FunnyStrange.com

June 8 movie: Hangmen Also Die. Fritz Lang movie about Czech resistance against the Nazis. Brian Donlevy plays Reinhard Heydrich's assassin, and Anna Lee is the Czech woman who doesn't even know him but helps him escape. (She didn't know he was an assassin, just that he was in trouble.) The Gestapo find out she was involved and her father Walter Brennan is taken hostage, along with hundreds of Czechs.

It's a compelling movie, intense and intensely violent. Particularly difficult to watch is a scene in which a Gestapo officer tortures an old woman. The Nazis in this movie might have been a touch cartoony, or maybe a lot. But come on: the movie was made in 1943 by Lang and Bertolt Brecht, both of whom had fled Nazi Germany. I think they had a right.

June 6 movie: Hollow Triumph / The Scar. I'm not sure exactly what the deal is with the title of this movie. TCM called it Hollow Triumph but the opening credits called it The Scar. In any case, it's a noir starring Paul Henreid in a dual role. He plays a smart, talented man who could have made something of himself, but chose a life of petty crime instead. While hiding out from the local mob, he discovers a respectable doctor who is a doppleganger of himself and resolves to use the doctor's identity to conceal himself.

It's a nice little movie, well plotted and engaging. Strains credulity a bit, but not the worst I've ever seen by a longshot. There are some interesting questions about whether the people in your life really know you at all, and a nice irony in Henreid's character trying to scam his way into the life he could have had on his own merit. The scar of the title is a scar on the face of the doctor, which the gangster must recreate on his own face.

Supergee just linked to a horribly offensive liquor ad campaign, so I have to counter with my new favorite ad campaign, which to my surprise is for alcohol: The Most Interesting Man in the World. Most beer ads suck, and I don't even drink beer. These ads, I love.

In each ad the Most Interesting Man in the World goes on adventures, usually in evening clothes, excels at unusual sports, and rescues animals. They're like something out of an early 60s movie, like Clark Gable, Sean Connery, Ricardo Montalban and James Coburn rolled into one. Last night I saw another in the series. "He can disarm you with a look. Or his hands. Either way."

[ETA: Eat Me Daily has links to all the ads, plus a bunch of bon mots from the Most Interesting Man. My favorite is on bar nuts: "See those nuts? They are there to make us thirsty. While I don't like being coerced, in this case I shall make an exception."]

June 6 movie: Nat King Cole Soundies and Telescriptions. A collection of soundies (performance videos from the 1940s) featuring the King Cole Trio. A few of them were actually a bit later, and showed the Trio playing along with Cole's string-heavy hits like "Too Young" and "Mona Lisa." Mostly it was the early, jazzier songs which I like best.

June 6 movie: Machine Gun McCain. Italian mob movie -- by which I mean, a mob movie made by Italians -- starring John Cassavetes, Britt Eckland, Peter Falk and Gena Rowlands. The movie is flawed in some ways. Like for instance, Cassavetes and Eckland have crossed the mob, and are on the run, so what do they do? Go back to LA and walk into his old friend's place in broad daylight? Good idea! But I can't dislike this movie because the acting by Cassavetes and Rowland is so good, and the movie as a whole has such great style. Eckland wears this one dress to the casino that just blew my mind. I spent the whole scene trying to figure out how the dress was constructed. In truth, I'm complaining about the movie now but I really got into it at the time. I think Machine Gun McCain is going to be the standard by which I measure all other mob movies.

June 1 movie: The Wrong Box. This is a wonderful, hilarious, deeply misanthropic movie starring Ralph Richardson, Michael Caine, Peter Sellers, Peter Cook and Dudley Moore. It's kind of a "who's who" of 60s British comedy.

June 1 movie: Duck Soup. This is one of those movies that I've seen so many times that I have nothing to say about it. Except, how does it make me laugh every time? I know all the jokes, have seen them all over and over, and still I laugh out loud.

May 30 movie: Action in the North Atlantic. Enjoyable wartime drama about the Merchant Marines. Like maybe wartime movies, it's largely a propaganda piece, which is not a complaint: it was interesting to see a movie about the Merchant Marines. I particularly liked the scene where they join a convoy, and sailors from all over the world call out to greet them in a variety of languages. Starred Humphrey Bogart and Raymond Massey, and also Alan Hale!

(Warning: A kitten dies in the first five minutes of the movie, when their first ship is sunk. At least it doesn't happen on camera.)

May 30 movie: Duke Ellington in Hollywood. This was a series of clips of Duke Ellington. They weren't identified very well but it stands to reason that these were movies Ellington appeared in. Mostly performance videos though there were a couple of clips of him acting as well. The biggest surprise was a couple of songs Ellington did with vocals by Mae West. I wish I had thought to rip those while I had the DVD.

