Hollywood by Helicopter, 1958

“This movie is going to be pretty obvious.” That’s not the best way to get the viewer’s attention. And the rest of the script, read by Bob Crane, is not much better: “Hey Kitty, look … Kitty, you didn’t look hard enough … See the thing that looks like a building? That’s a building!” Nor is the premise of the film very good: Kitty is a novice actress, and, before appearing in her first movie, she gets an aerial tour of Hollywood and its landmarks.

But from a historical perspective, this 1950s footage of the Los Angeles movie industry has its intriguing moments. It’s particularly interesting to see how much space there still was around some of the studios and movie theaters. Just compare the image of Grauman’s Chinese Theater on Hollywood Boulevard taken from the film with a Google Earth shot from today:

By profession, Matthias Rascher teaches English and History at a High School in northern Bavaria, Germany. In his free time he scours the web for good links and posts the best finds on Twitter.

Name That Movie: 26 Films in One Animated Minute

Evan Seitz created this one-minute animation in which each letter of the alphabet represents a famous movie. How many can you name? The answers have been shared on Buzzfeed and The High Definite.

Don’t miss our collection of 450 Free Movies Online, which includes many great classics, indies, documentaries, noir films and more.

By profession, Matthias Rascher teaches English and History at a High School in northern Bavaria, Germany. In his free time he scours the web for good links and posts the best finds on Twitter.

“You Just Don’t Get It, Do You?” – A Montage of Cinema’s Worst Cliché

Jeff Smith, an independent filmmaker from Indianapolis, must have spent quite a bit of time going through hundreds of movies to come up with his final montage of 120 movies containing the line “You just don’t get it, do you?”. If you want to invest some time as well, try to guess the movies first and then compare your results with the list of actual movies here.

If you enjoy guessing movies, you can take a look at Jeff’s blog post “Name That Film,” in which he shows you tricky movie stills (don’t worry, he also provides the solutions).

By profession, Matthias Rascher teaches English and History at a High School in northern Bavaria, Germany. In his free time he scours the web for good links and posts the best finds on Twitter.

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Open Culture was founded by Dan Colman.