I Just Watched...

[Swithin]

...The women in the center of the photo is Paula Laurance, playing Diva and singing "Some Enchanted Evening." She was a dear friend. I miss her very much. (But I've never seen the movie!)
...

TCM shows it frequently. I can't imagine not seeing the film especially since you know participants!
My favorite is Bubbe... someone mentioned REIZL BOZYK for the Oscar? Damned straight.

I'd like to see it for her. She was a star of the Yiddish theater but made few movies. Her husband Max Bozyk was a bit older and appeared in a few of the classic Yiddish movies of the 1930s, including Mamele, The Dybbuk, Yidl mitn Fidl, (with Molly Picon), and that ultimate tearjerker, A Brivele der Mamen.

[TikiSoo]

Last night I watched the first of double noirs recorded from TCM last month spotlighting fave Gloria Grahame directed by Fritz Lang, THE BIG HEAT '53. While I had seen this many years ago had forgotten most of it, so it was a fun rediscovery.

The direction was impeccable, the scenes were beautifully shot & edited to the actors best advantage. The acting was good and the dialogue was typical noir.
The story, rather complicated begins with a suicide of a Police Officer. The woman in the house's reaction upon finding the body is surprising- cold & unmoved she makes a phone call- but not to an ambulance/police!

Glen Ford plays a detective looking into the suicide and as he uncovers Mob connections receives a car bomb that mistakenly kills his wife. He is then taken off the case and goes on a personal search to find his wife's murderer.
It's a great unraveling of all the connections that led to these crimes involving both mobsters & of course, Police corruption.

But the stand out here is Gloria Grahame. She fleshes out what's really a small role & by doing so evokes personal tragedy we can empathise with. Graham's Debbie is a wholly innocent charactor, completely discounted by the men, but remains lighthearted despite their dirty dealings.

Her charactor is defined by the scene where meeting up with the "Big Boss" whom everyone is afraid of, Debbie converses about him personally, his daughter, his home life, treating his as a person. You are then all the more horrified when she is cruelly disfigured by her supposed bf. It's as shocking as Richard Widmark pushing the lady in the wheelchair down the stairs-

The end wraps up nicely, but the impact of the undeserved deaths & destruction are what stays with you. That mostly due Grahame's performance.

[Detective Jim McLeod]

Three Secrets (1950) Youtube-6/10

A little boy needs to be rescued from a mountain after a plane crash kills his adoptive parents, three women who all gave up a baby for adoption years ago await to hear if the child was hers.

This was a Robert Wise directed film that i finally saw, now I have seen all of his films but one Two People (1973) which I cannot find anywhere.

I thought this was a pretty good tearjerker film, not one of Wise's best but watchable. We get to see the stories of each woman in flashback.

One (Eleanor Parker) had a fling with a soldier who was engaged to another. She is now is an loving marriage but cannot have any more children. She has a scene where she has to explain to her current husband about the baby. It is similar to a scene she has the next year in Detective Story where she also talks of a baby given away. The husband in this film (Leif Ericson) is a lot more understanding than Kirk Douglas in the later film.

Patricia Neal plays a hard nosed reporter who ends up divorced when her husband thinks she spends too much time on her job. Neal would reunite with Wise the next year with The Day The Earth Stood Still.

Ruth Roman plays a dancer who is convicted of manslaughter of the father of the baby when he refuses to acknowledge it.

The reveal of the mother was a surprise to me.

[CinemaInternational]

Time for some writeups.... Sorry that I haven't posted foe a few days. I was sick over the weekend, and only really recovered last night.

Bandits (2001) is another in the long line of Hollywood films where bank robbers are the "heroes" This new millennium take, which also includes a romantic triangle/ square element reminiscent of Paint Your Wagon. In other words, definitely not a film with upstanding characters. But Bruce Willis, Billy Bob Thornton, and Cate Blanchett are all extremely likable here, and that helps paper over things to make this a decent film.

Clarence, the Cross-Eyed Lion (1965) served as a theatrical pilot for the subsequent TV series Daktari, but it is a mostly likable film aimed at children with a vet working in Africa teaming up his daughter and a female researcher to attend to the afflicted lion of the title. It's mostly meant to be very cozy, and it is, outside of an ill-advised violent scene near the end. It's nothing major, but it has a distinct charm to it.

