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Heckle and Jeckle are in the ancient land of Egypt, lurking around pyramids and looking for a way to pick up loot. They work their way into a pyramid, but they are reckoning without the powers of ancient spirits and the curse of Tut. Also termites.

This one was released at the end of September, just in time for a spooky month of cartoons to celebrate Halloween. Many cartoons were released to tie to particular holidays, like July 4th and Christmas. Halloween cartoons formed a nice little genre, and this one probably was revived for several years. It has some nice gags in it, typical for Terrytoons' best series.

Here's another of the McGraw-Hill Text-Films. McGraw-Hill was never as big a player in the educational film market as Coronet, Centron, or Encyclopedia-Britannica. Usually their films were tied to a particular text book, and that would be one published by McGraw-Hill. These films thus served two purposes: the increase revenue by offering their works in an alternate form; and to serve as advertising for those text books.

So how was this one? Rather mediocre in its presentation. In speaking of the means that society uses to inculcate a conscience in youngsters, it offers those methods as purely punitive. There is no sense or focus on the rewards given for righteous behavior.

The National Film Board of Canada has long been a great proponent of animation. They have produced some great animated films. This is not one of them.

It is, instead, a dull and ugly lecture on the importance of taking care of your teeth. Aimed at small children, it has nothing in it that small children might enjoy and thereby make the film and its message more memorable. Instead it has a narrator that speaks in a bright, chirpy voice that sounds like it is aiming at convincing idiots of something. It has ugly designs, partial animation, and everything that would contribute to a brain wiping it away as another unpleasant memory.

A spoof newsreel offers an assortment gags in a blackout format in this Terrytoons cartoon.

This sort of a cartoon was s staple through the 1930s and 1940s. They offered a nice way to snap out gags, one after the other, without the bother of concocting a story to link them all together. They also dissed the newsreels themselves, which often covered trivial subjects under the bland description of "human interest story." This one is fairly, amusingly average for the writing, even though the decline in revenue as the full movie program and inflation whittled into the visual aspects of this cartoon.

When the first Star Wars trilogy was a new thing, they were best of friends. But they were children then, and now it's 1999. So even if they all still live in the same Ohio town, they have drifted apart. None of them have moved on with their lives, but still, they just stopped seeing each other. Now, however, there's only a year until the Second trilogy starts, and most of them are excited. One of them doesn't seem to care, but it's something for the others to talk about. But it turns out that one of them, Christopher Rodriguez Marquette, is dying. He's not going to live long enough to see the premiere. So the others decide to revive an old plan of theirs: to go to Skywalker Ranch and see if they can get a look at the rough cut. And so they set out on their crooked path in a van that's been fitted out with Star Wars memorabilia. But there will be obstacles in their way. Not everyone is one with the Force. Worst of these are Trekkies.

I've had niche interests myself, so I get it, but for most of this comedy road trip, it's sad to watch these people, their dreams getting in the way of their dreams, even though the jokes are scattered liberally throughout. Indeed, I've come to the conclusion that these little fandoms, these echo chambers in which people argue over the details like they're rabbinic scholars trying to figure out exactly what G*d wants, instead of figuring out how to deal with the world and get what you want. So while the real friendships that are at the center of this comedy are good, I found the totality to be annoying. With William Shatner, Billy Dee Williams, Carrie Fisher, Kristen Bell, and Danny Trejo.

Heckle and Jeckle decide they need a new house. They settle on a log cabin, and come across a nice stretch of piney logs. Unfortunately for them, it's a lumber yard owned by Powerful Pierre. Unfortunately for Pierre, it's Heckle and Jeckle.

I can understand why the other reviewer doesn't think much of this cartoon. Several of the gags are retreads from half a dozen years earlier. But this was no impediment to the people at Terrytoons; Paul Terry would reuse the same story and gags every few years, sometimes adding operatic music, sometimes adding Mighty Mouse. Given that these cartoons were intended for small children, how likely was it that a seven-year-old would have seen the cartoon that last played in the theater six years earlier?

