THREAD: Looking for some classic comedies to watch while quarantined? Here are some of my favorites.
You can't go wrong with the slapstick antics of Laurel & Hardy. They bounced off of each other beautifully. Here's a hysterical clip from their film BUSY BODIES. #LaurelAndHardy
The Marx Brothers are my heroes. Their brand of anarchic surrealism inspired everything from the Looney Tunes cartoons to the movies of @edgarwright. Their masterpiece is the war satire DUCK SOUP, which includes this legendary sight gag:
Charlie Chaplin is the godfather of screen comedy. He could pull off hilarious silent slapstick with the grace of a great dancer. The food machine sequence from his masterpiece MODERN TIMES is funny every time.
Stone-faced silent comedian Buster Keaton was one of the true geniuses of film. He regularly performed literally death-defying stunts, all in the service of a laugh. Here's a brilliant chase from his endlessly inventive classic SHERLOCK JR.
Harold Lloyd, the likable go-getter with iconic glasses, was the mastermind behind some of the silent era's funniest comedies. As you can see in this clip from the wonderful 1925 film THE FRESHMAN, his expressions and movements are priceless.
I absolutely love W.C. Fields. He was a drunkard with the voice of a carnival barker, who hated kids, hated animals, and was constantly muttering ad libs under his breath. He was a big inspiration on @JohnCleese and he's in his prime in this sequence from YOU'RE TELLING ME.
The oft-imitated but never equaled Mae West was constantly baiting the censors with her innuendos, all of which she wrote herself. As you can see from this bit from I'M NO ANGEL, she was the best.
Olsen and Johnson are massively underrated. They used to perform stage shows where they would invade the audience and unleash chaos into the theater. Their movie HELLZAPOPPIN' (1941) is probably the wildest and zaniest comedy ever made. Just great.
Director Howard Hawks helped to invent the screwball comedy in the '30s, and directed the best examples of it: BRINGING UP BABY, HIS GIRL FRIDAY and BALL OF FIRE are must-sees. His movies are known for the rapid-fire dialogue and strong-willed female characters.
Ernst Lubitsch is one of my favorite directors, famed for his "Lubitsch Touch." He was known for off-kilter jokes and sophisticated suggestiveness, and his movies inspired the work of Wes Anderson. This Greta Garbo scene from the charming NINOTCHKA has the perfect punchline.
Abbott & Costello were one of the greatest comedy teams of all time. A lot of people know their incredible "Who's On First" routine and the great ABBOTT & COSTELLO MEET FRANKENSTEIN, but not as many know this hilarious bit from THE NOOSE HANGS HIGH.
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It seems that a lot of people on here believe THE WIZARD OF OZ (1939) was the first movie ever made in Technicolor, but there were many color films before it. The first film ever released in full-color three-strip Technicolor is the Disney cartoon FLOWERS AND TREES (1932).
Ted Eshbaugh's Technicolor cartoon version of THE WIZARD OF OZ was actually made even earlier, but FLOWERS AND TREES was the first released to theaters.
Prior to FLOWERS AND TREES, many films were produced in Technicolor's two-color process, which allowed for a limited palette of reds and greens. Those two-color movies have a really unique look that I really like. Here's an example from 1930's KING OF JAZZ.
THREAD: In 1937, the Nazis exhibited art they deemed “Degenerate” in order to mock it. I was looking through a list of these amazing artists the Nazis hated, and I was ashamed at how many of them I didn’t know, so let’s look at their work together! Here’s Alexej von Jawlensky.
All of these artists were targeted by the Nazis because they were "modernist." In other words, they were pushing boundaries and making experimental work that went beyond straight realism. These boldly colorful works by Arnold Topp are a good example.
César Klein's work is so cool. He was a German Expressionist painter, and designer of silent movies like GENUINE (1920).
I couldn't pick my favorite films from 2023, so instead, here are my favorites from 100 years ago!
Best movie of 1923: SAFETY LAST. Harold Lloyd's masterpiece is just as funny and thrilling as it was a century ago.
Best Animated Short of 1923: BEDTIME. These Ko-Ko the Clown cartoons from the Fleischer studio blow my mind whenever I watch them. So much creativity popping out all over the place. This print comes from @cartoonsonfilm.
Best Stop-Motion Short of 1923: VOICE OF THE NIGHTINGALE by Ladislas Starevich. The early use of color gives the short a dreamlike atmosphere. Incredible stuff.
THREAD: Anybody have a favorite bit of water animation?
The best for me might be Disney’s PINOCCHIO from back in 1940. Amazing mix of stunning realism and painterly abstraction. You could only get a look like this in animation.
Aleksandr Petrov’s paint-on-glass water in THE OLD MAN AND THE SEA is absolutely gorgeous.
Studio Ghibli is always good at water. I love those fish waves in PONYO.
THREAD: One of my favorite movie periods is the Pre-Code Era (1929-1934), the racy period before the Hays Code kept movies of the ‘30s, ‘40s and ‘50s under strict moral guidelines. Here are some of my favorite Pre-Code lines, like this one from 1933's MYSTERY OF THE WAX MUSEUM.
One of the harshest of all movie insults, delivered by Joan Blondell in the great 1933 musical FOOTLIGHT PARADE.
Another ace line reading from Joan Blondell, also from FOOTLIGHT PARADE.