Three Ealing comedies recently became available that I had long wanted to see. Evidently I’m not alone: I waited several weeks for these on Netflix. Alas that the sound on these discs is not as clear as one might hope.

Passport to Pimlico (dir. Henry Cornelius). The next-to-last unexploded bomb left over from the Blitz goes off, revealing a cache of treasure and a royal charter declaring that the neighborhood is sovereign territory of the duchy of Burgundy. Soon the street is swarming with black-marketers and shoppers rejoicing at a loophole in wartime rationing (which was not lifted until 1951 if memory serves). Naturally the Government surround Burgundy with Customs and passport inspectors. The Burgundians retaliate by stopping a train with their own inspectors . . .

Whisky Galore! (dir. Alexander Mackendrick, who later directed The Ladykillers). During the war, an island in the Hebrides runs out of whisky and all is gloom – until a ship carrying fifty thousand cases for export hits a rock nearby. Hijinks ensue. — Gordon Jackson, whom you may remember from Upstairs Downstairs (Hudson the butler) or The Great Escape, here is baby-faced at 25. He had one of those faces that proclaim even in black-and-white that the bearer must have red hair. — Small spoiler: This is the only Ealing film I’ve seen in which lawbreakers (cheating the taxman) get away with it.

A Run For Your Money (dir. Charles Frend). Two Welsh brothers win a prize for their coal-mining excellence: a trip to London, £200 and tickets to a football championship match — but they miss their contact at Paddington and have misadventures. The comedy is low-key by today’s standards.

I’m sneezing up a storm today, and the good old allergy pill hasn’t helped. I do hope it’s not the same virus that afflicted my housemate for two weeks last month.

Who is the center of the movie universe? Kevin Bacon is not even in the top thousand. Rod Steiger has the lowest total path length. But would the result be different if actors were weighted by some measure of prominence (e.g. number of credits)?

It’s annoying to find a crank on our side. Rex Curry has for some time been documenting the sordid history of the Pledge of Allegiance to the Flag, and bully for him; but lately he’s gone a bit nuts in his efforts to demonstrate that the Nazi swastika stands for Socialism, frequently citing sources that, like this, show the word Sieg or Sieg-rune (symbol of victory, appropriate to any flavor of statism) but not Sozialismus; and here he reads a scribbled Adolf as another S-rune (standing for Sozialist, since no other German word begins with S) despite the wiggly remnants of the original letters and the cross-stroke of the f. Rex, a few pieces of unambiguous evidence – which are probably somewhere in among the chaff – would be far more effective than this farrago.

I lived in Los Angeles for three years without ever knowing how to get to the Hollywood Sign. And speaking of views from on high, every time I fly to Chicago (come to think of it, the last time was quite a few years ago) I look for Fermilab, but I’ve never spotted a buffalo.

Aaron Krowne should stick to mathematics rather than writing absurdities like this:

The H1-B program has allowed companies hiring software engineers to pay less for more engineers by running to the government for help.

As if there were no migration in a state of nature! It would be more accurate to say that the Immigration Acts (in which you’ll find the H-1B program) allow skilled natives to get paid more by running to the government to restrict supply. This incidentally reduces the wages of similar workers in other countries, giving foreign employers a price advantage (to the extent that their products are able to enter the market).

Movielens invites you to rate movies you’ve seen and offers recommendations according to your ratings. To my amusement, most of the top fifteen titles suggested to me are foreign: six Japanese (all by Miyazaki), four Chinese and one German.

Novel digital effects (interesting though somewhat crude by current standards) and slapstick mitigate the pointlessness of Kung Fu Hustle but detract from the fight scenes. Would I like it better if I understood the language?

天国と地獄 High and Low. Kurosawa does not disappoint in this policier, from a novel by Ed McBain (King’s Ransom). As in 野良犬 Stray Dog, it’s weird to see Mifune with a modern haircut and mustache; I could not be sure it was him until a close-up. Three other actors from 7 Samurai and Tsubaki Sanjuro were easier to spot.

