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Shasta Silent Film Festival 2011; The Balcony is first to know!
Topic Started: Nov 9 2010, 07:30 PM (715 Views)
panzer the great & terrible
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Mouth Breather
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We had the first meeting on next year's schedule today, and "The Adventurer" is on for sure. Also locked are Underworld, another Rin Tin Tin, maybe the wolf one in the "Treasures" box, the feminist Carl Theodor Dreyer comedy Master of the House, and a little-known Fairbanks picture, Til the Clouds Roll By (the silent version). Dave has a gorgeous print of it. The Comedy Showcase will include the cool Snub Pollard with the magnet car and all the other inventions, and two extremely rare Hal Roach shorts -- three shorts for a buck. There will also be a Chaplin feature, but we're still discussing which. Since the point of the festival is to show films with live piano, Modern Times ain't an option. You can't legally run it in public without his soundtrack: who knew? We're also talking about maybe showing a once-rare Griffith feature, Battle of the Sexes, and possibly the great Mary Pickford feature, Sparrows, directed by William Beaudine, a fine silent director who ended up making Jesse James vs. Frankenstein, or whatever the morons called it. Piece of Heck would have been a better title. I know I'm leaving something out, but I can't think what.

Of course, even the ones we're considering locked in could change. It's early in the game. We will have comfortable chairs next year -- they're already here. We were supposed to have them for this year, but they came all the way across the country and were sitting in a warehouse in Sacramento instead of our auditorium.
Life is just a bowl of cherries, it's too mysterious, don't take it serious...
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The Batman
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Sounds like it will be another great line-up, Mr P, wish I was there.

Always be yourself! Unless you can be Batman...then always be Batman!
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panzer the great & terrible
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Mouth Breather
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You're certainly welcome to come, Bats. It would be fun to show you this part of the world -- 'specially if you like wine. But if you're a beer guy, we aren't far from a hotel where Wyatt Earp stayed when he was looking at a gold mine to invest in. I've got a bridge you might want to look at while you're here.
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The Batman
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Ooooh, sounds good, I love bridges. I even bought the Brooklyn Bridge...twice. ^o)

Always be yourself! Unless you can be Batman...then always be Batman!
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panzer the great & terrible
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Mouth Breather
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I remember what I left out: The Iron Horse, John Ford's first epic Western. We'll show the rare American version with the A takes, including exciting Indian attack footage unseen in the UK version, some remarkable stunts, and a less inept performance by the leading lady. What happened to the American version is, The Museum of Modern Art had it, and circulated a print for years, but then John Ford's reputation went into critical eclipse and there was almost no demand for his work except among some Western aficianados. Worse yet, the museum itself turned into something of a dragon, sleeping on the films they had, and refusing to share them with the home video public. The man who presided over that is gone at last, and maybe now the Museum will take the worldwide public into consideration, not just the few people who can make it to their two screening rooms in NYC. This is happening slowly to say the least: it takes a while to melt an archivist. I believe they contributed one element of one film to the first Lobster Melies set. Such glacial laziness does not impress.

In the meantime, Peter Bogdanovich, Andrew Sarris, Lindsay Anderson, Martin Scorsese, Joe McBride and many others have worked like beavers to rehabilitate Ford's reputation. More than twenty of his silents resurfaced, Directed by John Ford came out, and The Fox Box brought some of his finest pictures to the public's attention. The man's finally getting his due, and it's time to show the full version of his first major triumph on a big screen with brilliant live piano accompaniment. The U.K. version wowed the audience at SFSFF last year, and this version is more fun.

We're already hard at work to make it the greatest silent film festival ever. Hope you can get there!
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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Mouth Breather
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See below.

Edited by panzer the great & terrible, Apr 7 2011, 05:14 PM.
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Stony Brooke da Mesquiteer
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I'd love to be there Paul... 'Tis a pity to miss it.
It's like Rodney King used to say, "Can't we all get a bong."
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mort bakaprevski
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panzer the great & terrible
Apr 4 2011, 09:25 AM
We're adding a Chico night.... ,
I'm waiting for a Zeppo night!!
"Nov Shmoz Ka Pop."
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mort bakaprevski
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panzer the great & terrible
Apr 4 2011, 09:25 AM
Live piano accompaniment by Dr. Frederic Hodges. His website is well worth a look. I enjoy his piano accompaniments equally with the films: the thought of him improvising a score to a film he sees for the first time awes me....
Minny decades ago I used to attend films at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. They had an organist, by the name of Chauncey Haines, who would improvise music for the silents. Not sure whether he viewed the films beforehand or not.... but he was incredibly good. I'm sure he's not with us anymore as he was quite old at the time.

