 Hello, welcome to Solidoid Mirror. I'm your hostess, Betty St. LaVeau. On this show, we talk about film history, film definitions, and then we go straight into the movies. Today, we're going to do a bit of film definitions and a bit of film history. So I want to start off with some definitions that involve the physicality of film or the artistic potential of film. Our first definition is the frame. It's one of many still images, which compose the complete moving picture. Now that everything's digital, the ratio is a little lower and I believe the visibility is much more clear, but I personally like to edit with old-fashioned solenoid myself. At any rate, a shot is a continuous strip of motion picture film created by a series of frames that runs for an interrupted amount of time. Two shots are two people in the frame. A long-angle shot is a shot from the camera, hmm. Partioned low on the vertical axis, anywhere below the eye line looking up. The cinematographer is the person who's responsible for the technical aspects of the image, lighting, position, and content. And last but not least, we have the extreme long shot. That's about around a quarter of a mile away from your lens. And I don't know where I got these definitions from, but thank any dictionary that helped me out. This is from an old show of mine about four years ago. So now I think we're going to go in a bit of film history and some film birthdays. This is the fifth volume of Solenoid Mirror, and this volume's been running for just about a year. So happy year to Solenoid Mirror, and also we'll do some birthdays to celebrate that also. So let's start off with, I'd like to start off with some actors and actresses that we've been watching on these movies, but maybe I'll break it up for a hot second. And we'll do some actors that we haven't checked out movies yet. So let's look at Lawrence Harvey. He was born October 1st, 1928, and died November 25th, 1973. He was born in Juniscus, Lithuania. He maintained that his birth name was Larushka Misha Skinny, but his legal name was Zave Mochef Hirsch Skinny. I love it when people have long names like that. Elizabeth Taylor adored him, and he was the father of stuntwoman Domino Harvey, who Tony Scott made a movie of named Domino. Between 1959 and 1965, he appeared opposite three actresses who all won Oscars. Simone Sinyorette and Rume At The Top, Liz Taylor and Butterfield Eight, and Julie Christie and Darling. We're gonna say Julie's birthday. She's one of, I love her. She's one of my adored actresses. Julie Christie, born Julie Francis Christie, April 14th, 1941, at Singh Lijan T. S. T. Chabua, Assam, India, and then, which was then part of the British Empire. She won an Oscar for Darling and a slew of British film awards ever after that. It was my favorite John Schlesinger film, The Director, who also did Midnight Cowboy, The Believers, and Marathon Man. She had an East Indian sister that her father favored over her, unfortunately, but I think the sisters had a close bond. Okay, so next we're gonna do Joan Blondell. Rose Joan Blondell, August 30th, 1906, died December 25th, 1979, in New York City, married to Mike Todd. Who is Elizabeth Taylor's third husband? Next, we have Anne Vorschach, Anna McKim, born August 2nd, her birthday today, 1911, and died December 10th, 1979, also in New York City. She was in three on a match and Scarface. Warren William, born Warren William Crush, December 2nd, 1894, September 24th, 1948, King of the Precode, he is called. Precode movies were the movies that were made before the government crunched down on Hollywood and said that they were being immoral with their interpretation of modern life back in the 30s. He was born in Atkin, Minnesota, and he usually played heels, but he played a good guy in three on a match. Okay, so let's do Mike Todd. Seems like it's a bit of a Liz Taylor page for some reason. Mike Todd, June 22nd, 1901, died March 22nd, 1958. His given name was Avrom Hirsch, Goldenbloggan, and Minneapolis, Minnesota. He was one of nine children. He was the youngest son, who's married to both John Blondell and Liz Taylor. And Anthony Pellegrino, the famous detective, once found some remains, some jewelry of his and gave it to Liz, that had been so on. It's a long story, but he's part of Hollywood lore. Sir Sidney Poitier, born February 20th, 1927, in Miami, Florida. He starred in Buckner Peacher, Stir Crazy, and was the first black American to win an Oscar. He never took to plastic surgery, and so he looks