DavidAllenUSA

"Endless Summer Revisited" (2000) Is A "Must See" For Admirers of Bruce Brown's "Endless Summer" surfing movies

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This is a documentary which explains how the two Bruce Brown (1937 - ) ENDLESS SUMMER (1964 and 1994) "surfers surfing around the world" movies were made.

The ENDLESS SUMMER (1964) movie really captures the spirit of the early 1960's, it's optimism, possibilities, and joy.

The 60's, in my opinion, got grabbed by bad people and exploited, but the ENDLESS SUMMER (1964) movie (and the later one in 1994, too) really communicates the spirit of those days (51 years ago!) at their very best.

Life really could be and should be (and for a few years in the early 1960's was, for some of us in our early 20's) as simple, yet as fulfilling as depicted in the ENDLESS SUMMER (1964) movie.

I can't praise it enough.

It is a statement of "the ideal life" and a description of it.

At the time the original ENDLESS SUMMER movie was made (shot in 1963), it was entirely possible to do just what the two protagonist surfer heroes of the movie (18 and 21 year old guys) did.....

Spend a year traveling around the world on the cheap, having wonderful, memorable, edifying adventures.

It was the time when books were being published with titles like EUROPE ON FIVE DOLLARS A DAY, and Icelandic Airlines charged $100 for a plane ticket from NYC to Paris.

Greyhound Bus Lines charged $100 for an "Ameri-Pass" which allowed unlimited Greyhound Bus travel anywhere in the USA for 3 months.

American Youth Hostels charged $5/night of less, and were clean, OK places to stay almost anywhere.

The ENDLESS SUMMER (1964) movie really captures the promise and possibilities of those times.

For me, it's a statement of my ideal politics and social policies! That's the kind of life for me.

Bruce Brown's son, Dana Brown, was the director of the movie (he is seen as a 1959 toddler baby in footage shown at the start of the movie).

The movie is made up of wonderful interviews by many of the "players" part of Bruce Brown's long career as a movie maker about surfers and surfing.

The question "How did we do it?" is answered by Bruce Brown himself, and many other who were surfers in his movies in the 1950's and 1960's and who were part of the team which created the first blockbuster documentary movie hit titled "The Endless Summer" (1964) and the follow up "Endless Summer Part II" (1994) movie as well as movies Bruce Brown made in the 1950's and early 1960's.

Home movie footage is included in this wonderful documentary which tells the story of how Bruce Brown and his team "did it," making wonderful, unforgettable movies about surfing all over the world.

Anyone interested in documentary and narrative feature movie production and behind the camera problems and challenges should see this movie.

It is so good, I can't find the words to say how good it is. Get it, enjoy it, re-screen it often along with the other famous Bruce Brown surfing movies.

THE BARBARIAN (1933) starring Ramon Navarro and Myrna Loy is/was an agreeable, no-brainer "B" movie with "A" movie stars of talent, esp. Loy.

It's a desert romance story of which the 20's were packed (both Valentino SHIEK movies, THE DESERT SONG and others less famous).

None of the Arabs had dark skin, and all of the Oases had unpolluted water holes and half moons shining through the sweeping palm trees and all the sand looked like White Sands, New Mexico with huge (but firm, easy to walk on) sand dunes.

Hollywood's idea of the desert in "Arabia."

The movie is a "girl's movie" (called a "Chick Flick" nowadays) written by GENTLEMEN PREFER BLONDES author Anita Loos.

The movie is about a pushy (probably feminist), spoiled "half Egyptian" leading lady with an American accent about to marry an English aristocrat in Egypt (but who runs off with Ramon Navarro at the very end of the movie..... Ramon had told her when he abducted her in the middle of the movie and proposed marriage that she won't have to be part of a harem, but makes her wait for water at an Oasis waterhole until the horse drinks first, then he drinks.....she's last to drink.)

Girls buy movie tickets.

Young guys between ages 18 and 24 courting girls and trying to keep the girls happy ALSO buy movie tickets for girls!

"Keep the girls happy" is what this movie is all about.

She's a pushy, spoiled USA feminista, and the guys (two of them!) both think she's wonderful!

It's just like WHEN HARRY MET SALLY (1988) starring Meg Ryan and Billy Crystal.

They guys never learn, the girls always win.

The guys always pension off the girls at an early age (which is why marriage is so popular with young girls) and kill themselves to do it, and the girls live 30 years longer than the guys, thanks to the good life the martyr husband earned for them before he died early!

Unpardonable cynicism, but I put to you and leave it with you.

Old story, and it still goes on!

The rising races of the world (Orientals, Latinos in the USA) ALL support the ladies, lots of children, and "family values" and the disappearing races (White people loyal to each other in the USA esp.) disappear because their numbers shrink and disappear, like a water hole during a drought.

So it goes, and THE BARBARIAN (1933) shows why!

Myrna's famous bathtub "nude scene" was dull and boring, (not as good as Maureen O'Sullivan's swim with Johnny Weismuller in TARZAN AND HIS MATE 1934).

Myrna was/is a true movie star, and was the best actor in the movie. A pleasure to watch her act.

Ramon Navarro wasn't terrible, but also wasn't convincing. His career didn't continue in the sound era, and this movie shows why.

"Untamed Africa" is part of "Untamed Earth: The Complete Series" is wonderful, but unavailable for purchase anywhere in 2015

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I obtained a roughly one hour episode about Africa which is part of the overall "Untamed Earth: Complete Series." British star actor John Hurt is the narrator.

What I saw when I screened the VHS tape of it I got was and is wonderful. Better in its way than even the documentaries of Sir David Attenborough.

A "complete" set consisting of 13 DVD's with a total running time of 41 hours and 30 minutes was made, and some details of it are posted on the Amazon.Com site, but with the "curretnly unavailable" tag added.

The high quality of what I saw is incredible.

Reports I obtained about this show state that the main producer, Frederic Lepage, is a writer and producer of several hundred TV shows and documentaries.

He first made Untamed Africa (1996) and further similar documentaries set on other continents followed.

It is said that Frederic Lepage pioneered a new way of wildlife documentary making, working with director Laurent Frapat.

I read that Lepage's initial wildlife documentary work received worldwide success in more than one hundred countries.

Other series followed, making a magnum opus of almost sixty films and some of the greatest hits in nature films : Untamed Amazonia, Untamed Australia, Untamed Asia, Untamed America.

What happened to the companion episodes (the other 40 hours!) of this show?

Where are the details?

It appears to have been shown as a TV series.

Wild life and the "untamed scene" all over the world is covered in the "complete set." This includes Africa, Asia, Australia, and North America.

Mention of a "re-release" in 2011 was made on one vendor site I visited, but the same "currently unavailable" notice appeared there, also.

This is a high quality nature zoology documentary series created by big talent, but somehow has disappeared with almost no trace or description of it except the name of the complete set, nowhere to be found (2015).

Does anyone know where this nature documentary can be found, or where details about it are available?

Contact me, David Allen (USA) at DavidAllenUSA@Yahoo.Com if you have information.

Thank you.

"Palooka" (1934) has wonderful actor work by Jimmy Durante, Lupe Velez, and Robert Armstrong

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This movie is an example of extremely good acting worth seeing, but brought down by not-so-good directing, script writing, and dull casting choices (esp. Stuart Erwin, the lead "Joe Palooka" protagonist character).

The movie was made in 1933, though 1934 is given as its release date of record.

Robert Armstrong starred in King Kong (1933), made in 1932, but not released until 1933, possibly not until after the much less famous "Palooka" (1934) movie was made and/or released.

His role as Joe Palooka's father is minor, but very well acted.

For me, the most spectacular part of this movie, and the reason I gave it a highest possible rating, is the unexpected and serious actor work of Jimmy Durante.

In several scenes in this movie, Jimmy Durante breaks character away from his usual and familiar comic exasperated buffoon character, and becomes a serious actor portraying scenes of riveting, serious intensity.

He gets angry and threatens people and isn't nice about it....intends to scare them, and obviously succeeds.

He becomes scary and does a very good job at portraying that.

Jimmy Durante could obviously have been a serious actor in gangster pictures of the Edward G. Robinson type, or unique movies which might have been labeled "the Jimmy Durante type."

Who can say?

I've watched his comic and musical performances my whole life starting in the early 1950's when I was 9 years old and he appeared and starred in TV's "The Colgate Comedy Hour."

I've seen him in MGM musicals co-starring with Frank Sinatra and Esther Williams and others, always as a comic "second banana."

But his performance in "Palooka" (1934) in perhaps 30 seconds total of serious scenes is very new for me, and quite wonderful (I am a retired SAG-AFTRA movie actor....worked 55 years as an actor before retiring, also taught college level movie history for 5 years, and I appreciate excellent actor work, which Durante displayed in "Palooka.")

Lupe Velez is yet another good actor (actress) in this movie.

Her career and life was brief, and she died young (in the 1940's in her 30's).

But she is electric in every movie I've seen her in from "The Gaucho" (1928 MGM - Silent) starring Douglas Fairbanks, Sr. to this movie, and others.

She was an actress with true "star quality," an electric magnetism which seems to "jump off the screen" into the audience and is always sure to delight them.

Few ever had it or have it now, but Lupe Valez, Jimmy Durante, and Robert Armstrong all had it, and are all in this movie.

Any movie buff or scholar who desires to study and experience high quality, charismatic actor work....top of the "food chain" acting.... should see this movie, and be patient with it's flaws and shortcomings.

Acting teachers should use this movie to show acting students what good acting is, and what can and has happened to good actors in otherwise flawed movies.

"The Man From Texas" (1939) Is An Excellent 1939 "Golden Age Of Hollywood" Cowboy Movie...Better Than STAGECOACH (1939)

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This excellent, classic cowboy movie was made in 1939, a year often justifiably cited as the best year in Hollywood movie history.

The movie was made at Monogram Studios, one of the "Poverty Row" "Gower Gulch" small studios which did not own movie houses (all of the "Major Studios" did in 1939).

