Great links: Czech poster for Disney's "That Darn Cat!"

I love posters showing how one country interprets and markets another country's film. Along those lines, over the years, I've showcased the Polish poster for Terror of Mechagodzilla; the Spanish poster for Gamera; and the Cuban poster for the Japanese film Lake of Tears, among others.

Tonight, we have the Czech poster designed by Eva Galova-Vodrazkova for the 1965 Walt Disney live action film That Darn Cat! It's focused on the cat and is entirely uninterested in the presence of Haley Mills, Dean Jones, Roddy McDowall or The Bride of Frankenstein's Elsa Lanchester in the film.

Somehow, I don't think I've ever seen That Darn Cat! And it looks like a lot of fun. The Disney cat movie I have more recollection of from my youth is 1978's The Cat from Outer Space, which also features Roddy McDowall. 

Anyway, this poster was featured in "Cats in Czech and Polish Movie Posters," a 2016 post by Adrian Curry on Mubi's website. It's a fun and colorful post, and well worth checking out.

Speaking of Disney's live-action films of the 20th century, also well worth checking out is a series of posts by Jeff Gibson at The Gibson Review, assessing and ranking those Disney films of the 1950s, 1960s, 1970s and 1980s. It got me thinking about what Disney live-action films of that era I most enjoy and which ones I want to track down and watch for the first time. 

If you asked me when I was a kid, I'd have said my favorite was Pete's Dragon (which is kind of a cheat, because it's a mixture of live action and animation). But while that film is a lot of fun (especially Shelley Winters, Jim Dale and Red Buttons), it's uneven and tries too hard to be a musical spectacle. And it's overlong, as Gibson points out.

So, looking back, the film I thoroughly enjoyed as a kid that holds up very well today is Candleshoe, a 1977 film with Jodie Foster, Helen Hayes, David Niven and a rambling old mansion full of secrets that require more brains than brawn to solve.

With some help from Gibson's lists (which generally encompass only the films available for streaming on Disney+), here is my personal list of Disney live-action films that I either love or want to track down for a first watch:

• Darby O'Gill and the Little People (1959)
• The Parent Trap (1961)
• The Moon-Spinners (1964)
• Mary Poppins (1964)
• That Darn Cat! (1965)
• Blackbeard's Ghost (1968)
• No Deposit, No Return (1976)*
• Pete's Dragon (1977)
• Candleshoe (1977)
• The North Avenue Irregulars (1979)
• The Watcher in the Woods (1980)
• Return to Oz (1985)

*-Though I haven't seen it in nearly 50 years and I have no idea how the wacky child kidnapping humor holds up.

 

Saturday's postcards: 2 cards stashed away more than a decade ago

It's been a quiet (though windy) Saturday. After taking care of all the cat chores — including feeding community ferals Mamacita, Creamsicle and MeowMix — this morning, I spent some more time pruning circa 2012-2014 time capsules, finishing with a satisfyingly heavy bag bound for the trash can. 

During the pruning, I came across a handful of postcards, including these two. The first features a black bear (photographed by Hälle Flygare). More than a decade ago, I put stamps on it but then had some sort of false start on the Postcrossing card I intended to send. So now I have available a bear postcard featuring Jimi Hendrix and Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus stamps (both issued in 2014). Thanks to the nature of USPS forever stamps, the postage is still correct for sending an international postcard! 

The other postcard is a blank "Silveresque" card published by Valentine's. Edinburgh Castle has appeared on Papergreat before, but not this particular card. Now it has once again been liberated from an envelope and can be mailed to someone, to cheer up their day.

Solidarity / солідарності з Україною