May 30 movie: The Mambo Kings. Drama starring Antonio Banderas and Armande Assante as Cuban brothers/musicians who move to the US in the 1950s. In my opinion the music was much better than the movie. The excellent music is a good reason to watch the movie: Tito Puente and Celia Cruz both perform. Also Desi Arnaz Jr. plays his father, who gives the brothers their big break. The movie does a terrific job of mixing old and new footage: they insert Banderas and Assante into the I Love Lucy show, and in the very beginning there's a musical number in a Cuban nightclub that I think I recognized from a 50s movie. On An Island With You maybe?

May 29 movie: Kelly's Heroes. Soldiers find out about a cache of gold bars in enemy territory and set out to steal it. Sound familiar? Sound like, maybe, Three Kings? Yeah. Three Kings must have been, um, "inspired by" Kelly's Heroes, and I'm kind of surprised I never heard about the earlier movie when Three Kings came out.

In some ways they're not actually that similar -- Three Kings is much more political, and Kelly's Heroes is much more cynical. Let that sink in a minute. Kelly's Heroes is more cynical. Much more cynical. There's that whole redemptive thing at the end of Three Kings which doesn't happen at all in Kelly's Heroes.

Kelly's Heroes stars a whole bunch of people. Notably Clint Eastwood, Telly Savalas, Don Rickles (being surprisingly not annoying), and Donald Sutherland as a hippie. In the Army, in WWII! A hippie whose CO died, so he and his whole platoon tuned in, turned on and dropped out. They lie around their tank letting their hair grow and listening to sitar music. It doesn't make a whole lot of sense, then again the movie never takes it self too seriously. It's basically a heist movie set in the war, not a war movie. Though there is one excellent battle scene (the one in the minefield) that could have been in any serious war movie.

I have so many movies to write up that if I don't have much to say, I'm going to put a whole day's movies in one post. Like

May 28 movies: Broadway Melody of 1940, Dancing Lady and Damsel in Distress. Three Fred Astaire movies without Ginger Rogers. Of the three, Broadway Melody of 1940 is by far the best. Costars Eleanor Powell, a superlative dancer. She and Astaire don't have any romantic chemistry; the pleasure of watching them together is seeing two masters share their mutual talent. Seriously, in 1940 Astaire and Powell were probably the two best dancers in the movies. It's a crying shame they only made one movie together.

Dancing Lady is Astaire's first movie and he's basically a specialty act. He's called by his own name and he shows up, "dances" with Joan Crawford twice, and that's it. The movie is really about Crawford struggling to succeed as the star of Broadway producer Clark Gable's new show. And there's a romantic triangle with Crawford, Gable and Franchot Tone. On the plus side, one of Astaire's two "dance" numbers (I use quotes because he isn't allowed to dance much, so as not to show up Crawford) is about beer and he wears lederhosen. On the negative side, the stage crew are played by Ted Healy and His Stooges, aka the first incarnation of the Three Stooges. I loathe the Three Stooges. I suppose if you liked them, that would be a plus for this movie.

Damsel in Distress. Another Astaire movie with a costar who can't dance. This time it's Joan Fontaine, who can't sing either. Astaire and Fontaine don't spend a lot of time together, and it ends up feeling more like a solo effort for Astaire. George Burns and Gracie Allen make good costars. I'm not crazy about the "ha ha you're stupid" gags which are the backbone of Burns & Allen's comedy, but they have a couple of good dance numbers with Astaire. Georg read somewhere that Burns & Allen had to audition for Astaire, and so they had an old vaudeville friend of theirs choreograph a dance for them. And Astaire liked the number so much that he wrote it into the movie. It's the dance they do with hand brooms. Astaire also has a couple of terrific solo dances: one in the street to "A Foggy Day," and one that blew me away where he dances and plays the drums at the same times. I've read that Astaire was accomplished at several musical instruments, and whenever you see him play an instrument in a movie, it's really him playing.

May 27 movie: The Dragon Murder Case. First I watched the best Philo Vance movie, then the worst.* This one starred Warren William as Vance. They really seemed to be phoning it in by this point. The worst part is that the DVR conked out right before the end of the movie and I never found out who did it. They were all standing in front of a pool and William was about to explain the convoluted whodunit, then the DVR froze, and when it finally rebooted William and Eugene Pallette were cracking jokes, roll credits. Dang!

*worst among the 4 I've seen. There may be another that's worse, and if so, I have no desire to find out.

