365 Films in 365 Days

#52 Treasure Island

February 19, 2021
Treasure Island (1950) ***
Disney +
Free
Disney other

“Them that die will be the lucky ones!”

Treasure Island was the very first completely live-action film made by Disney, but once they started they just started rolling them out like gangbusters, I thought at first because they discovered how very much cheaper they were than animation, not to mention faster, but it turns out it is because after the war, any money they made on Disney films in the UK had to be spent there, so they opened a film unit in England.

It was also the last of the four films Bobby Driscoll did for Disney, at least as live action, because of course he voiced and modeled for Peter Pan a few years later.

The film also starred Robert Newton as Long John Silver, who invented the famous pirate voice by exaggerating his own West Country accent, so all of those “Aaarrrr”s that we do today when we are playing pirate, that’s all him. It seems extremely odd to see someone performing in that accent just as a matter of course.

They did a pretty good job with condensing the script, because the whole “Billy Bones shows up at the Admiral Benbow” section at the beginning could take a full half hour on its own, they just start right away with Blind Pew arriving and go on from there.

The photography is beautiful, the sea and the sky and the ship and the adventure! Yes, it’s a little odd that Jim Hawkins is an American child there for some reason, but they weren’t so hung up on accents in the olden days, and often they would be just so wrong that you’d be like, I believe everything, I’m all in! Or otherwise you wouldn’t find out about what happened with the pirate treasure and the mutineers and Squire Trelawney’s big fat mouth!

It is a fun flick, and a great yarn, and well worth the watch.

Week 7 wrap-up 2/12-2/18

I didn’t do quite so well this week at watching Disney films, being my brief for the month, only seeing three Disneys, but I think I’m still ahead of the game as far as watching them at least 50% of the time.

It was the best week yet, however, in that of the seven films I saw, five of them were four star films! I mean, how do you choose between Blazing Saddles, Casablanca, All The President’s Men, One Hundred and One Dalmatians, and The Sword in the Stone for best film of the week? I hope I’ll be able to figure it out before I come to the end of this post.

And the other two, So Dear to My Heart and The Kennel Murder Case, both at two and a half stars, neither of them were bad, so I have the Same problem with picking a worst. But a five-way tie for best and a two-way tie for worst simply will not do.

It will have to be Casablanca for best film of the week, if only because of how startled I was at how brilliant it truly is, and So Dear to My Heart being the worst, while not being bad, just of the two bottom films it is the one I would least like to rewatch. Proved by the fact that I actually did have to rewatch part of The Kennel Murder Case because I had forgotten what my opinions were of it, and quite enjoyed it the second time!

#51 The Kennel Murder Case

February 18, 2021
The Kennel Murder Case (1933) ** 1/2
TCM
Free
Wildcard

“What do you think of the suicide theory now, sergeant?”
“Well, it’s slightly complicated, since the man shot, slugged, and stabbed himself, especially in the back.”

Archer Coe is a rich jerk and many many people have excellent reasons to bump him off, but he is found dead in a locked room, a victim of an apparent suicide.

William Powell is Philo Vance, amateur detective, and he even has a charming dog, but not Myrna Loy, so this cannot be as good as the Thin Man movies. Philo Vance is sure that Archer Coe did not kill himself, locked room of no, and then it turns out that, apparently, he was not only shot, but also hit on the head and stabbed in the back, so he makes it his duty to work out which of the myriad of suspects is the real killer.

I have heard many episodes of the old time radio show over the years, and he is always the perfect Boy Scout who gets his man and makes no errors, and is a little dull. William Powell plays him with enough of a twinkle that the character is way more interesting.

Powell played Philo Vance in five films for Paramount, this one being the last, until, sick of these detective mysteries, he signed with MGM who immediately put him in…a detective mystery. But it was The Thin Man, which turned out to be just the ticket.

