The 2025 edition of the Noir City film festival at Oakland's Grand Lake Theatre is on and pays tribute to the genre's formidable femme fatales, many of whom were interviewed onstage by festival programmer/curator/film preservationist and Czar Of Noir Eddie Muller. TCM's Alicia Malone (seen in the Noir City 22 poster) co-hosts this weekend's shows.
Noir City returns to Oakland's spectacular art deco movie palace, the Grand Lake Theater on 3200 Grand Avenue, with a great lineup of classic movies.
The Psychotronix Film Festival has been producing movie events in various venues since 1992 - and shall return to the Orinda Theatre at 2 Orinda Theatre Square (Moraga Way and Brookwood Road) with an improvised, sometimes ragtag, all over the map but highly entertaining lineup of films this Saturday night.
These films include 1950's commercials and "educational" films, the most bizarre obscure classic cartoons, trailers from the worst movies, the campiest musical shorts and TV programs that aired once or should never have aired.
The gang that produces these extravaganzas on glorious 16mm film started as DIY archivists/curators/showmen way back in the 1980's and worked on film presentations in the San Francisco Bay Area and Sacramento for several years prior to producing the first Psychotronix Film Festival at Foothill College, benefitting KFJC, in December 1992.
Rather amazingly, 32 years later, the Psychotronix gang keeps schlepping 16mm Kodak Pageants and reels in the service of big screen fun, featuring a different mix at every show, which is never repeated - and a new celluloid configuration will be hitting the big screen at the Orinda Theatre.
Said mix includes. . . TV ads!
Vintage car commercials!
Cheesy TV show openings!
Toy commercials!
Trailers from bad movies!
Musical short subjects!
And, invariably, Incredibly Strange Cartoons.
Again, the Psychotronix Film Festival, featuring "16MM Film, The Vinyl of Visuals," returns to bring its highly distinctive variant of big screen fun to the Orinda Theatre at 2 Orinda Theatre Square (Moraga Way and Brookwood Road) Saturday night, September 28, 2024 at 8:30 P.M.
Thanks, Sci Fi Bob Ekman, Scott Moon and Robert Emmett for your good work over these past three decades - and thanks to the Orinda Theatre.
The Broncho Billy Silent Film Festival is three days of films, lectures, and fun named in honor of the man who, as co-founder of Essanay Studios with George K. Spoor, brought the movies to Niles: "Broncho Billy" Anderson. Get festival passes or advance tickets for individual shows here.
This year's Broncho Billy Silent Film Festival includes extremely rare Essanay Studio Films, tributes to Women in Film who starred for Essanay in the early days of movies, ultra-wacky comedies featuring Mack Sennett Productions headliner (and, later, an excellent and most prolific character actor) Billy Bevan, Lenticular Kodacolor home movies, a film about Greta Garbo made for Turner Classic Movies by Kevin Brownlow and Patrick Stansbury among several documentaries on classic movies (The Love Goddesses, The Movies Go West, The Western Costume Company), a presentation by Bison Studios historian and author Marc Wanamaker and a Focus on Film Collectors noting their contributions to preservation of our cinematic heritage.
Friday, July 26 7:30 p.m.
The Love Goddesses
(1965, Walter Reade-Sterling Presentation)
Director Saul J. Turrell’s exploration of sex in the movies. From the silent era and Clara Bow to Cinemascope and Marilyn Monroe, see how the movie industry’s depiction of sex has changed through the decades. Here's an excerpt from it.
Preceded by the documentary, The Western Costume Company (1951)
From the NESFM website: This noteworthy business has been a landmark in Hollywood for decades. Not only has it been supplying “Western" costumes to movie producers, but costumes, armor, weapons, medals, furniture, and props of all kinds from all periods of history. We are shown through the various department of this huge facility, and follow a beautiful and fancy costume from its inception on a designer's drawing-board through its assembly end eventual clothing of a model, along with a number of other unusual and beautiful costumes used not only by motion picture studios, but by theatrical and television producers as well.
Saturday, July 27
11:00 a.m. Walking Tour of Niles
11:00 a.m. movies (FREE program) - Broncho Billy: The First Reel Cowboy (1998, Arkansas Educational Television Network)
This short film details the career of Gilbert M. "Broncho Billy" Anderson, the very first cowboy movie star. Featured in more than 200 westerns, he preceded the likes of William S. Hart and Tom Mix as the silver screen's cowboy headliner.
G. M. Anderson, as star, producer and director, was instrumental in the formation and development of the western movie genre.
The influence of Broncho Billy is still seen today in films depicting the Old West.
The museum thanks the creators of this documentary for allowing us to screen it.
