The Little Rascals Volume 3
Blu ray – The ClassicFlix Restorations
ClassicFlix
1932, ’33 / 1.37:1 / 210 Min.
Starring George McFarland, Dorothy DeBorba, Dickie Moore
Written by H.W. Walker
Directed by Robert F. McGowan
The third volume in ClassicFlix’s Little Rascals series introduces the show’s most celebrated performer, George McFarland, otherwise known as Spanky. Before landing a contract with Hal Roach, the tiny Texan was already making a giant-size splash in his hometown of Dallas where he appeared on billboards hawking Wonder Bread and underwear. The following year Spanky made the leap from billboards to movie posters in the first of 88 comedies made for the Roach Studio before retiring ten years later at the wizened age of 14—which works out to approximately 137 in Rascal years.
Spanky arrived at the Roach lot just in time, Our Gang favorites like Jackie Cooper, Allen Hoskins (Farina), and Mary Ann Jackson were leaving the troupe for greener...
Blu ray – The ClassicFlix Restorations
ClassicFlix
1932, ’33 / 1.37:1 / 210 Min.
Starring George McFarland, Dorothy DeBorba, Dickie Moore
Written by H.W. Walker
Directed by Robert F. McGowan
The third volume in ClassicFlix’s Little Rascals series introduces the show’s most celebrated performer, George McFarland, otherwise known as Spanky. Before landing a contract with Hal Roach, the tiny Texan was already making a giant-size splash in his hometown of Dallas where he appeared on billboards hawking Wonder Bread and underwear. The following year Spanky made the leap from billboards to movie posters in the first of 88 comedies made for the Roach Studio before retiring ten years later at the wizened age of 14—which works out to approximately 137 in Rascal years.
Spanky arrived at the Roach lot just in time, Our Gang favorites like Jackie Cooper, Allen Hoskins (Farina), and Mary Ann Jackson were leaving the troupe for greener...
- 11/30/2021
- by Charlie Largent
- Trailers from Hell
What a Halloween treat! Karl Freund stopped directing after this classic, which is a shame — it’s German expressionism’s most exciting foray into classic Hollywood horror of the ’30s. Peter Lorre is incredible as Dr. Gogol, making himself as creepy and repulsive as possible while retaining a giddy audience sympathy. It’s Grand Guignol all the way — macabre, funny and irresistible. The screenplay toys with uncomfortable Body Horror and psychological weirdness; Colin Clive must contend with becoming the recipient of murderous hands. Frances Drake is the beauty that drives Dr. Gogol mad, and comedian Edward Brophy is a highlight in a non-comedic scene. “I have conquered science. Why can I not conquer love?!”
Mad Love
Blu-ray
Warner Archive Collection
1935 / B&w / 1:37 Academy / 68 (86) min. / Available at Amazon.com / Street Date October 19, 2021 / 21.99
Starring: Peter Lorre, Frances Drake, Colin Clive, Ted Healy, Sara Haden, Edward Brophy, Henry Kolker, Keye Luke, May Beatty, Billy Gilbert,...
Mad Love
Blu-ray
Warner Archive Collection
1935 / B&w / 1:37 Academy / 68 (86) min. / Available at Amazon.com / Street Date October 19, 2021 / 21.99
Starring: Peter Lorre, Frances Drake, Colin Clive, Ted Healy, Sara Haden, Edward Brophy, Henry Kolker, Keye Luke, May Beatty, Billy Gilbert,...
- 10/26/2021
- by Glenn Erickson
- Trailers from Hell
Review: "Arabian Nights" (1942) And "Al Baba And The Forty Thieves" (1944); Blu-ray Special Editions
Normal 0 false false false En-us X-none X-none
“Technicolor Sabers”
By Raymond Benson
Was this really a movie sub-genre? Colorful “Middle Eastern” action-comedy-adventures loosely derived from The Book of One Thousand and One Nights? Full of harem girls, saber-wielding swashbucklers, epic set pieces with beautifully designed sets and “Arabian” costumes, camels and horses and tigers, and… comedians?
The answer is, ahem, yes. During the war years of the early 1940s, Universal Pictures made several of these “exotic adventure” pictures that capitalized on the success of Britain’s Thief of Bagdad (1940). Hollywood quickly got into this act, but like the Bing Crosby and Bob Hope “Road to…” pictures, these movies set in the world of ancient Arabia were filmed on sound stages in southern California… and it shows.