#50 So Dear to My Heart

February 17, 2021
So Dear to My Heart (1949) ** 1/2
Google Play
$3.99
Disney other

“Lavender blue, dilly dilly, lavender green/If I were king, dilly dilly, I’d need a queen.”

This film was the last of the myriad of hybrid live action/animated Disney films until Mary Poppins fifteen years later.

It’s the story of Jeremiah and his extremely naughty black lamb, Danny, named after Dan Patch, the racehorse, who visits their small town in the first scene, and where my nerds at who know exactly who Dan Patch is solely because he is in the song Trouble from The Music Man? And that he is a trotting horse and no stuck up jockey boy will be sitting on him? I can name at least five people amongst my acquaintance without even stopping to think, who can raise their hands at that challenge!

This was the last film that Bobby Driscoll and Luana Patten would be paired together, and the last for Luana until Johnny Tremain when she was 19. They were the first two Disney kids, which brought them no luck, as they both had tragic early ends, Bobby’s both earlier and more tragic.

Also starring were Beulah Bondi, aka Ma Bailey from It’s a Wonderful Life, and a terribly young and beardless Burl Ives (I mean, he was 39, but that was pretty young for Burl Ives, and it’s only his fourth film!). He sings Lavender Blue, Dilly Dilly, a song I had on a Disney record album, but didn’t realize it was from this film.

It is a slight, but charming film, and I resent having to rent it. Why does Disney + exist but to show me every single Disney movie at any moment of the day or night when I want to see it. But we are getting into the live action films, and there are a ridiculous number of those that I will be complaining about how they are missing.

#49 The Sword in the Stone

February 16, 2021
The Sword in the Stone (1963) ****
Disney +
Free
Disney animation

“Blow me to Bermuda!”
“Where… Where did he go?”
“To Bermuda, I suppose.”

Another charming Disney animated feature, this month is going swimmingly. This one, like One Hundred and One Dalmatians before, is animated in a freer, sketchier style than the Princess films, it just breezes along.

Merlin the wizard finds Wart, a skinny, awkward boy, and teaches him all kinds of important things, because he know the future, which is that Wart is destined to pull the sword from the stone and become the true King of England.

One funny thing, I keep thinking that this is the movie where the owl talks about falling in love as being twitter-pated, but as I found out when I was watching Bambi, it’s Bambi! However, it’s so firmly lodged in my skull, that when I was looking for a quote to put at the top of this post, I spent a minimum of ten minutes trying to find the quote where Archimedes talks to Wart about being twitter-pated, instead of Friend Owl telling Bambi, Flower and Thumper.

I am reminded that it has been a really long times since I read The Once and Future King, (the film is based on the first section, originally published as a stand-alone book), and I really should get onto that.

#48 One Hundred and One Dalmatians

February 15, 2021
One Hundred and One Dalmatians (1961) ****
Disney +
Free
Disney animation

“The humans have tried everything. Now it’s up to us dogs, and the Twilight Bark.”

I was going to watch The Letter, but after about 15 minutes, I changed my mind and remembered, hey! I’m supposed to be watching Disney movies this month, and I haven’t watched one since Peter Pan four days ago! So One Hundred and One Dalmatians it is.

It’s absolutely charming, of course, and the animation is incredibly interesting, with the backgrounds only sketched in, especially in Hell Hall. Extremely different than Sleeping Beauty, the last animated film before this, which nearly bankrupted the studio.

Of course, watching it as an adult, I’m all, you are planning on keeping seventeen dogs in a house with no garden? I mean, they won’t be puppies forever, what are you doing with all the poop? And if you aren’t going to get them fixed, you are in big trouble very soon!

The Twilight Bark made me burst into tears. All these dogs, jumping into action, with the oblivious humans trying to get them to shut up, but they won’t! Not with fifteen dognapped puppies to find and rescue! And I love how the dogs from the beginning all come back as part of the Barking Chain.

