January 1943: The Hard Way























Opening with an attempted suicide, that’s not what you expect when imdb says that this is a romantiv musical. The scenes of industrial grime in a factory town are stunning.

imdb is on acid, of course. This is a movie about struggling out of property and the hard-nosed grift needed. Ida Lupino is brilliant as the schemer and Joan Leslie is perfect as the ingenue.

But… the last half, when we get The Moral, just isn’t very exciting. “Oh, yeah, being relentlessly ruthless might perhaps not be healthy. Got it.”

Basically: The first half hour is great, and then it’s off into very clichéd territory. I love melodrama, but this goes all kitch.

The Hard Way. Vincent Sherman. 1943.

Popular movies in January 1943 according to IMDB:

PosterVotesRatingMovie
471548.0Shadow of a Doubt
2917.6The Adventures of Smilin’ Jack
4317.3Forever and a Day
8107.2The Hard Way
5547.0No Time for Love
17407.0Tarzan Triumphs
6276.7Immortal Sergeant
3796.6The Crystal Ball
6726.4Hitler’s Children

This blog post is part of the Decade series.

Download Codes

I mostly buy music on physical format because… I don’t know. I’m old? Right. So included in the latest batch was the new single from 80s phenomenon Soft Cell:

And as is often the case these days, there’s a download code included so that people presumably can avoid actually listening to the vinyl:

Now, I usually ignore these download codes, because my experience with them is pretty negative: You usually get a badly-organised zip file with some crappily encoded mp3s, and no cover artwork or anything, so it’s just a lot less work for me to just sample the vinyl, really, since I’ve got that pipeline set up nicely.

And besides, mp3 eww dude!

(The exception here is the excellent Bandcamp site, which gives you perfectly-organised zip files of high quality FLAC files, including nice cover artwork. Virtually all the music I’ve bought online is from Bandcamp.)

But this download code said “download the free digital album”, and I though “uhm, there’s an album? The vinyl is just two songs but perhaps there’s an album included somehow?” I mean, it’s unlikely, but it’s possible. Things are weird in music these days.

So I go to The Sound of Vinyl, and there’s this page:

So I tried clicking on the “enter this code field”… but that turns out to just be a picture.

But there’s that big red button! Let’s try clicking it!

…

So to get the “free” “digital” “album”, I have to do a social media hookup thing? Or give them my email?

Yeah right.

But?

Argh.

So the scam here is to gather contact information, I guess? Well, fuck you then, The Sound of Vinyl.

Feel free to use the secret code if you want to. I guess it’s first come first served?

It’s not a very good single.

December 1942: A Night To Remember


















Oh, this is just perfect. It’s a screwball comedy about a couple moving into a haunted tenement house… OR IS IT!??!

Things move at a brisk pace, and if all the individual gags aren’t exactly genius, it all just kind of works.

“Jeff! Don’t be a fool!”

“Don’t be silly. I’ve always been a fool.”

See?

It turns into a marvellously convoluted mystery and it’s hugely amusing. Loretta Young and Brian Aherne turn in wonderfully over-the-top performances.

It’s an almost perfect little thing.

A Night To Remember. Richard Wallace. 1942.

Popular movies in December 1942 according to IMDB:

PosterVotesRatingMovie
54348.0Random Harvest
24427.6Went the Day Well?
2157.54 passi fra le nuvole
139667.4Cat People
5437.2Journey for Margaret
4456.9Thunder Rock
30916.9The Black Swan
3866.8Whistling in Dixie
3766.8Tennessee Johnson
16176.8Keeper of the Flame

This blog post is part of the Decade series.

November 1942: Once Upon a Honeymoon


















Ginger Rogers! Cary Grant! In a romantic Nazi intrigue comedy!

Director Leo McCarey was a veteran director with films like Duck Soup on his resumé, but hadn’t really been super-successful. (He did do An Affair To Remember later, though.)

And… this movie tries so hard. It’s got so much going for it, like Rogers’ preposterous English accent, and Grant hamming it up, and a bunch of scenes that are screwier than a Black & Decker. But somehow the pacing is just off. Instead of jokes landing, I find myself going “Yes, I can see that’s a very good bit. Quite amusing”.

Everything should just have been faster and wilder. It’s like they could have excised one third of the frames out of every scene and this would almost have been a classic.

Well, for the first third, at least. Then it kinda goes totally off the rails. And this DVD restoration shifts between scenes that have pretty good film quality and some that are atrocious, and the latter bits are scenes that are painfully bad. So was this put together from footage found on the editing room floor?

Once Upon a Honeymoon. Leo McCarey. 1942.

Popular movies in November 1942 according to IMDB:

PosterVotesRatingMovie
4061848.6Casablanca
24967.7Gentleman Jim
87797.7The Palm Beach Story
42057.3Road to Morocco
24267.3You Were Never Lovelier
5417.3‘Neath Brooklyn Bridge
4696.9Springtime in the Rockies
20146.5Once Upon a Honeymoon
2476.4Seven Sweethearts
2576.2Boston Blackie Goes Hollywood

This blog post is part of the Decade series.