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Mae West in Night After Night Photo: Irving Lippman Mae West, who was born 130 years ago this month, made a career out of being funny, smart, and sexy in an industry that doesn’t often give women the space to be more than one thing at a time. Both on screen and off,...

Graphic: Getty Images

Mae West, who was born 130 years ago this month, made a career out of being funny, smart, and sexy in an industry that doesn’t often give women the space to be more than one thing at a time. Both on screen and off, West turned sexism...

You Can’t Cheat an Honest Man

Blu ray

Kino Lorber

1939 / 1.33:1 / 79 Min.

Starring W.C. Fields, Charlie McCarthy, Edgar Bergen

Written by Charles Bogle

Directed by George Marshall, Edward CLine

Charlie McCarthy was W.C. Fields’ most formidable antagonist—a wide-eyed charmer with a bright (not to mention permanent) smile, Charlie was everything the great comedian wasn’t. One thing Fields had that Charlie didn’t was flesh (admittedly sagging) and blood (80 proof on the best of days). The diminutive McCarthy was made of wood—only a dummy in top hat and tails but the most famous puppet on the planet, and operated by the worst ventriloquist in Hollywood, Edgar Bergen. Though Bergen couldn’t keep his own mouth from moving when he spoke for Charlie, the little fellow’s dialog still packed a punch. Indeed, the reason the duo proved so effective in their skirmishes with Fields was because their humor,...

To lose ourselves in a world of winks and wisecracks from quick-witted showgirls, ditzy heiresses and fast-talking career women may seem like a borderline irresponsible choice in These Troubled Times. But the blast of pure pleasure that is the Berlin Film Festival’s 27-movie tribute to Mae West, Rosalind Russell and Carole Lombard is an act of cinematic self-care with a precedent. The “No Angels” Retrospective, which co-ordinator Annika Haupts says was conceived as “mood-lightening” counter-programming during Germany’s first corona lockdown, comprises comedies that were themselves developed during America’s Great Depression. Spanning 1932 to 1943, there are ordained classics like “My Man Godfrey,” “His Girl Friday,” “Twentieth Century,” “To Be or Not to Be” and “The Women.” But there’s also a trove of less well-known treasures, united by irreverence and leading ladies whose charisma transforms the contrivances of Hayes Code-era Hollywood into escapism so effervescent it froths the blues away.

Closing out a year in which we’ve needed The Criterion Channel more than ever, they’ve now announced their impressive December lineup. Topping the highlights is a trio of Terrence Malick films––Badlands, Days of Heaven, and The New World––along with interviews featuring actors Richard Gere, Sissy Spacek, and Martin Sheen; production designer Jack Fisk; costume designer Jacqueline West; cinematographers Haskell Wexler and John Bailey; and more.

Also in the lineup is an Afrofuturism series, featuring an introduction by programmer Ashley Clark, with work by Lizzie Borden, Shirley Clarke, Souleymane Cissé, John Akomfrah, Terence Nance, and more. There’s also Mariano Llinás’s 14-hour epic La flor, Bill Morrison’s Dawson City: Frozen Time, Ken Loach’s Sorry We Missed You, Jennie Livingston’s Paris Is Burning, plus retrospectives dedicated to Mae West, Cary Grant, Barbra Streisand, and more.

Check out the lineup below and return every Friday for our weekly streaming picks.

The Paleface

Blu ray

Kino Lorber

1948 / 91 min.

Starring Bob Hope, Jane Russell

Cinematography by Ray Rennahan

Directed by Norman Z. McLeod

In 1934 Al Christie directed Going Spanish, a 19 minute farce billed as “An Educational Musical Comedy.” The movie is notable only for the film debut of Bob Hope whose wisecracks about the movie’s incompetence provoked Christie to cancel the comedian’s contract. Another filmmaker made his mark with the irascible producer too—Norman Z. McLeod got his feet wet working as title cartoonist for a series of silent films known as Christie’s Comedies. Pretty soon McLeod would be dealing with funny men in the flesh; W.C. Fields, the Marx Brothers, Danny Kaye and Hope himself. He would direct—and with those particular artists, “manage” might be a more appropriate term—some of the greatest comedies to emerge from the studio system.

