This 1932 short film from Paramount was designed to highlight the musical comedy talents of Anna Chang and Joe Wong, vaudeville performers in search of a movie niche. Instead, the film unexpectedly launched the career of an unbilled actor who stole the show from the two stars.
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I admit I was a bit skeptical about approaching “At Capacity” because a lot of these films always feels so cynical, Thankfully, Spencer Jamison is so talented she lends a fresh gloss to a tired formula. Having had its world premiere at the LA Shorts International Film Festival, “At Capacity” is an entertaining and intelligent romance comedy about serendipity and salvaging good out of what might seem irreversibly bad.
BOOTLEG FILES 875: “A Doonesbury Special” (1977 animated film that received an Oscar nomination).
LAST SEEN: On YouTube.
AMERICAN HOME VIDEO: On VHS and laserdisc plus a blink-and-you-missed-it DVD release in an anthology collection.
REASON FOR BOOTLEG STATUS: There might be a rights issue that is unresolved.
CHANCES OF SEEING A COMMERCIAL DVD RELEASE: A re-release on DVD and Blu-ray is not likely at this time.
As a prefix to this column, I need to confess that I’ve never been infatuated with Garry Trudeau’s comic strip “Doonesbury.” Yes, I am highly aware of its awards and cultural resonance, but I never found Trudeau’s brand of satire to amusing or provocative. That being said, I was curious to explore “A Doonesbury Special,” the 1977 production that marked the only time that Trudeau’s comic strip was adapted into an animated film. Trudeau collaborated with Oscar-winning animators John and Season Hubley on this work – John Hubley died while the production was in the storyboard phase, but he still received co-director and co-producer credit with his wife and Trudeau.
Selected to screen at the 2024 HollyShorts Film Festival, director Christopher Greenslate’s “Bananahead” is an unnerving and well told tale about legacy and impostor syndrome. It’s very much a horror movie, but it’s also a very stark movie about hitting a bar that someone previously left and a lot of what they can leave behind after they have gone. Sally Maersk is a stunner in the role as Andi Sanger, a young performer who gives herself the inherent pressure of taking on a role in the adaptation in her mom’s best selling book “Bananahead.”
Where is the American dream bred? In the heart or in the head? Director-Writer Ziyu Luo’s “American Daydream” is a classic ode to the idea of the American dream and our pursuit of it. Is the “American Dream” an unreachable goal, or something that we each have within us, personally? Recently having its world premiere at the HollyShorts Film Festival, “American Daydream” is a brilliant beautiful short drama comedy that explores ideas about immigration, assimilation and Americanization.
I really have to give it to Jane Kaczmarek who stars in “And Now I Lay Me Down.” She really is a marvel in what is a pretty gut wrenching movie that approaches a serious topic with a tongue in cheek. Kaczmarek is essentially the only cast member in the entirety of Rani DeMuth’s short drama comedy and commands a lot of the screen with such an immense powerful and intense sadness.
Dave Chappelle asked for a Bell’s Beer during a comedy set in Kalamazoo, Michigan. Taking a sip, he casually called out, “The Two-Hearted Ale? Why the hell did you put a fish on the label? ” This is the story of that iconic trout label adorning the most popular it IPA beer in America, and its eccentric artist, Ladislav Hanka.