The People Vs. Larry Flynt (1996) was an Oscar nominated film I avoided for years because I was vaguely uncomfortable with it being directly about pornography ... and having relented, I still feel troubled. It's not as though I'm a prude, after all, I thought Blue Velvet was a masterpiece. But there is something alarming about this movie's sheer celebration of pornography, seemingly minimizing or condescending to any complaints to it, seemingly fully endorsing its dehumanizing treatment of its female models without batting an eye. And that just seems kind of queasy. For what its worth, Woody Harrellson is good as an increasingly loony lead, Courtney Love and Edward Norton turn in exceptional work as his wife and lawyer, respectively, and Milos Forman directs smoothly, but this film just needed to be more tempered. Maybe I'm the wrong person for this.

Half a Sixpence (1967) was one of the costliest of all British made musicals, and it wasn't successful. Perhaps this was because it didn't have any really big names, or maybe because toothy Tommy Steele is an aquired taste (and a mite too old for his teenage/early 20s character). But the film itself is handsomely made, the music is likable, the dancing is winning, and its story of rags to riches to rags is absorbing. It's another one of those late 60s musicals that looks better and more charming with age.

Speechless (1994) feels like an artifict now from an earlier era. It's a battle of the sexes romantic comedy where the on/off lovers are chief speechwriters for opposing senate campaigns. Geena Davis is the Democrat, Michael Keaton is the Republican. It's all meant to be very breezy and regardless of which political party you allign with, the film has barbs for both (and a late development finds that both barely seen candidates are corrupt), so I am not sure if many would really like this today. But Davis and Keaton do have a very nice crackling chemistry, and Bonnie Bedilia is spot-on as Keaton's co-worker who just happens to be his ex-wife. The whole film might not stand up to scrutiny, but its very likable fun.


And now, a few notes on recent posts...

I have seen Crossing Delancey many times, as it is one of my father's favorites. It's a very nice little film, charming and very adeptly written. Reizl Bozyk shines as Amy Irving's grandmother.

Just about everything about American Beauty felt like a dirty cliche to me, and it is in such bad taste. I much prefer two other films of suburban dysfunction from around the same time, The Ice Storm and the low-budget indie Judy Berlin (which featured an extraordinary final performance from Madeline Kahn)

I never saw Le Corbeau, but there actually is a remake, done not too long after the original. It was 1951's The Thirteenth Letter, which reset the story in Quebec. That version was an Otto Preminger film for 20th Century Fox, starring Linda Darnell, Michael Rennie, and Charles Boyer. It's decent, with the atmosphere being the most memorable quality of the film.

Now, as to Criterion. Yes, their $30/$40 discs are extremely expensive (even though they have a half off sale every July at Barnes and Noble), but I will be eternally grateful to them for finally getting a home edition of Cluny Brown on the market, something Fox never did, not even on VHS...

But my big beef with Criterion is the effect it has had on film viewers born in the 80s/90s/early 2000s, maybe even later, and what films they will indeed watch from earlier years. For a film to get such a release from Criterion gives it an immediate cachet with these younger viewers, and if sonething isn't in the collection they do not deign to give it any attention or acknowledge it even exists. For them, Criterion offers the only classic films they will even want to see, and well, not all the films are up to par. (1998's Armageddon? Seriously?!?). Thus, someone who would be a contemporary of theirs chronologically like me, or Speedy, or Bagel, or someone else could try to go on another website and reccomend a non-Criterion classic until we were blue in the face, and the other people just would not budge. These youthful Criterion addicts are very reminiscent of the cinematic guerillas in John Waters' 2000 film Cecil B. Demented.

This type of Criterion worship has bled into film criticism as well, with disastrous results, culminating in last year's eye-rolling Sight and Sound critics poll saying that 1975's Jeanne Deilman (a nearly three and a half hour film about a prostitute who scrubs dishes, peels potatoes, mops floors, and performs other menial tasks until she snaps and kills a client after 200 minutes of household chore ennui) was the best movie in movie history. You read that correctly, and its Criterion standing helped it immensely. The "best" movie critics in the world found that anti-film as the best movie of all time. It's pomposity at its most lethal. Plus, Criterion also creates some skewed suggestions of the past by championing films that were not exactly warmly received on their first release (case in point, Spike Lee's no holds barred blackface satire Bamboozled, which offended many black audience members in 2000 now gets the luxury treatment, even though the film significantly set back Lee's career for close to 20 years)

As for other features of Criterion discs, they always do include those color tests, and I don't know why, they are hardly necessary. And those lengthy essays range from decent to awful. The one included on the release of Metropolitan is actually pretty good. But, they had two that were absolutely unbearable on 1986's True Stories, which were insults to that joyously quirky film.