The Movies Go West (1974, Bell) This film is one of the first visual explorations of the Essanay Film Manufacturing Company as it existed in Niles 100 years ago. Filmmaker Geoffrey Bell was at the helm for this project, which was narrated by Hal Angus, one of the players at the old studio and husband to the head of the scenario department, Josephine Rector. The Niles Museum's Rena Kiehn elaborates:
The Movies Go West includes invaluable images of Niles in the 1970's, including film taken of the original barn that Broncho Billy settled in when first arriving in town, before building a then state-of-the-art studio a block
away.
1:00 p.m. The Women of Essanay
A selection of Essanay Film Manufacturing Company films made in Chicago and Niles, featuring top movie actresses of the day, including Ethel Clayton, Martha Russell, Dolores Cassinelli, Ruth Stonehouse, Eleanor Blevins, Marguerite Clayton, Evelyn Selbie, Bessie Sankey and Margaret Joslin. The program also includes stories about those who were instrumental behind the scenes and involved with getting the productions completed.
A special screening of Garbo, the Photoplay Productions (Kevin Brownlow, Christopher Bird and Patrick Stansbury) documentary celebrating the centenary of the birth of the iconic movie star of iconic movie stars. It covers the early years of Greta Garbo in Sweden, her movie career, early retirement from showbiz and subsequent life in NYC. It features interviews with Greta's friends from later life, friends and such filmmakers who worked with her as Clarence Brown.
7:30 p.m. Flesh And The Devil
(1927, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer) In Greta Garbo’s breakthrough picture she delivers a luminous performance as a new type of vamp: less consistently cruel and more subtle than earlier styles. Director Clarence Brown recalled, “Flesh And The Devil was my first picture for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, and it really made Garbo.” Her name was listed under the title, which would change after the film’s phenomenal success. She became the most famous woman in the world and the leading film actress. Starring Greta Garbo, John Gilbert, and Lars Hanson. Directed by Clarence Brown.
Opening the Saturday night show, two Mack Sennett comedy shorts featuring goofball du jour Billy Bevan, leader of The Charge Of The Mustached Brigade!
The Golf Nut (1927, Mack Sennett Comedies) Co-starring Vernon Dent. Billy plays a wacky photographer and terrible golfer who brings unmitigated disaster to the links.
Ice Cold Cocos (1926, Mack Sennett Comedies) Billy and his pal Andy Clyde impersonate two ice-delivery men in a suburban town. Mayhem ensues.
Jon Mirsalis, Kurzweil Keyboard Accompaniment
Sunday, July 28
10:45 a.m.
Special Behind-the-Scenes REAL vs. REEL program (FREE program)
Vintage Los Angeles film studios expert and special guest Marc Wanamaker will share some behind-the-scenes images and amazing tales of REAL California history intertwined with motion picture history, the REEL kind. He will share images from two recent books he co-authored: Hollywood: Behind the Lens - Treasures from the Bison Archives (with Steven Bingen) and Hollywood’s Trains and Trolleys (with Josef Lesser).
12:30 p.m.
Hidden Colors of the California Nursery and Beyond: Lenticular Kodacolor Home Movies (FREE program) Back for its second year, with different films! See rare home movies of the Niles Nursery and beyond in color for the first time in 90 years! Local horticultural historian Janet Barton and our museum's own Zack Sutherland walk you through this long-defunct technique of color film processing, and the resulting footage taken in Niles and elsewhere in California. Piano Accompaniment by David Drazin. (High-definition Digital presentation)
2:30 pm - Focus On Film Collectors featuring The Isle of Hope (1925, Richard Talmadge Productions)
Film collector Michael Aus was scrolling through eBay one night when he found a print of The Isle of Hope, a formerly-lost film for sale. After acquiring the only print, Aus deposited the film here at our museum – thus giving us an opportunity at this year's festival to demonstrate how film collectors have been essential
over the decades to making rare or lost material visible to the public.
The Isle of Hope is a stunt-filled adventure feature film starring Richard Talmadge, a former circus tumbling performer turned movie actor and producer, later turned Hollywood stuntman. Also featured are Helen Ferguson (a former player at the Essanay Film Manufacturing Company in Chicago), James A. Marcus,mand George Reed. (High-definition digital presentation)
4:30 pm Film Is Dead, Long Live Film! (2024, Cold Eye Films)
This award-winning documentary explores the vanishing world of private film collecting: an obsessive, secretive, often illicit realm of basement film vaults, piled high with forgotten reels. Condemned as pirates and hounded by the FBI, film collectors have long lurked in the shadows. Yet their efforts have resulted in the survival of countless films that would otherwise have been lost to history. Journeying to film festivals, dealer rooms, archives, film storage and workspaces, and ad-hoc screening rooms, a trove of interviews is amassed which
profiles the people involved with collecting and preserving film, underscoring their motivations and legacies. Produced and directed by Peter Flynn.
