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.
Sea Salts (1949, Jack Hannah)
The Stop Button Posted by on Feb 7, 2012
Sea Salts opens with a framing device, which doesn’t make much sense from a story point of view. Well, wait, maybe the frame is to show the viewer Donald Duck (as a sea captain) is a likable greedy, selfish jerk, not a dangerous one. The protagonist is actually a beetle, one of Donald’s read more
Non-Stop New York (1937, Robert Stevenson)
The Stop Button Posted by on Feb 6, 2012
I’d almost say Non-Stop New York has to be seen to be believed, but it might imply someone else should suffer through the film’s endless seventy-some minute running time. It’s a completely idiotic British attempt at an American proto-noir. The film opens in New York, so you have a read more
Haunted Spooks (1920, Hal Roach and Alfred J. Goulding)
The Stop Button Posted by on Feb 5, 2012
Haunted Spooks is a disjointed experience. It starts well enough, with unmarried Mildred Davis inheriting a mansion… so long as she’s married. Her lawyer promises to get her a husband, which the title cards have already revealed will be Harold Lloyd. Then Haunted takes its time bringing read more
Feed the Kitty (1952, Chuck Jones)
The Stop Button Posted by on Feb 4, 2012
A tough bulldog adopts an adorable kitten in Feed the Kitty; a story Jones liked so much he remade it. This one, the original, manages to be charming without saccharine, maybe because of the really strange objectification of the dog’s lady owner. She kicks up her skirt at one point, revealing read more
Inspector Hornleigh Goes to It (1941, Walter Forde)
The Stop Button Posted by on Feb 3, 2012
For the final Inspector Hornleigh picture, the filmmakers go propaganda. They do have some fun with it—the film’s first sequence is Gordon Harker and Alastair Sim on an army base, undercover as aged privates, investigating scrounging. It’s all played for laughs, sort of wasting some of the running read more
An Inspector Calls (1954, Guy Hamilton)
The Stop Button Posted by on Feb 1, 2012
For the majority of An Inspector Calls, I thought Alastair Sim’s delicate, thoughtful performance was out of place. The film’s incredibly melodramatic and contrived. After the twist ending… well, I’m pretty sure it’s still melodramatic and contrived, but it gives the i read more
Golden Yeggs (1950, Friz Freleng)
The Stop Button Posted by on Jan 31, 2012
Once again, the boys at Warner Bros. have some problems with basic gender realities. Not only does Daffy Duck lay eggs (something he strongly infers in Golden Yeggs without getting graphic), neither do ganders. That incredible plot problem aside, Yeggs is a lot of fun. It starts on Porky Pig’ read more
Inspector Hornleigh (1939, Eugene Forde)
The Stop Button Posted by on Jan 30, 2012
It would be interesting to know how much of Inspector Hornleigh features Gordon Harker (playing Inspector Hornleigh) on screen. While Harker does get a fair amount of the running time, a lot is spent on his sidekick, played by Alastair Sim, and the villains. The script’s approach to narrative read more
An Eastern Westerner (1920, Hal Roach)
The Stop Button Posted by on Jan 29, 2012
In An Eastern Westerner, Harold Lloyd plays a Manhattan playboy whose antics land him out West. Not the antics where he destroys a dance hall in the opening sequence, which nicely establishes the character, but the ones where his parents catch him. Westerner‘s opening sequence, where Lloyd is read more
Food for Feudin’ (1950, Charles A. Nichols)
The Stop Button Posted by on Jan 28, 2012
Food for Feudin’ has some really strong animation, but also some weak. There’s a great sequence where Chip and Dale crawl into these gardening gloves and confuse the heck out of Pluto. During that sequence, the animation is spectacular. Earlier, when the chipmunks are gathering nutsR read more
Bubbles (1930, Roy Mack)
The Stop Button Posted by on Jan 26, 2012
Bubbles might be of modern interest because to Judy Garland fans, as an eight-year old Garland and her sisters show up at one point. But to anyone else? Well, it may also be interesting as an early sound short. There’s a lot of coordinated tap dancing in the short and I kept wondering if the read more
Grand Canyonscope (1954, Charles A. Nichols)
The Stop Button Posted by on Jan 24, 2012
In Grand Canyonscope, Donald Duck is the typical disrespectful, annoying American tourist. What’s funny about the cartoon is how–in 1954–it was one in every bunch of tourists… whereas now it’s the inverse. The cartoon’s in CinemaScope and director Nichols uses th read more
The Limejuice Mystery or Who Spat in Grandfather’s Porridge? (1930, Jack Harrison)
The Stop Button Posted by on Jan 22, 2012
The Limejuice Mystery is, in puppets, the meeting of Sherlock Holmes (renamed Herlock Sholmes here) and Anna May Wong (who’s also renamed for legal reasons, I imagine). Now, there are some good Holmes jokes–like the bobbies dancing to Holmes’s violin solo and Holmes’s hobby read more
Old Smokey (1938, William Hanna)
The Stop Button Posted by on Jan 21, 2012
Technically speaking, Old Smokey is a fantastic cartoon. The animation and the backgrounds are both excellent. Hanna composes some great shots, as well as the camera “movements.” But it’s not a fun cartoon. There are no gags, because there’s real danger. A house is on fire a read more
The Tin Man (1935, James Parrott)
The Stop Button Posted by on Jan 19, 2012
I’m wondering if all the Thelma Todd and Patsy Kelly shorts–the team being one of Hal Roach’s attempts at a female Laurel and hardy–are as bad as The Tin Man. For a while, it seems like Todd is much worse than Kelly, but once Kelly’s acting opposite someone else… read more
A-Haunting We Will Go (1966, Robert McKimson)
The Stop Button Posted by on Jan 17, 2012
Expository dialogue in a cartoon? I’ve never heard anything so silly before… in A-Haunting We Will Go, the witch introduces Speedy Gonzales. Unfortunately, she does not cook him. Strangely (and sadly since the character dynamic is amusing), Daffy’s nephew doesn’t get an intr read more
Good Cheer (1926, Robert F. McGowan)
The Stop Button Posted by on Jan 15, 2012
Good Cheer is unexpected. It’s the only Our Gang Christmas short and it’s a mix of high concept morality and special effects extravaganza. The short opens with a lot of ice storm effects, down to cats and mice being affected, and it’s excellent work. There’s also some great read more
Rabbit Hood (1949, Chuck Jones)
The Stop Button Posted by on Jan 14, 2012
Rabbit Hood features some great voice work from Mel Blanc. Some of the responsibility falls on Jones and writer Michael Maltese, of course, since they put Bugs Bunny in Sherwood Forest with the Sheriff of Nottingham as an antagonist… but Blanc makes the cartoon memorable. Bugs has some great read more
The Nose (1963, Alexander Alexeieff and Claire Parker)
The Stop Button Posted by on Jan 12, 2012
The Nose is an example of pinscreen animation. If I understand it correctly, thousands (over a hundred thousand, for example, in the case of The Nose) of pins are put on a board and moved and photographed under different lighting situations. The result is startling. Directors Alexeieff and Parker a read more
Second Sight (1989, Joel Zwick)
The Stop Button Posted by on Jan 11, 2012
There are some funny lines in Second Sight. Not many, but some. And they’re good, laugh out loud lines. It’d be hard for John Larroquette, reacting to Bronson Pinchot acting like an idiot, not to get some laughs. The whole thing feels like a “what I did on summer hiatus” for read more