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  My Misspent Youth In Films... Darby O'Gill & The Little People Directed by: Robert Stevenson Starring: Albert Sharpe, Janet Munro, Sean Connery Released: June 22, 1960 A wily old codger matches wits with the King of the Leprechauns and helps play matchmaker for his daughter and the strapping lad who has replaced him as caretaker. What I Thought Then A magical story of Leprechauns in which two old men match wits against each other. The effects were so convincing that between this and The Gnome-Mobile I figured little people must exist somewhere. Also, there's a banshee at the end and it was terrifying, but not so terrifying that I didn't want to watch it again and again. What I Think Now You know what? It holds up rather well. The "little people" effects are well done for the time, using size-matched sets and composites with well-hidden matte lines. The banshee effects, on the other hand, don't look great. The pacing is deliberate, but it's not slow.

 My Misspent Youth In Films... Seven Brides For Seven Brothers Directed by: Stanley Donan Starring: Jane Powell, Howard Keel Released: June 22, 1954 In 1850 Oregon, when a backwoodsman brings a wife home to his farm, his six brothers decide that they want to get married too. What I Thought Then This was one that we watched a lot. It's fun, funny, and filled with fighting, dancing, and slapstick humor. I loved the barn-raising scene, and I especially liked Frank, the hot-head. After decades without seeing it, I could still rattle off the names of the seven brothers (Adam, Benjamin, Caleb, Daniel, Ephraim, Frank, and Gideon). A good time for the whole family. What I Think Now Let's just say that the sexual politics of film have changed a lot in six and a half decades. But before we dig into that, let's talk about the stuff that works. Structurally, it is a taut film, which is not what you expect from a musical made during the Hollywood musical boom. Keel and Powell have very

 In 2019 I blogged about music. Last year I wrote about board games. For 2021, I'm going to write about the movies I grew up on and how they've aged (as I have). I'll be going through them in the order in which they were released, starting a week from today with 1954's Seven Brides For Seven Brothers . The list is not finalized but it's going to be in the 60-70 range, which lines up really poorly with the weeks of the year. So I'm going to post on Fridays (because that's when new movies come out--or used to when I was a kid) and there will be some double-features, probably around summer of 1989, since basically everything came out that summer. Still working out the kinks, honestly. We'll see how it plays. I expect to find some hidden gems as well as some full-on cringe. I'm limiting myself to movies that I have re-watched (or will have been able to re-watch) in the last decade.