Thursday March 11, 2010
Let's hear it for the Internets, the Googles and the "U-Tube," as one lady of a certain age I worked with was wont to write.
Here for all to love is every Alfred Hitchcock cameo, in chronological order, from his early days in London through his Hollywood heyday. (Warning - the Hitchcock theme music is loud and repetitive.)
I must say the Master of Suspense did not change his looks much from youth to age, except to become even more of what he was. And while most of these are great, I wouldn't watch all of his films in order. I would start with the best Hitchcock movies.
Hat tip to Cinematical for digging this up.
Wednesday March 10, 2010
I hated when they did it to Humphrey Bogart and Jimmy Cagney (Diet Coke) and Fred Astaire (Dirt Devil vacuum cleaners, for God's sake).
Now they're doing it to classic movie star Marilyn Monroe and murdered musical genius John Lennon. Using film of them in commercials. All to sell a squat little Citroen car. Yuck.
The irony is that in both clips, the stars are rejecting nostalgia, embracing the new, the groundbreaking. And then, with a burst of cool music, this little car that looks like a malformed VW bug shows up.
Monroe's image continues to make millions for the people who control it, and I guess Lennon is going to be one of those icons who earns just as much in death as he did in life, if not more.
The whole thing creeps me out.
Lennon's glasses and a photo from a 2007 charity auction in New York, by Gareth Cattermole/Getty Images
Tuesday March 9, 2010
Huge hat tip to Peter Hartlaub, pop culture critic of the San Francisco Chronicle, for this collection of Orson Welles's weirdest gigs.
It's beyond the drunken Paul Masson. It's more over the top than the famous frozen peas.
If you see only one time-wasting YouTube video today, let it be this featurette about how the classic movie director and star came to do an animated Transformers movie as one of his final roles. It's kind of touching, actually. A genius, and utterly fascinating, to the end.
(The Dark Tower commercial is a stone hoot as well.)
The director in 1937/Wikimedia Commons
Monday March 8, 2010
Remember that old joke about why Ginger Rogers was a better dancer than Fred Astaire?
She did everything he did, but backwards in high heels.
Now that's the title of a stage show in Los Angeles about the life of the classic Hollywood hoofer, who once won a Best Actress Oscar but is still best remembered as the dancing partner of the debonair Mr. Astaire.
Backwards in High Heels is getting mixed reviews, but you can't beat the music. In between old standards, it focuses on Rogers' relationship with her mother and her four husbands, and features a parade of folks playing legendary stars from Ethel Merman to Jimmy Stewart.
And then there' s the dancing. Sounds like a charming evening out on the town in a city that usually pays more attention to movies than the stage.
Ginger on an old Hollywood magazine cover.