Hello!

First up from Michael McQuarrie is a 1980 educational film about a kids with socializing problems, Why Is It Always Me?  We’re more accustomed to vintage educational pictures that are either depressingly clueless or unintentionally hilarious.

The interesting factor is that the star of this thing is the very photogenic John Cusack. The show tries too much and is still painfully square, but Cusack looks ready for anything. He’s not exactly the great actor yet, but he gives everything that’s needed.  Despite the haircut they’ve given him.

Gee, we wonder if some filmmaker could find a way to integrate these shots as flashbacks in a new movie …

Plus, this was first posted on Sunday … and is thus a repeat:

We have a quick note to add here at CineSavant to mark a milestone …. it was ten years ago that the old DVD Savant page migrated to guest status at Trailers from Hell. After 15 years with various hosts, TFH came through with an ideal arrangement.

The first ‘Savant’ review up at TFH was Mad Max; Fury Road, which was accompanied by a nice note from TFH welcoming ‘DVD Savant’ into the fold: August 24, 2015.

Friend Stuart Galbraith IV came to the rescue back then too, letting me post a few weeks of reviews on his page when posting at DVD Talk was no longer possible. At this link to the DVD Savant Column for August, 2015, one can read some of my concern, wondering what was happening at DVD Talk. Then, on August 25’s Column, I was able to to make the announcement … “The vaunted Trailers from Hell page has stepped up and offered to guest-host DVD Savant while waiting for DVDtalk to renew access to the site. This is fun, being handed from one gracious group of online entrepreneurs to another.”

The temporary situation soon became more permanent, more than just a place to post reviews. When TFH scheduled a website facelift for itself, they offered to design a new independent web page for me, to be the home of the ‘new’ DVD Savant. I don’t recall the changeover very clearly, but the first actual CineSavant Column appears to have arrived on  July 4th, 2017. It looks pretty plain-wrap to me now. After getting some bugs worked out and the column format nailed down, I see I made an announcement on  September 16, 2017. By this time we had the linking picture at the top of the Column, etcetera. Charlie Largent created the logos for CineSavant, which I think are beauties.

Anyway, the ten years has been a smooth ride. Contributing reviewer Charlie Largent has been contributing reviews here for over eight years, and we’ve had a lot of input from the UK’s Lee Broughton as well.

Thanks for reading, and for all the correspondence, which has taught me so much. We couldn’t pass up this Anniversary without saying something.

Cheers and best, Glenn Erickson

Hello from Glenn Erickson:

We have a quick note to add here at CineSavant today to mark a milestone …. it was ten years ago that the old DVD Savant page migrated to guest status at Trailers from Hell. After 15 years with various hosts, TFH came through with an ideal arrangement.

The first ‘Savant’ review up at TFH was Mad Max; Fury Road, which was accompanied by a nice note from TFH welcoming ‘DVD Savant’ into the fold: August 24, 2015.

Friend Stuart Galbraith IV came to the rescue back then too, letting me post a few weeks of reviews on his page when posting at DVD Talk was no longer possible. At this link to the DVD Savant Column for August, 2015, one can read some of my concern, wondering what was happening at DVD Talk. Then, on August 25’s Column, I was able to to make the announcement … “The vaunted Trailers from Hell page has stepped up and offered to guest-host DVD Savant while waiting for DVDtalk to renew access to the site. This is fun, being handed from one gracious group of online entrepreneurs to another.”

The temporary situation soon became more permanent, more than just a place to post reviews. When TFH scheduled a website facelift for itself, they offered to design a new independent web page for me, to be the home of the ‘new’ DVD Savant. I don’t recall the changeover very clearly, but the first actual CineSavant Column appears to have arrived on  July 4th, 2017. It looks pretty plain-wrap to me now. After getting some bugs worked out and the column format nailed down, I see I made an announcement on  September 16, 2017. By this time we had the linking picture at the top of the Column, et cetera. Charlie Largent created the logos for CineSavant, which I think are beauties.

Anyway, the ten years has been a smooth ride. Contributing reviewer Charlie Largent has been contributing reviews here for over eight years, and we’ve had a lot of input from the UK’s Lee Broughton as well.

Thanks for reading, and for all the correspondence, which has taught me so much. We couldn’t pass up this Anniversary without saying something! Cheers and best, Glenn Erickson

Hello!

Correspondent Michael McQuarrie gives us two strong online links today. The first up is a 1970 short subject adapted from a stage play by Arthur Miller, and starring Eli Wallach and Robert Ryan. It’s almost unknown and is rather indifferently directed, but it’ll be something that fans of the stars will want to see.

