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| Befade |
 Posted: Sun Apr 17, 2022 2:05 am |
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Joined: 20 May 2004
Posts: 3784
Location: AZ
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| Go back. When I was there a fancy department store had half of the first floor all about cats: photos of peoples cats, cat books. Contests, a play with actors in cat costumes. Go to a cat cafe. No loose cats. |
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Lost in my own private I dunno. |
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| Syd |
| Posted: Sun Apr 17, 2022 10:46 am |
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Joined: 21 May 2004
Posts: 12921
Location: Norman, Oklahoma
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gromit wrote:
Btw, Nicosia is one of two divided cities in Europe. Bonus points if you can name the other.
Well, Rome is, though I assume the border to Vatican City is easier to cross. |
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I had a love and my love was true but I lost my love to the yabba dabba doo, --The Flintstone Lament |
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| gromit |
| Posted: Thu Apr 21, 2022 10:42 am |
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Joined: 31 Aug 2004
Posts: 9010
Location: Shanghai
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The divided city of Mitrovic, with Albanian Kosovars on one side of a bridge and Serbian irredentists on the other separated by UN peacekeepers.
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Bart, fyi, I bailed on the Elba Knix forum a couple months back. Wondered why I was engaging with 3 trolls and the jerk kiid. Otherwise there might have been 3 others who posted sometimes. Was a waste of my time. So I'm not very likely to drop in to the politics forums any more. Who knows? But a simple thing like deleting or moving a bookmark really makes it easy to drop a long time habit and move on. |
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Killing your enemies, if it's done badly, increases their number. |
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| Syd |
| Posted: Thu Apr 21, 2022 10:07 pm |
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Joined: 21 May 2004
Posts: 12921
Location: Norman, Oklahoma
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gromit wrote: The divided city of Mitrovic, with Albanian Kosovars on one side of a bridge and Serbian irredentists on the other separated by UN peacekeepers.
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Bart, fyi, I bailed on the Elba Knix forum a couple months back. Wondered why I was engaging with 3 trolls and the jerk kiid. Otherwise there might have been 3 others who posted sometimes. Was a waste of my time. So I'm not very likely to drop in to the politics forums any more. Who knows? But a simple thing like deleting or moving a bookmark really makes it easy to drop a long time habit and move on.
I like my answer better. |
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I had a love and my love was true but I lost my love to the yabba dabba doo, --The Flintstone Lament |
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| bartist |
| Posted: Fri Apr 22, 2022 9:03 am |
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Joined: 27 Apr 2010
Posts: 6958
Location: Black Hills
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gromit wrote: The divided city of Mitrovic, with Albanian Kosovars on one side of a bridge and Serbian irredentists on the other separated by UN peacekeepers.
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Bart, fyi, I bailed on the Elba Knix forum a couple months back. Wondered why I was engaging with 3 trolls and the jerk kiid. Otherwise there might have been 3 others who posted sometimes. Was a waste of my time. So I'm not very likely to drop in to the politics forums any more. Who knows? But a simple thing like deleting or moving a bookmark really makes it easy to drop a long time habit and move on.
Thanks, Bo. I did notice your departure. I don't look in the sports threads much except around the Olympics or WS. Politics still has Boz (Whiskey), Josh, Facility, Larry (whose DC based obs are great), DeeJ, and a couple others I like to engage with. And the clueless Australian is often entertaining. The two hardcore trolls there are easily skippable, and it's fun to catch them out sometimes when their own logic turns on them. So I persist with that thread. |
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He was wise beyond his years, but only by a few days. |
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| Syd |
| Posted: Mon May 02, 2022 10:58 pm |
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Joined: 21 May 2004
Posts: 12921
Location: Norman, Oklahoma
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| I've always thought that one of the most fascinating eras of film was around 1930 when films were adjusting to sound. I tried to do this once as a film forum, but Nancy diverted it to (an amazingly productive) precode forum but I thought that missed the point, which is how do you adjust to a major change in the very medium you're discussing? Admittedly it's esoteric, but we are supposedly a film forum, so why not do a discussion of what makes a fim? |
Last edited by Syd on Tue May 03, 2022 6:47 am; edited 1 time in total
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I had a love and my love was true but I lost my love to the yabba dabba doo, --The Flintstone Lament |
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| gromit |
| Posted: Tue May 03, 2022 5:20 am |
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Joined: 31 Aug 2004
Posts: 9010
Location: Shanghai
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Uh, there's kind of nobody here. I pop in once a week or so.
It is interesting how some actors just didn't make the transition to sound well. International stars with thick accents or who didn't know English had a tough time. Didn't Garbo do one film reading pho-ne-ti-cal-ly?
I like the films where they just slapped in some dialogue for a few scenes, mostly 1929 & '30. Some the camera became fixed in position. Others tried to add camera movement or actor movement, and occasionally voices go in and out, as they get near/away from hidden mics.