McLeod’s technique, a hands-off approach that was the opposite of showy,...

Margaret Hamilton with Ray Bolger and Jack Haley in an MGM promotional photo for "The Wizard of Oz".

Movie lovers associate actress Margaret Hamilton almost exclusively with her immortal portrayal of the Wicked Witch in the 1939 MGM classic "The Wizard of Oz". However, as writer Veronika Bondarenko points out in a column for Pocket Worthy, there was much more to the woman and her talents. Hamilton was proud of her performance in "Oz" but ultimately resented the fact that her other career achievements were largely ignored by the public and critics. She appeared in such diverse productions as "The Adventures of Tom Sawyer", "13 Ghosts", "My Little Chickadee", "The Red Pony", "Brewster McCloud" and "The Anderson Tapes". She was also a veteran of stage productions and appeared in countless hit TV shows.

To read about her remarkable life and career, click here.

The great Larry Wilmore joins us to share some very personal double features.

Show Notes: Movies Referenced In This Episode

1917 (2019)

Animal Crackers (1930)

Duck Soup (1933)

My Little Chickadee (1940)

A Night At The Opera (1935)

A Hard Day’s Night (1964)

The Manchurian Candidate (1962)

The Manchurian Candidate (2004)

The Parallax View (1974)

Singin’ In The Rain (1952)

A Clockwork Orange (1971)

Planet of the Apes (1968)

Conquest of the Planet of the Apes (1972)

Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977)

E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial (1982)

Jaws (1975)

The Stepford Wives (1975)

The Party (1968)

The Return of the Pink Panther (1975)

The Pink Panther Strikes Again (1976)

Richard Pryor: Live In Concert (1979)

Richard Pryor: Live And Smokin’ (1971)

Jo Jo Dancer, Your Life Is Calling (1986)

Dolemite Is My Name (2019)

Lenny (1974)

The Human Centipede (First Sequence) (2009)

Lolita (1962)

Caligula (1979)

The Night of the Iguana (1964)

The Elephant Man (1980)

What Would Jack Do? (2020)

Blue Velvet (1986)

The Apartment (1960)

Some Like It Hot (1959)

Double Indemnity (1944)

The Sting (1973)

Butch Cassidy And The Sundance Kid...

This week’s episode of our podcast We Are Movie Geeks The Show is up! Hear Wamg’s Cate Marquis, Jim Batts and Tom Stockman talk movies. We’ll discuss the weekend box office and review Table 19 and Don’T Kill It! We’ll also discuss all of classic movies showing locally including My Little Chickadee, White Heat, and Raging Bull all at the Tivoli. We’ll also talk about how excited we are about seeing Kong Skull Island this week and discuss our favorite giant ape movies.

Here’s the show:

http://www.wearemoviegeeks.com/wp-content/uploads/wamg-3-6-54.mp3

The post This Week’s Wamg Podcast – Table 19, Don’T Kill It!, and More! appeared first on We Are Movie Geeks.

My Little Chickadee, White Heat, and Raging Bull constitute the three-film series sponsored by The Mildred Kemper Art Museum next week at The Tivoli Theater (6350 Delmar in the University City Loop). This ties into the museum’s current exhibit “Rosalyn Drexler: Who Does She Think She Is?” These are Free screenings!

A kiss. A punch. A body braced for impact. The paintings of Rosalyn Drexler exude uncanny stillness, anticipation and, frequently, the dread of imminent violence. Moments of intimacy and conflict are frozen, sliced and readied for examination — excerpts from narratives whose conclusions can only be guessed. From Feb. 10 to April 17, the Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum at Washington University in St. Louis will present “Rosalyn Drexler: Who Does She Think She Is?”, the first full-career retrospective for the multi-talented artist. Surveying six decades of work, the exhibition features major paintings and collages alongside rarely seen early sculptures.

