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Shasta Silent Film Festival; final schedule
Topic Started: Oct 11 2010, 11:39 AM (821 Views)
panzer the great & terrible
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http://www.shastaartscouncil.org/programs-and-events/silent-film-festival/
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panzer the great & terrible
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All films are real film -- no DVDs. Live piano accompaniment by a feller who knows how. Four different T-Shirts, all white on black. All balconeers get a poster suitable for framing. Real popcorn, popped before your eyes, and vintage sodas -- we're talking NuGrape, Moxie and such. All films shown in the old Redding Courthouse. Ask me and I'll show you the holding cell (a creepy, creepy sight). Projection by leading film preservationist Dave Shepard. Beer available between shows at a real saloon. Intros and (maybe) title reading by panzer the great and terrible. How can you miss such a splendid throwdown?
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The Batman
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Thanks for the link and info, Mr P. Sounds like it will be a real blast. Wish I was there, please give a full report.

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George Kaplan
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I'll be there, second year in a row.

And Panz, if you are really going to read the titles for THE NIGHT CRY, we kiddies expect genuine canine vocalizing from Rin Tin Tin, not the "bark bark! yelp yelp!" of Hanna-Barbera.
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panzer the great & terrible
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Of course I'll report. The Rin Tin Tin vehicle and the Constance Talmadge film, plus the reminiscences of Mrs. Cox, will be the highlights and deserve a full report. The rest is familiar territory, though it will be interesting to see what kind of print Dave comes up with for Our Hospitality. I'll be watching the Kino print in a few days as a refresher.

Our Hospitality is one of the great restoration success stories. The first print I saw was almost completely destroyed by nitrate decomposition. Now it's a lovely film.

Mr. K, Shepard has put his foot down and there will be no barking even though my pal Matt (whom you will meet) found a superb barker. Dave says we can't have a barker unless we come up with a condor imitator. I've only seen one condor, and he had nothing to say. My imitation of nothing is severely lacking in the anything department.

Don't forget to ask to see the holding cell. It's freestanding and eerie as all get out.
Edited by panzer the great & terrible, Oct 13 2010, 04:21 AM.
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panzer the great & terrible
Oct 13 2010, 04:09 AM
Of course I'll report.

I've only seen one condor, and he had nothing to say. My imitation of nothing is severely lacking in the anything department.

Thanks Mr P, looking forward to the feedback.


And I would have to say, imitating a condor would be hard for someone like you... ;) :D

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panzer the great & terrible
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The festival is over, and I am one tired puppy. For me the highlight was Keaton's granddaughter, Melissa Talmadge Cox. The Grand Duchess and I had dinner with her and her husband, Bill, and breakfast the next day. We talked about her grandfather (She brought his pork pie hat), her grandmother Natalie Talmadge, and her two extraordinary great aunts, Constance and Norma Talmadge, but we also talked about everything else under the sun. She and her husband are spirited and lively conversationalists, we got on like a house afire, and time raced by. I hope to run into them at future festivals because there will always be more to say. Her father was a publicist at Fox, and worked with Marylyn Monroe -- she has a picture of him sitting in Marylin's lap.

There were movies at the festival too.

The festival began with a program of three short comedies, beginning with the Charley Chase short, "The Caretaker's Daughter." This is only available elsewhere in a poor print on a cheapo DVD set, but it's fun and deserves a better release. Charley and a gangster's girlfriend are quite innocently together at a woodsy lodge, and Charley's wife and eventually the gangster show up -- Charley disguises himself as the caretaker (his brother James Parrott), and everything you can think of about people popping in and out of doors takes place, plus a lot you'd never think of. More caretakers appear (never mind), and eventually all is chaos. A good start.

Everybody who loves silents knows "The Goat," one of the funny Keaton shorts. The print was as good as I've seen.

"A Pair of Tights" completed the program. Made at Roach at the very beginning of the Laurel and Hardy craze, it resembles their films but stars Edgar Kennedy and Stuart Erwin as a couple of tight(wad)s taking two girls out on the town. Kennedy insists on stopping for ice cream so nobody will have much appetite for dinner, Erwin pulls up in front of an ice cream parlor, and flapper Anita Garvin hops out to get the cones. On the way back, the swinging doors hit her from behind and ice cream flies. She goes back for more cones, and more, and more, and let's just say that if you're the kind who feels sorry for ice cream, your emotions will get a workout. Kennedy gets well-decorated, but the best scene is the one where a matron in a big, silly hat sits down on four scoops. First she's a smug clotheshorse, then, without any real change of expression, a sense of puzzlement creeps in, followed by profound disappointment with the world and all in it. I laughed until I ached.