"The Man From Texas" (1939) is a fast paced, interesting, believable, well acted, well written, well directed movie which includes good cowboy songs sung by Tex Ritter who did a wonderful job as "Tex Allen," the protagonist, lead character in the story.

This wonderful movie is much better, less sappy, more believable, and less contrived than "Stagecoach" (1939) which is often wrongfully cited as "the best western ever made" and "the best western made in 1939."

"The Man From Texas" (1939) starring Tex Ritter got lost in movie history, as did other movies not made by "the Majors," which also control important (and expensive) movie publicity and organizations of fame (including The American Film Institute and the Motion Picture Producers of America).

The movie is now in the Public Domain, and is available inexpensively in DVD form. It is not restored, but should be.

Hooray for good movies like "The Man From Texas" (1939) which should have been honored but were not due to the politics of Hollywood, and the power of big money which has always controlled Hollywood.

This movie "slipped through the cracks," but is worth obtaining and screening often. Huge talent both in front of the camera and behind it went into the making of "The Man From Texas" (1939).

It is a great western movie.

"THE FIFTH ESTATE" (2103) IS WONDERFUL! 10 STARS FOR THIS GENIUS MOVIE! HERE'S WHY......!

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This movie is good for two reasons....

It depicts unusual people working as computer experts using their skills for political and social purposes, and also it shows the strange and exotic world and lifestyle these computer expert revolutionaries live in....mostly a world of night, fog, and "film noir" personality. Both of these are worth learning more about.

A 2013 feature length documentary titled WE STEAL SECRETS was made about the same subject area covered by THE FIFTH ESTATE (2013), and that documentary is a good companion video to screen back to back along with THE FIFTH ESTATE. Actual persons part of the story covered are shown and some are interviewed in WE STEAL SECRETS, and parts of the overall complicated story are covered not covered in THE FIFTH ESTATE, but useful in understanding the larger, complex story. Both movies are worth seeing.

This movie was made to be watched AT HOME while the viewer sits alone on a comfortable couch, paying attention to the many important details of the movie and enjoying it's brilliant cinematic presentation, including it's good direction and screenplay, along with the actor work so widely praised, deservedly.

It is a movie made by genius filmmakers about genius characters (I pass no judgment here on whether the genius depicted is used for good or evil.....the characters portrayed are clearly possessed of genius worth studying...and enjoying!).

First, it depicts the strange and exciting night time, film-noir (in color, since it was made in 2013) world of computer hacker criminals who are do-gooder, revolutionary types always praised by poets, always written about by novelists, and ALWAYS subjects of thriller movies made by Hollywood studios which want to make profitable pictures.

Our lives in present days (2015) are influenced by computers, the Internet, and the World Wide Web and its many websites, including "news leak/ whistle blower" websites like WikiLeaks.Com and OpenLeaks.Com.

Political and criminal revolutionaries of the present and future will do their work using computers, hacking, and the Internet, and most people have no idea what this is all about, no expertise or understanding of what it takes to use computers, hacking, the Internet to impact the world.

THE FIFTH ESTATE (2013) shows what that world is like (mostly a night-time world where "the action" takes place indoors while perpetrators face computer screens which cast eerie blue/green upward lights onto the faces of the down looking hero/villain computer users.)

Normal people, average people never see this world....but they CAN if they watch this movie. A good two hour education in what the world of computer geeks/ revolutionaries looks like. Worth the price of the video for that alone.

In addition, we see a portrait of a driven, genius (for good or ill...I pass no judgment about that here, I repeat) computer expert who is also a politician, excellent communicator, and intellectual to an advanced level.....well read, well experienced at dealing with a broad variety of important people from the top to the bottom of society (all societies).

The Julian Assange character portrayed in this movie is the result of 60's/70's era counter-culture hippie types.....a second generation hippie/revolutionary, but with up to date skills and ambitions.

Similar, if you will, to the TERMINATOR TWO hero child (aged 12 in the TERMINATOR movie) played by Edward Furlong.

This movie cannot be understood (or enjoyed) unless the viewer does his/her homework FIRST.

Read the Wikipedia biog profile article about Julian Assange, and the Wikipedia article about WIKILEAKS first (read it away from the computer so you can think about it, go back to it later....print out goes to 62 pages if you enlarge the typeface so it's easy to read. Worth the money spent in paper and computer ink!).

The population of the world is now 7 billion people (it was 2 billion plus as recently as World War II years....70 years ago). That is incredible.

The world is now (predictably and logically) CROWDED. Nobody has privacy in crowds.

Good things have happened due to the population increase and changes to accommodate it, but privacy has gone and will keep going.

Privacy of the sort people commonly experienced in the past and expected is simply no longer possible, and people better get used to that.

This movie is all about privacy, and the fact it is disappearing (I pass no judgment on whether this is a good or a bad thing).

The world is now filled with many more smart, educated people than ever lived on the world before (just as it filled with more rich people than ever before, more doctors, more plumbers, etc. etc.......seven billion people worldwide means more of every category of people).

This movie is FOR smart educated people (who must do their homework before seeing the movie, and know how due to their advanced formal education), and ABOUT smart educated people (who run everything in the present day world, and are the only ones who can).

The heroes, the villains, the cops, the robbers, the government types, the revolutionary types are ALL smart, educated people.

The movie is filled with the faces of intelligent people saying intelligent things (and making references nobody who fails to do advanced research about the subject and people depicted in the movie will or can understand).

Do your homework FIRST, before seeing the movie.

Bad reviews this movie got were not written by people who did their homework first. Ignore those reviews! This is a 10 star movie for sure.

OKAY America (1932) is a "Walter Winchell Theme Movie," one of several worth seeing.

Remember that in 1932, Walter Winchell was VERY important in the show biz world. He was a "wordsmith" of renown and enormous talent, and a showman extraordinaire.....his career went non-stop from the 20's until his death in the 70's. He was always thought important, and for good reason.

The high quality of the actor cast in OKAY America (1932) shows the investment big shots in Hollywood thought worth making in a movie about Walter Winchell.....Lew Ayres, Maureen O'Sullivan, Louis Callhern, others.

This is a quality movie, one of a group all based on the Walter Winchell character and phenomenon.

Over movie history, "Walter Winchell" type "theme movies" (the world of gossip column "tell all" newspaper reporters) were made, most of them well done because the subject (Winchell and his dramatic ways) is inherently dynamic, fast moving, and interesting.

BLESSED EVENT (1932 starring Lee Tracy appeared the same year as OKAY America (1932), and was based on a Broadway play from 1932 which dealt with "the world of Winchell" (without naming him directly).

Winchell himself appeared in WAKE UP AND LIVE (1937 Fox) playing himself "doing his thing" and the movie is wonderful, but also, mysteriously, hard to get, not ranked among the "great" 30's musicals, which it certainly was and is.

SWEET SMELL OF SUCCESS (1957)starring Burt Lancaster was an anti-Winchell movie of fame but was clearly a re-affirmation that Winchell was always interesting, always news for decades! Gathering various "Winchell theme movies" is worth doing. These movies are all good!

ON YOUR TOES (1939) is MORE important than THE RED SHOES (1948) ON YOUR TOES (1939) starring Vera Zorina (1917 - 2003) and Eddie Albert (doing the Gene Kelly part in SLAUGHTER ON 10th AVENUE ballet) is the most important ballet movie ever made. More important than the excellent, more famous movie titled THE RED SHOES (1948) starring Moira Shearer.

Get it from RobertsVideos.Com in Canada.

It's more important, better than the very good, justifiably honored RED SHOES (1948) movie.

Nobody interested in ballet in the movies can ignore ON YOUR TOES (1939) or why it was "disappeared" in 1939, the most important year in Hollywood movie history! Zorina was a Berlin, Germany born ballet dancer (big problem in Hollywood in 1939), and was married to George Ballanchine until 1946 when he married Maria Tallchief.

She married Goddard Lieberson (head of Columbia Records), had two sons with him, stayed married until his death in 1977.

She went on to be the head of an important ballet company in Norway.

She died in 2003 at the age of 86 of "unknown causes." She was a brilliant stage actress who originated the stage role in the 1930's of I MARRIED AN ANGEL (Jeanette MacDonald was the star of the movie version).

Her guileless style of acting shows up brilliantly in ON YOUR TOES (1939).

See it, get it, pay for it (RobertsVideos.Com isn't cheap!).

Thank you!

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David Roger "Tex" Allen, retired SAG-AFTRA movie actor...too old to work, too young to die!

Where to purchase one or two reeler short subject sound movies or get info re: packages they are in?

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Movies like THE SONG WRITERS' REVUE (1930) are hard to find for purchase.

Short movies, one and two reeler short subjects from early sound days, are hard to sell, it seems. Some may be available in packages (groups of 10 short movies sold together using one "umbrella" title), but it's hard, often, to learn WHICH package with what "umbrella" title a particular hard to get movie is in.

I saw a fragment of THE SONG WRITERS' REVUE (1930) part of Hollywood REVUE OF 1929 which is available from most large video vendors. Great to see Arthur Freed in 1930.....one of the legends of Hollywood/ MGM music producer history.

Young, very unassuming looking guy....in 1930. Didn't look like a mogul at all, yet!

Anyone know where to get these, and maybe more useful, where information can be gotten identifying PACKAGE videos the single one or two reeler short subject sound movies may be in?

Let me know.

I'm David Allen. Email me at DavidAllenUSA@Yahoo.Com.

Thanks.

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Excellent Doug Fairbanks Jr. Movie From Early 1930's......All His 1930's Movies Were Unusually Good

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This is an excellent movie.

It's about the culture of celebrity creation by the mass media, politicians, and others, and shows the hard life and hard times the newly created and celebrated "hero" is put through (he actually was a hero USA Naval submarine officer).

This is an important subject, and few good examinations and treatments of it have ever been made.

The Anita Ekberg fragment of LA DOLCHE VITA (1960) also does a good job of showing "behind the scenes" truth about media professionals and treatment of celebrities, and the effects of the "celebrity life" on celebrities themselves. The Anita Ekberg fragment of LA DOLCHE VITA (1960) lasted only about 20 minutes during a movie lasting more than 2 hours, but the image of Anita became the signature image of the film, and justifiably.

