Monday, March 31, 2008

Let's all go to the lobby

Let's All Go to the Lobby is a 1953 musical animated snipe played as an advertisement before the beginning of the main film. It featured a family of four talking concession stand products, singing "Let's all go to the lobby to get ourselves a treat" (to the tune of "We Won't Be Home Until Morning") and walking to the concession stand.

The trailer was animated by Dave Fleischer (producer of Popeye cartoons) and produced by Filmack Studios of Chicago, a company that specialized in snipes. It was part of a series of Technicolor trailers aimed at alerting audiences about a theater's newly installed concession stand.

In 2000 the United States Library of Congress deemed the short "culturally significant" and selected it for preservation in the National Film Registry.

Further color snipes, such as ones using a clock and featuring singing and dancing hot dogs, popcorn boxes, candy bars and other concession stand products took their cue from this trailer. Those targeted at drive-in theaters directed their patrons to the snack bar. Such shorts are still used for this purpose

Here is an updated version.....

Sunday, March 02, 2008

Entr'acte


This extraordinary early film from director René Clair was originally made to fill an interval between two acts of Francis Picabia’s new ballet, Relâche, at the Théâtre des Champs-Elysées in Paris in 1924. Picabia famously wrote a synopsis for the film on one sheet of note paper, headed Maxim’s (the famous Parisian restaurant), which he sent to René Clair. This formed the basis for what ultimately appeared on screen, with some additional improvisations. Music for the film was composed by the famous avant-garde composer Erik Satie, who appears in the film, along side its originator, Francis Picabia. The surrealist photographer Man Ray also puts in an appearance, in a film which curiously resembles his own experimental films of this era.