Let's be realistic.

Fanciful, disturbing, and wildly original, it announces the arrival of a fresh, bold voice in American cinema.

This is a small, humorous movie in some ways, but it has a huge heart. What a nice experience.

It is an exhilarating, distressing, funny and profound film, with one of the more memorable film scores in years,

James A. Fitzpatrick was a documentary producer who filmed brief travelogue type scenarios highlighting different cities/cultures/regions of the world, etc. Over some four decades from the silent era through the mid 1950's, Fitzpatrick made a few hundred of these films which were screened during the heyday of Hollywood when newsreels and cartoons were also shown. One of the hallmarks of Fitzpatrick's films was the beautiful Technicolor. This MGM film features California, circa 1947. Fitzpatrick showcases the sand dunes near the Arizona border, irrigation, vineyards, date trees, Hans Ort's cycle tours in Beverly Hills, the variety of architecture, a surprise visit with western actor Leo Carrillo at his ranch, and the oldest church, Chinatown, and the Mexican vendors of Olvera Street in Los Angeles. ** of 4 stars.

A typical James A. FitzPatrick "TravelTalk" illustrates how much variety there is in California, which is why it can be used for so many settings by Hollywood's filmmakers.We glimpse sand dunes stretching across the desert and now traversed by a modern highway; vineyards as a result of irrigation that produces a large portion of the world's grapes; date trees that provide sheltering palms; the City Hall area of Beverly Hills; Spanish and English architecture; ranches in open country, especially one owned by Leo Carrillo, Spanish character actor; and finally a look at Chinatown and its many tourist shops, as well as a Mexican street near the border where we see a man working on vases at a potter's wheel.The brief tour is over before you know it but it does give an indication of the variety of the terrain in California.

Mediterranean Ports of Call (1941) ** (out of 4) Around the World in California (1947) ** 1/2 (out of 4)Two short's from MGM's TravelTalk series with both being shown in Technicolor. The first film tells the early bloody history of Algiers, the city of Monte Carlo and other historic sites including the infamous Suicide Rock. The second short shows us California and how various locations there are just like many other famous cities across the world. From the deserts to the forests to Hollywood, the short shows off why you can find just about anything in the state. As I've said countless times before when reviewing these TravelTalk films, they are certainly a product of their time as they've certainly been bypassed by better documents of these places but both of these shorts remain mildly entertaining on a history level. The California episode is clearly the best as it nicely breaks down the state and how it is like so many other places. The first film is decent but we really don't get to learn too much about any of the places it covers.