Not that I claim that the series was as good as ever. Terry's staff was running out of novel situations to put the two talking magpies in. But this one is still good on its own terms.

That's Hy Hazell in the title role. Even though it's actual a revue, there's enough of a plot to keep things moving along. Miss Hazell's staff is putting on a show, backed by Freddie Frinton, who made his packet selling chewing gum. However, with Miss Hazell's title, comes the delusion among the various branches that she's engaged to any number of men, including private Harry Secombe, and leftenant Michael Bentine.

But, as I noted, it's really a revue, so everyone sings at least one song, Graham Stark shows up because Peter Sellers isn't available, the comics mug it up in skits supposedly written by Bentine and director Maclean Rogers, and there's a bevy of pretty dancers for two numbers, as well as a comic boxing match.

It's all an excuse for fans of the Goon Show to have a little fun, but not too much of it. It's about as much as you can expect in an E. J. Fancy production; at least it wasn't shot wild.

Around Bologna and adjacent places in Italy, there are old men. They're retired, and they like to hang out at construction sites, hands clasped behind their backs, observing the work and offering helpful comments. They are called "umarelli" and that urge to rubberneck is pretty near universal. So it's hardly surprising to find people gathered at a construction site somewhere, I would imagine, in America, watching through holes in the fence. And it's hardly surprising to find Heckle and Jeckle there, making a buck by ensuring that everyone has a good view, and plenty of peanuts and hot dogs to eat -- at a price. But the site watchman, their nemesis the bulldog, tries to stop the two talking magpies. When will he ever learn?

It's a fine entry in what I consider Terrytoons' best series, with a nicely ascending arc of destruction, some thrill comedy, and, of course, major explosions at the end. Enjoy!

While researching on the Great Barrier Reef, Josh Hartnett is injured and rendered comatose. His wife, Tamsin Egerton, is distraught beyond words. But Hartnett is unaware of this. He is in a dream state in which he is an officer in the East India Company in the 18th Century. While his bosses are in a war to gain hegemony over the subcontinent, fighting goes on, and Hartnett and a woman fighter, Bipasha Basu, travel together and fall in love.

Roland Joffe directs, the visuals are superb, the actors are fully committed and up to their roles. And the script is a piece of romantic junk out of a bad romance novel, with a desperate attempt to give it some depth by reference to quantum entanglement that brings people together over the centuries. It doesn't work. It's shocking that Joffe, who has directed some great movies about the power of simple, decent emotions in the context of great and horrifying events, could have fallen for this. I suppose that's the problem with great artists. When they're right, they're magnificent. When they're wrong, they're horrifyingly bad. Here, Joffe was horrifyingly wrong and bad.

In this Walter Lantz cartoon directed by Paul Smith, a turtle na,ed Herman wants to fly. He tries to do so on his own, with a bald Eagle telling him he can't do it. But when Herman shows up with the loot to pay for lessons, the Eagle says yes.

It's a cartoon that's more sweet than funny -- unless you like seeing turtles plummeting to the ground -- and so not to my taste at all. With a muddled ending, it sinks even further. Still, although Paul Smith was not the best cartoon director in the racket, he was competent in many things, and best particularly with the Cholly Willy series, which came with a liberal admixture of cuteness. This one qualifies on that last quality far better than most.

Giuliano Gemma, another of the innumerable sons of Jove, wind sup wooing Antonella Lualdi, defeating the evil king Pedro Armendariz, and generally having a good time in this light-hearted peplum movie.

Anyone who went to see the American version expecting an outright comedy was bound to be disappointed; Mel Brooks directed the trailer for the movie, and it's a lot sillier than the actual movie. But then, swords-and-sandal flicks are rarely known for their depth. People went to see them for the combination of pretty girls in short chitons, and body builders dressed likewise. Even so, this movie never takes itself seriously, with Gemma being less musclebound and more clever than your average hero.

Dimwit stops being a hunting dog and goes fishing in this cartoon, but while he might catch a few, how many does he expect to keep when Heckle and Jeckle are around?

