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.
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
Alice Cans the Cannibals (1925, Walt Disney)
The Stop Button Posted by on Jan 10, 2012
The animation is a strange mix of great and mediocre in Alice Cans the Cannibals. The principals, whether it’s Julius (the titular Alice’s sidekick), the variety of animals they encounter or the cannibals presumably out to eat Alice (though why they’re chasing Julius, a cat, is ne read more
The Iron Mule (1925, Roscoe ‘Fatty’ Arbuckle and Grover Jones)
The Stop Button Posted by on Jan 8, 2012
What The Iron Mule lacks in plotting, it makes up for in exuberance. Unfortunately, the exuberance isn’t omnipresent. It’s like directors Arbuckle and Jones felt the need for gags, which don’t work, but had modern fun with the physical comedy. Almost all of the physical comedy is read more
Chili Weather (1963, Friz Freleng)
The Stop Button Posted by on Jan 7, 2012
I’m missing why Speedy Gonzales is the good guy in Chili Weather. He’s trying to steal food (the theory being the factory has food so it should give food to his friends) and he tortures the guard cat. If one got really creative, he or she could interpret Weather as commentary on the Mex read more
The Miracle Water (1914, Eleuterio Rodolfi)
The Stop Button Posted by on Jan 5, 2012
The Miracle Water is so exceptionally confusing–and it’s only ten minutes–I wonder if something had been lost or if the theaters handed out a plot summary. In fact, it’s so confounding, I read some descriptions online and they characterize the film as family friendly fare. A read more
Midnight Crossing (1988, Roger Holzberg)
The Stop Button Posted by on Jan 4, 2012
Midnight Crossing is a terribly written piece of garbage, but there’s some definite potential to it. It takes forever for the potential to show. The movie opens with one of the worst directed, worst written action sequences I can think of. Then it flashes forward to modern day and it’s bad, but read more
The Booze Hangs High (1930, Hugh Harman and Rudolf Ising)
The Stop Button Posted by on Jan 3, 2012
It takes The Booze Hangs High nearly half its running time to have its first gag… but it’s worth the wait. An adorable little duckling tells its mother it needs to go number two. Without dialogue or visual followthrough, but the message is clear. And, all of a sudden, Booze starts getti read more
Police Academy (1984, Hugh Wilson)
The Stop Button Posted by on Jan 2, 2012
I forgot how loose eighties comedies are in terms of filmmaking and narrative. I don’t think Wilson has a single good shot in the film. The best ones are workmanlike at best and the worst… well, he has these absurdly weak low angle closeups on David Graf, either to make him look tall or read more
Kid Auto Races at Venice (1914, Henry Lehrman)
The Stop Button Posted by on Jan 1, 2012
Okay, Kid Auto Races at Venice makes a little more sense now… it was ad-libbed. Charlie Chaplin really was just doing annoying gags in front of people who are watching a baby-cart race. Most the film consists of Chaplin acting like a jerk. He’s funny and appealing enough, but the short& read more