The films were hugely popular at the time, but they have not aged well. We shall examine two of the more successful entries of...
“Technicolor Sabers”
By Raymond Benson
Was this really a movie sub-genre? Colorful “Middle Eastern” action-comedy-adventures loosely derived from The Book of One Thousand and One Nights? Full of harem girls, saber-wielding swashbucklers, epic set pieces with beautifully designed sets and “Arabian” costumes, camels and horses and tigers, and… comedians?
The answer is, ahem, yes. During the war years of the early 1940s, Universal Pictures made several of these “exotic adventure” pictures that capitalized on the success of Britain’s Thief of Bagdad (1940). Hollywood quickly got into this act, but like the Bing Crosby and Bob Hope “Road to…” pictures, these movies set in the world of ancient Arabia were filmed on sound stages in southern California… and it shows.
The films were hugely popular at the time, but they have not aged well. We shall examine two of the more successful entries of...
- 8/4/2020
- by nospam@example.com (Cinema Retro)
- Cinemaretro.com
Vintage ’30s comedy returns, with a beautiful blonde, a sassy brunette and elaborate location filming in a bygone Los Angeles. Hal Roach found a good match for his ‘female Laurel & Hardy’ comedy team in gorgeous Thelma Todd and the smart-mouthed Patsy Kelly.
The Complete Hal Roach Thelma Todd Patsy Kelly Comedy Collection
DVD
1933-1936 / Color / 1:37 Academy / 445 min. / Silver Series / Street Date June 26 2018, 2018 / available through Classic Flix / 39.99
Starring: Thelma Todd & Patsy Kelly.
Produced by Hal Roach
Directed by Gus Meins, William Terhune, James Parrott, Nick Grinde, others
Hal Roach made the movie game pay big even back in the ‘teens, when Los Angeles used zoning laws to force moviemakers away from downtown, into the remote ‘suburbs’ of Hollywood and Culver City. Taking a choice piece of Culver City real estate, Hal built a veritable empire of comedy, mostly with short subjects. He helped launch the great Harold Lloyd, invented and...
The Complete Hal Roach Thelma Todd Patsy Kelly Comedy Collection
DVD
1933-1936 / Color / 1:37 Academy / 445 min. / Silver Series / Street Date June 26 2018, 2018 / available through Classic Flix / 39.99
Starring: Thelma Todd & Patsy Kelly.
Produced by Hal Roach
Directed by Gus Meins, William Terhune, James Parrott, Nick Grinde, others
Hal Roach made the movie game pay big even back in the ‘teens, when Los Angeles used zoning laws to force moviemakers away from downtown, into the remote ‘suburbs’ of Hollywood and Culver City. Taking a choice piece of Culver City real estate, Hal built a veritable empire of comedy, mostly with short subjects. He helped launch the great Harold Lloyd, invented and...
- 7/28/2018
- by Glenn Erickson
- Trailers from Hell
The restoration of a newly rediscovered director’s cut of the 1931 The Front Page prompts this two-feature comedy disc — Lewis Milestone’s early talkie plus the sublime Howard Hawks remake, which plays a major gender switch on the main characters of Hecht & MacArthur’s original play.
His Girl Friday / The Front Page
Blu-ray
The Criterion Collection 849
Available through The Criterion Collection / Street Date January 10, 2017 / 39.96
His Girl Friday:
1940 / B&W /1:37 flat Academy / 92 min.
Starring Cary Grant, Rosalind Russell, Ralph Bellamy, Gene Lockhart, Porter Hall, Ernest Truex, Cliff Edwards, Clarence Kolb, Roscoe Karns, Frank Jenks, Regis Toomey, Abner Biberman, Frank Orth, John Qualen, Helen Mack, Alma Kruger, Billy Gilbert, Marion Martin.
Cinematography Joseph Walker
Film Editor Gene Havelick
Original Music Sidney Cutner, Felix Mills
Written by Charles Lederer from the play The Front Page by Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur
Produced and Directed by Howard Hawks
The Front Page:...
His Girl Friday / The Front Page
Blu-ray
The Criterion Collection 849
Available through The Criterion Collection / Street Date January 10, 2017 / 39.96
His Girl Friday:
1940 / B&W /1:37 flat Academy / 92 min.
