Tweet Gallery of Mastheads

Typical of Feuillade that there's this picture of a bald guy and I wonder who he is... and Mike has to write his way out of it. "Inadvertent surrealism" is right. It finally hit me during a MOMA showing where one of his two-reelers was running and they had to post a letter ... and so took a balloon to the mail box. Suddenly it hit me: the producer had rented him a balloon, so they had to use it. This was a man who wrote himself into a corner and just did did something else and hoped no one would notice.

Bob

A beautiful piece of work, Mike. Thanks for putting in the effort each month.

Indeed, finding new mastheads must keep you on your toes, but I look forward to them every month.

[Mike Gebert]

Thanks, it's a fun challenge, finding images that really capture the personalities or movies involved. And especially as we start to enter the centenary of the era of movies and movie stars we know, it will be interesting to track that in real time 100 years on, as with the Gishes last month. I just have three years to find a good Birth of a Nation image...

The Marilyn Monroe Blu-ray collection just came out, but in September we'll be getting the Universal monster collection on Blu-ray and in October is the Hitchock classics Blu-ray collection. Then there's the promised Blu-ray releases of INTOLERANCE/THE MOTHER AND THE LAW/THE FALL OF BABYLON as well as the official release of the Mary Pickford Blu-ray collection many of us already have. Might they foreshadow Nitrateville mastheads to come?

Well, you definitely guessed at least one, but it's not the only anniversary or video release tie-in I'm planning on in the upcoming months.

I like seeing Fantomas peeking over the Nitrateville logo, very clever! Thanks for this wonderful masthead.

I opened my computer to Nitrateville and immediately said "ohhh...nice." Good work Mike.

Thanks, it's a fun challenge, finding images that really capture the personalities or movies involved.

Where do you find them?

Jim

[Mike Gebert]

Well, in this case I cobbled it together, but usually it's just a matter of searching online for something specific and looking at page after page of results till I spot something cool. A few times I've scanned from books, if the image is big enough that you won't see the dots at this size. Nothing special about how I find them.

[Mike Gebert]

It's not easy to find a picture of Mack Sennett, it turns out, other than a handful of portraits which make him look like a banker (or, with mustache, a bit like William Faulkner). Then I found a tiny one of him on a set with [correction] Chester Conklin and a couple of women someone other than me will have to identify. It's just barely big and good quality enough to run at NitrateVille— but it's such a strikingly posed shot, with Sennett looking like the boss about to kick some butt, that it seemed the natural choice. (Brent Walker used it as his masthead, too.) Anyone have a bigger copy and know more about its circumstances?



Anyway, the reason for this being Sennett month (which it won't entirely be; there's a brief homage to be paid later in the month) is that, one, it is the 100th anniversary of the founding of Keystone, and two, TCM will be showing no fewer than 78 Sennett films restored for video by Paul Gierucki— go here for the most details— followed by a release of a Sennett set some ways down the road.

It's not easy to find a picture of Mack Sennett, it turns out, other than a handful of portraits which make him look like a banker (or, with mustache, a bit like William Faulkner). Then I found a tiny one of him on a set with Snub Pollard and a couple of women someone other than me will have to identify.

MIke, You should have left Snub Pollard for someone else to identify too, because it's Chester Conklin.


RICHARD M ROBERTS (I'll leave Brent Walker to identify the Women).

Is that taken from HOLLYWOOD CAVALCADE?

Bob

[Mike Gebert]

MIke, You should have left Snub Pollard for someone else to identify too, because it's Chester Conklin.

Damn! I thought Conklin at first, but I looked at photos of Pollard, Conklin and Billy Bevan, just to make sure, and the droopy mustache seemed closest by far to Pollard.

Pollard
Conklin

MIke, You should have left Snub Pollard for someone else to identify too, because it's Chester Conklin.

Damn! I thought Conklin at first, but I looked at photos of Pollard, Conklin and Billy Bevan, just to make sure, and the droopy mustache seemed closest by far to Pollard.

Pollard
Conklin

Well, considering that Pollard worked for Hal Roach, not Sennett, should have made the decision a little easier.


RICHARD M ROBERTS

[Mike Gebert]

So why was his mustache moonlighting for Sennett?

So why was his mustache moonlighting for Sennett?

Sounds like a vintage silent comedy short:
"Mustaches and Moonlight".

Is that taken from HOLLYWOOD CAVALCADE?

Bob

I don't think so. When that film was made, Sennett was in his late 50s and his hair was almost completely white. In Brent Walker's book there's a picture of Sennett at the time of Hollywood Cavalcade (p. 230), and he looks a lot older than he does in the masthead photo.

The image up top looks like it dates from the heyday of Keystone, in the 1910's.

[Mike Gebert]

60 years ago this Sunday, the modern era of film began. No, not sound, or the MPAA rating system, or the use of CGI... this was Cinerama! Cinerama was a firework that blazed brightly and sputtered, with only seven features in Cinerama (and a couple of others in similar processes) over more than a decade— though almost all the films were huge hits, the 3-projector system wasn't destined for mass replication. But other systems followed and color, widescreen spectacle became the movies' norm. Flicker Alley has released two new DVD/blu-rays which attempt to recapture Cinerama's excitement for home video through "smilebox" presentation, as Warner did with How the West Was Won, though there's nothing to compare to the real thing (which I was fortunate enough to see in Dayton, Ohio at the New Neon back in 1998, one, or rather two, of the great movie experiences of my life).

I didn't want to change the format of the site's masthead for a whole month, and there was no way to really pay tribute without taking up the whole panorama, but we can at least take this weekend to pay tribute to... Cinerama! Here's the main thread, and there's more here about a concurrent LA festival of Cinerama screenin

[silentfilm]

Great masthead!

Cool.

[Christopher Jacobs]

Love the Cinerama masthead! (But you didn't "smilebox" it!) Sure wish I could be in L.A. for the 3-panel Cinerama screenings and all the others. Need to order those Blu-rays soon!

[Danny Burk]

Looks great! Good enough to be up for a month.

Fabulous

Love it! Love it! Love it! Thank You!

TCM has a night of Cinerama films scheduled for October 18, 2012.

Argh! There seems something indecent about widescreen color in Nitrateville. I can understand why Fritz Lang said it was useful for photographing a snake.

Bob

BRILLIANT!

Very nice work! I wouldn't be worried about looking at that all month. Hope everyone who's attending has fun at the Cinerama dome this weekend!

Brilliant and evocative -- too bad Smilebox isn't available, and my computer monitor isn't pliable . . .

[Danny Burk]

Thanks, Danny! I had to blow it up to 300 percent to get the total effect, but it does improve the perspective somewhat . . .

It really looks great! There was almost a full house for the last Cinerama film, the short "In the Picture." Tickets have been going fast.