amazing to this day. He is one of the most hands-missed men to ever grace the Hollywood screen. All right, so that might be it for birthdays today. All right, so yeah, I think that's it for the birthdays. And thank you for listening, dear viewers. Now we're gonna go into the movies. I'm only gonna do two today. Happens to be my own birthday month, and I've been so busy a little peeked, so I'm not doing three movies like I ordinarily do. I'll do three movies next week, but today I'm only gonna do two. And they're both very different from one another. One is extremely notorious for having a curse on it, and the other one is just one of those favorites of mine that I love to talk about every now and then. So the first one is Incubus, which starred William Shatner, Charles Names, Eloise Hart, and Atma, Robert Fortier, and Mylos. It was directed, and I think produced by Leslie Stevens. It was his production company. I believe Dominic Frontier did the music, and it was shot, I believe in Big Sur, California, but it looks very, it looks like it was shot in the summer of Norway, and didn't look like America at all. Part of the reason for this is because the movie you've spoken in Esperanto, and it's one of only two movies that were made in that language. So I'm gonna start with a little bit of a plot. I'm not gonna blow the ending. You're gonna love looking at this movie, the atmospheric black and white, the stark costumes of the stars. It looks like it was set in some medieval time, okay? So Kia and Emil are two sisters. They are succubuses. They do the devil's work, and they drag the souls of immoral, immoral humans down to hell, okay? People, especially your hypocrites, who fake being nice. So to quote the older sister, Abel, when the wheat ripens, someone has to harvest it. Now, when you're looking at this in the subtitles and you're listening to these gals talk like that, you're like, whoa, that sounds like some pretty heavy duty supernatural scary movie poetry, okay? The younger sister, Kia, though, has her eyes on bigger games. She intends to drag down a man whose soul is more pure, more pure than most pure gold, okay? So because of this, there are catastrophic results for all involved. Emil tells her sister, her younger sister, it's one thing to drag a man who's corrupt or a woman who's corrupt down hell. It's another to try and attack a hero. A hero can simply not, a hero will not, a hero will win over your evil butt, okay? I can't afford my language, all right? So the film was lost for years and that's the other part of the story. The next part of the story is that it was spoken in Esperanto, which is, you know, treated like the metric system. Now, Esperanto was developed by, and I have the notes for this, this wonderful article by Mr. Adam Epstein, published on Malbono just last year in June. I've got my own copy of this film, by the way, just to let you know, I think I bought for both a couple of video years and years ago. An eye doctor created the language of Esperanto as a shared common language to promote peace around the world. He had good intentions, okay? Unfortunately, Esperanto is regarded by most wags as kin with such kooky ideas such as the metric system and even Reagan's, you know, that shield that he was going to put, yeah, it's up there with that, unfortunately, even though Esperanto, I think, is more practiced in this country than the metric system is, but again, Esperanto is practiced by two million people in over 100 countries. So, of course, the metric system exists outside this country and many more people practice it, but I think in this country, more people practice Esperanto than they do the metric system, okay? So, I love this line that Mr. F. C. wrote. He wrote that one reviewer said of the movie, Back in the Day, it's like a foreign film from a country that never existed. It really has an otherworldly, an outerworldly appeal. Okay, so Esperanto speakers did not like this movie. The cast had learned the language phonetically a few weeks before they shot the movie, which to me is amazing. I mean, I think to learn from what I know, to learn a language as a child is much easier than to learn it as an adult, okay? So, the outcome of that, according to Mr. Shatner in his latest memoir, is that Esperanto has put a curse on the movie, so Bill destroys every print that he gets. So this comes back to the fact that a lot of unpleasant things happened to some of the actors and actresses on this movie. So I really don't wanna talk about that