Welcome to BlogHub: the Best in Veteran and Emerging Classic Movie Blogs
You can rate and share your favorite classic movie posts here.
You can rate and share your favorite classic movie posts here.
You’re in Love, Charlie Brown (1967, Bill Melendez)
The Stop Button Posted by on May 20, 2012
As hard as director Melendez tries, there’s not much he can do with “You’re in Love, Charlie Brown.” The special’s two salient problems are the animation and the writing. Melendez comes up with some truly stunning shots in the special; for example, he closes with a bea read more
The Story of Anyburg U.S.A. (1957, Clyde Geronimi)
The Stop Button Posted by on May 19, 2012
The Story of Anyburg U.S.A. is an odd one. A small town decides to sue cars–personified here as cute, the windshields as big eyes–for all the auto accidents. Sadly, Anyburg opens with a lot more energy–the narrator goes on and on about homicides on the highway and such and it does read more
Stopover in Hollywood (1963, Will Williams)
The Stop Button Posted by on May 17, 2012
Shockingly enough, Paramount Pictures produced Stopover in Hollywood. Watching the short, it’s hard to believe any studio put money behind the lame travelogue–especially since it doesn’t make any use of the Paramount studio. Just off the content, I would have guessed Marineland pa read more
Sunday (1971, Klaus Georgi and Lutz Stützner)
The Stop Button Posted by on May 15, 2012
Sunday opens with lovely music from B. Güttler and a slow zoom to the planet Earth. The zoom is actually fades, with retouched photographs immediately giving the short a particular feel. There isn’t a lot of motion in Sunday. Often the animated figures are superimposed over photographs and mo read more
Wood Choppers (1929, Paul Terry)
The Stop Button Posted by on May 12, 2012
Wood Choppers is not a good cartoon. The animation is weak and director Terry’s approach to the cartoon’s reality is anything goes. Dogs resurrect themselves after being turned into sausages and mice are able to reattach their heads and morph their tails into anything they can imagine. read more
Oliver the Eighth (1934, Lloyd French)
The Stop Button Posted by on May 10, 2012
Watching Oliver Hardy muddle through Oliver the Eighth‘s terrible dialogue makes one wonder if the short truly did not have a writer–there isn’t one credited–or if the actors just made it up on the spot. Given the rampant stupidity in Eighth, the latter seems more likely. Th read more
Robin Hood Daffy (1958, Chuck Jones)
The Stop Button Posted by on May 8, 2012
Robin Hood Daffy is an unappealing mix of pointless, dumb and bewildering. Besides Porky beating up Daffy (Porky’s Friar Tuck, Daffy’s apparently Robin–more on that one in a bit), Jones’s gags all seem recycled from a Wile E. Coyote cartoon. It’s Daffy swinging around read more
The Hoose-Gow (1929, James Parrott)
The Stop Button Posted by on May 6, 2012
The Hoose-Gow is something of an early talkie mess. The shots are paced for a silent movie, leaving long awkward pauses in the soundtrack. The short’s synchronized sound is a fledgling effort. The stock sounds, when used, are obvious. Parrott’s direction is problematic throughout, with read more
Congo Jazz (1930, Hugh Harman and Rudolf Ising)
The Stop Button Posted by on May 5, 2012
Congo Jazz is a great example of how old Hollywood racism works. Having Bosko, the lead in the cartoon, be a little black kid isn’t really overtly racist… until Harman and Ising have him meet a couple monkeys. Guess who looks like who? And then, sort of confirming racists are morons, it read more
Supergirl (1984, Jeannot Szwarc), the director’s cut
The Stop Button Posted by on May 4, 2012
Supergirl never really had a chance. The Superman-inspired opening credits lack any grandeur, ditto with Jerry Goldsmith’s lame music. Goldsmith improves somewhat throughout, but the lack of a catchy theme song hurts the film. The film has a few things going for it, however, including Helen S read more
The Vampire (1945, Jean Painlevé)
The Stop Button Posted by on May 3, 2012
The Vampire is a nature short. It opens with exquisitely photographed sea creatures, moves into a discussion of the popular vampire–with Nosferatu clips–and then gets to its point. The titular vampire in question is the South American vampire bat and director Painlevé has one in captivi read more
The Deadly Trap (1971, René Clément)
The Stop Button Posted by on May 2, 2012
It would be nice to have one positive thing to say about The Deadly Trap. Clements’s direction is so odd, Paris doesn’t even look good. Clements barely shows it; he tries hard to stylize–extreme close-ups on random objects, no establishing shots. Actually, wait, Andréas Winding read more
Bosko the Doughboy (1931, Hugh Harman)
The Stop Button Posted by on May 1, 2012
Watching Bosko the Doughboy, I kept thinking, “too soon.” It’s a comedy cartoon about World War I, specifically trench warfare. In the cartoon, Bosko is the only human. The rest of combatants are animals–dogs, cows, a pig or two, a lot of birds. The battle scenes are graphic read more
Glimpses of Old England (1949)
The Stop Button Posted by on Apr 29, 2012
Even though it does have some rather nice direction–a miniature posing as a real English village–Glimpses of Old England does not credit a director. One must assume the producer (and narrator) James A. FitzPatrick did not want to distract attention from himself. While he’s a compl read more
Hare Conditioned (1945, Chuck Jones)
The Stop Button Posted by on Apr 28, 2012
Embarrassingly, I didn’t understand Hare Conditioned‘s title until I looked it up online. No, I won’t tell you. The cartoon is an enthusiastic chase through a department store, with star window attraction Bugs Bunny about to be shipped off the to taxidermy department. Bugs is lika read more
Manhattan (1979, Woody Allen)
The Stop Button Posted by on Apr 27, 2012
Every shot in Manhattan, whether of the cityscape, the interiors or the actors, is so carefully and beautifully composed, it’s not surprising Allen lets the cast go a little loose. Gordon Willis’s black and white photography is luminous, giving the city an otherworldly, dreamlike feel. That feeling read more
It Was a Short Summer, Charlie Brown (1969, Bill Melendez)
The Stop Button Posted by on Apr 26, 2012
“It Was a Short Summer, Charlie Brown” is a rather ambitious cartoon, both from Melendez’s directorial standpoint and Charles M. Schulz’s narrative. It starts with the beginning of the school year, then moves back–through the writing of a theme–to the summer. Sch read more
Crimes and Misdemeanors (1989, Woody Allen)
The Stop Button Posted by on Apr 25, 2012
Crimes and Misdemeanors is not a particularly nice film. It juxtaposes two men in crisis–Martin Landau’s successful ophthalmologist has a girlfriend (Angelica Huston) who is threatening to tell his wife and Woody Allen’s failing filmmaker is crushing on the producer (Mia Farrow) o read more
Goliath II (1960, Wolfgang Reitherman)
The Stop Button Posted by on Apr 24, 2012
Instead of padding Goliath II out to an exhausting fifteen minutes, director Reitherman and writer Bill Peet should have concentrated on making it a good seven minute cartoon. Worse, there are animation problems every few frames in Goliath, like whoever photographed the cells didn’t know how read more
A New Life (1988, Alan Alda)
The Stop Button Posted by on Apr 23, 2012
Alda opens A New Life likes it’s going to juxtapose he and Ann-Margret’s lives immediately follow their divorce. For a while, it does. Alda’s got Hal Linden as a sidekick, Ann-Margret’s got Mary Kay Place. It’s all very even. She’s going back to school, he’s trying to figure out how to read more