Short Film Showcase - Cashback (2004)

Cashback, 2004.

Written and Directed by Sean Ellis.
Starring Sean Biggerstaff, Emilia Fox, Stuary Goodwin, Michael Dixon and Michael Lambourne.

Cashback centres on an aspiring art student, Ben (Sean Biggerstaff), who spends his nights working the graveyard shift at his local 24 hour supermarket. While his co-workers all have their own methods of wasting time as the clock ticks down on their shift, Ben has his own unique technique for fending off boredom by imagining that time stands still, giving him the freedom to explore his creative side.

Although Cashback received some criticism towards its excessive nudity, the short went on to win 14 awards including Best Narrative Short at the 2005 Tribeca Film Festival, while it was also nominated for the Academy Award for Live Action Short Film in March 2006, losing out to Martin McDonagh's Six Shooter. Cashback also went on to inspire the full-length feature of the same name, which premiered at the 2006 Toronto International Film Festival before receiving theatrical runs in the UK and North America.


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Short Film Showcase - The Big Shave (1967)

The Big Shave a.k.a. Viet '67, 1967.

Written, Directed, Produced & Edited by Martin Scorsese.
Starring Peter Bernuth.

For his final project as a student of New York University's film school, Martin Scorsese produced the six-minute short The Big Shave as an anti-Vietnam piece for an "Angry Arts Against The War" demonstration. Dialogue-free and employing only a single location and character, Scorsese took a simple premise and crafted an accomplished and unsettling piece that is said to be a comment on the self-destructive nature of U.S. intervention in Vietnam.

Set to the musical styling of Bunny Berigan and his jazz classic I Can't Get Started, The Big Shave sees a young man (Peter Bernauth) enter a bathroom and begin shaving, only to repeat the action over, mutilating his face into a bloody mess. Scorsese makes great use of the stark contrast in colour between the deep red blood and the pristine whiteness of the bathroom, and utilises inventive editing techniques such as repeat cuts to enhance the graphic imagery.

The success of The Big Shave paved the way for Scorsese to move into feature filmmaking by completing a project that had began in 1965 as a student film entitled Bring on the Dancing Girls, which went through a number of changes before being issued in 1968 under the title Who's That Knocking at My Door.


For more on Martin Scorsese check out our latest filmmaker profile Understanding Scorsese.

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Short Film Showcase - What's a Nice Girl Like You Doing in a Place Like This? (1963)

What's a Nice Girl Like You Doing in a Place Like This?, 1963.

Written and Directed by Martin Scorsese.
Starring Zeph Michelis, Sarah Braveman, Fred Sica, Mimi Stark and Robert Uricola.

What's a Nice Girl Like You Doing in a Place Like This? is one of the earliest shorts from legendary filmmaker Martin Scorsese and was shot on 16mm while he was studing at New York University's Tisch School of the Arts in 1963. Considered by the director to be his first real film (he had previously made the 'miniature epic' Vesuvius VI in 1959), the 9-minute surrealist comedy is described as "a tale of pure paranoia" and revolves around a writer, Harry (Zeph Michelis), who becomes obsessed with a picture of a boat on a lake, leading to a frustrating bout of writer's block.

For its time, What's a Nice Girl Like You Doing in a Place Like This? is a remarkably inventive student film, employing rapid-fire editing and clever cinematography techniques to give an early indication of Scorsese's dynamic visual style. Scorsese would follow this up with a further two shorts - It's Not Just You, Murray! (1964) and The Big Shave (1967) - before making his feature debut in 1968 with Who's That Knocking at My Door.


For more on Martin Scorsese check out our latest filmmaker profile Understanding Scorsese.

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Short Film Showcase - The Adventures of André and Wally B. (1984)

The Adventures of André and Wally B., 1984.

Written and Directed by Alvy Ray Smith.

The Adventures of André and Wally B. is an early computer-animated short created in 1984 by the LucasFilm Computer Graphics Project, which would later become Pixar Animation Studios following the purchase of the company by Apple co-founder Steve Jobs in 1986. Directed by Pixar co-founder Alvy Ray Smith and featuring animation by John Lasseter and sound design from LucasFilm regular Ben Burtt, the 2-minute short centres on a character named Andre, who is awoken from a restful nap in the forest by a pesky bee intent on stinging him.

The short film is notable for its groundbreaking animation techniques including the first use of CG motion blur, and premiered at the 1984 SIGGRAPH conference in Minneapolis. It was also shown theatrically before Terry Gilliam's cult sci-fi Brazil (1985), and was reissued a decade later alongside Pixar's debut feature Toy Story (1995).


Related:

Animated Storytellers: A Pixar Animation Studios Profile

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Movies... For Free! The Street Fighter's Last Revenge (1974)

Welcome to this week's "Movies... For Free!" column, where we showcase classic movies freely available in the public domain (with streaming video!). Read the article and watch the movie right here!


