Movie-A-Day #100: Babe (1995).
It’s National Farm Animals Day. There are so many movie options out there for this day, from the classic (“Charlotte’s Web”) to the scathing (“Animal Farm”), but let’s stick with the cute ‘n’ cuddly with the sheep herding pig of “Babe.” That’ll do, pig, that’ll do.
Movie-A-Day #99: The Conversation (1974).
It was 151 years ago that the oldest surviving recording of the human voice was made. It’s a short clip of French inventor Édouard-Leon Scott de Martinville singing “Au Clair de la Lune” into his phonautograph machine. Although Scott had built the machine a few years earlier for his studies in acoustics, this recording is the oldest one that researchers have been able to uncover. The device simply recorded sound waves as two-dimensional line tracings on paper or glass, but it laid the groundwork for the later gramophone and wax cylinder technologies.
Audio recording has gone through a long and complicated history since then. Francis Ford Coppola’s terrific thriller “The Conversation” captures one aspect of the world of sound – specifically the obsession and paranoia of audio surveillance.
Roadracers (1959).
The Scoop:
A soap opera on wheels, “Roadracers” tells the story of estranged father and son race car drivers who struggle to reconcile against the backdrop of a pair of overly-complicated interlocking love triangles — oh yeah, and a lot of race footage, too. If you can picture William Shatner in “As the World Turns,” you can imagine the caliber of acting and turgid melodrama on display here.
This film was among a whole slew of cheap, profitable teen-oriented drive-in flicks churned out by American International Pictures in the late 1950s and early 1960s. And although most of those movies are still well-remembered today, “Roadracers” has mostly fallen by the wayside. I suppose that’s mostly due to the predictable and cliché-ridden central story, and the fact that it’s so heavily padded with extra racing footage.
But it’s that racing footage that holds the real interest here, especially for gearheads and car nuts. There are classic Austin Healeys, Ferraris, Porsches and Triumphs galore, along with plenty of other vintage hot rods from the time. It’s all stock footage of actual grand prix races that weren’t staged for the movie. There’s so much of it that it actually drags down the main story, but that may be for the best, since the story isn’t the main reason to watch this one.
Best Line:
“It’s the horsepower inside a man that really counts!”
Side Note:
Written and produced by Stanley Kallis, who was also one of the creators behind the original “Mission: Impossible” and “Hawaii Five-O” TV series.
Companion Viewing:
“The Lively Set” (1964).
Links:
IMDb.
Internet Movie Cars Database.
Take a Look:
I was unable to turn up any clips for this one, sadly.
Movie-A-Day #98: The Window (1949).
This is National Window Safety Week in the United States, intended to raise awareness about the dangers associated with children playing in or around windows. One child who had a different sort of window safety issues was Tommy (Bobby Driscoll) in the suspenseful noir “The Window,” who witnesses a murder and then overhears the killers’ plans to get rid of him, all thanks to an open window.
Movie-A-Day #97: The Legend of Drunken Master (1994).
We’ve got a two-fer today! On this day in 1933, the Cullen-Harrison Act went into effect in the United States, allowing the production and sale of beer and marking the beginning of the end of Prohibition in America. And today is also the 57th birthday of Jackie Chan. And in “The Legend of Drunken Master” booze and Jackie Chan collide for a classic bit of martial arts comedy. It’s actually a sequel to an earlier movie, “Drunken Master,” one of Chan’s earliest hits and based on the life of historic kung fu master Wong Fei-Hung. The ’90s movie is easier to find here in the States, but they are both worth watching.
Desuko Movie Spot. 