Montage

The humanist man is a construct that divides human and non-human. It is the conviction that humans exist ‘either outside of nature or above it’ (Gilebbi, 2019 p. 357).  Gilebbi suggests that The Great Beauty (2013) is an allegory of the crisis of the Humanist Man by implying that Jep is searching for a posthumanist subjectivity (2019, p. 356).  Jep is searching for his place in the world that surrounds him. He is distanced from the ecosphere, this is shown by placing Jep up high above the city at the party, at his house, etc. And when he walks through the city he watches as others such as the nun who is collecting the oranges, appear to become one with her environment, as she almost vanishes into the tree. About 1 hour and 35 minutes into the film Jep asks Arturo to ‘make me vanish too’ and Arturo replies, ‘it’s just a trick’. The giraffe scene harks back to the zoetrope, an optical toy of the late 19th century, and a precursor to film and film cameras. The zoetrope gave the viewer th

  I watched this film for the first time many years ago, pre my studies and I will say back then I really didn't appreciate it.  I found the goats humorous, who wouldn't? But I didn't understand what Frammartino was saying, and that was all my fault, not his.   This is a sublime piece of filmmaking.  It tells the story of the four circles of life. Human, non-human, organic and mineral.  It places humankind, not at the centre of the story, but rather just one of the parts of the story. And that is how we are in life, we are not the centre of the story, we are simply just one of the parts of the story.  But with all of our intelligence we somehow don't realise this, well some of us don't, a good percentage sadly.  It is mostly set and filmed in the south of Italy in a little village called Caulonia.  Le Quattro Volte (2010) is a non-anthropocentric film, The director, Michelangelo Frammartino, by not placing humankind at the centre of his film gives the audience an o

De Sica was one of the great Italian directors of the neorealism era. He directed one of my favourite films, Bicycle Thieves (1948), and the stunning and heartbreaking Umberto. D (1952) (some say the last true neorealism film). Both those films pull at the heartstrings, but De Sica knew when enough was enough and was never over-sentimental. He directed   The Roof  in 1957. It contains many of the elements of neorealism. But it sits outside of the dates that most film historians and scholars agree that true neorealism exists. In The Roof, the main protagonists struggle to survive, struggle to get ahead.   It is a simple premise.  A young married couple just trying to get not only find a house to live in but one that will afford them some privacy. They start off sharing a house with his parents, his younger sister and his elder sister, her husband and their family of several children. They share their bedroom with his parents and his younger sister. Eventually, their frustration leads

 This technology has already been used in film production. This brings back projection to a whole new level and I can imagine for some camera operators they would be itching to try,  ICVFX . I do wonder how this impacts actors though, I would think this be better than working in front of green screens.  I would think it would give the actor more to feed off so to speak.

I've recently studied Italian cinema at University.  We watched several films with an eco-cinema gaze on the films. We watched some amazing films and I have to say it was one of my favourite courses that I did, except for the last essay (I struggled with that). The films that I watched are The Four Times (Le Quattro Volte) Director: Michelangelo Frammartino, The Consquences of Love (Le Conseguenze dell'amore) Director Paolo Sorrentino, The Wonders (Le maraviglie) Director: Alice Rohrwacher, The Great Beauty (La grande bellezza) Director Paolo Sorrentino , Basilcata Coast to Coast - Director Rocco Papaleo, I am Love (Lo soon L'amore) Director: Luca Guadagnino and Gemorrah (Gomorro) Director:Matteo Garron. And I loved each and every one. One of the films led me to a film that I hadn't watched. Basilicata Coast to Coast is a road trip comedy about a group of musicians and a journalist that travel by foot from one side of the region of Basilicata, Italy, to the othe

 I do, from time to time.  Obviously in films that have been made using a language that I don't know (that is every language but English,  I am sad to say).  But have you found yourself turning on the subtitles when you watch something that is in your native language? Apparently, we are not alone. This is an excellent doco that I found on Youtube, that I think may go some way to answer why we need to.