The recent box office success of The Boss firmly establishes Melissa McCarthy as the current queen of movie comedies (Amy Schumer could be a new contender after an impressive debut last Summer with Trainwreck), but let us think back about those other funny ladies of filmdom. So while we’re enjoying the female reboot/re-imagining of Ghostbusters and those Bad Moms, here’s a top ten list that will hopefully inspire lots of laughter and cause you to search out some classic comedies. It’s tough to narrow them down to ten, but we’ll do our best, beginning with… 10. Eve Arden The droll Ms. Arden represents the comic sidekicks who will attempt to puncture the pomposity of the leading ladies with a well-placed wisecrack (see also the great Thelma Ritter in Rear Window). Her career began in the early 1930’s with great bit roles in Stage Door and Dancing Lady.

Sometimes actors are cast in a movie together and instantly display great onscreen chemistry. You look at them and think, “These two should work together again. They make a good team.” Sometimes they do reunite and it leads to a series of great screen collaborations, but sometimes they don’t and we’re left wishing the pair would have made more films together.

Back in the days of the old ‘Studio System,’ movies studio execs would look for actors who had good on-screen chemistry and repeatedly cast them together in films. This was called “packaging”, and it lead to the frequent teaming of people like Fred Astaire & Ginger Rogers; William Powell & Myrna Loy; Humphrey Bogart & Lauren Bacall; Boris Karloff & Bela Lugosi; Bob Hope & Bing Crosby; Errol Flynn & Olivia de Havilland; Nelson Eddy & Jeannette MacDonald; etc., etc.

The ‘Studio System’ is long gone and so is “packaging”. It’s a pity...

or, Savant picks The Most Impressive Discs of 2015

This is the actual view from Savant Central, looking due North.

What a year! I was able to take one very nice trip back East too see Washington D.C. for the first time, or at least as much as two days' walking in the hot sun and then cool rain would allow. Back home in Los Angeles, we've had a year of extreme drought -- my lawn is looking patriotically ratty -- and we're expecting something called El Niño, that's supposed to be just shy of Old-Testament build-me-an-ark intensity. We withstood heat waves like those in Day the Earth Caught Fire, and now we'll get the storms part. This has been a wild year for DVD Savant, which is still a little unsettled. DVDtalk has been very patient and generous, and so have Stuart Galbraith & Joe Dante; so far everything...

I miss hilarious monologues. Comedy of the 21st century is a science of awkward pauses and ratatat dialogue, and thus the great tradition of cinematic monologuing has been largely resigned to dramas. Worse, it's usually only male characters whose rants are lionized; Al Pacino in "Dog Day Afternoon" or Alec Baldwin in "Glengarry Glen Ross" spring immediately to mind when I think of celebrated speechifying.  So today I'm toasting the opposite of those dead-serious, dude-driven monologues: These are 10 hilarious monologues by actresses. Enjoy. And then enjoy again.  1. Madeline Kahn, "Paper Moon" Trixie Delight just wants to get in the car and have a little fun, but Addie here is holding out. Using some coaxing and a little bit of frustration, Trixie prevails. It is basically ridiculous that we watch movies without Madeline Kahn in them. 2. Alicia Silverstone, "Clueless" Leave it to Cher Horowitz to perfectly understand violence in the media.

He's back and he's funnier than ever. The mischievous, cagey entertainer William Claude Dukenfield starred in some of the best comedies ever. This five-disc DVD set contains eighteen of his best, all the way from Million Dollar Legs in 1932 to Never Give a Sucker an Even Break in 1941. And we get to see all sides of W.C's talent -- he was a top-rank juggler, of just about anything. W.C. Fields Comedy Essentials Collection DVD Universal Studios Home Entertainment 1932-1941 / B&W / 1:37 Academy 1316 minutes (21 hours, 46 min) Street Date October 13, 2015 / 99.98 Starring Larson E. Whipsnade, T. Frothinghill Bellows, Egbert Sousé, Eustace P. McGargle, Harold Bissonette, Professor Quail, Augustus Winterbottom, Mr. Stubbins, Sam Bisbee, Ambrose Wolfinger, Cuthbert J. Twillie, Humpty-Dumpty. Written by Charles Bogle, Mahatma Kane Jeeves, Otis Criblecoblis

Reviewed by Glenn Erickson

In the late 1960s there were these things called Head Shops, see, where various hippie consumer goods were sold.

