Scene from 'The Birds'

Why are they doing this?

'All This and World War II' (trailer)

Okay, this exists. I grew up with movies and the Beatles and the shadow of WW2 but I don't remember this (that said--is this where Elton John's 'Lucy in the Sky' came from?). And I'm guessing no one else does either. All I found was the trailer, that will just have to suffice. 

'Tarkovsky's Dreams: A Supercut'

Getting ready for an upcoming Tarkovsky retrospective, found this on the Archive.org. 

Don't know who did this or why or what it is really, but like the best of Tarkovsky, it is hypnotic for no reason at all. It is a reminder that Tarkovsky was as good as anyone in the history of cinema at pointing a camera at some random object and making it look cool. His mastery of sound design, too, is among the greatest of all time. His films are compulsively watchable, even when they make no sense at all--indeed, what good is "sense" when you have all this in front of you? Looking forward to revisiting his films. 

Westward the Women

Scene from 'This Gun for Hire'

Veronica Lake doing a nightclub magic show. I loves me some sleight of hand. Miriam Hopkins meets Ricky Jay. 

Scene from 'Phantom Lady'

OMG, I have a new all time favorite music scene from a movie (no idea what my favorite was before, but it don't matter because it's 2nd best now!). Always love Elisha Cook Jr., but him hanging for dear life during his drum solo while Ella Raines flirts (while being simultaneously disgusted) is gonna stay with me for a while. The movie, Phantom Lady, has its moments (Franchot Tone as the crazed, but eerily natty, bad guy is kinda fun to watch) but problems with the plotting keep this from being a for-real classic. Watch it for that crazy beat, man!

The Last Farewell/That Hamilton Woman

The internet, for whatever reason, has set Elvis Presley's "The Last Farewell" to scenes from the film That Hamilton Woman. So...uh...this exists. This is utterly pointless in every way but honestly my only criticism is that I found the opening and closing credits intrusive and clumsy.

Did Elvis Presley imagine that his songs would live on in this way? Did Olivier and Leigh realize their mock romance would be re-purposed to suit the short attention spans of future masses? Indeed, did Horatio Nelson realize that in the future his imperial awesomeness, which was nothing but an albatross for him in his homeland, would inspire people to create homemade pieces of art about him? That people would create plastic-based mechanized operas about his sex life? Why haven't we made movies about Olivier's sex life? Elvis knew that he was built to be a sex symbol and Olivier had many high profile relationships in the public eye, so how is it that instead we get a movie about a dude that died well over a century before this movie was made (which is 4/5 of a century old right now)? Is it that in Nelson's time naval heroes (and their whispered extramarital exploits) were the best celebrity culture available? 

What is time marching toward? Will people decades from now be re-purposing this blog post in the name of something I could never even conceive of? Probably not...but not definitely not.

Eazy E Recording from 'Straight Outta Compton'

Watched this again the other day, holds up well. Deftly avoids falling into cheesy melodrama on the one hand or overwrought hero worship on the either. Keeps it real and the gritty is what makes the movie work. This was one of my favorite scenes of that whole year.

Scene from 'Nigthcrawler'

"A friend is a gift you give yourself."

'Steam Heat' from The Pajama Game

In a musical it's not uncommon for characters to spontaneously sing and dance in a sort of collective out-of-body experience, its how the audience can take in a musical number but still remain with the cinematic world of the film. But this scene from The Pajama Game is from a talent show where the other characters are present. For the movie-going audience it's just another musical number, but in the course of the story being told, this is altogether different. How do the other characters not notice that Gladys Hotchkiss has some serious fucking skills for a factory bookkeeper? This should bring the movie to a halt, shouldn't it? Whatever was going on should be utterly ignored now, everyone would be absolutely changed by this, wouldn't they? (Also this is really the only scene in the movie that makes you go, 'Oh yeah, Bob Fosse did this!')

A scene from Buffalo Bill and the Indians