Tongolele c.1950, via vintagegal
To celebrate Cinco de Mayo (which is this weekend), here is a clip of Tongolele, burlesque dancer and actress of the Cinema of Mexico. I'm unsure what film this clip is from, so if you know, please comment with the title.
Happy celebrating this weekend!
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Clip from Ready, Willing, and Able (1937). View larger here.
As Donovan and I prepare for our Champaign-Urbana Letter Writing Social, I find my mind preoccupied with typewriters. Since we are giving one away at the social, I can't help but think about how happy the person who wins the typewriter will feel.
I try to think back about how I felt when I got my first typewriter, which was given to me for free many many years ago. How exciting it all was. The clacking sounds, my soar finger tips, the accomplished feeling you get just from hitting the keys. I found this clip from the movie Ready, Willing, and Able (1937) and felt it is the closest to expressing what that first typewriter feeling is like. I hope you enjoy.
For those of you who can join us this weekend at the Mini-Maker Faire, the above typewriter is the one we have up for grabs. Stop by, say hello, and get a giveaway ticket.
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Scene from Rear Window (1954)
Rear Window is one of my favorite Hitchcock films. I've always been mesmerized by the life of the courtyard in the community. It reminds me a lot of the apartment I had while living in Savannah, GA a few years ago. My patio butted-up against my back-neighbor's deck. He often played his trumpet with his windows open. The sound would trickle in through my open windows. It was so soothing and comforting to hear. Living in older apartments, where you can hear your neighborhood noises, you lose comforts like temperature control, but gain a sense of community.
Rear Window Timelapse from Jeff Desom on Vimeo.
And why all this rambling about the Rear Window courtyard? Well, Jeff Desom has lovingly pasted together all of the courtyard scenes from Rear Window so you view all the actions in chronological order. (See above) How the heck was he able to accomplish this? Desom explains that “[s]ince everything was filmed from pretty much the same angle I was able to match them into a single panoramic view of the entire backyard without any greater distortions.”
It is an amazing sequence that I can watch over and over again. I hope you enjoy viewing i to. (Via The Atlantic)
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In looking through Netflix to find something good to watch while I finished Donovan's sweater, I discovered a BBC mini-series called Island at War (2005). I was curious to what it was about and was surprised to find it had to do with German's occupying British soil. What now? Yes, from 1940-1945 Germans occupied the Channel Islands, and this mini-series deals with the first half of that occupation.
This was a very good, yet very hard to watch, series. You would like to think that something like this didn't happen and if it did, it would have been a passive occupation, since the islands had no military to speak of. But no. The German military considered this a "model occupation" and saw it as amazing propaganda, so it was full on occupation. They even changed the cities and streets on the Chanel Islands to German names.
The show follows three families of different classes and shows how the occupation is changing their lives. SF Chronicle criticized that while we see many bad Germans in this show, but that there are few bad British characters shown. I'm not sure I agree with this statement, as we see looting, black market profiteers, and countrymen turning against others over rumors. It gets quite awful between British characters if you pay attention to the undercurrents.
There are some shocking moments in this series, which in turn made me learn about tiny everyday facts from the homefront. For example, I had no idea that the hatred toward women who "fraternized" with Germans was expressed and acted against during occupation. I was aware of the violence against these women after liberation, but assumed that it was repressed (out of fear) during the war. And this, my friends, is where we get the colorful slang "Jerry bag," which is used quite often in the second half of the season. Ah, British folks are so much better at slang than Americans.
Unfortunately, this show terminated after the first season, so it ends quite abruptly. There are only 6 shows, but I highly suggest watching them. There is some very good television here and there are many actors you will recognized from shows like Life on Mars, Downton Abbey, and Midsomer Murders. So, just watch it already!
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Still from Beyond the Rocks (1922)
I will start off this post with a confession: I have not seen The Artist yet. I know. It's horrible, but I just haven't had any time to go and see it.
With all that out in the open I think it absolutely awesome that The Artist won an Oscar and I am enjoying the writings and analyzing that is happening due to the popularity of the film. One of the best articles about silent cinema and its importance that I have read recently is from the New Yorker.
Intertitle from Miss Lulu Bett (1921)
David Denby does an amazing job talking about nuances of silent film and how one appreciates it today in his article "The Artists: Notes on a lost style of acting." I feel silly not knowing that most silent films are not shown in the right speed when you see them on TV or through dvd. I always try to watch silents in the theater to save myself the pain of crappy music that weren't meant to be with the images before my eyes. The speeding up of the film makes the nuanced movements of the actors campy and quick, argues Denby, and loses the delicacy of the silent movie's magic.
