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| The Griffith Project; -- reactivated! -- DVD 1 | |
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| Tweet Topic Started: Jun 27 2009, 07:47 PM (884 Views) | |
| The Batman | Nov 23 2009, 09:31 AM Post #16 |
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Charter Member
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Great news, Mr P! I have been looking forward to more of your Griffith reviews. I am definitely considering picking the whole shebang up. |
| Always be yourself! Unless you can be Batman...then always be Batman! | |
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| panzer the great & terrible | Nov 23 2009, 10:55 AM Post #17 |
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Mouth Breather
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So glad you're back, Bat. You have been sorely missed. I do recommend the whole shebang, dreadful comedies and all. I can't begin to express my gratitude to the Grapevine folks, for this and many other things. They richly deserve our support (they have serials too!). Tiger, I agree about Birth, and dread reviewing it. It's a brilliant film that happens to preserve some archaic attitudes that were still around in the small town where I grew up, which makes them doubly repellent to me. Most Americans, especially the young, have progressed beyond this nonsense, but don't let's kid ourselves -- there are still idiots all around, and it's not smart to have public showings of Birth, however valuable it may be to film students, because it shocks the enlightened and feeds the unenlightened; it's dangerous because it's powerful. Nothing wrong with MOMA showing it, of course, but I think I'd be irresponsible if I ran it here in Chico, with scads of xenophobic loonies likely to stumble in. |
| Life is just a bowl of cherries, it's too mysterious, don't take it serious... | |
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| Zodiac | Nov 23 2009, 04:29 PM Post #18 |
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Balcony Gang, Foist Class
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Boy, you caught me napping! I saw the Gritthin project and was shocked to find no reference to Barney, Aunt Bea,Opie - hell not even Flloyd or Otis I just learned about Silent Movies and I try so hard to avoid learning - Darn LOL |
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| panzer the great & terrible | Nov 23 2009, 06:39 PM Post #19 |
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Mouth Breather
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Life is hard, Zodiac. |
| Life is just a bowl of cherries, it's too mysterious, don't take it serious... | |
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| panzer the great & terrible | Nov 25 2009, 12:26 AM Post #20 |
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Mouth Breather
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Here we go with Volume Five. 1.) The Mountaineer's Honor. Mary Pickford is a Kentucky gal known as "Harum Scarum." I'm not making this up. She falls for a guy from the flatlands and her brother doesn't approve, and that's all I'm a-tellin'. Soft and frequently dark print of a movie that must have been absolutely gorgeous, with New Jersey standing in for Kentucky. Not a masterpiece, but OK. I'm not 100% sure I understand the ending, but what the heck. One thing about the silents is, sometimes they make you pine to see them as originally released, and none more than this. |
| Life is just a bowl of cherries, it's too mysterious, don't take it serious... | |
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| Black Tiger | Nov 27 2009, 08:22 PM Post #21 |
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Charter Member
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Just saw Intolerance at the Museum of Modern Art. If there was ever a film definition of the term "epic", this film is it. It weaves four stories of intolerance and hatred battling hope and love - the fall of Babylon to Persia, the condemnation and crucifixion of Christ, the St. Bartholomew's Day slaughter of the the Huguenots by Parisians (identified as a conflict between Catholics and Protestants) and a modern American tale of a poor young couple in danger of being destroyed by aristocratic "do-gooders", corruption, villany and an unequal socio-economic system. One thing I'll say for Griffith. After starting a firestorm with Birth of A Nation, he sure didn't lay low and dodge the tough topics. The filmmaking in the segments is phenomenal with incredible battle scenes (including elephants in Babylon!) and massive carnage mixed with moments of sensitivity and love. This film should definitely be seen on the big screen. I can't imagine getting half the impact on a tv. Griffith again demonstrates why he is one of America's more important filmmakers. There appeared to be a number of young film students in the audience. And rightly so. |
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| panzer the great & terrible | Nov 28 2009, 05:37 AM Post #22 |
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Mouth Breather
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I've said it before and I'll say it again: Intolerance is the greatest American movie by a country mile. There's a scene where workers on strike are being shot and killed by scabs and policemen, and you notice a huge sign on the wall behind them that reads "The same today as yesterday." How did a two-bit ham actor from Kentucky come up with that? And I agree with El Tigre: the thing doesn't work as well on TV. Without a big picture and an audience you can't really get it. But that's true of all movies. I urge those of you who do the FNF thing to show 'em some of the more dramatic silent movies -- not the arty stuff, but movie movies like Orphans of the Storm, Robin Hood, Docks of New York or A Girl In Every Port -- or any Keaton or Harold Lloyd picture. You'll be amazed at the reactions, especially from the kids. A love for silent flicks is somehow embedded in our DNA; you just have to give 'em a chance and you're hooked, but I have better luck watching them on the computer than on the TV. |
| Life is just a bowl of cherries, it's too mysterious, don't take it serious... | |
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| Chandu | Nov 28 2009, 02:04 PM Post #23 |
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Champeen of Justice and Seeker of Knowledge, but rascal at heart!