Starring Cary Grant, Rosalind Russell, Ralph Bellamy, Gene Lockhart, Porter Hall, Ernest Truex, Cliff Edwards, Clarence Kolb, Roscoe Karns, Frank Jenks, Regis Toomey, Abner Biberman, Frank Orth, John Qualen, Helen Mack, Alma Kruger, Billy Gilbert, Marion Martin.
Cinematography Joseph Walker
Film Editor Gene Havelick
Original Music Sidney Cutner, Felix Mills
Written by Charles Lederer from the play The Front Page by Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur
Produced and Directed by Howard Hawks
The Front Page:...
- 1/3/2017
- by Glenn Erickson
- Trailers from Hell
When Bill Gilbert was 12 years old, he put together a time capsule filled with stamps, a coin, a family photo and a letter. Sixty-seven years later, a contractor named Mark Knecht found it. Knecht, a general contractor in Pueblo, Colorado, was working on a house last week when he discovered a jar under some cabinets. It was Gilbert's time capsule, undisturbed for nearly 70 years. "My name is Billy Gilbert," the letter reads. "I am 12 years old and Janice is fourteen. This is the year 1949." "I was stunned by it, really," Knecht told KING5 News. He did some Googling, but Bill's name didn't turn up anything.
- 2/1/2016
- by Alex Heigl, @alex_heigl
- PEOPLE.com
When Bill Gilbert was 12 years old, he put together a time capsule filled with stamps, a coin, a family photo and a letter. Sixty-seven years later, a contractor named Mark Knecht found it. Knecht, a general contractor in Pueblo, Colorado, was working on a house last week when he discovered a jar under some cabinets. It was Gilbert's time capsule, undisturbed for nearly 70 years. "My name is Billy Gilbert," the letter reads. "I am 12 years old and Janice is fourteen. This is the year 1949." "I was stunned by it, really," Knecht told KING5 News. He did some Googling, but Bill's name didn't turn up anything.
- 2/1/2016
- by Alex Heigl, @alex_heigl
- PEOPLE.com
By Mireille Latil-Le-Dantec. Originally published in Cinématographe, no. 35, February 1978 in an issue with a Chaplin dossier.
Translation by Ted Fendt. Thanks to Marie-Pierre Duhamel.
The Chaplinesque Quest
The overbearing weight of interpretative studies devoted to Chaplin makes any pretension to some "fresh look" at a universe already studied from every angle seem absurd from the outset. At least, on the occasion of the homages currently being made in theaters to the little man who would become so big, a few fragmentary re-viewings more modestly allow for the rediscovery of the thematic unity of this body of work and the inanity of any artificial divide between the "excellent" Charlie films and the "mediocre" Chaplin films – a divide corresponding, of course, to the event which his art was not supposed to have survived: the appearance of those talkies that – in the excellent company of Eisenstein, Pudovkin, René Clair and many others – he...
Translation by Ted Fendt. Thanks to Marie-Pierre Duhamel.
The Chaplinesque Quest
The overbearing weight of interpretative studies devoted to Chaplin makes any pretension to some "fresh look" at a universe already studied from every angle seem absurd from the outset. At least, on the occasion of the homages currently being made in theaters to the little man who would become so big, a few fragmentary re-viewings more modestly allow for the rediscovery of the thematic unity of this body of work and the inanity of any artificial divide between the "excellent" Charlie films and the "mediocre" Chaplin films – a divide corresponding, of course, to the event which his art was not supposed to have survived: the appearance of those talkies that – in the excellent company of Eisenstein, Pudovkin, René Clair and many others – he...
- 7/22/2014
- by Ted Fendt
- MUBI
The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences will kick off a day-long celebration of home movies on Saturday, October 12, at noon, with “Home Movie Day Los Angeles,” a free event that welcomes Angelenos, their families and friends to watch their personal home movies on the big screen.
At 7 p.m. the Academy will present “Hollywood Home Movies IV,” which will feature specially selected home movies from Hollywood’s Golden Age, including footage of such luminaries as Lucille Ball, Humphrey Bogart, Billie Burke, Marlene Dietrich, Walt Disney, Mitzi Gaynor, Betty Grable, Cary Grant, Jean Harlow, Shirley Jones and Florenz Ziegfeld.
In addition to intimate glimpses of celebrities at work and play, the program includes 1935 footage of Atlantic City, Satchel Paige pitching in an exhibition game at Los Angeles’ Wrigley Field, Billy Gilbert’s Uso troupe performing during World War II, and the wrap party for “It’s a Wonderful Life.
