Last screening

Way back in 2017 i began a movie review blog. It was restricted to reviews of films from the 20th century because reasons, and has stuck to that mostly (there have been a couple of reviews of films from the late 1890s!) Now, after eight years and 1,999 reviews i have finally decided to call it a day. Why 1,999? Well the blog is for films between 1900 and 1999 so i thought it was an amusing number to end on...

The blog has tended to review more obscure and lesser known films, especially B-movies from the 1930s to 1950s, rather than famous blockbusters though i did end on Star Wars, my favourite film of all. It will be strange to no longer be seeking out films and reviewing them but it is quite a drain on my time and i think it is better to end now than to struggle on and fizzle out after review 2,217 or something.

The blog is not going anywhere, the reviews will all be available to view for ever more (or until Google kill my Blogger account).

Cigarette Card Stars (3) : Paula DeCardo

"Paramount's lovely chorus girls are admired for their perfect figures and features. One of thge loveliest of them all is Paula De Cardo, a dark-haired young beauty who possesses also a considerable ability in acting for the screen. Her talents in this direction are well borne in mind, and it is more than likely Paula will be one of the stars of the future."

Unfortunately Paula never became one of the stars of the future. She was born in Chicago in 1916, the daughter of the well known dancing team Paul and Perla DeCardo. She made her film debut in 1932's Jewel Robbery, afterwards studying dancing in Paris to hone her skills. She appeared in dozens of films in the late 1930s though always in minor roles. She was also a highly respected ballerina in Los Angeles.

But she died young, at the age of 26 in 1942, her last film being 1940's "Good Old Schooldays".

Cigarette Card Stars (1) : Janet Shaw

This new series looks at some of the stars featured on Ardath cigarette cards from the 1930s.  

"Janet Shaw, whose real name is Ellen Claney, was given a film contract by Warner Bros. in 1938. She appeared in the film "The Sisters" and also in "Torchy Blane in Chinatown" with Glenda Farrell. Has golden hair, a delicate complexion and vivacious features."

So it says on the rear of the card. Born in Nebraska in 1919, she made her uncredited film debut in 1935's "She married her boss". She appeared in dozens of films in the late 1930s and 1940s when her career hit it's high, appearing in films such as Bela Lugosi's Night Monster (1942), Alfred Hitchcock's Shadow of a Doubt (1943) and the Charlie Chan film Dark Alibi (1946). However, she was never able to break out of being a supporting actress and into stardom, but her list of films is certainly very impressive.

In the early 1950s she appeared in a number of early TV programmes, her last screen appearance being in City Detective in 1955. She died in 2001 in Nebraska.

Cigarette Card Stars : An introduction

In the days before smoking was considered bad for you (or at least no one cared much if it was), cigarette packets came with cards to collect. Parents often giving the cards (which could cover any number of topics) to their children to collect. The cards nowadays can be highly valuable and tended to be collected by adults! The Ardath Tobacco Company released a number of card series on up and coming stars (or hopefuls in any event) of film and stage, we will be looking at some of these cards and the starlets portrayed on them in an upcoming series.

Type sketch art

Humans have always found ways to use and push technology in ways never originally intended, especially to create art. Human ingenuity has enabled for example music to be created using the clicks and whirrs of a floppy disk drive, in earlier times expert use of the typewriter was used to create artworks. The use of typewriters to create images goes back to the earliest days of the typewriter in the late nineteenth century.

It can still be done nowadays but the heyday was undoubtedly when millions of people daily used typewriters for work in the first half of the twentieth century. One example from the early 1930s was a competition in the New Movie Magazine for typists to recreate photographs of movie stars using their typewriting skills in this case Greta Garbo.

One hundred movie reviews up

At the start of the year I launched three new blogs. Two of them (on waterway and computer history) I expected would work out really well. The third, a blog of movie reviews, was more speculative and I honestly didn't know how if it was a good idea and how long it would survive. As it happens the two history blogs didn't work out and have been archived. The movie blog on the other hand is going from strength to strength and passed the hundred review milestone last week.

The movie blog has evolved very quickly. It started out just featuring reviews of films I had seen in the past, so a lot of 1980s and 1990s stuff (the blog is restricted to twentieth century movies). Then I discovered the wealth of older movies available on the likes of Amazon Prime and Youtube. Most reviews nowadays seem to be of 1930s crime dramas - which I am now most certainly a fan of. The blog continues and it will be interesting to see if it evolves again.

Public domain image of "The Air Mail" lobby card

Tie-ins (1) : Enter The Dragon

This new series will review tie-in novels to popular movies and TV shows, especially those written in the 60s and 70s. I've always been a fan of tie-ins such as Star Trek and CSI novelisations though this series will tend to go deeper into the past...

Enter The Dragon by Mike Roote

Enter The Dragon, the classic Bruce Lee kung-fu epic is one of my favourite films, can the martial art skills of Bruce translate into prose? Well yes the author does an unexpectedly good job. As the film is one of my favourites i have seen it many times of course, so that makes a tie-in novel in this case an interesting experience. Will the book stay true to the original screenplay? Will it add anything new?


Well yes to both really. The novel is fairly true, there are a few differences in structure for example the flashbacks near the start of the film are presented in the book in linear fashion at the start but that's fine as it probably works better in print. The overall plot and feel of the film is adhered to with some differences in detail (but this may have been changed from the screenplay the author worked to anyway).

Does the novel add anything new? Well amazingly yes, it helped clarify some parts of the plot which perhaps were not that clearly laid out on screen. So overall a hit. The cover artwork is basic but effective, a classic still of Bruce in his epic fight with Han. No bullshit.

A long time ago in a galaxy far far away...

Last night i finally got around to watching Rogue One and thus continuing my tradition of seeing every Star Wars film on original release. Yes thats back to the late 70s and the original film. It had a profound effect on me (aged about 6), my interest in technology and space was sparked and maybe thats resulted in me being where i am now.

Anyway Rogue One is a good film, it took awhile to get started but finished so well. Thats quite unique with films these days which seem to peak in the middle and by the time you get to the third act you are desperate for it to end. To be honest i was ready to watch the original Star Wars film (which runs directly after Rogue One continuity wise) right after. And ready to take the whole Empire on by myself.

While i liked The Force Awakens i think Rogue One properly reboots the Star Wars franchise and takes it to somewhere new. Onwards to the new film at the end of the year, which i will see of course...

Count Dracula

I'm a big fan of early cinema and when i saw that the Electric Cinema in Birmingham was showing the original 1931 Dracula movie i just had to go along and see it. This was the first official film adaptation of Dracula and is great fun with Bela Lugosi's performance as the lead tough to beat (only Christopher Lee is on a par in my opinion).

Not a perfect film, it was an early talkie and sometimes the sound is a big harsh. The film also ends quite abruptly. But its so atmospheric, indeed there is a lot of fog in this film. And large floppy bats.

The art of movie posters

Movie posters are a wonderful art form, classic film posters are nearly as memorable as the actual film in many cases (especially in early cinema). This poster for the silent horror film Häxen is particularly striking though. I don't think it leaves much to the imagination, i'm sure you would go into the theatre knowing what you were about to see!

The film actually is being shown next month in Leicester though i'll just stick to watching it on Youtube perhaps.