By Gary Meyer
For over a year few of us could go to a theater and enjoy movies the way they were meant to be seen. Audiences are slowly feeling comfortable returning as theaters have made a host of improvements to protect us and to my knowledge no new cases of Covid have been tracked to a cinema.
If you love them movies I hope that you will enjoy this entire article.
By John Bengston
There was hidden interplay between movies filmed in Hollywood and in San Francisco. Buster Keaton filmed scenes adjacent to several San Francisco landmarks, but in each case before they were actually built!
Hosted by the San Francisco Silent Film Festival, I will be presenting “Silent Footsteps — From San Francisco to Hollywood” on Sunday, June 6 at 12:00 noon PDT, as part of its ongoing “Amazing Tales Online” series. The webinar is free (register HERE), but SFSFF welcomes new members and support.
The Climb begins with life-long friends Mark (director and co-writer Michael Angelo Covino) and Kyle (co-writer Kyle Marvin) cycling up a steep hill in the south of France. Mark is ahead, though both are panting heavily with the exertion. Kyle, who is about to be married, is thanking Mark for suggesting the ride, while also waxing rhapsodic about the bucolic beauty of the scene. Mark, the more experienced cyclist, is giving Kyle advice on how to pace himself. Then, while Kyle extols the virtues of his intended, Mark drops the bomb.
By C.J. Hirschfield
Longtime word nerds like myself have been delighted by recent documentaries that celebrate letters and the wondrous ways they can be arranged. Films include Obit, about New York Times obituary writers, Wordplay, which covered a major crossword puzzle tournament, as well as Spellbound and Spelling the Dream, which welcomes us into the stressful world of spelling bees.
Clearly, it was only a matter of time before the “magic little puzzle” of palindromes—words, phrases, and sentences that read the same backward and forward—were thrust into the spotlight. The new documentary The Palindromists turns out to be much more of a “wow” than a “huh?”, palindromic words used to judge contestants in the World Palindrome Championship, around which the film is centered.
Carl Reiner made the world laugh. We will miss him but his legacy was to leave us laughing no matter what. And boy do we need it now.
As a kid I loved Your Show of Shows. Other than the program’s stars, Sid Ceasar and Imogene Cocoa, I had no idea who the other people were except that they were funny and we loved them for that. The actors and writers included unknowns like Mel Brooks, Carl Reiner, Howard Morris, Larry Gelbart, Neil Simon, Woody Allen and Carl Reiner.
We did a random “Vintage Hollywood Valentines” Google search and came up with a treasure trove of images. And if you click on any given image it enlarges with several new images to the right.
Can you name the stars?
But we have gone further. If it is true that the way to a lover’s heart is through the stomach, check out some vintage food cards. Why stop there. We cover growing up, comics and animation and the really bizarre “Vinegar Valentines.”
Plus several renditions of the classic song, “My Funny Valentine” by Frank Sinatra, Kim Novak. Ella Fitzgerald, Miles Davis and more.
