I think I saw that one. Was the conceit that it was a documentary about the Civil War, interspersed with commercials for things like Little Black Sambo’s restaurant, N****r Toothpaste, and Cops-style reality shows about catching runaway slaves? Powerful. Especially the epilogue, that showed that all the incredibly racist products advertised were real things that had been sold in the not-too-distant past.
Which one?
the 1943 version, starring Don Ameche
or
the 1978 version, starring Warren Beatty, which was a remake of the 1941 film Here Comes Mr. Jordan
The 1943 version is great. I have not seen the other two.
The Wrong Trousers is as perfect a short movie as anything.
Yes! Bill Nighy’s old Father Christmas is hilarious. Kids will love that film but there is plenty of humour for the grown ups too.
In my opinion the greatest 25 minutes in television/cinema history. Utter perfection.
The '43 version is about as good as it gets, the Warren Beatty version is about a step-and-a-half below that (but if you’re a Buck Henry [he co-wrote it], or Charles Grodin fan you’ll want to adjust that upward), and I haven’t seen … Mr. Jordan. Some day.
“Have you seen this chicken?” while making a glove gesture is still my wife and I’s go-to expression for complete obliviousness.
Both!
I havent seen Here Comes Mr. Jordan…Id say for sure the Ameche film qualifies as little known. When we first got cable in the 70s there was a channel dedicated to smaller movies and along with HBO i devoured it. The 1943 Heaven Can Wait played a lot along with The 27th Day
Night of the Generals
A German military policeman investigates the murder of a prostitute, with the only witness saying the killer wore a red stripe on his uniform pants – identifying him as a German general. Great role for Peter O’Toole.
I’ve seen both Heaven Can Waits and Here Comes Mr. Jordan (dumb title). I love the '43 HCW and HCMJ. I wanted to like the Warren Beatty version, but it was just o.k. and didn’t click with me.
A slightly cheesy end-of-the-world pic I liked a lot is The Night of the Comet.
This was by far the best protest for obvious reasons.
Good grief, it’s you!!
I feel the same way about Will Vinton’s studio. Vinton’s the one who coined the term “Claymation”, and copywrighted it, IIRC. Didn’t stop people from using it.
He did lots of short subjects and commercials (probably best known for the Califoria Raisins, but he also did the Noid for Pizza Hut, and a slew of others). They did the music video for John Fogerty’s Vantz can’t Dance, and the special effects for a movie that belongs in this thread, Return to Oz and for Captain EO. the Michael Jackson 3D Disney film But Vinton studios also did a couple of feature-length films that ought not to be forgotten.
The Adventures of Mark Twain (1985), with the voice talent of (among others) James Whitmore as Twain. Uses elements from The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County, Extracts from Adam and Eve’s Diary, The Mysterious Stranger, Captain Stormfield’s Visit to Heaven, and others, interspersed with bits and pieces of Twain’s autobiography and the ostensivble plot about Tom Sawyer, Huck Finn, and Becky stowing away aboard Twain’s balloon trip to Halley’s Comet. Well worth looking up.
The Festival of Claymation
I suspect the reason Aardman animation isn’t better known in the US is that many of their productions got little or no distribution here. I didn’t find out about Sean the Sheep until I saw it at a science fiction convention.
I agree that The Adventures of Mark Twain was particularly good.
If no one’s mentioned Return to Oz in this thread, I will. Very faithful to Baum’s sensibility and quite creepy. Still, the imagination is breathtaking.
I mentioned Adventures Of Mark Twain I feel invisible
I did, in the post you’re commenting on.
Sorry about that. As you can see, it happens to us all.
A movie that deserves more recognition is The Fabulous World of Jules Verne, filmed in 1958 in a process they called “Mystimation”, with live action, animation, puppets and engravings combined. It was dubbed into English.
As long as we’re talking Karel Zeman films, The Fabulous Baron Munchausen (1962), War of the Fools (1964) and The Stolen Airship (1967) are all equally worthwhile and little known.
Separately…
Rope of Sand (1949) - This was Burt Lancaster’s least favorite of his own films, probably because he was forced by the studio to do it. Nevertheless, it’s actually quite entertaining with an excellent cast, including Claude Rains, Paul Henreid and Peter Lorre (all were in Casablanca a few years earlier).
The Gamblers (1970) is a little known but very amusing caper/comedy based on a Gogol story. It was shot in - what was then - the beautiful resort town of Dubrovnik in the former Yugoslavia and features (of all people) Stuart Margolin in a fun role.
Seen it, and I agree. The “Mystimation” was animation that deliberately imitated the steel engravings used to illustrate the original texts. It’s also an adaptation of one of the more obscure Verne novels, Face au Drapeau, translated as Facing the Flag. The Fitzroy/ARCO edition was titled For the Flag and published under that title in paperback by Ace books in 1969 (that’s the copy I have). The novel (and film) feature a submarine – the third Verne novel to do so, after 20,000 Leagues and The Mysterious Island (there was also a short story with a sub published early in his career). It also features a sort of guided missile weapon, although the film turns this into a super-cannon.
I haven’t seen Zeman’s other films. They are (or were) more difficult to find.
I really liked The Lives of Others:
Highly rated and won a lot of awards, but given that it’s a German film, it probably fits @ekedolphin’s definition of “little-known” in that less than 1% of people you asked in Times Square would have heard of it.