Playing around mid-century modern style part 2: The Bellboy (1960)

I'm always amazed how many Jerry Lewis films I have in my collection. This is the easiest one to defend. Filmed on location in Miami at the gorgeous Fontainbleau Hotel, this is pretty easy to enjoy. The hotel is really almost a leading character, with plenty of views of the imaginative luxury architect Ted Lapidus poured in it. It was sort of a movie in and of itself, so it's natural that Lewis, when staying there, could grasp its merits as a backdrop. The film has very little dialogue, and it's quite short. A Stan laurel look-alike keeps popping up, and it's quite telling, as this is actually old-fashioned material. But it works more often than not. Anybody who enjoys how things looked and felt mid-century will find this hugely enjoyable. And the jokes pass by amiably, if there's one that misfires the next one may make you smile.

Playing around mid-century modern style part 1: Play Time (France 1967)

I recently watched two films that used mid-century modern architecture and style as a setting for comic purposes. They both were highly successful and a wonderful time machines for enthusiasts of the era. The first was Jacques Tati's 1967 Play Time. An enormously ambitious (and expensive) project, it plants Tati's Monsieur Hulot in a stark glass and stainless steel wonderland of ultra-modern confusion. The comedy is subtle and clever, with an ambling pace that balances a sense of amusement with a sort of awe at the modern world. Absurd scenarios play out in the form of interweaving characters who walk in and out of the story in a natural pace, with overlapping dialogue. The Hulot character is actually marginalized, which might disappoint fans of the earlier Tati comedies. The perspectives and scenarios play with scale and are without equal, all photographed in stunning 70mm. This Criterion Collection release has a remarkable second disc that illustrates how Tati went about building this city setting expressly for the film. It was so expensive that it lost money.

Department S

This is a great entry into the ITC collection of slick, sophisticated adventure series from the mid 1960s. A trio of agents work on cases too puzzling or far-out for Interpol. They are supervised by a worldly African diplomat (Dennis Alaba Peters). There's an American in charge (Joel Fabiani), and an attractive female computer expert (Rosemary Nicols- who has the finest legs ever seen on television). But the real reason to watch is Peter Wyngarde as Jason King- a hedonistic mystery novelist with a brilliant mind and the grooviest wardrobe ever. King is outrageous and the perfect cap to the string of vibrant guest appearances Wyngarde had made in shows like The Avengers and The Prisoner. Watch a couple of these and all the earnest TV series on the air seem quite laughable. This is from a time when people smirked a lot and had reason to. Jason King was later spun off into his own series. It wasn't quite the treasure that this is. As the 60s wore on the formula started to evaporate (as it did in The Persuaders). Highly recommended.

A Place For Everything (sort of)

I only recently made the effort to organize and catalog my video collection. It was getting a bit out of control. First I physically went through and sorted what I had, then I filed them (roughly) by genre onto my shelves. A lot of this effort comes down to getting boxes (thank you, Ebay) and labeling things. I had spindles of mismatched discs, so all that had to be dealt with. The next step was finding a program to enter what i had so that I could create a database. This was accomplished with DVDpedia, which is a great little shareware program that interfaces with imdb.com as well as the various Amazon sites across the world (nice touch that, as I have many foreign-origin DVDs). It's still quite a task finding room for all the titles and having them in a rational order. Haven't gotten to British sitcoms yet. Or all my conspiracy-oriented titles (boy do I have a lot of Kennedy assassination material). Fitting everything into order is probably something akin to what someone with an apartment in Tokyo deals with for everything.

Something Weird Video: Lifestyles USA Vol. 1

This is amazing stuff. There's a slew of amusing retro industrial films on this disc. A real standout though is a mid-50s GM short devoted to designers. It's all an excuse to wax on about their auto product. But there's some fantastic shots of mid-century home designs: furniture, housewares, appliances. and so on. And there's some cool sequences in an idealized design studio at GM. For all lovers of the MCM era this would do nicely. Highly recommended.

Anna (France 1967)

What can you say about this mod musical fantasy starring the delicious Anna Karina and featuring Marianne Faithful and Serge Gainsbourg (Gainsbourg also wrote the songs)? It's sort of wobbly in the narrative- but hey, it's the 1960s. My guess is it was hard to stay on task when you were shoving in all the great photography and ideas that went into this. Silly and light, the whole thing is enormously enjoyable. I searched for years after learning of the existence of this. What I've got is a very good copy with nice image quality and good subtitling. It's ripped from a Japanese VHS apparently. How do you say "fun" in french?

La morte viene dal pianeta Aytin (Snow Devils) 1967

This was the missing piece in my collection of Italian space operas directed by Antonio Margheriti (namedropped in Tarantino's Inglorious Basterds of all things). This one is part of the Gamma 1 Quadrilogy. That sounds impressive, but these are low-budget films that get by on charm. There's beautiful women, futuristic space cars, and ambitious miniatures that are shakily photographed. This is by far the strangest and silliest of the lot. I had never seen this, whereas the earlier films (Wild, Wild Planet, War Of The Planets, and War Between The Planets) were all staples of creature feature and late night movies from the early 70s on. Many thanks to my Flickr-friend Poletti for my copy!