Finds: January 11, 2014

Jo Pugh, "Walter Summers at war: 'the service has got in my blood' " at Silent London:

http://silentlondon.co.uk/2014/01/09/walter-summers-at-war-the-service-has-got-into-my-blood/#more-2106300778

More here:

http://greatwarfiction.wordpress.com/2014/01/09/on-walter-summers/

Summers (1896-1973) was a film director whose career began in the silent era, after he had served World War I. He made many war-related films, and never got militarism out of his blood. Since silent film and World War I are two great interests of mine, this article was right up my alley.

Pugh's article points to the European Film Gateway website, which I was unaware of and which is simply amazing:

http://www.europeanfilmgateway.eu/
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Tom Mes's review of Chris D.'s mammoth Gun and Sword: An Encyclopedia of Japanese Gangster Films 1955-1980 at Midnight Eye:

http://www.midnighteye.com/books/gun-and-sword-an-encyclopedia-of-japanese-gangster-films-1955-1980/
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Stephen Bowie, "Finding My Way into Schlock" at World Cinema Paradise (a pretty new site, and very promising):

http://worldcinemaparadise.com/2013/12/19/finding-my-way-into-schlock/

A nice investigation of recent releases of Seventies era grindhouse cinema. Bowie is a great blogger at his own Classic TV History:

http://classictvhistory.wordpress.com/
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Many have never heard of the gutsy and unique singer Lee Morse (1897-1954). She has been one of my heroes ever since I discovered her music in LP re-releases that were issued when I was a clerk at the late lamented Doubleday Bookshop at 5th Avenue and 53rd Street in Manhattan - the very narrow store with the spiral staircase visible through the front glass that is prominently featured in the Barbra Streisand-George Segal comedy The Owl and the Pussycat (1970). The store had an amazing little record department manned in the early Eighties by my great co-workers, the late Doug Root, Matt Callaway, and Victor Gomez, and me (I rotated through all the departments of the store). We featured classic pop, jazz, classical, and the most obscure show albums you could ever hope to find. Our counter became something of a cult spot, once written up by the great theater and film historian Ethan Mordden, who hung out for great, long conversations. This was kind of our equivalent of the legendary Quentin Tarantino era at Video Archives in Manhattan Beach, California, when Quentin held court as perhaps the most voluble video store clerk of all time. (This period has been in no way over-glamorized - librarian-zinester Denise Dumars, a Video Archives customer at the time, once mentioned to me in private correspondence that you were almost afraid to enter the store if you didn't have three hours to spare.)

Anyway, Lee Morse - there has never been anyone like her. Her yodeling is always mentioned, but there is a lot more to her delivery than that. She comes across as completely her own woman.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lee_Morse