The
benshi of Japan were live narrators of silent films.
"To many 'silent' cinema fans in Japan,
benshi were a major attraction. It was usually the film that drew people to the theater, but it was often the
benshi which determined which theater a person would attend.
Benshi were huge cultural stars of the time, with
benshi earning as much, if not more, than many actors."
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posted by Paragon
on Feb 27, 2011 -
17 comments
He invented or popularized a startling array of the fundamental elements of film: the dissolve, the fade-in and fade-out, slow motion, fast motion, stop motion, double exposures and multiple exposures, miniatures, the in-camera matte, time-lapse photography, color film (albeit hand-painted), artificial film lighting, production sketches and storyboards, and the whole idea of narrative film.
By 1897, in a studio of his own design and construction – the first complete movie studio – his hand forged virtually everything on his screen. Norman McLaren writes, "He was not only his own producer, ideas man, script writer, but he was his own set-builder, scene painter, choreographer, deviser of mechanical contrivances, special effects man, costume designer, model maker, actor, multiple actor, editor and distributor." Also, his own cinematographer, and the inventor of cameras to suit his special conceptions. Not even auteur directors such as Charles Chaplin, Orson Welles, John Cassavetes, and Stanley Kubrick would personally author so many aspects of their films."
Inside: 57 films by Georges Méliès, the
Grandfather of Visual Effects.
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posted by Paragon
on Feb 3, 2010 -
31 comments
Joseph Frank Keaton Jr. was born into vaudeville. He quickly became a popular and controversial part of his family's stage act; an act that had his father violently hurling the "disobedient" child across the stage into scenery, the orchestra pit, or even into the audience, only to see him emerge amazingly unharmed. After the boy took an unplanned and particularly clamorous fall down a hotel stairwell, an astonished
Harry Houdini cried out to the parents, "
What a buster your kid took!" And thus, as legend has it, did little Joseph Frank Keaton Jr. become
Buster Keaton.
At 22, Keaton made his
cinematic debut with mentor Fatty Arbuckle. Afterward, he immediately founded Buster Keaton Studios, releasing a series of brilliant short (and later longer) comedies.
Dozens of these are freely available to stream or download at the
Internet Archive, including
Steamboat Bill Jr,
Convict 13,
The Electric House, and his seminal
The General (alt), which, despite
completely failing at the box office, would be later hailed by many as one of the
greatest
films
of
all
time.
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posted by churl
on Apr 25, 2007 -
58 comments
