It’s a Bird (1930)
It’s a Small World (1950)
It’s Always Fair Weather (1955)
It’s Hummer Time (1950)
It’s Impossible to Learn to Plow by Reading Books (1988)
Murder at the Vanities (1934)

— — —

It’s a Bird (1930)

Charlie Chucklehead of Chattanooga (Charley Bowers) works at a junk yard, where apparently nobody buys the old auto parts, so he has to smuggle out mufflers and radiators and leave them on the sidewalk and in city parks. Eventually, his work is made easier when he discovers a bird that eats the metal parts.

And this is where the film goes beyond. The bird is briefly introduced in a non-moving drawing that’s uncredited, but looks suspiciously like a work of Dr Seuss. And then the bird becomes … I don’t know what — a bird that eats metal.

It’s not a cartoon. It’s looks real, albeit mechanical, and its movements are either perfect puppetry or stop-motion work that’s done so well it’s lost the stops and appears to be 100% motion.

The film credits this as the Bowers Process, and some quick research tells me that cartoonist and comedian Bowers did indeed invent a special process for animating objects on film, but he kept it such a secret that the secret died with him, in 1947.

As for the film, it’s a 15-minute short structured like a comedy, and it dishes out a few laughs, but mostly it delivers non-stop strange. Which, of course, I love.

Verdict: YES.

♦ ♦ ♦

It’s a Small World (1950)

Harry is a 10-year-old boy who’ll never grow another inch — doctors say he’ll be a midget. To save him from mockery, his father (The Waltons‘ Will Geer) pulls the boy out of school, instead keeping him isolated at home (but the movie portrays this as noble, not cruel). Harry has a crush on a girl, and she likes him too, but she grows up and gets married, while he stays small.

In ordinary movies, a different actor steps in when a child grows up, but in this feature-length short subject, the same actor (Paul Dale) plays Harry as boy and man.

Harry is too proud to join the circus, so he works as a shoeshine boy/man. Then he becomes a pickpocket, because he still looks 10 years old, and who’d suspect a little kid would steal your wallet?

Eventually Harry bursts into song, in this melodrama of minuscule proportions from second-string horror moviemaker William Castle (Homicidal, Straight-Jacket, 13 Frightened Girls, etc). Castle co-wrote the screenplay and directs, but this is early in his career. He hadn’t yet embraced the schlock that later became his fame, so this is as ordinary as a film about a dwarf pickpocket can be.

It has a few classic Castle moments, like when the boy is taunted by his own shadow: “You’d better grow. I’m not gonna stay small.” But both boy & shadow stay small, and the movie stays oddly earnest and even sincere in pursuit of its happy ending.

Verdict: YES.

♦ ♦ ♦

It’s Always Fair Weather (1955)

Gene Kelly, Dan Dailey, and Michael Kidd star in this spiritual sequel to On the Town, but without Frank Sinatra. That movie was about three buddies enjoying a last weekend together before marching off to World War II. This one’s about three buddies (Ted, Doug, and a man improbably named Angie) who fought the war together, then came home to mid-20th-century America.

Ted’s been dumped by the pre-war girlfriend he’d hoped to marry, and sharing drinks to console him, the three men promise they’ll get together ten years later. When they do, it’s a bittersweet reunion. Doug wanted to be an artist, but ends up working in advertising. Angie wanted to be a chef, but now he’s running a burger joint. And Ted’s become a world-class slut and boozer. The three of them trade jokes and sing snappy songs, sure, but the underlying reality is that they’ve all settled for less than they’d wanted from life. As do almost all of us.

The musical numbers are elaborate, and vary from great to nothing much. Kelly sings “Why Am I Feeling So Good?” while skating and tap-dancing in skates, somehow making it look effortless. The three buddies dance with garbage can lids lashed to their feet, which is fun to watch, but inherently sad. A dozen sweaty jocks in a gym belt out a song with lyrics largely indecipherable, and the showstopper is “Baby, You Knock Me Out,” with Cyd Charisse dancing amidst those busted-nose boxers.

Produced by Arthur Freed, co-directed by Kelly and Stanley Donen, It’s Always Fair Weather is beautiful, boisterous, and sometimes on-my-nerve-getting, with moments of melancholy set against music and dancing. You know everything’s going to work out fine, but still it’s pessimistic and emotionally dark, and resonates with our pessimistic and dark times, where you know everything’s not going to work out fine.

