Don Kennedy - Laugh Laugh Phonograph Yankee Doodle
Peppa Pig is an animated series for pre-school children about a cheeky and slightly bossy little pig called Peppa. Peppa lives with her little brother George, Mummy Pig and Daddy Pig. Her favourite things include playing games, dressing up, days out and jumping up and down in muddy puddles! Peppa does everything a normal four year old does. Her adventures always end happily with loud snorts of laughter!
Don Kennedy - Laugh Laugh Phonograph Yankee Doodle
John Hughes, who had previously given gravitas to the angst of adolescence in his 1984 film, "Sixteen Candles," further explored the social politics of high school in this comedy/character study produced one year later. Set in a day-long Saturday detention hall, the film offers an assortment of American teen-age archetypes such as the "nerd," "jock," and "weirdo." Over the course of the day, labels and default personas slip away as members of this motley group actually talk to each other and learn about each other and themselves. "The Breakfast Club" is a comedy that delivers a message with laughs. Thirty years later, the movie's message is still vivid. Written and directed by Hughes, the film's cast includes Molly Ringwald, Anthony Michael Hall, Judd Nelson, Emilio Estevez and Ally Sheedy.
Film melodrama comes in many variations, but director Douglas Sirk's style of domestic melodrama is marked by stylized interiors and use of mirrors, where the role of photography is crucial, with exquisite use of primary colors and camera angles to convey emotion and mood. During the 1950s, the Universal team of Sirk, producers Ross Hunter and Albert Zugsmith, cinematographer Russell Metty and composer Frank Skinner, released a series of glossy, often deliriously flamboyant "women's picture" melodramas, including "All That Heaven Allows," "Magnificent Obsession," "Written on the Wind" and "Imitation of Life." The often-lurid plots in these films may have seemed laughable and unrealistic, but the emotional impact on audiences packed a wallop that led to major box-office bonanzas for Universal. Sirk's last American film, "Imitation of Life," is based on the Fannie Hurst novel about two mothers (one white and one African-American) and their daughters (one white and one who wishes to pass for white). Sirk's 1959 version (with Lana Turner and Juanita Moore as the mothers) offers a telling contrast to the more restrained melodramatic style used by John Stahl in the 1934 version (previously selected for the registry), starring Claudette Colbert and Louise Beavers. One can also spot in Sirk's film fascinating glimpses at the evolving social standards and mores the country had undergone in the 25 years that elapsed between the two films, particularly in the characters of Moore and her daughter Susan Kohner. However, New York Times reviewers did not note much difference in the two versions. The paper's 1934 reviewer called the film "the most shameless tearjerker of the fall" while Bosley Crowther's 1959 review proved little different: "It is the most shameless tearjerker in a couple of years." Sirk's version ends with Mahalia Jackson singing "Trouble of the World" during the penultimate funeral scene and daughter Susan Kohner begging forgiveness while hugging her dead mother's casket.Expanded essay by Matthew Kennedy (PDF, 761KB)
Charles Burnett was one of the "LA School" of African American filmmakers that emerged from the UCLA film department in the 1970s, and "Killer of Sheep" was his thesis film. It is simultaneously naturalistic and poetic, witty and heartbreaking. The story centers on Stan (Henry Gayle Sanders), a blue-collar worker from the Watts area of Los Angeles, whose job in a slaughterhouse barely keeps his family above water. It documents his struggle to retain dignity in the face of grinding deprivation and disquieting temptations, and the alienation that threatens to break him away from his family. It also provides a sympathetic yet clear-eyed portrait of a community assaulted by poverty and lack of opportunity, yet it manages to remain hopeful.
Stories of boys and their dogs have long been fodder for films and books, but none has ever resonated more strongly with the public than this 1957 adaptation of the Fred Gipson novel. Produced by Disney, which knew how to touch the hearts of moviegoers with both laughter and tears, the beloved film was directed by Robert Stevenson and stars Fess Parker, Dorothy McGuire and Tommy Kirk. Few movie endings have ever proved as emotionally affecting as the conclusion of "Old Yeller."
In one of the first LGBT films widely accepted by general audiences, Shirley Clarke explored the blurred lines between fact and fiction, allowing her subject, Jason Holliday (né Aaron Payne), a gay hustler and nightclub entertainer, to talk about his life with candor, pathos and humor in one 12-hour shoot. Clarke originally envisioned Jason as the only character, but she subsequently revealed: "When I saw the rushes I knew the real story of what happened that night in my living room had to include all of us [the off-screen voices. her crew and herself], and so our question-reaction probes, our irritations and angers, as well as our laughter remain part of the film." Bosley Crowther of "The New York Times" described it as a "curious and fascinating example of cinéma vérité, all the ramifications of which cannot be immediately known." Legendary filmmaker Ingmar Bergman called it "the most extraordinary film I've seen in my life." Thought to have been lost, a 16 mm print of the film was discovered at the Wisconsin Center for Film and Theater Research in 2013 and has since been restored by the Academy Film Archive, Milestone Films and Modern Videofilm.