May 27 movie: The Kennel Murder Case. Apparently there were a lot of series of detective/mystery movies. The Thin Man, the Saint, Mr. Moto, and Philo Vance to name a few. This was the best of the Philo Vance movies, at least the ones I've seen. It starred William Powell and was (sort of) set at a high society dog show. Hmm. William Powell, detective movie, high society, and dogs? That would never work.

May 26 movies: It Happened One Night and There Goes My Heart. These movies are very, very similar. There Goes My Heart was made several years later, and isn't as well known, so I'm assuming it was a knock-off of the more successful It Happened One Night. Both are well worth watching as far as I'm concerned. I watched them back to back during a marathon work session.

Speaking of which, someone asked me recently how I find time to watch so many movies. Well, for one thing, I don't watch a lot of regular TV. I follow a couple of Bravo reality shows, and of course the Daily Show and Colbert. But I don't watch sitcoms, weekly dramas, TV news, talk shows, etc. If I'm watching television it's almost always TCM.

Also, when I work at home I divide my work in two categories: the kind that requires my full attention and the kind that doesn't. Work that requires my whole brain would be programming, detailed graphic work, anything that I have to think about or pay close attention. Work that doesn't would be moving data from one place to another, setting up the weekly newsletter, any kind of routine task that takes more time than brain power. I'll often put a movie on to keep myself company while doing that kind of work. I used to listen to podcasts while working, and maybe someday I'll get tired of movies and go back to podcasts.

May 26 movie: The Dawn Patrol. This year for Memorial Day TCM did a special on WWI movies. They had a guy from a WWI museum to introduce the movie. The guy was interesting but he mostly talked about the accuracy of the weapons, uniforms and airplanes. H did not have much to say about the movie as a movie.

Anyway The Dawn Patrol is a wonderful movie. I've seen it several times and it never gets tired. It was made between the wars, it's about a group of British biplane pilots who laugh in the face of death. Laugh, I tell you! And drink a lot. Stars Errol Flynn and David Niven as the hotshot pilots, and Basil Rathbone as their commander, who is tortured about having to send other men to their deaths, often in impossible conditions, when he'd rather be out there himself.

The Dawn Patrol includes 3 cast members who were also in The Adventures of Robin Hood, made in the same year: Flynn, Rathbone and Melville Cooper, who played the Sheriff of Nottingham.

So I haven't posted in a while. Which you might or might not have noticed. I had a big deadline that took up pretty much every waking minute until a few days ago. (and pleased to report that everything went well, no major glitches.) Then I needed a couple of days to recover, rest and catch up on other work. And now here we are.

Today I was fending off a cold, watched movies and slept and did the last two weeks' crossword puzzles, and only did a little bit of work. I think it's telling that given the clue "Thou S _ _ _ _ " I immediately thought "Thou Swell," and when that turned out to be wrong I could not for the life of me figure out what else it could be. (the real answer? Thou Shalt.)

Speaking of movies and catching up, time to write up some movies!

May 26 movie: Dean Martin: Memories Are Made of This. Not a movie so much as a series of performances, mostly from Martin's TV show. There was one funny one where Martin couldn't get the mic stand fully extended. He alternated between stooping over and holding the (heavy, I assume) mic up, and pulling frantically on the mic stand whenever he wasn't singing.

May 25 movie: The Dirty Dozen. I did not intend to watch this, but I happened to turn it on a few minutes in and I got sucked in. It's a great movie. Exciting, well-made, great cast. It's cynical, and gets pretty dark at the end there. Which is not unusual for war movies made in the late 60s.

May 24 movie: A Walk in the Sun. This was an excellent movie about the invasion of Sicily, directed by Lewis Milestone who also directed All Quiet on the Western Front. Starred Dana Andrews and a great ensemble including Sterling Holloway, Lloyd Bridges, Richard Conte (was in The Godfather and the original Ocean's Eleven) and Norman Lloyd. He plays a curt tough guy who will surprise you if you remember him as the kindly old doctor on St. Elsewhere, not so much if you know him as the villain in Saboteur.

It's rare to see an ensemble war movie without the usual cast of stereotypes: no plucky ethnic guy, no Texas hayseed who becomes best friends with the Chicago hustler, no "I'm getting too old for this shit" career man, etc etc. The characters all seem very real and, what's the word. Underwritten? They just seem like people, not types with a capital T. The movie was very spare, with good use of locations. There's a beautiful shot that the director uses a couple of times, of the camera panning along a ditch or trench while the men jump down into the trench one by one.

I'm really glad I got to see this. My only complaint was the first reel had not been well restored & the night scenes were so blurry they were a little hard to watch. The image cleared up at some point and from then on was no hindrance to enjoying the movie.