Silent movie fans in Southern California, enjoy the return of the Cinecon! The 59th Cinecon will bring big screen fun to the Old Town Music Hall (home of the Mighty Wurlitzer) in El Segundo, CA all Labor Day Weekend, starting tonight. Check out the schedule here.
In decades of curating film shows, found myself and audiences fascinated with the 1920's short subjects made by the ingenious artist, filmmaker, photographer, illustrator and American in Paris Man Ray (August 27, 1890 - November 18, 1976).
Can't explain exactly why Man Ray's films are fascinating, why the visuals are so compelling, why after watching Emak Bakia or Le Retour A La Raison, one immediately wants to watch it again.
Whenever, in presenting DIY 16mm film shows, this blogger screened Man Ray's films, whether in 1990 or 2020, the audience was enthralled. Man Ray's photos and paintings enthrall this writer as well.
Tranisitioning less than deftly from the world of Dada and Surrealism to the sonic milieu of saxophones, big bands and swing, the man known as the President and among the greatest innovators in jazz and 20th century music history was saxophonist and clarinetist Lester Willis Young, cornerstone of the mighty Count Basie Orchestra, born on August 27, 1909.
Along with fellow jazz greats Marlowe Morris, Jo Jones, Barney Kessel, Illinois Jacquet and Red Callendar, he's part of the all-star group that starred in Gjon Mili's outstanding 1944 musical short subject Jammin' The Blues.
There are not many film clips of Pres, who passed in 1959, but here are a few in which he is featured with several excellent ensembles jam-packed with virtuosos. He sounds great, as usual.
Here's an enjoyable yin/yang from the Art Ford's Jazz Party TV program featuring Lester Young with fellow tenor saxophonist, King Of Swing and stylistic opposite Coleman "Body & Soul" Hawkins.
Author, jazz historian, bandleader and saxophonist Loren Schoenberg penned one of the very best pieces this music fan has read about Lester Young and has posted Pres clips on his You Tube channel. The following Lester Young albums - studio recordings on Verve volume 1, volume 2 and volume 3 - are musts for the swing and music fan's collection.
Tough to pick just one Pres performance of the many. This 1956 Birdland All-Stars concert of Miles Davis, backed by The René Urtreger Trio and featuring special guests Lester Young and (piano virtuoso) Bud Powell, is particularly amazing listening.
Now, to paraphase an old friend of mine, shifting gears from music to comedy, it is indeed August 27, so that means the gang at Way Too Damn Lazy To Write A Blog pays tribute to comedian Al Ritz, born Albert "Al" Joachim on August 27, 1901 and part of a zany trifecta with brothers Harry and Jimmy.
Any mention of Al or his brothers Harry and Jimmy brings to mind the question of just how does a comedy fan or classic movie buff explain The Ritz Brothers.
None other than the great Mel Brooks gives that very explanation a try in this interview with Conan O' Brien.
Gifted physical comedian Soupy Sales agrees.
Here, animated Ritz Brothers tangle with none other than Donald Duck in The Autograph Hound. Excellent work as usual, Disney artists!
Who influenced Sid Caesar and the gang from Your Show Of Shows and Caesar's Hour? The one, the only, the legendary rubber-faced alpha goofball Harry Ritz (in the act, albeit not in the following photo, "the guy in the middle").
While the Ritzes, compared even to the Marx Brothers and The Three Stooges, remain emphatically a characterization-free zone, their genius is in their ultra-wacky dancing, patter and singing.
As is the case with musical comedy stars Ray Bolger and Donald O'Connor, the humor is in how they move.
This production number from the Alice Faye musical On The Avenue presents one answer to the question, "just what did people find funny about The Ritz Brothers?" There's Harry's bravura vocal and indescribably funny dance moves by the trio. LOVE the bit where they mimic penguins!
Besides the He Ain't Got Rhythm number, the best example of Harry, Jimmy and Al Ritz remains the episode of The All Star Revue they hosted on May 17, 1952. The key to the Ritzes is that, as was the case with Dean Martin & Jerry Lewis, they shined as a live act and were emphatically toned down for feature films. Harry is THE ad-lib king and his improvisations are seldom in the team's feature film appearances for Fox and Universal.
This All Star Revue show presents a valuable record of their act, as The Colgate Comedy Hour shows did for many comics (Martin & Lewis and Abbott & Costello as well as the Ritz Brothers, whose Feb. 22, 1953 episode of the series does not exist) - and is also the reason this blogger has been known to utter the phrase "DON'T HOLLA - PLEASE DON'T HOLLA" for no apparent reason. The Ritzes' anarchic spirit and musical comedy mojo reigns supreme throughout.
The gang at Way Too Damn Lazy To Write A Blog sincerely hopes that kinescopes of the Ritz Brothers' second episode of All-Star Revue, which aired on November 22, 1952 as part of the Four Star Revue series, and the aforementioned 2-22-1953 Colgate Comedy Hour show turn up.
New York animation fans, take heart: there are two very special events packed with classic cartoon goodness on the weekend. We at Way Too Damn Lazy To Write A Blog are happy to plug these fun programs curated and presented by our friend, silent era animation expert and showman Tommy José Stathes.
Tommy and the Cartoon Carnival team are back from hiatus with excellent big screen fun, starting with a Saturday matinee at the Metrograph in Manhattan.
The press release elaborates: Come enjoy silly classroom shenanigans, neurotic school teachers, clever kid delinquents, and other assorted scholarly trials and tribulations.
Spanning the 1910s through the ’50s, this assortment showcases classic characters such as Farmer Al Falfa, Bobby Bumps, Flip the Frog, Porky Pig, Baby Huey, Little Lulu, and others.