part because y'all can look it up. I'd rather you watch the movie and then do the research. Don't be influenced or saddened by what happened, the outcome of the movie being made, but it's part of the lore of the movie. So, I thought I had written down the Frenchman who had found the movie. It was in the Cinématique Francais and he found a print after, it was the producer, I think his, I think his name's Alan Taylor, though I wrote it down. Anyway, he revived interest in the movie and that's why you're even able to watch on YouTube now. Yay, all right, it's a great scary movie. You're gonna love it, all right? Anthony Taylor is his name, yes. And he found it in the French film Archive Cinématique Francais in 1993. And I think that that's it for that one. Okay, yeah. All right, so the next movie that we're gonna talk about is just one of those, you know, you watch, it comes on television. You might even be watching, you know, some marathon of it and you're like, wait, I wanna watch that one. And it's Goldfinger, okay? So, basically, I don't have the grossest today. I think Terrence Young directed it, but basically I just want to, oh, it's direct by, this one's direct by Guy Hamilton, pardon, all right. So I just wanna say that stars Sean Connery, Gert Frode, Shirley Eaton, Tanya Mallett and Honor Blackman, all right? So Diamonds Off Forever, I think has the best music. That soundtrack has been used in a, I think a Kudrun Dorfmider album, I'm not sure, but it's so hauntedly beautiful. And then Thunder Ball's Heroine, to me. She's the most poignant and exquisite domino. I just love her for a while. I was calling one of my sisters that by a nickname because she's just a wonderful bond heroine. But Goldfinger is probably everyone's secret favorite. It's like, oh yeah, like if you had a choice between watching Goldfinger and The Man with the Golden Gun, you're gonna watch Goldfinger, okay. So, the first shot is a sign of Miami Beach and the Air, which is a, I'd like to say a flag, literally, a pun of a flag of the type of wonderful fun that's gonna come in this movie. It's a spy movie and serious things happen and people get hurt, but there's a sense of, it hasn't been done before, even though there's another Bond movie previously. So, the antics of all the actors are exquisite, especially that Honor Blackman, I think. So, from that shot, it zeroes in on a terrific dive from a diving board to a medium shot of a diver into the pool as we pan over to Felix Slider's face. And Felix is Bond's friend in CIA, okay. So, it always reminds me of the overhead shot in Atorius where Hitchcock pans from the staircase to Ingrid's quenched fist, all right. I love shots like that. Now, I think Harold Sakata as Aujab is also stand-up character in this. And Sean Connery has like a real man's body. Gert Frobe had to speak his lines phonetically and Shirley Eaton, who plays Jill Materson, did not affixate under all that gold paint. She showed up on a episode of Ghostbusters in 2003 to dispel the rumor that she had died. So, and she also wrote an autobiography called Golden Girl and Race to Family. So, let's just really quickly, since I have them on the page right here, let's go quickly over our cast's birthdays. Not their deaths though. Sean Connery, August 25th, 1930. In Fountain Bridge, England. Honor Blackman, August 22nd, 1925. Pesto, Newham, London. William Allen Shatner, March 22nd, 1931. Cout Sainte-Luc, Montreal, Quebec. Shirley Eaton, January 12th, 1937. I believe Blackpool, England. And last but not least, Toshiyuki Harold Sakata, born July 1st, 1920, in Honolulu, Hawaii. And he won Olympic medal for weightlifting. He's an Olympian. Okay, I think that wraps it up for me today. I'm your host, is Betty St. Louisville. I hope that you've enjoyed this episode of Celluloid Mirror. I'd like to thank St. Louisville Lemonade and St. Louisville Consultations for taking the day off today. Also, Gendron Building. Quality and concrete for almost 40 years for their continued support. My cast and crew here at Orca. And for all the writers I pick up stuff from that I don't ordinarily mention, such as Kale Sonnen, who is a great microphone man, right on Kale. I didn't know you were a fighter. I first found you out as someone who can manipulate that microphone. And also, my pals, who I have not yet met, Edison and Esther over at Once Upon a Crime. When you're a writer, it's good to study other writers. Until next time, baby, stay away from those bad movies. Have a great August. Ciao.