"Tribute" to a B-Movie Maven

Yesterday, Bob Clark, the famed director of Porky's and A Christmas Story, died tragically in a car crash on the PCH. In honor of the man who somehow made leg lamps sexy, I gathered some clips of Clark's more memorable works.

1. A Christmas Story

Probably one of the best and worst Christmas movies ever made, there are so many great clips from this movie. It is nearly impossible to pick from all the coming-of-age, holiday-with-family goodness. "Oh Fudge"Read More...

Scorsese's Student Film

An NYU student film by Martin Scorsese titled What's A Nice Girl Like You Doing In a Place Like This?



You would think being a former student of the NYU film department, I would have seen this brillant little number. (Alex tells me that she had seen it the first week of film school; us Cinema Studies folks missed out)
Instead, I found the early cinematic works of Mr. Scorsese posted to The Little Round-Headed Boy's blog. He called the short film:

a mini-masterpiece. It's a comic autobiography of Algernon, a cheery Brit who comes to the big city as a writer and tries to discover who he is through a series of misadventures. It's full of witty comic touches, visually inventive montages and one shadowy character who reminds you of the Mobsters who would inform his later films.

A big fan of Scorcese, I have to agree with the Little Round Headed Boy. His early work shows growth and potential. The writing, the music, the shadows, the slow pacing, are all unmistakeable Scorcese. I just can't look away.

Maybe this YouTube capture of Marty's early works will pump me up for the several hours that l am about to commit to see The Departed in theatres. Pretty sure it will be worth it!

Alfred Hitchcock's Cameos

Much like the answers in the back of a Where’s Waldo puzzle, this video highlights and exposes Alfred Hitchcock infamous cameo appearances.



Set to the music in Alfred Hitchcock Presents, this video is a friendly reminder of the many historic and memorable films created by auteur, Alfred Hitchcock. Using DVD’s of the feature length films, the video creator strings together the title cards and cameo's of Alfred Hitchcock.

The creator notes on his YouTube post that some of Hitchcock’s cameo appearances are missing: Easy Virtue (1927), Blackmail (1929), Foreign Correspondent (1940), Suspicion (1941), Spellbound (1945), The Paradine Case (1947) and Under Capricorn (1949).

I have seen almost all of Hitchcock’s films, yet I am always so absorbed by the plot and the numerous details that I never focused entirely on his cameos. My favorite appearance has always been Lifeboat when Hitchcock is featured as a fat guy in a weight loss ad on the back page of the newspaper, the image created from his shadow in The Wrong Man wins my aethestic tastes.