What’s a Silent Movie, Dr. Plonk (2007) ?

Dr. Plonk (2007)
Apparently this has finished filming.
reputedly in the slapstick style of Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton…shot with a hand-cranked camera
When’s it out on DVD ?

Hollywood and the “refined culture of today”

Look at this film clip introducing The Girl Can’t Help It (1956)

Only Bollywood does this as well today: taking what’s in musically, and building a color and choreography and costume extravaganza around it (that may not be as hip as the music seemed to suggest, but that’s highly entertaining).
Cinematikal has a four-part essay on Tashlin…

curse of the videophone

There’s neat little video piece on Slate today on how the videophone is going to take us to see all about “real” life.
But that’s highly misguided. About Saddam’s hanging, the comment is that the videophone can come
to upend neat little narratives
Beware of realism and realistic devices. Just like there’s nothing inherently realistic about cinema, [...]

as a pianist…

…this is a pretty funny one

(the rest of the entries are here)

what’s a Silent Movie ?

Silent Movie (1976)
Actually “Silent Movie” is not silent at all. It has a very busy soundtrack, full of music and of exaggerated noises that accompany such sights as those of a foot crushed in a door, a head bashed against a wall or the collapsing of a Murphy bed.
The only element missing is spoken dialogue, [...]

the useless gal and the atheist

The Fantastic Voyage (1966)
A trip inside the body of important scientist who needs brain clout removed. With Raquelle Welch what do you expect but…

when there’s no one in films

The World Is Watching. Not Americans. - New York Times
I can’t recall the name of the writer who expressed frustration at the decline of films in recent decades, by saying (I’m paraphrasing):
there was a time when films were filled with people, and movie houses were also full of people. Now that films have very few [...]

Superman and the common man

ImageTexT: Exhibits: Exhibit 1: Superman

Superman sprang from the imagination of two Jewish teenagers growing up in Cleveland during the Great Depression. Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster were both lower-middle class sons of immigrants who believed in the American dream. They were avid readers of science fiction and pulp magazines and aspired to write and draw [...]

In My Father’s Court

Isaac Bashevis Singer, In My Father’s Court, 1966
Singer in autobiographical bits from his (mostly) Warsaw childhood. Through the cases heard in his father’s room (unofficial rabbi) it’s a picture of Jewish life in Poland in the early 20th century that emerges.
There’s a review from the NYT here.
The cases themselves are all precise anecdotes that are [...]

still the ol’ confusion

About the online petitions to have her [Ms. Fanning] arrested, she said that the district attorney’s office in Wilmington was busy prosecuting real sex crimes, like one in which a 10-year-old girl was impregnated by her father. “All these cases are reported in the newspaper, and nobody ever calls them about that,” she said. “But [...]