• Comedy Team, Female Style

    Let's Do Things
    Catch-As Catch-Can
    March 3, 2024

    With the massive success of Laurel and Hardy, who producer Hal Roach had paired together after signing them separately in 1926 (they would remain with his studio until 1940), the man had the bright idea of creating a female counterpart duo, bringing together Zasu Pitts and Thelma Todd. The team would make seventeen popular shorts from 1931-33, their first two, Let’s Do Things and Catch-As Catch-Can, looked at here today. Like all good comedy teams, you have two very different character types. Zasu comes across as the slightly depressed, nervous and fretful brunette, while Thelma is a much more vibrant and colourful blonde dame. . . the former’s desperation often dragging her more put together friend into rather unorthodox situations. In Let’s Do Things, they find themselves as employees selling music for a giant department store... while looking for a way out of their dead-end jobs.

  • Wartime Blonde Bombshell

    My Favorite Blonde
    February 22, 2024

    Comedic war-tinged movies were all the rage in Hollywood during World War II... a way to ease the tension while keeping morale up. Think Charlie Chaplin’s The Great Dictator (1940), Abbott and Costello’s quasi trilogy of Buck Privates, In the Navy, and Keep `Em Flying (all of which were released in 1941), Ernst Lubitsch’s To Be or Not to Be (1942), as well as today’s feature, the Sidney Lanfield directed, Bob Hope starring My Favorite Blonde (also 1942). A wartime crime caper woven within a Bob Hope vehicle, Karen Bentley (Madeleine Carroll – The 39 Steps), is a British secret agent who is given the unenviable task of delivering a cipher after her partner is murdered by a ruthless group of German spies led by Madame Stephanie Runick (Gale Sondergaard – who was also in The Cat and the Canary, Never Say Die, and Road to Rio with Bob Hope).

  • Busy Bee

    The Beekeeper
    February 6, 2024

    In the same vein as other recent one man versus the world action films like Taken, The Equalizer, John Wick, and Nobody, 2024's The Beekeeper, directed by David Ayer, captures the same formula of stylish action combating rampant corruption that should appease fans of this style of flick. Following quiet man Adam Clay (Jason Statham), the retired gent spends all of his time as an apiarist – that is, a beekeeper. Renting space in a rural barn from a former teacher and avid charity worker, Eloise Parker (Phylicia Rashad), she is the first person to really show compassion and care for the reclusive renter.

  • Flying High!

    Keep 'Em Flying
    January 30, 2024

    If you’ve ever seen anything from the comedy team of Abbott and Costello, you’ll know that it is rather rare to find anyone who will take up the screen as much as good old funny man Lou... that is, unless he’s paired with comedienne Martha Raye – there’s a reason she’s known as “The Big Mouth”. In Keep `Em Flying (1941), they would share the silver screen for the first and only time... but Lou had his work cut out for him, as she plays twins. The team’s fourth starring movie released in just ten months (and the third military movie to keep spirits high during World War II), all four were manned by Arthur Lubin (their next film, Ride `Em Cowboy would be his last with the duo), a steady hand that helped keep the boys in line.

  • Eternity Box

    Creep Box
    January 22, 2024

    An Indie sci-fi film on the precipice of where we might be heading, Creep Box, written and directed by Patrick Biesemans (and based upon his own short from 2022), ruminates on a hybrid artificial intelligence that is both intriguing and terrifying. Following Caul (Geoffrey Cantor), a PHD in psychology and parapsychology at HDTH Corp, he is currently working on a sleek black tech box... a device that can be used to collect the memories of the dead, which are then fused with an A.I. that can utilize the past of the deceased to not only communicate with loved ones, but also gather information that could lead to solving crimes of those who have been murdered.

  • Virtue Signaling

    Virtue
    December 18, 2023

    A Pre-Code romantic crime drama from Columbia Pictures, 1932's Virtue, directed by Edward Buzzell, got off to a bit of a bumpy start... for when star Carole Lombard (on loan from Paramount) met studio president Harry Cohn (known to be blunt, opinionated, and rather colourful with his language), he told her that her hair was too white – making her look like ‘a whore’. Lombard, no shrinking violet, promptly responded with: “if anyone would know a whore it would be you”. Though the two would soon earn each other’s respect (something that would last for the rest of their lives), this really is a perfect story that exemplifies the edgy themes and style found in these Pre-Code movies. Opening with a black screen that hides the visuals of a criminal sentence, a Judge rather kindly orders several prostitutes to vacate the city, but if they return, they shall be punished to the full extent of the law.