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While Buster Keaton was called The Great Stoneface, he actually was able to portray a wide range of nuanced emotion in his movies. Here is a love scene from The Cameraman (1928). Buster has just messed up his job interview for a movie newsreel company, but Marceline Day, one of the company’s employees, sees something special in him.
Thanks to YouTuber Andrea Lombardo
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Yes, it’s the song from the much-maligned film, Ishtar, starring Warren Beatty and Dustin Hoffman as two hapless singer-songwriters who, in the Hope-Crosby style, find themselves soon on the Road to Morocco. The believably bad songs were written by songwriter Paul Williams. In this opening credits scene, the duo are struggling earnestly to come up with a hit song.
In a just world, one day Ishtar would get the respect it deserves as a very funny movie.
Thanks to Youtuber Chris Hecker
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In 1925 Buster Keaton made the feature film Seven Chances. Filled with great sight gags, the movie’s final chase scene has never been surpassed.
Here’s the set-up: Buster’s grandfather’s will says that if Buster gets married by seven pm that day, Buster will inherit seven million dollars. So in order to fulfill the will, Buster, chased by dozens of money-seeking would-be brides, runs through a myriad of obstacles to reach his one true girlfriend in time.
The inventiveness of the full 13-minute chase is really jaw-dropping. You can see the amazing avalanche sequence, the last four minutes of the chase, by clicking on the video above.
Thanks to YouTuber Alpic Montagnes
Update: evidently the owners of that video have blocked it in some countries, despite fair use exceptions, not to mention the free advertising for Buster Keaton movies. Sorry about that.
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One of my favorite ballads from Saturday Night Fever.
Despite the video here, the movie track was not sung by the Bee Gees, but by Australian singer Samantha Sang, with backing vocals by Barry Gibb. Sang had a modest career, but this was her biggest hit.
Thanks to YouTuber chanjky
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The Comedian is the new Robert De Niro movie in which he plays a washed-up comedian trying to make a come-back years after his initial fame. It has a great cast including Danny DeVito and Patti LuPone, and a raft of cameos. Is it worth seeing? You can hear my review of the film, which was broadcast yesterday on radio station WBAI, by clicking on the grey triangle above.
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The great Audrey Hepburn in Breakfast at Tiffany’s. While I had known that the Johnny Mercer-Henry Mancini song Moon River was written for the movie, I didn’t know that Mancini wrote it specifically for Hepburn’s singing range. Unlike in My Fair Lady, the voice here is Hepburn’s own. The understated George Peppard plays her writer friend.
Thanks to YouTuber As you set out for Ithaca…
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The Bert Kalmar/Harry Ruby ditty as performed by Zeppo, Harpo, Chico, and Groucho Marx.
And in our magician radar, we find Bert Kalmar who performed magic in tent shows when he was ten years old.
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As great as Buster Keaton’s full-length movies are, his shorts are also filled with astounding scenes. Here’s a jawdropper from the 1920 short, Neighbors.
Thanks to YouTuber wonkat
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Happy Birthday Groucho, Gandhi, and Alexi!
Thanks to YouTuber A Homage to Real Humour
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Buster Keaton in the amazing cyclone scene from Steamboat Bill Jr.
The bit at 3:10 almost killed him. He had a leeway of just inches. And he was doing the “lean” way before Michael Jackson.
Thanks to YouTuuber sonoftrev
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Not since Georges Méliès and Buster Keaton has there been such an inspired movie trickster as Zach King. While most of the magic I put on this site contains no camera trickery whatsoever, Zach King’s clever YouTube videos are nothing but inspired bits of camera conjuring.
My favorite gag: the dinner invite.
Thanks to YouTuber AWESOME
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Last Thursday WBAI broadcast the interview I did with filmmaker Ken Burns, whose new PBS documentary Jackie Robinson airs April 11-12. Burns talks with me about the myths that have grown around the legend of Jackie Robinson, and the whole process of filmmaking.
If you have any interest in baseball, film, or American history I think you’ll greatly enjoy listening to this interview with a great American documentarian.
Thanks to Mario Sanchez for helping to edit this radio piece.
Click on the grey triangle to listen.
