February 22 - February 28:
Bela Lugosi Meets a Brooklyn Gorilla (1966)
Bela Lugosi, Duke Mitchell, Sammy Petrillo
We got this DVD from our fabulous pal Lenore and finally got around to watching it this week. What a great discovery for the tiki room! Sammy Petrillo, as a low-rent Jerry Lewis imitator, is a train wreck, but the tropical-tiki setting, dumb plot and goofy acting more than make up for it. Thanks, Lenore!
February 1 - February 21:
The Endless Summer (1966)
Mike Hynson, Robert August, Bruce Brown (narrator and director)
This is both a seminal documentary about surfing and one of my favorite films, so I was excited to finally get the DVD for my birthday. I think most people dream of following summer around the world, with no other care than finding the perfect wave, and these guys did it. It's inspiring.
Mad Men, Season One (2007)
Jon Hamm, January Jones, Elisabeth Moss
I'm neither ashamed nor proud to say this, but I could probably name fewer than five current TV dramas. It's not that I think TV is beneath me--I LOVE TV. I just think a lot is so badly written that I got out of the habit of watching anything but classic TV, food shows and the Travel Channel some years back and now I don't even think to look for new shows. Well, enough people told me I'd love Mad Men that I got the DVDs out of the library (after being on the waiting list for about six months) and I'm officially hooked. I love the "New York in 1960" fashions and settings. The show is cynical as hell, but they are in advertising and most (not all) of the characters have at least some redeeming qualities. I got through all but three episodes, so I'm hoping Netflix will mail them ASAP.
Another birthday present was a three DVD set of 1960s "counter culture" films. They're very rare and the films themselves are in pretty deteriorated condition, but they're great to watch, anyway. So far we've watched "Coffee House Rendezvous," parts one and two, which are little documentaries about coffee houses set up in places like church basements and donated spaces, so that teens have a place to go that keeps them off the streets, and "Boys Beware!," about the (insert ironic tone here) ever present danger of young men getting picked up on the streets by gays, who sometimes even murder them. It's pretty amazing to know something like this was shown in schools at one time.
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