TV/Movies Megathread

[Admiral Yi]

How many of these early German directors were Jewish?

[Ideologue]

Oh, yeah, Dreyer was Danish.  I knew that.  Ordet is Danish, hence Dreyer is Danish.  I forgot he also did The Passion of Joan of Arc.  In fairness to me, I almost just said "the guy who did Vampyre" and simply hurriedly looked it up without recalling either of those facts.

As for Stroheim, German-speakers, then.  (I did remember that he was technically Austrian )  Was Austria different enough, culturally, to separate German and Austrian films of the period?  I mean, for example: David Cronenberg is a Canadian filmmaker, but an Anglophone, and distributing films to a North American Anglophone audience, and it's easier to place him in the Anglophone body horror/cosmic horror current that includes John Carpenter (USA), Wes Craven (USA), Clive Barker (UK), Ken Russell (UK) and Stuart Gordon (USA) than it is to say "This guy is operating in a specifically Canadian movement."  Edit: Ridley Scott (UK) too.

Von Stroheim never made films in Austria; he emigrated to the United States in 1909 and began working in Hollywood films in the middle part of the next decade.

Nuh-uh.  He was a famous officer of the Imperial German Air Service.  I saw part of a documentary about it once.

[Savonarola]

How many of these early German directors were Jewish?

Lubitsch and Ophuls were.  Murnau was homosexual, which, even in the Wiemar era, was a serious crime.  The actor Conrad Veidt's wife was Jewish.  I believe that Lang had enough Jewish ancestors that he might have been in trouble if he had stayed.

[Ideologue]

Yeah, I remember seeing a bit about Germany's sodomy laws when I was doing my background for Dearden's Victim.  Unlike Britain in 1961, the Germany of 1919 (or thenabouts) was apparently not ready for the message of Different From the Others... and, to bring it back around, starring none other than Ivan in the Terrible Paul Leni Movie himself, Conrad Veidt.  Small world, though.  I think he was in like 80% of German films.  Probably a bunch of Austrian and Danish and American ones too.   (And British ones.  I've been jonesing to see the Alex Korda Thief of Bagdad.)

[CountDeMoney]

Germany's sodomy laws

Are they as hot as they sound?

[Tonitrus]

FOUR MINUTES, PEOPLE

[spoiler]I hope they eat Eugene.[/spoiler]

They should give him an axe.

[spoiler]My main problem with the Eugene character (and maybe it's not a problem, but intentional), is that the way they present the character is so obviously fake/full of shit, that it makes all the other characters who believe it look even more stupid as a result.

So far, the character is about as plausible as Lettow showing up after a zombie apocalypse and saying that the key to the cure is Southern independence.
[/spoiler]

[Duque de Bragança]

Oh, yeah, Dreyer was Danish.  I knew that.  Ordet is Danish, hence Dreyer is Danish.  I forgot he also did The Passion of Joan of Arc.  In fairness to me, I almost just said "the guy who did Vampyre" and simply hurriedly looked it up without recalling either of those facts.

As for Stroheim, German-speakers, then.  (I did remember that he was technically Austrian )  Was Austria different enough, culturally, to separate German and Austrian films of the period?  I mean, for example: David Cronenberg is a Canadian filmmaker, but an Anglophone, and distributing films to a North American Anglophone audience, and it's easier to place him in the Anglophone body horror/cosmic horror current that includes John Carpenter (USA), Wes Craven (USA), Clive Barker (UK), Ken Russell (UK) and Stuart Gordon (USA) than it is to say "This guy is operating in a specifically Canadian movement."  Edit: Ridley Scott (UK) too.

Von Stroheim never made films in Austria; he emigrated to the United States in 1909 and began working in Hollywood films in the middle part of the next decade.

Yep, besides Stroheim's German was a bit weird (e.g La Grande Illusion). Guess he stayed too long abroad.

[Ideologue]

Probably not.

So I just watched The Man Who Laughs.*  Just for the record, in Queen Anne's England, the monarch did not have the power to have noblemen disappeared or to force subjects to be married, right?

*Technically, I just watched Cabiria.  Holy moly, there are like so many people thrown into fires in this awesome movie.  Unsatisfactory climax though, lacking in violence.  But I don't even know how they even accomplished the optical effect in that last shot in 1914, so I left it pretty impressed.  So, the questions arise: when the fuck is the 180 minute restoration that got screened at Cannes eight years ago getting a home video release... and is adding sixty minutes to the movie likely to make it better?

[Josquius]

Do you watch silent films in silence/with the original score? Seems so creepy....

[Ideologue]

Do you watch silent films in silence/with the original score? Seems so creepy....

I watch them with whatever they give me.

Attempting to watch a silent film in actual full-on silence is a recipe for dozing off.  In fairness to me, that would never have been the intended presentation.

I've found I prefer recently-composed scores, e.g. Gabriel Thibaudeau's score for the Phantom '29 reissue, to attempts to recreate the films' contemporary scoring, e.g. the ear-piercing organgrinder shit Kino thought would go well with The Cat and the Canary.  (I did rather like the nice piano-driven score on Cabiria, which sort of splits the difference.)

Anyway, answer my question about England, English.

[Admiral Yi]

I prefer the dubbed versions.

[celedhring]

Attempting to watch a silent film in actual full-on silence is a recipe for dozing off.  In fairness to me, that would never have been the intended presentation.

IIRC at one point working for movie theaters was the largest source of employment for instrumental musicians. Given the fact that the introduction of sound roughly coincided with the Great Depression, that must've been a great time to be a piano player.

[Viking]

FOUR MINUTES, PEOPLE

[spoiler]I hope they eat Eugene.[/spoiler]

They should give him an axe.

[spoiler]My main problem with the Eugene character (and maybe it's not a problem, but intentional), is that the way they present the character is so obviously fake/full of shit, that it makes all the other characters who believe it look even more stupid as a result.

So far, the character is about as plausible as Lettow showing up after a zombie apocalypse and saying that the key to the cure is Southern independence.
[/spoiler]

[spoiler]He worked in the comic book because he never actually spouted any technobabble. It also doesn't help that our heros went to the CDC earlier and know that the CDC knew nothing. To make it work they would have had to make him an obvious science person (give him a white coat?) and make getting him to Washington the highest possible priority for the group once they meet him. Letting his arc become a secondary story just kills the entire idea. [/spoiler]

[Josquius]

Do you watch silent films in silence/with the original score? Seems so creepy....

I watch them with whatever they give me.

Attempting to watch a silent film in actual full-on silence is a recipe for dozing off.  In fairness to me, that would never have been the intended presentation.

I've found I prefer recently-composed scores, e.g. Gabriel Thibaudeau's score for the Phantom '29 reissue, to attempts to recreate the films' contemporary scoring, e.g. the ear-piercing organgrinder shit Kino thought would go well with The Cat and the Canary.  (I did rather like the nice piano-driven score on Cabiria, which sort of splits the difference.)

Anyway, answer my question about England, English.

Arbitrarily as an order to be followed or else? No.
A shit tonne of influence to get it done, especially against people of significantly lower stature and respect: yes

[Grey Fox]

[spoiler]Dude, that's Morgan.[/spoiler]

[spoiler]I loved the look he gave the camera basically saying "Rick, ffs, stop."[/spoiler]