新・座頭市物語 New Tale of Zatôichi (#3, dir. Tanaka). Now in color. We learn more of Ichi’s past.

The Birds (dir. Hitchcock). Every bit as pointless as I feared it might be.

The Mind Benders (dir. Basil Dearden).

Hud (dir. Martin Ritt). I was curious about this for a silly reason. Soon after I first heard of it (I guess in advertisements for a television showing), there was a radio PSA saying “call HUD” if you’ve been treated unfairly. At the time I didn’t know that HUD was an acronym, so I thought, is this a subtle ad for the movie or what? So it stuck like a burr in a corner of my mind.

Irma la Douce (dir. Billy Wilder). For once, a comedy set in Paris where no one tries to put on a frog-eating accent — despite the opening narration by Louis Jourdan.

座頭市兇状旅 Zatôichi the Fugitive (#4; dir. Tanaka). Subtitles of Japanese movies seem always to be more or less compressed; here, I think some important background was omitted.

The Haunting (dir. Robert Wise).

Tom Jones (dir. Tony Richardson). Damned fine sport, as some of the characters might say. — In the book, I believe, Squire Western illustrates his name by speaking with a pronounzed Zomerzet dialect, voizing all his vricatives; zadly there’s none of that in Hugh Griffith’s portrayal.

Le Mépris (Contempt) (dir. Godard). Abandoned for boredom.

It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World (dir. Stanley Kramer). At least half an hour could be cut as repetitive, and it would still be unusually long for a comedy; yet the plot is quite simple.

Doctor Who. I’m enough of a fan to watch as much of the canon as is available. The disc Lost in Time: the William Hartnell years collects surviving early episodes (most were wiped so the BBC could reuse the tape). I wonder whether “The Crusade”, in which the Doctor’s party get entangled with Cœur de Lion and Saladin, would have the same plot if written fifteen years later!

Zatôichi’s Fighting Journey (#5; dir. Yasuda). Good use of color; good script; good fight-scenes.

My Favorite Martian is available on DVD, but not The Addams Family or The Wild Wild West or Get Smart. Does that seem right to you?

We recently watched the first two episodes of The Protectors (1972), which wanted to be The Avengers — even quoting from the latter’s title narration at one point, contrasting the “professional” with the “talented amateur”. The plots were tolerably interesting, but the sparkle of the model was missing; as if Gerry Anderson took some leftover Avengers scripts and said, “Okay, now let’s cut out all the humour.”

Today I watched the first two episodes of The Saint (1962), and was surprised at how trite they are: a failed theatre producer plans to kill his third wife for the insurance; a gangster kidnaps an American governor’s daughter to get his brother out of the electric chair, and guess what, the Saint fails to spot the obvious corrupt policeman. Unlike the Saint of the books, this one is not in the habit of working alone; there’s nothing to distinguish him from any number of other teevee detectives, except that early in each episode someone says “hey, that’s the famous Simon Templar!” and a halo briefly appears over his head.

The Saint was, I gather, a very popular series. I shudder to imagine its competition. It would have been better as a half-hour show — and even then it might drag in comparison to its rough contemporary Danger Man.

Jules et Jim (dir. Truffaut). It took me a long time to sort out that the one with an English name is French and the one with a French name is German. I find that in French a German accent sounds much like an English accent.

座頭市物語 (The Tale of Zatôichi) (#1; dir. Misumi). Good stuff. Unusual for the genre in that the hero draws his sword only about three times in all.

Lolita (dir. Kubrick).

続・座頭市物語 (The Tale of Zatôichi continues) (#2; dir. Mori). This is the shortest of the series (72 minutes) and a bit thin on story; but it is here that Ichi takes actions that will mark him as an outlaw, and also learns something of the woman he loved and lost.

Lawrence of Arabia (dir. Lean). I saw the first half before.