Thanhouser films online, People On Sunday coming to DVD

Posted on March 29, 2011
Filed Under film news, films, miscellany, silent films

Dr. Jekll and Mr. Hyde (1912) from Ned Thanhouser on Vimeo.

Thanhouser Film Preservation Company has put their films online!

This is Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1912), from the Thanhouser Company, a pioneering American film studio in New Rochelle, New York that was active from 1910 to 1918. Read more

The Phantom Empire (1935)

Posted on March 25, 2011
Filed Under films, serials

Minutes after escaping from the secret underground city of Murania, where he was killed by a radium bomb and then restored to life in the Radium Reviving Chamber, singing-cowboy radio star Gene Autry hijacks a plane belonging to the evil scientists who gunned down his partner. Accompanied by Frankie and Betsy, his dead partner’s teenaged kids, Autry pulls a gun on the pilot and orders him to fly the dynamite-packed plane to Radio Ranch, the remote desert home of Autry’s radio show. Autry, who is wanted for murder, is obliged by contract to appear live on his show every day at two o’clock on pain of losing his contract, and with it the ranch. On this day it appears that Autry will indeed miss his appearance, what with having been killed and resurrected and all, until sharp-eyed Frankie, who is the president of the Junior Thunder Riders Club and a radio whiz, spots a radio-telephone in the cockpit and connects to the transmitter at Radio Ranch, enabling Autry to perform from the plane. Frankie tunes the radio and holds the gun on the pilot as the resurrected Autry, dressed in the uniform of a Muranian Royal Thunder Rider, sings “I’m Getting A Moon’s-Eye View of the World” in his thready, inoffensive tenor. Read more

Tokyo Chorus (1931)

Posted on March 20, 2011
Filed Under films, silent films

Yasujiro Ozu’s 22nd silent film, one of his earliest surviving works, is a poignant, charming, bittersweet domestic tale about a salaryman with a family whose life is turned upside-down when he loses his job.

Tokyo Chorus is a great example of the technical and aesthetic attainments of late-period silent film. (Ozu didn’t make a sound picture until 1935.) No talkie is this light on its feet. Sometimes melancholy, sometimes gently humorous, Tokyo Chorus has the understated cinematic swing that film lost for a time with the introduction of sound. It’s small and intimate, with simple sets and prosaic locations. Ozu doesn’t move the camera much, but it’s always in an interesting place. The film’s life springs from a fine nuanced performance by Tokihiko Okada in the lead role, Hideo Shigehara’s superb photography and sharp cutting, and Ozu’s unassuming lyricism. Read more

Japanese cinema blogathon, Baby Peggy, Joan Dark at SxSW, Vertov retro at MoMA

Posted on March 19, 2011
Filed Under film news

Japan Cinema and Cinema Fanatic have launched the Japanese Cinema Blogathon to raise money for relief efforts in Japan following the horrific earthquake, tsunami and nuclear accidents. Participants are blogging about Japanese cinema all next week. Please click to logo to donate to this most pressing of causes. With superb timing, the NYT‘s always-excellent Dave Kehr weighs in on Silent Naruse, a five-film collection from Eclipse that includes some of Naruse’s earliest surviving work. Read more

Film of the catastrophe at Chernobyl (May 1986)

Posted on March 16, 2011
Filed Under contemporary, films

The above film was shot by Vladimir Shevchenko, a cameraman for Central TV in Ukraine, who was admitted into the Chernobyl nuclear power station in May 1986, immediately after the fire was extinguished in Unit 4. Read more

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