Tortilla Flats - 1942 - Drinking Song

I'm not doing justice to this post, I should write paragraphs but I'm in the mood to share now not later.

Tortilla Flats - 1942 - Drinking Song


Akim Tamiroff's verse:

"listen amigos and I will ask you this/
why is a glass just like a woman's kiss/ (muah)
when it's full of wine it makes you blind a little bit/
when the wine is gone you can see through it..."

The paisanos celebrate Danny's inheritance with an "impromptu" drinking song (words by Broadway's Frank Loesser.) Spencer Tracy, John Garfield, Akim Tamiroff, Sheldon Leonard.

The film is actually quite fun and stays pretty true to the book.

Tortilla Flats - 1942
Directed by Victor Fleming
This was Fleming's second film with Tamiroff the first being Reckless 1935
so Tamiroff shared the screen with Hedy Lemarr in Tortilla Flats and Jean Harlow in Reckless... not bad.
Other information about Tortilla Flats... Stars Spencer Tracy and Hedy Lemarr. Based on a Steinbeck novel. Frank Morgan was nominated for Best Supporting Actor.

Lev Kuleshov - Statement on the Art of Cinema

"1) The actors played their parts well, but that is the art of the
theatre!
2)The designer created beautiful sets, but that is the art of the
designer!
3) The cameraman did an excellent job, but that is the art of the
photographer!
4) Finally, the plot was entertaining, but that is the art of the
writer!
Now where, for goodness' sake, is the art of film? There is none here,
nor can there be, for however good we are at reproducing other arts,
the best we can hope to achieve is an ideal moving photograph and not
genuine film art. Let us reason in this way: if film art does not lie
in the filming of separate pieces, then it must be sought in the
juxtaposition of those pieces, i.e. their assembly." (pp 39-40).

Art of the Cinema (1929; cf. Kuleshov on Film, ed. by Ronald Levaco)
The Banner of Cinematography" (English edition: Lev Kuleshov, 1987,
Selected Works, Moscow: Raduga Publ.)

1924 The Extraordinary Adventures of Mr. West in the Land of the Bolsheviks
Directed by Lev Kuleshov
(too bad it's in russian... I don't understand russian)



This VHS is going for $99... does that come with the vcr?

The Interrupters - 2011 - independent documentary

The Interrupters - 2011
This four plus minute clip completely captured my attention.


The Interrupters - 2011 - Directed by Steve James (director of Hoop Dreams)
It looks like a compelling documentary on the still rough streets of America. There's a lot of information at the films website:
www.interrupters.kartemquin.com
From the site:
"The Interrupters tells the moving and surprising stories of three Violence Interrupters who try to protect their Chicago communities from the violence they once employed."

"The film’s main subjects work for an innovative organization, CeaseFire, which believes that the spread of violence mimics the spread of infectious diseases, and so the treatment should be similar: go after the most infected, and stop the infection at its source. The singular mission of the “Violence Interrupters” — who have credibility on the streets because of their own personal histories — is to intervene in conflicts before they explode into violence."

"Kartemquin Films intends to develop a national outreach campaign that builds on the exposure from the film’s appearance at Sundance and will continue through the 2011 television broadcast and beyond. The Interrupters Community Engagement Campaign will use the documentary as the centerpiece of a two-year effort to engage audiences and communities in reflection, discussion and action around the structural causes of street violence, and creative approaches for interrupting the cycle of retaliatory violence."