The Street Fighter's Last Revenge, 1974.

Directed by Shigehiro Ozawa.
Starring Sonny Chiba, Reiko Ike, Sue Shiomi.

The Street Fighter's Last Revenge is the final instalment in the cult 1974 martial arts trilogy that also includes The Street Fighter and Return of the Street Fighter. Sonny Chiba returns to his role of mercenary Takuma 'Terry' Tsurugi, accepting a mob contract to deliver a pair of stolen cassette tapes that hold a formula to create cheap heroin. Naturally the mob double-cross Tsurugi (when will they ever learn?), and the martial arts master then sets about to bring down the drug cartel with a little help from female government agent Kahô (Sue Shiomi, who would also appear with Chiba in the unrelated spin-off Sister Street Fighter, released the same year).

With this third movie production company Toei drew upon elements of the spy genre such as Bond and Mission: Impossible to breathe new life into the franchise. Chiba’s character is now a master of disguise with an array of gadgets at his disposal, and there is a noticeable shift away from the brutal action of the earlier movies to focus more on story. Nevertheless, the film remains enjoyable and is presented here in an English dub that includes voice-over work from Star Trek legend George Takei as one of the mobsters in pursuit of Chiba.



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Movies... For Free! The Flying Deuces (1939)

Welcome to this week's "Movies... For Free!" column, where we showcase classic movies freely available in the public domain (with streaming video!). Read the article and watch the movie right here!


The Flying Deuces, 1939.

Directed by A. Edward Sutherland.
Starring Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy.

The Flying Deuces is a classic Laurel and Hardy feature that reworks the scenario of an earlier short, Beau Hunks (1931), with the hapless duo enlisting in the French Foreign Legion after Ollie is rejected by a married woman. Naturally the pair soon discover that military life is not for them and go AWOL, only to be caught and sentenced to death by firing squad. Will they manage to escape in time?

Although the legendary comic double-act had appeared as guest stars in four MGM pictures, The Flying Deuces marked their first headlining performance without long time producer Hal Roach. The film's success would ultimately lead to the dissolution of this partnership and while Hal Roach Studios released two more features the pair soon moved on to contracts with MGM and 20th Century Fox.



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Movies... For Free! Horror Express (1973)

Welcome to this week's "Movies... For Free!" column, where we showcase classic movies freely available in the public domain (with streaming video!). Read the article and watch the movie right here!


Horror Express, 1973.

Directed by Eugenio Martin.
Starring Christopher Lee, Peter Cushing and Telly Savalas.

Horror Express is a low budget Spanish production that reunited the celebrated 'Hammer Horror' duo of Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing, while director Eugenio Martin reused the sets from his previous effort Pancho Villa (1972) along with star Telly Savalas, whose appearance in this picture comes hot on the heels of his debut as Kojak in the American television series.

Anthropologist Professor Saxton (Lee) has discovered what he believes to be the 'Missing Link' frozen in Manchuria, and he and associate Dr. Wells (Cushing) board a train bound for Europe with the fossilised creature stored in a crate. A number of brutal murders soon occur and when the creature is found to be responsible it is destroyed. However they soon discover that the fossil was inhabited by an alien entity that possesses the ability to shift between bodies, and the two set about to rescue the remaining passengers with the aid of Captain Kazan (Savalas) and his small band of Cossacks.

Like many European productions of the time, Horror Express was mostly shot without sound and dialogue recorded for the various different markets in post-production (with Lee, Cushing and Savalas all providing their own voices for this English version). While the film failed disappointed at the Spanish box office it did prove successful in the U.K., and has since achieved a cult following due to repeated television broadcasts throughout the 1970s and 80s.



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Related:

The City of the Dead a.k.a Horror Hotel (1960)

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Movies... For Free! Return of the Street Fighter (1974)

Welcome to this week's "Movies... For Free!" column, where we showcase classic movies freely available in the public domain (with streaming video!). Read the article and watch the movie right here!


Return of the Street Fighter, 1974.

Directed by Shigehiro Ozawa.
Starring Sonny Chiba, Yōko Ichiji, and Masashi Ishibashi.

After Bruce Lee's classic Enter the Dragon (1973) had popularised the martial arts genre in the West, Japanese production house Toei Company quickly capitalised with their own release, The Street Fighter (1974), starring Sonny Chiba (also available in our Movies... For Free! collection). With The Street Fighter achieving wide international success, Toei immediately began work on a follow up and Return of the Street Fighter was rushed to cinemas later that year.

Chiba returns as martial arts master and mercenary Takuma 'Terry' Tsurugi, who once again upsets his yakuza employers when he refuses a contract to kill personal friend Masaoko (Masafumi Suzuki). Naturally the gangsters aren’t too happy with Tsurugi's insubordination and set about to make him pay, while old enemy Junjo (Ishibashi) also has his sights on revenge, laying the foundations for a bloody ballet of cartoon hyper-violence.