On Sunday at BAM Rose Cinemas in Brooklyn, the long-awaited theatrical debut of Cartoon Carnival: The Documentary (2021) will be shown as part of Animation Block Party 2023 (20th season!)
The documentary' press release adds: it was wholly inspired by the Tommy Stathes Cartoon Carnival.
Produced and directed by UK-based documentarian Andrew T. Smith, a TSCC admirer from abroad, the film was shot primarily in 2015-2016. It features abundant film clips, interviews with a variety of historians, as well as footage from one of our 16mm Cartoon Carnival programs held at the now-demolished puppet workshop and theater, Standard Toykraft, in Williamsburg. This unique documentary was finally unveiled to the public through a Turner Classic Movies broadcast in October of 2021.
Today, we pay tribute to the great artist and animator of Felix The Cat, Otto Messmer. While producer Pat Sullivan took all the credit for the creative escapades of the famous feline in his 1920's heydey, Messmer was the driving creative force behind the character.
Turns out August 16 is both the day entertainer Elvis Presley died of opiates, fame, celebrity and deep-fried food in 1977 and the day one of the most amazingly talented and original of all comic artists and animators, Otto Messmer, was born, in 1892 (in West Hoboken, New Jersey - now Union City, NJ).
Have a hunch that readers of this blog are enthusiastic fans of Mr. Messmer's consistently imaginative and inventive work, from comics to animated cartoons to the legendary neon lights on Times Square.
And, speaking of animated cartoons, here are several of this blog's all-time favorite Felix The Cat adventures. . .
Dont know if it is possible to purchase a Blu-ray or DVD of John Canemaker's outstanding documentary about Otto Messmer - sure hope that is the case. Here's an extended excerpt from it - and thanks, Mr. Canemaker, for this and the superlative book Felix: The Twisted Tale Of The World's Most Famous Cat.
After drawing and supervising the Felix The Cat comic strip (which he would do until 1954) and working on Times Square, Otto Messmer returned to animation in the mid-1940's at Famous Studios, where he and Bill Turner collaborated on stories for the Popeye, Little Lulu, Noveltoons and Casper series. Several, most notably the Popeye cartoon ROCKET TO MARS, are among the best Famous ever produced in its checkered history.
Still, one associates Otto Messmer's animation with the minimalist but intergalactic and indefatigable 1920's version of Felix.
Today, in between remembering many folks we love who have left us - the latest being singer/songwriter/bandleader/guitarist and activist Sinead O' Connor, silent movie accompanist and conductor Sir Carl Davis (who we saw accompany Abel Gance's NAPOLEON), Paul Reubens (a.k.a. Pee-Wee Herman) and ace Walt Disney Studios expert, author and historian Jim Korkis - and reading the latest indictment, the gang at Way Too Damn Lazy To Write A Blog seeks refuge in very odd classic movies. First and foremost, there's the indescribable love triangle noir melodrama Desert Fury. . . IN COLOR!
None other than Eddie Muller introduces this oddest of noirs at the 2016 Seattle Noir City fest.
Don't know who directed the following short subject starring beloved comedian, actor and cartoon voice guru Billy Bletcher getting chased around by a lobster. Who cares - we love it!
Always liked such experimental films of New Zealand sculptor-painter and sometimes animator Len Lye as Rainbow Dance, Colour Box and Trade Tattoo, and was thrilled to see he made a stop-motion animation short back in 1933.
The last time this blog posted something by the incomparable genius of stop-motion animation Ladislaw Starewicz, his family contacted me to mention that the films are under copyright.
While not knowing if the European copyrights hold for U.S. bloggers or not, promptly took 'em down. So here's a brief 5 minute clip from one notable Starewicz masterpiece; if the great artist's descendents want me to subsequently delete it, that's okay. Alas, I have given up all hope of ever seeing a 35mm print (let alone a nitrate original) on the big screen of any films by the incomparable Ladislaw and Irina Vladislavovna Starewicz; please, Starewicz family, come to the Niles Essanay Silent Film Museun and prove me wrong!
Recently ordered the Stop-Motion Marvels Blu-rays from Thunderbean Animation, so such otherworldly and bizarre cartoons as the following produced by Kinex will be waiting!
This blogger's tombstone no doubt will say "he liked bad cartoons for some reason," along with "WAY too much in moderation" and "didn't follow orders," so here's MOTHER HUBBA-HUBBA HUBBARD, a zany and definitely bizarre cartoon from the hated and despised Screen Gems studio. Do I find it funny, very funny? Yes - absolutely. Do I know why? NO! Does anybody else, including those who made the cartoon, like it? Probably not.
Watching this, wonder if it was a product of Bob Clampett's cup of coffee at the then-unraveling Screen Gems studio. That opening animation with the dog (starting at 0:22) sure looks like something Bob would have done at Warner Brothers with wacky Rod Scribner as "featured soloist." I'll still take this and most of the other Columbia cartoons (sans - ouch - A BOY, A GUN & BIRDS and the horrible Lil' Abner series) over a 1951 Famous Studios opus 365 days a year.
And, while speaking of Famous Studios, this begs the question who made our favorite bizarre classic cartoons of all-time. Well, that would be many of the same artists who made Noveltoons and Little Audrey cartoons in the 1950's, but 25 years earlier!
Way back in the 1920's, long before other studios recruited them, these super-talented animators were cranking out frequently brilliant (and bizarre) cartoons at the NYC studio of Max & Dave Fleischer.
Behold - KOKO'S EARTH CONTROL! The gang at Way Too Damn Lazy To Write A Blog, as always, are suckers for The Inkwell Imps and Out Of The Inkwell!
