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.

Russian Ark -- 2002

Once this was over, I just had to say "wow." The most compelling part of this production was that it was a 90-minute film presented in a single, continuous take. It is the only feature film in history to do this. It was also shot in one take, which is, again, the only film in history to do this.

During the film, it really felt like you were following along with this guy as he was walking through this Hermitage Museum in Russia. He had a guide, or more like a companion, for a time which gave him someone to talk to, but for the most part, we were experiencing this from one person's POV the whole time.

The basic plot is a filmmaker finds himself in this museum and he travels through time while walking through this museum experiencing everything that happened over a 300 year history. If that sounds boring to you...well, that's kind of the crappy part. It kind of is boring.

Technically, the film is impressive. To coordinate everyone involved in the production to do everything all at once is a feat worthy of a great regardless of the story line, but judging the story just leaves you flat. The camera occasionally "looks" at something for an extended period, and you just want to move on. The traveller guy acts oddly at many places, and at one point trades raspberries with someone else who had kicked him out of a room. It was really odd. I guess the film would mean a lot more to those who know the history, but to me, I just didn't get it.

It was amusing at several points because the actors inadvertently take you out of the film by glancing at the camera. Maybe they're looking at the "guy" who's walking around, but he goes unnoticed most of the time. The end was odd when he was clearly walking backwards through the crowd and they had parted in front of him; you could see them closing the gap behind him.

So from a filmmaking perspective, this is a landmark film. A single take is nothing short of impressive for a feature film, no matter what the story is. But the story is mostly a documentary. So you trade one for the other.

The Amityville Horror -- 1979 -- R

The Amityville Horror is one of those movies that the filmmakers claimed was based on a true story, but snopes.com lets you know that's a bunch of nonsense. Regardless, this film is about a family that moves into a house a year after a guy killed his parents and four siblings while they slept, claiming that voices in the house told him to do it. During their short stay, which the film says was 28 days at the beginning, weird things happen in the house such as voices, flies, black goo in the toilets, the daughter having an imaginary "friend" that actually (and freakishly) exists, and the father slowly losing his mind.

The overall package here is pretty good. Since they wanted the feeling of it to be based in reality, you really don't see much in the way of monsters or anything. Everything is implied or just heard. It makes for the whole thing to be very creepy and certainly makes you question the odd noises you hear in your own house at night.

However, we're not without some question marks. I have barely started and already odd things happen. 

The father who comes to bless the house and is run out. That's cool. Why didn't he tell the family then? Sure, they weren't there, but wouldn't that be worth waiting around for?

Then the thing in the basement. He goes downstairs and acts like he's never been there before. To top that, there's a cobweb in the way he has to duck under. A realtor would not have left that.

Then the kid decides to knock out the light bulb and fall down the stairs. Weird. It would have been something more interesting if the popped bulb came into play later, but it didn't. The whole thing was a non-incident.

Meeting of the priests: there's a big argument as to what's really out at the house. I have a suggestion: go there. If they turned him down; I'd be ok, but he never even suggested it. He should have insisted on it. But no. Like so many things, he kept silent at the opportune time.

His friend says to get away from thehouse for a couple of hours...but he's been out all day. I can get the reason why the friends really came over, but they could have found a better reason. Oh yeah, where'd the motorcycle come from>

I don't think I'd've made it to the 17th day. The night before day 17 was one of the freakiest, and I think that would have been it for me. Beyond this, we get labels for days 18 & 19 and then it's "The Last Day". No nothing significant happened between day 19 and day 28? Maybe it was the trailer that said 28 days, but I know that was established as an overall time frame somewhere.

Dang, that is one freakin' long drive from town. The sun was lower in the sky when she left and it's pitch black when she gets home. As I recall, they aren't too far from a main city unless she went a long way for a headline making news story.

The good points really out weight the question marks, though. That's me being nitpicky. The male lead was well developed enough for me as well as his wife. The kids are gone for most of the film, which weakens it only marginally. The stuff that happens in the house makes the house a character of its own. The line "houses don't have memories" couldn't have been more inaccurate than in this film.

Truly a freakish addition to the haunted house canon where the bad guy is a demon possessed house that not even a priest can escape the wrath of (which granted loses a point of believability in my book since Jesus is stronger than a demon and his followers have the power to withstand its influence. A man of God should make the demon flee, not the other way around. Satan doesn't have that type of power over God's people). But for a good scare and one to make you question those bumps in the night, it works very well. It also makes you wnat to bless your own house once you get home.

Marie Antoinette -- 2006 -- PG-13

I guess I'm one of the slow ones who doesn't get it. This film won some stuff and was nominated for some other stuff, but I found most of those nominations and wins have to do with costumes and production design, which, I'll have to say, were quite good. My overall opinion of what I look for in a film, however, showed it to be lacking in what it takes for a film to survive through the ages. It was directed by Sofia Coppola, daughter of esteemed writer/director of The Godfather, Francis Ford Coppola, but it appears in the case of this film, the apple didn't land anywhere near the tree.

This film starts out very well with the transfer of young Marie from Austria to France to wed the prince over there, Louis, in an effort to bring peace to their nations. The transfer and wedding goes off without a hitch, but apparently Louis and Marie don't make a connection...literally. Their marriage goes unconsummated for years after the legal act is done. They sleep together, but never "do it." This, naturally, upsets everyone involved in both France and Austria as her purpose as the wife of a king-to-be is to produce an heir and a few back ups, so the royal family does not end with Louis. Well, no sex means no heir.