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My recent post about Times Square, set me thinking about the film Midnight Cowboy. When it first came out, all the talk was of Dustin Hoffman whose turn as Ratso Rizzo was, of course, a classic characterization. After Hoffman’s scrubbed suburban college grad in The Graduate, it was a treat to see him do something diametrically opposed in Midnight Cowboy. But I think because of Hoffman’s flashy performance as Ratso, Jon Voight’s achievement in the film was somewhat overlooked. Voight looked like they had picked someone off the street from Texas and that was that. But how many knew that Voight was born and raised in Westchester County, NY? His transformation was just as impressive as Hoffman’s, only nobody realized it.
Above, you can see the devastating last scene in the movie, fading out with John Barry’s haunting theme written for the film.
Thanks to YouTuber Ofer3331
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The great Danny Kaye was a master of the patter song, but this wonderful scene of tongue-twisting word play gets laughs even without music. I somehow missed this one in my own childhood, but was happy to catch up with it during my son’s growing up.
Click on the video of this clip from Danny Kaye’s whimsical The Court Jester to find out if the Vessel With The Pestle has The Brew That Is True.
Thanks to YouTuber sirstrongbad
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One more brilliant scene from Charlie Chaplin’s The Great Dictator, where he plays the Fascist dictator, Adenoid Hynkel.
Thanks to YouTuber nebelppa
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Here’s animator Nina Paley’s newest installment of her Seder Masochism project. Moses go back up Mount Sinai and brings back the tablets. Complications, compromises, and circumcisions ensue. Click on the video above to watch.
You can hear my radio interview with Nina Paley here.
Exodus 19-40:
https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Exodus+19-40&version=NLT
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I teach mathematics to new immigrants to the United States. Though the students are of high school age, some of them had not had any formal schooling in their own country. Yesterday, one student, a West African girl to whom I have been teaching basic arithmetic, was struggling with her twos and fives multiplication tables. We worked for a while with only some success, and then she turned to me brightly and said, “Ask me 379 times 13.” I was a little skeptical, but I wrote it out on the paper in front of us, the 13 beneath the 379. She looked at the example quizzically, and said, “Are you sure that’s how you write it?” So I wrote it across in a line, and she became much happier. “Ahh,” she said, “that’s 4,927.”
I thought about it for a few moments and realized she was correct. I was stunned. A minute ago she was having trouble with five times six; now she was answering this difficult multiplication problem seemingly in her head. I asked her how she knew.
She smiled at me and said, “I saw it in a movie in my country. In the movie, there was a school, and the teacher in the classroom put that example on the board. I have been waiting for someone to ask me 379 x 13 ever since!”
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When tap dancing legend Maurice Hines was asked in an interview for the name of the greatest tap dancer he had ever seen, he replied Sammy Davis, Jr. That answer surprised me, because though my generation knew Sammy Davis as a singer and dancer and Rat Pack member, I didn’t know that he was also a child tap-dancing prodigy. Above is an extraordinary clip from a short called “Rufus Jones for President” (1933) starring the 7-year old Sammy Davis, Jr. Click on the video above for an amazing few minutes of sheer joy.
You can see the whole movie, starring Ethel Waters, on YouTube. In it, mother Ethel Waters dreams about her son becoming the first Black President while singing “Am I Blue?” and “Underneath A Harlem Moon.”
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Nina Paley is a brilliant animator/cartoonist whose work is simultaneously smart, beautiful, and provocative. She is probably best known for her epic video called Sita Sings The Blues. There’s nothing quite like her animation videos. This short film above, This Land is Mine, about the violence in Israel/Palestine over the past centuries is a fine example of her oeuvre. Click on the video to play.
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One more great scene from Charlie Chaplin’s wonderful movie, Modern Times. The set-up is that he’s just been released from the hospital (nervous breakdown from his last factory job), so he’s not fully aware of what is going on in the outside world.
The flag, of course, is red.
Has anyone stolen this gag since it was done in Modern Times in 1933?
One of my favorite Chaplin scenes.
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Last night, I was at a screening of the classic 1971 film Our Latin Thing, showcasing the music of the incredible Fania All-Stars, which time-warped us all to 1970s NYC.
Monday morning is all congas, flute, bass, brass, and joy.
