Random Thoughts

December 1941: Sullivan’s Travels

Sullivan’s Travels. Preston Sturges. 1941.

After a string of low-budget movies today, here’s an A feature. By Preston Sturges! This is his third movie in this blog series! I didn’t plan this! It starts off with people fighting on the top of a speeding train! That’s the best way to start a film!

It’s a movie about making movies, and they condescendingly refer to Hopalong Cassidy movies (which was, like, the previous entry in this blog series).

This is absolutely hilarious. I was literally rolling around on the floor laughing.

(By literally I mean figuratively, of course.)

It’s brilliant. The mix of cynicism and sentimentality is perfect. It’s definitely not a Frank Capra film. (Not that there’s anything wrong with that.)

Wonderful performances and razor-sharp dialogue.

Popular movies in December 1941 according to IMDB:

Votes	Rating	Movie
18951	8.1	Sullivan’s Travels
8371	7.8	Ball of Fire
1982	7.5	Hellzapoppin’
17341	7.4	The Wolf Man
364	7.2	Remember the Day
872	7.1	Mr. Bug Goes to Town
1850	7.1	Johnny Eager
2307	7.0	Tarzan’s Secret Treasure
788	7.0	H.M. Pulham, Esq.
393	6.9	Bedtime Story

This blog post is part of the Decade series.

November 1941: Secret of the Wastelands

Secret of the Wastelands. Derwin Abrahams. 1941.

Oh! This is a Hopalong Cassidy movie! I don’t recall having seen any of these before, but Hopalong himself looks very familiar. According to imdb, William Boyd basically did no other roles after the mid-30s, so I guess I must have seen one of these before?

Looks like he did about 70 of these over a ten-year period (before making the jump to TV), and I’m guessing that this is a pretty undistinguished example of the form.

It definitely has its charms, and I can understand the attraction for children of this era. It’s like a TV series? Only in movie theatres? It looks cheaply made and the plot isn’t very complicated, but it’s kinda fun? Mysteries, hidden tunnels, a slightly awkward love interest thing going on (with the youthful ever-horny sidekick), and a grizzled old coot as the comedic diversion.

It’s very formulaic, but there’s a reason the formula exists.

Surprisingly enough, the Chinese (who looked positively dastardly at the start of this movie) turn out to be good guys!

Oops! Spoilers!

Popular movies in November 1941 according to IMDB:

Votes	Rating	Movie
24665	7.4	Suspicion
4118	7.3	Shadow of the Thin Man
4677	7.3	They Died with Their Boots On
672	7.2	Remorques
1197	7.0	Keep ‘Em Flying
763	6.9	Blues in the Night
295	6.6	Unholy Partners
501	6.6	The Corsican Brothers
335	6.5	Skylark
225	6.5	Go West, Young Lady

This blog post is part of the Decade series.

October 1941: All-American Co-Ed

All-American Co-Ed. LeRoy Prinz. 1941.

Another thing from the box set, and pretty kooky.

It’s a great set-up where they manage to come up with a good explanation for why a guy from an all-male college disguises himself as a woman and goes to an all-female college. I know! The drag isn’t very er fishy, but it’s pretty risque.

There’s some great tunes in here, some over-the-top but pitch perfect performances and it isn’t a second too long. What a nice little surprise.

And it’s the second (and final) movie director LeRoy Prinz did, although he continued to be involved with movies in other capacities. He was mainly known as a choreographer in the 30s and nominated for several Oscars, but this movie looks so great on a scene by scene basis that it’s just incredible that he didn’t do more directing.

This movie isn’t even mentioned on his Wikipedia page.

Popular movies in October 1941 according to IMDB:

Votes	Rating	Movie
118855	8.1	The Maltese Falcon
16506	7.8	How Green Was My Valley
1644	7.5	Never Give a Sucker an Even Break
4470	7.4	49th Parallel
385	7.3	Nothing But the Truth
90494	7.3	Dumbo
2765	7.3	I Wake Up Screaming
797	7.1	One Foot in Heaven
1166	7.1	Swamp Water
878	6.9	Texas

This blog post is part of the Decade series.

September 1941: Let’s Go Collegiate

Let’s Go Collegiate. Jean Yarbrough. 1941.

Another b-movie cheapie from the musicals box set.

And what seems to be a trend here, the b-movies are more diverse than the main features: This on has not only black people, but an Asian guy! Which is a first in this blog series, I think.

It’s amusing, I guess, but it feels like it never really gets its steam up. It wants to spiral out of control, but instead nothing really happens.

Popular movies in September 1941 according to IMDB:

Votes	Rating	Movie
910	7.8	It Started with Eve
408	7.6	Father Takes a Wife
1334	7.5	Hold Back the Dawn
714	7.1	Ladies in Retirement
256	6.9	La corona di ferro
1590	6.9	You’ll Never Get Rich
586	6.5	Lady Be Good
401	6.5	The Smiling Ghost
514	6.5	Lydia
914	6.5	A Yank in the R.A.F.

This blog post is part of the Decade series.

Useful Consumer Review

In the last episode, I whined about how useless wireless earbuds are, with the main problem being that the typical range of these earbuds extends all the way from your left ear to your left shirt pocket, and not any further (when you’re outdoors and the blutooth signal doesn’t have walls to bounce off of).

But a few weeks back, I read a review for the Jabra Elite 65t, which claimed that these were the best wireless earbuds ever (when it comes to range), so I thought it was worth a go.

And it is! These are larger earbuds than I’ve been using, which probably explains the extra range. They have a little sticky-outey bits that probably has an antenna, and it seems to help: I can now semi-reliably keep my phone in my left pants pocket while having an earbud in my right ear, which was pure sci-fi with the older earbuds.

The UX on these is also quite satisfying: I pick an earbud out of the charging case, and it connects to the phone almost immediately, and then clearly tells me it’s done that. And it has a physical button that can be used to pause/unpause the audio, and switch the earbud on/off (if you don’t have the charging case with you).

If you’re just using a single earbud, that has to be the right one, but they are quite comfortable to wear, so I’ve gotten used to listening to stuff with my right ear only.

The user interface basically can’t be improved upon for my use case, which is walking around listening to radio dramas in one ear. The battery time seems to be good, too: They haven’t run out of juice once while I’ve been using them.

Which brings me to the one annoying thing, because everything has to be annoying, right?

Right.

The charging case itself is just horrible. If you open it a bit stridently, the earbuds are liable to go flying all over the place. And there are no magical magnets to keep them in place, or to guide you to inserting the earbuds back into the case, so you really have to concentrate while doing that.

Here’s an interpretative video:

Which is a shame. This is almost a perfect product, but in daily use, the bad charging pod design is an annoyance.