Flying Down to Rio and mental illness in the '30s

As I've posted before, I'm a sucker for movies from the 30s. TCM was showing "Flying Down to Rio," and I was stunned by the climax in which chorus girls are shown dancing on the wings of biplanes.

This is insane!

The girls would dance, then they'd cut to the ground where people would ooh and ahh.

Of course it was all done with rear-screen projection, but you'd have to be insane to even come up with an idea like that.

Then it gets better: Under the planes are trapezes, and two trapeze artists are tossing a girl back and forth. And they drop one! But it's OK, she lands on then wing of another plane. They gives a thumbs up to the crowd, and everyone claps.

Truly the work of maniacs!

DC Comics Presents #56

And what makes this book so special? The story is OK, (Superman, Power Girl meet, pre-Crisis, without crossing over dimensional border!), art is not spectacular, yet it makes two little moments of history.
a) the cover will parallel the cover for Crisis on Infinite Earths #7 (the only difference being Supergirl would stay dead longer.)
b) It's the first/only time Power Girl would be drawn by Curt Swan, making her officially a member of the Superman family. Now, if they could only have gotten Kurt Shaffenberger and Jim Mooney to draw some Power Girl stories, how cool would that have been?

Review: 30 Rock, last episodes

Great, nonstop jokes, and it managed to end on a hug without any actual hugging. ("I love you too, Jack.") (it pisses me off to this day that every episode of "Family Ties" ended with a hug.)

Kenneth's immortal
Every woman in L.A. looks like Cerie
Julianne Moore and Selma Hayek have lost their accents
"I shouldn't have gotten such a loud pacemaker"
The cancellation of the show doesn't sink in until they take away Jenna's mirror.

Really a great way to go.

Some niggling things. Parts of it though reminded me of those dreadful 1980s reunion movies, where we see what Gilligan/girls from "Fact of Life," Rhoda and Mary are doing now. Kenneth is now president of the network, Jack is having an identity crisis in his new role of CEO. If 30 Rock was awful, and they did have a reunion show 15 years from now, that's the kind of plotting we'd have.

But all in all, a great finish to a great show. It should have gotten a complete season to tell this story though.