The Precarious Attainment of Relevance

Saturday, December 31, 2011


It may be the end of 2011, but I have no year-end lists or resolutions or anything of substance to say, really. Just a few goals for SBBN, a slight modification to my previously-announced plans, and a bit of randomness.


One of the best and first film bloggers I have encountered in our vast blogoverse was Arbogast on Film, whose keen eye for sublime cinematic visual moments and incisive analysis made his blog a must-read for anyone.  Arbo has announced his blog is shutting down, and while I am happy to hear that he's retiring from blogging because his real life work has picked up, I'm still ridiculously sad. I learned an immeasurable amount from his blog over the years and Arbo has earned my undying gratitude. Thank you, Arbo, for everything, and best of luck!

***

My dear SBBN readers, there is no schedule for this month, but I would like to refer everyone to my BBFF Ivan's January TCM schedule post. It is comprehensive and uncommonly good, just like those cookies made by tree-dwelling two-dimensional freaks of nature.

As for the schedules posted on SBBN, if anyone really really reallyreally wants me to keep including Sundance Channel, this is your last chance to say so. Their schedule is more TV shows than movies, plus the online schedule webpage is clunky and late to update, so I'm inclined to drop Sundance altogether from my future schedule posts.

Things have been a bit sparse around here lately, but at least it's because I'm working too hard instead of not working at all, so that's a change. This current project is kicking my ass, leaving me semi-conscious on the pavement while rifling my pockets for all my spare time, but I think it's ultimately a good thing. I think. I... think. Remember when I wondered aloud how hard this serious writing stuff was going to be? Now I know! Ha ha!

Sure, maybe I've lost some of my sanity, but I've also learned that I cannot do a series of these projects end-to-end as I had originally planned. Once this project is done, expect the shorter posts and the Phantom Creeps series to continue apace. I'll need the breather. But until the project is done, things will be dead as fried chicken around here. If you simply cannot go more than a few hours without reading my unbelievably genius prose, there's always Twitter. I am on the Twitter; I'm given to understand many of you are, too. Perhaps we can exchange geniusness on the Twitter?



I have little to say about 2011 except that it has been anything but boring; it has been exciting and frustrating and has stretched the limits of both my thigh muscles and my sanity, so that's neat. Unless the Mayans come down in their calendar-shaped spaceships and take us all to Valhalla, naked and in tubes, 2012 looks to be like another doozy of a year.

My very sincerest thanks to you all for reading SBBN, humoring and encouraging me, and inspiring me with your own blogs and comments. Have a wonderful 2012 full of the kind of excitement you most desire!

Excitement!

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Posted by Stacia at 6:02 AM 14 comments

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These Amazing Shadows on PBS December 29th

Tuesday, December 27, 2011


Independent Lens on PBS will premier the documentary These Amazing Shadows on Thursday, December 29th. In many places, it will be on at 10:00 PM, but locally on KTWU it won't be on until midnight, so make sure you check your local listings.

Frazer Bradshaw, director of photography for These Amazing Shadows, shoots smoke enhanced projector light for the documentary.

Watch the trailer for These Amazing Shadows here.



These Amazing Shadows is an hour-long documentary about the National Film Registry and the films that have been included over the years. It has received numerous critical accolades and awards while on the film circuit, and is finally coming to television this Thursday. I don't want to give too much away, so if you want to be completely unspoiled, stop reading here!

The documentary features interviews from a variety of people including Rob Reiner, Julie Dash, Tim Roth, George Takei, John Waters, and Brooks Boliek giving recollections of their own film experiences along with facts about some of the films in the Registry. While the beginning of the documentary is rather dry with some very basic information that really did not need to be included, just give it a few minutes to get to the good stuff. Discussions of the internment of Japanese Americans in WWII as well the Zapruder film are included along with rare clips from films such as Cologne: From the Diary of Ray and Esther (1939) and Gus Visser and His Singing Duck (1925).

