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klondike

Post by klondike »

mrsl wrote:All right Mr. Rubini:

Make me sound like Ma Yokum, you Fink!

Anne

HAWWWWHAHAHAHAWWWW! Great retort, Anne!
:lol:

Not sure how many of the Post-Eisenhower kids know who "Mammy Yokum" was/is, or what is meant by "fink", but it sure kicked-up the fizz in my barrel! :wink:
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Post by Lzcutter »

All this talk of AFI Lifetime Achievement Awards makes me so nostalgic for their first ten years of giving out this award.

They had a wonderfully printed program that you could buy via mail. The dinner was broadcast on television and was a two hour look at the life and career of the receipent. I still remember pieces of the first one honoring John Ford and the ones honoring Hitch and Welles.

In 1993 or so, whichever year Jack got his, it heralded a move towards the younger demographic of television and an effort by the AFI to engage that young demographic to learn more about the AFI.

Since then, the AFI has been less about film preservation as their mission and more about their film school.

Ah, but those first few years were a filmlovers delight.....
Lynn in Lake Balboa

"Film is history. With every foot of film lost, we lose a link to our culture, to the world around us, to each other and to ourselves."

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Post by moira finnie »

Hi Lynn,
About those AFI first ten years: are any available on vhs or dvd?
It would be a classic film fan's dream to find them in his stocking, wouldn't it?

On another topic about film preservation in the news today, here's an article I came across in the NYTimes about Part Three of the Treasures From American Film Archives that have just been issued by the National Film Preservation Foundation. Many of the 40 movies included are only minutes long, but this time they deal with social issues as addressed in early 20th century movies, from Edison's "Why Mr. Nation Wants a Divorce" about the temperance movement, (Love that title). Most intriguingly, this film was deposited at the Library of Congress in the form of a paper print! I'd no idea that ephemeral product was ever used for film.

Other topics include women, immigration, workplace safety, homelessness, public education and predatory lending practices. Tyrone Power, Sr. even comes along as a prosecuting attorney in one 1916 movie about a bunch of women who terminate their pregnancies because they are lazy and literally want to lie around eating chocolate bon-bons! Yikes, that was a hot potato even back then.

Other big budget productions include Victor Schertzinger’s 1929 Redskin with extended sequences photographed in two-color Technicolor, Cecil B. DeMille's The Godless Girl (1929) and D.W. Griffith's 1910 version of Ramona, a sympathetic story about an Indian couple facing discrimination. (This was also later filmed in a well-known version in Technicolor in the '30s at Fox with Don Ameche & Loretta Young.)

Some of it sounds as dramatically facile as films from the studio era and today, but, based on the earlier collections, this is well worth viewing. I can't wait for my library to get this one.
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Someday my prints will come

Post by Moraldo Rubini »

moirafinnie wrote:....Many of the 40 movies included are only minutes long, but this time they deal with social issues as addressed in early 20th century movies, from Edison's "Why Mr. Nation Wants a Divorce" about the temperance movement, (Love that title). Most intriguingly, this film was deposited at the Library of Congress in the form of a paper print! I'd no idea that ephemeral product was ever used for film. ...
What do you suppose that means, Moira? Was this a Zoetrope piece, or plates for a Nickelodian? Or do you think they just printed each frame as if they were stills?
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Post by moira finnie »

I'm not sure, Moraldo.

The mystery of paper print of a movie rather than some other film material such as celluloid is one of the reasons that I posted this here. I was hoping that someone with more knowledge of film preservation and the technical side of movies might answer this. How could such a film be projected?
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Post by Moraldo Rubini »

moirafinnie wrote:The mystery of paper print of a movie rather than some other film material such as celluloid is one of the reasons that I posted this here. I was hoping that someone with more knowledge of film preservation and the technical side of movies might answer this. How could such a film be projected?
Well, if it were a Zoetrope, for example, it wouldn't be projected. Zoetropes use printed images. The images are covered and the viewer sees them through slits. When cylindrical zoetropes would spin, the images would appear to move when viewed through the slits. Linear Zoetropes would appear to move as you passed them. San Francisco [undground] Metro system used linear zoetropes for advertising last year. Very effective and cool; though I suppose those not interested in film history might have been annoyed by more advertising.

Nickelodians would use the printed cards and would turn as the viewer cranked a handle to turn them, thus lending a motion picture experience.

Something tells me I haven't articulated any of this very clearly...

