo 1949... like this film...)

POPEYE FIGHTS TO THE FINISHK ON DVD! (PUNDITS CLAIM SPINACH-AIDED VICTORY)

POPEYE TO BE FINALLY RELEASED ON DVD

A couple months ago, I accused King Features Syndicate, the intellectual owner of Popeye, of cultural crimes for continuing to withhold the full slate of classic Max Fleischer Popeye shorts from being released on DVD, due to an ongoing decades-old dispute with Warner Bros., the studio which currently owns the rights to the library. Warners' has apparently been restoring the films in anticipation of a settlement in the case, and on Wednesday, June 9, 2006, a date that will ring loud and true in the hearts of cartoon fans for eternity, that time has come. The two entities have come to terms, Warners' kicks some serious ass, and now a complete Fleischer DVD boxed set of the Popeye series will be coming out sometime in 2007.

I'm sorry, that is all that I can write about it at one time. I can barely keep my fingers on the keys due to the fact that I keep floating up into the air with laughter. (Maybe I shouldn't write after I've seen part of Mary Poppins...)

Now, let's get to work on a definitive Betty Boop collection...

THERE'S A RIOT GOIN' ON UP IN CEL BLOC #8

A second week of Aesop's Fables from the Van Beuren Studios in the early 1930's was the focus, but the next couple weeks will see the spotlight hopping around between numerous studios and stars. I'm feeling the need to be a little more diverse with my choices for a while, so with the cute but sneakily dope-tinged Fly Frolic, I am bidding adieu to Van Beuren for the forseeable future. (I still have four or five films left on the first volume of the Thunderbean collection, but I shall save them for another time). Hopping over to Ub Iwerks' studio today for The Village Barber with Flip the Frog. As for the past week, go check them out!

The past week on the Cinema 4: Cel Bloc -
Sunday, 6/04/06: A Romeo Robin (1930) Cel Bloc Rating: 4
Monday, 6/05/06: Hot Tamale (1930) Cel Bloc Rating: 5
Tuesday, 6/06/06: Gypped in Egypt (1930) Cel Bloc Rating: 6
Wednesday, 6/07/06: Makin' 'Em Move (1931) Cel Bloc Rating: 6
Thursday, 6/08/06: The Family Shoe (1931) Cel Bloc Rating: 5
Friday, 6/09/06: Toy Time (1932) Cel Bloc Rating: 6
Saturday, 6/10/06: Fly Frolic (1932) Cel Bloc Rating: 6

RECENTLY RATED MOVIES #18

Fuzzy everything.

Fuzzy editing. Fuzzy screenwriting. Even fuzzy acting. And this fuzziness is embodied in the scene where Jennifer Aniston parades past Vince Vaughan to shock him with the fact that a certain recently waxed area of her pelvic region is no longer in the fuzzy category, and as she walks away from the camera, its lens fuzzes out more the longer we are allowed a glimpse of her posterior. She, of the infamous Rolling Stone butt cover, a full decade later, mind you, has to resort to coyly exposing her flesh, only to tease the audience in the so-called "romantic comedy" called The Break-Up. The irony of the fuzz shot is that the scene is about a bare cooter. On the Vaughn end of things, he sells the scene with just a shocked look and a bemused smirk on her exit, but I feel it would have been more devastating if the audience could have shared in his pain more by seeing clearly what is walking slowly out of his life. Because her posterior beauty is one of the few things that his character is clearly going to miss.

That's right. A fuzzy relationship, too. We see them meet cute at the ballpark, though he is obnoxious and pushy from the start, and then the credits roll along with a stacked deck of photographs showing their purported close and strong relationship, but by the time the movie proper comes about, there is no evidence of it whatsoever. Speaking as a guy, Vaughn's character is an ass, and everything that I despise about "guyhood" in the 'Aughts. She may be a little too arty and correct for him (she even works at a gallery), and certainly he takes affront to what he perceives as her mildly controlling attitude, when all he wants to do is come home, play violent video games, watch the ballgame, and put his shoes on the couch. Except for the ballgame, all strikes against him in my book (and speaking of my own relationship, which I consider to be successful after six years together, you find other ways to see the big game if it coincides with something important. It's called TiVo, it's called VCR. Girlfriend first, trivia later...)