Now this is really getting into spoiler territory, and I recommend you watch the documentary and come back to comment after you've seen it. You have been warned! The National Film Registry was created by the National Film Preservation Act of 1988 and was in response to the colorization of films. The segment as it appears in These Amazing Shadows casts Ted Turner as a Goldfinger-esque megalomaniac who, as Woody Allen put it in Senate testimony in 1988, bought up all the films in the world just to be dastardly. And I have never understood why all these people upset at colorization were okay with films edited for television for decades. Content was removed, films were cropped to pan and scan or shown with screwed-up aspect ratios, and reduced in length so more commercials could be squeezed in. That was apparently okie dokie, but colorization was not, and I just don't get it. Further, at this late date, a good 23 years after everyone realized colorization was a bad idea that did nothing to harm the original prints of films, and after over 17 years of TCM and preservation and documentaries funded by Turner/Time Warner, it seems silly to act like Ted "Dr. No" Turner was evil incarnate who almost ruined the entirety of U.S. film history.

I don't want to make it sound like I disliked the documentary because I liked it, and I think These Amazing Shadows was downright fearless in discussing some uncomfortable issues reflected in cinema. You will all enjoy this documentary, so check it out!

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Posted by Stacia at 11:15 PM 7 comments

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Happy Holidays To You!

Sunday, December 25, 2011




Bette, Peggy Lee, Kay Starr and the rest of the gang here at SBBN wish you a very happy holiday season!

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Posted by Stacia at 7:54 AM 4 comments

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Book Review: The Hammer Vault

Monday, December 19, 2011


On Tuesday, Marcus Hearn's new Hammer compilation The Hammer Vault will be released in the U.S. I was lucky enough to snag a copy of this extensive book before the official drop date, and I'm glad I did. It's a hefty thing, nearly 13 inches by 10 inches in size with 175 thick pages. The Hammer Vault manages to combine substantial historical information with a coffee table book aesthetic, making it appealing to Hammer Horror buffs and casual fans alike.


My husband was impressed with the amount of female nudity in the publicity of later Hammer films.


Amongst the dozens of promotional pictures and lobby cards are more interesting items such as scripts, internal memos, behind-the-scenes photos and promotional items, such as a set of paper fangs distributed for Dracula: Prince Of Darkness. Some unexpected celebrities that show up in the photos are Joan Crawford, Sammy Davis Jr., and Luciana Paluzzi. The most fascinating items though are the props, all quite deteriorated but still very recognizable, such as a formerly-fuzzy bat from Kiss of the Vampire and one of my personal favorites, the heart revived by Frankenstein in The Evil of Frankenstein (1963). A few of the posters shown are nearly the entire size of the 13 inch by 10 inch pages; I already liked this book, but seeing that the Quatermass and the Pit poster was one of these large reproductions made me full-on love this book.

Pre-order it today or buy it Tuesday at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, or your favorite bookshop.

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Posted by Stacia at 2:31 AM 2 comments

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TCM Remembers 2011

Tuesday, December 13, 2011




The TCM Remembers memorial video for 2011. Another difficult year, but to be honest, we feel this way every year. The song is "Before You Go" by OK Sweetheart.

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Posted by Stacia at 1:10 AM 13 comments

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Harry Morgan: 1915-2011

Wednesday, December 7, 2011


Character great Harry Morgan passed away today at his home. He was 96.


Courtesy Bright Lights Films.



It's no exaggeration to say that I grew up with Harry Morgan. His character of Colonel Potter on "M*A*S*H" was important to me during my childhood where (for good or ill) television parental analogs were as comforting to me as the real thing, often more so. Col. Potter was a hard-edged Missouri man with a heart of gold, a description that matched my own father... or half matched, rather.  One of the few times I saw my dad laugh with more than wry sarcasm was when Col. Potter's Jeep flipped and could not be fixed; Col. Potter, an old cavalry man, took out his pistol and shot the Jeep as if it were a mortally wounded horse.

