JonasEB

Part of the problem is the lack of attention people pay to the settings on their TVs. They have the contrast and brightness out of control and they keep the various sharpness settings on. Things like "edge enhancement" should be turned off immediately and the general sharpness setting should be set to "0" (abslutely no artifical enhancement..."0", that is unless your TV uses "50" as a neutral level and anything below it artificially softens the picture but I believe those TVs are the exception; "0" should be the natural point on most TVs.) Grain is visible on the new Blu-ray of Fort Apache but it's light, completely unobtrusive, natural, and pleasant looking on my system, but if you turn the sharpness up to the max, it's going to look guite garish. This is the case with most of the Hollywood films I've seen on the format. I don't remember seeing anything Hollywood with Red Desert or Faces levels of graininess (and I like the way those look too - Cassavetes was proud of the effect he achieved on Faces.)

> {quote:title=FredCDobbs wrote:}{quote}The problem is not with just showing "newer films". The problem is that most "newer films" made after 1960 aren't any good. Most made after 1966 are lousy. Most made in the 1970s are too awful to every watch even once. Etc. They get worse every decade after that, so much so that many films today are slasher vile vulgar decapitation films, castration films, mutilation films, cannibal films, torture. Films made by crazy people for crazy people. These are the kinds of films Hitler liked to watch, with real people being tortured. In Mexico now, the death cults are torturing people such as cutting off their arms and legs while they are still alive. Like what we see in some modern Hollywood films. Such is the new world we live in. No thanks, not for me. Newsflash: Most films made **before** 1960 are terrible and if that's all you see today, you're not looking hard (not looking at all.) The idea that TCM's faux-change (which, for the 1,000,000 time, facts prove it hasn't) is going to kill the channel is the height of shortsightedness. Want to know what will kill TCM? Fashion fetishists. People obssessed with appearances (ex. a little boy refusing a favorite toy because it comes in a pink package.) People who aren't real cinephiles and are clearly proud of it (to adapt a famous quote, "Don't trust anyone who doesn't like films made after 1960.") I don't think TCM's supposed methods for exanding their audience are going to help much; this is a deeper rooted problem that has to do with the lack of respect for the art form today. To get people to appreciate the films of the past they need to know and appreciate the multitude of great things that are in fact happening today, every day, every month, and every year. At least TCM is trying to do something about a very real problem. The whiners here aren't helping at all and, once again, apear to be very and shamefully proud of it.

> {quote:title=filmlover wrote:}{quote}More on Blu from Olive on August 7th: > > *Rio Grande* > *Johnny Guitar* HURAHHHHHHHHH!!! That makes me very, very happy!

TCM mostly shows Turner-owned silents and silents from groups they have specific partnerships with (David Shepard, Flicker Alley, Milestone.) There's nothing "conspicuous" about the absence of that film when TCM is light on Kino product outside of Buster Keaton in the first place. But go ahead and build up phony narratives in your head if that makes you happy. > {quote:title=infinite1 wrote:}{quote}...including some boring foreign made silents that were made well into the talkie era and don't qualify in my mind as true silents. Thankfully no one cares what you think.

That missing space is the third film in the Samurai Trilogy, Duel at Ganryu Island - 11:45 PM ET. Very pleased to see Mifune get a day, although Muhomatsu is the only film I haven't seen in this lot.

This comparison has been done before so I expect it'll all be conveniently wiped under the rug and forgotten in time for another thread on the same topic in a few weeks. The fact that the 70s & 80s numbers are the same really says it all. Whether the 30s and 40s or 50s or 60s have more or less on the schedule changes with the months.