It's early in th saga of Terrytoon's best cartoon characters, so the occasional inconsistency is to be expected. In this case, whichever one is supposed to be English stops speaking in an English accent and speaks in a higher tone than his fellow talking magpie; everyone shows rows of menacing teeth, from bird to whale; and H&J show up white in the last few frames. That might be because their feather's have been incinerated.

Still, the gags come fast and funny. That's pretty good for a Terrytoon, even if it's not the best the two birds ever appeared in.

Two small-town fleas are at a square dance and talking about their upcoming marriage. Up drives a car with a French poodle and suitable dastardly flea, who abducts the lady flea. The boy flea pursues.

Although there are signs of the tightening budgets that afflicted theatrical cartoons in the 1950s, the script by Michael Maltese more than makes up for any shortcomings, with ethnic fleas to suit the dogs they live on, and objects that move by themselves, much like flea circuses, still a known thing when this was made. Walter Lantz's staff was skill enough to ring many amusing changes on these two basic themes.

Breezy Bear may have no trouble getting into the circus because today it's free entrance for children. But his pop, Windy Bear, is another matter. He tries to get in by taking the place of the juggling bear, but soon discovers that while showing up is half the job, you have to do the rest of it too.

If this had been made for television that year, it would have been pretty good. This was a theatrical cartoon, however, and shows the impoverishment that was going on. Aerwork had been severely simplified to cut down on costs, both in character design and background work; and if this is fully animated, it still shows signs that the articulation that earlier cartoons had used was no longer in use.

Still, it's amusing in terms of scripts.

Here's a short film from the National Film Board of Canada about making maple sugar in Quebec. I know a little of the subject, not just because I like maple syrup -- who doesn't? -- but because a cosnf mine b old dairy farm in the Catskills that had become overrun with sugar maples. So he set up a sugaring operation, although he stops the process when it's still syrup.

Because of this I caught one error, in ich the narrator tells us that sugaring is carried out only in North America. It turns out you can also use Russian birch for the same process. Even though the yield is much lower and the taste a little different, they do some of that in Siberia.

Heckle and Jeckle steal a nice bowl of bones from Soupbone, the dimwitted dog. He proceeds to chase them, and they play tricks on him. But this cartoon isn't one in which the two talking magpies torment someone for no reasons. All three of them consider it an funny game. Not so the bulldog, who's a psychiatrist who sticks Soupbone in a padded cell. But H&J won't let him do this to a pal, so they proceed to really torment him.

This is a nice variation on the best Terrytoons series, with a different attitude towards their shenanigans. Although it starts out in a manner I didn't care for, in the end it's all good fun.

Heckle -- or maybe it's Jeckle. I was never sure which was which -- has been thinking. Since he's a cartoon character, he can do anything he can think of, like become a puppy dog or a swim in a bath tub of infinite length. Jeckle -- or maybe it's Heckle, like I said above -- tries this out, and the two of them decide to torment the bulldog, who's a beat cop in this cartoon featuring the two talking magpies. But will he realize he's a cartoon character too?

Heckle and Jeckle are my two favorite Terrytoons characters, always filled with bonhommie and an assortment of good gags. When you go meta on me, as this cartoon does, I'm even happier.

Heckle and Jeckle are enjoying a pleasant game of gin runny at their pleasant home above the golf course. Alas, the bulldog is on the green today, and his wild drives keep hitting their home, their cards, and themselves. So they settle in for a course of vengeance in this typically funny Terrytoon.

I agree with the other reviewer. The Two Talking Magpies are my favorite Terrytoons series. Contrast that with the fact that every comedian has a golf routine or short subject in his repertoire, and my enjoyment is reduced a bit. But with Terrytoons still in their lush, candybox-art phase for the background work, and some good gags, there's a lot to enjoy here.

At the top of a ski resort lies an isolated chalet. Eight people arrive in response to an unexpected dinner invitation from someone they have never met. There are two servants. If the person who invited them has his way, none of them will leave alive.

It's the second screen version of Agatha Christie's And Then There Were None, directed by George Pollock, who had filmed several of her Miss Marple mysteries with Margaret Rutherford.. It was Pollock's last time as director. He went to work for Stanley Kubrick.