Where do I start with this one?   Again I don't want to give too much away, but this is a film that will stay with me for a very long time, a very, very long time.  I do not go to the movies very much, and for someone with a BA  double majoring in Media and Screen Culture, I know the irony.  I love watching films, I especially love movies that are about the human experience.  And this one is certainly about the human experience.   Now, before I go forward I want to warn spoilers may be lurking ahead. The Banshees of Inisherin (2022)  is set in 1923 and from the island of Inisherin, you can see the impact of the civil war across the bay. (which the film narrative is a metaphor for). The film starts as a comedy, albeit a dark comedy. But to me, this film at about the halfway point turns into a horror film, with Colm (Brendan Gleeson) as the chief protagonist in the storyline. From about the halfway point I was sitting on the edge of my seat just dreading what was to come next.  And I

Let's deal with the elephant in the room first. I don't really remember why I stopped posting here. I enjoyed doing this blog and will continue to post from now onwards. Since my last post, I have been studying towards my BA in Media and Screen Studies(which is so close to completion I can taste it). I also started another blog on another platform, https://sapicturetheatres.wixsite.com/sapicturetheatres which is about the history of picture theatres in South Australia. It's a work in progress. I aim to post about once a month on there, so if you are interested please have a look. So to quote Austin Powers "I'm back baby". Let's now talk about the film, and what a film it is. The Consequences of Love is a 2004 film directed by Paolo Sorrentino. Sorrentino is a masterful Italian director who if you don't know his name, you may know some of his work,   The Great Beauty (2013),  Youth (2015), and  The Young Pope (2016). He has also done a number of

I little tribute I made for Harry from his First National years. I want to do one later on his Sennett years. But in the meantime

If I said the name Harry Langdon would you know it? Now I'm not talking about Harry Langdon Jr here, the celebrated photographer but rather his father the 1920s silent comedian. Harry Langdon Snr came to the movies quite late really, he was about 40 before he made his first movie. He ended up at Sennett Studios after working with Sol Lesser at another studio. Mack said that Harry was the greatest comedian that he had ever seen, having worked with a few above-average comedians such as Charlie Chaplin, Mabel Normand and Roscoe Arbuckle to name a few, Mack should have known a comedian when he saw one, so this statement has some weight behind it. Hal Roach had shown interest too in Langdon.  Initially, Harry didn't really get to do much at Sennett, but stand around and do a couple of silly things with the legendary Sennett Bathing Beauties filling in the space about him. But soon Harry got to be Harry and slowly you see his character coming out more and more , Mack must have been

For weeks, no months really I have been waiting for December, not for Christmas, no something just as good though. Finally after wishing and hoping for the last couple of years I would get to see Buster Keaton on a big screen with an audience. Last Monday night was that night. I know that I have mentioned Buster Keaton a couple of times on my blog before but if you really haven't seen one of his movies I really urge you do so. So where did this interest in Buster begin. About 3 years ago I went into my local DVD store and there he was staring out at me amongst the "nostalgia" section. I thought to myself he's got an interesting face I think I would like to watch that movie, but I couldn't as they only had it on Video Tape and my video machine had long ago died a natural death. So instead I went home and on my online DVD outlet I ordered The General to rent, it arrived a day or so later, on a Friday. On the copy that they sent me was also a two-reeler that Buster h

I love Mickey Rooney and I especially love the Andy Hardy series of movies, recently I was able to get a copy of Andy Hardy's Private Secretary, that makes two now in my collection. I also have a copy of Love Laughs at Andy Hardy. I recently read one of Mickey's books, Lifes Too Short. And sure Mickey could have been a little more shall we say, less descriptive in regards to his wives. But Mickey, and we have to remember this has lead an extraordinary life, even more than most "film stars". Dragged out of poverty to be become for quite a number of years the top star of MGM, then the biggest and best in the business, and then sinking to backruptcy not once but several times throughout his life. I think I know why I like Mickey so much. He is this wonderful link to the past. He was a star in the 30's and into the 40's when Private Secretary was made, and yet even today he still works. Have a look at IMDB and just see how much work he has planned and that&

