Ads and Oddities #5
Greenbriar Picture Shows
by John McElwee
3d ago
  Ad/Odds: Dick's Doughnut Party, Unholy Love, All-RKO Show, and Dream Girl WHY NOT A DOUGHNUT PARTY? --- Merit badge to all who toss such event after fashion of Olivia DeHavilland and Dick Powell in 1938. What goes ideally with doughnuts? They may not have proposed marijuana then, but I’ll attest to pastry and cannabis as irresistible combo for potheads during a seventies usage peak … this not from personal experience (never used weed --- really). What I did hear of, and often, was classmates toking up on weekend nights, then hitting Hwy. 421 for Winston-Salem (apx. an hour’s distanc ..read more
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More Batjacs ...
Greenbriar Picture Shows
by John McElwee
1w ago
  Produced by John Wayne --- Part Two Of the Batjacs, Seven Men from Now may be an only one called canonical. Of westerns, it is close to a top of fifties heap. Extras for Seven Men from Now are lush with profiling of Budd Boeticcher, Kennedy, Gail Russell, more from the 1956 project. 2010 and thereabouts was when DVD buyers really got a money’s fillup. “Sparkhill” made these pocket documentaries. I don’t know if they are still in business, but they did a crackerjack job. Where your 78-minute feature comes with as much length again of bonuses, there is $5.99 well spent (Amazon’s curre ..read more
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A Feature Group Up from Depths
Greenbriar Picture Shows
by John McElwee
2w ago
  When Paramount Played with Batjac --- Part One Call this “When DVD Was King,” or Gold Age for Discs. Guess all formats have such apex, be they laser, even cassettes of long past. CD’s still come out, though I’m not certain who buys them. DVD stunned for quality when initially arrived. First toe-in I recall was 1999 and Teenagers from Outer Space. Suddenly we knew 16mm was kaput. Now it is discs that are dinosaurs, for why buy when streaming will do? Except streaming is them deciding what you watch, and when, “physical media” the retreat we make to possession that is true. Must be me ..read more
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Parkland Picks with Popcorn #3
Greenbriar Picture Shows
by John McElwee
3w ago
  PPP: The Scarlet Claw and 1975 Homecoming Parade, and The Lodger (1944) A right combination of setting and selection makes memorable time spent with shows. Mine of late was The Scarlet Claw with The Lodger (both 1944), seen in pocket of paradise that is the Parkland, this third of recorded visits there, and so far a most stimulating for favorites ideally suited to a small corner of home sweet childhood home. We’ve all found our sweetest spot by now. Just recline back and let the rest of a world turn as will. Does private theatre work best in jewel box proportion, just room for you i ..read more
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Works Well with Whiskey #3
Greenbriar Picture Shows
by John McElwee
1M ago
 WWW: Robocop, The Sea Wolves, Sign of the Gladiator, and The Hill ROBOCOP (1987) --- Outlaw action thriller they’d not dare today, Robocop silly on surface, a title giving exclamation to that, but don’t confuse with safe spandex  served over twenty years past (really, that many?). Robocop runs rapid, tawdry in the cut-price doing. Used to be flummoxed by those calling the eighties a golden era, or “last” golden era, but hang if things like Robocop don’t open my eyes. Robocop is fun in disorienting ways. No wonder it made a star director of Paul Verhoeven, forever young in m ..read more
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Film Noir #27
Greenbriar Picture Shows
by John McElwee
1M ago
  Noir: Breakaway, Canicule aka Dog Day, Circle of Danger, Clash by Night, and Cloudburst BREAKAWAY (1956) --- It’s another Tom “Duke” Martin thriller with Tom Conway! There were two, lensed in Britain, one US-released, Murder on Approval, while this one, Breakaway, I’m not for sure. Maybe RKO in waning days floated it to a handful of Yank cinemas. Someone more patient to do necessary research will enlighten us. Breakaway showed up in a “Forgotten Noir” DVD box, itself forgotten for coming out of VCI years back, but these  please where it’s small change intrigue one wants, or Con ..read more
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1951's Stab In the Back
Greenbriar Picture Shows
by John McElwee
1M ago
  LIFE Versus the Movies August 13, 1951, was Detonation Day, not when a cold war turned hot, but where the Number One family weekly aimed laser at an industry they said was in throes of decline, an industry too late to save. Hollywood saw LIFE’s gesture as one to live ever after in infamy, a sneak attack wholly unjustified. How could amusement for masses occasion such hostility? Everyone read LIFE magazine. A household to afford but one magazine subscription would subscribe to LIFE. Whatever it printed, people talked about. Size mattered, as issues were big as a Declaration of Indepe ..read more
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Watch List for 1/29/2024
Greenbriar Picture Shows
by John McElwee
2M ago
  Watched: The Cyclops, Law of the Underworld, The Band Plays On, Warlock, and Before Dawn THE CYCLOPS (1957) --- Who'd have dreamed a sci-fi junker like this would so rivet generations after sixty, closer to seventy, years. I watch ... and again I watch ... for no sensible reason. Maybe it's contemplation of obnoxious roar the title monster issues (Paul Frees said to have devised it), or perhaps one or all of humbled names engage me: James Craig (remote on the location, said co-star Gloria Talbott --- could you blame him?), Tom Drake (the Boy Next Door now next to blown-up iguanas ..read more
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Precode Picks #2
Greenbriar Picture Shows
by John McElwee
2M ago
  Precodes: Let Us Be Gay, Smart Money, Dark Hazard, Susan Lenox, and a Hot Lobby Card LET US BE GAY (1930) --- Doormat duckling turns swan when wife Norma Shearer gets shaft from straying husband Rod LaRoque, this after she bore him two kids if traipsing about the house with hair ribbons and endlessly singing “I Love You, I Love You,” a treacly tune I know not the origin of. Norma really pulls out stops for opener scenes here, no make-up and believe me, Shearer without war paint was plain personified; you’d not figure her to have ever been a movie star, let alone in a position to rem ..read more
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Must Art Be One of a Kind To Be Art?
Greenbriar Picture Shows
by John McElwee
2M ago
If You Can't Make It, Then Fake It Art as defined for a past hundred and twenty-five years was “there” in terms of painting, sculpture or whatever solid thing was one of its kind, not shareable in terms of taking possession to later enjoy at home. Art no longer unique was no longer classified as art, essential aura lost where reproduced and made commercially available. What one could own could not be art. German thinker Walter Benjamin spoke to contrary and on behalf of new arrived photography, recorded sound, and moving pictures, modern means by which art could travel and be anyone’s prop ..read more
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