Naked Hands (1918)

Naked Hands (1918) - Humanity (1916)
A 5 reeler originally, it was reissued as a 2-reeler as Broncho Billy Anderson was attempting a comeback in 1918. It is tight, quick, and interestingly rough. The characters move in all directions in the frame, but whenever you’re given depth of field you can bet your six-gun that they’re [...]

My Favorite Brunette (1947)

My Favorite Brunette
I had never seen a Bob Hope and this seems like a good place to start. I know it’s been remarked before, but Woody Allen’s comic persona is a complete rip-off from Hope ! Every mannerism, every routine, the way lines are both nonsensical, hyper-sexed and self-deprecating, it’s all there.

Double Exposure (1944)

Double Exposure
If you’re going to be at war and in 1944 to boot, this is a pretty good flick to spend your time with. Such nice people ! From Nancy Kelly as Pat Marvin to the soft-spoken Ben (aka Phillip Terry) to wolf-turned-lamb Larry (Chester Morris), such gentleness, such respect for careerist desires, for other [...]

Danger Ahead

Danger Ahead (1935)
Sub-par B fare but with very good fighting (long silent fighting sequences) and a very good number by Fuzzy Knight at the piano. Something funny happens after the first 15 minutes. To all purposes the film is as good as over — but then it just has to fill another 45 minutes of [...]

A Bride for Henry (1937)

A Bride for Henry (1937)
An interesting Monogram B program picture. If only for its funky Architectural art deco titles

The film itself is like an aborted “comedy of remarriage” à la Stanley Cavell, since the girl does marry the wrong man but does not remarry the right one in the end — rather, the wrong man [...]

daily-life beauty, questions

Tzvetan Todorov, Eloge du Quotidien, my link between Dutch 17th century paintings and 1920s Hollywood cinema:

Finding beauty in daily life, unaware

Tzvetan Todorov, Eloge du quotidien: essai sur la peinture hollandaise du XVIIè siècle (1993)
Vers la moitié du XVIIè siècle, pour des raisons esthétiques (le Carravage, Rembrandt) mais aussi historiques (commerce) et culturelles (protestantisme, valeurs domestiques), des peintres hollandais se sont retrouvés à peindre avec précision et, souvent, bienveillance des scènes de la vie quotidienne: vie [...]

Kafka’s America

Published posthumously in 1927 by a not so scrupulous testament executioner.
Most of the book is spent in explaining the surrounding logic to the hapless character, who seems to always be asking the same questions: “why…?” or “and what would happen if…?”, much like a child trying to grasp the logic of the world. It’s sometimes [...]