Film #34: Quasi at the Quackadero

Yet another short I like (look at the two others below) is by Sally Cruickshank. Titled Quasi at the Quackadero, it's the closest that cartoons have come to replicating the feel of underground comix. The colorful, even trippy animation coupled with the wonderful voice work (I love Anita's nasal whine) captivated me when I first saw this on the big screen at the Rhodes Theater in Atlanta. I

Film #33: Special Delivery

This cartoon, by John Weldon and Eunice Macauley, is one of the funniest bits of animation I have ever seen. Everything works together: the soapy organ music, the inventive scripting, the sardonic narration, and the fun colored-pencil animation style. I saw this on HBO in the 1980s, not long after it took home an Oscar in 1978 for Best Animated Short. I remember being slightly shocked at the

Film #32: Timepiece

Jim Henson's Timepiece was Oscar-nominated for Best Live Action Short in 1965. I saw this unusual pre-Sesame Street short on HBO in the early 1980s and have remembered it ever since as one of the strangest moments I ever had watching a film--such a bizarre notion, that "Kermit" is behind all this madness. I still am not sure what Timepiece is all about, except to say that it explores beats,

Film #31: Titus

After mounting such grand Broadway productions as the acclaimed The Lion King, director Julie Taymor was seen as a natural to make the leap over to movies. Her first film, Titus, proved right those willing to take a chance on her. While the movie's extraordinary design suffers from the scale-down to television, Titus -- one of Shakespeare's most maligned plays -- now crackles as a most

Film #30: Electra Glide in Blue

It's a strange feeling to write about Robert Blake movies now, after so much has happened to him in his personal life. But, all that aside, if you think about it, Blake had a long and fascinating career in movies. Under his real name Mickey Gubutosi, he was Mickey in Hal Roach's Our Gang series of short films. He went on to play Little Beaver, the Native American sidekick to Red Ryder (Bill

Film #29: Inside Moves

I'll never forget catching Inside Moves on cable back in the early 80s. It was like finding buried treasure, it really was. This 1980 film has now been almost totally forgotten--it's not even on DVD. But if you ever get a chance to see it, and have a prediliction for the sentimental, the beguiling, the intelligent, the well-crafted film, then you will love it as much as I did. Richard

Film #28: Point of Order!

Anybody who saw George Clooney's Good Night, and Good Luck and was interested in learning more about dirty ol' Joe McCarthy should rent Emile de Antonio's 1963 documentary Point of Order! Cut from hours of old kinescopes of the 1953 Army hearings that destroyed the red-baiting senator and his evil minion/lawyer Roy Cohn, Point of Order! is one of the greatest historical documents ever put to film