Here is a very informative documentary on the great Georges Melies, father of the fantasy film. He invented a lot of techniques still used today.
And here is a great website with an excellent article on Melies:
Here is a great film that I just watched on Amazon Prime. It was recently restored and looks great. What a cast, Simone Signoret, Marcello Mastroianni, and Silvia Milo, who is amazing in this film. This was made at the height of Italian filmmaking, so much talent! The settings, the camerwork, the clothes by the inimitable Danilo Donati. This film is a joy to watch, a masterpiece. Check it out and see what you think. Here is a scene from Youtube.
Here is a German film of an Edgar Wallace mystery. Creature With The Blue Hand, starring everybody’s favorite psycho Klaus Kinski as twins no less! Double your pleasure, double your fun! There were a lot of Edgar Wallce films made in Germany. This one I was turned onto by Quentin Tarantino, he programmed it as part of a personally curated batch of films that aired on Spike Tv about 10 years ago. Anyway it’s a nice clean version in German mit subtitles so Enjoy!
Here is an animated short film by the late great Adam Beckett. I saw this at the Whitney Museum of American Art in 1974. It blew my mind. What a great talent, such a sin that he died so young, just after he worked on Star Wars. An early alumnus of CalArts, the great experimental art school that’s now in Canyon Country, although I believe Beckett started there when it was in LA at a closed Catholic school. Anyway check out this genius of the elaborated loop, hand drawn, optical printed, super Cool
Here’s the trailer for a cool movie about Leon Theremin, Russian inventor It’s a great story, check it out.
Here is the edited version of Ptushko’s great Ilya Muramets, cut down and dubbed by Roger Corman, released in the USA as The Sword and The Dragon A lot of cool foreign films were acquired by American International and other distributor, recut, dubbed and shown at Theaters, mainly to kids. You cans the original Cinemascope version on dvd.
Here is a condensed version of a film by the great Czech animator Karel Zeman. Joseph E. Levine bought the rights to Zeman’s Fabulous World Of Jules Verne in the early 60’s and released it in the US, exposing millions of American kids to it’s magic. See it in Mystimation! A roto-gravure effect where lines were added to images imitating illustrations from the 1800s. Hers’s the American trailer and a documentary on Zeman. Enjoy!
They restored Putney Swope and re-released it! It’s playing in several theaters in Los Angeles right now. I first saw it many years ago at a midnight show at the Park Theater in Caldwell, N.J. It blew my mind. Check it out if you can. I know and worked with the writer/Director Robert Downey Sr. He is a great guy, a prince. Funny and charismatic and an all around great human being. Meeting him made my career in films, I owe him a lot. So here is a trailer for Putney Swope, it was a big hit when it came out in 1969. Same time as Easy Rider.
If you want to catch up on your Spaghetti Western watching look no further than Amazon Prime. I guess they acquired the FilmRise catalog and have a whole slew of Italian Westerns from the 60’s. I’ve watched A Pistol For Ringo, The Return Of Ringo, Cemetary Without Crosses, Django Kill, and last night a crazy one with Lou Castel called Requiescant. But there are a ton on there. You can watch The Great Silence, The Grand Duel, Navajo Joe and many others. So saddle up companeros and tune into Westerns on Prime.
Here is a great behind the scenes view of maestro Federico Fellini directing Giuletta Delgi Spiriti, his first color film. Photographed by the amazing Gianni DeVenanzo, a true genius. The thing that gets me is how cheap everything looks in this footage, you see all the tricks that go into making a fim but when you watch the real movie, it all looks so amazinf=g! so beautiful, you can’t believe it’s the same thing. Watch this, then watch the movie and see for yourself the magic of movie making.
Here’s the final version of the scene.
Check out this great animation while you can