Hello!

A new DVD Classics Corner on the Air podcast takes time out for Dick Dinman and Alan K. Rode to debate Raoul Walsh’s excellent thrillers High Sierra and Colorado Territory: which is more effective, the gangster ’41 or the outlaw western ’49 remake?  Bogart and Lupino light up the original, but Joel McCrea and Virginia Mayo are terrific too.

A few directors have remade their own movies, Alfred Hitchcock, for one — but I can’t think of another remake by the same director, which transposed the original into another genre entirely. CineSavant reviewed the corresponding Criterion disc back on October 23.

Director, film expert extraordinaire and Trailers from Hell guru Brian Trenchard-Smith has a new piece up on his website entitled CENSORED! Why did they cut that bit? — Part 1. It’s a breezy lesson on the history of film censorship in the U.S. and the U.K.  It grabbed my attention immediately with its wealth of special detail, such as a discussion of political censorship in silent cinema, with examples pointing out racist motives.

We also get a blow-by-bow description of the censorship woes inflicted on Paramount’s pre-Code Island of Lost Souls, which in 1932 was a movie with something to offend everyone. The article begins with an explanation of all the cuts made to The 7th Voyage of Sinbad in England — they were pretty brutal with it. Brian labels the page NSFW but I saw nothing particularly offensive (?). I learned quite a bit from this ‘part 1.’

I’ve linked to one or two of these post-Tsunami videos before, but thought this new ten-year commemorative show was especially affecting. Instead of chopping up original footage, we see long, clear and uncut shots of the disaster unfolding. It’s an NKH show called 3/11 – The Tsunami: The First 3 Days.

That sent me back to my 2020 review of the Japanese movie Fukushima 50, and now I feel like seeing it again.

And because an imporant anniversary is nigh, and the truth needs to be seen and re-seen, here’s a link to the New York Times’ Day of Rage: How Trump Supporters Took the U.S. Capitol. It’s the whole story of a traumatic day, in incredible detail. There is so much overlapping camera coverage on view, not a single moment of the insurrection is in doubt.

Thanks for reading! — Glenn Erickson