ABCs at the Movies: The Doubles Round!

[memento]

Starred Raymond Dandy who made several other "Dandy" films.

[southendmd]

IMDb trivia:  Shortly before this film was made, Harold Lloyd was involved in an accident where a "prop" bomb exploded as he held it in his hand. Lloyd lost his thumb and index finger on his right hand in the explosion. The Goldwyn family had a flesh-colored prosthetic glove made for him so that he could continue his movie work. In many scenes in this movie, you will note that Lloyd's right hand is deliberately not being used. Furthermore, with some of the stunts Lloyd performs, it's difficult to tell that he is handicapped at all!

[MaineWriter]

from IMDb:

• An experimental film, never released to the public. Selected frames were published in the journal The Phonogram in 1892.
• Among a group of four Edison films that were the first to be photographed in 35mm.

Filmed at the Edison Laboratories, West Orange, NJ



That's Thomas Edison, on the right, who invented the movie camera, and George Eastman (of Kodak fame) on the left who invented the film used in the camera. This picture was taken in 1928.

[oilgun]

IMDb Plot Outline:The Glenroy Brothers perform a portion of their vaudeville act, "The Comic View of Boxing: The Tramp & the Athlete", which depicts a boxer with a classic style trying to contend with an opponent who uses a very unorthodox approach.

[youtube=425,350]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tZRRto_wBpo[/youtube]
I trhink this is the film that is often mistaken to be The Glenroy Brothers (Comic Boxing)

IMDb User Comments:    

The Actual Glenroy Brothers Movies Have Pretty Good Comedy, 29 November 2005

Author: Snow Leopard from Ohio

The Glenroy Brothers were one of the popular vaudeville acts that appeared in some of the Edison Company's numerous movies, and their act works quite a bit better on the silent screen than most of the others did. It's good comedy and is still worth seeing, even though only brief footage of it survives.

Unfortunately, because the Edison Company also made many other films of serious boxing matches at about the same time, a number of films that are now labeled as Glenroy Brothers movies are actually footage of other, serious boxers. The rough, unfinished boxing styles of the era and the sometimes staged spectators in the background can make it possible to think that a genuine boxing match is a comic vignette.

But a genuine Glenroy Brothers is actually fairly easy to identify. Their stage act was called, 'The Tramp & the Athlete', and their routines were based on that theme. One brother would dress in all-white clothing, as 'the Athlete', and would try to fight in a classic boxing style. The other brother would dress in shabby dark clothing as 'The Tramp', and would perform cartwheels and other such antics, to throw off his opponent.

In one of Kino's otherwise excellent compilations of early films, they included some footage of a match between two real boxers (Hornbacker and Murphy), and erroneously titled it as "Glenroy Brothers (Comic Boxing)". For this reason, the other review that is posted to this title (as of the time of this writing) actually describes this other movie, "The Hornbacker-Murphy Fight" (1894). (It is a detailed, well-written, and interesting review, but it does not refer to any Glenroy Brothers movie.) Many other sources also have this same misidentification, undoubtedly based on the original mistake in the video collection.

There were at least two actual Glenroy Brothers features filmed. The second one is included in a newer Kino DVD collection of Edison movies, which was compiled with the assistance of film historian Charles Musser, an expert on the subject. (Interestingly, this newer collection also includes the Hornbacker-Murphy footage, now under its correct title.) This first Glenroy Brothers feature may be lost, since the only genuine Glenroy Brothers feature that appears to be readily available today is the second one. It's very possible that, as happened with many of the very earliest movies, the negatives wore out quickly and were replaced by a remake.

[Fran]

From Movies.com:

Babe Ruth stars in his own silent bio-pic, charting his climb from humble beginnings.

[Meryl]

The Impossible Voyage (Voyage à travers l'impossible) is a 1904 silent film (produced by Star Film, France) by pioneer filmmaker Georges Méliès. The film's time is about 20 minutes (nearly five times the length of the average film at that time), and probably was inspired by Melies' successful earlier film Le Voyage dans la Lune (A Trip to the Moon). It is loosely based on Jules Verne's play Voyage à travers l'impossible. Like most of Méliès' films at this time, it made use of narrative, models, and trick photography.

[oilgun]

An outline of the book from I forget where:

Imagine a world where everything is run by giant American corporations - it shouldn't be too hard a stretch!

In Max Barry's highly entertaining satire on globalisation, Australia is now part of the USA (Australian Territories of the USA), as are most small countries, and brand names have taken over the world.

No longer do we have surnames, we have affiliated names like Hack Nike, Hayley MacDonald's and Billy NRA.

Hack Nike is the poor schmuck who jumps at the chance for promotion, and signs a new job contract, not realising he's just agreed to assassinate the first 14 teenagers to buy a new brand of running shoes - I'll let you guess which brand.

The marketing presidents of this company have decided death is the ultimate 'street cred' for youth, and a few deaths won't matter in the quest for increased sales.

Unfortunately, Hack decides to inform the Police, only to find that they too have been privatised, and will do the job for him if the price is right, and so Jennifer Government, federal agent extraordinaire enters the scene, hot on the trail of corrupt executives.