IT'S TOUGH TO BE FAMOUS (1932) starring Doug Fairbanks Jr. and Mary Brian is a blunt, no-nonsense look and implied criticism of the entire phenomenon of "hero celebrities" which most celebrities become in time, at one level or another. Readers, viewers, concert and show ticket buyers are all urged to worship the celebrated performer, and the list of celebrity victims is long....Elvis, Princess Diana, Marilyn Monroe, John Barrymore, and on and on and on.

Douglas Fairbanks Jr. had a famous movie star father, came of age for young leading man roles just as the talkie movie technology became widespread (early 1930's), and had a lot of talent performing the role of the intelligent and often unwilling hero types he was so often cast in.

All his movies are worth collecting and seeing. I've never seen one he starred in during the 1930's which was bad....quite a compliment considering how many bad movies were made then, and were made at all times.

Really good movies are rare and precious.

IT'S TOUGH TO BE FAMOUS (1932) and THE NARROW CORNER (1933) both starred Douglas Fairbanks Jr., and are both worth getting and seeing often.

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Written by Tex Allen

01/09/2014,

Columbia PA USA

Ann Southern (1909 - 2001) was an astonishing 92 year old in 2001, and the MAISIE series shows her dazzling personality close up!

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by David "Tex" Allen, January 2, 2014

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I screened MAISIE (1939) starring Ann Southern and many memories of seeing the incredible star of that movie over the years of my life (I turn 70 in 16 days!) returned. The memories were/are all pleasurable.

The late Ann Southern (1909 - 2001) was born Harriet Lake in North Dakota and died at age 92 in Idaho. Not a typical Hollywood movie star, but really.....who is or ever was! Movie stars are all like snow flakes, every one different and distinctly unique (to be redundant intentionally....emphasizes my point!).

Her only child, actress Tisha Sterling (c. 1948 - ), is about my age (I was born in 1944), and starred with young Clint Eastwood in one of his early 1960's hits titled COOGAN'S BLUFF (1969). Tisha played a hippie girl.....I also spent some time (not much) as sort of a hippie in NYC during the 1967 "Summer Of Love." Ann Southern's daughter did a good job in COOGAN'S BLUFF, and I watch that movie often when I want to remember hippie NYC in the 1960's.

The electric Ann Southern is best revealed in MAISIE (1939) and other movies in that series which went on until 1947.

The MAISIE series was a "B" movie effort always made cheaply, and which depended on the dazzling and wonderful and always interesting (and oddly sexy......tiny girls only 5'1" tall are usually not sex stars) Ann Southern.

It is a pleasure to sit back and watch Ann "do it," like a sure fire Al Jolson type stage entertainer so packed with predictably crowd pleasing electricity, the audience was always happy, the performances always a success.

Ann Southern was the quintessential performing artist......AND....pay attention....she lived to a VERY old age, She might have lived another 10 years to age 102 if she hadn't lived in Idaho in her 90's, rather than, say LA Calif. or NYC.

Smart lady, and it shows in the MAISIE (1939) movie which is all about Ann Southern at age 30 being magnetic in a "B" movie and stuck with dull but reliable Robert Young as a leading man/ straight man (latter cast as Marcus Welby, M.D., and FATHER'S KNOWS BEST's leading man father......two likable but dull and predictable guys people could rely on).

I admire movie stars who make it into old age....girls mostly like Kate Hepburn, Lillian Gish, Gloria Stuart, others who got past age 90....and very few males...Bob Hope, George Burns, Eli Wallach. Woody Allen is not yet 80 in 2014, but is sure to make it past 90.....both his parents lived past 90 and his Dad made it to age 100.

Ann Southern was 18 when she did her first silent movie extra work, and her stardom period began in 1939 when she was 30 with MAISIE (1939.....the most important year in the history of Hollywood movies, maybe any movies!).

She got to MGM in 1939 after work with other studios during the late 1920's and 1930's.

At MGM, she was given the lead in a "B" comedy about a brassy, energetic showgirl --originally intended for Jean Harlow (who had just died, and thus couldn't "do" the role)--that wound up becoming a huge hit and spawned a series of sequels that ran until 1947.

Ann also appeared in such well received features as Brother Orchid (1940), Cry 'Havoc' (1943) and A Letter to Three Wives (1949). After 1950 the roles dried up and Ann turned to television and another hit series, playing the meddlesome Susie in the 1953 series Private Secretary (1953). I remember seeing this show on black and white TV when I was 9 years old.....

By the 1950's, Southern had gained a lot of weight, and always wore solid black dresses which de-emphasized her portly body, and showed off her always lovely, interesting, and reliably beautiful face.

Being fat in her middle age didn't stop her from being one of the biggest TV stars of the 1950's...the rightly labeled "Golden Age Of Television."

The PRIVATE SECRETARY series was canceled in 1957 and Ann came back in The Ann Sothern Show (1958), which ran from 1958 to 1961.

In 1987, when Ann Southern was 78 years old (!), she would be nominated for an Academy Award for her role as the neighbor of Lillian Gish and Bette Davis in The Whales of August (1987).

Both her co-stars were older than Ann in this famous movie starring geezer pre-WWII movie star actresses (Gish had starred in BIRTH OF A NATION in 1915!).

Ann Southern's famous words about her co-stars in "The Whales of August" (1987) were "Lillian is a person first and then a movie star. Bette is a movie star." (Compliment about Lillian Gish, bad review of Bette Davis, in case you can't read between the lines).

RIP, Ann Southern (aka Harriet Lake of both North Dakota and Idaho!).

You were one of the best of the best and the MAISIE (1939) movie proves it......among other movies and TV shows you did (and songs you sang....Ann sung THE LAST TIME I SAW Paris in a 1941 movie which song got the Best Song Academy Award in 1941, thanks importantly to Ann!).

This is one of the very best documentaries ever made.

The fact the series got no major awards and also, almost 30 years later, is not available for sale in the DVD format is astonishing.

If you know of a DVD version for sale in 2015 or later, please let me know by emailing me at DavidRogerAllen@Hotmail.Com. Thanks.

I provide the titles of the 12 episodes (I own all of them in VHS cassette format):

1. Remembering 2. Caring 3. Eating 4. Believing 5. Correcting 6. Working 7. Living 8. Marrying 9. Understanding 10. Mediating 11. Creating 12. Trading

The excellent twelve part series was provided free of charge to USA public libraries in the middle 1980's along with other famous and edifying cultural documentaries such as America (1972) narrated by Alistair Cooke, and CIVILISATION (1968) narrated by Lord Kenneth Clark.

Various USA based big money charitable foundations were credited with gifting the HEART OF THE DRAGON (1985) series to public libraries.

The HEART OF THE DRAGON (1985) series is, to my thinking, obviously a major propaganda effort to reverse the anti-Chinese image on USA media which demonized the country and it's culture (and Marxist ideology) so that USA citizens would accept the new economic and (benign) political role of "modern China," which role is disconnected from the China governed by Chairman Mao from 1949 to his death in 1976.

By that time (1976), the "Chinese Cultural Revolution" he started in 1966 had failed, and new leaders came to power, visited the USA and charmed the public using devices such as wearing USA cowboy hats, etc. etc.

The 12 episodes started with "Remembering," which implied that the "Chinese Cultural Revolution" of 1966 - 1972 or so was past, regretted, and disowned.

The final episode titled "Trading" is all about the "new China" and it's role in the go-getter world of business, including USA business.

These two episodes communicated the main messages for which the series was intended, told the story of "the new China."

The middle episodes depict day to day life amongst "little guy" Chinese people, and creates a sympathetic picture of their charm, intelligence, humanity, creativity, and day to day problems and challenges.

It was all very well and skillfully done, with particular efforts to present the whole picture of "people in China" in a diplomatic way intended to end hostility which previous "anti-Chinese" USA and western media had used since the rise of Mao in 1949 up to 1972 when USA President Richard M. Nixon's surprise personal visit to China occurred (for the purpose of announcing to the world that the USA leaders and China leaders had agreed to begin a new era of friendship and cooperation unknown in modern times up to 1972).

Since 1985, when the HEART OF THE DRAGON (1985) documentary series was aired on USA Public Television (PBS) stations nationally in the USA, and then placed in public libraries in VHS video cassette form for the next 10 years at least, China has grown in prosperity, importance, and political and economic power in the world, and in the life of the USA.

9 of the 20 largest world "skyscraper" buildings are now in China (4 more are in the Middle East in the United Arab Emerates capital of Abbu Dabbi), and the Empire State Building in New York City, NY USA (which for decades was ranked "the world's tallest building") isn't even on the list of the "20 tallest buildings in the world" (see the WORLD ALMANAC AND BOOK OF FACTS for the current list).

Since Nixon's 1972 visit to China, a huge portion of USA manufacturing centers have been removed "offshore" to foreign countries like China where labor is cheaper and USA Unions have no say or power regarding treatment and compensation of workers.

China's current enormous wealth is largely the result of newly arrived (since 1972) USA money. Large USA retail outlets like WalMart and KMart are currently (2015) purchasing sales locations for Chinese manufactured goods.

The power of China has grown enormously since 1972, and the HEART OF THE DRAGON (1985) was a building block in communicating sympathetic news about China to USA, UK, and other previously hostile groups who had decried the existence and threat of "Communist (or 'Red') China" in the years from 1949 to 1972.

This is all food for thought.

THE HEART OF THE DRAGON (1985) TV documentary was exceedingly well and expensively made propaganda media effort aimed at reversing western opinions about China and the USA's relationship with China.

It was a slick sales piece, and it is worth seeing and re-seeing for many reasons.

It is possible to obtain the used VHS cassettes given to USA public libraries, now sold in the "used video" market on Amazon.Com and other vendors.

It is helpful to know and use the episode names of the twelve parts of the show, and also to include the name of the narrator "Anthony Quayle," when making search efforts.

