JonasEB

Among the rarities on December 14th's George Eastman House day is this one... The highly significant Japanese silent film A Page of Madness. There is no official video edition of this, even in Japan, and to my knowledge this is the first time it's showed up in an English-language country on television.

December 14th - The highly significant Japanese silent film A Page of Madness will be shown. There is no official video edition of this, even in Japan, and to my knowledge this is the first time it's showed up in an English-language country on television.

The official "Suggest A Movie" Page - http://www.tcm.com/suggest-a-movie/index.html - is authentic. I've had a great number of successes with it over the past couple of years.

I guess Warner refuses to have anything to do with the "Rape of Christ" scene so that automatically puts the 2004 version off the table. But even if we did get the 2004 version, it would still be a DVD - apparently that restoration only exists on SD digibeta, there isn't a film copy. Money would have to be spent and archives would have to be opened to get a proper film version assembled and it's highly unlikely Warner's going to go for that. Unfortunate, but at least the original British X-rated theatrical cut will finally be available again.

Valentine, the British Film Institute is going to release The Devils on DVD in March next year. http://www.bfi.org.uk/news/143

Strike, a major silent film, certainly has been on US TV before and has been on TCM before. In fact, here's the old programming article for it... http://www.tcm.com/this-month/article/445903|0/Strike.html TCM either mistakenly ordered the old version used on the Image DVD or Kino sent them a wrong or flawed master of the restoration they just issued. They usually have limited opportunities to show films licensed from small companies like Kino (usually one time per rental) so they probably didn't want to spend the money unless they were getting what they wanted. Strike will probably show up again in March, April, or May - at least within the next year.

> {quote:title=helenbaby wrote:}{quote}I'm pretty sure the wraparounds & any original programming in the last 3 or 4 years are filmed in HD, but since the films are all made before HD cameras, they aren't. Although I'll have to say that the films are more vivid, for the lack of a better word, on the HD feed. Film has always been "HD", it has a capacity far beyond the common digital formats today (that's why they look good projected; a DVD sized image would look terrible on a 50 ft screen.) Digital has only just caught up to 35mm film, it's still inferior to 70mm film. Film just requires a new telecine scan at a higher resolution to capture what's on the print, whereas video is locked at whatever resolution it was originally shot at. TCM is waiting for the right time to do genuine HD - it requires a lot of HD masters to be made and delivered. Warner/Turner films are surely ready to go but the same may not be true for the other studios. Most studio DVDs made in the last 10 years should have been made from 2K scans, so in theory we should have a lot ready for HD but it needs to be in TCM's hands. The channel should definitely be ready by 2015. Maybe TCM will start true HD broadcasting on their 20h anniversary in 2014. As for TCMHD's upscaling quality - 4:3 B&W films tend to look the best, often quite good, and widescreen color films tend to look the worst (because TCM must artificially enlarge a 4:3 letterbox master in this case.) It's also worth mentioning that these problems are more significant if you have a 120hz framerate/refresh or higher TV (SD television in general fares poorly on these.)

Unfortunate, but not surprising, to hear Fox is missing a lot of film materials. I was hoping that the same could be done for a lot of the late silent-era Fox titles we've been waiting for. Definitely eager to see What Price Glory this Sunday! Oh, this is the artwork for the upcoming edition of Wings...

And here's what the artwork looks like...

http://blogs.suntimes.com/ebert/2011/11/unless_we_find_an_angel.html Darn, I've enjoyed the new incarnation of the show.

> {quote:title=ValentineXavier wrote:}{quote}I used to enjoy Siskel and Ebert, for their discussions. I would often disagree with their conclusions, but felt I was given sufficient info to make my own conclusions. And the show was just so fun to watch when you got them going on a particular subject - never the same after 1999 and none of the other shows that copied the format did it right. General thread comments... Roger Ebert = "Socialist-Far Left Lens" - Ebert's obviously not a socialist and being a liberal isn't terribly far to the left. Let's not start on the backwards use of the term liberal in this country (did you know the main conservative party of Japan is called the Liberal Democratic Party? It's actually quite commonly used everywhere else for center-right parties like our Republicans.) Socialism = "Far Left" - Pretty much ever country in the world, except for the U.S., has a mainstream socialist party. That should tell one something. Every other country also seems to have at least 3 and often 4 or more viable political parties - that should really tell us something very obvious about ourselves (we are in fact a country that only caters to the center of the political spectrum.) Michael Medved = Idiot - Well, that's because he is.

Probably Jonathan Rosenbaum in general but others have written my favorite examples of criticism (like David Bordwell's Ozu book.)

Reading comprehension troubles? I'll highlight the pertinent points for you... *ValentineXavier wrote: "Also, there have been many cases in the past where local Comcast Cable head-ends have inadvertently turned it on, so it can't be turned off at your house."* It's that simple. This has happened before and it's likely this is what has happened to the original poster. That's why they don't deserve a lot of crap from people who can't take the time to read the thread.

As noted in this very thread, right before you in fact, this is a problem caused by the cable station. It has happened before and has been noted here before - but that doesn't mean that every single person who watches TCM is going to know about that. It's a reasonable complaint and now the OP probably knows what to do. Don't be a dick.

What TCM was like back in the day... They have always played films made within the last ten years - since month #1. They've always scheduled things from 1970 on. The amount of films post-60s hasn't changed in the last five, ten + years - proven countless times on this forum. They've always aired world cinema - more daring and challenging choices showing up lately. They've always aired silent films - they've actually seemed to increase in number over the last couple of years. They've always aired rare, hard to find, or otherwise never to be seen films on TV.

