Category: DVD distribution
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Is Copyright All Right?
Imagine my surprise walking home from the C train tonight, listening to the newest episode of Seth Godin’s podcast “Akimbo“, and hearing my own voice. Last week, Seth Godin discussed the current status, validity, importance and relevance of copyright on his podcast “Akimbo”. It’s a topic I grapple with myself, sitting on both sides of…
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Found at “Mostly Lost”: volume 2 – new DVD
My DVD label Undercrank Productions has a new release, the second in a series that showcases the identification fun we have every year at the “Mostly Lost” workshop at the Library of Congress at it’s Packard Preservation Campus in Culpeper, VA. Attendees each year receive a “swag bag” when they arrive and register on day…
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Marion Davies Makes an Appearance in Italy
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, sound system, music stands and…
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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 a Day (1918) is a…
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Buster Keaton’s Leap to ‘One Week’, and Marcel Perez’s Jump from “Split-reelers” to 2-reelers
Stretching to Two Reel Length was no Stretch For Marcel Perez What has always struck me as remarkable about Buster Keaton (well, one of several things) is his maturity as a filmmaker at the ripe old age of 25. His first solo release, One Week (1920), looks nothing like any of the 14 two-reel Arbuckle comedies…
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Marion Davies Marches On…!
Happy Birthday to Victor Herbert, Composer of “Babes In Toyland”, “Ah, Sweet Mystery of Life” and the elusive “Marion Davies March” Victor Herbert’s March of the Toys wafted over my WFMT app this morning, in honor of the composer’s birthday, and I immediately thought of Stan Laurel & Oliver Hardy – and then Marion Davies. Stan…
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The Humor of “Jackass” and AFV In the Early 1900s, as Performed by Marcel Perez and Others
The injury humor of Johnny Knoxville, the Farrelly Brothers, and thousands of anonymous klutzes is nothing new — French and Italian comedians were doing it during movies’ first decade. Last September, a lot of people sent me a link to an article in the New York Times that articulated something I’d been thinking for some…
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Are DVD Players the Next Turntables?
As each year winds down, I’ve found myself squinting into a magic eight-ball of media and distribution, wondering, “Will next year be the end of DVDs?”. The response has been either “Don’t count on it” or “Reply hazy try again”. This year, with 2017’s push toward streaming, I thought for sure I’d get “Signs point…