The HEART OF THE DRAGON name has been given to other media products, and the documentary series episodes for sale and worth buying can get lost if one is not careful to distinguish the documentary from non-documentary shows about China or shows which use the same title.

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Tex Allen is a retired (2014) SAG union Middle Atlantic States USA movie actor, film scholar, and movie history teacher.

Email: TexAllen@Rocketmail.Com.

Far Out Isn't Far Enough: The Tomi Ungerer Story is excellent....see it!

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By David (Tex) Allen Columbia PA USA DavidRogerAllen@Hotmail.Com

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October 27, 2013

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This movie was just released on DVD, Region 1 (USA, etc.) and is very good...compare it to the excellent CRUMB 1996 and CONFESSIONS OF ROBERT CRUMB 1987 documentaries....also about a famous 1960's illustrator who left the USA...now lives in France, just like Tomi Ungerer!

Ungerer is seen at age 81 with white hair, walking with cane.

He is old and bent over, but still has a twinkle in his eye and a great sense of mischievous humor.

The "special features" section shows an interchange he had with Jules Feiffer which is wonderful.

"Special Features" on this video also show the late, great Maurice Sendak complaining about THE KING'S SPEECH "Best Picture Academy Award" movie.....also wonderful.

This documentary is a treasure because Tomi Ungerer is a treasure.

Buy a copy directly from FIRST RUN FEATURES in NYC to support them and increase their profits. They sell wonderful but lonely and not well publicized documentaries like this one, and have high costs and low income. Send money to them so they can keep up their great work!

Also, get the CRUMB 1997 and THE CONFESSIONS OF ROBERT CRUMB 1987 videos used from Amazon.Com cheap....another great American artist who moved to France....he's still there!

Thanks for reading this.

TEX (David) Allen Columbia PA USA DavidRogerAllen@Hotmail.Com

"Inside Job" (2010) documentary explains nothing clearly, identifies no clear villains, and isn't good "Scapegoat Theatre" ore plain old good show biz done well!

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I got INSIDE JOB (2010) in the mail yesterday (ordered a cheap used DVD from good old reliable Amazon.Com), screened it last night.

Ugh!

The movie didn't provide clear information, targets, villains to remember......nothing. Wasn't good "Scapegoat Theatre" in the honored tradition of "All The President's Men" (1975) starring Robert Redford (which implied the Republican Party tried to murder Washington Post reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, and got away with it!), or "The China Syndrome" (1979) starring Jane Fonda and Jack Lemon (which claimed power industry people sent hit men after employees willing to be "whistleblowers", and got away with it!).

When the "Michael Moore Memorial Scapegoat Movie Awards" for "Best Scapegoat Movies In History" are set up (definitely an unmet need in today's world), two movies which don't deserve top honors as "good scapegoat movies" are certainly "Inside Joh" (2010) and it's brother movie about the 2008 finance industry "meltdown" "Too Big To Fail" 2012 starring William Hurt as the anguished USA Secretary Of The Treasury.

I spent two wasted hours watching "Inside Job" (2010) and I wasn't a happy camper when the movie was over.

Just 2 hours of tormented, uncomfortable, intense guys wearing dark suits and ties talking about, complaining about, apologizing for who knows what?

The movie didn't explain anything clearly, didn't identify or highlight a single understandable issue.

"We got trouble right here in River City" all seemed to agree.....

OK....so what?

The best part, such that any best part occurred at all, was when the insincere and bureaucratically skilled Dean Of The Columbia University (NYC) Business School sort of lost it toward the end of the movie, and told the guy interviewing him he (the Dean) was sorry he agreed to be interviewed, and the interview would end in 3 more minutes and.....that's ALL!

Tough dude!

That part of the movie was supposed to show how academics in famous business schools were big supporters of the Wall St. players they (the academics) helped make rich and gave profitable advice to (what at Business Schools for, anyway?) the bad guys who made big money and walked away with it during the "meltdown" crisis of 2001-2007.

People go to business schools to learn how to get rich.

That's what the schools teach, the best they (the schools) can.

The movie producers tried to vilify the school teachers at the business schools for doing their job.

Well......OK.

At least it would have provided at least one clear villain and one clear target, one clear issue......bad guys at business schools.

George W. Bush was (is) a Harvard Biz School grad....has a Master's from that school.

That's a start. Go after Biz School grads, esp. famous ones who go on to get power and big money! Great show biz!

The "Business School grads and teachers conspiracy" would have made GREAT "scapegoat theater" and INSIDE JOB (also TOO BIG TO FAIL) would have been much more entertaining and watchable (this has nothing to do with logical and morally worthy).

Anyway, the closest INSIDE JOB came to being good show biz was the scene when the agitated Columbia U. Dean told his interviewer off....sort of, and politely!

Great!

"JFK" (1991) uses long monologues to keep the audience riveted.....the Oliver Stone and Co. screenplay is the star of a great show! Here's why......

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If a Nobel Prize for movie screenplays resulting in incredible movie results were awarded, the writers of the "JFK" (1991) screenplay should get the first one..........

Here are the official screenplay credits for "JFK (1991) starring Kevin Costner: Oliver Stone (screenplay) Zachary Sklar (screenplay) based on the Jim Garrison book "On the Trail of the Assassins" and the Jim Marrs book "Crossfire: The Plot That Killed Kennedy" Two screen writers who used two books to fashion a truly hypnotic screenplay resulting in a wonderful, satisfying, riveting movie.

"There are no good movies without good screenplays" saith the movie god sage, and this often repeated in "How To Write Good Screenplays" type books, of which there are many (many worth reading).

How true! The current (2013) fashion and mania and center stage status of comic book, superhero "action" movies packed with special effects and computer generated images (CGI's!) is all about the LACK of good screen writing available to the movie industry, which serves a huge and profitable market (aka the world wide audience reading and willing to pay big money for the distraction from their awful lives provided by a good, entertaining movie), and substitutes video game type psychedelica (both visual and audio images and sounds) to dazzle without the need for mental logic or coherent ideas.

Well......good screenplays are hard to come by, always were.

The "JFK" (1991) screenplay resulted in a wonderful, magnetic, riveting movie packed with long, long, long compelling monologues delivered by wonderful, verbally capable actors (Kevin Costner, Donald Sutherland, others) which "action heroes" of fame and note (e.g. Clint Eastwood, bless him) could never have, and will never deliver.

Clint, even in his 80's, can jump out of windows and slug bad guys, but he can't provide articulate, sustained intelligent long, long monologues filled with polysyllabic words and complex but logical ideas which go on and and on and on..and keep us all on the edge of our seats, and make us grateful we were lucky enough to see a great movie with almost NO "action" and visual crutches the "no ideas" "silent super hero" movies based on Marvel Comics types shove at us in current times (2013).

Only well educated and articulate actors can "talk the talk" and present long, intelligent arguments, and "JFK" (1991) does that well, to it's credit.

For those who don't know, "JFK" (1991) is a Kennedy assassination conspiracy movie based on Jim Garrison's assertions, legal actions, and book with help from yet another Kennedy assassination conspiracy book..

What the brilliant Oliver Stone and his co-authors have done is simple and wonderful.

They have taken a "single issue" argument and "cause" well known to the public and famous everywhere, and made a movie consisting of long, long monologues presenting in logical and articulate detail various related arguments in such zealous detail, any lawyer advocate of ability would be dazzled.

And dazzled we, the audience, are....by this movie and it's simple device......logical long monologues presented by well equipped (for monologues) actors which are implicitly dramatic and appealing.

"Single issue" causes (such as the Kennedy assassination conspiracy arguments) are dramatic and satisfying.

They provide the audience with a good time for the same reason a good football game provides good times to onlookers.

Logic, oddly, has very little to do with it all.

"Single issue" causes not seriously challenged or contradicted (the case in "JFK" 1991) SEEM logical and deliver a delicious satisfaction to the audience.

This has nothing to do with whether or not the "cause" presented is worthy or whether the conclusions advocated are accurate and true.

It's all about the psychological satisfaction of hearing a good one sided case well presented which we've all heard about before, and can never know about completely....nobody can for most famous "single issue" causes of fame.

And there are many, many, MANY "single issue causes" of fame over history which could ALSO be presented in movie form using the techniques of screen writing used in "JFK" (1991), which would make incredibly successful and satisfying movies (again, let us emphasize that logic has little to do with emotional and mental satisfaction...a good "single issue" movie filled with monologues must avoid on-screen challenges to the case it presents....the fact it's one sided is what will make it a successful movie!

Richard Hofstader's brilliant book titled "The Paranoid Style In American Politics" (1952 Harvard U. Press) discusses the fame and success of single issue causes.

Hofstadter states, rightly, that single cause writing (which the "JFK" 1991 screenplay definitely is) is successful due to "the fierce logic of the one-idea mind, the firm conviction that complex social issues can be unraveled to the last point, that social problems can really be solved, and solved by simple means." The back up materials which can feed a movie screenplay of the "JFK" (1991) type are copious and available almost in tidal wave proportions.

What is Hollywood waiting for? It's time for more "single issue causes" movies with many long, long monologues delivered by good actors......

The movie makers will get rich, and the lucky audiences will be endlessly satisfied!.

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Tex (David) Allen is a retired SAG-AFTRA movie actor who taught movie history 5 years in Baltimore MD USA area colleges from 2004-2009.

"Point Of No Return" (1993) starring Bridget Fonda is a USA copy-cat version of a famous French language classic, "La Femme Nikita" (1990) starring Anne Parilaud.

"Point Of No Return" (1993) is a movie expensively done, but a failure due to......lack of talent in writing, casting, and direction.

Little, skinny, physically uncoordinated Bridget Fonda is no Anne Parilaud, could never make it as a clothes or photo model, has an infectious toothy smile and connections to a famous Hollywood actor family.....and that's not enough for a movie where the main character must be physically fit, coordinated, and a pleasure to watch at all times doing all things.