I have recently become very interested in the career of Cliff Edwards know to many in the 30's as Ukulele Ike. Now Cliff if you have never heard of him was HUGE in the 20's and 30's, he was everywhere, he could do everything. He was a comedian, he could act, he played Ukulele (of course) and he could sing, boy could he sing . Cliff was a great "scat singer", he is amazing to listen to and his music although not much heard of today would be I think if more widely known make him famous all over again. He had over his career sales of over 70 million (no that is not a typo) records, his own radio show and later his own television show. He starred with such legends as Buster Keaton (which is where I first came to know of him) in the early 30's. Cliff was the first person on film to sing "Singin in the Rain" you should hear his version from "The Hollywood Revue of 1929" a major outing by MGM to welcome sound. Cliff lived an amazing life, sadly it

I've just uploaded a montage that I made to Buster Keaton's 1925 movie Go West. I love the song by Tex Ritter and of course he sang the title tune in High Noon, which is another great song.

In the 50's Danny Kaye was a superstar. I lot of people today haven't even heard of him and it is sad. True Kaye's humour has not really aged well but I still think that if you watched The Secret Life of Water Mitty or Wonderman (my favourite Kaye movie) that you couldn't fail to see the charm in Kaye and understand why he was so popular. Kaye may be known to modern audiences for work that he did later in his life on The Crosby Show. But it is the movies that he made in the beautiful technicolour world of the 50's that Kaye will always be remembered for and rightly so. No-one could do what Kaye did so well, and together with his wife Sylvia Fine they were a very talented team, now that is was an unusual marriage. They lived apart and yet neither of them ever divorced the other and it was not because of a genuine like of each other for all accounts they could be quite brutal to each other at times. He left his estate to his daughter Dena but only on the understanding

Recently uncovered is 50 seconds of film that is of enormous historical value to Australia and New Zealand. This piece of film was filmed by Mr. Ellis Ashmead-Bartlett, an English journalist. This film was part of a larger film called "With the Dardanelles Expedition : Heroes of Gallipoli"and it was filmed between July and September 1915 and shown in Australia and New Zealand in 1916. Why this piece of the film was removed from the the Dardanelles Expedition film is a mystery, but thankfully it has survived and was recently found in amongst some other film of WW1. So why is this film of such importance, because some would argue that it shows the first steps of a nation, it is on this very beach in the Dardenelles that Australia became a nation, truely united for the first time; not as separate counties or states we were Australian. We went to WW1 as British Troops and returned as The Australian Infantry. To watch this piece of film follow this link http://www.awm.gov.au/comme

This weekend I went to see The Great Dictator. This was a moment that I had been waiting for for a long time, the chance to see an old comedy on the big screen, it doesn't happen too often where I live sadly. There was a good crowd at this movie, around 250 I would say. Not too bad on a Saturday afternoon, when the weather was perfect, certainly you could have found a million other things to do rather than lock yourself away in a movie theatre. And we had a large car race on the weekend also, which about 250,000 people attended over the 4 days that it ran. So this makes me ask why, why don't theatre chains of today ever show old movies? Why don't they show Ängels with Dirty Faces, The Third Man, Philadelphia Story etc. I really think that once a month perhaps on a traditionally slow night, say Thursday's perhaps theatre houses should grab an old movie and give it a try. In the multiplex cinema's of today you would just need to use one theatre and one showing and try

In Adelaide on November 18th 1922 you could have gone to see Charlie Chaplin in Tillie's Punctured Romance at The York. Why it was on so late after it was released I don't know, did it take 8 years to make it to South Australia? It is advertised as "The Biggest Show in Town" so you would take from that that it hadn't been shown beforehand. It is the largest ad by far taking up nearly a 1/4 of the page. So what else could you see if you had already seen Tillies. There is Harold Lloyd in Get Out and Under (c 1920) or Never Weaken (1921). Douglas Fairbanks could be seen in When the Clounds Roll By (1919) , this is advertised as his new big picture, but it was nearly 3 years old in 1922. Mary Miles Minter could be seen in The Little Clown(1921). The Sheik too was playing, which I assume was the 1921 Valentino movie, not the 1922 British made movie, it is "advertised as "The Grand Farewell Screening of", so I think I am correct in my assumption

