July 9, 2007
Shorts, 7/9.
"Cecil B DeMille's sensational reformatory exposé, The Godless Girl; Redskin in two-color Technicolor; Lois Weber's anti-abortion drama Where Are My Children?; The Soul of Youth by William Desmond Taylor; and dozens of rare newsreels, cartoons, serials, documentaries, and charitable appeals are showcased in the National Film Preservation Foundation upcoming four-DVD box set, Treasures III: Social Issues in American Film, 1900-1934." I'll post the full press release with the lineup as a comment below.
"When I left the BFI in 1998, it was regarded worldwide as the outstanding example of an educational and cultural film institution," writes Colin MacCabe:
In international circles the BFI is now mentioned not as an enviable model but as an awful example of political vandalism.... In recent weeks the institute has announced that it can no longer support its publication division; its great library, the recipient of hundreds of valuable donations, from Derek Jarman to Richard Attenborough, is being offered to any university that will house it; and most recently the film archive itself has been declared in grave danger through lack of resources. This is the archive which houses not only the films of Hitchcock and Lean but also the biggest collection of silent film in the world and documentaries which record British life in every decade of the 20th century.
Also in the Observer, Killian Fox caught that Simpsons Movie preview (10 minutes and a Q&A) and has five spoilers, if you don't mind that sort of thing.
"One filmmaker who set out to check the pulse of rock and roll's angry bastard fistwaver spikehair stepchild, just to see if it still has one, is filmmaker Susan Dynner," writes Graham Rae at Film Threat. "In her fine, comprehensive new documentary Punk's Not Dead, Dynner examines the origins, evolution and current state of those hated in the nation... and comes to some interesting, though not particularly surprising (to those who know anything about the punk scene at all) conclusions. And does she find punk dead? Of course not."
"Julian Fellowes, an Oscar winner for his screenplay of Gosford Park, spoke last week about his fascination with Victoria and how he intends to replace the image of her as an aloof, dowdy widow with that of a feisty, romantic teenager played by Emily Blunt," reports David Smith. The Young Victoria, produced by Graham King and Martin Scorsese and also starring Miranda Richardson, starts shooting next month.
Also: "I came across a short film recently which blew everything else I had seen that week out of the water," writes Guardian critic Peter Bradshaw. "It had come into my hands as part of a DVD that the UK Film Council had made as part of its Cinema Extreme project: commissioning short films on provocative, extreme subjects from new British filmmakers.... Soft is shocking and violent, and ingeniously, intimately upsetting in a way I can only compare to the controversial scenes in Gaspar Noé's Irréversible."
"So what exactly is a 'chick flick'?" asks Gloria Steinem at Alternet. "Just as there are 'novelists' and then 'women novelists,' there are 'movies' and then 'chick flicks.' Whoever is in power takes over the noun - and the norm - while the less powerful get an adjective. Thus, we read about 'African American doctors' but not 'European American doctors,' 'Hispanic leaders' but not 'Anglo leaders,' 'gay soldiers' but not 'heterosexual soldiers,' and so on. That's also why you're left with only half a guide. As usual, bias punishes everyone. Therefore I propose, as the opposite of 'chick flick' and an adjective of your very own, 'prick flick.'"
"Invisible City chronicles the ways people attempt to leave a mark before they and their histories disappear," writes Stefan at Twitch. "From an avid amateur film director trying to preserve his decaying trove of Singapore footage to an intrepid Japanese journalist hunting down Singaporean war veterans, Tan Pin Pin draws out doubts, regrets and the poignantly ordinary moments of these protagonists who attempt immortality. Through their footage and photos rarely seen until now, we begin to perceive faint silhouettes of a City that could have been."
Wellesnet finds "a wonderful piece about the cinematography for [Citizen Kane], written only a few months after it premiered by Gregg Toland for the September, 1941 issue of Theater Arts."
"Choosing to sit and behold it, one can't help but think how perversely it agitates the urban sense of what constitutes wasted time." Andrew Chan on James Benning's 13 Lakes and the ways the film "serves to make us hypersensitive to the moments when art does interrupt, when the switch between the appearance of objectivity and the camera's essential subjectivity is flipped."
Also at the House Next Door: "While the gourmet kitchen is a tidy metaphor for the collaborative food-chain process of filmmaking, it's Ratatouille's theatrical puppetry and visualization of the non-visual senses that makes it explicitly about movies," argues Ryland Walker Knight. Related: "I'm not sure that two decades ago, or even a decade ago, it would have been possible to make and successfully market a Cinderella story set in the fussy world of haute cuisine, a furry fairy tale that presents a snooty dismissal of inferior victuals as a badge of honor and path to glory," writes Frank Bruni in the New York Times.
Also in the NYT, Charles Taylor looks back to what went wrong with Factory Girl and finds "a tale of how tensions between behind-the-scenes financiers and filmmakers, a frantic push for awards glory and the horrendous influence of bad buzz can doom a movie before it even opens." Glenn Kenny comments: "[T]he thing is actually worse than I remember."
Paul Matwychuk: "Charles Burnett graciously took some time out from editing Namibia to talk to me about the experience of making Killer of Sheep."