Parilaud was all those in "La Femme Nikita" (1990), Fonda is none of those things in "Point Of No Return" (1993).

Francis Coppola noticed that movie star Harvey Keitel didn't look good on the screen during rushes of "Apocolypse Now" (1979), and fired Keitel after one week's shooting and replaced him with Martin Sheen (who had heart attack at age 36 on the set of the movie, but lived anyway, and is still alive as of 2013)

Nobody noticed, it appears, that Bridget Fonda was just not the right girl for the Anne Parilaud role in "Point Of No Return" (1993), and Bridget didn't get fired.....and the results are available now and forever for all to see and groan about.

It is astonishing the rich USA movie makers could have blown the chance to make at least a passable re-make of the French movie.......all they had to do was look at the masterpiece (titled "La Femme Nikita" 1990 starring French fashion model/ actress Anne Parilaud.....absolutely brilliant actress in all ways).

The copy-cat version was made in 1993 in the USA and titled "Point Of No Return" stars Peter Fonda's daughter (Henry Fonda's granddaughter! Jane Fonda's niece!) Bridget Fonda as the star.....female "secret agent" govt. "licensed to kill" type.

The USA copy-cat movie is almost a shot-for-shot copy of the 1990 French movie until the final sequence, which is re-written to match the USA setting.

It's all so baaaaaaaaaaad.....there is no way to say how bad it is.......

However, for people who already saw "La Femme Nikita" (1990 France) on which "Point Of No Return" (1993) is based, there is educational value in having seen the otherwise totally valueless USA movie..... the whole USA disaster copy cat attempt is an example in spades of the fact that big, big Hollywood money can't and doesn't buy talent.........and no-talent types in high places get hold (at least sometimes) of big money movie projects, and blow it big time.

Money can't buy happiness, and it ALSO can't buy good moving making results, even when the recipe for how to do it is provided step by step and the final ideal results are shown to the wanna-be chefs (i.e. movie producers, directors, writers, actors, etc. etc.).

Money and talent are not the same thing, much as Hollywood establishment types often deny that.

"Point Of No Return" (1993) is proof.

Many books have been written about bad movies of fame made in Hollywood..."Heaven's Gate" is the poster movie for "classic bad movies" always at the top of the lists provided. The reasons movies were bad was....they didn't make (enough) money for the movie makers and investors. How tragic!

But bad art ("Point Of No Return" 1993 is an example) is never cited......

Well, it should be, and movies like "Point Of No Return" (1993) should be included in the "Hollywood Hall Of Shame" lists of all time bad movies.

Comparing the two movies ("La Femme Nikita" 1990 French, starring Anne Parilaud and "Point Of No Return" 1993 USA, starring Bridget Fonda) is a valuable exercise in movie education.

"Nikita" is soooooooooooooo good, and "Point Of No Return" is sooooooooooooooo bad............

Too painful to describe why, but screening both movies back to back is.....educational, to say the least!

"State Of The Planet" (2000) Makes Wrong Basic Political/Social Assumptions, Ignores Important Questions: Is It "Junk Science?"

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Ecological and overpopulation crowding problems the world faces currently are abundantly clear and oft cited many places. What is needed is useful new information about what is to be done, or can be done, especially politically and commercially.

The importance of political and commercial changes and actions impacting current problems is mentioned in throw-away comments at the very end of this documentary with no elaboration or proposals.....yet elaboration and proposals regarding these things are precisely what is needed.

Sir David Attenborough (1926 - ) takes advantage of an interesting and timely topic, then refuses to ask obvious and basic questions of importance about "how did this happen" and "what can be done"....

Particular people, particular groups in the world caused present problems, "we" as a group (the entire population of the world) didn't all cause the problems, as this documentary states repeatedly, to it's discredit.

No action to correct "State OF The Planet" problems can take place if accurate blame is not fixed, and this is not done in this documentary, sadly.

"State Of The Planet" (2000) takes an important overall topic of great interest to widespread audiences, and ignores obvious questions (questions also obviously controversial) and provides familiar politically and socially correct views which shed little light on the subject treated by "State Of The Planet" (2000 BBC), and end up providing the viewer with a doubtful intellectual treatment of problems presented.

It comes near to being "junk science," which phenomenon has abounded in recent decades and threatens to overwhelm and drown modern science media and major science education outreach.

Right subject, but wrong questions, and wrong assumptions.

This is part of a larger trend part of Sir David Attenborough's long laundry list of science presentations over the past 35 years.

Sir David Attenborough (1926 - ) is probably the most famous popular natural science media personality in modern times, and his importance (chronicled interestingly in "A Life On Film" part of the "Attenborough In Paradise" DVD package) cannot be denied.

Sadly, what also cannot be denied is the overall decline in intellectual quality of his presentations since his earliest major solo natural history documentary credit titled "Life On Earth" (1978 BBC), which was a well done, carefully and intelligently presented account of natural history on Earth from its earliest single cell beginnings in ancient oceans to humankind "modern man" primates in current (1978) times.

"Life On Earth" (1978) was Sir David Attenborough's best science documentary, and emphasized Charles Darwin's natural selection/ adaptation theories and ideas.

This was all very controversial because Darwin's ideas conflict with current widespread gospels of social equality in which "nurture" is emphasized ("anybody can do well with good education and good material resources") and "nature" ("you are importantly what you inherited from your direct ancestors, and people with different ancestors are different, not at all the same, and can never be").

Fast forward to "The Living Planet" (1984 BBC) which was a pleasant and well photographed trip around the world which depicted various animals in varied habitats. It was a de-facto travel documentary with little intellectual content, a lot of pretty pictures and interesting local facts, but lacking in the overall intellectual conclusions part of the much better "Life On Earth" (1978 BBC) presentation.

Then came "Trials Of Life" (1990 BBC) which presented animal behavior in 12 episodes with obvious lessons and parallels for the current human community, but made no comparisons and came to no conclusions about lessons humans should learn from study of the animal kingdom and basic behavior widespread, well documented.

Other documentary science presentations followed, but "State Of THe Planet" (2000 BBC) offered the chance to look at overall questions part of what has become of the Earth in recent times, and how it affects humans who live on the earth (currently more than 7 billion, almost double the amount since "Life On Earth" 1978 was produced).

Questions of competing and mutually hostile activities engaged in by different human groups on the Earth, and impact of these activities are summarily ignored.

The problem activities and results leading to bad times in current history are dismissed, and the collective term "we" (all human beings, no differences between groups or individuals) is invoked.

"We" are guilty.

"We" caused the big problems currently in progress and getting worse.

"We" must change (as a group, in a unified way).

The fact is that some groups and some individuals caused the problems depicted on "State Of The Planet" (2000 BBC) and also problems not mentioned at all or not emphasized (e.g. the arrival of 7 billion people overpopulating the planet, up from roughly 2 billion people roughly 60 years ago.......an astonishing and dramatic and portentous change in Earth's human history).

5 billion NEW people are here who weren't here in 1950, and they all want housing, health, education, culture, happiness, power.

The big numbers are being nurtured and catered to because profits result from doing that, both political and commercial.

Political and commercial causes of current "State Of The Planet" (2000) problems are mostly ignored and soft-pedaled, and for obvious reasons.

Political and commercial interests control major media and media spokespersons, including Sir David Attenborough (1926 - ) who did not "bite the hand that fed him" by criticizing powers in the political and commercial world, and ideals pushed forward onto the world and its media by those powers.

It is important to pay attention to and ask the basic questions posed in "State Of The Planet" (2000 BBC), but it is equally important to have high intellectual and logical standards.

Anyone who has these standards will not (and cannot, sadly) take "State Of The Planet" (2000 BBC) seriously.

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Email: TexAllen@Rocketmail.Com

"What Just Happened" (2008) is a good "behind the scenes" movie about Hollywood big shots.

I screened a used DVD of "What Just Happened" (2008) starring Robert DiNero last night alone in my living room in my Lancaster County PA apartment, and concluded it was a good, intelligent "insider" movie about "behind the scenes life" in Hollywood.

"What Just Happened" (2009) stars and was produced (and probably mostly owned) by Robert DeNiro, directed by Barry Levinson, originally from Baltimore MD USA...my home town.... (directed WAG THE DOG with DeNiro, who likely also owned that movie, too).

Curious movie about two weeks in the work and personal life of a major Hollywood studio movie producer, prima donna movie stars and directors he has to coddle and coax, his two ex-wives and children from each he still visits and misses (wives and children), politics with studio big shots, his trip to Cannes Festival to show a controversial movie he produced, etc. etc.

The movie was made cheap (33 days, reported cost was $25 Million) with cameo roles by Sean Penn and others, but comes in a DVD package with two discs....a second "bonus" disc I haven't screened yet....what could be on that? Story (WHAT JUST HAPPENED) is based on two movie producer memoir books written by a now aging (born in 1942) producer, Art Linson. who spent 30 years in Hollywood, was the producer of CARWASH (1970's?) cult movie starring Richard Pryor and others.

In 1995, Linson published his first book, A Pound of Flesh: Perilous Tales of How to Produce Movies in Hollywood. His second book, What Just Happened? Bitter Hollywood Tales From the Front Line, was published in 2002.

Linson states in the "special features" interview part of the "What Just Happened" DVID that he originally wrote a book of anecdotes he thought would make interesting and scandalous reading, and Robert DeNiro (interview provided with DVD..."Special Features") read the book, asked the author to write a screenplay with DeNiro playing the aging producer dragging around baggage of two ex-wives and children from each (all still housed in big mansions the producer paid for....the wives got when divorces happened), weirdo Hollywood personalities including movie stars, agents, writers, VIP major studio execs who ride around in chartered jet planes, etc. etc.