[Lorna]

Three Secrets (1950) Youtube-6/10
This was a Robert Wise directed film that i finally saw, now I have seen all of his films but one Two People (1973) which I cannot find anywhere.
One (Eleanor Parker) had a fling with a soldier who was engaged to another. She is now is an loving marriage but cannot have any more children.
Patricia Neal plays a hard nosed reporter who ends up divorced when her husband thinks she spends too much time on her job. Neal would reunite with Wise the next year with The Day The Earth Stood Still.
.

ROBERT WISE and ELEANOR PARKER would also re-team for what was maybe the biggest film in either's career THE SOUND OF MUSIC.

[TikiSoo]

The People Vs. Larry Flynt (1996) Maybe I'm the wrong person for this.

Count me in with ya. Beautifully stated explanation.

Half a Sixpence (1967) It's another one of those late 60s musicals that looks better and more charming with age.

Never heard of it-THANK YOU a musical is always needed, especially over dreary winter.

Just about everything about American Beauty felt like a dirty cliche to me, and it is in such bad taste. I much prefer two other films of suburban dysfunction from around the same time, The Ice Storm and the low-budget indie Judy Berlin (which featured an extraordinary final performance from Madeline Kahn)

Agree 100% about A. Beauty. I loved The Ice Storm, although for some reason a bit less with each viewing.

But my big beef with Criterion is the effect it has had on film viewers born in the 80s/90s/early 2000s, maybe even later, and what films they will indeed watch from earlier years. For them, Criterion offers the only classic films they will even want to see, and well, not all the films are up to par.

As for other features of Criterion discs, they always do include those color tests, and I don't know why, they are hardly necessary. And those lengthy essays range from decent to awful. The one included on the release of Metropolitan is actually pretty good. But, they had two that were absolutely unbearable on 1986's True Stories, which were insults to that joyously quirky film.

Thank you for articulating my thoughts, I could never pinpoint what bothered me about Criterion. They still fall farther to the positive side for me though, just getting these films preserved & available. I also like the new quirky cover art.

[Lorna]

I also like the new quirky cover art [on CRITERION DVDs].

oh yeah, absent from my beefs with CRITERION is the COVER ART, which is a real rabbit hole to go down on pinterest or google images. Trying to find the best is near impossible, you can only highlight your faves:

[Lorna]

you know,

i'm torn.

i have never seen CROSSING DELANCEY and, while all your remarks have me wanting to...I also kinda don't wanna spoil what fun it is to view this photo without knowing just what on earth the context of the scene is.

not a clue.

If I had to caption it, it would be: "MISS HAVISHAM TO ANITA BRYANT: "**** YOU AND **** YOUR ORANGES, NOW GET THE HELL OUT OF THE EAST VILLAGE!"[/b]

[Swithin]

Half a Sixpence (1967) was one of the costliest of all British made musicals, and it wasn't successful. Perhaps this was because it didn't have any really big names, or maybe because toothy Tommy Steele is an aquired taste (and a mite too old for his teenage/early 20s character). But the film itself is handsomely made, the music is likable, the dancing is winning, and its story of rags to riches to rags is absorbing. It's another one of those late 60s musicals that looks better and more charming with age.

I haven't seen the film of Half a Sixpence, but I like the score of the original show and have it on my phone. It was nominated for nine Tony Awards, though it didn't win any. (It was the year of Fiddler.) The musical (which is based on Kipps) had good runs in London and on Broadway. I'm unfamiliar with the film version.

Tommy Steele has been regarded as Britain's first rock-and-roll star. He was so popular, that he was seriously injured by "adoring" fans after a concert. That may be why he segued into a more sedate theater career.

