Movies Til Dawn

R.I.P. MY LOVING DAD!   Subscribe in a reader

Above are two wild 60s Canada Dry commercials. The one featuring Ann Margret is from 1968 and manages to cover every mod, in, groovy, far out filmmaking style in one two-minute collage of trendiness. Ann is Ann, of course--she's beyond appealing. The big question raised for me is: what the hell was 'Wink' Cola? Clearly something that didn't have the staying power that Ginger Ale and Club Soda do. The commercial is so long that I wonder if it served as some sort of promo reel for Canada Dry conventions--the kind the company would throw annually for their salesman, all of whom would get blotto on Whisky and Gingers (or perhaps Vodka and Winks?) The other commercial is a faux-noir narrated piece that I think has a secret agenda: as it pictures a number of swinging nighttime parties at which sexy people seem to only consume non-alcoholic bottles of Ginger Ale, it could very well be the secret work of a very hip temperance league. Enjoy and remember: the first gulps fo...

As I'm in New York, it somehow makes perfect sense for me to be sitting around looking at footage of Los Angeles--after all, that's mostly what I do when in LA only then it's footage of New York. The above reel shows a traffic free LA sometime in the mid 1960s (guessing by the cars). Why does it exist? Who shot it? My theory is that someone took a trip there with their 8mm camera and decided to drive around, shooting the city through their windshield as a way to prove that they actually were there once they returned to Minnesota. We see pieces of Century City--then relatively new--as well as Wilshire Blvd in Westwood. There's also a brief glimpse of the distant UCLA campus but apparently they bailed and headed in a different direction. Our visitors spent an inordinate of time on the freeway--though I guess it could be argued that everyone in LA does--and we get glimpses of the vast and mostly empty 405 including a nice bit where they take the Wilshire Blvd. exit. ...

Our investigation of Bernie Madoff's real estate portfolio continues with a not very thorough examination of his Montauk Long Island beach house. Built in the early 80s, it is every bit as depressing as the one we used in the movie--high ceilings ruined by bad galleries, formica counters, faux-stone fireplace, tacky windows etc., the view being the only real selling point. (By the way, we used a house in Long Island that was so close Queens we could have taken the subway to work--amazing how relatively similar the beach was forty-five minutes out of the city compared to five hours and forty-five minutes out of the city, the usual Hamptons commuting time). If there's anything sweet to be found in the Madoff tale, it's that this house was purchased a good ten years before the Madoffs entered the billionaire phase of their lives, yet they never sold it and moved up. A little sentimental fact that we put in the movie and which does nothing to alter the perception of Madoff a...

I have trouble letting a movie go once I've finished it. All that work, all that effort, all that stress and all that satisfaction and suddenly--poof!--it's yesterday's news. I get it. Our culture is so jammed with information, our DVR's so overloaded, the new 'binge-watching' fad so overwhelming (and, I think, a little unhealthy...how about reading a little or taking a walk during the weekend?) that we don't have time to linger over a movie that aired a distant five weeks ago. So I'm going to let go--though I'm not going quietly. Madoff is still on my mind and above I've posted a very nice little tour of Bernie and Ruth's Manhattan digs which were then for sale for 15 million dollars. Located on Lexington Avenue and 64th street, the apartment is pleasant and classical in design and by no means a megalopolis money-strutting overload property. The building was built in 1927 and the Madoff's owned the penthouse. You entered on the top...