Still from Ménilmontant (1925)
Another aspect of the article that really got to me is the impact of the larger than life actor/actress:
Seen properly, the best early movies were a revelation, particularly the sight of actors in closeup—filling a screen fifty feet or more across the diagonal, they presented a new landscape of flesh that astonished viewers. Faces that large might have appeared on billboards, but they didn’t move—they didn’t tremble like a field of grain or surge like the sea. - Denby, page 2
I've experience this awe-effect first hand when I saw Beyond the Rocks (1922) in a theater. I never saw the big deal about Valentino until this movie. As I sat and watched him act I realized why he was important, but I didn't get why he was a sex symbol, until his close-up. I think I actually gasped out loud when his entire face was projected on the screen. His pooled eyes, quivering lips...it was all emotion and it was all directed at me. It was amazing and is something I've never experienced in modern movies. Read Denby's article and get ready to reignite your love for silents.
It is because of Denby's article I was reminded how much I enjoy the theatrical quality that silent movies retain and I have made a date to go see Wings (1927) this Saturday at the Music Box Theatre. If you are in Chicago, I highly suggest you go too. There will be live organ accompaniment and it will be magical.
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Tate's Straight Talk with the illustrator Maurice Sendak is an interesting look into the artist's thoughts on creation, survival, and your personal canon.
Interesting quote from the beginning: “People said, ‘why didn’t you do Wild Things 2? Wild Things 1 was such a success’. Go to hell. Go to hell. I’m not a whore. I don’t do those things.”
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View larger at source here.
An interesting American-made newsreel about British Rationing during the war. Some scenes that stood out to me for being glossed-over or put in a better light:
- The length of food queues is not shown in the film, though the cut-away to see the rest of the family doesn't necessarily hide that it is was a long wait. But when she walked out of the general market and there was no line, I thought that was a bit odd.
- She can only bake one cake a week? Shoot, that seems a lot more frequent then the articles I've read about rations. I was made to believe it was more like a cake a month or each fortnight, if they were lucky. Does anyone know of info that can back-up this cake a week suggestion the actress states?
- Buns of bread? What about the government loaf that was joked to be Hitler's true weapon against the Brits? I thought it was only in loaf form.
- I like the scene where they talk about clothing rations and issues with cosmetics. Is it just the lighting, or does that actress have cropped hair? If so, I love that she keeps the little curl pinned to her side!
- Hello, I am in love with the "British family" living room. The grouping of the sofa chairs and the placement of the radio is just perfect.
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As much as I adore Downton Abbey, this spoof for BBC's Red Nose Day is hilarious and sometimes hits the nail on the head. View full size here.
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Have you watched any episodes of The Hour yet? Wow, I love this show. I don't know what I was expecting when C told me it was about a news show in 60s Britain, but I was initially hesitant to watch it. I'm glad I did because this show blends in an unexpected twist of cloak and dagger to make a really intriguing plot.
Let me first admit that I gave this show a chance for the pure eye candy. Oh, you think I mean the vintage goodies and scenery. No, I mean Dominic West and Ben Whishaw. Two men who are easy on the eyes in two very different ways.
Whishaw's character, Freddie Lyon, was one of my favorites, as I think he is meant to be. His integrity and fight to the tooth attitude is what drives this entire story for me. For some it may be Bel's fight to be taken seriously as a producer in a man's world, but I wasn't really captivated by how this story line was portrayed. Freddie's relationship with his father and how his past intertwines with the mystery at the heart of the plot is what got me sucked into the show.
Oh yeah, and his outfits. I adored Freddie's outfits and am dying to knit a vest like the one shown above. What can I say, I guess you can't stop a knitter from dreaming, even when she is embroiled in a mystery.
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View larger on You Tube.
I am surprised at how apt this 1960 editorial and interview about media and its change on society is for us right now. I especially liked McLuhan's metaphor of media being like drums:
"Where everyone gets the message all the time. A princess gets married in England and boom boom boom goes the drums; we all hear about it. An earthquake in North Africa, a Hollywood star gets drunk, away go the drums again."
- Marshall McLuhan (3:50, "The World is a Global Village," CBC TV)
I don't think the internet or social media is evil or anything like that. I just think everything needs to be taken in moderation. If we rely on one thing too much, other aspects of ourselves get lost. We become one dimensional. Sometimes we forget and lose ourselves in media, but this is completely fine. Just be self aware and pull yourself out of it and go experience something completely different. Close the laptop, have thoughts, hang out in real time.
(Video found via Open Library's blog.)
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Letter Socials:
TBA