A goodly assortment of well known performers essay the roles: High O'Brian, Shirley Eaton, Fabian, Leo Genn, Stanley Holloway, Wilfrid Hyde-White, Dennis Price.... and their performances, good as they may be, betray the fact this Mrs. Christie could plot out the most ingenious mysteries (when I read them a half century ago, I was able to figure out precisely one before the answer was revealed), but she couldn't write in more than the barest sense of composing a sentence correctly. All of his descriptions are dull, all of her characters stereotypes.

Which raises the question of whether, when the game of Clue is being played, is anything else important. I think so, but that's a personal take.

A lady seated in a chair peeks out from behind her fan in this charming experimental film by Georges Demenÿ.

Douai-born Demenÿ was a gymnast and inventor who worked with Etienne-Jules Marey on many of his projects, including their experiments in what would become cinema. When they parted because Demenÿ wished to make money off the thing, he went to Gaumont for backing; although his Phonoscope was not a success, Gaumont incorporated several of its components into what would become standard for the movie camera. Demenÿ returned to his primary interest, gymnastics. He died in 1917 at the age of 67.

:In the troubled neighborhood of Crown Heights in the Borough of Churches, a sheltered Jewish Girl -- Karen Starc -- and a Black rapper -- Tariq Trotter -- fall in love.

Despite some issues with the location shooting -- one sequence shot in the subway shows one of the Canal Street stations as clean as my grandmother's kitchen after the pre-Passover cleaning -- it's a lovely modernized version of the Romeo & Juliet story, with many references to Solomon and the Queen of Sheba; indeed, Trotter's character is named Solomon. There's a nice sociological undertone of each culture struggling to maintain its identity that plays nicely into the story, with Trotter's efforts to come to some understanding of the deep love he feels for the lady, and Miss Starc trying to calm her hot-headed relative, played by David Vadim.

Woody Woodpecker visits Niagara Falls and decides to go over the Falls in a barrel. The park guide tells him it's forbidden, and continually stops the red-headed woodpecker from achieving his goal ... by winding up in the barrel himself, going over the Falls to the cheers of all the tourists.

It's a nice example of building a comedy by variations on a gag, with a gradual increase in the sheer size of the gag. At first it's only the single ranger, but by the end, it's the entire staff of the Falls, with Woody trying his best to achieve his goal.

Although the Woody Woodpecker cartoons had declined from the days when Shamus Culhane was in charge of them, they occasionally were very good. This is an example of that.

Breezy Bear heads off to the little red schoolhouse without his books. His father snatches them up and tries to catch his son, but is distracted because the fish are jumping. As he tries to catch one, the truant officer spots him, thinks he is a student playing hooky, and tries to force him to school.

It's typical late-1950s theatrical cartooning, with simpler designs than in days of yore, but still pretty good writing and voice acting. Interesting (to me at any rate) is that the truant officer seems be modeled on Hercules, the little man who featured in a couple of Lantz cartoons half a decade earlier.

A bear tries to get honey out of a hive without much success in this Walter Lantz cartoon.

A good script helps, with lots of painful gags on view. Technically, there has been a decline in visual quality; increasing costs due to inflation, as well as a decline in demand for theatrical cartoons due to the rise of television, had forced Lantz, as well as the other cartoon factories, to opt for simpler designs and more impressionist background art. Still, the story writing remains pretty good, as well as the voice performances. The 1960s would show greater losses, particularly in writing, but that time had not yet come.

This McGraw-Hill educational film discusses class in America, and the rigor with which it is maintained. It makes its points well, but fails to note that class boundaries, although they are difficult to cross in a lifetime, can vary greatly over generations. Although a man or woman born of low class can achieve financial success without moving up in class, his children are not so bound; the right school can make a tremendous difference in forging new connections.

It's interesting that when this movie considers vertical mobility, it only thinks about people rising in class. It's certainly possible to sink in class over the same generational eras. But Americans don't like to consider that.