It’s The Reason Why, directed by Paul Leaf. He directed other short subjects showcasing noted actors — Alan Arkin, Dustin Hoffman, Elaine May. Leaf produced some offbeat short subjects and a string of successful TV movies, including Judge Horton and the Scottsboro Boys from 1976.

A year after The Wild Bunch, Robert Ryan wears a mustache for a show that could have been filmed in a day. The business on hand is the hunting of wild woodchucks on Eli Wallach’s country property, but the real subject would seem to be killing in general, and maybe the Vietnam War. It was reportedly filmed on Arthur Miller’s home in Roxbury, Connecticut. We wonder if a woodchuck problem inspired playwright Miller to write this one-act piece. It comes off as a bit preachy and insubstantial, but it makes its point. It would go well with a clip of Marilyn Monroe from  The Misfits, wailing about the killing of wild horses.

Second-up is a long-form Swiss documentary in the German language about Italo westerns, filmed in 1972. The subject is the decline of the genre, but we see plenty of BTS footage from the set of a western by Sergio Corbucci, plus lots of contemporary footage of movie districts with marquees, etc.

After the opening I couldn’t get the English subtitles to function, but I think that’s just me … Michael apparently didn’t have that trouble. Google translates the title Leichen pflastern seinen Ruhm as the English ‘Corpses Pave His Fame.’

The last item was forwarded by Joe Dante. We of course know the fine Patty Duke / Anne Bancroft version of  The Miracle Worker, but we were much less aware of the original Live TV version from 1957. It later became a Broadway play, which is where Bancroft and Duke got involved.

The original TV teleplay was written by William Gibson, of today’s reviewed movie, The Cobweb. The director is the great Arthur Penn. Annie Sullivan is played by Teresa Wright, looking very severe. Helen Keller is played by Patty McCormack, a performance that will erase memories of her infamous  Rhoda Penmark.

Also on hand are Burl Ives, John Drew Barrymore, Akim Tamiroff and Katharine Bard. The music is by Russell Garcia. It’s a top title of the Golden Age of Live TV — remarkable in every respect. No problems with drapes, here.

Thanks for reading! — Glenn Erickson

Hello!

Criterion released its November disc lineup yesterday: of seven features, six will be available in 4K Ultra-HD; the titles include John Hughes’  The Breakfast Club, Reginald Hudlin’s  House Party  and a Blu-ray of  Abbas Kiarostami Early Shorts and Features.

Four titles grab us as extra-special. We can hear the sound of pocketbooks being put at risk —

•  Howard Hughes’  Hell’s Angels will be in 4K. Announced as the ‘Magnascope’ Road Show version, it may not be longer than what we’ve seen before, but it’s been re-formatted a 1.54:1 aspect ratio. Criterion says that a 1:37 encoding is present as well. One of the extras is a selection of outtakes and rushes from the picture. It will be interesting to see the color dirigible sequence in 4K; it’s been 20 years, and I can’t remember if there’s more than one.

•  Based on how good the making-of docu  Hearts of Darkness looked last week, we’ll also want to get a look at Les Blank’s  Burden of Dreams, the epic story of the making of Werner Herzog’s  Fitzcarraldo. It’s an epic in its own right. Besides capturing Herzog’s all-time classic ‘nature is vile and murderous’ harangue, Blank filmed some of the wildest out-of-control real-life filming ever. Smashing into rocks, the untethered steamship drifts toward a dreaded waterfall with no power, and with Herzog trying to direct a panicked, screaming Klaus Kinski on board. It’s reality madness, did Herzog take the risk just to see Kinski blow a fuse?

•  Luis Buñuel’s  Él is one of his creepiest semi-surreal explorations of ‘everyday perversity.’  Within the strict confines of Mexican censorship he suggests taboo weirdnesses that remain disturbing. Did the Mexican cast not know what they were getting into?  It’s another Buñuel gem that’s difficult to see in a decent presentation, which makes a 4K encoding seem miraculous. This is excellent … more Buñuel, please!

•  Finally, Criterion’s 4K edition of Stanley Kubrick’s  Eyes Wide Shut promises some special extras, but the news will be that it’s the International Version that went unreleased in America back in 1999. Is the film a triumph for Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman?  Gee, it’s been 26 years already, and the debate over the film’s merits has yet to die down.

Thanks for reading! — Glenn Erickson

Hello!

Michael McQuarrie has located an item that’s old news to Stuart Galbraith IV, but fresh fun for us. Back in 1965 the movie importers Bercovitch and Saperstein were in the middle of a deal with Toho. They licensed several genre pictures for U.S. consumption, which is how we first saw such items as  Frankenstein Conquers the World,  Invasion of Astro-Monster and  War of the Gargantuas. So far, so good — Saperstein distributed them theatrically and for TV through American-International.