It is one of Beckett's most famous – and most startling – images. But what inspired the half-buried woman in Happy Days? His friend and biographer James Knowlson tracks down the first Winnies

Samuel Beckett was a passionate lover of art and a friend of many painters and sculptors. He loved Dutch and Flemish painting in particular – and art almost certainly inspired some of his most memorable theatrical images. Even his earliest plays, such as Waiting for Godot or Endgame, recall the old masters: the character Lucky in Godot may well remind you of a Brueghel grotesque; Estragon and Vladimir's physical antics echo scenes in Adriaen Brouwer's paintings ("Dear, dear Brouwer", Beckett called him); Hamm in Endgame appears to share genes with some portraits by Rembrandt, staring out at the viewer – Jacob Trip in his armchair, perhaps.

As for Beckett's late miniature works – recently revived by the Royal Court with a tour...

Amazon has released their early Black Friday Deals Week schedule beginning Monday, November 19 and running through Monday, November 26 and I have added the entire list in its state below and will be updating as more and more titles are added it to it and considering the limited number of Blu-ray titles included I have to assume this thing is going to get beefed up. There are some notable titles beginning with the Gold Box Deal on Saturday, November 24 where the Blu-ray edition of the recently released amazon asin="B006U1J5ZY" text="Bond 50: The Complete 22 Film Collection" will be on sale. The price has not yet been announced, but as of right now it sits at $149.99 and I wouldn't be surprised if it drops under $100 on that day so stay tuned. Additional titles on sale throughout the eight day sale include X-Men Origins: Wolverine, X-Men: The Last Stand,...

Today marks the 100th birthday of Universal Pictures and to celebrate the studio has released a list of 100 facts based on its first 100 years in existence. I have placed in bold some of the ones I found interesting as well as offered a selection of photo and video accompaniments here and there. 1. Universal Film Manufacturing Company was officially incorporated in New York on April 30, 1912. Company legend says Carl Laemmle was inspired to name his company Universal after seeing "Universal Pipe Fittings" written on a passing delivery wagon. 2. The only physical damage made during the filming of National Lampoon's Animal House was when John Belushi made a hole in the wall with a guitar. The actual Sigma Nu fraternity house (which subbed for the fictitious Delta House) never repaired it, and instead framed the hole in honor of the film. 3. The working title for Et: The Extra Terrestrial was "A Boy's Life.

Philadelphia's been a punchline for as long as I can remember -- long before most of us were around, even. After all, it was way back in 1940, in a movie with Mae West called My Little Chickadee, that W.C. Fields famously stood on the gallows and told his executioner, "I'd like to see Paris before I die. Philadelphia will do." Back in Fields' day, the knock on the City of Brotherly Love was just that it was so dull -- closing up at 10 o' clock, second prize is two weeks in Philadelphia, yada yada yada. Over the next seven decades, as pro sports increasingly became the city's remaining portal into the nation's consciousness, you could add the epithet "boorish" to "boring" -- there were snowballs at Santa Claus (sort of) and catcalls for just about anyone. Oh, and did...

One of my earliest movie related memories – from the time I was six or seven – was of parading around the house, hips swishing and purring in my finest Mae West mimicry, “Why don’t ya come up and see me sometime?” I barely remember actually watching the B&W My Little Chickadee on the tube, so mesmerized was I by the platinum blonde goddess, a creature clad in ultra-femme garb but projecting an aggressively male body language and distinctly unfeminine voice – like no one I had ever seen on the screen. Years later I would realize it was my first encounter with a woman like me. Miss West is my patron sinner/saint for many reasons, but mostly ...