The first problem is that these two should never have gotten past that first date. They have nothing together, and since we don't get to see their chemistry as a couple except in some quick flashes of photographs, their later arguments ring false and register as nothing more than harsh empty tirades on the part of both sexes. The second problem is that the deck is stacked against Vaughn, because there are a million reasons why she should dump him, and the worst he can come up with is the fact that she doesn't want to put a pool table in the dining room. His character is worse than an ass: he is a big baby, and the ending that the studio tacked on is so phony I wanted to throw the projectionist through the screen, and the thing wasn't even his fault.

Another thing that is the fault of the filmmakers (including producer Vaughn) is the sense that many performances seem to have been hacked up by the editors (why hire Ann-Margaret as Aniston's mother if she is only going to be in about five minutes of the picture?) in trying to fit the film into a likeable category for filmgoers, but "romantic comedy" is not it. There should be romance in a "romantic comedy", and it's not here, folks. The movie is shrill and single tone; it wastes a lot of acting talent in inconsequential scenes that we care little about (do we ever care that his stupid boat-tour business is a success?); and it wastes John Michael Higgins in a badly written a capella-singing dinner scene which is supposed to be gratingly endearing but just comes off flat.

The problem is that eight zillion people have gone to the film already (yours truly duly noted as attending, of course), and it has given the studio the balls to announce the film in commercials as "The biggest opening romantic comedy of all time!" Weighed against what? The Deer Hunter? And just because people went, it doesn't mean they walked out satisfied. Oh sure, most people will just breathe in deeply upon leaving the theatre and say, "Well, that was okay." (I imagine most of these people with accents straight out of Fargo, to capture that casual across-the-board Middle American acceptance of crappy things we are told to like.) The reason that I am giving this a lower rating than the Jessica Alba-starrer Into the Blue, which is as bland as Britney Spears though with double her IQ (which puts it in the low 70's), is that given the talent involved in The Break-Up, it should have been so much better. It could have been so much better. I would bet that a good director's cut would come up a far more satisfying film, especially one that goes with the blows and delivers the knock-out punch that all of the character's caterwauling should have led them up to giving. Perhaps even giving us the original ending. Was it depressing? I don't know... but I would be far happier with a film that sticks to its convictions, and at least gives us the knowledge that these two incompatible people will move on to newer and better horizons. So, the film as it stands gets a subpar rating because of the utter disappointment it offered up to this viewer.

Now, that I think about it, the ending is actually like one of those horror movie finales where the characters realize they are trapped in a nightmare from which they can never awaken. The pseudo-happy ending is actually a depressing ending, because the cycle of spit and bile will get another shot at homewrecking once these two settle into a new relationship with each other.

All of a sudden, I feel so much better. That fuzzy ass has become so much clearer...

The List:
Into the Blue (2005) (DVD) - 5; Hauru No Ugoku Shiro [Howl's Moving Castle] (2004) (DVD) - 8; The Ice Harvest (2005) (DVD) - 7; It Happens Every Spring (1949) (AMC) - 7; Dr. No (1962) (AMC) - 7; The Break-Up (2006) - 4; Le Samourai (1967) (DVD) - 8; Aguirre, der Zorn Gottes [Aguirre: The Wrath of God] (1972) (DVD) -8; Stardust Memories (1980) (TCM) - 6.

THERE'S A RIOT GOIN' ON UP IN CEL BLOC #7

Follow the bouncing ball, folks! The Cel Bloc is stuck in the early 1930's for the next couple of weeks. Most of the films hail from one company, the Van Beuren Studios, who folded in 1936 after RKO pulled the rug out from under them and went with Disney instead. Hard to blame them, of course, but the company that went down produced a lot of fun little pictures over the years. Not great films, but fun little pictures. Thunderbean Animation has produced an exquisite collection of many of these films, and when the title of the DVD, Aesop's Fables From the Van Beuren Studio - Volume 1, promises it is the first of a series, then I hope that they follow through with the rest. Dig the cat girl on the cover, too! Meeee-owww!

