The Bird
Jessica May ought to have the edited version of FlashCast 25 in my grubby little hands shortly, but, in the meantime, have you fully enjoyed our weekend releases?
Tonight we’re off to the bright lights and cold pavement of the city, so that we might take in The Maltese Falcon on the big screen. You’ll have to excuse me if I get a little wound up on the topic in today’s blogging: it probably ranks above Casablanca for my favourite Bogart film.
Warner hated to see actors smoking on the screen, fearing it would prompt smokers in the movie audience to step out into the lobby for a cigarette. During the filming of _Maltese Falcon, The (1941)_, Warner told director John Huston that smoking in the film should be kept to a minimum. Bogart and Lorre thought it would be fun to annoy Warner by smoking as often as possible, and got their co-stars, Mary Astor and Sydney Greenstreet to go along with the joke. During the initial filming of the climactic confrontation, all four actors smoked heavily. After seeing the rushes, Warner furiously called Huston to his office and threatened to fire him from the picture if he didn’t tell Bogart and Lorre to knock it off. Realizing their prank had backfired, Bogart and Lorre agreed to stop smoking on camera. However, when the next series of rushes came back, it was obvious that the *lack* of smoking by the actors was taking away from the sinister mood of the scene. Huston went back to Jack Warner, and convinced him that the smoking added the right amount of atmospheric tension to the story, arguing that the characters *would* smoke cigarettes while waiting nervously for the Maltese Falcon to arrive.
– imdb
The topic also reminds me of this fantastic Adam Savage talk from TED. It’s a bit of a geek-out-on-pixie-sticks, but the ride is definitely worth the price of admission.
[youtube_sc url=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=29SopXQfc_s]
Sam Spade refers to Wilmer as a “gunsel”, a term the censors assumed was a slang reference to a gunman. […] It is more usually an “underground” term which refers to a person who is either a “fall guy” or a “stool pigeon”, in which case Spade is making both a direct and an indirect reference to Wilmer’s character.
– imdb
For example, were you aware that in 2007 the MPAA, who gives the motion pictures their ratings, decided that excessive smoking can lead to a film being rated R? It’s apparently why Sigourney Weaver’s character begins Avatar as an intense smoker, then, midway through – post-MPAA announcement – she suddenly drops off.
While it’s never been especially all right to go around pummeling ladies, I’ve certainly had a few moments of “whoa” while watching older films. There’s a scene in 
The worst offender, however – and this goes double for musicals – is casual racism.
It’s horrible enough to have a film with a groveling, illiterate black-servant character played for comedy, but there’s a period in musicals in which you can not avoid a well-known actor showing up, under a cake of makeup, to make the modern audience uncomfortable. The picture above is Fred Astaire, in blackface, for the movie 
Pierce Brosnan as James Bond doing the shooty-jumpy-explodey-spy-thing. They turned it into a video game at the time of its release, a classic for the GameCube that I wasted many hours on in my youth.
This, to me, falls directly in line with the buggering up of Star Wars, and the removal of weapons from E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial.
I haven’t been writing reviews of all the films I’ve watched so far for the October 31, although I’ll probably go back and chat them up when I have more of an opportunity – still, I wanted to take a moment to mark the watching of Horror Express, (aka Panic in the Trans-Siberian Train,) as it certainly deserves a bit of the spotlight.
For those who don’t recall, we’re talking about a fellow whose original effort at breaking into the movie business was so bad that he ended up selling it himself via late night infomercials; it’s actually how he got into the business of selling garbage no one needs.
I would love to show you a youtube clip of the original Underground Comedy, just to demonstrate how drab and soul-sucking it was, but Vince has had every scrap of it removed from the usual public video feeds.