Even though they can be arbitrary, I love lists. As such, I’ve been using That’s Entertainment as a guide for my musical education, attempting to watch the full-length films of every clip featured. The project is a few months older than this blog, so I’m still in the midst of writing about the movies I watched before I had a venue to talk …
TCM celebrates Independence Day with a great collection of musicals, though mostly well-known and easily accessible classics, so make sure to check those out if you haven’t seen them. That leads to a lighter first-half of the month, but builds into a crescendo of not-on-Netflix/not-even-on-DVD classics the week of July 22nd. All times are in …
I get the majority of my musical rentals from Netflix nowadays, which means I have to make the decision on my weekend viewing earlier in the week… so by an eerie coincidence, by the time I found out Esther Williams had died, Million Dollar Mermaid was already on its way to me for weekend viewing.
I’ve owned a box set of Elvis Presley movies for about the past three years, yet as of this weekend I’d only watched ONE of them, and even that (Jailhouse Rock) was only within the past few months–on some weekend I hadn’t rented a musical and needed something for my weekend morning project. I actually may have watched more of them sooner had I not owned them, because I was lulled into the complacency of always having them right there, waiting for me–instead of a rental with a due date or a friend tapping on their wrist waiting for a disc’s speedy return.
Man, Busby Berkeley really is on another level, isn’t he? He certainly had an eye for film, which I think really distinguishes him from other choreographers, both of his era and of any time. His most famous set pieces simply can’t be replicated in any other medium–not only are the dancers choreographed, but the cameras as well… and you can’t get one of those great Berkeley overhead geometries seated in a theater.
I was trying to think of a new category of posts to write about, since that helps to keep me in line, and it took me an embarrassingly long time to put together the fact that I’ve named my film blogging site The Vintage Cameo and that maybe, hmm, I don’t know, I can perhaps highlight some literal vintage cameos? To be fair, I didn’t even really “come up” with it–I was just watching The Seven Little Foys and was surprised by the sudden James Cagney appearance.