I confess to not being the biggest Marx Brothers fan. Chaos as comedy is something that has a fairly short shelf life for me. But I have to also confess.
I recently watched the fascinating 1934 film Dos Monjes, directed by Juan Bustillo Oro. A few things that make this film notable. First, it's the oldest Mexican film I've seen..
While I'm not sure that Robert Altman's 1984 adaptation of the Donald Freed and Arnold Stone play where a drunk Richard Nixon rants into a tape recorder is a great.
In the aftermath of Triumph of the Will, the German military was mad that Leni Riefenstahl didn't pay it enough attention. It wanted its own film. And so she made.
The brutalist architect Gottfried Böhm died the other day. The way his Pilgrimage Church dominates the town of Neviges, Germany to me is just an atrocity. But I know there.
One of the first films in Hollywood to deal with anti-Semitism, Edward Dmytryk's 1947 film Crossfire deals with soldiers returning from World War II who are killing time in Washington..
I recently watched the 1984 PBS production The Killing Floor, about the Great Migration and Black labor in Chicago meatpacking during World War I and leading up to the World.
Frank Sinatra rarely allowed himself to be interviewed. This 1988 Larry King interview at least claims to be his last major interview. The extent to which you want to listen.
