Yes, time to confirm it: My newest obsession is definitely John Barrymore in his silent era. Which is a relief, I mean-- I've spent a couple of months just half-heartedly liking things. That's not me at all. Thank God something came along ( Read more... )

There are certain actors I try to avoid seeing in colour. Sure it's fine for novelty's sake (I still have a hard time wrapping my head around the fact that Ginger Rogers' ostrich feather gown in Top Hat was actually very very blue), but for the duration of an entire movie it can be really distracting to me ( Read more... )

I know I'd sworn off Capra movies, but then I read some line from Platinum Blonde (1931) that made me laugh, and decided to give it a go. I'm glad I did ( Read more... )

The Son of Frankenstein was different than I'd anticipated, not going for the same sympathetic approach the previous movie did, but it was still a delightful straight-up horror movie. I got a kick out of the lampshade hanging about how the majority of people seem to think Frankenstein is the name of the monster, that got a titter out of me ( Read more... )

I was at the library, picking movies to tide me through the weekend when I read the cover of the Kurosawa movie The Scandal and had to snicker. It began something like (in Norwegian): "The handsome and smooth Toshirô Mifune plays Ichiro, an artist who ( Read more... )

Ah man, why have I kept putting off watching Sanjuro? That was kind of awesome! Definitely more my kind of thing than Yojimbo.

Well for one, Sanjuro takes itself a lot less seriously than Yojimbo. I have definitely never laughed out loud this much during a Kurosawa movie before! Sanjuro himself is as invincible and untouchable as before, taking ( Read more... )

I've done all my little "unwind when you can't sleep" routines; I've played Tetris, I've sketched, I've made Lupin GIFs... Actually I really feel like playing more Assassin's Creed, but I know that'd only make me forget to go to sleep at all ( Read more... )

I was actually trying to locate some Cole Porter lyrics when I stumbled over an article about "cross-vocals" - when male singers perform songs written for female singers, or vise versa, without changing the pronouns. Apparently it was quite usual back in the day; In the twenties/thirties music publishers had such a hold on the rights to their tunes ( Read more... )

The Nostalgia Chick did a video on Les Miserables the musical this week, and that's how I learned that there was a 25th anniversary concert made a couple of years ago ( Read more... )

Wow, I'd heard A Fistful of Dollars was based off of Yojimbo, but I had no idea how closely it followed the plot! Between this and Seven Samurai/The Magnificent Seven I'm starting to really see the ingenuity of transposing Japanese Jidaigeki cinema (I learned this term today, neat) and Westerns. There's obviously something good that crosses over ( Read more... )