While the premise is very funny, and there are lots of opportunities for laughs at the expense of the greed of the corporate world and its servants , much of the humour is uneasy, as this possible future world seems to be uncomfortably close to reality.

Perhaps this should be marketed as a cautionary tale, and be required reading for governments

[MaineWriter]

from Wikipedia:

The Kiss (also known as The May Irwin Kiss, The Rice-Irwin Kiss and The Widow Jones) is an 1896 actuality, and was one of the first movies ever shown commercially to the public. The film is around 47 seconds long, and depicts a re-enactment of the kiss between May Irwin and John Rice from the final scene of the stage musical, The Widow Jones. The film caused a scandalized uproar and occasioned disapproving newspaper editorials and calls for police action in many places where it was shown. One contemporary critic wrote: "The spectacle of the prolonged pasturing on each other's lips was beastly enough in life size on the stage but magnified to gargantuan proportions and repeated three times over it is absolutely disgusting."

The Edison catalogue advertised it thus: "They get ready to kiss, begin to kiss, and kiss and kiss and kiss in a way that brings down the house every time."

The film was directed by William Heise for Thomas Edison. In 1999 the short was deemed "culturally significant" by the United States Library of Congress and selected for preservation in the National Film Registry.

You can watch it here (25 seconds):

http://www.archive.org/details/Irwin-RiceKiss

[Fran]

From Ropesofsilicon.com:

Starring: Rachel Weisz, Saoirse Ronan, Stanley Tucci, Susan Sarandon, Michael Imperioli, Mark Wahlberg, Rose McIver, Andrew James Allen, Reece Ritchie, Carolyn Dando
Director: Peter Jackson

An adaptation of the Alice Sebold best-selling novel, The Lovely Bones tells the story of Susie Salmon, who is murdered, but continues to observe her family on Earth after her death. Although she is detached from the world she once knew, Susie witnesses the impact of her loss on her loved ones, whilst her killer skillfully covers his tracks and prepares to murder again. In a tone that is both emotionally truthful, and darkly humorous, Susie tries to balance her desire for vengeance against the love she feels for her family and her need to see them heal; and ultimately comes to understand that the concept of family can encompass both the living and the dead.

[youtube=425,350]http://youtube.com/watch?v=EIh48mMLLyo[/youtube]

=comment=
This is one of my favorite books because I love the author's concept of heaven.  I can't wait to see Saoirse Ronan (Atonement) in the role of Susie.  Some kind person at IMDb e-mailed me a copy of the screenplay, so if anyone is interested in reading it, let me know.

[oilgun]

The second in a trlogy of experimental films.

IMDb Plot Outline:In an experiment that follows up on the results of 'Monkeyshines, No. 1', an Edison company worker again moves around in front of the motion picture camera.


Monkeyshines No.1 (left) Monkeyshines No.2 (right)

An interesting comment:

A Slight Technical Improvement on the First "Monkeyshines", 9 January 2006

Author: Snow Leopard from Ohio [again]

In a technical sense, this second Edison Company "Monkeyshines" camera experiment represents a slight (perhaps very slight) improvement on the first movie. Paradoxically, for that reason it is actually a little less interesting (because less bizarre) to view. But its historical significance is still considerable.

As with the first "Monkeyshines" movie, this one consists of some brief footage of playful activity in the Edison Company facility. Compared with the first one, the figures are a little less ghostly and a little better defined, and the motions are slightly easier to determine. It still has the weird, surreal appearance of aliens or ghosts or abstract shapes, just not to quite the same degree.

Both "Monkeyshines" features were made when Edison was pursuing the idea of a cylindrical approach to motion pictures, by close analogy with his successful phonograph idea. The recent Kino DVD collection of Edison features has (as extras) a few photographs of the film and the equipment that were used in these early experiments, and they are quite interesting to look at for anyone with an interest in these earliest efforts to create movies.

A funny comment re:  Monkeyshines No.1

Shamelessly derivative. 10 August 2004

Author: Brian (bdabramson) from Miami, FL

No, not this movie - everything else that follows it. Virtually every single movie that has been released since the climax of the Monkeyshines trilogy shamelessly copies the basic plot device which propels this film, which is, of course, the technique of showing a person doing something on camera. A few films have broken this mold by showing, perhaps, animals or vegetables doing things on camera. But the vast majority refuse to plumb any original depths, and insist upon limiting their scope to people doing things on camera. It's just too bad that the money-hungry Hollywood establishment is unwilling to explore the artistic possibilities of showing, perhaps, 4 hours of a blank screen, punctuated only by occasional blips resulting from defects in the film stock

I guess Brian hasn't seen Derek Jarman's Blue, the whole film consists of just a blue screen with voice-over.




===RE:THE LOVELY BONES===

From Ropesofsilicon.com:

Starring: Rachel Weisz, Saoirse Ronan, Stanley Tucci, Susan Sarandon, Michael Imperioli, Mark Wahlberg, Rose McIver, Andrew James Allen, Reece Ritchie, Carolyn Dando
Director: Peter Jackson

A bit of trivia:  Ryan Gosling was originally signed to be in this but either pulled out or was let go.  He was replaced by Mark Wahlberg.