I meant to do a blog on a particular favourite Australian Christmas Movie, A Bush Christmas, but time got away from me and I never had a chance to rewatch it. But then I thought perhaps I should work from memory, but it was a long time since I've seen it, perhaps a year or two. If you are not aware of it perhaps you should do a search and find a copy, it dates from the mid 40's and I think Chips Rafferty was in it (yes he was - I checked in IMDB). The story is set on a station where 3 children are on their Christmas Holidays and under mum's feet. Mum and Dad are finding it hard to make ends meet and it hasn't rained for months. Their only hope is there horse Prince winning the Cup, but Prince is stolen. The 3 children decide that they are going to find Prince and return him home, along the way they meet with lots of misadventure, and find out that the true meaning of Christmas is not what they will get, but what they already have. http://www.amazon.com/Bush-Christm

Earlier on I mentioned that I would be discussing many genre's of film not just Australian Film, this is my first post away from Australian Film and I have decided to discuss a Short Film that I rate as one of my all time favourites. Buster Keaton's The Boat. Last year I watched "The General", Keaton's acknowledged masterpiece and was completely entranced by it, I had previously watched some silent movies and had not really gotten into them. But I found The General very different and still rate it as one my favourite movies. After watching The General I had to see more Keaton so I did the BIG plunge and purchased The Art of Buster Keaton (Released by Kino), every single short and feature film that Keaton released whilst he had he own studio, oh an one in which he was merely an actor "The Saphead". In amongst this wonderful set, is The Boat. a short first released in November 1921. The premise is that Keaton having built a boat "The Damfino" dec

Recently I was reading a local online news service and there it was "Memories sought for film premiere restaging". It had been 50 years since the Gala Premiere of "A Town Like Alice" at the Pioneer Theatre in Alice Springs on the 24th July 1956; and the good people of Alice Springs wanted to relive some of the excitement and glamour of Hollywood coming to the Alice. According to the "Centralian Advocate" dated July 20th 1956 a world record was to be set on July 24th (the big night) , the record was that in no part of the world have so many people travelled such long distances to see one film ( I wonder if this is still the World Record Holder?). I read this book at High School as did most Australian children. It tells the story of a group of women and children Prisoners of War forced to march across Malaya by the Japanese. Along the way one of the women (Jean Paget) meets up with an Australian soldier (Joe Harman) who sneaks food in for them from his labor

"The Woman Suffers While The Man Goes Free" released in 1918 and showed successfully throughout all the states in Australia before being banned in New South Wales ( On the 2 2nd Oct 1918. Was it forced by Overseas Interests into the movie industry in Australia, as it was a very successful movie?) . It was produced by Raymond Longford and starred Lottie Lyell; she was billed as "Australia's Film Star". It was produced by Southern Cross Feature Films based in Adelaide, South Australia. It is South Australia's First Feature Film and what a great first feature it is. Filmed in and around Adelaide, including the use of Morphettville Race Course for the Melbourne Cup sequence of the movie, a great use of original film from the Melbourne Cup. blended with the drama. The Premiere was held on March 23rd , 1918 at The Theatre Royal in Adelaide. The review the The Adelaide Advertiser dated Monday March 25 1918 was positive "Justifiable pride was felt by the crowde

Is at the beginning. In 1894 Australians got their first glimpse of a future that they would never have dreamed of. At 148 Pitt Street in Sydney James McMahon opened a Kinetoscope Parlour. There were 5 machines each running a different title and for a Shilling each the public could make their way to each machine. Approx 20,00o people parted with their shillings and visited the parlour in the first 4 weeks alone, new films were advertised each week. In 1895 the other cities of Australia got their chance to see this new sensation when the 5 machines toured Australia. But the real beginnings of cinema in Australia were at the Vaudleville and Music halls where films would be used as Chasers, just as they were being used in other countries such as America, and like America the Chasers turned out to be just as popular as the acts themselves and they did not serve their actual role; people stayed to watch them rather than leave to allow a new audience to enter the halls. In 1895 Talkies came

This is my first post to the room, I love early silent films and am a Damfino (a member of the Buster Keaton International Society). I live in Australia and I hope to write about mainly films that I have watched recently, or anything that I happen to come across that I find interesting.