The Shamus: "The Candidate, despite the sideburns and old cars, hasn't aged a bit in 35 years. It's one of the best films of the 70s, one of Redford's watermarks as an actor, a worthy Oscar winner for Jeremy Larner's screenplay, a brilliantly naturalistic feat of direction by Michael Ritchie and the most cynically realistic view of the modern political machine." Also: a happy 65th to Richard Roundtree.
"Myra Breckinridge might just end up being one of the most ambitious bad movies you ever see," writes Megan Weireter at Not Coming to a Theater Near You. "I can't help but compare it to Beyond the Valley of the Dolls (also released by 20th Century Fox in 1970); I kept thinking about how that film, though just as ambitious in its own way, takes itself far less seriously and is so much more fun to watch."
"[I]f there were a film that looked like a zine, it's this." Mike Everleth watches Ennui. And Westsider, too.
IndieWIRE interviews Richard Wong, director of Colma: The Musical.
Haitians are making about 10 features a year, "rivaling Cuba as the Caribbean's biggest movie producer and often outselling better-financed imports," reports Stevenson Jacobs in the Los Angeles Times. "The ultimate dream? To transform the impoverished, politically volatile country of 8 million into a cinema powerhouse - Haitiwood - following the lead of India and Nigeria."
"It was learned over the weekend that Kerwin Mathews, the star of Ray Harryhausen's epochal fantasy The 7th Voyage of Sinbad (1958) and several other important genre films of that period, passed away in his sleep during the early hours of July 5," writes Tim Lucas. "He was, unbelievably, 81 years old."
Online browsing and viewing tips. "My interest in matchbox labels lies primarily in the design but also the concept that these small images can communicate to a large number of people," writes Jane McDevitt. "1950s and 60s Eastern European labels captivate me most. Why did this area of the world embrace modern design and imagery when many countries, including Britain, still preferred the Victorian aesthetic?" Via Coudal Partners, also pointing to the trailer for I Met the Walrus.
Online viewing tip #1. Mystery Man on Film pulls together the complete Cinema Europe series. Via wood s lot.
Online viewing tip #2. SiouxWIRE, having just completed that list, finds Mark Eastwood's typographic version of a sketch on class written by Marty Feldman and John Law featuring John Cleese, Ronnie Barker and Ronnie Corbett.
Online viewing tips. The Shamus: "Here are a bunch of one-minute commercials made by famous directors for Parisienne cigarettes." Seriously, though: Godard, Polanski and so on.
Posted by dwhudson at July 9, 2007 9:08 AM
NFPF ANNOUNCES LINE-UP FOR TREASURES III 4-DVD BOX SET
48 FILMS NEVER BEFORE SEEN ON VIDEO DEBUT THIS FALL
San Francisco, CA (July 9, 2007)—Cecil B. De Mille's sensational reformatory exposé, The Godless Girl; Redskin in two-color Technicolor; Lois Weber's anti-abortion drama Where Are My Children?; The Soul of Youth by William Desmond Taylor; and dozens of rare newsreels, cartoons, serials, documentaries, and charitable appeals are showcased in the National Film Preservation Foundation upcoming four-DVD box set, Treasures III: Social Issues in American Film, 1900-1934. Slated for release by Image Entertainment on October 16, Treasures III (retail price $89.99) introduces to DVD 48 films from the decades when virtually no issue was too controversial to bring to the screen.
"In film's first decades, activists from every political stripe used movies to advance their agenda,� said Martin Scorsese, who serves on the NFPF Board of Directors. "These films are an important and fascinating glimpse of history. They changed America and still inspire today.�
Prohibition, birth control, unions, TB, atheism, the vote for women, worker safety, organized crime, loan sharking, race relations, juvenile justice, homelessness, police corruption, immigration—these issues and more are brought to life in the new 12-1/4 hour set. In addition to the four features, the line up includes the first Mafia movie, a 1913 traffic safety film, management's version of the Triangle Shirtwaist fire, temperance and suffragette spoofs, A Call for Help from Sing Sing!, an action-packed Hazards of Helen episode, a patriotic "striptease� cartoon for war bonds, the earliest surviving union film, and a medley of prohibition newsreels kicked off by Capital Stirred by Biggest Hooch Raid.
The motion pictures are drawn from the preservation work of the nation's foremost early film archives: George Eastman House, the Library of Congress, the Museum of Modern Art, the National Archives, and the UCLA Film & Television Archive. None of the works has been available before in high-quality video.
Treasures III is playable worldwide and has many special features for DVD audiences:
• Newly recorded music contributed by more than 65 musicians and composers
• Audio commentary by 20 experts
• 200-page illustrated book with essays about the films and music
• More than 600 interactive screens
• 4 postcards from the films
The third in the award-winning Treasures series, the new set reunites the curatorial and technical team from the NFPF's earlier DVD anthologies. The project is made possible through the generous support of the National Endowment for the Humanities and the National Film Preservation Board of the Library of Congress. Net proceeds will support further film preservation. A four-page brochure with the full contents list can be downloaded from the NFPF Web site, www.filmpreservation.org.