At 7 p.m. the Academy will present “Hollywood Home Movies IV,” which will feature specially selected home movies from Hollywood’s Golden Age, including footage of such luminaries as Lucille Ball, Humphrey Bogart, Billie Burke, Marlene Dietrich, Walt Disney, Mitzi Gaynor, Betty Grable, Cary Grant, Jean Harlow, Shirley Jones and Florenz Ziegfeld.
In addition to intimate glimpses of celebrities at work and play, the program includes 1935 footage of Atlantic City, Satchel Paige pitching in an exhibition game at Los Angeles’ Wrigley Field, Billy Gilbert’s Uso troupe performing during World War II, and the wrap party for “It’s a Wonderful Life.
- 10/2/2013
- by Michelle McCue
- WeAreMovieGeeks.com
Joan Fontaine movies: ‘This Above All,’ ‘Letter from an Unknown Woman’ (photo: Cary Grant, Joan Fontaine in ‘Suspicion’ publicity image) (See previous post: “Joan Fontaine Today.”) Also tonight on Turner Classic Movies, Joan Fontaine can be seen in today’s lone TCM premiere, the flag-waving 20th Century Fox release The Above All (1942), with Fontaine as an aristocratic (but socially conscious) English Rose named Prudence Cathaway (Fontaine was born to British parents in Japan) and Fox’s top male star, Tyrone Power, as her Awol romantic interest. This Above All was directed by Anatole Litvak, who would guide Olivia de Havilland in the major box-office hit The Snake Pit (1948), which earned her a Best Actress Oscar nod. In Max Ophüls’ darkly romantic Letter from an Unknown Woman (1948), Fontaine delivers not only what is probably the greatest performance of her career, but also one of the greatest movie performances ever. Letter from an Unknown Woman...
- 8/6/2013
- by Andre Soares
- Alt Film Guide
Sergei Eisenstein reportedly called "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs" the greatest movie ever made. That's especially high praise coming from the director who virtually invented avant-garde cinema, but it's hard to argue with Walt Disney's landmark achievement. The first feature-length animated movie, "Snow White" began its record-breaking run in theaters 75 years ago this week (on Feb. 4, 1938), and it was hailed immediately, both for its instant impact in transforming the medium and for what proved to be an enduring work of screen storytelling and vivid artistry. Before "Snow White," animation was widely dismissed as crudely drawn short films with singing and talking animals, strictly for kids. But Disney proved animation could work at feature length and yield results as artistically satisfying as live-action film. Today, "Snow White" stands as the template for virtually every animated feature made since, as well as the cornerstone of all the Disney family-entertainment empire has built over the past 75 years.
- 2/7/2013
- by Gary Susman
- Moviefone
Moving on to 2004. What follows is my original top ten list, based on films released in NYC in 2004. If I have anything new to say that'll be in red after the original text.
Top Ten Runners Up (in descending order): Aviator, Hero, House of Flying Daggers, Mean Girls, Maria Full of Grace, The Five Obstructions, Collateral, Goodbye Lenin!, Birth and Closer Yes, I'm absolutely horrified by the rankings now. Nothing about that ranking feels right now. I am most ashamed that Birth was only at number [cough] 19 in its year. In my self-flattering memory I "almost" put it in the top ten despite the then brutal reviews. I was ahead of my time! Oh well... at least I did actually name it the #1 most underappreciated film of the year. At the time I said...
Jonathan Glazer made a significant splash four years ago when his brilliantly acted heist film Sexy Beast...
Top Ten Runners Up (in descending order): Aviator, Hero, House of Flying Daggers, Mean Girls, Maria Full of Grace, The Five Obstructions, Collateral, Goodbye Lenin!, Birth and Closer Yes, I'm absolutely horrified by the rankings now. Nothing about that ranking feels right now. I am most ashamed that Birth was only at number [cough] 19 in its year. In my self-flattering memory I "almost" put it in the top ten despite the then brutal reviews. I was ahead of my time! Oh well... at least I did actually name it the #1 most underappreciated film of the year. At the time I said...
Jonathan Glazer made a significant splash four years ago when his brilliantly acted heist film Sexy Beast...
- 12/15/2009
- by NATHANIEL R
- FilmExperience
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