Today I got a really cool dvd set in the mail : Collection One of episodes from the first season of "Tales Of Tomorrow", a very early television series from 1951! "Tales" was a sci-fi anthology series, one of the first ever created, and it was performed and broadcast live, so part of the excitement of watching it now is to see the cast flying by the seat of their pants and imagining them on air as it happened, when TV was brand new. You actually hear a flub or two in the delivery of lines, which makes the performance feel all the more real. As an added bonus, the original commercials are included in the episodes. In the one I watched tonight, which was called "Verdict From Space" and had to do with aliens being upset about our development of the H-Bomb, there was only a single sponsor, a maker of affordable designer watches. The ads for the watches are stylish but also so quaint as to make you smile sheepishly at the way the world once was, and how you might wish it to be again someday.
Anyway, hugely recommended! "Tales Of Tomorrow", man what a great show, if the first episode was any indication. The image looks passable, it is nearly 70 years old and has not been restored, but all in all it is very watchable. The audio sounds a bit garbled in places, but again, this does not detract overall.
The writing is excellent, you get a truckload of story in 25 minutes, and they explore topics like the hydrogen bomb, which was brand new in 1951! Holy smokes it was a topical issue! They were blowing the damn things off in the atmosphere, vaporizing small islands during tests.
Maybe it wasn't such an innocent time after all.......(oy). But really it was an innocent time, because the American culture was not yet bored and cynical, and so much had not yet happened. Elvis was still five years away, and the Moon eighteen. Personal computers would come in another lifetime called The Eighties. Everything was new in the 50s. It was a world of possibility.
Mom and Dad moved to Los Angeles in 1951, because Dad had just been hired by ABC-TV in Hollywood. Coincidentally, ABC is the station that broadcast "Tales Of Tomorrow", so maybe the show was on the schedule when Dad arrived to work at the station. I was stoked to find this dvd set on Amazon, and there are two more collections available. They don't have all the episodes, because I guess some weren't salvageable due to age, but I'm still gonna buy all the sets. This is one show I am gonna savor every moment of, because I love that time period of the early 50s (just like "The 1950s Housewife" does). :):) /////
I also watched a movie, "The Kid Brother" (1927) starring Harold Lloyd, a Silent comedy classic. I have been catching up on my Lloyd films, little by little, and I am coming to regard him as equal in talent to Buster Keaton, though in a different way. Of course, Harold Lloyd doesn't need my approval. He was a much bigger box office star than Keaton. Buster may have done the more elaborate stunts and set pieces, but Lloyd specialised in sight gags and facial expressions (he invented the Double Take), and he is almost manic in his energy, The pace never slows in a Lloyd movie, and the laughs keep coming throughout. Like Buster, he often was portrayed as a wimp trying to prove himself, and this is the case in "The Kid Brother", where he is seen as unmanly by his gruff Sheriff father and his two linebacker-sized older brothers. Ultimately he will have to prove himself to them, which he will do through sheer comedic insanity. The plot involves some crooks who have arrived in town in the guise of a traveling Medicine Show. They have a Pretty Girl in tow, and in Silent films, girls were at their prettiest and most girly, and always had "one up" on the men.
Lloyd and Keaton were like two sides of the same coin. I remember when we did a Buster Keaton retrospective at CSUN about two years ago, and Professor Tim remarked that there are two camps of dedicated fans, those for Buster and the others for Harold Lloyd. "There are Buster people and Lloyd people" is how he put it. He was talking about longtime fans, people who have followed Silent comedy from way back. Me, I was new to all of this when I saw my first Buster Keaton flick in 2017, and my first Harold Lloyd about a year later.
I don't see why you can't like 'em both. In fact, I think if you like one, you are automatically gonna like the other. I am finding Harold Lloyd to be an absolute riot and "The Kid Brother" may be the funniest film I've seen by him so far. This one is another recent release by Criterion and the restoration is close to perfect. It looks like you are watching a new release of a 92 year old film.
Two Huge Thumbs Up is the obvious result. If you want to have a good time, watch Harold Lloyd make a nitwit out of himself for 80 minutes, while thwarting some even bigger nincompoops. It's high energy comedy, and it goes without saying that "they don't make 'em like this anymore". ////
Because it was a day off, I finally got out on a hike, my first in three weeks. I only went up to Aliso, nothing new or fancy, but it was so good to be up there all the same. When you don't see it for a while, you regain that feeling of being in "Lord Of The Rings" territory. The place is pure magic and I am grateful to live nearby.
Elizabeth, I am happy to see that you are working on your new dance film. It's pretty wild that you guys still have a heavy layer of snow in May (I mean, that pic looks like the dead of Winter!), but as you say - "only in Wisconsin". And I am glad you were able to get your last minute shot. :)
That's all I know for tonight. See you in the morning, big love until then. xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
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