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I recently saw a short piece on History Detectives which showed Philadelphia as one of the largest silent movie stidios of the early 19 teens, run by man named Lubin. He even had a large estate where he'd built western sets and other backdrops. They described his operation as a silent film center and bigger than Hollywood at the time. They attributed Birth Of A Nation to be one of the main factors in his downfall, since the public now realized movies could be more than mere fluff. Another contributing factor in the collapse of Lubin's film empire was WW I, since much of his business was foreign sales. I suppose most of you were well aware of all of this, but I found it quite intriguing. |
| Not plane, nor bird, nor even frog. It's just little ol' me... | |
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| CliffClaven | Dec 6 2009, 10:22 PM Post #24 |
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Balcony Gang, Foist Class
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Speaking of Griffith, TCM just ran Battle of the Sexes (1928). It's a quirky film, a simple old-fashioned melodrama about a middle-aged husband being led astray and brought to his senses, but fitted out with up-to-date sets and costumes that make the predictable plot turns feel creakier. It's not completely cheesy, but there are a few too many unintended laughs -- adult children who jump around like hyper, wide-eyed gradeschoolers, a pocket notebook where the notes are typed (how'd they get it into the typewriter?), a drawn-out series of shots to convey that a tiny mouse is sneaking up on a woman (who is standing absolutely still in the middle of an empty room), the outraged father trying to spank his grown daughter when he catches her with the golddigger's oily lover. The oily lover might be an intentional joke -- He looks like a discount Valentino, manages to underplay hammily, and is introduced as "Babe Winsor -- The wrong answer to a maiden's prayer." And there are some honest laughs, like the husband trying to shape up (and finally resorting to a girdle), and repeated shots of a talkative blond in a nightclub, consuming everything on the menu while maintaining a nonstop line of chatter to her unseen companions. The golddigger herself is energetic and not nearly as hard as the first intertitle assures us she is. She plays the same happy flirt whether vamping the husband, throwing herself at her "perfumed ice" boyfriend, or checking out the transparency of some new lingerie. On the plus side, you do feel for the betrayed wife -- the actress manages to keep it convincing, even when she breaks down and walks the edge of an apartment rooftop. And the husband -- Jean Hersholt -- finds the line between foolish dupe and total cad, even when playfully rolling currency in his mistress's curls at a nightclub. If Griffith had chosen a New England village or a historical setting, it might have played a lot better. As it is, it plays like a puritan version of Cecil B. DeMille's "racy" society dramas -- not a laughable mess by any means, but with too many missteps to be more than just interesting. |
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| panzer the great & terrible | Dec 7 2009, 09:10 AM Post #25 |
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Mouth Breather
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Battle bombed when it came out. An attempt was made in the last decade to rescue it by pitching it as an early feminist film, but it doesn't really bear that out. My nominee for the best late Griffith picture is Lady of the Pavements, which featured the early Lupe Velez in the same story as Sternberg's The Devil is a Woman and Bunuel's That Obscure Object of Desire -- three brilliant and very different movies from the same insignificant story: one of the curious accidents of movie history. To enjoy Griffith you must learn to ignore certain Victorian mannerisms, the worst of which is having his heroines flutter about like butterflies. He must have had a sister with ADD. Edited by panzer the great & terrible, Dec 7 2009, 09:30 AM.
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| Life is just a bowl of cherries, it's too mysterious, don't take it serious... | |
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6:23 AM Jul 11