smaynard-2 Reviews

Reflections in a Golden Eye (1967)

A couple of strange performances, at the very least!

[5/10 · 19 August 2005]

See this film if only to see some truly unusual performances, including the one given by Marlon Brando. A totally bizarre performance is given by Zorro David as the Filipino houseboy, Anacleto. Apparently this was his only film role, which is no surprise. In fact, just his dialogue is weird enough to make this film worth seeing!

It's hard to see anything else when Liz Taylor is on screen, though ... she looked SO good then. Julie Harris delivers a fine performance as the mentally ill wife of Brian Keith, who seems rather subdued in this role. And in spite of an uneven script, director John Huston's touch is pleasingly evident.

Edison Kinetoscopic Record of a Sneeze (1894)

And shortly before he sneezed, . . .

[19 May 2001]

One story has it that, in 1877, railroad tycoon Leland Stanford and a pal were having drinks on Stanford's California stud farm, when one or the other of them wondered aloud whether or not a galloping horse ever had all four hooves off the ground.

Stanford directed his chief researcher to find out. In turn, the researcher hired Eadweard Muybridge (real name: Edward Muggeridge) a landscape photographer of note, to set up 24 cameras with trip wires along a track. A horse ran through the wires, tripping the shutters of the cameras, and the resulting photographs showed that, indeed, all four of the horses' hooves were off the ground for quite a while. When viewed rapidly in sequence, these photos were the precursor to "motion pictures".

What was needed of course, was film that moved through the camera, and several people created cameras and projectors (sometimes the same device) that did this, but all had various shortcomings.

Thomas Edison directed his employee, a Scotsman named W. K. L. Dickson (who would later go on to found Biograph Pictures), to study the inferior machines then in use, and come up with something better. He did, sort of, and he (under Edison's name) came up with the kinetograph (the camera), the kinetoscope (the projector) and the kinetophone (the projected film). None of these technologies were actually new, but Dickson's advances in each device resulted in a system that simply produced better looking presentations.

On April 14, 1894, at a theater on Broadway in New York City, several of Dickson's films were presented together, at an admission fee of 25 cents. The show included short films of a dancing bear, some Vaudeville pratfalls, and, . . . "Fred Ott's Sneeze", which became the very first copyrighted motion picture.

Shock Waves (1977)

An anecdote about this movie

[3 June 2000]

As a pre-production assistant and sound recordist on this film, I remember producer Reuben Trane and Director Ken Wiedernorn returning to the production office after taking co-star John Carradine from Miami's airport to his hotel.

Everyone on the crew was interested in how Carradine, in his late '70's and a movie icon if ever there was one, looked, acted, felt, etc. We were all keen to know if he seemed fit and ready for a role that required quite a bit of physical action, including moving as rapidly as possible from a small dinghy to a larger boat, while both were bobbing at sea.

Reuben and Ken came into the office looking morose as someone asked, "So, how IS he?" I don't remember which of them responded, but one of them said, "Let's put it this way, he has trouble walking on flat land with a cane!"

But, trooper that he was, Carradine did everything asked of him without complaint. He was also often "the life of the set", and in between takes or after a days' shooting, he would regale us all with wild tales of Hollywood and the stars and moguls he had known so well.

It's been about 25 years since I worked on "Shock Waves", but the memory of old man Carradine lives on vividly. He was a helluva guy.

Under the Lighthouse Dancing (1997)

A woman learns she is dying shortly before her husband-to-be and their friends can put together her wedding.

[8 October 1999]

I agree with Mar-2, . . . this film is a beautiful celebration of love and friendship. It also reminds us of how fleeting and precious love can be. It has a well crafted story, believable acting, and good design and direction. I highly recommend it.