> {quote:title=SansFin wrote:}{quote}The earliest TCM schedule I can find online is for January, 1998 at: > http://web.archive.org/web/19980131213949/tcm.turner.com/CAL_TXT/9801/02/9801CT.htm > > There were 379 movies and 34 scheduled specials ranging from *MGM Parade Show#6* (1955) to *Festival of Shorts* (1998). > The oldest movie was *Male and Female* (1919) which was 79 years old. > The newest movie was *Marie: A True Story* (1998) with Sissy Spacek which was 10 years old. > > Per a fast-and-dirty sorting: > 1 movie of pre-1920s. > 11 movies of the 1920s. > 121 movies of the 1930s. > 101 movies of the 1940s. > 72 movies of the 1950s. > 51 movies of the 1960s. > 18 movies of the 1970s. > 4 movies of the 1980s. > > The April, 2012 schedule is at: > http://www.tcm.com/schedule/monthly.html > > There are 444 movies and 15 scheduled specials ranging from *MGM Parade Show#9* (1955) to *Peter O'Toole: Live from the TCM Classic Film Festival* (2012) > The oldest movie is *A Modern Musketeer* (1917) which is 95 years old. > The newest movie is *Freaked* (1993) which is 19 years old. > > Per a fast-and-dirty sorting: > 3 movies of pre-1920s. > 20 movies of the 1920s. > 92 movies of the 1930s. > 89 movies of the 1940s. > 108 movies of the 1950s. > 109 movies of the 1960s. > 17 movies of the 1970s. > 4 movies of the 1980s. > 2 movies of the 1990s. > > The percentage breakdowns are: > 1998: 98.6% of movies were more than 20 years old. (374) > 2012: 99.7% of movies are more than 20 years old. (443) > > 1998: 92.6% of movies were more than 30 years old. (351) > 2012: 98.8% of movies are more than 30 years old. (439) > > 1998: 80.2% of movies were more than 40 years old. (304) > 2012: 95.9% of movies are more than 40 years old. (439) > > 1998: 58.5% of movies were more than 50 years old. (222) > 2012: 79.0% of movies are more than 50 years old. (351) > > For April, 2012 TCM is airing more movies and older movies than they did in January, 1998. Quoted for emphasis since everyone seems to be ignoring it. Facts don't matter to some people.

Would have been nice to see some silent films on the "Classic Adventure" days. Couldn't find any of the missing Silent Sunday or TCM Imports yet.

Just because a movie was remastered doesn't mean it's set in stone "as good as it gets." It just means it was scanned again, usually at a higher resolution, and presented with or without a lot of digital clean-up (the former can be a bad thing - the new Criterion Blu-ray of Late Spring is noticeably softer than its British counterpart because of a lazy attempt at removing damage.) If you threw a VHS/Laserdisc era master onto DVD it would/could look better than either of the prior formats because of the increase in resolution. The DVD would match that old SD master's resolution, whereas the VHS & Laserdisc copies would be scaled down to their max resolutions. Most DVDs in the last twelve-plus years were made from HD masters (usually just 2K or 4K) but they can only display them at the max NTSC resolution of 720x480, whereas the Blu-ray takes advantage of much of the rest of the available resolution. And 35mm film of any age, if it is of good lineage, ex. not a duplicate of a duplicate of a duplicate but an original theatrical print, interpositive or negative, has far greater "resolution" than the Blu-ray format can reproduce. Older films get the same amount of improvement with Blu-ray over DVD that newer films do. You don't have to re-buy anything you don't want to - Blu-ray players play DVDs and always will. This has been the most consumer friendly new format yet people still make this complaint. Also, we should stop thinking about Blu-ray as "taking over" DVD; the two formats are going to co-exist for a long time...and they should (a lot of films, a lot of important films, may never make it to Blu-ray.) Dual Format editions are good for numerous reasons. As stated before, it's a future proofing method but it also assists in the case of compatability issues, particularly for people with multi-region Blu-ray players. If my Region B disc fails to play on my multi-region player, and I can't do a firmware update because it would erase the multi-region capability, then I at least have the DVD (and usually for insignificant or no extra cost.) And then there's just the basic flexibility it affords. As for Blu-ray reviews - a lot of people don't like film grain. Blu-ray is able to reproduce grain more authentically than any prior format and some people think the film grain is obscuring detail when it isn't (digitally cleaning it away actually wipes out detail.) Amazon.com reviews are more often than not produced by people who have no idea what they're talking about, so don't listen to them, look for professional reviews or find message boards that allow for discussion to clear up any misinformation. Blu-ray makes the film look more like a film on video, some people just can't take it.