"Tommy Steele was almost torn apart by young fans in amazing scenes at Dundee Caird Hall last night. He was mobbed and collapsed, unconscious. The scenes happened at 10.45pm. With two choruses to go in "Mabeline" a song written by Tommy himself, he let out an enthusiastic "Oh Yeah" and fans, mostly girls, who had been flooding down on to the stage from the capacity audience, took that as a signal for the end."

https://bygone.dundeecity.gov.uk/bygone ... index.html

[Lorna]

MY REPLIES IN RED- LHF

Speechless (1994) feels like an artifict now from an earlier era. It's a battle of the sexes romantic comedy where the on/off lovers are chief speechwriters for opposing senate campaigns. Geena Davis is the Democrat, Michael Keaton is the Republican. It's all meant to be very breezy and regardless of which political party you allign with, the film has barbs for both (and a late development finds that both barely seen candidates are corrupt), so I am not sure if many would really like this today. But Davis and Keaton do have a very nice crackling chemistry, and Bonnie Bedilia is spot-on as Keaton's co-worker who just happens to be his ex-wife. The whole film might not stand up to scrutiny, but its very likable fun.

ohmigah! I almost mentioned this back in the 1994/5 posts we were making, I saw this in the theater with a group over the holidays in December 1994 and was the only one who liked it, everyone else reaaaaally did not, so I never saw it again. it was a surprise flop, maybe the first in the downturn of GEENA DAVIS'S career, I remember thinking her hair was a little too severe in the part. it's wild that this was a reunion with MICHAEL KEATON after BEETLEJUICE. I still remember it only made $19 million at the box office, which is terrrrrible.

I never saw Le Corbeau, but there actually is a remake, done not too long after the original. It was 1951's The Thirteenth Letter, which reset the story in Quebec. That version was an Otto Preminger film for 20th Century Fox, starring Linda Darnell, Michael Rennie, and Charles Boyer. It's decent, with the atmosphere being the most memorable quality of the film.

I can see LINDA DARNELL being perfect for the part.

Now, as to Criterion. Yes, their $30/$40 discs are extremely expensive (even though they have a half off sale every July at Barnes and Noble), but I will be eternally grateful to them for finally getting a home edition of Cluny Brown on the market, something Fox never did, not even on VHS...

GOD I LOVE CLUNY BROWN!

But my big beef with Criterion is the effect it has had on film viewers born in the 80s/90s/early 2000s, maybe even later, and what films they will indeed watch from earlier years. For a film to get such a release from Criterion gives it an immediate cachet with these younger viewers, and if sonething isn't in the collection they do not deign to give it any attention or acknowledge it even exists. For them, Criterion offers the only classic films they will even want to see, and well, not all the films are up to par. (1998's Armageddon? Seriously?!?). Thus, someone who would be a contemporary of theirs chronologically like me, or Speedy, or Bagel, or someone else could try to go on another website and reccomend a non-Criterion classic until we were blue in the face, and the other people just would not budge. These youthful Criterion addicts are very reminiscent of the cinematic guerillas in John Waters' 2000 film Cecil B. Demented.

This type of Criterion worship has bled into film criticism as well, with disastrous results, culminating in last year's eye-rolling Sight and Sound critics poll saying that 1975's Jeanne Deilman (a nearly three and a half hour film about a prostitute who scrubs dishes, peels potatoes, mops floors, and performs other menial tasks until she snaps and kills a client after 200 minutes of household chore ennui) was the best movie in movie history. You read that correctly, and its Criterion standing helped it immensely. The "best" movie critics in the world found that anti-film as the best movie of all time. It's pomposity at its most lethal. Plus, Criterion also creates some skewed suggestions of the past by championing films that were not exactly warmly received on their first release (case in point, Spike Lee's no holds barred blackface satire Bamboozled, which offended many black audience members in 2000 now gets the luxury treatment, even though the film significantly set back Lee's career for close to 20 years)

As for other features of Criterion discs, they always do include those color tests, and I don't know why, they are hardly necessary. And those lengthy essays range from decent to awful. The one included on the release of Metropolitan is actually pretty good. But, they had two that were absolutely unbearable on 1986's True Stories, which were insults to that joyously quirky film.

AS TO ALL OF THIS,
YES!!!!!

[Lorna]

one other thing that adds a level of complication and difficulty in procurement of not just CRITERION titles, but all films on dvd was the advent of BLU-RAY, which led to a lot of "old school" DVDs being out of print and most titles now coming out solely in BLU-RAY, which was something that complicated my search for LE CORBEAU, although I will note that STREAMING entertainment and buying digital copies of movies has really DENTED the DVDS market to the point where a BLU RAY PLAYER can be bought pretty cheap as can SOME TITLES (though LORD KNOWS NOT ALL THOUGH.)