Verdict: YES.

♦ ♦ ♦

It’s Hummer Time (1950)

Sylvester the cat is up to all sorts of shenanigans, but at every attempted mischief he’s caught by an authoritarian bulldog. Each time the cat’s caught, the dog dishes out worse and worse punishments. The cat knows he’ll be punished, has endured these same cruelties before, and pleads for mercy: “No, not the rain-pipe…”, but the dog escalates the penalties more and more.

So, seven minutes of a cat & dog’s cruelty and laughs. An allegory for people who enjoy punishment, it’s discipline without the bondage. Sylvester isn’t ready to admit it, but he enjoys this almost as much as the dog, and so did I.

Verdict: YES.

♦ ♦ ♦

It’s Impossible to Learn to Plow by Reading Books (1989)

A few characters hang around, mumble a lot, read their mail, ride a bus, make breakfast, eat dinner, look out the window, walk on the sidewalk, etc. Once in a while they converse, but say nothing interesting. And that’s the movie.

Richard Linklater has done some very good work — Slacker, Dazed and Confused, the Before Sunset/Sunrise/Midnight trilogy, School of Rock, Fast Food Nation, A Scanner Darkly, etc. He’s a reliably interesting moviemaker, and this was his first feature film, but it’s not so reliable.

Whatever traditionally adds up to cinema, Linklater runs in the opposite direction. That was the idea, I think — he wanted to break all the rules at once, and see if he could put something together from all those broken rules.

Linklater himself stars, and you can see elements of Slacker in all this, but whatever vibes, writing, performance, and staging made that movie a success, it ain’t here. It’s Impossible is boring. Simply nothing happens, through the first hour at least. After that, I began growing angry at myself for watching, and clicked it off.

It’s Linklater, though, so I came back a week later and watched to the end. And I will say, the film rallies in its final third. It stopped making me angry.

Guy fixes a flat, then drives his car through bland city traffic, searching for something worth listening to on the radio, changing stations every few seconds… for what seems like five minutes. Then he comes into a shitty apartment, turns on TV, and changes channels every few seconds, looking for something worth watching.

OK, we get the point. Life can be boring, tedious, the options mostly suck. But I’m not sure anyone, even Linklater, can make a message movie where the message is “Life can be boring” that isn’t itself boring, tedious, and sucky.

And yet, the scene in an art cinema is funny. And I kinda want to hear the cassette tape some stranger hands to Linklater. Maybe there’s more to this movie than being boring, tedious, and sucky. Maybe I’ll come back and watch it again in a month…

Verdict: MAYBE.

♦ ♦ ♦

Murder at the Vanities (1934)

It’s opening night for a big-time New York cabaret called “The Vanities.” Things are hectic backstage, and rushing the showgirls along, the stage manager says, “Get in there and get your clothes off.”

This is definitely a pre-code flick. It’s a cross-genre goulash — a musical comedy murder mystery, never quite succeeding as any of those, but so brassy and ballsy it’s still enjoyable.

While some dame sings “Sweet Marijuana,” blood drips from the ceiling onto one of (what the movie repeatedly refers to as) “the most beautiful girls in the world.” There’s been a murder, but the show must go on, so the performers are told that the victim merely fainted, and the cabaret continues, as do the killings.

Accompanied by dozens of dancers, Duke Ellington and his band perform “Ebony Rhapsody” on stage, and then an actor machine-guns them all to death — and the audience laughs, because those murders are a joke, see. The other murders, we’re supposed to take seriously.

The investigating cop is casually corrupt and not very bright, collecting clues at about the same rate as the corpses accumulate, but never interrupting the show.

Some of the costumes are remarkably bold, and one of the insane dance numbers successfully stirred my loins. The cabaret’s main male performer radiates anti-charisma, and much of the singing is quite bad by 2020 standards (and, I suspect, also by 1930s standards).

But you’ve never seen anything quite like this, and neither have I.

Lucille Ball and Ann Sheridan can be spotted among the showgirls. Kitty Carlisle stars, and I’d never seen her in anything but To Tell the Truth, where she was a perpetual panelist all through the 1950s, 60s, and ’70s.

Verdict: YES.

11/29/2025

If you can’t find a movie I’ve mentioned, or you have a recommendation, please drop me a note.

Logo illustration by Jeff Meyer. No talking once the lights dim, and only real butter on the popcorn, not that fake yellow stuff.

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