Chaplin and Keaton

[Ravi]

Here's why I haven't bought the WB Chaplin discs.  I saw a Chaplin short on TCM recently that had the PAL to NTSC look.  I hope they don't do this with the Keaton films.

What a waste. Obviously the Warner image is sharper than the Image Entertainment image, but I am very disappointed in the blurring which is still prevalent here as in The Great Dictator DVD. The contrast levels in the new Warner discs are very dark. My bet would still be to buy the European versions. I am very disappointed in my purchase of this Region 1 DVD. It does have quite an array of Extra Features, but the "ghosting" is extremely visible as well as other associated artifacts that appear with PAL->NTSC.

Instead of doing the transfer from the original source themselves, Warner let someone else do it (Mk2) then took THEIR PAL transfer. Now we get the worst of both worlds: 4% PAL speedup from original source and lower NTSC resolution (AND "ghosting"). It looks to me to have excessive digital processing. I'm glad I still have my Image discs, but will look into the PAL Mk2 versions as they are released.

[modage]

uh oh.  now this goes right back to the other thread "Whats More Important to You on a DVD?".  even though i watched the mk2 versions and they looked great to me, this guy seems to think there are problems with it.  so, now i'm faced with the dilemma: do i buy the image box set with ZERO extras because of a supposedly better picture?  or do i buy the superextras sets that has a problem i would never notice in a million years?

[cine]

I wouldn't worry about it, mod. The guy was probably WAY too picky... but maybe I'm just trying to be optimistic about it.  

[RegularKarate]

A local theater here in Austin, the Alamo has this thing called "Rolling Roadshow" which has featured movie events that are just cool as shit (ex. "Goonies" shown in a cave, "Jaws" on the water, and this weekend is "Caddyshack" on a golfcourse).

I usually don't mention these, but I thought this just looked cool as shit:

http://www.drafthouse.com/RRS/frames.asp
(you have to click on the Buster Keaton Poster on the right)

The General - live music by Guy Forsyth

We'll be taking a 2 hour train ride out into the boonies on the vintage Austin Steam Train. Along the way, there'll be southern barbecued pork picnic (veggie options available) with drinks (dessert will be served on the return trip). Then we'll settle into a rural pasture in Burnet and wait for the sun to set and the show to begin. Guy Forsyth will be performing live his score for a pristine 35mm print of Buster Keaton's pinnacle film achievement, THE GENERAL.

Guy generally performs as a quartet. This night, however, he will have a quintet, the fifth member being a 44 ton vintage locomotive, sounding off on cue.

It's $45, but I really think it'll be worth it... hopefully I'll make it.

[Redlum]

That sounds like it will be fantastic.

Similar events are held here in the UK by Stella Artois. They did the Jaws at the beach thing, they also did Shawshank in a decomissioned prison, which I thought was pretty cool.

[cine]

[RegularKarate]

So, I went to this event (three posts above for the lazy) and it was pretty awesome.

The train ride lasted a little too long (it was 2 hours each way) and the bar on the train was over priced with little selection.  Once we got there, though, it was all worth it.

They have a giant inflatable screen that they put out in the middle of nowhere, we get off the train and hike to this clearing, set up our folding chairs and wait for the sun to go down.  Then the coordinator introduces the event and talks about upcoming stuff (including a Romero-fest hosted by the man himself) and then it started.  

Guy Forsythe was incredible... They didn't miss a beat... the music was extremely tight and in-cue with the movie (I kept forgetting that there was a live band and not a prerecorded soundtrack) and it was really unique, they played the sawblade in certain scenes and it sounded lovely.  

At one point, the generator died in the middle of the movie and the screen deflated.  They got it up and running again in no time, but while the screen was re-inflating, Guy and his band played some song songs (with actual singing)... it was really nice.

I slept during the train ride back.. and now my wife really likes Buster Keaton... it was a great night.

[Redlum]

Nice one. I'm very jealous. Glad it was good.

[wilder]

Charlie Chaplin's only novel published for the first time
4 February 2014
via The Guardian


Out of Limelight ... Chaplin in a still from the eponymous film. Photograph: W Eugene Smith/Time & Life Pictures

Footlights, the screen legend's unseen prequel in prose to the film Limelight, reflects his sadness at declining stardom
Read an extract from Footlights by Charlie Chaplin

The only work of fiction ever written by Charlie Chaplin, a dark, nostalgic novella which was the root of his great film Limelight and which has lain unpublished for over 60 years, is being made public for the first time.