"Safety Last" may be Harold Lloyd's finest film, and from it comes the most recognizable image in silent comedy: the man dangling from a clock. Joining forces with Hal Roach in 1915, the former movie extras started a company to produce Lloyd's films, and the comedian was soon the highest paid actor and biggest box-office draw. Bolstered by his success with a few early "thrill" shorts and inspired by a popular stunt performer known as "the human fly," Lloyd was eager to make a feature-length film that would give audiences the same excitement. In the film, Lloyd's country boy seeks fame and fortune in the big city and ends up as an unwitting human fly forced to scale a tall building. The studio built sets on the rooftops of several downtown Los Angeles buildings to enhance the illusion, although Lloyd still risked danger with his antics, thus delivering on his recipe for a successful thrill picture: "a laugh, a scream and a laugh."Expanded essay by Richard W. Bann (PDF, 425KB)
This rollicking musical satire of Hollywood in the 1920s when film transitioned from silent to sound features outstanding performances by Debbie Reynolds, Donald O'Connor, Jean Hagen, and Gene Kelly who co-directed the film with Stanley Donen. Don Lockwood (Kelly) is the reigning king of silent movies and his regular co-star Lina Lamont (Hagen), while beautiful, is dumb but manipulative. When Don becomes interested in fresh-faced studio singer Kathy Selden (Reynolds), Lina has her fired. When talkies take off, Don and Lina's stardom appears to be over as audiences laugh at Lina's shrill voice for the first time. Don's friend and creative partner Cosmo (O'Connor) comes up with the brilliant idea of using Kathy to dub Lina's voice. Now considered one of the greatest musicals ever filmed, it's filled with memorable songs, lavish routines and Kelly's fabulous song-and-dance number performed in the rain.Movie poster
A vaudevillian for much of his professional life, Harry Langdon was discovered and brought to Hollywood by Mack Sennett in the early 1920s but languished until 1925, when director Harry Edwards and then-gagman Frank Capra developed three features and several shorts for him. Their great success added Langdon to the fraternity of "The Four Silent Clowns" along with Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton and Harold Lloyd. In the film, Langdon plays the assistant of circus strong man Zandow the Great, who inevitably and most comically is forced to impersonate Zandow when the headliner is incapacitated. Langdon and Capra predated by five years Chaplin's "City Lights" with its story of a timid man in love with a blind woman, in this instance Priscilla Bonner, successfully mixing belly laughs with scenes of great emotional tenderness.Expanded essay by Bill Schelly (PDF, 359KB)
239. - Our Idiot Brian When Peter and Brian are "watching" the movie on the couch, they laugh rather awkwardly, with Brian sounding like he has the Beavis laugh. As an added bonus, it turns out that they were just staring at the DVD menu.
Peter telling Brian they're gonna party like its the Roaring 20's, and the following cutaway.Man: (singing while doing the Charleston) No TV, movies suck, I'm here with my gal, shake your hands, kick around, wear a suit to breakfast! Underwear that laces up, all girls have a guy's haircut, crank your car to make it start, you will die of measles!
After being told that Brian has a brain tumor, Peter pulls out a shrink ray pistol and shrinks himself to enact a "Fantastic Voyage" Plot to destroy the tumor from within. He resizes a second later when he gets raped by a bug.
Stewie says that Brian's tumor makes him as useless as Black Widow is to the Avengers.Thor: So, what's your superpower? Black Window: Kicking. Thor: Oh, right, 'cause none of use can kick. Hey, which one of you guys can kick? [he, Captain America, Iron Man, and Hawkeye raise their hands] Hulk, stop being nice. Hulk: [raises hand] Sorry.
The entire montage of Peter and Brian doing crazy things set to "Cotton-Eyed Joe".
Brian in the hospital:Brian: Being in this hospital bed-I feel like the main character of As I Lay Dying as he or she lay dying! Stewie: Oh, that's just the amount of superficial quasi-knowledge the old Brian had.
Brian hanging a nice lampshade on Stewie tricking him into getting his tumor removed.
At the end of the episode, Peter gets an operation to give him a second penis, but his original penis promptly falls off.
"YEAH, free flyin' meat!"
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