Homage to Eadweard Maybridge -- 1880's (1994 documentary)

This was a collection of sequential picture films, each lasting only 30 seconds or so each. As a predecessor to the actual film camera's product, they provide an interesting glance into what led to what we are now familiar, but of course, since it was all experimental, provide no story or anything.

One point of interest, though, is what he chose to film for a subject. As the oldest of films, this kinda points to the dirty mind of man...every one of these short subjects were naked women. Yup. Completely disrobed.

As I watched the "Woman throws a baseball" one, I couldn't help but think that if that were how the sport were played, it would have a much bigger fan base...

I'd say we've come a long way quality wise in the way of 35mm prints and HD video, but when you realize your first genre is porn, you gotta wonder where they were planned on taking the art form.

This is on "The Movies Begin Vol. 1".

Edison Shorts -- 1894-1897

This was included in a collection of other old films from this era. The Edison Shorts include the following:

The Kiss - 1896
Serpentine Dances - 1895
Sandow (Strong Man) - 1894
Glenroy Brothers (Comic Boxing) - 1894
Cock Fight - 1896
The Barber Shop - 1894
Feeding the Doves - 1896
Seminary Girls - 1897

These basically show exactly as the title suggests, and they all were very short (most a minute or less). All of them were a single shot with the camera probably mounted on a tripod. There was no zoom, pan or anything else beyond what the camera saw from its perch.

These kind of look like someone's home videos or what a photographer might shoot with his still camera, except that the pictures are moving. It kind of indicates that the original idea was to use it as a traditional camera, but to give the end user a feeling of life in his pictures instead of trying to capture life in a still. The advent of storytelling in this medium was a few years off still. 

The final one in the list (Seminary Girls), like Eadweard's sequential pictures, point to the seedier side of the art form with a bunch of girls in their nightgowns engaging in a pillow fight. It appears Edison had a bit fo a dirty old man streak as well, and one might wonder what he has in his "private" collection.

This is on "The Movies Begin Vol. 1".

Lumiere Films - 1895-1896

Swimming in the Sea 
Children Digging for Clams
Loading a Boiler
Dragoons Crossing the Saone 
Promenade of Ostriches 
Childish Quarrel 
Lion, London Zoological Gardens
Photograph
Transformation by Hats
Carmaux:Drawing out The Coke
Poultry Yard
Arab Cortege, Geneva
New York: Brooklyn Bridge
New York: Broadway and Union Sq
Policemen's Parade, Chicago

Another collection of older, very short films yielded pretty much as the title clearly states in all cases. The camera appears to have been positioned on a tripod to watch what is going on and it all plays out very much like a still photographer's photo gallery, but with the pictures moving. Two of them, however, deserve some special distinction.

Photograph - this one appears to be more staged than filming actual events. A photographer poses another man for a picture, and the man has trouble posing, then they knock the camera over, breaking it apparently. It's very comic and slapstick-ish.

Transformation by Hats - this one has a man who changes his appearance (including his face) by changing hats with some built on masks. He does an effective job and it took a moment to realize exactly what was going on. It was an effective demonstration of how some minor work that would later be attributed to makeup would appear on screen.

It was a fascinating collection to view. This is on "The Movies Begin Vol. 1"

Actualities - 1897-1910

On "The Movies Begin Vol. 1".

President McKinley at Home - 1897
Packtrain on Chilkoot Pass - 1898
Skyscrapers of New York City - 1903
TheGeorgetown Loop - 1903
San Francisco: Aftermath of Earthquake - 1906
The Dog and his Various Merits - 1908
Moscow Clad in Snow - 1908
Airplane Flight and Crash - 1910

While I'm not sure why they are titled Actualities beyond the simple fact that they actually exist, this was the title given to these on the DVD containing them. They were put together as a single series of short films, though these are longer than the typical ones.

 

The first two with McKinley and the Packtrain are more like the older shorts just showing a slice of life from a stable camera, though I'll admit it interesting to see McKinley on film.

The rest get a little more interesting as the filmmakers apparently experiment more and more with their art to get some real motion and storytelling going on.

Skyscrapers has the camera on a boat traveling down a river, so the whole thing consists of what looks like a long tracking shot of the city as seen from the river. Easy concept: put the camera on something; it moves.

Georgetown is basically the same concept except now we have the camera on a train. However, this one introduces something else. As the train is cruising through the landscape, the view pans slightly around the curves. I thought it was just viewing out the side of the train, but the camera was actually panning around as sometimes we got views of the train's passengers waiving and other times was a view of the landscape.

San Francisco gives us an early distaster movie/news shots. This one was far more complex than the earlier ones as we have multiple shots of the aftermath including people milling around and lots of destruction. The camera pans around in several shots as well giving us a better panorama of what San Francisco looked like at the time of the quake.

