Watching Hitchcock’s 1934 film The Man Who Knew Too Much, that I shared a couple of days ago, brought to mind the climatic rooftop scene in David Lean’s superb screen adaptation of Dickens’ Oliver Twist. Robert Newton, who has my vote as the greatest character actor of all time, is terrifying as the villain Bill Sykes.
https://youtu.be/qelzn2njS9c
There comes a time in every boy’s life, even for 12-year-old Clark Kent, to learn where he came from.
Kal-El was only months old when he was rocketed to Earth, and yet his biological mother had an impossibly tiny waist! Krypton truly had a race of physically superior beings.
George Lucas didn’t leave well enough alone when he began using digital technology to “improve” the special effects in Star Wars. To the dismay of just about everybody but himself, Lucas kept tweaking until eventually he had Greedo rather than Han shooting first in the Cantina.
Alfred Hitchcock remade The Man Who Knew Too Much to get out of his contract with Paramount and/or because he thought he could do better in 1956 than he did in 1934. Either way, I’ve watched the earlier film many times, and the later one only once.
https://youtu.be/MOAlp-oIQBE
While getting through some devastating personal setbacks 20+ years ago, David Gray’s White Ladder was my go-to album.
Something that has somehow escaped my awareness until now is Joe Biden’s fondness for the Hagar the Horrible comic strip from March 6, 1984.
Yesterday, Boing Boing shared this Vox video from a few years ago, so I’ll share it today.
The Fleischers featured Cab Calloway in a delightfully bizarre animated adaptation of Snow White, four years before Disney’s take on the tale. Micky Mouse makes a quick cameo. This is the stuff that inspired the creation of Cuphead.