Thanks for bringing all of this up though, Moira. I first mentioned this DVD set in the thread devoted to The Godless Girl. This is a four-part set, and looks fascinating! I hope if any of the Oasis denizens purchases it, they'll tell us about the experience.
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Post by moira finnie »

A zoetrope would have worked for the paper film, as would the nickeloden, but for some reason, I think there may be a more complex explanation about the way that the paper was used here.
Thanks for bringing all of this up though, Moira. I first mentioned this DVD set in the thread devoted to The Godless Girl. This is a four-part set, and looks fascinating! I hope if any of the Oasis denizens purchases it, they'll tell us about the experience.
Moraldo, if you are referring to the other two parts of this early film collection, I've seen them and wished I had the deep pockets to afford purchasing them. Most good library systems should have them available. The movies that they show range from heartbreaking documentary footage of farm life to the most whimsical and imaginative retellings of sometimes familiar stories. One of my favorite films in the series shows a group of young adults around the turn of the century playing in the snow. It's lovely to see their world spring to life again on film in such a natural, unselfconscious way.
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Post by Lzcutter »

Hey guys,

Regarding paper prints- here's the explanation from Wikipedia which is the most concise and understandable definition I could find:

For thousands of early silent films stored in the Library of Congress, mostly between 1894 and 1912, the only existing copies of them were printed on rolls of paper submitted as copyright registrations. For these, an optical printer was used to copy these images onto safety filmstock, a project begun in 1947 and continuing today.
Lynn in Lake Balboa

"Film is history. With every foot of film lost, we lose a link to our culture, to the world around us, to each other and to ourselves."

"For me, John Wayne has only become more impressive over time." Marty Scorsese

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Post by Lzcutter »

About those AFI first ten years: are any available on vhs or dvd? >>

Moira,

Some of them were mastered to laserdisc back in the late 1980s and early 1990s. I have a copy of the John Ford tribute on laserdisc.

I wish the AFI would make them available on DVD but I suspect rights issues might be the bugaboo there.

Still, we can hope!
Lynn in Lake Balboa

"Film is history. With every foot of film lost, we lose a link to our culture, to the world around us, to each other and to ourselves."

"For me, John Wayne has only become more impressive over time." Marty Scorsese

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Fake Falcon Finally Finds Fooderie

Post by Moraldo Rubini »

[Okay, "fooderie" was lame, but it was alliterative!]

Last February, the Maltese Falcon was stolen from John's Grill, a restaurant in downtown San Francisco that looks like the kind of place where Sam Spade would eat. It seems the Falcon is always getting stolen. At the time it happened, I thought it was a real artifact -- one of the props from the movie; but no, it was a replica. But then the one in the movie turned out to be fake too, didn't it? They thought it was the jewel encrusted bird covered in enamel, but no -- it was lead. So once again we have a phony falcon. Even so, a $25,000.00 reward was put on it -- to no avail. So the Grill got San Francisco's Academy of Art to make another. Here's the story.
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Post by Moraldo Rubini »

Roger Moore got his star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame yesterday. The most surprising aspect [to me] was that he got the star just days before his 80th birthday! Where does the time go? For Moore information and a picture of the merry ex-Bond, click here.
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Post by Sue Sue Applegate »

Great link to the "new" falcon story, Moraldo! Thanks.
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Post by SSO Admins »

I had posted on paper prints before the crash, and Lynn's explanation is dead on. Film was not considered copyrightable, so the films were transferred to paper. Some producers transferred every frame, and these are the ones that can be reconstructed today. Some only transferred key frames, and these are lost as films, although it's possible to get an idea of the set construction and costumes.

Netflix has most of the sets of early films that have been released. A lot of the early Biographs are also available on Youtube.

Here's one of my favorites. I wish we could bring Griffith back to do a short on cell phones.

[youtube][/youtube]
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The Great Escape

Post by Moraldo Rubini »

That was a great clip, Jon! I love the movie within a movie too.

_____________________________________________________________


Recently in the R.I.P. thread, I mentioned the death of Bud Ekins; the stunt driver for Steve McQueen in The Great Escape. Now Geoff Willatt, an actual former prisoner from the real Great Escape camp has come forward with his story.
Willatt wrote:I don't know how many people watched The Great Escape but it was not really like that. I know because I was there. There was frost and snow on the ground and there was no Steve McQueen-like American figure. 'Big X', the leader, was British Squadron Leader Roger Bushell. I worked for the escape, but I did not draw an escape ticket - or I would have been shot in cold blood like the other 50 recaptured prisoners.
For the full article, click here.
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Kane, if you're able

Post by Moraldo Rubini »

Sotheby has announced it will auction off the Oscar award that Orson Welles won (with Herman Mankiewicz) for the screenplay of Citizen Kane. The Decemer 11, 2007 auction is expected to bring in a million dollars for the award. And I imagine the Motion Picture Academy of Arts and Sciences must be reeling with frustration. The Academy now requires Oscar-winners to give them first right of refusal to buy back an Oscar for $1.00. But this rule went into effect in 1950, and Kane was released in 1941. For more on the story, click here
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