Included in the deal was the non-monster  International Secret Police: Key of Keys, a light spy spoof with a notable cast: Tatsuya Mihashi, Mie Hama, Akiko Wakabayashi and briefly, Kumi Mizuno. It wasn’t a good sell in America, as the action and humor was definitely pitched to Japanese taste. But the importers came up with a creative idea.

Comedian Woody Allen was then trying hard to launch himself as a movie writer-director. He took on the job of recutting and redubbing Key of Keys as a looney comedy, also to be released by A.I.P.. Allen redubbed an entirely new storyline and characters onto the show, using a core of friends and associates as writer-performers: Frank Buxton, Louise Lasser, Julie Bennett, Len Maxwell, Mickey Rose and Bryna Wilson. The new track was an unbroken string of movie in-jokes and off-color humor. It was a smash at college screenings, in pan-scanned 16mm prints. Allen filmed an ending gag with himself and Playboy bunny China Lee; after he left the producers padded the film with scenes from another film in same Japanese series, and added several minutes of performance footage of The Loving Spoonful.

You had to have been there … the show has jokes about an Egg Salad recipe and non- PC names like Shepherd Wong, Suki Yaki and Wing Fat. The Japanese hero is ‘Phil Moskowitz, lovable rogue’; one of his girlfriends describes herself as ‘a terrific piece.’ It’s fun hearing Allen and Louise Lasser’s voices throughout the movie.

The campy title for this hybrid was What’s Up Tiger Lily?   Isn’t there a character in Peter Pan called Tiger Lily?  Why didn’t Disney come down on Saperstein like ‘Cobra Man,’ with his deadly electric wires.

This Internet Archive proudly presents the entire source movie from which What’s Up Tiger Lily? … it’s in Japanese with closed captions. Akiko Wakabayashi and Mie Hama became familiar faces when they were both cast in the James Bond movie  set in Japan. Woody Allen later disowned the film entirely.

Another Michael McQuarrie good one: a 1963 TV special about the Hanna-Barbera animation studio, filmed at its then-new fancy facilities in the middle of Cahuenga Pass, a half-mile from Universal City.

It’s a general fluff piece with host George Fennemann learning how TV cartoons are made. After struggling for acknowledgement at MGM, the creators of Tom and Jerry struck gold with their simplified, audio-driven cartoons for TV. By 1960 they had a corral of titles and characters and a production machine that all but printed money.

We’re supposedly seeing the development of the character Magilla Gorilla, or at least see him being trotted out for more series fun. A writer gives an enthusiastic pitch: “I’ve got six stories based on bananas!”  By this time Hanna & Barbera were hardworking salesmen, distributing their cartoon successes on TV everywhere in the world, on kiddie shows and in prime time series.

I watched because I recognized the Hanna-Barbera studio building as something I visited about 1974. My late associate Robert S. Birchard entered the film industry as an H-B sound cutter, where everything was done on mag-striped 35mm film. The sound library was enormous. The audio tracks got a lot of attention, because the cartoons were basically radio shows with as little animation as possible, and acres of recycled action. Every run cycle began with a character spinning his legs while a ‘hero’ effect played, a quick bongo riff followed by a ‘Zing’ noise when the character sped off in a minimal-animation blur. How Bob did the work I don’t know — the sound effects were codified, to a master plan — one deviated from the formula at one’s peril.

Thanks for reading! — Glenn Erickson

Hello!

Animation fantasy fun at CineSavant. First up, correspondent Lee Kaplan points us to a polished YouTube presentation from ‘The Royal Ocean Film Society,’ a 13-minute short subject about the nuts and bolts of Ray Harryhausen’s game-changing ‘reality sandwich’ Dynamation setup.

The text is intelligent and the technical explanation is good, and the clips are nicely chosen. We skip most web odes to Mr. H., but this one is a good basic introduction to a much-admired Lost Cinema Art.

And the dependable Michael McQuarrie comes up with second good link related to animation, this time traditional cel animation.

It’s a short subject visiting the Miami Fleischer Animation Studio for an inside look at its workings, filmed in bright color. It’s fun just seeing the employees’ hairstyles from 1938, let alone the traditional animation tables and the cels with their registration pegs.

The process is covered fairly well, and we get a good look at the Fleischers themselves. We may have posted this short subject before, but this new scan is much cleaner. Thunderbean did the restoration. They have also re-formatted the five-minute short subject for widescreen. We can debate the appropriateness of that, and the fact that the original titles and credits are completely missing.

Thanks for reading! — Glenn Erickson