NitrateVille.com

There's not a bottle big enough for me to ever watch Helen Gardner's 1912 Cleopatra again. Actually, crude and clunky as it is in cinematic terms, I'm rather fond of Helen Gardner's CLEOPATRA. She has an oddly compelling screen presence that overcomes the theatrical staging, low budget, and crude e...

I'd love to see some of these, especially a silent version of Daphnis and Chloe, released to DVD/BluRay. From Dennis' very brief description it sounds reasonably close to the original novel, which in the most common English translation (made by George Thornely in 1657) is described by the translator...

Well, that's what the "canons" of silent cinema are all about... what certain critics and historians think are the most worthwhile, influential, and/or interesting. A really good place to start would be as many films as possible by the four founders of United Artists -- Charlie Chaplin, Mary Pickfor...

Yes, I understand now. The out of sync shutter blade would keep exposing the film during the camera's pull-down process instead of only during the time the film is held stationary in the gate, thus giving part or all of the frame a vertical blur. This is something that computer software could imitat...

I'll second most of the recommendations so far, but there are tons of films that really need championing and greater public awareness. Films like THE GOLDEN CHANCE, THE GOOSE WOMAN, WILD ORANGES, A COTTAGE ON DARTMOOR, HINDLE WAKES, etc. really deserve to be much better known outside of the die-hard...

Wow, you have 300 Blu-Rays already?? Must be a lot of contemporary films in there. We may have to rescind your Nitrateville membership card (if there was such a thing). Well, there are a fair amount of films from the past decade (including a number of off-beat titles that never seem to show up at o...

Will you be covering the recent silent horror films CALL OF CTHULHU (2005) or PROMETHEUS TRIUMPHANT: A FUGUE IN THE KEY OF FLESH (2008)? Both do admirable jobs of recreating the look of silent cinema, and both have gotten at least some distribution and can be found on DVD with a little searching. Th...

While most of my DVD-Rs off of TCM are more or less randomly arranged in stacks of mainly silent and mainly sound titles, I do have some order for all my commercially-purchased discs (about a hundred laserdiscs, about a thousand DVDs, and about 300 BluRays). My 16mm and 35mm film prints used to be s...

It's the angle of the shutter blades in a movie camera that determines the length of the exposure. The shutter revolves as a disk, and a 180-degree angle would be half a disk rotating while the film is held stationary. This would give a 1/48th of a second exposure for film running at 24 fps. Larger ...

The big "innovation" in SAVING PRIVATE RYAN wasn't so much the skip/step-printing, but the use of a much higher shutter speed than the minimum required for 24 fps shooting and typically used in normal movie photography. The faster shutter speed, whether at 24fps or artificially stretched to 12 fps, ...

Thought it was time to change topic headings, instead of continuing discussion/speculation about CHICAGO in the BLACK PIRATE restoration thread. I would definitely be another who would buy a BluRay of CHICAGO immediately (of course at this point I try to buy every silent that comes out on BluRay). W...

I do not dislike THE SORROWS OF SATAN, which is an interesting if not completely successful attempt by Griffith to bring his style and themes to a studio product. It looks essentially like a Cecil B. DeMille picture directed by D. W. Griffith (and, actually, it is!), which is why it's not quite like...

SUNRISE (1927) Okay, techically not a talkie but it does have a Movietone soundtrack. Although most people have probably seen this on film or DVD, it's now available on BluRay and belongs in every collector's library. The first and only film ever to win the Academy Award for “Most Artistic or Uniqu...

But was every performance a sell out? I can't verify that every seat was sold out, but every performance during the initial roadshows was essentially a full house. Later reissues likely had lower attendance, but obviously enough to keep the film in circulation. The Schickel (pages 280-81) estimate ...

Finally getting around to this thread. Many of the previously mentioned books were instrumental in forming my appreciation of silent film, especially, of course Kevin Brownlow's THE PARADE'S GONE BY and the "Joe Franklin" illustrated discussion of classic silent films and stars by William K. Everson...