Nagisa Oshima's Empire of Passion on June 15th. Jean-Luc Godard's Les Carabiniers and Luchino Visconti's The Damned on June 17th.

Francis Ford

> {quote:title=filmlover wrote:}{quote} > > *Too Late Blues* (1961) Bobby Darin - DVD and Blu-ray The John Cassavetes film? Finally, that's wonderful news!

The silent Seventh Heaven has never been on FMC to my knowledge (the sound remake has) but they did show Street Angel last month.

> {quote:title=kriegerg69 wrote:}{quote} Just because a film has a lovely use of COLOR doesn't necessarily make it a wonderfully PHOTOGRAPHED film...many examples cited here seem to have been cited because of the look of the color...many were cited in the other thread about the best COLOR in a film (Red Shoes, for example). Well if you didn't intend it to, it does read that way. In context of the argument you're making, there's no qualification that would indicate otherwise. It would have made more sense to cite a film in that spot that you think relies on color alone and not on composition. You've made a distinction in your initial post but didn't offer any example from the thread of what is merely "good color" vs. "good cinematography (in color)".

You're splitting hairs. The first post says, "...both color and composition." Are you really saying The Red Shoes isn't a wonderfully shot and composed film regardless of its brilliant color? First time I've ever heard that. What if the quality and use of the color is precisely WHY the photography is effective to begin with? French Cancan is studio-bound and intentionally artificial; the wonder of the cinematography is in the way Renoir moves color around. That's why it's good. These things aren't mutually exclusive at all. Practically every film mentioned in this thread is justifiable.

Not necessarily the "finest" but some that I really, really like... Technicolor: Meet Me in St. Louis (Vincente Minnelli, 1944) - http://www.blu-ray.com/movies/Meet-Me-In-St-Louis-Blu-ray/28203/#Screenshots French Cancan (Jean Renoir, 1955) - http://www.blu-ray.com/movies/French-Cancan-Blu-ray/12780/#Screenshots Not Technicolor: Szindbad (Zoltan Huszarik, 1971) - http://criterionforum.org/forum/viewtopic.php?p=342795#p342795 Equinox Flower (Yasujiro Ozu, 1958) - http://www.dvdbeaver.com/film3/blu-ray_reviews53/equinox_flower_blu-ray_/large/large_equinox_flower_blu-ray_2.jpg http://www.dvdbeaver.com/film3/blu-ray_reviews53/equinox_flower_blu-ray_/large/large_equinox_flower_blu-ray_10x.jpg http://www.dvdbeaver.com/film3/blu-ray_reviews53/equinox_flower_blu-ray_/large/large_equinox_flower_blu-ray_8x.jpg http://www.dvdbeaver.com/film3/blu-ray_reviews53/equinox_flower_blu-ray_/large/large_equinox_flower_blu-ray_6x.jpg

John Ford's Tobacco Road...no, I am not kidding. Perhaps it had a lot to do with seeing The World Moves On - one of the few films I genuinely despise - but my second viewing of Tobacco Road was very pleasant. Charley Grapewin, tasty Gene Tierney, Ward Bond punching out the jerk son and flipping a car over with his back - good stuff. It's not Judge Priest or How Green Was My Valley (what is?) but it's definitely not the travesty it's usually painted as.

May 20th Jean Renoir's Rules of the Game at 2:00 AM ET and Partie de Campagne (A Day in the Country) at 4:00 AM ET. Really interested in the latter - it's not available in the U.S. and I'm curious as to what source it's coming from.

The problem with a TCMHD is that TCM needs to acquire a large selection of HD masters before they can have a legitimate channel. I don't think they want a lot of SD programming on an authentic HD channel...but they also don't want to repeat the same things over and over and over again. Most of the studios are ready to provide HD masters of their holdings including the classic films, most DVDs were made from HD telecines, the problem is gathering enough of them - it's a lot of time and money. I think it's possible that a genuine HD channel may debut around TCM's 20th anniversary in 2014 but you can't be completely sure about that.