The feature of the evening was Chicago, the first movie of the hit Broadway satire, remade as Roxie Hart in the Forties, and then again ten years ago took a Best Picture as Chicago. Phyllis Haver plays Roxie with more moxie than Ginger Rogers or Renée Zellweiger, the sweaty sleazeball Billy Flynn is no pretty boy Richard Gere, and May Robeson plays the Queen Latifah part (!!!). There is no Velma, just a dark lady who gets in a catfight with Haver. There's an added sublot involving stolen money, and the lover Roxie shoots is Eugene Pallette.

I've loved this picture since I first saw it, and the score provided by the Monte Alto Orchestra on the DVD is a tremendous enhancement. Rodney from that band provided piano for us, and it made the picture.

In this instance deMille pushes the bounds of censorship or takes advantage of the per-Code atmosphere, depending on your belief system. In any case the movie is slam-bang entertainment, and readily available to the home collector in a flawless DVD edition. Panzer's coveted five star rating.
Edited by panzer the great & terrible, Oct 25 2010, 04:18 AM.
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Thanks for the report, Mr P. I don't have to say how jealous I am of your meeting Melissa Talmadge Cox and getting all those great stories.

"The Caretaker's Daughter" looks like a fun one, hope a proper DVD release is in the works.

And you did not mention if "A Pair of Tights" is available? It sounds like a hoot.

You know my feelings on CHICAGO, a fantastic release of a fabulous movie. 5 Batarangs right there.

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panzer the great & terrible
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"Tights" doesn't seem to be available in North America. Gravy may know if it's on some German release, or something like that. I laughed my heck off.

But hey, that was just the first day of the festival. The second day began with The Last of the Mohicans, which I think is familiar to serious silent film collectors. On the big screen, the deep focus compositions are what stand out: something's going on in the foreground, but the far distance is still in focus. The history books tell us that technique first appeared in Citizen Kane. Phooey. The audience enjoyed the scenes in Yosemete, back before the area was built up. It's never been my favorite movie, but on a big screen with an audience it was exciting.

Did I say exciting? The Night Cry, with Rin Tin Tin -- now that was exciting! Rin Tin Tin, quickly moved up to near the top of my list of the screen's best actors. No, really, the dog could act. He could tear your heart out, without ever once looking at his trainer. He seemed to enjoy being a star. Weird. The story? Well, some critter is a-killin' lambs, and it has to be Rinty because the lambs he's guarding don't git hurt (never occurs to anybody that it's because Rinty's good at guarding them). There are strange cries at night; Rinty hears them and finds the condor that makes them, but nobody else seems to be listening. This is one case when spoilers wouldn't spoil much, but suffice it to say that when the guy trying to kill Rinty bangs his head on a stone fireplace, the audience applauded like mad. This movie made me a Rinty convert. It's a deep dish melodrama, that's for sure. No word yet on a DVD release, but it wouldn't stun me to learn there was a Rin Tin Tin box in the early planning stages -- not that I know anything at all like that. One thing I am sure of -- everything will come out eventually, but as for right now, a lot depends on how well other newly-rereleased silents do.

We had a barker and a condor imitator: some found that tacky, but I liked it. The same performaners also read the titles aloud, which was not a great idea IMO. At the very least they should have rehearsed, and it's hard to imagine how we could have managed a screening just for them.

Our Hospitality: For me Melissa Cox's intro was the highlight, but then I've seen the film a dozen times. The Grand Duchess is no silent movie fan, but she loved it (and loved her fellow Melissa too). Incidentally, Ms. Cox's favorite of her grandfather's movies is The General, which came as no big surprise. Keaton, she told us, retained his fascination with the railroad. He had a large-gauge model train, and for her birthday one year had the kids sit outside the barn with the tracks going right down the middle of the table and the train would come out of the barn bearing hot dogs, sodas, ice cream and cake, kind of like those sushi bars with the little boats. This is the first of the Keaton features I would call excellent -- it's a well-proportioned story with strong performances from Keaton and his then-wife Natalie, and I give it a 5 on the Panzometer.

Her Primitive Lover has been little seen since its first release. Dave showed it in a 16mm print taken directly from the negative, which he owns. It's the plot about the girl in love with a romantic guy who dies out in the jungle, so she marries his stodgy pal instead; then, of course, the dead guy shows up alive. This time she divorces the husband and goes off with the romantic "Primitive Lover," but they are waylaid by a masked bandit, and you're going to have to imagine what comes next. Constance Talmadge is the star and she IS a star in every good way, with enough charm and vivacity for two stars (unless the other one is Clara Bow). I liked the movie: as Dave said, it's no Ingmar Bergman film, but it's fun. Four Panzer stars. I may be way off base here, but my impression is that a Lobster Films release on DVD is a possibility.

