BruceH

It's one of those commentaries that makes you like the film more, that's for sure. I tend to like commentaries by noir sage Eddie Muller and DVD Savant Glenn Erickson. And that "20th Century Fox Studio Classics" series of DVD re-releases tends to have good-to-excellent commentaries, and often two commentary tracks, which is nice. Got to mention Criterion of course: The commentaries on their The Lady Eve, The 39 Steps, The Lady Vanishes, Notorious, Grand Illusion, and Trouble In Paradise are pretty good. I'm not so happy with the commentary on the new edition of The Third Man but you can't have everything. Gun Crazy and Murder, My Sweet from the first Warners Noir Box have very helpful, information-packed commentaries that add greatly to an appreciation of the movies. (The other DVD's in the box, not so much.) Finally, I hate to admit this, but the Ebert commentary track for Citizen Kane is pretty top-notch, believe it or not. (There's also a second commentary track by Peter Bogdanovich that isn't as good.) It's on the 2-disc "special edition" DVD, but this has been the standard edition in the US for some time. Rooster, you've got me beat---I've only seen Kane 7 or 8 times on the big screen! The most memorable was at the 4,000-seat Metropolitan/Wang Theater on the 50th-anniversary re-release. The place was sold out and people loved it!

Why didn't he just flip the damn records like you do in the store, rather than grabbing them one by one and removing them from the stack. That took forever.

Hey, I happen to be reading that now! Can't be just a coincidence; God must have made it happen!

All the solos were made from scratch!

Who is Kim Kelly? A character from the TV show "Freaks & Geeks."

"...It just goes on, and on, and on, and seems like it was written in a total hurry. All I know is if I passed in something like this, I'd get a totally bad grade on it." ---Kim Kelly

It would be worth it for a hot minute, just to see and hear those first few press conferences and public service announcements.

Great recommendations! I got the Jazz Reunion album on vinyl back in the 80's---one of the first things by Pee Wee that I ever got, and I still like it. Swingin' With Pee Wee I picked up just a few years ago and it's great value for the money.

I've heard them. Particularly like the Five Keys and Moonglows. Probably my favorite group are The Five Royales. They had great harmonies, great instrumental chops, and (aside from the usual amount of novelty tunes) some damn good songwriting.

I always spelled it "Sympathy For the Devil."

You are so right Jim. Yesterday I had a tune from Blues Up and Down (the 2fer) going through my head all day. When I got home I clicked through the CD to find out which one it was. Sure enough, it was "Hey Lock."

More like the kooky Berkley label.

Was Fagen's "The New Frontier" actually a hit? Nifty. Though hardly surprising as it sounds so much like Steely Dan. The song I hear played the most from that album is "IGY." I've heard that in waiting rooms, supermarkets, bowling alleys, you name it. Somehow I still like it though.

I used to collect doo-wop and girl group music in the early 80's. Since then I've re-bought some stuff on CD, but I'm not obsessed with getting all of it duplicated on CD because I don't listen to it as much as I used to. I got the Rhino "hat-box" collection that was mentioned. It's a great compilation that I like better than their doo-wop boxes, even with the inevitable overlap of songs I have two or three copies of. I'm also a fan of the Spector girl-group stuff. I actually got some used 45's (Darlene Love, the Ronnettes) ages ago, and some years later made some tapes of the 'Back To Mono' box (thank God for libraries.) When the price of that box went down so low I finally bought the damn thing last year. The whole girl group genre (or style) has always been particularly amenable to the "One-hit-wonder" syndrome. Some group would come out with a gem ("Mr. Lee" for instance) and then sink back into obscurity. The field is rife with these, if you'll pardon the expression, nuggets. Part of the charm. These days I would never want to listen to girl groups all the time, but I'm glad it's there, always kept in reserve as it were.

Amazon sure doesn't say much about it. But then, this is one of those books I'd have to physically look over before buying.

D'oh!!

Only if Mel got to direct, produce, and finance the film himself. And Monk's life just wasn't violent enough.

When the panic broke out, I looked over my collection and decided I already had pretty much all the OJC's that I want/need right now, so for me, the answere is none. I'm sure that if there are any I decide I want in the future, there'll be some way to download or access them, perhaps using some nifty device that makes the ipod look like a victrola.

What'djathink? I got this myself, and I have to say that it's a flawed, yet intelligent and powerful film. Especially for what is, in essence, a mere monster movie. Kind of difficult, unfortunately, to see the great actor Dana Andrews in latter days, clearly drunken in several scenes. Peggy Cummins, the most fatale of femmes in Gun Crazy is good in a good girl role, and villain Niall MacGinnis is magnificent, the ultimate scary clown. Director Tourneur is still in his prime, and the flick is surprisingly chilling and affecting. Glenn Erickson, AKA "DVDSavant," suggests that the controversial scenes explicitly showing the demon were shot actually by Tourneur, barring the close-ups. I'm inclined to believe him. Erickson even defends the close-ups as well, which is where I part company with him. But imagine the movie without them, and I believe that the long-shots of the demon, perhaps cut by several frames in an ideal world, are quite effective in the context of the film. I agree; flawed but surprisinly good. Or not so surprising if you know Tourneur's earlier work. As for Dana Andrews, there was worse to come--I saw portions of some later films recently, and he looked even more under the weather, shall we say, than in Demon. Tourneur supposedly directed a couple of episodes of The Twilight Zone. I should seek those out.

Which one? Yet another version of Body Snatchers opening this month..."The Invasion" with Nicole Kidman & Daniel Craig. I've got extremely low expectations of this one. It's been sitting on the shelf since early 2006 and has been massively re-scripted, re-shot and generally tweaked to the point where most likely nothing is left. ...And it seems to be set in a big city rather than a small town like the original. (Of course, the 1978 remake was set in San Franciso of all places, where if everyone were taken over by space aliens, the outside world wouldn't know the difference.) But I think Kidman is damn good actress. If there's anything good in the movie, she'll help it.

Hey, man, you're the one who hipped me to Mr. Show! With the velveteen touch of a dandy fop! Thanx! You're very welcome. The time is now, children are our future....

By the way, it must be noted here that "I'm just a Bill" was written by Frishburg but sung by Jack Sheldon. "Conjunction Junction" was written by Dorough, sung by Sheldon. See Here Are people going to start dissing Jack Sheldon now? Actually, I have to admit to not being familiar with most of the names on the list that started this thread. Maybe I should be thankful for that, I don't know.

OUCH! That youtube clip is stricty from cringeville! I recall coming home from school in the afternoons in the early 1970s and flipping on the tube to watch Griffin and/or Douglas myself. I remember seeing acts from the sublime to the ridiculous, or sometimes both, , like the Mills Brothers, Charo, Buddy Hackett, etc. Quite an education, in its own way. Same here. Though I recall liking Mike Douglas more. Surprised to learn that Merv Griffin was born and raised right here in the Bay Area, in the small city of San Mateo.

Nice list, Kalo! For some reason, "No Language in Our Lungs" now makes me think of gym class... I would add "When You Were Mine," from the Prince album Dirty Mind. I believe that came out in 1980.

I'll always like Harry Connick Jr. for doing the voice of Dean McCoppin in The Iron Giant. Admittedly, that has nothing to do with singing.