Isegoria

If Saul Bass did the titles for Star Wars, they’d look something like this:

As this Saul Bass Retrospective explains, he made his name with the title sequence to The Man with the Golden Arm. He also did the title sequence to Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho. I had no idea he did the title sequence to Alien.

His title sequence to Anatomy of a Murder perhaps best exemplifies the signature style being spoofed — pardon, being paid homage to — by that Star Wars sequence:

Or perhaps his title sequence to It’s a Mad Mad Mad Mad World:

I do not know how I managed to miss the fact that Bulfinch’s Legends of Charlemagne was published as a separate volume — outside of his Mythology — with illustrations by N.C. Wyeth.

Mr. Door Tree shares some of those illustrations in his Golden Age Comic Book Stories (spread across multiple pages).

(Hat tip to Drawn!)

I never quite knew what mondo was supposed to mean — vaguely “over the top” was my understanding — and I certainly didn’t know that it had a clear, specific origin:

The fad started with the Italian film Mondo Cane (A Dog’s World, also a mild Italian curse; “mondo” literally means “world”) made in 1962 by Gualtiero Jacopetti and proved quite popular. Mondo films are often easily recognized by name, as even English language mondo films often included the term “mondo” in their titles. Over the years the film makers wanted to top each other in shock value in order to draw in audiences. Cruelty to animals, accidents, tribal initiation rites and surgeries are a common feature of a typical mondo. Much of the action is also staged, even though the film makers may claim their goal to document only “the reality”.

Although the craze really hit in the 1960s, it made a comeback with Faces of Death in the 1980s.

I just watched Murder, My Sweet, the noir classic — and it does include some wonderfully noir cinematography. The film is based on Raymond Chandler’s novel, Farewell, My Lovely — they changed the name, because the lead actor, Dick Powell, had starred in a number of musical comedies, and Farewell, My Lovely sounded like one more.

Chandler himself approved of Powell’s portrayal of Philip Marlowe, but I had a really tough time seeing Powell as a really tough guy — and I laughed out loud when Claire Trevor (as femme fatale Helen Grayle) said, “You’ve got a nice build for a private detective.” Even for 1944, that is not a good build.

One odd bit of trivia: In the movie — again, Murder, My Sweet — the evil psychiatrist mentions using digitalis on our hero. In the book — again, Farewell, My Lovely — he uses scopolamine (also known as Columbian devil’s breath), which makes much more sense:

“There’s a drug called scopolamine, truth serum, that sometimes makes people talk without their knowing it. It’s not sure fire, any more than hypnotism is. But it sometimes works.”
— Marlowe in Farewell, My Lovely

I just — finally — got around to seeing the film classic, Ben-Hur, and certain parts had me asking, “Did this play really differently in 1959?” It turns out that a Wikipedia contributor noted the same thing:

In interviews for the 1986 book The Celluloid Closet, and later the 1995 documentary of the same name, screenwriter Gore Vidal asserts that he persuaded director Wyler to allow a carefully veiled homoerotic subtext between Messala and Ben-Hur. Vidal says his aim was to explain Messala’s extreme reaction to Ben-Hur’s refusal to name fellow Jews. Surely, Vidal argued, Messala should have been able to understand that Ben-Hur, his close friend since childhood, would not be willing to name the names of his fellow Jews to a Roman officer. Vidal suggested a motivation to Wyler: Messala and Ben-Hur had been homosexual lovers while growing up, and then separated for a few years while Messala was in Rome. When Messala returns to Judea, he wants to renew the relationship with Ben-Hur, but Ben-Hur is no longer interested. It is the anger of a scorned lover which motivates Messala’s vindictiveness toward Ben-Hur. Since the Hollywood production code would not permit this to appear on screen explicitly, it would have to be implied by the actors. Vidal suggested to Wyler that he would direct Stephen Boyd to play the role that way, but not tell Heston. Vidal claims that Wyler took his advice, and that the results can be seen in the film. Vidal is the only person ever to make this claim, and Heston insisted that Vidal had little to do with the final film. However, Vidal responded by producing extracts from Heston’s 1978 biography An Actor’s Life, in which the star described Vidal authoring most of the final screenplay.

On a more serious note, the novel, Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ, was a phenomenal success in its day:

The novel was a phenomenal best-seller; it soon surpassed Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin (1852) as the best-selling American novel and retained this distinction until the 1936 publication of Margaret Mitchell’s Gone with the Wind. In 1912, Sears Roebuck published one million copies to sell for 39 cents apiece: the largest single-year print edition in American history. The book was also the first work of fiction to be blessed by a pope.

One last thing: Roman naval ships did not use galley slaves at the oars. Oarsmen were trained professionals in the classical world.

This piece on 5 Ways Hollywood Tricks You Into Seeing Bad Movies isn’t particularly clever, but I did enjoy this infographic on Sweeney Todd‘s target market:

Since it’s Valentine’s Day, I suppose I should bring back this anatomically correct candy heart:

Artist Nathan Sawaya makes awesome Lego sculptures, but he also produces some super-sweet candy art. Case in point, this human heart fashioned from Necco Conversation Hearts, and “star bursts” made from Starbursts.

Discerning geeks recognize that the animated Clone Wars shorts that played on Cartoon Network were much, much better than the live-action movies.

Now Lucas is bringing us some Uncanny New Clone Wars, done in CGI and stylized, but not quite enough to make the human characters look like cartoons rather than zombies.