Directors seem to have had an easier time moving to sound. But some probably failed too. |
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Killing your enemies, if it's done badly, increases their number. |
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| bartist |
| Posted: Tue May 03, 2022 7:58 pm |
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Joined: 27 Apr 2010
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Location: Black Hills
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| A good topic! I have heard that Europe was suspicious of the new talkies, and slow to accept the technology (like Vitaphone) because they felt that a focus on dialogue would subvert the aesthetic of silent film. There were a lot of visual-only purists in Europe and other parts of the world who were alarmed by the whole idea of sound. I went to a festival eons ago, with silent films, where this professor came out and talked about this at some length. |
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He was wise beyond his years, but only by a few days. |
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| Syd |
| Posted: Wed May 04, 2022 9:40 am |
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Joined: 21 May 2004
Posts: 12921
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gromit wrote: Uh, there's kind of nobody here. I pop in once a week or so.
It is interesting how some actors just didn't make the transition to sound well. International stars with thick accents or who didn't know English had a tough time. Didn't Garbo do one film reading pho-ne-ti-cal-ly?
I like the films where they just slapped in some dialogue for a few scenes, mostly 1929 & '30. Some the camera became fixed in position. Others tried to add camera movement or actor movement, and occasionally voices go in and out, as they get near/away from hidden mics.
Directors seem to have had an easier time moving to sound. But some probably failed too.
The Garbo film was probably her first talkie, Anna Christie. She had a pretty strong accent that was pretty sexy. In some early talkies, like Five Star Final and Penny Arcade, some of the actors, such as Edward G. Robinson, James Cagney and Joan Blondell have no problem adjusting to sound, while others seem like they're acting on a stage or over-emoting. I'd put Warren Baxter in In Old Arizona and Lionel Barrymore in A Free Soul into that category (but not George Arliss in Disraeli, who is great. Baxter and Barrymore did adjust pretty quickly. |
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I had a love and my love was true but I lost my love to the yabba dabba doo, --The Flintstone Lament |
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| bartist |
| Posted: Wed May 04, 2022 1:36 pm |
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| And then there were the thousands of pit orchestra musicians (yes, the higher profile movies in big city theatres of the silent era would have a pit orchestra, and not just a piano or organ) who lost their jobs when sound had established itself. There was even a depression in the musical instrument industry, as so many musicians ended up selling off equipment and getting other careers. I learned this from Rob Cook, who wrote a history of the Ludwig Drum Co. |
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He was wise beyond his years, but only by a few days. |
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| Befade |
| Posted: Thu May 05, 2022 3:03 pm |
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Joined: 20 May 2004
Posts: 3784
Location: AZ
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I think you are more involved in a silent film. Everything isn’t explained with words. Even. With black and white films that are talkies you are not diverted by the excitement of color.
Thus, the challenge for film makers today is how to make a film that forces the viewer to make an effort to be involved.
I just rewatched Last Year in Marienbad. That is a difficult film. And a maddening film with the dirge like organ music. I can’t say I enjoyed it. But at the time I think it was considered very avant- guard, very brilliant. |
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| gromit |
| Posted: Fri May 06, 2022 9:25 am |
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Location: Shanghai
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| In the early talkie era, suddenly films are no longer so universal. One of the crazy things is they started making the same film in different languages using a different cast. You have the sets, so slap in a cast who speak German or French and make the same film again. I'm not sure how extensive this was or when it dropped away. But was a thing in the 30's. |
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Killing your enemies, if it's done badly, increases their number. |
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| Syd |
| Posted: Fri May 06, 2022 6:44 pm |
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Joined: 21 May 2004
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Location: Norman, Oklahoma
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| They did that with Dracula. There was a German Language version of Anna Christie with Garbo in common with the English version, but the rest of the cast was German. There was also a silent version with her but I don't know anything else about it. The tagline must have been "Garbo Doesn't Talk". (There's also a 1923 silent version with Blanche Sweet.) |
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I had a love and my love was true but I lost my love to the yabba dabba doo, --The Flintstone Lament |
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| grace |
| Posted: Sat May 07, 2022 3:14 pm |
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Joined: 11 Nov 2005
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| A couple years ago, Fathom Events showed a double feature of the Lugosi Dracula and the Spanish-language version. While the films were the same almost shot-for-shot, we liked the Spanish version a little better. |
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| knox |
| Posted: Mon May 09, 2022 12:00 pm |
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Joined: 18 Mar 2010
Posts: 1246
Location: St. Louis
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| The job loss thing mentioned earlier was quite a thing, as I understand it. Not only pit orchestra musicians were out of work, but also some films were accompanied by someone reading a text alongside the showing. In Japan, there were actors who would get up on stage by the screen and perform dramatic scenes with the movie as a sort of moving set. As in Europe (as Bartist mentioned), there was a general sentiment that the moving image was supposed to be a silent thing which could then be supplemented by live sound/music, or just watched in silence if the pure visual art was paramount. |
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