Preceded by short subjects from the Niles Essanay Silent Film Museum's archive:
Ringling Brothers Circus Parade (1902) A visiting circus and onlookers in a street scene.
Suzie Loses Her First Tooth (early 1920s) This early example of an infomercial is an animated tale of heroes and villains in a battle over dental hygiene.
Piano Accompaniment for shorts by Bruce Loeb.
The Broncho Billy Silent Film Festival shall hold forth at the Edison Theater and the Niles Essanay Silent Film Museum at 37417 Niles Boulevard, Fremont, CA 94536. 510-494-1411.
There will be Special Festival Hours for the museum and store.
On May 4th in the year 2024, Sci Fi Bob Ekman, Paul F. Etcheverry, Scott Moon and Robert Emmett will be back at Foothill College!
WHY??? to retroactively celebrate May Day in the lovely Los Altos Hills with yet another KFJC Psychotronix Film Festival!
The all-16mm entertainment extravaganza, jam-packed with celluloid heroes and celluloid zeroes!
The show will feature the usual stuff we - and those who produced Mystery Science Theatre 3000, Cinematic Titanic, Cinema Insomnia and the MADS as well - adore.
That includes retro TV ads!
ESPECIALLY cigarette ads.
B, C, D and Z-movie trailers
The inevitable Soundies and Scopitones!
Incredibly Strange Cartoons, of course, will be on the menu.
Will the show be jam-packed with movie stars, CGI and cool effects? In a word - NO! Will there be anything in Mandarin? We're looking!
Shall we
toss a wide variety of films from different places, genres, techniques or time periods together into quite the kaleidoscopic cinema salad? Yes, definitely.
The KFJC Psychotronix Film Festival Saturday, May 4, 2024 at 7:00 p.m. Room 5015, A.K.A. Forum Classroom Foothill College campus 12345 El Monte Road
Los Altos Hills, CA 94022 (El Monte exit off of Highway 280)
NOTE: The perpetrators of this festival, this very Monday evening from 6pm tp 7pm PST, shall be on KFJC 89.7 FM to plug it shamelessly with co-founder Robert Emmett on his Thoughtline show.
Be seeing you at Foothill College! For more, see Scott Moon's sensational Psychotronix Film Festival website!
The past year has had at least one prominent thing going for it: the full-fledged return of film festivals after an extended lockdown-related hiatus. The 2024 version of the San Francisco Silent Film Festival opened earlier this week at the Palace Of Fine Arts Theatre, in San Francisco's Marina district. Do we seek a Star Trek teleportation device that would make attending these screenings a breeze? Yes.
The Laurel & Hardy Show - Saturday, April 13 at 10:00 a.m.
Buster Keaton in Sherlock Jr - Saturday, April 13 at 7:00 p.m. The Gorilla 1927 version starring Charlie Murray - Sunday, April 14 at 10:00 a.m.
Harold Lloyd in The Kid Brother - Sunday, April 14 at 12:15 p.m. Live music by Mont Alto Motion Picture Orchestra.
Sunday, April 14, 2024 at 3:00 p.m. Roxy Cinema NYC, 2 Avenue of the Americas (lower level) and Cartoons On Film presents Peculiar Puppets vol. V (16mm) The press release elaborates: Roxy Cinema hereby presents a fifth retrospective screening featuring various peculiar examples of puppet films from the 1920s through the 1950s. Warning: You may find some of the offerings to be rather unsettling, possibly even creepy!
On April 18-21, 2024, TCM Classic Film Festival returns to the Holly-woods. Venues include the Egyptian Theatre, the Chinese Multiplex House 1-6, and, of course, Club TCM at the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel. It is the 15th edition of this epic festival and features lots and lots of classic movies along with more recent fare which, by this point, April 2024, were definitely long time ago. . . make that a very long time ago. Many special guests, still living movie stars and various favorite scholars and historians we know will be on hand. Still miss Robert Osborne! For way more on past TCM festivals, check out the TCM YouTube channel.
Still thinking of the late, great Joe Flaherty, who did excellent William F. Buckley and Kirk Douglas impersonations and whose fellow SCTV cast members were also incredible mimics, Way Too Damn Lazy To Write A Blog now turns to the topic of impressionists. Rang in 2024 on the blog with a January 1 post largely devoted to old school impressionists - John Byner, Bobby Darin, Sammy Davis Jr and Australia's best, Keith Scott, included.
Those of us who have long since passed retirement age, such as this "ok, boomer" blogmeister, remember seeing impressionists regularly on TV. Such popular and ubiquitous stand-up comedians of the day - Jack Carter, Shecky Greene, Guy Marks - featured impersonations prominently in their acts.
The Ed Sullivan Show, The Hollywood Palace, The Tonight Show With Johnny Carson and The Dean Martin Show featured superlative impressionists.