Although the subject matter of the Dog and its Merits is kind of silly, it plays out more like a documentary with multiple shots of the various dogs and their jobs, and this one throws in intertitles (cards between shots that describe what is happening or coming up) that describe the upcoming dog we're about to see. It's an amusing watch.

Moscow Clad in Snow takes us one step further than the Dogs with more intertitles and even more shots of Moscow's various views. This one is a much grander style though and paints Moscow in a very touristy light to include a grand panoramic shot of the city from a high rooftop. It gives a very simple view of what happens in the snow in Moscow, and that is: life goes on. We have horse drawn sleds in two laned city streets. A marketplace where people notice the camera and stare and smile at it. Even got a group of people "walking" on skis. Kind of neat.

The final one doesn't match the quality of the last two. Someone gets his primitive plane out of his garage. The camera misses the takeoff as it basially disappears in the distance of the field, and we miss the crash as well. We get some aftermath shots, but on the whole, it's a disappointing ending to a progressively more interesting collection.

This Film Is Not Yet Rated -- 2006 -- NC-17 (Rating Surrendered)

This is a documentary about the MPAA and the ratings system. More specifically, it concerns how and why films are rated in an attempt to get to the bottom of why some films get an R while others get a PG-13 and while others get NC-17 when films that have the same scenes get an R. It also delves into the inner sanctum of the MPAA via guerilla filmmaking to find out who the mysteriouos film raters are. It makes for an interesting documentary, and it's very informative, so rather than comment on how the documentary is made (what's the point?), I'll kind of talk about some of its opinions.

One point it repeatedly tries to drive home is the idea that the MPAA equals censorship, and blames this organization for getting content cut from their films because they give it a high rating. It is a fact that NC-17 spells death for any film because of marketing and sales, but when you get right down to it, is that the fault of the MPAA? A brief point was made that was brushed off of the true culprits of censorship, and they aren't the MPAA.

The purpose of the MPAA which was stated in the midst of the documentary is that ratings are given to inform parents of the state of the film's content. The ratings are well known: G, PG, PG-13, R, and NC-17 (formerly X). They each have their place on films, and to those of us who are over the age of 17, these ratings mean nothing...absolutely nothing. We can watch anything we want. Some people use them as a means to decide whether they want the type of content the ratings imply, but at the end of the day, the purpose of the ratings are exactly the same: to allow the viewer a quick insight to the film's content as it relates to children.

Where does the censorship come in? They hit it in the doc. Marketing, sales, movie theatre owners, Wal-Mart, Blockbuster... They stated Wal-Mart and Blockbuster (who purchase 40% of the video sales collectively) will not buy or carry NC-17 films. You can't run trailers for R or NC-17 films on TV. So should we picketing for censorship? The MPAA only gives the ratings. It is those who are using those ratings for decision making that are practicing the censorship. 

Ironically, I got this from the public library. Since the film surrendered its NC-17 rating that it got from the MPAA, it is now Not Rated at all. I guess that means it can be purchased.

This is not to say that the MPAA is not without its problems and inconsistencies. I've seen R rated movies that confound me as to why they're R (PG-13 would make more sense). I've also seen PG or PG-13 movies that are better placed as R (Amityville 3-D immediately springs to mind as it has some rather sick scenes, yet it got a PG rating, getting rated just before the PG-13 rating came out; I suspect Poltergeist had something to do with that as Spielberg fought Poltergeist's R rating initially and got it a PG). They apparently don't provide any notes as to why a movie gets a rating to some people, but to others, they provide details as to which scenes and moments should be cut. It was really strange, and while I know the slant of the documentary was against the MPAA, they made some solid points to their problems.

Personally, I think the purpose of the MPAA is legit, but the information the MPAA provides has been abused by marketing, retailers, and others to practice the censorship that the MPAA was created to avoid. The point of the ratings system was to allow the filmmaker to make the film they want to and let the viewer know ahead of time what kind of film they were in for and whether the children should come. I do feel that films should receive equal treatment regardless of their ratings and the parents should be given the choice of whether kids could watch it or not. Unfortunately, some parents don't want to take any responsibility for anything causing retailers like Wal-Mart to think for them and censor films they don't think are family friendly based on the rating alone. But if these films can be cut down to R, aren't you getting the same thing without the 3 seconds of content that sent it over the fence? In fact, one film made a "neuter version" of their film so they could exhibit the original NC-17 version, and sell the film in some form through Wal-Mart.

If enough films got NC-17 ratings and pushed for their inclusion (apparently A LOT of films get NC-17 for a variety of reasons in their first go round through the MPAA; the Friday the 13th series, I hear, has gotten either X or NC-17 every single time it goes through the first time for violence), we'd get some changes to what gets censored. But since everyone feels victimized and folds to the system, the system maintains their stranglehold.