Return of the Street Fighter managed to repeat the success of its predecessor and inspired another sequel - The Street Fighter's Last Revenge - to complete the trilogy.

Please note that the film is split into two parts - the second part will load automatically after the first has finished, simply click play to resume.



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Movies... For Free! Lady of Burlesque (1943)

Welcome to this week's "Movies... For Free!" column, where we showcase classic movies freely available in the public domain (with streaming video!). Read the article and watch the movie right here!


Lady of Burlesque, 1943.

Directed by William A. Wellman.
Starring Barbara Stanwyck and Michael O'Shea.

Lady of Burlesque - also known as The G-String Murders and Striptease Lady - is a 1943 murder mystery set in a New York burlesque house and is notable for pushing the boundaries of the Motion Picture Production Code, a stringent set of guidelines which governed all American productions until the late 1960's.

Based on the novel The G-String Murders by famed striptease artist Gypsy Rose Lee, the film adaptation stars silver screen legend Barbara Stanwyck as Dixie Daisy, a newcomer who has quickly adapted to the ruthless and bitter backstage politics of the burlesque scene. When Dixie falls out with a rival singer and later discovers her body - killed via g-string strangulation, naturally - she becomes the prime suspect in a murder investigation.

This was Stanwyck's second role as a showgirl in as many years (the other being in Howard Hawks' 1941 feature Balls of Fire), and she is joined by Michael O'Shea as her romantic interest, comedian Biff Brannigan. With elements of comedy in addition to song and dance routines, Lady of Burlesque remains an entertaining and suspenseful film, albeit somewhat dated by today's standards.



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Short Film Showcase - The Spirit of '43 (1943)

In a slight departure for this week's Movies... For Free! entry, we present the classic animated Walt Disney WW2 Propaganda short, The Spirit of '43, starring Donald Duck...

The Spirit of '43, 1943.

Directed by Jack King.
Produced by Walt Disney.

In a rare example of public domain content from the legendary animation house, The Spirit of '43 is a World War II propaganda film featuring the classic Walt Disney character Donald Duck. A sequel to an earlier Disney production, The New Spirit (1942), the short was financed by the American government (hence its copyright free status) and designed as a propaganda tool to urge the public to pay their taxes for the war effort, complete with the slogan "taxes to bury the Axis".

Donald stars as your average American joe torn between two opposing sides of his personality - a 'thrifty' duck (represented by a Scotsman, and surely the inspiration for Scrooge McDuck), who urges Donald to be careful with his money and pay his taxes, and a 'spendthrifty' suit-wearing evil duck who wants Donald to blow his wages in the saloon. The two engage in a tug of war over Donald and each fall backward; the evil duck creashing through Swastika-shaped saloon doors while the Scottish duck falls against a brick wall, revealing Old Glory itself and leading to a montage of patriotic wartime imagery.

The Spirit of '43 proved very successful in its objective of increasing tax contributions from the American public, and remains to this day an entertaining and historically important piece of animation.



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Movies... For Free! Dementia 13 (1963)

Welcome to this week's "Movies... For Free!" column, where we showcase classic movies freely available in the public domain (with streaming video!). Read the article and watch the movie right here!


Dementia 13, 1963.

Directed by Francis Ford Coppola.
Starring Luana Anders, Patrick Magee, Eithne Dunne and William Campbell.

A scheming widow Louise Haloran (Luana Anders) pretends that her husband John is still alive in order to manipulate her way into her rich mother-in-law's will. Visiting the family's castle in Ireland, Louise discovers that Lady Haloran (Eithne Dunne) is wrought with guilt following the death of her daughter Kathleen many years before, and sets about a ploy to convince the elderly lady that Kathleen is attempting to contact her from beyond the grave. However Louise gets more than she bargained for when she is brutally slain by an axe-murderer, and it is up to family doctor Justin Caleb (Patrick Magee) to unravel the mystery and find the killer.

Produced by b-movie maestro Roger Corman, Dementia 13 is a low-budget horror and marks the feature debut of acclaimed filmmaker Francis Ford Coppola. Initially working as a sound man on location in Ireland for Corman's 1963 release The Young Racers (also starring Anders, Magee and William Campbell), Coppola was offered the opportunity to remain in Ireland and use the leftover budget to produce his own violent and bloody thriller, with Corman keen for something along the lines of Hitchcock's Psycho (1960).

Coppola and Corman clashed over the final film with the producer wanting more gore and a longer running time. Corman employed another of his proteges, Monte Hellman, to direct a five minute prologue that had little to do with the narrative (not included in this version), and an additional death scene was filmed by exploitation director Jack Hill. The final movie was released to mixed reviews with the rushed production criticised heavily (the screenplay was written in just three days), although Coppola was also praised for his inventive direction, hinting at what he would later come to achieve.



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