NitrateVille.com

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2050/2300719028_c8f261a2cc_o.jpg We had a little discussion of our stars of the month in the Smashing James Agee thread: And so, for more than 50 years, we've had the idea that these were accepted as the four major silent comedians... [except] we haven't behaved that ...

http://www.filmforum.org/films/unitedartists.html A cool retrospective of United Artists releases from all different times in the studio's history-- and unlike the DVD box set released at Christmas, it doesn't give short shrift to the earlier films, with screenings of titles such as Robin Hood, My B...

Well, it certainly couldn't hurt to send a polite note of support for silents here:

http://www.tcm.com/TCMCFA/feedback.jsp

I do too. I have both the laser box sets of the swashbuckling (mostly) pictures, but I've managed to see surprisingly few of the earlier comedies over the years, so I am very much looking forward to this.

But doesn't NetFlix also get unlabeled discs from the disc producers sometimes, or minimally labeled discs, or whatever?

Thanks for the pics, Larry. A Wichita friend reading the board spotted an old friend of ours in the shot labeled "The theater Saturday evening." Cool and good to see a good turnout.

I hadn't noticed the problem because, I guess, my browser automatically line-breaks them without making them unclickable. I'll look into a mod but the easy ways for posters to avoid those big clumps of ugly link text are: 1. Go to www.tinyurl.com and get a shorter link that links to the same thing. ...

No, I demand obsequious, HBO-style behind the scenes documentaries: PAUL WEGENER: What attracted me to it was, it's really this incredible journey that the audience goes through with this guy who's just like you or me, except he's made of clay and has a dumb haircut. RICHARD ARLEN: El Brendel is jus...

the undisputed silent comedy triumvirate of Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton, and Harold Lloyd

Jeez, doesn't he read NitrateVille?

Thanks, Jessica. I'd like to go slightly OT and also plug another recent Kino release-- Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors, a 1965 Soviet film by Sergei Paradjanov. That may not sound like fun (Salt For Svanetia, anyone?) but it's a riotously colorful sort of Georgian folk tale full of vivid camera work...

Wasn't this licensed by Killiam Shows back in the day, along with things like Sunrise, Seventh Heaven, etc., and thus copyrighted but more readily available than the average Fox title? Or something like that. Cinevent showed it a few years back in what I recall was at least a pretty good print. It's...

See, to me that's exactly the kind of quote that says we know Hart's being parodied because everyone says Hart is being parodied.

In all variants of film and animation criticism, that list of "the best" is invariably followed by diminishing or dismissing the rest. It brings real investigation and film research to a halt. I think that's right, although Agee did at least create some initial benefit for us from doing it in that ...

He's busy making his spring wardrobe from Alcoa and Reynolds products.

The mention of "a.m.s. nonsense" brings your humble, but determined, moderator into the picture after several of the last few posts. While I'm happy to see a serious, non happy-talk discussion of the issues underlying the management of the fests, and recognize that certain folks have histories with ...

That's a good point, Greta-- Hart was "the great stone face" before Keaton ever was, and on a certain level, everything Keaton ever does is mocking the stern, moralistic seriousness and righteousness of his persona. That said, thanks for some good insight into what makes The Frozen North actually a ...

Helpmates. Helpmates is pretty much the most perfect short of all time. Everything is just timed perfectly. You might be able to argue that it mainly works for those deeply familiar with L&H, and others are better for newbies, but I think that's intrinsic to L&H anyway-- I want to know exactly what'...

Thanks, Chris, for the report. Great reading. Re: The Frozen North-- I know everyone says it's a Hart parody. Can anyone identify anything in it that seems to actually refer to Hart? It strikes me as more like a general northern-melodrama parody than Hart-specific (and did Hart ever make an Alaska/Y...

Someone else emailed me about this, and given that the screening announcements are numerically the largest group of posts here, I can see the argument that they make it hard to find other things in the same board. So I'll create another board in both silents and talkies for screenings, though it may...

I think that's a great question. I have no answers for you, but hopefully someone will...

Also The Old Dark House and She. Those would be among the most valuable properties, both acquired because Rohauer would buy underlying literary rights and then when somebody wanting to remake something, trade them the story rights for rights to the original version. (Or some more byzantine variation...

Other collectors had copies, then Rohauer got copies, then he "owned" them.

Exhibitors got to screen things before they booked them back then?

That's going to haunt my nightmares tonight.

Well, the positive side is that we're starting to go to things together-- the older son (9) and I have seen many things, from The Great K&A Train Robbery to Modern Times, and we're starting to do the same with the younger one (6).

So I finished this. I guess I'm just too far removed from being able to care about this subject. A courtier turns arrogant and falls out of favor from his prince. Eventually he sort of turns into a stalker and goes mad. Thanks for sharing. To my mind there's a real contradiction in the piece in that...

Boy, if we had all of his lost and his unproduced films, he'd have quite a body of work.

Thanks for the great examples of trade ad art, that was really fun, Bruce. (And sad at the same time.)

You know, it's not just that there's a lot more other stuff to watch-- the combination of kids and HDTV means nature shows will take a much bigger place in your life, and believe me, they're a lot more enjoyable than they were in Marlin Perkins' day on a 21" set-- but jeez, even within our own niche...

I first ran across Hochbaum in David Shipman's The Story of Cinema; he's wrapping up cinema before WWII and he makes reference to a string of European directors who had made an art form out of the movies and it goes something like this-- "produced top-class artists such as Renoir, Feyder, Clair, Sjo...

Morning Edition on NPR has this series of interviews with folks who've been around a long time. Tomorrow's (2/15) is supposed to be with "the sweetheart of Mexico," who got a contract with Hollywood in 1928, according to the promo. I can't think of any other sweetheart of Mexico who could still be a...

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March '08 Stars of the Month Stan, Ollie and Charley

United Artists retrospective at Film Forum, NYC

Lupita Tovar on NPR tomorrow AM (I think)