Has Anybody Seen My Gal? (1952) The Savage Innocents (1960) Red Psalm (1972) Dust in the Wind (1986)

Spike Lee - It's definitely Ace in the Hole (he's on the Criterion DVD.) Jules Feiffer - I could see Gold Diggers fitting this one. Regis Philbin - Somebody Up There Likes Me (can't you just imagine the way Regis would say that?) Anthony Bourdain - Rififi Jim Lehrer - Fat City Ellen Barkin - The Searchers Debra Winger - My Fair Lady

It's a shame Criterion didn't do more with Certified Copy. After such a long delay and at $40 SRP it would have been beneficial to include another early feature film (as Close-up did) or some of Kiarostami's short films (although a box set of the Koker films may be coming soon, so I assume they're saving many for that project.) And that cover - it's modeled on the male lead's book briefly seen in the film but...I don't like it. Hopefully another substantial feature is added, otherwise I can't recommend this edition over the already stellar Region Free (and cheap - currently less than $10) U.K. Artificial Eye Blu-ray (or alternatively, this DVD-only Artificial Eye box - http://www.artificial-eye.com/film.php?dvd=ART519DVD - in each case superior to the corresponding Region 1 edition and, again, less expensive.)

Also 2010's Moguls and Movie Stars series - November was mostly full of silent films. But a month with silent films three times each week, all night long, that would be very desirable.

> {quote:title=hlywdkjk wrote:}{quote}Peggy Noonan > The Wall Street Journal, December 27 > > *Final note.* We are at a point in our culture when we actually have to pull for grown-up movies, when we must try to encourage them and laud them when they come by. David Lean wouldn't be allowed to make movies today, John Ford would be forced to turn John Wayne into a 30-something failure-to-launch hipster whose big moment is missing the toilet in the vomit scene in Hangover Ten. Our movie culture has descended into immaturity, deep and inhuman violence, a pervasive and flattened sexuality. It is an embarrassment. > > > Credit, then, to those who make movies for grown-ups. I end with words I never expected to say: "Thank you, Harvey Weinstein. WELL DONE." > Not...true. Proactive moviegoes know better, Peggy Noonan seems to expect things to be dropped into her lap. She's just perpetuating the same falsehood that damages not just film culture, but culture in general. Strike 1! Every year, at this time of year, we get a lot of movies for "adults" because the industry has found a way to market them in a particular way - this includes making people think "movies for adults" are rare but every time this year we get more and more movies like The Iron Lady or My Week With Marilyn. They're very successful too - another thing perpetrated by marketing or hype, that they're not successful - so there's no reason for the studios to change the policy we've had for about 30 years now - using "indie farms" (my term - Weinstein Co., Fox Searchlight, etc.) to produce "adult" fare at the end/beginning of a year, making blockbusters and cash-cows for the rest of the year. What this strategy that the studios and people like the Weinstein's use does do, however, is keep people from looking farther than they should to find movies. We don't have to pull for movies for adults, they're abundant, we just need to look for them. Not even Certified Copy, maybe the best film of 2010 and starring the beloved-by-practically-every-facet-of-filmdom Juliet Binoche, got any mention from the mainstream press. "Descendants of Lean" type films still come around every few years - The English Patient and Atonement, Strike 2 for Peggy Noonan - but just like "Epic Lean" I don't think much of these films. As with Lean then and as with English Patient and Atonement now, superior things are ignored in their favor: The Leopard in 1964, Mysteries of Lisbon in 2012. The Academy is still pushing the same artistic values they always have, and continue to suppress the very same things. If Raul Ruiz can make a wonderful 5 hour period film in this period for less than $5,000,000 then we're still capable of enormously great things - it's on us to pay attention, not to expect the powers that be to drop them in our laps, and it's only our loss when we do not do these things. John Ford: Westerns still manage to get nominated for Best Picture, but the mainstream still can't recognize Heaven's Gate for what it is so I'm not sure America deserves a John Ford when they so violently screwed over a descendant of Ford (and of Luchino Visconti/The Leopard) 32 years ago and continue to scoff at it to this day. (Note: Only one John Ford western was ever nominated for Best Picture, the conventional Stagecoach. The post-war westerns, some of his most important work, were ignored or faintly patronized at the time, never recognized for the rich view of civilization, myths and heroic figures, and our country that they were. We weren't any more interested in what he was really doing then than we are today.) Strike 3! I don't weep for culture, I weep for us, for we do not appreciate what we already have, we hide it and ignore it (as we always, always, have.)