"What Just Happened" (2008) was one of many movies I screened recently about "how movies are made, what goes on behind the scenes" Other movies of the "movie movies" type screened recently for the first time include "The Player" (1992) directed by Robert Altman (MASH, NASHVILLE, etc.), "The Stunt Man" (1978) starring Peter O'Toole, and "Wag The Dog" (1997) starring Dustin Hoffman and Robert DiNiro (about a Hollywood producer who goes to Washington DC to help the US President, and is murdered by the people who hired him for his trouble!...."Nice guys finish last," eh?) I also got "White Hunter, Black Heart" (1990) starring Clint Eastwood (about a John Huston type movie director making a movie in Africa and hunting big game on the side), and "The Last Stunt Player" (1993) starring ex-California Governor, Arnold Schwartzenegger before his Governor days.

Addional "movies about the movies" include: "Sullivan's Travels" (1941), "Sunset Boulevard" (1949), "The Bad And The Beautiful" (1953), "Get Shorty" (1995), "Hollywoodland" (2008), and "Hollywood Hotel" (1937).

I've already seen (often) "The Last Command" (1928), The Life And Death Of 9413: A Hollywood Extra" (1927), "A Star Is Born" (both 1937 and 1954 versions), and "Singin' In The Rain" (1952). Also "The Last Tycoon" (1970's) starring young Robert DeNiro and Robert Mitchum.

There are many other similarly themed movies to see, no doubt.

So many movies, so little time! I find these movies are very edgy and not a bit restful....just like Hollywood and just like the movie making biz I've been part of so long (BTW, I'm a SAG-AFTRA movie actor who started Hollywood paid actor work in 1970).

All very educational and cathartic....but not restful or edifying.

Back to better, classic movies for me after the current "festival" is over. (I'm like a retired sea captain or sailor who buys a cottage on a hillside overlooking the ocean, and stares out over it and remembers his days at sea.) Many "movies about the movies have been made over movie history including "The Last Command" (1928) starring Emil Jannings and also starring William Powell, directed by Josef Von Sternberg, set in silent movie big studio Hollywood.

Many "movie movies" followed "The Last Command" (1928) quickly, including "A Star Is Born" (1937 and the Judy Garland version in 1954), "Singin' In The Rain" (1952), and many others, including important good movies never famous (e.g. "The Life And Death Of 9413: A Hollywood Extra" (1927) silent experimental movie by then young Greg Tolan, who went on to help film "Citizen Kane" (1941).

"The Life And Death Of 9413: A Hollywood Extra" (1927) is one of several "movies about the movies" included in the Library Of Congress National Film Registry List.

Four of the movies on the list were stories about "extras" (background actors) who rose to movie stardom or died at the end of the movies (the two silent era movies had tragic ends about the "extras" starring in them, and the two sound era movies had happy endings....the "extras" became movie stars!).

I started work as a paid Hollywood movie actor 43 years ago (1970) and am now sort of retired.

I still work on major Hollywood studio movies shot "on location" on the East Coast of the USA, also major TV drama projects, when I get called, but mostly I'm retired these days, thankfully.

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(Visit WWW.IMDb.Me/TexAllen for a detailed list of SAG movie credits since 2004....).

Email Tex at TexAllen@Rocketmail.Com

"Tarzan's New York Adventure" (1942) Is Surprisingly Good...Worth Seeing!

This is yet another excellent sequel movie to the original "Tarzan" (1932) movie starring Johnny Weismuller as "Tarzan," and also starring Maureen O'Sullivan as "Jane," who has become Tarzan's wife in this very well written, acted, and directed movie.

"Tarzan And His Mate" (1934) is an earlier "Tarzan" series (with Johnny Weismuller playing Tarzan....others played Tarzan in other series), and is rightly considered one of the best movies ever made, and is honored by placement on the Library Of Congress National Film Registry List. "Tarzan And His Mate" (1934) is unusual for many reasons, but one of the most important is that it is a high quality movie which is seldom the case for most "sequel" movies.

"Tarzan's New York Adventure" (1942 MGM) starring Johnny Weismuller is a fast paced intelligent movie which is presented in only 71 minutes total, obviously intended as part of a "double feature" which was an important and frequent form of movie house programming of "B" movies in the 1930s and 1940s.

The script is well written and very tight.

The adopted son of Tarzan and Jane, named Boy and roughly 12 years old, is taken without the permission of his adopted parents (Tarzan and Jane) to New York City by a Long Island, New York (located near New York City) circus owner who wants to use the talents the boy has with wild animals in his circus.

Wonderful group elephant tricks are shown both in the Africa sequences which open and close the movie, and also in the center part New York City/ Long Island, New York circus location. Other riveting animal performances (one by a chimpanzee and another by a lion) are also memorable.

Tarzan and Jane follow their adopted son, Boy, to New York City, locate him, and fight to have him returned to them and to Africa.

Both the action sequences at the Long Island, New York circus location (which includes wonderful action by circus elephants Tarzan calls upon successfully to help him stop the bad guys from kidnapping his adopted son) and the courtroom sequences (Tarzan and Jane must go to court to prove they are suitable parents) are well done, well acted, believable and entertaining.

This movie includes a famous sequence in which Tarzan climbs the upper structure of the famous Brooklyn Bridge in NYC, then dives 200 feet head first into the East River. This sequence was actually filmed at the real Brooklyn Bridge, and is also included in the excellent Ken Burns "Brooklyn Bridge" documentary about the history of the building and cultural importance of the Brooklyn Bridge.

Circus grounds scenes were actually filmed in Florida at a circus wintertime headquarters location there.

The movie is entertaining, fast paced, well written, well acted, well directed, and has wonderful animal and exotic Africa locations, all worth seeing.

It is an unexpected gem.

I enjoyed the "Crocodile Dundee" (1986) movie starring Paul Hogan and read that "Tarzan's New York Adventure" (1942) is similar in story and location (both Tarzan and Crocodile Dundee visit New York City, and neither fits in or is a typical New Yorker, which has comic and sometimes interesting action results).

I decided to obtain this not very famous or honored movie, and I'm very glad I got it and screened it.

A great action/ comedy movie lasting not much longer than one hour, and worth seeing again and again.

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Written by Tex (David) Allen, SAG-AFTRA USA east coast movie actor.

See the IMDb website for bio and movie credit details about me.

Email to Tex Allen at TexAllen@Rocketmail.Com

"Crocodile Dundee II" (1988) Not As Good As First "Crocodile Dundee" Movie Due To Writing Problems In Part Two.

The first "Crocodile Dundee" (1986) movie was a wonderful comedy.

The second "Crocodile Dundee" (1988) movie was intended to cash in on the first movie, which it probably did....it probably made much more money for the owners of the movie than the first movie did.

Nobody expected the first movie to be a big hit. Everybody expected the second movie to be a hit, and movie owners could (probably did) cut great deals with movie house owners, television presentation people, and sellers of VHS and DVD home videos.

The second movie made the owners much richer than the first movie did.

But.........sadly, it wasn't (isn't) as good a movie as the first one.

Old story with comedies of fame...going back to "The Thin Man" (1934) which was a big, unexpected hit when it first came out, and resulted in many sequels, none as good as the first movie.

There are exceptions to the rule that follow-up movies are never as good as initial movies...."Godfather II" (1974) is an example.

An example closer to home is the original Johnny Weismuller "Tarzan" (1932) movie which was followed up by an even better "Tarzan" sequel titled "Tarzan And His Mate" (1934 which co-starred the lovely Maureen O'Sullivan (Mia Farrow's mother!) who swam totally nude with her handsome husband, Johnny Weismuller as "Tarzan" in a sort of underwater ballet quite breathtaking to see, and quite tasteful, nude though the dancers were in pre-code 1934 times.

"Crocodile Dundee" (1986) is sometimes compared to "Tarzan's New York Adventure" (1942) which uses the same jokes......yokel Tarzan from darkest Africa comes to NYC, dresses up in tuxedos, goes to night clubs, rides subways, and doesn't fit in....very funny! The owners of the "Crocodile Dundee" movie series would have done well to pattern the second "Crocodile Dundee II" (1988) movie after "Tarzan And His Mate" (1934) and could have made a much better movie if they followed the "Tarzan And His Mate" (1934) example (BTW, "Tarzan And His Mate" 1934 is honored by inclusion on the Library Of Congress National Film Registry List....best "best movies" list of all, to my thinking...and the first "Tarzan" Johnny Weismuller movie isn't!).

Linda Kozlowski, a lovely, Julliard NYC Drama School graduate of both high acting talent and skills (and also very pretty in her 20's in the 1980's) could have done much more than she did in the "Crocodile Dundee II" (1988) movie, where she and Paul Hogan are already "mated" and committed, and there is no more electricity based on courtship and "the chase" seen in the first movie.

Oh well........we are "too soon old and too late smart" and so is Hollywood (including the Australia part of Hollywood responsible for the Crocodile Dundee movies).

Here are reasons the first Crocodile Dundee (1986), aka "Part One," is better than the second one: Part One (1986) showed a "fish out of water" pretty girl reporter (Linda Kozlowski) in Australia, and then a "fish out of water" Australian comic male hero (Paul Hogan) trying to survive in the New York City of the mid-1980's.

Part One worked because it presented non-stop "fish out of water" jokes and situations all well acted by Hogan and Kozlowski.

Part One wasn't serious and didn't try to be.

Great photography of rural Australia and of up-scale New York City and suburbs.

Part One made fun of strange types in both settings, and the main actors did a good job as comics reacting to the strange types.

Good enough.

The Part One movie was a hit.

Part Two wasn't as good because it tried to get serious, got away from the main value of Part One, which was that both rural Australia and New York City of the 1980's are strange for people there for the first time reacting to all they see and must put up with.

Part Two was an imperfect action movie, not as good as Tom Cruise, Harrison Ford, Pierce Brosnan, Matt Damon, Bruce Willis, Sean Connery, Clint Eastwood, Jason Statham, etc. etc. movies, and not as funny as the first Crocodile Dundee (1986) movie.

Neither Paul Hogan nor his leading lady from Part One, Linda Kozlowski have the chance to "show their stuff" as they did often in Part One ("showing their stuff" was what made the first movie a big hit).

Paul Hogan and Linda Kozlowski are good actors, but the writing of Part Two just wasn't as good or "on the mark" as was the writing for Part One.

