“We say hip, hooray, Hip, hip hooray, For fat!”

– Barry Mann & Cynthia Weil, The Fat Song

Speak an Arabic language on UN Arabic Language Day

“The first section's dead. There's no one left. We lost contact with the second. The third is reorganizing. All that's left is the fourth. It's enough to start over with.”

“I'm not Hassan. I'm his cow.”

Freebie: National Insurance Awareness Day (USA) redux.

 

A boy (Bin Amatsu), helps out his father and stepmother's insurance money scam by pretending to be injured in traffic.

An underdog for National Underdog Day (USA)

 

Underdog Ánimas Trujano is dead set on becoming his town's next mayordomio, the wealthy, respected man in charge of funding one of Oaxaca's major religious festivals. He does find a way, a terrible one, and does get the respect and riches he wishes for. But even with all the money and praise in the world, Ánimas' continuous down his well-trodden path of gambling away the riches bestowed, and cheating on his long-suffering wife.

 

It took me a moment to get comfortable with the casting of Japanese movie legend Toshirō Mifune as the titular important man (also see Noé Murayama in Rodríguez's Los hermanos Del Hierro from 1961, but from that moment on, Ánimas Trujano feels as universal as any great cinematic experience should be.

Alabama Day: filmed in Alabama.

 

In what he dubbed “Stand in the Schoolhouse Door”, George Wallace, Alabama governor, blocked Black students from walking into the University so he could uphold his inaugural promise of “segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever”. This prompted a national crisis, resulting in the President issuing Executive Order 11111, making the #NationalGuard step in.

“Come Senators, Congressmen, Please heed the call, Don't stand in the doorway, Don't block up the hall”

– Bob Dylan, The Times They Are a-Changin (1964)

In a then-groundbreaking new documentary format, Robert Drew and associates followed President John F. Kennedy and Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy during the crisis. And they filmed everything; from tense phone calls, private discussions, private moments (one of RFK's daughters on the phone with a bemused “Kerry”, Dept. Nicholas Katzenbach), and many, many shots in which nothing – which is everything – is said.

Something is lost and found on Official Lost and Found Day (USA)

“We come to life, we die… It's a perpetual renewal. How boring.”

– Mibu

Someone digs in soil on World Soil Day

Someone shaves on Safety Razor Day (USA)

 

Accompanied by the sweet tunes of Bunny Berigan and Ira Gershwin's I Can't Get Started, a young man shaves his face. The Big Shave is a short commissioned film which contains many of the hallmarks of Martin Scorsese's later, more accessible work.

“I've been consulted by Franklin D., Gretta Garbo has had me to tea, Still I'm broken hearted, Cause I can't get it started, With you”

–Ira Gershwin, I Can't Get Started (1936)

There's also the obvious influence of #KennethAnger to be found, in nostalgic show tunes, the fetishisation of chrome and clean lines, followed by lustful, by ways erotic, violence. #Scorsese theme here is not homoeroticism, not on the surface at least, but the carnage laid upon so many young men sent off to the smouldering battlefields of #Vietnam. There'd be another six years of that. And meanwhile, some young men came back. And some picked up a job, driving a cab.