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The Bootleg Files: 3rd Ave. El

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BOOTLEG FILES 857: “3rd Ave. El” (1955 Oscar-nominated short).

LAST SEEN: On YouTube and Internet Archive.

AMERICAN HOME VIDEO: It was reportedly on video, but I can’t confirm that.

REASON FOR BOOTLEG STATUS: This fell through the cracks.

CHANCES OF SEEING A COMMERCIAL DVD RELEASE: Maybe as a special feature.

New York City residents of a certain age will remember the IRT Third Avenue Line, an elevated railway that operated between Manhattan and the Bronx. The Manhattan portion of the line – which was informally known as the 3rd Avenue El – ended in 1955, while the Bronx portion of the line had service until 1973.
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Love Lies Bleeding (2024)

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Now in Wider Release Exclusively in Theaters.

Rose Glass’s crime thriller is a rotten and often grotesque neo-noir that kept me glued to the screen from beginning to end. Like more neo-noir’s, Glass’s film centers on morally gray protagonists doing battle with amoral characters, all of whom are couped up in such a small town. Corruption and violence is never too far away and “Loves Lies Bleeding” centers on Lou and Jackie, both of whom are desperate to escape their confines. More and more their lives feel like prisons, with their whole source of misery pointed toward domestic dysfunction.

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Every Bugs Bunny Ever: Hot Cross Bunny (1948)

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Hot Cross Bunny (1948)
Directed by Bob McKimson
Written by Warren Foster
Music by Carl W. Stalling
Animation by Manny Gould

Robert McKimson is one of my all time favorite directors for the Looney Tunes and Bugs Bunny, if only because his shorts always end up being so off the cuff and bizarre. But not bizarre in the Bob Clampett sense, but bizarre in original and outside the box. There’s just something so out of bounds about “Hot Cross Bunny” that even when I was a kid, I couldn’t get over the unusual energy of the short. When I was a kid, “Hot Cross Bunny” was one of the many shorts on constant rotation every Saturday morning on “The Bugs and Daffy Show” and I always got a kick out of it whenever it came on.

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