Footlights, which runs to 34,000 words, traces the same story as Chaplin's valedictory film Limelight – that of an ageing, alcoholic clown Calvero and the ballerina he saves from suicide.

The film, in which Chaplin played Calvero and Claire Bloom the ballerina, was the final American movie Chaplin made before he was banned from the country for alleged communist sympathies. The novella, which Chaplin wrote in 1948, before the film script, widens and deepens the story, giving an insight into the author's state of mind at the time.

It has lain in Chaplin's archive for decades, but has now been pieced together from a mix of handwritten and typed scripts by Chaplin's biographer David Robinson. It is published by the Cineteca di Bologna, an Italian film restoration institute which has been digitising the Chaplin archive for his family.

Cecilia Cenciarelli, co-director of the Cineteca's Chaplin project, said the novella "has shadows. It's the story of a comedian who has lost his public, by a comedian who at that time had lost his public, who was referred to in the press of the time as a 'former comedian', a 'former successful film maker'".

It is a prequel of sorts to the film, in that it fleshes out "why Calvero has nightmares, why he is so disenchanted with his career, with the public", she said. "The book deals a little more with the relationship of the artist to his audience, with the meaning of art."

"I know I'm funny," says Calvero in the novella, "but the managers think I'm through ... a has-been. God! It would be wonderful to make them eat their words. That's what I hate about getting old – the contempt and indifference they show you. They think I'm useless ... That's why it would be wonderful to make a comeback! ... I mean sensational! To rock them with laughter like I used to ... to hear that roar go up ... waves of laughter coming at you, lifting you off your feet ... what a tonic! You want to laugh with them, but you hold back and laugh inside ... God, there's nothing like it! As much as I hate those lousy – I love to hear them laugh!"

Chaplin was going through a bad time in America when he wrote the novella, said Robinson. "He was a big target for J Edgar Hoover ... which was effective to the extent that a great deal of middle America turned against him. This was a shock to him, who had been the best loved man in the world for 30 years." These feelings, said Robinson, "work themselves out in the story of Calvero".

Footlights, complete with Robinson's commentary and description of the story's evolution, is being launched by the Cineteca this week, with an event at the British Film Institute Southbank, London, featuring Robinson and Bloom, to whom the book is dedicated. The book will be available from the publisher's website and Amazon, although it does not yet have a British or American publisher – something Cenciarelli is hoping will change.

"It is astonishing that this man who went to school for six months in his life managed to become a writer," she said. "The reason it has never been published before is because the family has been a little protective ... but eventually they were convinced this would be a good thing to do."

"He never meant it for publication," said Robinson. "It was something absolutely private ... he wrote it for himself."

In his commentary, Robinson writes that Chaplin "can move without warning from the baldly colloquial to dazzling yet apparently effortless imagery, as when the crushed Calvero gazes 'wearily into the secretive river, gliding phantom-like in a life of its own ... smiling satanically at him as it flecked myriad lights from the moon and from the lamps along the embankment'".

Chaplin's childhood in south London can be seen, he writes, in a child character's "aversion to parks – 'the dreary, forlorn patches of green, and the people who sat about them, were the living graveyards of the hopeless and the destitute'". The novella also shows "the delight in fine or strange words of the self-confessed autodidact, who kept a dictionary beside him and set out to learn a new word every day: brattled, selenic, efflorescing, fanfaronading and – to the end of his life his all-purpose favourite – ineffable."

"Once he'd got a word he liked to use it, even if it was not quite right for the situation," Robinson said. "Nevertheless he does write amazingly. With his films he worked and worked until it came right, and it is the same with this book. It's a good read. Strange, but good."

Pamela Hutchinson, who blogs about silent film at www.silentlondon.co.uk, called the publication "very exciting".

"There is always tremendous interest in Chaplin – and when so much has been written about him over the years the chance to read his own words, especially ones we haven't heard before, is refreshing," she said. "One of the things that is really wonderful about Limelight is that it shows Chaplin returning to the London of his youth: the tenements and music halls that he knew.

"To read what he was writing about this world in the 40s confirms our fondly-held belief that Chaplin never forgot his British roots throughout his successes in the States.

"The subject matter of Limelight – poverty, mental health and the variety stage – as well as its London setting, could have been plucked straight from his childhood. The drafts of this novella confirm that these things were still playing on his mind late in his life."