Bedazzled, Part Two

A while back, we provided a short commentary on the film Bedazzled, starring Dudley Moore, Peter Cook, and Raquel Welch but felt it was worth providing a little information on this movie because it is quite entertaining, and also a film most folks have never seen. In 1966, Raquel Welch became very famous from the success in the cult classic, One Million Years BC, and she was also terrific in Fantastic Voyage, (where they shrink some people to inject them into a body to perform a delicate operation on an important diplomat. That films also stars Stephen Boyd, Donald Pleasance, and Edmond O'Brien, but i digress). Anyway in 1967, she played one of the seven deadly sins, (yep, Lust :~), and well, she was built for this role.

I have always been a HUGE fan of British humor, and Bedazzled is just dripping irony and biting sarcastic social commentary. While it is very funny and light, it is also very thought provoking, especially the part where Peter Cook, as Satan explains that he is doing God's will, by being Satan, since God needs a devil to tempt people so they can have the tests in life that build character.

Bedazzled was directed by the legendary Stanley Donen, whose credits include Charade, The Pajama Game, Singing in the Rain, and Royal Wedding. Donen also direct Indiscreet (Ingrid Bergman, Cary Grant) and Funny Face (Audrey Hepburn, Fred Astaire). So what are you waiting for? Go check out Bedazzled and see for yourself if it a great movie. I think it is.

We're Talking Baseball

In the unlikely event that tonight's MLB All-Star game is a blowout or just boring, check out some of these highly entertaining baseball video clips in the LikeTelevision library. My personal favorites include the Jackie Robinson Story, Bang the Drum Slowly, starring Paul Newman, and The Clampetts Meet the Dodgers, where Jethro Bodine gets a tryout with Leo Durocher of the Los Angeles Dodgers. And for all of you New York Yankees fans, check out this vintage video clip, The Lou Gehrig Story, which includes the Iron Horse's legendary farewell speech to all the Yankee fans at Yankee Stadium. ("I consider myself the luckiest man on the face of the Earth...")

Metropolis, Ready for Download

We took a break last week from our job of preparing the studio for a new musical offering. (We hope to be doing some live video shoots of some promising bands on the "chitlin circuit", which goes from Atlanta to Washington, DC). And for your downloading pleasure, we re-encoded a Fritz Lang classic titled Metropolis. This 1927 silent is listed as one of the best movies of all-time by most movie pundits. On IMDB, it is listed as #74 for instance, and carries a respectable 8.4 rating. The movie is all about the scary new technology of the early 1900s, and how electricity and factory automation were going to ruin the world. It is techno-phobia at its finest, and is an interesting film when looked at from today's current hysteria, global warming. (When i was a kid, it was going to get really cold after a nuclear winter. And now we are slated to burn in hell as we get warmer). In any event, the lesson seems to be that all the gloom and doom dire predictions are rarely all they are cracked up to be. Yes, I understand we all should lower our carbon footprint, and i enjoy riding a motorcycle, so I like to think I am doing my part to save on the precious gas droplets, by getting close to 55 miles per gallon. But I digress - check out Metropolis and if you are a member, or want the movie a la carte, go download it. The new MPEG files look great!

If you need more Metropolis related videos, check out Superman as he finds some bad guys at the Metropolis munitions plant.

July Fourth Videos

We hope everyone has a terrific long weekend for the July 4th holiday and we hope that all your burgers are grilled to perfection. Here's a few videos obtusely related to the July 4th holiday. Let's start with some fireworks - a cool cartoon called Patriotic Popeye. Popeye's nephews Peepeye, Poopeye, Pipeye, and Pupeye get their hands on some fireworks and have a bang up time setting them off. If you some eerie sci-fi drama is more your thing, we'd suggest this episode of One Step Beyond, with George Washington on a cold Night in December. If you prefer comedy, watch this Andy Griffith Show episode, Andy Comes to America.

One final July 4th gem, check out Kate Smith debut a new song titled God Bless America on a national radio broadcast in the 1940s during WWII.

George Carlin Remembered

I regret to say that George Carlin, one of the funniest guys EVER - died of heart problems at the age of 1971. Carlin was an early maverick of comedy, in the same vein as a Lenny Bruce, or a Bill Hicks, George Carlin could be very funny, while at the same time being able to "hit that nerve" that made you feel a bit uncomfortable. We have an early example from the Johnny Carson Show, where he did the role of the Hippy Dippy Weatherman, who was a very mellow hippy character who just happened to be a meteorologist. For you youngsters, during the time this clip was made, everyone was VERY worries about getting blown up by the Atomic Bomb, dropped by the Russians. (The 60's equivalent of global terror, Al Qaeda style). And an ICBM ... was an Inter-continental Ballistic Missile. Here's the clip - Carlin is a very young guy in the clip, no beard, why he almost looks like he voted for Barry Goldwater and Eisenhower.

Hockey & Twisted Humor

Here's a few video clips related to hockey humor - Dr. Barre, Hockey Team Dentist, Antoine DuFleur, the poet laureate of the NHL, and The Penalty Box, a description of the rules of hockey from a skewed point of view and Zamboning with Dave, a silly short on cleaning the ice with an Olympia ice scraper. Frank Random makes a guest appearance as a Viking mascot, and Skooter makes his 1999 internet debut as Antoine DuFleur.

Plus - more a hockey commercial with a famous dog. woof woof!

Starry-Eyed Intern

Yep, the deranged knuckleheads at LikeTelevision decided to give a kid a chance, so we decided to get ourselves an intern. Nope, it wasn't a magnanimous philanthropic quest, in fact we were inspired by all the work done for free on behalf the presidential candidates, we thought to ourselves - we should get in on this, and found ourselves a joyous rube ready to work for next to nothing. Better still, he was willing to even clean our bathrooms, even the dreaded - Men's BR! (Now that's saying something - since we did some live recording for the band MegaTurd, all of us who actually work here have used the Ladies bathroom ever since, and they recorded here in 1999). But Mr. Brian, aka the Brian that Wouldn't Die, ventured out into many places no man has dwelled before. Right now we have him doing some painting in the studio - we gave him some basic instructions - we want this 100% black wall to be about 60-70% white, not for any prejudicial gerrymandering of course, we just wanted the wall to reflect more light. And so, to honor his hard work and verve, here's a few pix of our new eager beaver, Brian.