The closing shot of the festival was Wild Bill Wellman's Wings, in a silent print apparently made from the synchronized version of 1929 (of which sound elements are lost). Clara Bow is the gal next door, Buddy Rogers is the man she loves, Richard Arlen is his best bud, and Gary Cooper in a short but memorable role is the flier inhabiting the tent they move into.

This was the first war film to use real planes doing real stunts live in the air before a studio's camera; everything before this was taken from government stock footage or done with miniatures. Here it's all real. The stars and the cameramen had to learn how to fly, so if you see a flier flying, he actually is flying -- no process shots at all -- and the other flyer is photographing him. The story, if you can call it that, is about Clara Bow's efforts to land Rogers, but is just a frame for one exciting flying sequence after another, from which Bow is entirely absent; so it's really a buddy picture. Richard Arlen is good looking here in a distant, aristocratic way, and his looks tip off an essential plot point which I can't go into further without a major spoiler. In a nice touch, Henry B. Walthall, the "Little Colonel" himself, is cast as Arlen's even more distant aristocratic dad.

I gave a five minute introduction and you could fill a book with what I left out. Still kicking myself over that. But they did laugh and applaud, so it could be worse. I can't judge. Wings racks up a solid 4 stars on the Panzometer. I dock it a little for the long, inconsequential Paris sequence -- I get tired of all the bubbles.

My big minus for the festival was the folding chairs: new ones were supposed to be there, but were hung up in some warehouse awaiting delivery.

Now ssshhhhh! Don't tell anybody, but next year we may have Underworld, and we'll certainly have another romp with Rinty. I'm going to push for a swashbuckler too.
Life is just a bowl of cherries, it's too mysterious, don't take it serious...
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panzer the great & terrible
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"Tights" doesn't seem to be available in North America. Gravy may know if it's on some German release, or something like that. I laughed my heck off.

But hey, that was just the first day of the festival. The second day began with The Last of the Mohicans, which I think is familiar to serious silent film collectors. On the big screen, the deep focus compositions are what stand out: something's going on in the foreground, but the far distance is still in focus. The history books tell us that technique first appeared in Citizen Kane. Phooey. The audience enjoyed the scenes in Yosemete, back before the area was built up. It's never been my favorite movie, but on a big screen with an audience it was exciting.

Did I say exciting? The Night Cry, with Rin Tin Tin -- now that was exciting! Rinty quickly moved up to near the top of my list of the screen's best actors. No, really, the dog could act. He could tear your heart out, without ever once looking at his trainer. He seemed to enjoy being a star. Weird. The story? Well, some critter is a-killin' lambs, and it has to be Rinty because the lambs he's guarding don't git hurt (never occurs to anybody that it's because Rinty's good at guarding them). There are strange cries at night; Rinty hears them and finds the condor that makes them, but nobody else seems to be listening. This is one case when spoilers wouldn't spoil much, but suffice it to say that when the guy trying to kill Rinty bangs his head on a stone fireplace, the audience clapped like mad. This movie made me a Rinty convert. It's a deep dish melodrama, that's for sure. No word yet on a DVD release, but it wouldn't stun me to learn there was a Rin Tin Tin box in the early planning stages -- not that I know anything at all like that. One thing I am sure of -- everything will come out eventually, but as for right now, a lot depends on how well other newly-rereleased silents do.

We had a dog imitator and a condor imitator: some found that tacky, but I liked it. We were going to have a police dog, but he got pre-empted to solve a crime. The same performers also read the titles aloud, not a great idea. At the very least they should have rehearsed, and it's hard to imagine how we could have managed a screening just for them; so as a practical matter we probably won't repeat that experiment.

Our Hospitality: For me Melissa Cox's intro was the highlight, but then I've seen the film a dozen times. The Grand Duchess is no silent movie fan, but she loved it (and her fellow Melissa too). Incidentally, Ms. Cox's favorite of her grandfather's movies is The General, which came as no big surprise. Keaton, she told us, retained his fascination with the railroad. He had a large-gauge model train, and for her birthday one year had the kids sit outside the barn with the tracks going right down the middle of the table and the train would come out of the barn bearing hot dogs, sodas, ice cream and cake, kind of like those sushi bars with the little boats. This is the first of the Keaton features I would call excellent -- a well-proportioned story with strong performances from Keaton and his then-wife Natalie, and I give it a 5 on the Panzometer.