So that's an interesting start, and I'm sure it's a historical fact and such that this occurred (I'm no history buff, but hey, movies ALWAYS tell the truth, right?). Personally, I would have liked to have seen at least some measure of effort on the part of Marie to get Louis moving. It would have made for some nice tension and conflict between them with her trying to jump his bones, and his pushing her off. She has the motivation to do it; pressure from everyone on every side saying "your marriage and our lives are in jeopardy unless you do it with him," so I was waiting for a good argument and shouting match or something from them. Instead, we get "I'm tired" "Okay." Here's where dramatic license takes precedence over historical accuracy. I don't care if they never argued; I'm falling asleep here.

The bigger problem with this film comes in with what is used to fill the screen time when we're not being bombarded by letter and problems related to the issue of no action. We get lots and lots of parties. This film might as well be called "The Many Parties of Marie Antoinette" because that is a good 75% of this film. It actually got really boring watching her go to party after party after party. I know this aspect of her life is important, and it does help to shape her character really well, but these scenes needed to be a lot shorter catching only the high points and leaving out the rest of the nonsense.

As for pacing, nearly every scene goes on longer than it should. As I'm watching it, I start thinking, "okay, this scene is over; let's move on." A few seconds later, it does, but it should have moved on before we reached the point when it was over. Trimming the end of each scene would have probably cut a good 5-10 minutes out of the film and created a piece that at least moved quicker. This film could have easily been shortened to 90 minutes and been a breeze to watch; instead, we're treated to a flick of over two hours, and we feel every minute.

Finally, we all know how the life of Marie Antoinette ends...I am no history buff, but that fact is ingrained enough. Knowing how she dies is enough to give some tension to the end of this movie, but guess what...it never happens. The people might be storming the palace, but Louis and Marie get into their carriage and ride off. Roll credits. Whoa. A modernized and stylish biography of Marie Antoinette and no guillotine. There's something wrong here. Maybe guillotines aren't PG-13 material.

What went right? The presentation of this film is definitely Oscar-worthy. We get 17th century environments with a 21st century feel. Instead of string orchestras, we get each party overdubbed with modern rock music. Most of the film is scored with a rock orchestra, with very little period music. Actions of the characters are very 21st century in nature as if she took the nature of the activity from back then and updated everything to make it presentable to modern audiences while retaining the values of the earlier era. Very clever. Very stylish. Very wonderfully done.

So, we get a cool update of an old story, but one that misses the mark considerably in terms of storytelling. It could have been much better had we been given more of the story and less of the parties. Trim about 30 minutes out of it, and we just might have something here. How'd it win Best Film somewhere? I dunno. Nepotism got her into the industry, right?

A Night To Remember -- 1958

Titanic is one of those subjects that people tend to get swept up in, no matter who they are. Most people these days know well the 1997 version of the disaster by James Cameron, but who consider themselves true fans of the disaster (can you be a fan of a disaster?) prefer this film over its modern counterpart. Why? Well, I can give you the reason they'll give, and then what is likely the more accurate reason they'd never admit to.

They will tell you that they prefer this 1958 version of Titanic because it is a pure factual retelling free of the distractions of fictional subplots. It allows you to focus on what really happened without the attachment to several characters who were never there. And indeed, this movie was soon enough after it happened that they were able to get several first hand accounts of that night, so from that perspective, the film worked very well.

The primary, unspoken reason is that this film is considered the "original" version of the story, and it is considered very fashionable to like something that few other people know about. They tend to not only claim preference over this version, but voice hatred over the 1997 version. Really, hatred? It makes them feels smarter and of a higher status to have viewed this version of the events since it gives them a social edge in certain circles.

Here's what I can tell you about this film based on what I've learned over the years about Titanic and what really happened. Both films actually have something worthwhile to offer in telling the story. This film clearly had White Star execs hanging over it the whole time to make sure the story that was told was the one THEY wanted told. It was based on a book that likely was also overseen by the White Star Line to dispell whatever they wanted dispelled about what was done and what wasn't. The major factual differences between the films have to do with stuff that the company did not want the general public to know about, but that survivors claimed had happened.

For instance...the biggest difference: the state of Titanic when she went down. White Star maintained that Titanic went down in one piece. This is what was portrayed in A Night to Remember. However, when the site was finally viewed, they found that Titanic broke in half before she sank. This was consistent with survivors' stories that were stifled by White Star. Also, in this movie, the life boats were nearly full. Not completely, but nearly. In the 97 version, a point was made that they weren't filling the boats anywhere close to capacity.

So how does this work actually work in the opinion of this avid movie watcher? Very, very well. They do stick to the basic facts and make tableaus out of the various people. Some of the stories when Titanic goes down are extremely emotional and heartbreaking, which is the point. It is a disturbing feature to watch and more so when you know that it really happened very much as you see it. If you don't feel like marching over to the California and hitting someone, you weren't paying attention.

There's honestly not much to say about it. It was well done, and clearly had a lot of backing and voices into making a good film out of it. If you enjoy the stories of Titanic, this one is a must see. When the facts are taken into consideration between this film and the 1997 version, you honestly get a very complete picture of what went on that night on 1912.