Burt Watch: Smokey and the Bandit (1977)

Watched:  12/19/2018
Format:  Streaming Amazon Prime
Viewing:  Unknown
Decade:  1970's

Christmas Noir Watch: Lady in the Lake (1946)

Watched:  12/19/2018
Format:  DVR off TCM
Viewing:  unknown.  5th?
Decade:  1940's

PODCAST: "Love Actually" (2003) - Episode 4 in the Signal Watch Holiday Cinema Series - w/ SimonUK and Ryan!

Watched:  12/17/2018
Format:  DVD
Viewing:  Second
Decade:  2000's

Simon brings a bit of British Christmas into the PodCast to class the place up a bit. We talk 2003's new-classic, "Love Actually", a multi-story, ensemble romantic comedy featuring an all-star cast. And Simon explains to Ryan the stuff he didn't get as a slow-witted American.




Music:

Christmas Time is Here - Vince Guaraldi Trio from A Charlie Brown Christmas
Christmas is All Around - Bill Nighy as "Billy Mack" Love Actually OST
O Tannenbaum - Vince Guaraldi Trio from A Charlie Brown Christmas


Holiday Cinema Series Playlist

Penny Marshall Merges With the Infinite

According to numerous press sources, director and actor Penny Marshall has passed.

Like everyone else my age, I grew up with Laverne & Shirley, where Marshall played a working class girl cohabitating with her best pal, Shirley, as they had weekly misadventures for years on network TV. 

She disappeared briefly, only to re-emerge as a director of a number of movies I saw and liked in formative years, including Jumping Jack Flash and Big.  Honestly, I've thought of her more as Director Penny Marshall for decades at this point, and it's a remarkable two-part career she was able to pull off.

Marvel Watch: Spider-Man - Into the Spider-Verse (2018)

Watched:  12/15/2018
Format:  Alamo Drafthouse South
Viewing:  First
Decade:  2010's

Noir Watch: "The Naked City" (1948)

Watched: 12/15/2018
Format: TCM on DVR (from Criterion, natch)
Viewing: first
Decade: 1940's

"There are 8 million stories in the Naked City.  This has been one of them." is probably a line you've heard used somewhere - maybe not from this movie, exactly, but from the television show loosely based on this movie that was a sort of crime-anthology series that started off in the late 1950's, aping the style of police procedural that The Naked City (1948) may not have originated, but it did get down to a T.