Her Primitive Lover has been little seen since its first release. Dave showed it in a 16mm print taken directly from the negative, which he owns. It's the plot about the girl in love with a romantic guy who dies out in the jungle, so she marries his stodgy pal instead; then, of course, the dead guy shows up alive. This time she divorces the husband and goes off with the romantic "Primitive Lover," but they are waylaid by a masked bandit, and you're going to have to imagine what comes next. Constance Talmadge is the star and she IS a star in every good way, with enough charm and vivacity for two stars (unless the other one is Clara Bow). I liked the movie: as Dave said, it's no Ingmar Bergman film, but it's fun. Four Panzer stars. I may be way off base here, but my impression is that a Lobster Films release on DVD is a possibility.

The closing shot of the festival was Wild Bill Wellman's Wings, in a silent print apparently made from the synchronized version of 1929 (of which sound elements are lost). Clara Bow is the gal next door, Buddy Rogers is the man she loves, Richard Arlen is his best bud, and Gary Cooper in a short but memorable role is the flier inhabiting the tent they move into.

This was the first war film to use real planes doing real stunts live in the air before a studio's camera; everything before this was taken from government stock footage or done with miniatures. Here it's all real. The stars and the cameramen had to learn how to fly, so if you see a flier flying, he actually is flying -- no process shots at all -- and the other flyer is photographing him. The story, if you can call it that, is about Clara Bow's efforts to land Rogers, but is just a frame for one exciting flying sequence after another, from which Bow is entirely absent; so it's really a buddy picture. Richard Arlen is good looking here in a distant, aristocratic way, and his looks tip off an essential plot point which I can't go into further without a major spoiler. In a nice touch, Henry B. Walthall, the "Little Colonel" himself, is cast as Arlen's even more distant aristocratic dad.

I gave a five minute introduction and you could fill a book with what I left out. Still kicking myself over that. But they did laugh and applaud, so it could be worse. I can't judge. Wings racks up a solid 4 stars on the Panzometer. I dock it a little for the long, inconsequential Paris sequence -- I get tired of all the bubbles.

My big minus for the festival was the folding chairs: new ones were supposed to be there, but were hung up in some warehouse awaiting delivery.

Now ssshhhhh! Don't tell anybody, but next year we may have Underworld, and we'll certainly have another romp with Rinty. I'm going to push for a swashbuckler too.
Edited by panzer the great & terrible, Oct 26 2010, 10:05 AM.
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panzer the great & terrible
Oct 26 2010, 10:00 AM
Did I say exciting? The Night Cry, with Rin Tin Tin -- now that was exciting! Rinty quickly moved up to near the top of my list of the screen's best actors. No, really, the dog could act. He could tear your heart out, without ever once looking at his trainer. He seemed to enjoy being a star. ... No word yet on a DVD release, but it wouldn't stun me to learn there was a Rin Tin Tin box in the early planning stages -- not that I know anything at all like that. One thing I am sure of -- everything will come out eventually, but as for right now, a lot depends on how well other newly-rereleased silents do.
It's available from Grapevine Video. I haven't seen it; so, I can't speak to quality. I've been pleased with other Grapevine releases.
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panzer the great & terrible
Oct 26 2010, 10:00 AM
"Tights" doesn't seem to be available in North America. Gravy may know if it's on some German release, or something like that. I laughed my heck off.

Thanks, Mr P, I will have to check into that.
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panzer the great & terrible
Oct 26 2010, 10:00 AM
Rin Tin Tin -- the dog could act. He could tear your heart out, without ever once looking at his trainer. He seemed to enjoy being a star. No word yet on a DVD release, but it wouldn't stun me to learn there was a Rin Tin Tin box in the early planning stages

Tell me you are teasing, Mr P, and you know there is a boxed set on the way! Rinty rocks!

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mort bakaprevski
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Damn dog bit me on the fetlock!!
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panzer the great & terrible
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Serves you right for having a fetlock, mort. I don't know what that is but it sounds dirty to me.

Mr. Bat, I don't know anything except how to beat these here drums. Put it this way: there are people who haven't made up their minds about many things, but need encouragement. If you want to provide same, go to the websites of Flicker Alley and Lobster Films and order, order, order. Great things will come to pass when those folks have some cash flow. One set the Flicker folks have that's rarely talked about is their ships and the sea box, Under Full Sail, which includes a deMIlle-produced feature, The Yankee Clipper, (Rupert Julian got director's credit but guess who got the money?) along with more silent and early sound seafaring material. Great fun. Their Doug Fairbanks box includes some of the best early silents and is on sale right now here and there.

Life is just a bowl of cherries, it's too mysterious, don't take it serious...
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