Continuum Film Blog

but even better...darro + moreland

No, you can't win...in the movies!

 

happy birthday oh eddie-bey!

I wish I had time to talk all about All-Media Star (stage, radio, screen, television) comedian Eddie Cantor today!  A reoccurring figure in my work who has fascinated me every since high school when I first guiltily giggled through one of his blackface routines--which one was it? When he was rubbed in spa mud to hide from thugs, or after burning an errant champagne cork to hide from heavies or just slathering it on to dance with the Nicholas brothers--when his movies made a rare appearance on TV?  My favorite, the complex, disturbing and funny moment I return to in my videos is in gorgeous, Technicolor "Whoopee", when Henry Williams hides in a gas stove that blows up revealing (and disguising) him as a "black" man.

But in Cantor's early films "black' is only one of myriad examples of racial and ethnic cross-dressing that animate these "anarchic", vaudeville-style musicals. He appears as Indians, Orientals, Latinos, Ladies, Romans and importantly, "Hebrews"! The movies are crazy and for me, a central part of the history of our film culture. But I can't go into all that now. OK, Toots?!

 

Here's a previous post with Eddie Cantor.

ein blonder traum (a blonde dream) (1932) d. paul martin

1932. Germany. Directed by Paul Martin. Screenplay by Walter Reisch, Billie (as “Billie”) Wilder. Music by Werner Richard Heymann. With Lilian Harvey, Willy Fritsch, Willi Forst, Paul Hörbiger.

 

 

my first movie star crush...

I shed a few tears this morning for my first movie star crush...

RIP Anthony Curtis--a New York guy!

"Anthony Curtis" mixed media collage, 2007 ina archer

 

Houdini (1953) d. George Marshall, is one of my favorites!

continuum: fear of fear

 

My first? trauma...

Funny thing--when I typed "f" in the header for Fear the auto-function wrote "family".  A perfect introduction to this link to my Horror blog that I set up for my New School summer class, To Die For: The American Horror Film 1968-1970.  In horror films snooping around in strange places can have dire consequences and in my case, I made the unfortunate decision to WRITE THE BLOG IN (AN)OTHER PLATFORM!  Ohh, the horror of trying to format the layout or change the size of the typeface! AHHH,the stabbing pain in my eyes as I tried to quickly design a HEADER! Imagine my screams as I had to Rip away all of the content and then...SOMEHOW LOST IT!! 

So, here is the bloody, skeletal corpse of my blog which you will notice has no text! I will fill the posts back in asap.  Fact is, I've been neglecting all of my blogging--that's where the family plot comes in perhaps and it has been a rough year.  Perfect time for a horror film class which helps to sort out some demons--and you can sit in the dark...with strangers!

Fear of Fear (not the film by my own RWF--which is one of my absolute favorites!) but the Roosevelt kind of fear.  I'm taking the class in part to overcome my fear of the the fear that may result from my watching the horror genre. Many of the films we have seen in class are films that I grew up with in the 70's and was not allowed to view. They were forbidden to me, for my own mental safety I suppose but I would hear of them, hear them described, see them advertised and overhear of the extreme reactions (in the cases of The Exorcist and The Amityville Horror) of totally freaked-out audiences. I was almost crippled with the fear of how scared I would be by these movies. My imagination just filled, filled, filled in the rest...

The clip below (which is the masthead for my H-blog) scared the BEJESUS outta me! When we returned to New York from Panama we moved into an apartment in the ever terrifying Yonkers. I saw this show open on our tiny black & white TV (I've got a good Wizard of Oz tale about the tv) while sitting on the couch with the family and some friends one Saturday evening and started screaming like TCM's Sally!

For years(?) I afraid to be in the proximity of the tv or to change channels near the hours of what, 8pm? lest my eyes fall upon this gruesome site/sight!

And the sound was even scarier!

some "green" advice for '10

from my favorite futuristic film: "Just Imagine" (1930)

Never Swat a Fly! (he may love another fly...)

continuum: this is christmas in america!

No time to blog!  Not even micro-style, but Miss Velma's Los Angles based, Christmas Drama gives me the Holiday Spirit!

Wonder at Miss Velma's sharpshooting and sensitive inclusion of Native Americans and Hand Organs!  

Adore Him along with the Talking Animals of the Manger (including turtles and raccoons, thus provoking a moment when I humiliated myself with laughing at the screening I saw last year at Light Industry)! 

"I am the Cow. Moo, moo...mooo."

The Golden Eagle Mini-Bus, etc, to follow...

'Tis the Season!

wfpf screenings @ the whitney museum

A Fool and His Money (1912) d. Alice Guy Blaché

WOMEN’S FILM PRESERVATION FUND AT THE WHITNEY MUSEUM

Friday, December 4, 7 pm

 

Women’s Film Preservation Fund is honored to be part of the Whitney’s 2009-2010 homage to Alice Guy Blaché.

Join us for a WFPF screening of three Alice Guy Blaché films, which the Fund helped to preserve. These charming comedies were all made at her Solax Studios, in Fort Lee, New Jersey. Mixed Pets is the earliest extant Solax film and A Fool and His Money is the first American film featuring an all African American cast. Matrimony's Speed Limit (1912), one of the Fund’s first films, was part of its inaugural project in 1995.

 

 Mixed Pets (1911)

 A Fool and His Money   (1912)

Matrimony's Speed Limit   (1913)

 

The screening will be followed by a discussion and Q and A.

 

Drake Stutesman (editor, Framework: The Journal of Cinema and Media and co-chair of The Women’s Film Preservation Fund) will introduce the evening and moderate a conversation with :

Diana Little (preservationist, Cineric)

Kim Tomadjoglou (Preservation Director for the Whitney’s Alice Guy Blaché: Cinema Pioneer, film historian and programmer)

Mona Jimenez (Cinema Studies professor and Associate Director of NYU’s Moving Image Archiving and Preservation program).

 

"it sounds so romantic and perky..."

A lurked upon facebook conversation reminded me of this song I love by Soupy Sales!

Pakalafaka used to play on the Dr. Demento Radio Show and I recorded it one afternoon with my dad's dictation tape recorder standing in the kitchen in New Rochelle.  Must have been Jr. High School. Between songs on the tape were my screams for silence in the house!

Sing right along!

Pachalafaka, pachalafaka
They whisper it all over Turkey
Pachalafaka, pachalafaka
It sounds so romantic and perky
Oh, I know that phrase
will make me thrill always
For it reminds me of you, my sweet
just the mention of
that tender word of love
gives my heart a jerkish, Turkish beat

I won't say c'est bon
or l'amour toujours
For they can't express what I'm feeling
Even maresydoats or
other foreign quotes
don't seem to be quite so appealing
But pachalafaka! pachalafaka!
takes me back with you to passionate desert scenes
and it's there we'll stay
till the very day
we find out what pachalafaka means

we find out what pachalafaka means

Soupy's so romantic! And he loves the 20s!

so long soupy sales...

you and your big infectious smile!

(youtube you're SO stupid killing clips and fun--you deserve a pie in the face!)

Meanwhile, here's a clip without the stripper but with a movie marquee.