[Lorna]

also also, for them to charge twice the price, you think CRITERION would start producing some actual documentaries instead of using those VIDEO ESSAYS.

Also also, there is a CRITERION CHANNEL that you can stream for a monthly cost of something like $12.00...$14?

[CinemaInternational]

so, we were talking about DISNEY and ANIMATION and SEEING MOVIES IN THE THEATER IN THE 1980's and I took a wild hair with some Christmas loot and bought FANTASIA (1941) on amazon prime (note- I would have rented it, but you can't rent it, you can only buy it. I may have been high when this decision was made.)

I first saw FANTASIA on a BIG SCREEN re-release sometime around 1983, and my Mother stressed that it was a "very big deal." The strongest memories I have are of the NIGHT ON BALD MOUNTAIN sequence because DUH, I also remember liking the SORCERER'S APPRENTICE SEQUENCE and I really distinctly recall that the audience just WENT NUTS with LAUGHTER for the ALLIGATOR and HIPPO ballet sequence, which I personally didn't get it AT ALL.

in fact, as far as the film itself went [SETTING THE NIGHT ON BALD MOUNTAIN SEQUENCE (makes the "HAIL SATAN" hand symbol,) BY THE SIDE], 6 year old me was distinctly tepid towards the rest of it.



Now that I am older, I can see why the audience enjoyed THE CROCODILE/HIPPO Ballet scene so much, not only is it funny, but it's something of a breath of fresh air from a lot of crushing, if well-crafted pretension that comes across a little bit like a well-intentioned (but probably accurate) history lesson designed specifically to piss of the religious right (which I also can't get mad at.)

40 years later and I'm still kinda tepid towards a lot of it- although as an extremely amateur illustrator myself, I get the artistry and the effort, and I will always salute hand-drawn animation- but without a cohesive plot or something HUMAN to really tie it together, I can see how this movie event went over like a lead brick back in 1941 and remained the "AMY CARTER" of all of WALT'S CINEMATIC CHILDREN.]

also, the scene with THE CENTAURS and THE CHERUBS even with the RACIST BITS REMOVED is still REALLY REALLY REAAAAAAAALLY EFFIN WEIRD.

and also, the opening sequence set to TOCCATA AND FUGUE IN D MINOR is the weakest of the sequences by far

and also, while they were I am sure necessitated by the times, the scenes of THE ORCHESTRA WARMING UP and (oh MY GOD) THE INTERMISSION just stop the film cold- I can't say if they stopped it cold back in 1941 and on all the re-releases or not, but I got really tired of listening to the "narrator" in between the segments as well.

I wouldn't say that Fantasia was made to make a political point, so much as it was born out of Walt Disney's restlessness. He had wanted to make a film with concert music set to experimental cartoons, and nobody could talk him out of it, as he felt limited by just doing childrens stories, and he wanted broader horions. The problem was as it turned out that on its first release, it was too highbrow for the typical animated audience, but it was thought to be too lowbrow by members of the music world. And so while the film ran in exclusive books in NYC LA, and San Francisco for almost a year, it wasn't a hit elsewhere, and was sporadically released at that. Walt was crushed by the response.I don't really think it got embraced until the late 60s when the word spread around the Woodstock crowd that the film was quite a trip if you were stoned while you watched it. After that, it was kind of regarded as an institution. And the Disney company regards it as one of their best achievements. Its original VHS release was the best selling tape of 1990. A very belated sequel (running only 75 minutes) featuring other pieces of music (but still including The Sorcerer's Apprentice sequence, the one hold over from the original film) debuted at Carnegie Hall in December 1999. The sequel has some ravishing looking late-era hand-drawn animation, but suffers from some ill-advised live-action linking segments (the Penn and Teller one was particularly bad). They should have just had Angela Lansbury, who introduced the last segment (and there wasn't any jokiness in her intro), introduce every segment in the film.

I always found the final segment to be oddly structured. It gave me the creeps as a child, and thinking about it now, the balance in that final segment seems really off. I mean you have this sequence with this towering demonic figure, the fires of hell, chaos everywhere, and then the film segues in its final moments into a very quiet Ave Maria with night scenes illuminated by candlelight held by these small cloaked figures meant to be religious pilgrims. But the thing is that the hymn is so muted, and none of the pilgrims is ever shown up close. I feel as though the switch between the pieces was supposed to represent good triumphing over evil, but then shouldn't they have turned up the volume on the hymn and had more grandiose drawings so it didn't get muted by the nightshade bombast of the Bald Mountain music and visuals?