I took a little time and checked out the special Collector's Edition of The Wizard of Oz -- you know, the great and powerful one -- and this time around, the set comes with numerous other versions of Oz, including a 1933 animated one by the mysterious Ted Eshbaugh. Charming though a little wayward in its second half, it was the first film to start with the now-obligatory "black-and-white Kansas turns to colorful Oz" gimmick that was used in the 1939 MGM classic. No lion, munchkins or witches in this one, though, and it suffers for their loss; a decent enough time, so check out my review. Also, downloaded one of the Fleischer Bros.' Screen Songs from animationarchive.org. It has to do with bubbles, so see if you can locate it on the list below. C'mon, I dare ya! Ooh, don't you feel proud?

This week on the Cinema 4: Cel Bloc -
Sunday, 5/28/06: The Wizard of Oz (1933) Cel Bloc Rating: 6
Monday, 5/29/06: I'm Forever Blowing Bubbles (1930) Cel Bloc Rating: 6
Tuesday, 5/30/06: Happy Polo (1932) Cel Bloc Rating: 6
Wednesday, 5/31/06: Summertime (1929) Cel Bloc Rating: 5
Thursday, 6/01/06: The Iron Man (1930) Cel Bloc Rating: 6
Friday, 6/02/06: The Haunted Ship (1930) Cel Bloc Rating: 7
Saturday, 6/03/06: Noah Knew His Ark (1930) Cel Bloc Rating: 6

