Category: All Posts

Rescue the Hitchcock 9

My buddy D.F. Rogers’ favorite directors are Frank Capra and John Ford. I too love their classic movies, but my top two director picks are Alfred Hitchcock and Michael Powell.

Recently it was announced that a few reels of a long-lost early work by Hitchcock were found, from a silent movie called The White Shadow. Here’s a nice mini-documentary surveying Hitch’s career.


And now there’s another find from the silent film era. A cache of sheet music has been uncovered, with cues for a pianist to play for every sort of scene.

As mentioned in the video, the British Film Institute has a project to restore nine Hitchcock silent films. The BFI is preparing the films for a showing with the London Olympics next year.

This post is, in part, my roundabout way to say how dismayed I am by the violence that erupted in England this week. I’m glad the situation seems to have calmed down, especially because by now Prudence Bury has arrived in London for an upcoming reunion at the Royal Ballet School.

Local news

A terrible highway accident happened today, not far from here on a stretch of road that I travel often. It’s always disturbing to contemplate how something like this could happen to any of us, without a moment’s notice.

A woman is dead, another is seriously injured, and so are two children. I assume National Grid’s attorneys are already preparing for the lawsuit that is sure to come.

In living color

RCA CEO David Sarnoff was a ruthless businessman. His great insight and accomplishment was seeing the potential of broadcasting as an entertainment medium and making network radio and television a reality. But Sarnoff didn’t hesitate to steal technology, as he did from Philo T. Farnsworth, and he crushed the great inventor Edwin Armstrong, who had been a close friend.

Having said that, RCA’s engineers did an exemplary job of creating the all-electronic NTSC color television system that was backwards-compatible with existing black & white sets. It was Ampex, however, that introduced b&w video tape recording in 1956. Two years later, RCA modified an Ampex deck so it could record in color, and the amazing results are in this video. If only this technology had been available during WWII, we would have an entirely different historical perception of the era.

Information on the restoration of this historic recording is at this link.

Some Brussels sprouts

What a coincidence that this year two major movies — Smurfs and Tintin — are based on Belgian cartoon characters. Brussels is going green (and, uh, brown) by bringing back horses to the city’s streets…

…and Kristel Verbeke looks into experiments to increase the intelligence of apes (what could go wrong?)…

http://youtu.be/Ub1i9YFf764

…while Josje teaches girls how to dance the K3 way.

http://youtu.be/Cad7TI0P4fE

The psychecology of ’68

In 1968 America exploded politically, between the war in Vietnam, the assassinations of MLK and RFK, and the riots at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, all of which ultimately led to the election of Richard Nixon. It was a difficult year for me personally, between the second half of 7th grade sucking, family problems, and having to move. Also, I went from thinking about girls to thinking about girls, girls, and girls.

A HUGE bright spot for me in 1968 was the premiere of Laugh-In, a TV show that I enjoyed with great, even painful, intensity. And, as always, reading comic books and listening to the radio helped to get me through my troubles. 1968 was the year sandwiched between the Summer of Love, with the Monterey Pop Music Festival, and Woodstock. It was looking like a light year for Beatles singles, until Hey Jude dominated the charts for weeks, but there were plenty of other songs I loved hearing that year. Here are my top 5, in no particular order. One of them is the Troggs song I already featured.

http://youtu.be/S8-knbCtXdQ

http://youtu.be/nWxm5YRmzEU

The ‘internal affairs’ of ‘RENtOn 911!’

I first saw this story on the Daily Cartoonist, but it’s so strange that by now it’s probably getting wider coverage. In Renton, Washington, somebody has used Xtranormal animation to make parody videos of the police department. It’s apparently the work of an insider, and the chief isn’t amused. TV station KIRO7 broke the story. (Argh! The reporter says, “sign off on this,” an expression that drives me nuts. It should simply be “sign this.”)

[flv:http://www.dograt.com/Video/2011/AUG/CriticizeRentonPolice.flv 512 288]

Today, the police chief defended his use of the courts for what seems to be a personal vendetta. This story has all the ingredients of a real-life Reno 911!

[flv:http://www.dograt.com/Video/2011/AUG/RentonPoliceRespond.flv 512 288]