DALENBERG
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CULT, CLASSIC, INDEPENDENT AND AWARD-WINNING FILMS FROM AROUND THE WORLD
God Told Me To. Directed by Larry Cohen. USA, 1976.
This is one of those films that starts as one thing and then morphs into something completely different. As the layers of the onion are stripped away one by one, you end up somewhere that you had no idea you were heading for when you started out. I think of...
1909. Corner in Wheat. Directed by D.W. Griffith.
1909 in "100 Years, 100 Films" sees the advent of the one director who is responsible for more films in this series than any other, D.W. Griffith. Looking back at film history in chronological order, it is very obvious that there be a B.G. and an A.G. after the...
Men in Black. Directed by Ray McCarey, Featuring The Three Stooges. USA, 1934.
The Three Stooges (Moe Howard, Larry Fine, and Curly Howard) hit their stride in their third short feature for Columbia Pictures, Men in Black. The title is a play on "men in white," referring to hospital staff doctors in white coats. The Stooges play three...
1908. El Hotel Electrico (The Electric Hotel), directed by Segundo de Chomon
Acquiring the Lumière patents, the French company Pathé quickly rose to dominate the film industry in the early days of cinema. Around this time (1908), Pathé invented the newsreel, which came to supplant the actuality films as the leading form of documentary on...
8-1/2. Directed by Federico Fellini. Italy, 1963.
In his book The Great Movies (2002), Roger Ebert speaks disparagingly of those who follow the conventional wisdom that Fellini was better in his early, neo-realist films than in his later visions of personal fantasy and excess. Ebert flat out writes "This...
That Fatal Sneeze, directed by Lewin Fitzhamon. UK, 1907.
A comedy trick film from the makers of Rescued by Rover. Lewin Fitzhamon (1869-1961) was producer Cecil Hepworth's favorite director until "Fitz" broke away to form his own film company in 1912. Like many early film-makers, they played a lot with "trick films,"...
Grindhouse, directed by Robert Rodriguez & Quentin Tarantino (2007)
Robert Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino are kindred cinematic spirits. They both had their directorial debuts in 1992. Rodriguez made one of the 3 or 4 most celebrated independent films of all times with El Mariachi, which produced the miracle of $2 million from a...
The Dream of a Rarebit Fiend. Directed by Edwin S. Porter for the Edison Company. USA, 1906.
Winsor McCay's comic strip "Dreams of the Rarebit Fiend" ran in the Evening Telegram (a sister newspaper to The New York Herald) from 1904-1911. Pictured here is the Dover Books facsimile edition of a 1905 Frederick A. Stokes publication collecting the early...
The Battle at Elderbush Gulch, directed by D.W. Griffith (1913)
Two orphan girls are sent to live with their uncle in the wild West. They bring along two puppies in a picnic basket as companions. When the puppies run off, they are picked up by Native Americans (depicted as broad stereotypes with Griffith's usual ham-handed...
Rescued by Rover. Directed by Lewin Fitzhamon; Produced by Cecil Hepworth. UK, 1905.
This delightful film is the template for all hero dog movies to follow, especially the Lassie films. Maybe it is an urban legend, but allegedly the surge in popularity of the name Rover for pet dogs started with this movie. When a baby is kidnapped, the family dog...
