W. David Lichty

It was nominated for best Picture against Coal Minor's Daughter, Ordinary People, Raging Bull and Tess. John Hurt got a nod for Best Actor, and David Lynch for Director. It also got nominated for its screenplay, art direction, costumes, editing and music.

Fresh off the heels of Eraserhead and Six Men Vomiting, Lynch gets a Best Picture nomination in 1980, then almost gets tapped to direct Revenge of the Jedi. Sorry arty friends, that I would not have wanted to see, even after Dune. His particular personal stamp is not what that series needed.

October 10, 1980 - The Elephant Man

Hopkins plays a man who treats John Merrick much better, but with no less objectification, than everyone else in the film. Then he takes Merrick home for dinner, and the conversation between Hopkins' wife and Merrick is so genuine in its heart warmings.

October 6, 1999 - Fight Club.

Translated "Weary Death" or "Tired Death" but usually called Destiny in English speaking lands, it has a dreamy framing story surrounding three adventure fables, making it an easy, quick watch. I'm excited to see its recent, well-regarded restoration. Sharpness and detail would matter with this one

October 6, 1921 - Der Mude Tod

104 years ago this Fritz Lang picture (that occasionally feels more like Murnau) premiered in Berlin. Hitchcock might have watched some of this being made when he was in Germany; The timing is right. It is one of the few films I can confirm was a favorite of his.

In 1987, ILM (Lucasfilm's first rate special effects company) replicated a Lily Tomlin and a Bette Midler, one each, to make twins of them, and the effects were terribly obvious. 66 years earlier Keaton nailed it with the equivalent of stone knives and bearskins.

He's the sort of doing camera tricks you see happening, but can still marvel at.

Among the cinema gimmicks is the above, 9 of him, shot by rewinding the film in the camera and blocking 8/9ths of its lens 9 times. There should be a bunch of vertical overlap lines, but there pretty much aren't.

Two great pictures came out on the same day:

October 6, 1921 - The Playhouse. Keaton does the split screen thing, but what makes it work is that he plays each character, so the trick ascends past mere gimmickry.

(Best line is at 4:09)
vimeo.com/543346746

𝖬𝖺𝗋𝖼𝖾𝗅 𝖬𝖺𝗋𝖼𝖾𝖺𝗎 𝗈𝗇𝗅𝗒 𝗅𝗂𝗄𝖾𝗌 𝗌𝗂𝗑 𝗈𝖿 𝗍𝗁𝖾 𝖲𝖾𝗏𝖾𝗇 𝖲𝖺𝗆𝗎𝗋𝖺𝗂, 𝖻𝗎𝗍 𝗁𝖾'𝗌 𝙧𝙚𝙖𝙡𝙡𝙮 𝗁𝖺𝗉𝗉𝗒 𝗐𝗂𝗍𝗁 𝗍𝗁𝖾𝗆.

Watchable here, for some:

indypl.kanopy.com/video/mind-b...

The turns in this movie's directions happen so organically that it's hard to see them as the pivots they are. This is an intelligent movie, specifically it's an emotionally intelligent one, and morally complex in the best way, not via amorality, but strong moralities hitting real conflicts.

Here's an unusually sober and smart movie, smarter than Altered States, which treads some of the same territory, and much smarter than its advertising makes it look. Few movies try, and fewer successfully, to get suspense to build solely on moral substance, and this one does it with aplomb.

You could teach a short History of Hollywood with the movies released on this day:

October 3, 1941 Maltese Falcon
October 3, 1947 Police Headquarters
October 3, 1951 Early Summer
October 3, 1953 Duck! Rabbit, Duck!
October 3, 1955 The Trouble with Harry
October 3, 1971 Last Picture Show

There were three cinematic adaptations of The Maltese Falcon made within 10 years, five between ech. You know, like the Spiderman serieses (yeah, I know) that got mocked for representing a new low in reboot windows.

This was the third one.

Quai des Orfèvres is a history-killing international title if there ever was one, not that Police Headquarters, its translation, is a handful of green M&Ms either. France's #4 film of the year was critically acclaimed both here and in France; Clouzot was Best Director at the Venice Film Festival.

This movie is good enough to rank on a lot of Best lists: Classic Crime Films, Black & White Films, Top International Cinema of the '40s, but it's almost never even mentioned, likely because it's been little seen, and that possibly due to its real Hudsucker Proxy of a title.

On October 3, 1947, Police Headquarters (Quai Des Orfevres), from the fine director of the other great pictures The Wages of Fear (Le Salaire de la Peur), The Evils (Les Diaboliques) and The Raven (Le Corbeau) showed up on some screens.

The sequence would be:

28 Days Later
This one
Shaun of the Dead

That would be a fair, modern Infected Zombies series with a start, a good middle, and an ending. I used to think the remake of Dawn of the Dead would be in the #2 spot of four, but it really didn't hold up, to my surprise.

October 2, 2009 - Zombieland. It's a comedy, but like most good ones, the people in it feel like real people.

It won some Oscars, Best Picture, Alec Guinness got Actor, Best Director David Lean, Writing by two blacklisted writers, Carl Foreman and Michael Wilson, also Best Cinematography, Film Editing and Scoring by Malcolm Arnold.

But more important than that, it's a pretty good movie.

October 2, 1957 - Bridge on the River Kwai, not bad for David Lean. I'd love to see what Miyazaki could have done with it.

While it started off earlier as "Li'l Folks," the first syndicated "Peanuts" comic ran in newspapers on this day in 1950. There are some books of these early strips, and they're quite interesting reads. Patty, there, was the lead, with Charlie Brown being her much younger neighbor.

Peanuts has always been old to me. Today it's 75.

Charlie Brown was initially handled the way Linus Van Pelt would be when he first showed up, as the youngster of the neighborhood, with Patty playing big sister. The exception, of course, is that it never became okay to openly hate Linus.

YouTube video by The Graystones I Cant Tell You Why by @EaglesBand cover by The Graystones

I'm nowhere near the first person on Earth to find these guys, but ZANG!!!

www.youtube.com/watch?v=zCId...

September 23, 1970 - US release of Tora! Tora! Tora!, the he-said-she-said of Pearl Harbor pictures, the American half half directed by Richard Fleischer, the Japanese half by Kinji Fukasaku and Toshio Masuda.

Nice art.

Music was by Goldsmith.

Watch it here (I think!)

www.criticalcommons.org/Members/samm...

September 24, 1938 - Porky in Wackyland, in contention for my favorite Looney Tunes cartoon. I don't even know which are the other contenders, only that this is definitely one of them. Maybe that makes it it.

Rollerskating through the ’70s movie review (2005) | Roger Ebert Film by film, the makers of "Roll Bounce" have been creating a new world in American movies. This is a world in which black people live in well-kept homes,

I pretty much see eye-to-eye with Ebert's 3 star review: www.rogerebert.com/reviews/roll...

Quoth the once essential DVDJournal: "This movie is, without a doubt, a powerfully silly brain vacation."

www.dvdjournal.com/quickreviews...

28 years after so many attempts, Hollywood finally makes a fun rollerskating movie. This is The Last Dragon level fun, just for a slightly different crowd.

September 23, 2005 - Roll Bounce. Pleasant. Light. Fun.