One side thought: I don’t know but if you are going to name your child Cruella and raise her in a place called Hell Hall, nobody should be surprised at how she turns out.

Anyway, it’s not one of the greatest of the classic Disney animation, but it’s pretty close!

#47 All The President’s Men

February 14, 2021
All the President’s Men (1976) ****
HBO Max
Free
Filmspotting

“Boy, that woman was paranoid! At one point I – I suddenly wondered how high up this thing goes, and her paranoia finally got to me, and I thought what we had was so hot that any minute CBS or NBC were going to come in through the windows and take the story away.”

“You’re both paranoid. She’s afraid of John Mitchell, and you’re afraid of Walter Cronkite.”

Now, the Filmspotting category is supposed to be for Filmspotting Marathons, and also generally the idea is that these are movies I have not seen before. However, they are currently doing a series called 7 From ’76, and they started off last week with All the President’s Men, which reminded me just how much I love this movie.

I don’t know how many times I have seen it, probably between ten and twenty, and it makes sense that I am seeing it on HBO Max, since I’m pretty sure all but the first time I saw it was on HBO in the first place, back when they would just play one movie over and over again, and if you liked it, you’d watch it five times in a single weekend.

I started watching this in the afternoon, but had barely started before I decided to nap, and then didn’t get back to it until 11p. I thought about watching something else, since this film is 2h 15m, but nothing was calling to me, so I thought I’d watch half (the absolute minimum and only if I’m dying to go to sleep).

I then proceeded to watch the whole thing, because you just can’t stop watching All the President’s Men until it’s over, even if you know the plot like the inside of your own mouth, it’s just too gripping.

I was 11 years old when the film came out, and I saw it with my parents, because they would take me to see anything. Not that this is unsuitable for kids (beyond some language), just that you’d think it might be boring. Eleven-year-old me begs to differ! I did not at all understand everything that went on, but I was riveted nonetheless, it’s just that kind of movie.

The performances are entirely natural, and it’s a rogues gallery of great 1970s character actors: Martin Balsam, Jack Warden, Hal Holbrook, Ned Beatty, Jason Robards, any one of which would elevate any movie they were in, but all of them together, it is a tsunami of awesomeness.

Redford and Hoffman give terrific performances and are a great team. Sidebar: recently I heard on some podcast, someone talking about this movie as something they had sort of heard of, and they said that Dustin Hoffman and Robert Redford played Woodward and Bernstein, but they didn’t know who was who. Really? You think that Robert Redford might have played someone named Bernstein? Really?

Anyway, if you are reading this and you don’t know who played Woodward and who played Bernstein, live in your ignorance not one moment more, All the President’s Men is a doozy.

#46 Casablanca

February 13, 2021
Casablanca (1942) ****
Secret Movie Club Drive-In
$37 (double feature with When Harry Met Sally)
Wildcard

“If it’s December 1941 in Casablanca, what time is it in New York?”
“Uh, my watch stopped.”
“I bet they’re asleep in New York. I bet they’re asleep all over America.”

This was supposed to be a double feature with When Harry Met Sally, but unfortunately, due to high winds that made Rick and Ilsa look as though they were underwater on the blow-up screen, When Harry Met Sally was canceled.

The funny thing is, I might not have gone to see this movie if it was just Casablanca, because I kind of take Casablanca for granted. Like so many of the big classic films, you know they’re great, you’ve seen them, they are famous for a reason, but it is as though they are preserved in amber. Casablanca is famous and great, and we don’t have to see it again because we know it’s famous and great.

But it really is famous and great for a reason. Watching it this time, I realized just what a vital, living film it is, and that we are seeing these actors say these iconic quotes for the first time, not knowing that they would be iconic quotes.

When a movie is adapted from a famous book or play, often the most famous lines are already known, everybody knew Rhett Butler was going to say “Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn,” before Clark Gable even opened his mouth, but Casablanca was adapted from an unproduced play, and famously was shooting without a finished script, so nobody knew what it would become.