I just dug out the DVD to check a thing or two. I honestly think that the intermission of the orchestra leaving and then returning was not on the VHS release. It's certainly an odd little bit, especially with the title of the film being flashed on the screen in the middle of it (which they didn't do at the start of the film). Also, how did this get the Production Code seal? If you look near the end of Bald Mountain, two winged nude female figures (only partially looking human) flit by the camera, with split-second close ups, of , I kid you not, hot pink and red animated nipples. I didn't think that the Hayes code would have allowed that usually in 1940.

[CinemaInternational]

I am personally obsessed with pickles and believe they are not only delicious and satisfying, but good for one's health.

So of course I am in love with Peter Riegert as Sam.

In the latest TCM showing of CROSSING DELANCEY, Ben M says in his outro that when Peter Riegert and Amy Irving appeared at last year's TCM festival, Peter Riegert said that in the year after CROSSING DELANCEY a lot of women propositioned him, but he had a girlfriend so he declined. Very Sam-like! What's not to love about Peter Riegert as Sam?

Am I the only one who would have loved to give Reizl Bezyk the Best Supporting Actress award for 1988? Geena Davis won for THE ACCIDENTAL TOURIST, a likable performance but not in the same league. How many today would put THE ACCIDENTAL TOURIST (not to dump on that movie) in the top five nominees and not CROSSING DELANCEY, which got rather mixed reviews when it came out? Oddly, it has only a 6.9 rating on imdb, but many rapturous reviews from viewers like me.

One of the few weaknesses of the film, for me, is Sylvia Miles' outrageous overacting as the matchmaker, but on the other hand every observation Mrs. Mandelbaum makes about life seems true. Susan Sandler's script, based on her own play, is full of gems, like these from the scene with the reclusive writer (Rosemary Harris):

Lionel (the bookshop owner, to Sam): "Poetry?" Sam: "Pickles."

Pauline Swift (the reclusive writer) to Anton, the egotistical jerk: "I loved your book." Anton, at his iciest: "Books."

Bozyk is be at the top of the list of supporting actress performances of 1988, at least based on what I think at the moment. I enclose a top 25 lists of my picks of the supporting actress turns from that year. (And yes, I know that one or two of them only have two minutes of screentime, but they make the most of it.)

As for Crossing Delancey only having a 6.9 on IMDb, that score is actually pretty good. I've noticed on that website how films typically get scores in the 6 range, as there are not many 7s, and scant 8s. Only one or two films average a 9. That system seems a bit off, but it is true that Delancey's reputation goes up with every passing year....


1 Reizl Bozyk/Crossing Delancey
2 Kathy Baker/Clean and Sober
3 Lena Olin/The Unbearable Lightness of Being
4 Geena Davis/The Accidental Tourist
5 Twiggy/Madame Sousatzka
6 Mercedes Ruehl/Married to the Mob
7 Miriam Margoyles/Little Dorrit
8 Joan Cusack/Working Girl
9 Genevieve Bujold/Dead Ringers
10 Peggy Ashcroft/Madame Sousatzka
11 Ellen Greene/Talk Radio
12 Diane Venora/Bird
13 Shabana Azmi/Madame Sousatzka
14 Uma Thurman/Dangerous Liaisons
15 Amy Wright/The Accidental Tourist
16 Glynis Johns/Zelly and Me
17 Sandy Dennis/Another Woman
18 Sylvia Sidney/Beetlejuice
19 Conchata Farrell/Mystic Pizza
20 Jane Horrocks/The Dressmaker
21 Amanda Donohoe/The Lair of the White Worm
22 Betty Buckley/Another Woman
23 Priscilla Presley/The Naked Gun
24 Anne Bancroft/Torch Song Trilogy
25 Carol Kane/Scrooged

[CinemaInternational]

also also, for them to charge twice the price, you think CRITERION would start producing some actual documentaries instead of using those VIDEO ESSAYS.

Also also, there is a CRITERION CHANNEL that you can stream for a monthly cost of something like $12.00...$14?

That Criterion streaming service is .... Bothersome. It seems you can only run it if you use it on an internet-connected TV. It does not work on an actual computer monitor. I wasted some money that way not knowing. Sigh.