King Akim & Truxploitation

Who's the only actor to work with Cecil B. DeMille, Preston Sturges, Orson Welles and Jean-Luc Godard? That's right: Akim Tamiroff. WFMU's Beware of the Blog has a droll post this week (by one Kliph Nesteroff) about the Armenian-Russian teddy bear, positing that "he was a thespian who could easily oscillate from the highest to the lowest brow without ever jeopardizing his credibility." Whether or not you agree, you'll enjoy this immersion in his 40-year career, which features historical tangents into "yellow face" (that's white people portraying Asian characters) and the forgotten serial Canadian Mounties vs. Atomic Invaders.

And while you're there, go back two months and check out Nesteroff's link-packed post on truck-drivin' movies. It covers a decade's worth of lost masterpieces of the genre, from White Line Fever to Smokey and the Hotwire Gang. He laments, "The overwhelming majority of trucker flicks are relegated to rare early eighties VHS releases housed in giant puffy boxes." Criterion, are you listening?