FIVE DISCS OF DEATH #6

Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (1998)
Director: Terry Gilliam
Cinema 4 Rating: 8
I'm 14, my parents are divorced, and my mom has new friends, a new home, and is trying out variations in her own life. She leaves an intriguingly titled book on the dashboard of her car, leaves me in the car while she runs a few errands at a couple of stops, and in the time she takes at each stop, I successfully made it halfway through Hunter S. Thompson's Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. It cannot be stated too exaggeratedly that my mind was blown from that point on, to the point where my inner vision resembled that of Ralph Steadman's crude scrawlings on the paperback's cover. In the next couple of weeks, through the sly wrangling of the slim volume, I managed to read through it four times, and then hit the library for more of Thompson's seemingly insane though prophetic ranting against Nixon and the establishment. (Nixon had been abolished by this point, of course, but much of what he said still rang true as my political views were slowly being developed.) And Vegas? The craziest, funniest thing I have ever read, and it is truly amazing that I never turned to the physical self-abuse that Thompson and his characters delve in so freely. When people hear that I am such a Thompson fan, some of them automatically assume that I must be deeply steeped in drug culture, and they would be devastatedly wrong in this assumption. I am the complete opposite, for it is the purity of Thompson's scribbling that kept me returning to his screeds. If ever a man was born to write, and to do so against all odds, even those self-prescribed, then it was he. The film itself? No film version, however closely it might hew to the words, will ever do the book justice. But this comes awful close in spirit, and Depp and del Toro are a comedy team from Hell (in the good way). I am disappointed that Gilliam is not doing the next Depp/Thompson adaptation (The Rum Diary, directed by Bruce Robinson for 2008), but it's okay. He already got this one right.
Return to Oz (1985)
Director: Walter Murch
Cinema 4 Rating: 7
If only that infernal 1939 musical version wasn't around, then this would be the greatest Oz film ever made. And then perhaps, expectations wouldn't be so high for it, people would stop waiting for all of the characters to dance and sing, and they could just settle into a fantastic, thrilling and often quite scary adventure with Dorothy, the Scarecrow and a bulk of characters from the later Oz books. Beautifully designed from stem to stern, perhaps lacking a little in heart, but filled with marvelous mechanical and animated creations. Of course, if the 1939 version hadn't been made, then this film would either not exist, or there would have to be a regular version of the first book before this one would get made. Or else, this film could just be called Oz, since there would be no returning, but then everyone would wonder why they didn't make the more famous book with that Wizard character and that Wicked Witch person. I'm hoping that with the success of the Tolkien and Lewis stories recently, that some brave and enterprising producer will take another shot at a big screen Oz, just like this one, only staying true to each book and not jamming together two of them like this one does. (My only real critique against it.) There are dozens of books, Hollywood; that's plenty of sequels, and if there is one thing that you understand, it's driving something into the ground. Please do it in this case...
La Femme Nikita (1990)
Director: Luc Besson
Cinema 4 Rating: 6
I am worried about Audrey Tautou. Given my penchant for cinematic French chicks, it is natural that I have fallen for her image and wonderful eyes on the big screen. Once upon a time though, I felt the same way about the star of this film, Anne Parillaud, and I eagerly anticipated every film that she put out over the next few years, good and bad (Innocent Blood, Map of the Human Heart, etc.) Then, she swiftly stopped being the pixieish girl and grew up, and my interest in her activities waned considerably. Call my heart fickle, but poor Anne deserves an adoring fan who won't change the channel every time he finds out that Dirty Pretty Things is showing on IFC. Nikita has suffered a similar war of attrition with my emotions. Perhaps it is overexposure to the story due to a bad American remake (Point of No Return), a tepid Hong Kong version (Hei Mao) and an okay television series (some people love it, but then some people love According to Jim), and maybe it's due to every action film since a lot of the shots of this groundbreaking effort, but a pair of recent showings have dropped this film down somewhat in my estimation. I still enjoy it, but not nearly at the level that I once did. Perhaps this is proof that I am not so fickle after all, but that my critical opinion is merely advancing in age with my own maturing tastes. But, if that is so, why can't that same taste grow up along with Anne Parillaud? And why was I watching Saturday Morning cartoons this morning?
The Fearless Vampire Killers or: Pardon Me, But Your Teeth Are In My Neck (1967) Director: Roman Polanski
Cinema 4 Rating: 7
Yeah, Rosemary's Baby is a scary and terrific flick, and The Tenant is deliriously weird and sick, but for my money, as Polanski horror flicks go, I'll take The Fearless Vampire Killers. It's basically Count Dracula recast in a sex farce, with Sharon Tate supplying the sex (and how!), and Jack MacGowran and Polanski himself supplying the wacky comedic bits as the not-so-fearless titular characters. The settings are perfectly rendered, remote and creepily foreign to the apprentice Alfred (Polanski), filled with oddball rituals and off-the-wall omens. Hilarious and filled with slapstick, I first saw this film when it was first released on videotape, and it has remained a favorite of mine ever since, which I usually drag out when I am in need of a good Halloween laugh after pounding through some relentlessly dire monster marathons. I have some friends that are not as enamored with it, but they seem to be afraid of any movie not taking place in America or England. Hard to be a vampire fan with that attitude. You gotta hit Eastern Europe every now and then, and sometimes, you have to hit Hong Kong to fight some hopping vampires. It's what keeps the blood fresh...
The Island of Dr. Moreau (1977)
Director: Don Taylor
Cinema 4 Rating: 6
This is it, friends. This was the first film that I ever attended by my lonesome. I have detailed before how few films we went to when I grew up in Eagle River, AK. As there were no theatres in the town, we had to drive the 14 miles or so to Big City Anchorage to see a movie, and we usually did this in conjunction with shopping trips, doctor visits and what-not, and only rarely as a "family night out" at the movies. I had purchased the novelization of this movie (itself a remake of a H.G. Wells novella previously filmed in 1933 as Island of Lost Souls) through a school bookstore, and even though it wasn't Wells' words on the page, it was his concepts at play, and I was deep into Wells (pun intended) at the time. I had to convince my mother to not only drop me off for a couple hours while she went about some shopping business, and I spent the early afternoon awash in my first big screen monster movie. (It was rated PG and I was 13; the only trick was getting to the town and then the theatre.) For a very short time, even with Kong in my worldview at this point, this movie meant everything to me, Burt Lancaster became my favorite actor, and Barbera Carrera was the most beautiful creature I had ever beheld in my 13 years. This was all because, up there on that giant screen, they were all mine, even in a theatre filled with other like-minded lost souls. A couple weeks later, I saw Star Wars, and Moreau slowly slipped down the personal popularity ladder rung by rung for the remainder of my life. Still a fun movie, if a little too obviously cheesy 70's in cheapjack filmmaking style, and if you are a Lancaster aficionado (which I am) then you can also appreciate that it is the last film teamup of Lancaster and his true film partner: not Kirk Douglas, but rather, Nick Cravat, his old circus buddy with whom he appeared in nine films over the years. Since I saw this film just before The Crimson Pirate, I had no idea that the weird, shuffling manservant M'Ling in this film was the bouncing, vital Ojo, first mate to Burt's spirited Captain Vallo in the pirate flick. It taught me that every movie, even a cheesy one, has something to teach you about the history of the movies.