by ·Comments Off on Magical Mystery Tour (1967, The Beatles)

This collection of TV music videos with a loose framing story seems more like first-take/b-roll mess. Is it for kids? Was it influenced by The Monkees? They probably explained briefly in Anthology how this turned out so badly, and I already forgot.

At least each song gets a different visual treatment and some are nice (like the color-filtered mountainscapes over an instrumental song) and not just over-literal imagery (showing policemen in a row for the line “policemen in a row”). And at least during the awful narrative parts (Ringo squabbling with his aunt on a bus) we get nice symphonic versions of early band hits.

Have they been watching Kenneth Anger? Paul does his best silly walk. Ridiculous striptease with the Bonzo Dog Band. I don’t know if people back then knew who Mal was, but after you’ve seen Get Back it’s impossible not to notice him in every scene here. The anonymous veteran co-director was poor old Bernie Knowles, DP of The 39 Steps, now working with DP Richard Starkey.

by ·Comments Off on Tattooed Life (1965, Seijun Suzuki)

Fighting Elegy star Hideki Takahashi is Tetsu, an assassin whose life is saved by artist Kenji (star of Black Snow, not that one). Broke, our guys try to find anonymous manual work, but get tangled up with women and get themselves noticed (and implicated in murders and explosions). Kenji sketches the boss’s wife naked, which doesn’t go over well with the boss, and now Tetsu has to avenge his stupid brother. Suzuki brings mad style to the final ten minutes – which is an improvement over the one minute of mad style in Kanto Wanderer.

by ·Comments Off on Festival (1967, Murray Lerner)

Another concert compilation film, this one taken from multiple years of folk fests.

PP&M sing their hit song about having a hammer and a couple Dylan tunes, but more importantly Mary appears to have two moles on her neck in a vampire bite pattern. Seeger sings about creamed corn, some bluegrass guys tear it up, some blues guys chill it out. Joan Baez gets the best lines during an autograph session and an after-show interview, including telling fans “don’t get so hysterical,” which hits hard in this beatlemanic era. She’s down to earth in a film otherwise full of statements like “you don’t choose to play music, music chooses to play you.”

Blue Ridge Mountain Dancers:

Movie stops dead while a couple of guys attempt to explain the blues, less successfully than the Edward Bland movie explained jazz. I appreciate the continuation of a TNT Show theme by showing the white audience clap out-of-time with Howlin’ Wolf. Lerner had a perfect career, making nothing but rock docs. One of the DPs later shot more than one Dick Sargent thriller.

by ·Comments Off on The Ladies Man (1961, Jerry Lewis)

Jerry gets a live-in job at a womens boarding house. It’s overwhelming but whenever he tries to sneak out, they tell him he’s important to them, so he stays. Movie has very little story, very few good jokes, but some of the best-ever set design.

The girls include Gloria Jean, two decades after hurting WC’s ears in Never Give a Sucker, Billy Wilder regular Hope Holiday, and Kathleen Freeman, the only actor in Fritz Lang’s House by the River to also appear in Shrek. Buddy Lester is quite good as a scarfaced antagonist, George Raft significantly less good as himself.

by ·Comments Off on Don’t Look Back (1967, D.A. Pennebaker)

Pretty funny that as the Beatles came to the USA playing havoc in the media with their jokey answers to interview questions, Dylan went to England to do the same. This is more of a hotel room hangout movie than expected, and Bob gets aggressive and confrontational. Joan Baez comes across a ton better than she did in the TNT Show, harmonizing with Bob on Hank Williams songs. They’re in full folkie mode, Bob not having Gone Electric until a couple months after filming.

When I said Joan comes across well I meant musically, not lighting

unrelated: guess who I’ve got tickets to see this summer

by ·Comments Off on The Big T.N.T. Show (1966, Larry Peerce)

The Stones didn’t show up this time but the crowd still shrieks annoyingly while actor David “Man From UNCLE” McCallum leads the orchestra in “I Can’t Get No Satisfaction.” Turns out the crowd can be controlled – they shut the fuck up and focus on clapping out of time when Petula Clark starts “Downtown,” then resume yelling for The Lovin’ Spoonful’s singer looking silly hugging an autoharp. Ray Charles gets a big rocker, Bo Diddley chugs on the guitar, The Byrds dress stylishly and jangle on, and Joan Baez plays a song from Inside Llewyn Davis. Movie catches fire with the Ronettes into Roger Miller (the only one who talks to the crowd between songs). Donovan gets an appropriately pretentious intro (Dylan was wise not to accept the invitation) and after he mystifies the crowd, Ike and Tina bring the energy the hell back up for a raucous finale. Good movie.

Petula silences the screams:

Bo lets the girls rock out:

Joan kills the mood:

The Sparks Brothers say what are WE doing here?

Roger plays to the camera:

The crowd puzzles over Donovan:

Tina takes it home:

But there would be no next year:

by ·Comments Off on The Movie Orgy (1968, Joe Dante)

Somebody took a season’s worth of MST3K movies and Forbidden Room-ed them together. It keeps starting new stories, cutting them off for something new, then occasionally returning to one in progress, like how I’m currently reading ten books at once. Learned: You Bet Your Life was hilarious. Goofy Vietnam-era song over a mantis attack. Where’d the fake ads for headache pills and baby powder come from? Where’d this “House of the Rising Sun” music video come from?

Elisha!

Once an occasional cult cine-club screening, now this has more lboxd views than Trapped Ashes. I figured from half-understood descriptions that this would be an artless junk montage, but it’s entrancing… if Movie Orgy was a channel you could turn on at will, like Maddin’s Seances on Tubi, I’d hang up the blog and tune in forever. Don’t crowd me, Joe.

by ·Comments Off on Help! (1965, Richard Lester)

I’m on a 1960s rock & roll kick. Rewatched this a few months after Anthology, getting some nice HD screenshots of Eleanor Bron, including when I seen her in the arms of Paul saying “I can say no more.”