Talk About Cinema

For  The Popeye Blogathon , I’ve decided to review four holiday cartoons. Why did I choose the holidays as a theme? Because it gives me a unifying theme that allows me to talk about Popeye cartoons from different eras. Popeye originally started out as a character in E.C. Segar’s comic strip, Thimble Theatre . He became popular enough that he was adapted into his own theatrical cartoon series that also proved to be popular, putting him in the same league with Disney’s Mickey Mouse. Since then, Popeye has had multiple incarnations, but in order to keep things simple, I’ve decided to limit it to productions during the Golden Age of Animation. The Golden Age of Animation basically refers to the era where theatrical cartoons remained a regular feature in theaters. There’s some debate as to when it truly ended, though usually the 1960s and early 1970s are cited as approximate end dates. The Popeye theatrical cartoon series lasted until 1957, though a series of television cartoons ...

Here Come the Co-Eds is Abbott and Costello’s contribution to the college movie sub-genre, which had been especially popular with Golden Age comedians, and while the film is no Horse Feathers or The Freshman , they still managed to create an enjoyable film that maintains a fairly good pace throughout. Slats (Abbott) puts together a publicity stunt for his sister Molly (Martha O’Driscoll) in which she pretends to be interested in Bixby College. She is eventually accepted to the school on a scholarship, while Slats and his friend Oliver Quackenbush (Costello) are hired as caretakers. Chairman Kirkland (Charles Dingle), who holds the mortgage for the college, is not happy with her being offered the scholarship and threatens to close down the school unless she is expelled, so the school must raise the money for the mortgage in order to both keep the school open as well as allowing an expansion in their athletics program. The music is a bit hit-and-miss here. Some of the music is actu...

Sorry I was unable to post a review over the weekend. I was sick most of last week and at the moment I’m trying to catch up on stuff I’ve missed. As scheduled, my review of Abbott and Costello’s Here Come the Co-Eds will be up this weekend, so technically there will be two Abbott and Costello reviews in a row, though I still plan on doing them on a biweekly basis, so that will not change. With October coming up, even though I plan on continuing the Abbott and Costello series, for the other weeks, I’ve been considering doing some classic horror films, either from the Universal Monsters series or the Hammer series. I’m not super knowledgeable about horror films, but I still like certain horror films. Anyone have any specific classic horror films you’d like me to review? I’ll try my best to accommodate. Finally, I’d like to announce that I am taking part in my first blogathon. The writer of MovieMovieBlogBlog is hosting a Popeye -themed blogathon , and he has graciously allowed me to...

Abbott and Costello finally returned to MGM in 1944 to make Lost in a Harem . Although Rio Rita ’s story wasn’t really good, it did show that MGM knew how to properly showcase the team’s talents. Lost in a Harem further proves this, except this time they are provided with a better story. Prince Ramo (John Conte), whose throne has been taken from him by his uncle (Douglass Dumbrille), enlists the help of singer Hazel Moon (Marilyn Maxwell) and her buddies Peter Johnson (Abbott) and Harvey Garvey (Costello) in an attempt to get it back. If they help him, he promises to help them return to their home country. They must steal a pair of magic rings from the uncle that hypnotize people while also avoiding being hypnotized themselves. Before moving on with this review, I think it is important to address the fact that this is a film from the 1940s that takes place in the Middle East. Unsurprisingly, there are Middle Eastern stereotypes, notably the fact that many of them keep and use a sp...

When it comes to screen adaptations of the Sherlock Holmes stories, the ones that usually come to mind are the Basil Rathbone films. Two studios handled the production of this series; 20th Century Fox retained the original Victorian era setting for the two films they made, while Universal brought Sherlock Holmes to the modern world for 12 additional films. Today I’ll be talking about my personal favorite of the Sherlock Holmes films I’ve seen so far: 20th Century Fox’s The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes . Ann Brandon (Ida Lupino) is afraid for her and her brother’s safety after receiving a suspicious drawing that is similar to one her father received before he was murdered. She comes to Sherlock Holmes (Rathbone) hoping for his help in finding out who the murderer is before it’s too late. Holmes suspects Professor Moriarty (George Zucco) may somehow be involved and he and Dr. Watson (Nigel Bruce) set out to prove it before it’s too late, while Moriarty has his own trick up his sleev...