I understand he used to do it for a living back in the days of silents. Just looked him up & found he also had done some music for the sound Our Gang comedies as well.
"Nov Shmoz Ka Pop."
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panzer the great & terrible
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OK, here's a standing offer: three nights lodging at the Panzer Palace for the first Balconeer to travel more than 100 miles to the festival. I may also find some fool to pick people up at airports (Sacramento is closest) if youse don't know how to rent a car.
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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Mouth Breather
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New revised schedule:

October 21 : 6 pm $1 comedy show: ANGORA LOVE (L&H), PASS THE GRAVY (Max Davidson), IT'S A GIFT (Snub Pollard) and a Felix the Cat cartoon (You can find "It's a Gift" on the Slapstick Symposium set and the Davidson picture is in the new import). It's always a pleasure to see Hal Roach comedies on the big screen with an audience -- laughs appear where you never saw them before.

7:30 p.m. Two Ur-gangster films: UNDERWORLD, preceded by THE MUSKETEERS OF PIG ALLEY. Ben Hecht got screenplay credit for UNDERWORLD, but Howard Hawks always claimed he wrote a big share of the script. Whatever the truth, the script of Hawks' RIO BRAVO borrows from this, spittoon and all. And when you see Underworld, the name Feathers finally makes at least a little sense.

October 22: 10 a.m. MASTER OF THE HOUSE (Carl Theodor Dreyer). For the millions who hunger and thirst for a Danish feminist comedy from 1926, Carl Theodor Dreyer directed this lighthearted retooling of Ibsen. I kid the great Carl Theodor, but he's one of the top ten silent directors, with a little item called THE PASSION OF JOAN OF ARC to his credit, and this picture's good too. It's an upside down version of The Taming of the Shrew, with Father as the shrew.

12:00 THE KID, preceded by THE ADVENTURER (Chaplin). At five reels, The Kid was Chaplin's first feature -- "The Adventurer" was the biggest moneymaker of the Mutual comedies. I once didn't like The Kid, but it grew on me and now I count it among Chaplin's best. It's worth noting that the week before he started it, his first child died in infancy. Jackie Coogan's scene when he's torn away from the tramp who has become his parent is the greatest thing I've ever seen a child actor do, and the dream sequence (of heaven as a tramp would see it) is unique.

2 p.m. CLASH OF THE WOLVES (Rin-Tin-Tin) preceded by CAT DOG AND COMPANY (Our Gang) and, with luck, a live demonstration of a Shasta County K-9 police dog showing how it is smarter than most people. Rin Tin Tin, the dog who could act, stars as a dog with serious wolf trouble. At one point, on a mission to town, he wears a false beard and nobody knows he's a dog. Could I make that up?

4:30 WHEN THE CLOUDS ROLL BY (Douglas Fairbanks directed by Victor Fleming) One of the finest of the early light comedies that made Fairbanks a household name. An evil scientist wants to make Doug kill himself by, um, well, by making his life terrible. Called on to play a guy who is being hounded to death, Doug plays Doug, probably on the theory that Doug's who the people paid to see, so what we get is a lighthearted comedy about suicide. There's little trace of the Victor Fleming who directed The Wizard of Oz and Gone With the Wind here -- Fleming was basically a producer's director, just happy to put the other guy's vision on the screen.

7:30 THE IRON HORSE (John Ford). We're showing a beautiful print of the American version, longer, better acted and better edited than the usually-seen European version, because said version was constructed from the B takes, meaning the second-best takes, as was the custom of the day. Just another reason why film preservation isn't a science.

A young couple is blessed by Abraham Lincoln, no less, but the course of true love ne'er runs smooth and they have to build the first railway across North America before they can get together. The Indians, rightly seeing this rail business as a severe threat to their survival as a distinct culture, stage a series of attacks and raids, and it's here that the American version shines with amazing riding and stunts, making this a much better picture than the one shown in San Francisco last year.

Live piano accompaniments by Dr. Frederic Hodges. His website is well worth a look. I enjoy his piano accompaniments as much as I do the films: the thought of him improvising a score to a film he sees for the first time awes me, especially when I know it's how Fats Waller learned most of his trickerations.

Next year we're planning one of the big Griffith pictures. Not The Birth of a Nation, we promise. I'm pushing for INTOLERANCE, in which case we'll see the print the eventual Blu-Ray may well come from, in advance. If you love movies, a good print of INTOLERANCE is the grail.
Edited by panzer the great & terrible, Jul 9 2011, 05:24 AM.
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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We had to cancel the Chico day. See the above for the revised festival.
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