> {quote:title=phroso wrote:}{quote}The positive hype seems to be the result of wishful thinking by film critics and buffs, who would like to believe that all black-and-white movies are automatically masterpieces. There are plenty of film critics and "buffs" (don't like this word - implies people who obsess over trivia) who have mixed feelings about The Artist or don't like it at all and most of the reviewers praising The Artist to the heavens have done nothing to help most other black & white films of the last thirty or so years to reach the top of the Oscars (or any part of it for that matter.) This is a bit of another post from another thread about The Artist that I made... > {quote:title=JonasEB wrote:}{quote}It's awfully cynical of me, but the reason why The Weinstein Co. picked up the movie in the first place is because they knew they could advertise it in a very specific way to specific people and get these results. > > It's as focus grouped and market tested as any of the blockbusters but in a different way. The Artist passes market muster not because it conforms to a formula but because it has a...level of quirkiness and obvious difference that can easily be marketed. The Artist has obvious differences in its appearance from the normal product we get, but at the same time it appeals to the same things that audiences always like at the movies - sentiment, conventional plotting, etc. (Not that I'm opposed to any of these things mind you.) > > > I haven't seen The Artist yet, I very well might enjoy it, but I have wider concerns about its portrayal of silent films, chiefly, that it exploits the idea that silent films are different from sound films when they really aren't; it's only the most superficial difference. It's a novelty I don't appreciate. I get the feeling that 90-99% of the people who see The Artist won't seriously engage themselves with silent films, that ultimately the film's novelty only hepls itself and does nothing to improve the conditions real silent films face. > (And I really would like to be proven wrong on that last point: If The Artist was the catalyst that finally forced Warner to unleash the cache of silent masterpieces they've left to waste in the vaults on DVD and, I wish, on Blu-ray then it would be a rousing success in my eyes.) Hou Hsiao-Hsien's Three Times (the middle part of which is a silent film - and it's just like his other films) and Guy Maddin's films (often black & white and playing with silent attributes) didn't/don't achieve this market penetration because they neither fit what a modern audience might expect from a silent film nor do they fit the same audiences' model of what a movie is today. The Artist toes the former line and fulfills (or seems to, again I haven't seen it) the expectations of the latter. It's loaded in many ways and it's easy to build something out of it. > {quote:title=Aly_M wrote:}{quote}Also, I am suprised no one has pointed out that the subplot is exactly like a star is born. > > Frankly I don't see the purpose of making a silent film today and if they are trying to do a tribute to silents, why are they making it a musical? Who heard of a silent musical? They did not do tap dance routines like that in silents. It just really annoys me, the whole film. Is there anyone out there who is anything other than rapturous about "the Artist"? > The Artist is in the tradition of films like the silent Show People, the "Star is Born" predecessor What Price Hollywood, Singin' in the Rain, etc. It's deliberate and a lot of writers actually have pointed it out. And there are actually a lot of "musical" moments in silent film history. My issue with The Artist is not that it would dare be a silent film in 2012 but that it places silent films in relief for an audience in a way that isn't exactly truthful about what silent films mean to film history. As much as I like Kevin Brownlow's writing and work, I disagree with the notion that silent films are essentially different from sound films - it's all cinema and practically any good film since 1929 does things the way that any silent would have done them. Instead of reconciling something "alien" with what is familiar, we should affirm that silent films are like any other film. More people would appreciate silent films if they could see that it's not really different from a sound film and that the accomplishments of silent films are practically 90%+ of what the art form is.