Sadly, this is a common story regarding sequels trying to cash in on big initial hit movies, but slowed down because sequels become committee projects always less likely have singular vision of the sort which makes initial hit movies good, but hard to duplicate when committees take over.

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Tex (David) Allen is a SAG-AFTRA east coast movie actor who has written almost 100 movie reviews for both the Amazon and IMDb databases.

More about Tex Allen at the IMDb website.

See IMDb database for details about Tex (David) Allen.

Send emails to Tex Allen to TexAllen@Rocketmail.Com

"Citizen Kane" (1941) Was Reviewed On IMDb Site 1,063 Times As Of March 17, 2013, And Here Is Review #1,064....Just What The World Needs! -------------

I'm a movie actor (SAG-AFTRA accredited), a movie history teacher and scholar, and I've written 95 movie reviews posted on the IMDb.Com site as of today (St. Patrick's Day 2013....March 17, 2013 to any who don't know about St. Patrick and his famous anniversary day!).

I printed out my list of 95 movie review titles written for and posted on IMDb.Com, and noticed "Citizen Kane" (1941) was not included.

I supply the following movie review to make up for this oversight, and promise to review other famous and worthy classic movies in the future....my current 3/17/2013 movie review list of 95 movies includes many unknown and even a few unworthy movies, and it seems ironic and a shame movies of importance like "Citizen Kane" (1941) are not included.

About "Citizen Kane" (1941).....

Orson Welles was famously a self-promoter and opportunist of high skills and great gifts, and the widely accepted reputation of his movie "Citizen Kane" (1941) as "the greatest movie ever made" is due at least in part to his drum-beating, showmanship efforts over the decades to give the movie that label.

In fact, "Citizen Kane" (1941) is a tabloid type celebrity scandal story worthy of "The National Inquirer" tabloid newspaper and/or scandal magazine (the publication appeared in both forms over the many profitable decades it operated).

William Randolph Hearst (in the not too well disguised fictional persona of "Charles Foster Kane") is taken to task for having a pretty blonde unmarried ex-chorus girl mistress (Marion Davies named "Susan Alexander" in the movie), for living a life of profligate extravagance obviously both immoral and ridiculous, and for getting away with it all.....for living a life into advanced old age where he passes away, finally, in the care of uniformed nurses on duty at one of his mansions certainly as big as one of the Pope's summer palaces or any of French King Louis XIV's residential retreats.

In short, "Citizen Kane" (1941) "dishes the dirt" and wades through sleeze, sleeze, sleeze, all sanitized by the fact the sleeze is perpetrated by a person of wealth and power, a captain of industry of the sort demonized widely and often in the 1941 world then very much in love with Socialism and the philosophy of "sharing the wealth," meaning robbing the rich and spreading assets of rich around for the "poor" to share and enjoy.

"Rich bad guys" were very much in vogue in pre-WWII 1941 in the USA as targets for politicians and the media (the "New Deal" and Huey Long's "Share The Wealth" hustles were two of many examples of the times.....Upton Sinclair's California "EPIC"....an initialism standing for "End Poverty In California" was yet another of fame in the 1930's...).

"Citizen Kane" (1941) was a movie about a bad USA rich guy....tabloid stuff for sure.

It was presented using tried and true 1920's German art movie techniques of proved value...extreme close-ups, distorted angles, unusual and rarely used techniques of framing and scene changes.

"The Third Man" (1949) is the other movie of fame and honor Orson Welles made while still a handsome young man (middle 30's in 1949), and it also used eccentric and honored German art film techniques to portray post WWII Vienna, Austria as the dark world of "Harry Lime," the villain (another villain) Welles portrayed in "The Third Man" (1949).....

BTW, Welles was "the third man" referred to in the movie title, even though he was not officially given status as first billed movie star in "The Third Man" (1949)....Joseph Cotton was the "official" head movie star in that movie.

"Citizen Kane" (1941) became a media event due to the efforts of Orson Welles to make it so, and his efforts continued decades after "Citizen Kane" (1941) was released, and quickly forgotten by most people.

The retrospective (and in ways probably revisionist) history about the movie details....over the decades following 1941...tales of Louis B. Mayer offering almost one million dollars to burn the original negative before the movie is released, tales of the "battle" between then 76 year old Hearst and then 25 year old Welles), and blow-by-blow tales of how the movie "almost never made it to the theaters" and was "disappeared" after a brief release...

Welles became a movie star starting with "Citizen Kane" (1941), married Rita Hayworth, and was a mainstream Hollywood "player" during the 1940's and 1950's until his bad health and old age arrived early ended a not bad 20 year career in movies during which he was seen often on USA and world movie house screens.

He even became a player in the world of television, which displaced Hollywood movies by 1960.......who can forget the Orson Welles "Paul Masson Wine" TV ads promising the world that Masson wines would never reach wine customers "before it's time"? "Citizen Kane" (1941) was and is an OK black and white movie hard to enjoy the first time through which became a long range media event, and still is.

It is much more important as a media event and example of promotion and pop-scholarship than it is or was as a movie which stands on its own feet.

10 stars for "Citizen Kane" (1941) for it's place in "the big picture"......not the same as 10 stars for being a good movie, pure and simple.

"Citizen Kane" (1941) was never "pure and simple." Thank you for reading the 1,064th movie review posted on WWW.IMDb.Com for "Citizen Kane" (1941). I am grateful.

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Written by Tex (David) Allen, SAG-AFTRA accredited movie actor, movie scholar and movie history teacher, and movie reviewer.

Email Tex at TexAlleN@Rocketmal.Com

"Sleuth" (1972) starring Lord Laurence Olivier (1907 - 1989) and Sir Michael Caine (1933 - ), directed by Joseph Mankiewicz (1909 - 1993) is a 2 man "tour de force" stage play presented on film, shot mostly at a famous English restored 15th century manor house mansion called "Athelhampton Hall," owned in 1972 by Joseph Cooke, then a member of the UK Parliament.

Here are details about Athelhampton Hall in England (comments about the "Sleuth" movie follow).............

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The hall is a Grade I listed 15th-century privately owned country house on 160 acres (65 ha) of parkland. It is now open for public visits.

An internet "virtual tour" is possible by visiting WWW.Athelhampton.Co.Uk/ Sir William Martyn had the current Great Hall built in about 1493. A West Wing and Gatehouse were added in 1550, but in 1862 the Gatehouse was demolished.

Sir Robert Long bought Athelhampton House in 1665 from Sir Ralph Bankes. In 1684 an attempt was made by the court to sequester the estate from the then owner, James Long Esquire (son of Sir James Long, 2nd Baronet), to recover a debt, but this seems to have been unsuccessful. The estate passed down through the Long family to William Pole-Tylney-Long-Wellesley (Viscount Wellesley, later 5th Earl of Mornington), who sold it in 1848 to George Wood.

In 1891, the house was acquired by the antiquarian Alfred de Lafontaine, who carried out restoration to the interior and added the North Wing in 1920-21.

At the same time de Lafontaine engaged Inigo Thomas to create one of England's great gardens as a series of "outdoor rooms" inspired by the Renaissance. 20 acres (8.1 ha) of formal gardens are encircled by the River Piddle, and consist of eight walled gardens with numerous fountains and pavilions, plus a balustraded terrace, statues, obelisks and vistas through gate piers. Great Court contains 12 giant yew pyramids set around the pool by the great terrace.

The lawn to the west has an early 16th-century circular dovecote, and the south terrace features a vast Magnolia grandiflora and a Banksian rose. Pear trees cover the old walls and support roses and Clematis.

Athelhampton has been owned by three generations of the Cooke family, the present owners. It was the setting for the 1972 film "Sleuth".

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The movie lasts almost 2 1/2 hours and is hard to watch and get enthusiastic about in spite of the very good actor work of the two movie stars who are the only actors seen in the movie.

The lovely "Athelhampton Hall" setting is sort of the "third actor" in the show, and is one of the reasons the movie's pacing is slowed down (a small part of the movie was shot in London movie studios, but I would guess less than 10% was).

Laurence Olivier and Michael Caine are always worth seeing....they are two of England's best movie actors, and the problem parts of the movie are greatly forgivable simply because of the good work the two stars provide.

That said, there are indeed many "problem parts" of "Sleuth" (1972), and the characters presented by the writer are not interesting or sufficiently endearing to justify the long time the viewer is asked to spend with them.

It is important to like the stars of any movie, and that includes villains, and people who engage in villainy.

Neither of the 2 main (only) characters in "Sleuth" (1972) is sufficiently likable to keep viewers interested, regardless of the superb job Olivier and Caine do with what they are given.

Laurence Olivier probably owned a large percentage of the movie....Michael Caine was just beginning to act in movies he also owned ("Get Carter" [1971] was the first movie Caine produced and owned, partly).

"Sleuth" (1972) shows off Olivier's actor talent, which Olivier was no doubt happy with....and since he was the boss of the production, questions about the movie being a big "ego trip" for Olivier were probably not raised, neither, likely, were objections to the movie's shortcomings....too long, too slow, too obvious, not well written in many ways.

What the viewer and movie historian are left with is the fact that "Sleuth" (1972) is a very important and famous movie starring two of the most important movie actors of the 20th century, and at the same time, it is a mediocre movie in many ways.

It is technically and historically interesting, and not more.

For people (I am one) interested in "stage plays made into movies which remain interesting historical examples of well done stage plays," this movie is worth knowing about and seeing at least once.

BTW, stage plays like "Sleuth" (1972)....a play made into a movie..is arguably an art form which many people agree probably died around 1980....see the excellent documentary titled "Broadway: The Golden Age" [2004] which presents this view.

Any movie which stars Laurence Olivier is important (also true of any movie starring Michael Caine), and therefore, "Sleuth" (1972) is important......but this doesn't mean it's a good movie.

"Sleuth" (1972) is a bad movie with good qualities and excellent actors.....not the same thing as a good movie, sadly.

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Tex (David) Allen is a SAG-AFTRA accredited movie actor.

