Ben Model’s blog
-
Marion Davies’ 1922 Film Beauty’s Worth Gets a Deluxe Outdoor Screening In the Birthplace of Its Director Robert G. Vignola At the end of this week, on a piazza in the ankle of the boot that is Italy, a crew will assemble a large movie screen, high-end video projector, performance stage,…
-
ep. 28: scoring Laurel & Hardy, Mostly Lost 7, Lois Weber on organ and more
In this episode I discuss scoring a Laurel & Hardy silent comedy utilizing a tune many fans of theirs know, recording a new score for Lois Weber’s Hypocrites for the new Pioneers: First Women Filmmakers box set for KinoLorber currently screening in select cities, accompanying The Golem at the Morgan Library and Museum,…
-
The Blackhawk Films catalogs are available again!
USC Hugh M. Hefner Moving Image Archive and Lobster Films Collaborate to Make Blackhawk Films Catalogs Available to Fans and Scholars Again The monthly arrival of the Blackhawk Films catalog was one of the most highly anticipated mail deliveries for me, growing up, as it was for many classic film…
-
The film Mary Pickford didn’t want you to see – now restored by MoMA
Lubitsch-Directed “Rosita” (1923) Is On Screens Again After 95 Years and Worth Seeing I was on the fence about attending MoMA’s re-premiere of Rosita last week, initially. (This was on May 25, 2018) I’d heard it was being presented with its original cue-sheet score, and Pickford herself had perpetuated the…
-
ep. 27: organ sounds from Norway and Idaho, a trip to Hollywood, and using main themes
On this episode, Ben Model takes you above the Arctic Circle to hear a pipe organ accompanying a Swedish silent, to Boise ID to its historic 1927 Egyptian Theatre, and to Hollywood for the TCM Classic Film Festival. Ben discusses choosing a main theme for his score “Show People”, the…
-
Walking the Red Carpet at the TCM Classic Film Festival
How I Learned Why It’s Called a “Step-And-Repeat” by Stepping And Repeating I have posed for photos at events for press before, standing with people way better-known than I am in front of a large hanging sheet of paper or vinyl with festival/event logos on it, referred to as the…
-
Hitchcock’s “Blackmail”: underscoring MacGuffins and Spoilers
Or…What to Expect When You’re Expecting Something from a Hitchcock Movie I accompanied Hitchcock’s Blackmail (1929) on piano a couple days ago at MoMA, and I recalled and repeated the way I usually try to handle the murder scene. I know…I probably should have yelled “spoiler alert” there for you,…
-
Hooray for Hollywood and the 2018 TCM Classic Film Festival
Three Songs You Won’t Hear During My Accompaniment to “Show People” — and Why One of the bugaboos in film accompaniment that my mentor Lee Erwin (1908-2000) had, and one I share, is the use of “song title puns”. In fact, anything that make an audience member’s brain say “Hey!…
-
A Mysterious Woman in Buster Keaton’s “The Cameraman”
Honoring the Gag Work in a Silent Comedy Sometimes Involves a Doing a Little Homework and Then Sharing Your Findings With An Audience The gag title seen above from Keaton’s The Scarecrow (1920) got a huge belly-laugh at one of my shows this weekend. Usually it gets a tepid response…
-
What’s a Nice Car Like You Doing in a Comedy Short Like This?
Putting Humpty Together Again, Thanks to the Museum of Modern Art and the Library of Congress It isn’t often that a two-reel comedy can be reassembled by accessing a reel from one archive and a reel from another, but we were fortunate in the case of this film. Oh! What…