Way back in the 1950s and 1960s, it hadnt been that long since arger-than-life movie stars - Humphrey Bogart, Mae West, W.C. Fields, Jack Benny, Greta Garbo, Edward G. Robinson, Peter Lorre, Jimmy Cagney, Groucho Marx, Bette Davis, Katharine Hepburn, Cary Grant and Robert Mitchum - dominated both the silver screen and the cathode ray tube. Many of the aforementioned Hollywood stars were very much still with us then and could either love or despise the impressions. Johnny Carson and Dick Cavett would book the likes of Jack Benny and Groucho Marx on their late-night shows whenever they could.
Along with The Ed Sullivan Show and The Dean Martin Show, it was arguably the last TV variety program to provide mimics a showcase. The late 1970's On Location series by HBO did at least gave impressionists an extended opportunity to do their standup comedy acts.
And, speaking of The Dean Martin Show, how this blogmeister actually forgot to include the aforementioned Guy Marks (1923-1987), one of the very best and funniest of the old school impressionists back in the 1960's, we'll never know! Let's rectify that error now!
Since the demise of the TV variety program and such showcases as The Ed Sullivan Show in the 1970's, the last place where actual impressionists could be found is late night TV: SCTV (a.k.a. Second City Television), Late Night With David Letterman, Saturday Night Live and to a lesser degree Fridays, In Living Color and Mad TV. Frank Caliendo was the impressions guy on Mad TV.
Saturday Night Live has explored that "improv meets impressions" space from John Belushi's Marlon Brando as The Godfather impersonation to Gilda Radner's Lucy to the dead-on mimicry and comedy acting genius of Eddie Murphy, uncrowned and unheralded king of celebrity and politician voices Darrell Hammond - and the "micro-impressions" of the great Dana Carvey.
The Saturday Night Live casts have featured numerous stand-up comedians who do impressions over the decades - the infamous Season 6 featured three, Eddie Murphy, Joe Piscopo and Gilbert Gottfried - and a favorite 21st century SNL stalwart and new school impressionist is Bill Hader.
Sometimes Jimmy Fallon's musical impressions make it into The Tonight Show; we would also occasionally get a glimpse of them, along with very funny music-related sketches, during his SNL stint in the early oughts. He's a musician who happens to be an improv comic and clearly most at home with a guitar in his hand. Jimmy Fallon's impressions of Neil Young and Bruce Springsteen are my favorite bits of his.
Fellow SNL alum Melissa Villaseñor is also an amazing new school impressionist.
As is the case with Maya Rudolph, we have the impression that Melissa Villaseñor has many, many more impressions yet to be heard.
Melissa's celebrity impersonations (musical and otherwise) are a highlight of the current version of The Tonight Show, especially the Wheel of Musical Impressions feature. Now, has anyone gotten Melissa and Dolly Parton together?
The current SNL cast features two bonafide impressionists in James Austin Johnson and Chloe Fineman.
While eating a delicious sandwich on National Grilled Cheese Sandwich Day and checking Ebay daily for Star Trek teleportation devices in good condition (even knowing it's likely that Bill Shatner and Patrick Stewart have cornered the market on them), the gang at Way Too Damn Lazy To Write A Blog also yearn to see more showcases for comedians and comediennes with the gift of mimicry - and the gift of gab.
A week from today, April 6, the Psychotronix Film Festival returns to the Orinda Theater for a scintillating springtime extravaganza.
We celebrate April Fool's Day a few days late and the birthday of movie comedian Grady Sutton a day early!
Time to celebrate Easter retroactively and the right way - the Psychotronic way, starting with Bugs Bunny!
The Psychotronix Film Festival is baaaaaaaaaaaack - with yet another devastatingly delirious deluge drawn from Our Celluloid Past!
The April 6 program will be as refreshing as springtime!
And, indeed, what would spring be without pickles?
Our overstocked 16mm archive is bursting at the acetate seams yet again with some of the coolest odd-ball films you are likely to see.
What would a Psychotronix Film Festival be without classic TV ads and Soundies?
And kidvid gone wrong, terribly wrong?
The place: Orinda Theater 2 Orinda Theatre Square, Orinda, CA 94563 The time: 8:30 p.m. PST
Orinda Theater Movieline: (925) 254-9060
Attendees at the Orinda Theater show note: a few weeks after kicking off April with a cool Psychotronix show there, we shall get the merry month of May off to a roaring start with a KFJC Psychotronix Film Festival at Foothill College in the Los Altos Hills.
Yes, Virginia Mayo and Virginia Weidler, there will be a "Mayday" KFJC Psychotronix Film Festival - 31 years, 5 months after our first show - at Room 5015 on Foothill College on May 4.