Email him at TexAllen@Rocketmail.Com

"A New Leaf" (1971) starring Walter Matthau and Elaine May is one of best screwball romantic comedies ever made.

The story is based on a short story by Jack Ritchie titled "The Green Heart" and Elaine May wrote the movie script, directed and starred in the movie.

By far, this is her best movie of all time.

The movie presents a "poor little rich boy" meets "poor little rich girl" story, and follows the two into an unlikely marriage and a story which ends happily, even though the lovable villain, Walter Mathau playing "Henry Graham" does not have good or honest intentions, and does not intend to remain married to his new wife.

(He plans to become a widower taking his new wife's fortune, but at the last moment, changes his mind and his life, and the two literally go off together into a beautiful sunset....a heartwarming ending rare and almost corny, but very welcome).

The movie depends very much on the two main players, and the viewer comes to like them both very much as the story unfolds.

Other supporting actors in the movie are also lovable and wonderful, and very funny.

A really good movie has likable characters the viewer befriends from the very beginning of the film, and which characters remain lovable throughout.

There are no true villains in good movies, and current era movies (2013) often make the mistake of foisting villains of such ugliness and brutal, violent character no onlooker could ever like them.

The movie suffers when this happens, and the fact that despicable people exist in the world and have over history does not justify putting such people into the movies as characters.

No movie can be edifying when such people are portrayed, no matter how skillfully.

A good movie is edifying.

That is true of all good art in any and all fields and categories of art.

"A New Leaf" (1971) is a gratifying example of an edifying movie where all portrayed, large and small roles, major and minor roles, are wonderful and memorable.

It's a movie which makes the viewer feel good, and makes him/her glad for having spent time watching the movie.....and glad to return to it for many repeat screenings.

Very, very few works of cinematic art are like this. That is why "A New Leaf" (1971) really is a treasure. Other classic screwball romantic comedies of note worth seeing, good for the same reasons "A New Leaf" (1971) was good, include "His Girl Friday" (1939), and "Lovers And Other Strangers" (1970).

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Tex (David) Allen is a SAG-AFTRA accredited movie actor.

See details about him on the IMDb website by searching for "Tex Allen."

Email to TexAllen@Rocketmail.Com

"Mondo Cane" (1962) is an update of Homer (fl. c. 800 BC and Aesop (fl. c. 620 BC - 560 BC).....a warning to avoid the bad guys!

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Throughout cultural history in almost all cultures, cultural leaders and artists of fame and importance warn audiences to think twice about people and situations which look good but which are dangerous and should be avoided.

Two early examples are Greek authors Homer and Aesop, and the list at least from their times now thousands of years past is long, and extends to the present day, and into the art of current day cinema.

Gualtiero Jacopetti, credited as the main creator of the documentary movie titled "Mondo Cane" (1962 Italy) is a recent example of Cassandra type artists/ cultural leader who scream out "Beware!" to the rest of us.

Do most people get the point, take the advice of warning givers in the tradition of Homer, Aesop, and Jacopetti, and many, many others (some listed below)?

No....but the warnings continue in an unending stream, and are a noticeable part of cultural history, worth respecting as a phenomenon, even if not agreed with or heeded, which mostly, warnings given by cultural leaders are not (which explains why so few people presently or ever during past history are cultural!).

What's the big deal (the latest big deal) about Jacopetti and his "Mondo Cane" (1962) movie, eh?

We see the beautiful people (mainly the beautiful bathing beauty girls of 1962's "White Australia") at the start of the movie contrasted with others from places like Borneo, Fiji, and Malaysia (rural Italy and sports enthusiast Portugal are also included).

The message is clear...........most of the people and much of what some people in the world do is ugly, uncivilized, dangerous, and should be refused and avoided.

This is not a "love thy neighbor" movie, and refusing "love for thy neighbor" is not a new theme historically.

Homer's "Trojan Horse" story part of his Odyssey epic poem is an early example.

Accepting the big horse outside the gates of Troy might seem like a good idea, but, in hindsight, we realize it would be better for the besieged Trojans to have left it where they found it, and best to destroy it where they found (outside the gates of Troy) if that had been practical.

Two hundred years after Homer (fl. c. 800 BC), roughly, came Aesop (fl. c. 620 - 560 BC), also a Greek who also lived in present day Turkey (aka "Anatolia").

Aesop gives us yet another "avoidance is best" story with his "Farmer and the Viper" fable of fame.

For those who don't know, "The Farmer and the Viper" is one of Aesop's Fables, numbered 51 in the Perry Index.

It (Aesop's Fable) has the moral that kindness to the evil will be met by betrayal and is the source of the idiom 'to nourish a viper in one's bosom'.

The story concerns a farmer who finds a viper freezing in the snow. Taking pity on it, he picks it up and places it within his coat. The viper, revived by the warmth, bites his rescuer, who dies realizing that it is his own fault. In an alternative version, the farmer brings the viper home to warm by the fire. When it threatens his wife and children, he kills it with an axe. It is the latter version that appears in La Fontaine's Fables (VI.13) as Le villageois et le serpent; this ends with the detail that the farmer cuts the snake in three and the parts struggle to re-unite themselves.

The "brotherhood of man" doesn't extend to vipers (Aesop's opinion) any more than it extends to Trojan Horses (Homer's opinion).

Cultural history marched on into relatively recent times, and the cavalcade of writers giving us "Beware" type messages continued.

Thomas Hobbes, Voltaire, the Marquis De Sade, Darwin, Spencer, Thomas Henry Huxley, William Graham Sumner, movies of the 1960's protest era including "Mondo Cane," (1962), "Marat/ Sade" (1966), and "Zabriskie Point" (1969), and more recently William O. Wilson, Harvard University's embattled "Sociobiologist" of fame, still alive, kicking, and writing (in his 80's as of 2013) "Beware" messages to us all about the problems of "Inclusionism" in the same spirit as Homer urged us to avoid (i.e. "don't include) Trojan Horses.

It's up to us to choose........the Australian bathing beauty girls or the Borneo people (who take up much more of "Mondo Cane" 's screen time, so the avoidance point Jacopetti makes is all the more emphatically made......ignored though it was in the "brotherhood of man" historical period which came immediately after the 1962 release of the "Mondo Cane" movie).

We are told (by some, not all) that we are "all brothers" and it's not a good (or moral) idea to avoid particular groups of people, regardless of visual and other evidence we take in.

Is that true?

The long train of historical (including cinematic) cultural "Cassandra's" include many who say (nay, yell loudly, as Jacopetti does in "Mondo Cane" 1962), "No, it is not true, and don't be taken in by the tidal waves of copious propaganda urging otherwise for self-interested, hidden agenda reasons (often not identified or discussed by the warning givers)."

Only the wise survive......... most of the time.

Be wise.........it can't hurt.

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Tex (David) Allen is a SAG-AFTRA actor who has written many reviews of books and movies.

Email: TexAllen@Rocketmail.Com

"Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps" (2010) is a great movie in surprising ways, not obvious, but worth thinking about!

First, it's different than the excellent and deservedly praised and honored "Wall Street" (1987) movie starring Charlie Sheen and Michael Douglas.

"Wall Street II" is good for different reasons. Don't compare apples to oranges! Different, both good, but not for the same reasons.

"Wall Street II" is worth watching (again and again) for several reasons:

1. Great acting by superstar actors like Michael Douglas and Charlie Sheen (not credited, but part of the movie for about 60 seconds....the best 60 seconds in the movie!).

The "accidental meeting at a party" of 1987 "Wall Street" stars Michael Douglas and Charlie Sheen is electric.

These two guys are dynamite, and when mixed, produce incredible dramatics not seen in the rest of the movie, or in most other movies, anywhere.

Two superstars, no other way to describe them.

The movie is worth watching just for the quick take sequence which includes the return of "Bud Fox" (Charlie Sheen) meeting up with "Gordon Gekko" (Michael Douglas), both recently out of prison for "insider information victimless crime" offenses, and both doing great!

You'll go a long way to see better, more dynamic superstar actor work than these two guys provide in this movie.

It's explosive, and it's precious. Anyone who cares for incredible acting MUST see the Gekko and Fox Meetup part of the "Wall Street II."

2. Michael Douglas is an incredible actor of high gifts. He deserved his Best Actor Academy Award from "Wall Street I" (1987) and this movie ("Wall Street II") shows that with good writing and the right story, he can do the same good work, again and again and again.

It is a pleasure and a privilege to see the great Michael Douglas act in "Wall Street II." His Dad, Kirk Douglas (aka "Isadore Dempsky") would be proud of son Mike.

His weight in the movie is bad, and director Oliver Stone wisely shoots around the newly enlarged (too big) waistline Mike has in "Wall Street II."

But...what the hell? Nobody's perfect.

Other "nobody's perfect" fat movie stars in the movie include Sylvia Miles (see her before she gained weight in "Midnight Cowboy" [1969], and Susan Sarandon, who plays the mother of the young man star of the movie with a the strange name "Shia LeBoeuf" or something like that.

The commentary (available on the DVD versions of this movie) of Oliver Stone is wonderful.

Stone went to two famous prep schools (Trinity School in Manhattan, and the Hill School) and then went to Yale U. Then to NYC Film School.

He is an educated, cultured man, and his commentary is filled with references to Greek mythical figures like Tiresias and others one learns only when one goes to the best-of-the-best classical eastern USA private schools....which Oliver Stone did!

The DVD commentaries part of "Wall Street II" are a pleasure to listen to, and that is also true of other commentaries Oliver Stone provides for other DVD's I've seen and heard done by him, especially including his "W" movie.

He's smart, interesting, and his company is for sale in these DVD commentaries, and he's worth inviting to dinner! Make sure the dinner you provide has gourmet tasty food and a beautiful, intriguing, promising female dinner partner for your guest, Oliver Stone.

Great company from a smart, interesting, intelligent, and gracious man.

Get this "feel good" movie and keep it close.

You won't regret it!

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Written by Tex (David) Allen.

Email: DavidAllenUSA@Rocketmail.Com