Program 1: The City Reformed
The Black Hand (1906, 11 min.)
Earliest surviving Mafia film.
How They Rob Men in Chicago (1900, 25 sec.)
Police corruption Chicago-style.
The Voice of the Violin (1909, 16 min.)
A terrorist plot is foiled by the power of music.
The Usurer's Grip (1912, 15 min.)
Melodrama arguing for consumer credit co-operatives.
From the Submerged (1912, 11 min.)
Drama about homelessness and "slumming parties�
Hope— A Red Cross Seal Story (1912, 14 min.)
A small town mobilizes to fight TB
The Cost of Carelessness (1913, 13 min.)
Traffic safety film for Brooklyn school children.
Lights and Shadows in a City of a Million (1920, 7 min.)
Charitable plea for the Detroit Community Fund.
6,000,000 American Children…Are Not in School (1922, 2 min.)
Newsreel story inspired by census data.
The Soul of Youth (1920, 80 min.), with excerpts from Saved by the Juvenile Court (1913, 4 min.)
William Desmond Taylor's feature about an orphan reclaimed through the juvenile court of Judge Ben Lindsey with excerpts from the political campaign film Saved by the Juvenile Court (1913. 4 min.)
A Call for Help from Sing Sing! (1934, 3 min.)
Warden Lawes speaks out for wayward teens.
Program 2: New Women
The Kansas Saloon Smashers (1901, 1 min.)
Carrie Nation swings her axe.
Why Mr. Nation Wants a Divorce (1901, 2 min.)
Role-reversal temperance spoof.
Trial Marriages (1907, 12 min.)
Male fantasy inspired by a feminist's proposal.
Manhattan Trade School for Girls (1911, 16 min.)
Profile of the celebrated progressive school for impoverished girls.
The Strong Arm Squad of the Future (ca. 1912, 1 min.)
Anti-suffragette cartoon.
A Lively Affair (ca. 1912, 7 min.)
Comedy with poker-playing women and child-rearing men.
A Suffragette in Spite of Himself (1912, 8 min.)
Boys' prank results in an unwitting crusader.
On to Washington (1913, 80 sec.)
News coverage of the historic suffragette march.
Hazards of Helen: Episode 13 (1915, 13 min.)
Helen thwarts robbers and overcomes workplace discrimination.
Where Are My Children? (1916, 65 min.)
Provocative anti-abortion drama by Lois Weber.
The Courage of the Commonplace (1913, 13 min.)
A young farm woman dreams of a better life.
Poor Mrs. Jones! (1926, 46 min.)
Why wives should stay on the farm.
Offers Herself as Bride for $10,000 (1931, 2 min.)
Novel approach to surviving the Depression.
Program 3: Toil and Tyranny
Uncle Sam and the Bolsheviki-I.W.W. Rat (ca. 1919, 40 sec.)
Anti-union cartoon from the Ford Motor Company.
The Crime of Carelessness (1912, 14 min.),
Management's version of the Triangle Factory fire.
Who Pays?, Episode 12 (1915, 35 min.)
A lumberyard strike brings deadly consequences.
Surviving reel from Labor's Reward (1925, 13 min.)
The American Federation of Labor's argument for "buying union.�
Listen to Some Words of Wisdom (1930, 2 min.)
Why personal thrift feeds the Depression.
The Godless Girl (1928, 128 min.)
Cecil B. DeMille's sensational exposé of juvenile reformatories.
Program 4: Americans in the Making
Emigrants Landing at Ellis Island (1903, 2 min.)
Actuality footage from July 9, 1903.
An American in the Making (1913, 15 min)
U.S. Steel film promoting immigration and industrial safety.
Ramona: A Story of the White Man's Injustice to the Indian (1910, 16 min.)
Helen Hunt Jackson's classic about racial conflict in early California, retold by D.W. Griffith and starring Mary Pickford.
Redskin (1929, 82 min.)
Racial tolerance epic, shot in 2-color Technicolor at Acoma Pueblo and Canyon de Chelly.
The United Snakes of America (ca. 1917, 80 sec.)
World War I cartoon assailing homefront dissenters.
Uncle Sam Donates for Liberty Bonds (1918, 75 sec.)
' Patriotic "striptease� cartoon.
100% American (1918, 14 min.)
Mary Pickford buys war bonds and supports the troops.
Bud's Recruit (1918, 26 min.)
Brothers learn to serve their country in King Vidor's earliest surviving film.
The Reawakening (1919, 10 min.)
Documentary about helping disabled veterans to build new lives.
Eight Prohibition Newsreels (1923–33, 13 min.)
From Capital Stirred by Biggest Hooch Raid to Repeal Brings Wet Flood!
The National Film Preservation Foundation, the nonprofit organization created by the U.S. Congress to help save America's film heritage, is the charitable affiliate of the National Film Preservation Board of the Library of Congress. Since starting operations in 1997, the NFPF has helped save more than 1,100 films at archives, libraries and museums across 41 states, Puerto Rico, and the District of Columbia.
Posted by: David Hudson at July 9, 2007 9:12 AMInteresting. Apparently only five of these films had authors.
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