I'm not going to try to defend the film from negative reactions because I do think it's basically a failure - not in the "terrible film" sense, just that it doesn't quite work. Although a narrative was meant to be built out of the project, clearly focused on Tom Farrell, there's ultimately too little of it to build on and most of the other characters and visual connections are either too general or just not there. This isn't surprising considering that Ray had to mold something out of an entirely chaotic approach to filmmaking. There is the occasional moment in which the visceral effect of all of the images come together (the beard shaving scene) but it doesn't happen often enough. Ray said that he wanted to make a kind of "Guernica" out of the whole thing. So, it's a failure, but a supremely interesting one.

> {quote:title=Sky1948 wrote:}{quote}Hi;Just watched the November 2011 "What's Playing" show. Saw the ads for the upcoming "Master de Baters" or something like that. TCM isn't showing anything called "Master de Baters". What are you talking about? And what the hell is all of this talk about "putting a modern slant" on old clips. How did "liberal agenda" get into any of this??? Are we talking about the AFI Masterclass thing? TCM always does stuff like this. What does Steven Spielberg talking about his movies and collaboration with John Williams have to do with a "liberal agenda". Jesus Christ!

That's super... *Head hits desk* General comments: Silents = Pantomime - In some ways but most silent acting, especially from the 1920s on, is exactly the same as talkie era acting, just without the talking. The thing that makes it seem different is often the film speed (even correct, sensible, speed) and the framerate. Buster Keaton and John Gilbert didn't do the same thing. The silent era invented the screen acting that everyone here likes. The cartoon comparison I feel gives a very distorted picture of what silent acting actually looked like (some of it undoubtedly was but most of it wasn't.) Silents = A language of their own - Maybe a little but Classical Hollywood Style and the mode of production was basically perfected by 1920 and didn't change much. Sternberg in the 20s = Sternberg in the 30s. I suppose comedy changed in some ways but then only the very specific kind that Buster Keaton and Charlie Chaplin created - Clara Bow, Marion Davies, and Corinne Griffith were in movies that functioned just like the comedies of the 30s. Instead of making unnecessary excuses for silent films, which are only superficially "alien", we should be emphasizing how similar, familiar, it all is...because it is.

Then you missed the best part, the last half hour, which is absolutely amazing, a kind of proto-Apocalypse Now. It's a very flawed film, Ray should have been allowed to complete production and oversee post, but few people had the guts to make films like that then, never mind today.

> {quote:title=Filmgoddess wrote:}{quote}You can't blame the Academy for that but the individual countries that submit the entries each year. If they're picking films to represent their country that are not "represent of what's going on in world cinema" (and what do you actually mean by that?) then only those countries are to blame. That's true - it's either proof that every other country has the same middle of the road taste as we do or it suggests that they pick what they believe will have the best chance with Academy voters - but the Academy gets to pick which flims ultimately end up on their slate and it's always what one would expect. When I noticed last year's winner, In a Better World, featured poor Africans I knew immediately that it would win - I was right. My original quote was "A poor representation of the state of world cinema." Sounds pretty straightforward to me - this is not the best the world has to offer. "Obscure, weird Asian films" - If you mean "Asia Extreme", I don't care about that, but if you mean Still Walking or Yi Yi or Cafe Lumiere or Still Life, you're way, way off the mark. Obscure? Maybe. Weird? No, people just don't want to try and work with the films they watch anymore. Those two films aren't particularly special in the wide scope of things, nothing to get excited about. "Secret" isn't bad but "World" is pure Oscar-bait. Certified Copy was better than every film in the Best Picture category last year, let alone the Foreign Language category, which doesn't even come close. 50 years ago a film like it would have some chance of getting mainstream press - not anymore, and that's a shame.

Can anyone confirm whether Wind Across the Everglades was shown in cropped or open matte form? The titles and some of the long shots suggest the latter but I got the feeling that the image might be overly cramped in matted form if this was simply an open matte transfer. In any case, thanks to TCM for finally getting the film on the air! I loved it!

> {quote:title=cujas wrote:}{quote}Richard Schickel's DVD commentaries are woefully overrated. Zing! But that would imply that people actually like his commentaries! Does anyone? I like Schickel's "Men Who Made the Movies" series (in which he has no opportunity to say anything) and his revival of Sam Fuller's Big Red One but that's about it. He's not much of a critic. As for the question at hand, I'll say that most of the Academy's "Best Foreign Language" category is generally a poor representation of the state of world cinema...but of course AMPAS is an easy target in general.

Spite Marriage is at least better than something like Battling Butler and it is still Keaton-esque, especially the second half. The Cameraman was Keaton's last masterpiece but this is hardly a bad film. Have you watched Speak Easily and Sidewalks of New York? Those are examples of evaporated, dehydrated, crushed Buster Keaton. Keaton wanted to make Spite Marriage a talkie and watching it again I thought it would have translated well to that format. Although I doubt it would have changed anything, there's always that possibility that it might have given Keaton a better foundation and terms to work with in the new talkie world had he been able to pull off the debut he wanted.

A lot of good stuff here. The items that caught my eye... A double feature of Ozu's silent A Story of Floating Weeds and his 50s remake Floating Weeds. More Ozu is always a good thing! Jacques Feyder and Chris Marker films on the 8th Max Ophuls' The Reckless Moment and The Exile The Japanese cult film House on TCM Underground The Jean Renoir Diary of a Chambermaid Howard Hawks' Man's Favorite Sport, one of the few I haven't seen (Hows about Red Line 7000 in 2012?) And maybe The Gold Rush will be the true silent version this time out?

It doesn't at all matter in the slightest whether or not this has anything to do with Bogart the person, emotionally it's his richest and most graded performance and for that I would say it's the best.