I don't have my Schickel book handy, but is his $60 million a grand total extimated boxoffice gross, or just the silent era gross, or only its initial roadshow runs into the 1920s? It's easily believable as an accumulated gross, including the roadshows of the last half of the teens, its reissues in ...

The main reason was to get the best possible picture quality for each market. Making an interpositive and duplicate negatives degrades the image somewhat, and at that time the difference was even more noticeable than with today's finegrain filmstocks. A single negative might be good for a couple hun...

Seems it doesn't have the Movietone score. That's too bad. I've been wanting to hear it since I saw it at LACMA and the staff was caught off-guard when they discovered the print was actually silent! From what I've read, the Movietone part-talkie version is lost, and what survived by accident was th...

According to a news item reported on Blu-Ray.com, Kino is releasing the BluRay version of its BATTLESHIP POTEMKIN restored edition in April. Their DVD was so much sharper than previous incarnations that I expect the BluRay will really be spectacular, especially with that original Meisner score. The ...

Okay, here are my reports on the January 2010 "Watch That Movie" project. With temperatures below zero, it was an ideal weekend to spend in my basement home theatre (see http://www.und.nodak.edu/instruct/cjacobs/HomeTheatrePhotos.htm if you happen to be curious) for this year's "watch that movie" ev...

The 1912 Kalem production of FROM THE MANGER TO THE CROSS that's on DVD is a re-titled and possibly re-edited reissue version that survived in nontheatrical distribution to churches and schools. Very nicely photographed and staged, if crudely edited by the standards of a few years later, it's still ...

It's a shame if directors and/or distributors want to monkey around with the look (and sound) of their old films that the BluRay (or DVD) editions don't include the original theatrical version for comparison. The BluRay of DO THE RIGHT THING is not quite as saturated or orange-yellow as the original...

I'm not sure what I'll watch yet. I don't have any silents that I haven't already seen (finally got through the Gaumont set a couple of weeks ago), but for vintage 1940s-50s sound films I've never gotten around to watching, there are quite a few, including THE SOUTHERNER, LOUISIANA STORY, NEW ORLEAN...

I vaguely recall having read about a group in North Carolina that tried to track the film down and wound up with a VHS or DVD copy they screened publicly. Have you seen the data at http://toto.lib.unca.edu/findingaids/film_video_audio_music/conquest%20of%20canaan/conquest%20of%20canaan_.htm -- which...

Well, last night I had a couple of people over to watch Universal-International's THE BLACK SHIELD OF FALWORTH (1954) on the new Eureka BluRay (preceded by a standard DVD of a Universal cartune, CONVICT CONCERTO, a well-above-average Woody Woodpecker title released to theatres a couple of months aft...

I also ordered THE WRECKER based on David's recommendation, along with its talkie remake SEVEN SINNERS (and the BluRays of SUNRISE and BLACK SHIELD OF FALWORTH). Both DVDs are priced quite reasonably (about $15-$20 each) and arrived yesterday, despite the holiday rush exactly one week after Amazon.c...

Well, it's obvious that few on this list are really into blu ray Well part of it likely has to do with the way people watch their movies. I'm one of those who sit in the front row or two at Cinefest and Cinesation and somewhere in rows 7-10 at the Egyptian for Cinecon because I like to be close eno...

Well at least they're showing THE RACKET and THE CROWD during their February Oscar month this time, and in reasonably prime time for a change. However, I've always wondered why they don't program more of the silent Oscar nominees in their library specifically during that month, leaving the rest of t...

While GONE WITH THE WIND may not be my favorite film of all time (although I've seen it at least 10 or more times in theatres, plus campus 16mm screenings, TV, and home video), it's arguably the most famous film of the 20th century and undeniably popular with a wide range of viewers (much as films l...

After a flurry of classic releases to BluRay this fall, December is all but dead for collectors, but notable older films new to BluRay start to trickle out again in January. As noted in previous posts, Criterion has a couple of worthwhile classics in January and February ( 8 1/2 and LOLA MONTES ), b...

Search found 2245 matches

CHICAGO (1927) on DVD and/or BluRay