Horst in Translation ([email protected]) "Menu" is an American 10-minute live action short film from 1933, so this one will have its 85th anniversary next year already. The names of director Grinde and writer Smith will certainly not be to familiar to most, but this is the film that got 2-time Academy Award winner Pete Smith his very first of many Oscar nominations. He was the producer and narrator here. This film is about cooking as the title already gives away. We have a housewife here preparing the perfect meal that he husband can eat despite his tummy troubles. The cast isn't two shabby, two people with a star on the Walk of fame including a National Board of Review winner and an Oscar nominee. But the project is just too ridiculous. The comedy by the narrator while we see her prepare the duck is not funny and even if you love cooking (more than I do), there's really no point in seeing this one here. The Oscar nomination was way too much and it lost to a geography/travel documentary film and it would have been way worse even if it had taken home the crown. I may be a bit biased here as a vegetarian too, but this really wasn't a convincing work. Most production values are pretty low and the fact that it is in color (surprisingly given its time) does not make it a better watch either. Huge thumbs-down.

Edgar Allan Pooh . . . as the reign began for our most beloved leader, Franklin Delano Roosevelt (aka, FDR), who came into office proclaiming his Art of the New Deal (Social Security and Regulation for the Fat Cat One Per Centers who were then destroying America's workers with their job-killing Corrupt Capitalism). Now, with Friday's swear-in for Red Commie KGB operative, the buffoon D.J. Rump as the U.S. Game Show Host-in-Chief, every American should watch MENU again in order to learn how to stuff a duck when that Blessed Day upon which Rump's goose is cooked finally arrives. It's possible, of course, that the new American Czar Vlad "Mad Dog" Putin may decide to cut his losses, and use his Puppet Rump to nuke ALL of our American and NATO military bases at 1 PM the Day After Tomorrow. As the media has been warning for months, the Racist U.S. Constitution Suicide Pact leaves NO time for anyone to conduct sanity tests, impeachment hearings, or high treason trials during the FOUR MINUTES it takes for a "Destroy America!" tweet to morph from the mind of a Megalomaniac Tool to nukes taking flight. Thanks to the Racist Electoral College (concocted by Confederate Slave Rapists to insure that they could thwart Democratic Elections whenever they wished--the Racist Party has swiped FIVE elections from the people already, while the People's Party has yet to hijack ANY election!) and an irrational minority of Red Commie Russian Red State enablers (sharing a very similar mindset with the people of Russia itself, who HAD Democracy, but preferred and chose to live under Satan's Thumb, proving that they cannot be trusted to have a nation of their own!), we ALL may be as dead at Pete Smith's duck by the time you read this. But, as they say, Mass Delusions have consequences, and we're all better off Dead than Red, anyway. So, Pete, Bottoms up, wherever you are Today!

Eugene Zonarich This very slight MGM comedy short from 1933 isn't particularly funny, but it received an Oscar nomination for "Best Short Subject" that year, and it has the wonderful UNA MERKEL in her physical prime in TECHNICOLOR! (She would not appear in a color feature film until the early '50's MGM remake of "The Merry Widow" starring Lana Turner.) I'd give "Menu" a "10" if it had more of Merkel, but as it stands, it's worthy of an "8" for a Technicolor Una Merkel alone. Merkel was one of the great supporting players of the Hollywood studio era, and one of its most prolific, appearing in about three dozen feature films, primarily for MGM and Warner Brothers from 1931 to 1934. "Menu" is an early example of the three-strip Technicolor process that would not be used in feature films until 1935's "Becky Sharp" with Miriam Hopkins. Up until that point, it was reserved for short films, but usually musical shorts, unlike this simple "Pete Smith" MGM comedy short, most of which were shot in plain B&W. Una Merkel, with her strawberry blonde hair, blue eyes and pale pink complexion, was a feast for the eyes in the then "new" Technicolor process, and is the primary reason to see this film.

Clark Richards Menu---The Burp of a Nation---8/10.This little ditty shows up occasionally on TCM, so you might be lucky, as I was, to accidentally run across it in the ending minutes of a Tivo recording of a classic movie. The running time states that it is 10 minutes in length, but it seems much shorter than that. The short centers on a housewife and her feeble attempts at cooking. Her kitchen is in a shambles; everything she touches produces a sound effect and a wise crack from an omnipotent narrator (Pete Smith). Away from home, the husband sits in his office worrying about what his wife will be concocting in the kitchen for his consumption when he gets home. Meanwhile, at the office, his belly is aching, so he is never far from his bicarbonate of soda, which he keeps in his jacket pocket.The narrator keeps everything moving along very nicely as he throws in one liners, puns and wry observations of the hapless couple. The narrator also punctuates the proceedings by not only dropping in many appropriate sound effects, but also by bringing to life a chef to manage the wife's dinner arrangements. In a puff of smoke the chef enters into the kitchen and proceeds to teach the wife how to stuff a duck and bake some apples.When the husband comes home, the chef has disappeared and so has the husband's bicarbonate. The husband has a meal fit for a king, but he'll only be king for a day, I don't think this wife could make a bowl of cereal.After watching this short, I thought it was made sometime during the 1940's, but was completely shocked to see (while on IMDb) a release date of 1933. I didn't know they used color as early as that.Very short, very tasty and easily digestible. 8/10.Clark Richards