Another thing, which I only realized when it was pointed out to me several years ago, when this movie about WWII was made, the war was still on and nobody knew how it would end.

The play was bought by Warner Brothers in January 1942, Pearl Harbor was attacked in December 1941, so America was barely in the war. There was a time, you see, when it was extremely possible that the Axis powers would win, and this film was made when everything was still fluid and uncertain. It is a film about the now that was then.

The people in this film, some of whom were refugees who had fled Europe, did not know if they would see their homes again, if the families they left behind would survive. And you can feel all this when you watch the film, especially, famously, the Marseillaise scene.

It seems silly to say, “Hey, Casablanca is really good!” because everyone knows that. The real thing is that Casablanca is a splendid movie to watch just for the sake of enjoyment, and if you haven’t seen it in a while, give yourself a treat and watch it again.

#45 Blazing Saddles

February 12, 2021
Blazing Saddles (1974) ****
TCM
Free
Wildcard

“Are we awake?”
“We’re not sure…Are we…black?”
“Yes, we are.”
“Then we’re awake, but we’re very puzzled…”

Blazing Saddles I have seen one meellion times and will never get tired of it. You’d think that after 47 years, the razor sharp satire might seem quaint, but everything hits just as hard, maybe harder, than it did back in the olden days.

This was Mel Brooks’ third film, after The Producers and The Twelve Chairs, which is mostly forgotten, but contains Ron Moody from Oliver and an extremely young and hot Frank Langella, and I don’t know if I’ve ever seen the whole thing. I should rectify it if only for the Langella situation.

Mel wrote the script with several people, including Richard Pryor, who apparently liked writing for Mongo the best. Mel wanted Richard to play Sheriff Bart as well, but the studio didn’t want him because his drug use was known, and then Richard said that he wasn’t right for the role anyway, he was so light-skinned, and Mel definitely should cast someone much darker than him. They cast the wonderful Cleavon Little, who is just completely perfect.

Speaking of casting, The Waco Kid was originally supposed to be played by Gig Young, but it turned out that you really can’t hire an alcoholic to play an alcoholic, so Mel called Gene Wilder after they already started filming, and Gene was on set shooting within a couple of days, and ended up giving my favourite of all of his performances, it was so subtle. So, the Richard Pryor/Gig Young version was not to be, though I’m sure it would have been interesting!

My dad is actually in this movie, though his scenes were cut. He is visible in the background of one scene, and he got teensy little residuals for many years. It’s the hangman scenes, there used to be more of them, or they were longer, I don’t know. But it’s nice to glimpse him!

Anyway, this is a splendid movie, it has a lot to say about race and racism, while still being hilarious. And remember, Mongo only pawn in game of life.

Week 6 wrap-up 2/5-2/11

Week 6 I am definitely in the groove of watching movies, but totally out of the groove of posting about them on time, (and the same thing happens next week, says Kymm from the future) so let’s try to break that habit in week 8.

I saw eight films again this week, due to a double feature, five Disney films and three TCM. I am doing pretty well with the Disney focus of the month, eight out of twelve, and since my goal was 50%, I am on solid ground.

Of the eight films this week, four I had seen before, Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, Song of the South, and Peter Pan, three were new to me, Melody Time, The Trouble With Girls, Mystery House, and one I can’t remember if I have seen it or not, The Falcon’s Brother, so it goes in “hadn’t seen” with an asterisk.

The best of the week is kind of a tie between Sleeping Beauty and Cinderella, as the only two four star films, but I think Sleeping Beauty squeaks by with that lovely animation style. Melody Time and Peter Pan both have three and a half stars, so it was a pretty strong week.

Song of the South, Mystery House, and The Falcon’s Brother all have two and a half stars, which leaves, in the bottom, sadly, my father’s film, The Trouble With Girls, which is terrible, and only gets two stars because of Daddy, who gets at least one of those stars solely for himself.