As an adult, I discovered Morgan's career as a character actor in films. He was always an interesting actor, not content with playing a part conventionally. Morgan was talented, professional, and often very brave. His roles in Westerns may have been small in lines but never small in importance, and that was largely due to his solid acting ability. Harry never gave less than what he thought that role deserved, and if that meant crying as he watched My Darling Clementine on an episode of "M*A*S*H" then he would do it.

A few years ago I wrote a post about the picture of Mrs. Potter on Col. Potter's desk, and received some lovely emails from a member of Mr. Morgan's family. To you and the rest of the family, you have my most sincere condolences. Harry was an enormous part of our culture, and he will be missed.

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Posted by Stacia at 7:28 PM 7 comments

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Marie Prevost Project: Nana (1926)

Tuesday, December 6, 2011

Catherine Hessling in Nana (1926)
Don't watch Jean Renoir's Nana (1926) if you're looking to see Marie Prevost, 'cause she ain't in it.

Marie is supposed to have played Gaga, a character who, in Emile Zola's novel, is a worn-down middle-aged former courtesan. There is no identifiable character like that in Renoir's film, although toward the end there is an older woman who briefly shows up as a cautionary example of what Nana (Catherine Hessling) could turn into. The older woman is not named, at least not in the subtitles, so I cannot confirm if she is supposed to be Gaga.  It's also possible the character of Gaga was left on the cutting room floor (this may explain why the Marie Prevost in the film was uncredited), or perhaps Gaga was turned into one of the random hangers-on that surround Nana at her lush apartment or at the racetrack and did not resemble the character from the book.

However, to me it does not make sense for a 27-year-old Marie at the height of her fame in the United States to travel to France for the role of a middle-aged Gaga or for a reworked version of Gaga that became a tiny, uncredited role. 

Thanks to Larry Harnisch, I had the opportunity to look through all of the Los Angeles Times articles around the time Nana was released for mentions of Marie in the film, and there are none. Pretty much every step she took, both career moves and social activities, were reported in the newspapers and entertainment magazines of the era.  For example, the January 7, 1925 Times mentions her going to New York to visit her then-husband Kenneth Harlan. Two days later, the Times has a photo and caption of her at the train station. In early May, there were pictures of her sister Peg, who had almost no film career but was worth mentioning simply because she was Marie's sister. Later that month, a column called "Resort Notes" mentions that Marie and her husband stayed at the Hotel de Coronado. These incidental mentions of her are continuous throughout the mid-1920s, and it is positively inconceivable that Marie would have traveled to Paris to be in a film without there being some mention of it. Also, it should be noted that the contemporary New York Times review of Nana doesn't mention Marie at all. (Review here, registration may be required.)

My conclusion: Marie Prevost is not in Nana. I believe there must have been a French actress with the same name and confusion has turned into fact. I think GreenCine agrees. It should be noted that the IMDb is not to blame, as books going back to at least the 1970s claim our Marie Prevost is the Marie Prevost in Nana.

Nana is a great film, beautifully restored and in a lovely print available on DVD. Thus far, it's my favorite Jean Renoir, and I hope to see many more of his films in the future. Nana rightfully deserves its own post, so I won't go into it here other than to say that this is another movie that can be checked off the Marie Prevost Project list.


Marie Prevost publicity photo from July, 1926.

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Posted by Stacia at 7:02 PM 1 comments

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The 2012 Silent Film Benefit Calendars are available!

Friday, December 2, 2011


The annual Silent Film Benefit Calendar is here! This year's calendar comes with a photo on the cover that warms the frozen tundra of my heart: A still from Laurel and Hardy's Wrong Again, hands down the funniest short I have ever seen, narrowly edging out W.C. Fields' The Dentist.

For more info, to buy a calendar, and to see a list of all the terrific things the calendar has funded -- in 2008, it helped fund restoration of Bardleys the Magnificent! -- please see here.



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Posted by Stacia at 5:03 AM 2 comments

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