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Anabel Takes a Tour (1938)
Filmmaker(s): Lew Landers

Annabel Allison, star of Wonder Pictures, is irked at her poor publicity, especially when a rival gets engaged to a Marquis; so she makes studio head Webb re-hire disgraced publicity agent Morgan for her personal appearance tour. The trip proceeds with a flurry of Morgan's crazy, slapstick publicity stunts. Then Annabel has her chance to "bag" a real Viscount.

Sometimes It Is People film nuts are out there. I get mail from waves of them every day as I run in the dark, stepping on feet with my comments. There seem to be two kinds of zealots: those attached to genres and archetypes and those...


Published April 2, 2023
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Angels With Dirty Faces (1938)
The saga of America’s dirty faced kids... and the breaks that life won’t give them!
Filmmaker(s): Michael Curtiz

Childhood chums Rocky Sullivan and Jerry Connelly grow up on opposite sides of the fence: Rocky matures into a prominent gangster, while Jerry becomes a priest, tending to the needs of his old tenement neighborhood.

Shoulder Driving movie works, and it interests me why. Regular readers of my comments know that I am on a grand quest to map all the introspective and complex folding tricks used to ensnare viewers. I’m convinced they are important. But along comes something like this that...


Published April 4, 2023
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I Cover the War! (1937)
DRAMA FOR HIS NEWSREEL CAMERA!
Filmmaker(s): Arthur Lubin

Bob Adams, ace newsreel cameraman, is told by his boss, "Get the picture---we can't screen alibis." He heads for Samari, a desert hot-bed of tribal unrest in Africa, to do just that, which includes getting footage of El Kadar, bandit and rebel leader. He gets his pictures but only after a romance with the Colonel's daughter Pamela, saving his wimpy, hacked-off brother Don from being a dupe of the gun-runners, and run-ins with spies and throat-cutting tribesman. For a finale, he saves the British Army.

Picture Snatcher ‘Stagecoach’ turned John Wayne into a celebrated wooden actor, he was a an ordinary uncelebrated one in a series of odd projects. Probably the most interesting of these odd deals is this movie. It doesn’t seem to be rentable. In terms of the actual...


Published November 28, 2022
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A Night of Terror (1937)
Caught in the web of a madman!
Filmmaker(s): Rowland V. Lee

Ann Harding plays a lovely but somewhat naive young woman who goes on a European vacation after winning a lottery. Swept off her feet by charming Basil Rathbone, Harding finds herself married before she is fully able to grasp the situation. Slowly but surely, Rathbone's loving veneer crumbles; when he casually asks Harding to sign a document turning her entire fortune over to him, she deduces that her days are numbered.

Talking while Leaving Theater I heard that 3D would be going mainstream a few years ago, I hoped for a revolution in what we think films are. I believe we are seeing some radical rethinking, because with 3D and CGI, we get a less encumbered...


Published February 27, 2023
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Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937)
The Happiest, Dopiest, Grumpiest, Sneeziest movie of the year.

A beautiful girl, Snow White, takes refuge in the forest in the house of seven dwarfs to hide from her stepmother, the wicked Queen. The Queen is jealous because she wants to be known as "the fairest in the land," and Snow White's beauty surpasses her own.

Stained Glass have a lot of complaints about Disney; what he made personally and the lumbering beast his studio has become. In particular, he murdered one of the most precious literary structures we have in Alice. But in his first big project, he did well enough...


Published December 10, 2024
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36 Hours to Kill (1936)
Filmmaker(s): Eugene Forde

Duke and Jeanie Benson, an outlaw couple hiding out under assumed names. Duke realizes that he has a winning sweepstake ticket and will win $150,000 if he can cash it in without getting apprehended

Making Your Bed watched this in preparation for “Europa”. Both are essentially railroad movies. This is about a gangster who has come out of hiding to take a train trip to from Los Angeles to Chicago to collect on a sweepstakes ticket. On the train, several...


Published December 8, 2022
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After the Thin Man (1936)
Continuing the fun in their NEW hit!
Filmmaker(s): W.S. Van Dyke

Nick and Nora Charles investigate when Nora's cousin reports her disreputable husband is missing, and find themselves in a mystery involving the shady owners of a popular nightclub, a singer and her dark brother, the cousin's forsaken true love, and Nora's bombastic and controlling aunt.

Walk this Way conventional wisdom is that a classic is something that is so well formed initially that it serves well for a long time. So classic films, for instance, are seen like classic car engines, well engineered things that still work. But I think with...


Published April 4, 2023
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Bottles (1936)
Filmmaker(s): Hugh Harman

A dark and stormy night in a drugstore. The druggist mixes a potion and falls asleep. The skull-and-crossbones on the bottle comes to life and drips the potion on the druggist.

A Mind Ajar seems that one major theology of animation concerns the animating (meaning coming to life) of normally inanimate objects. It is one strain worth tracing, because with today’s film technologies, animals can easily be seen to talk and even wear clothes and such....


Published April 2, 2024
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My Man Godfrey (1936)
Butler! FOR THE COCK-EYEDEST FAMILY in the WHOLE WORLD!...and the butler-blonde battle was on!
Filmmaker(s): Gregory La Cava

Fifth Avenue socialite Irene Bullock needs a "forgotten man" to win a scavenger hunt, and no one is more forgotten than Godfrey Park, who resides in a dump by the East River. Irene hires Godfrey as a servant for her riotously unhinged family, to the chagrin of her spoiled sister, Cornelia, who tries her best to get Godfrey fired. As Irene falls for her new butler, Godfrey turns the tables and teaches the frivolous Bullocks a lesson or two.

The Man 30s was when movies decided what they want to be. You can spin one of three or four narratives tracing that development. One of those narratives casts genres as beings and has them duking it out, only a few surviving. In this narrative, you'd...


Published December 11, 2024
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The Phantom Empire (1935)
A Nation 20,000 Feet Underground

When the ancient continent of Mu sank beneath the ocean, some of its inhabitant survived in caverns beneath the sea. Cowboy singer Gene Autry stumbles upon the civilization, now buried beneath his own Radio Ranch. The Muranians have developed technology and weaponry such as television and ray guns. Their rich supply of radium draws unscrupulous speculators from the surface. The peaceful civilization of the Muranians is corrupted by the greed from above, and it becomes Autry's task to prevent all-out war, ideally without disrupting his regular radio show.

Subterranean Drugs involved in a study of ‘folding’ in film; folding is a matter of overlain or referenced narratives. Sometimes the folding is something only of interest to highbrow specialists, but usually it is a matter of fun. Some folding is a matter of introducing bizarre...


Published May 13, 2022
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