Tag: buster keaton

  • Buster Keaton in “The General”

    —

    by

    Ben Model

    Hey, isn’t that Al St. John next to the bone-head commander who thinks the Rock River bridge is strong enough to hold his train? Bruce and Steve were talking about this after the show, pretty certain it’s Al, and so I grabbed this frame from the DVD. Al’s not in the shot of the commander…

  • Keaton in Manchester VT

    —

    by

    Ben Model

    Manchester Center, VT – we had a nice crowd for Sunday’s showing of Steamboat Bill, Jr. at the Vilage Picture Shows theater. Mostly seniors, but a there were a few families with kids (I could hear the kids’ laughter over everyone else’s). The flyer put up all over town is at right. Set up of…

  • Hamilton Theatre – The General

    —

    by

    Ben Model

    Sunday Aug 10th at 7pm – another great show at the historic Hamilton Theater. This year was Keaton’s The General, plus The Scarecrow. 35mm prints came from Douris Corp. The print of The General looked great and is the usual print I’ve seen; main titles and credits replaced by a single “Rohauer presents” main title…

  • Radio City Music Hall

    —

    by

    Ben Model
    in

    I made my Radio City Music Hall debut yesterday, playing for the graduation ceremony of the School of Visual Arts. I improvised 90+mins of music while the graduates came up and received their diplomas…17 groups in all. I used the RCMH’s 9-foot Steinway grand, which was placed extreme downstage right, where I had a clear…

  • undercranking clip: Keaton

    —

    by

    Ben Model

    Don’t know if I’ve mentioned this here before, but I’ve been making a study of silent comedy filmmaking and how undercranking was utilized. I’ve discovered the comedians not only knew the film they shot would be shown faster, but they used this to their advantage, making many of their gags dependent on the increased speed…

  • April update part 1

    —

    by

    Ben Model

    Well…a month has flown by since my last posting, and much has happened. no way to catch up but to do it in pieces. Here’s an initial stab at catching up… Last week I spent three days recording scores for ten comedy shorts for the upcoming American Slapstick 2 DVD set from AllDay Entertainment. Five…

  • altscore.com site launched!

    —

    by

    Ben Model

    This week I launched www.altscore.com, finally. I’ve had this idea for several months but have finally had the down time to build the site and record scores for it. The site is a place where people can purchase and download MP3’s of piano or organ scores by me for silent films they have on DVD.…

  • Silent Clowns Keaton show in NY Times!

    —

    by

    Ben Model

  • Chaplin’s “Adventurer” for concert band

    —

    by

    Ben Model

    Well, March is here — and while my sched of performances is a tad lighter, I’m plenty busy with recording and re-arranging. A high school in Connecticut contacted me a couple months ago about doing a silent film program with one of my orchestral scores…but the school has a band and no orchestra (not too…

  • Boise day 3 – evening

    —

    by

    Ben Model

    Well, the Musical Movies event was a big success. We had a great crowd, the orchestra sounded great, Dr. Saunders kept the group in synch with both films, and the Arbuckle film Love went over big time, as did the sound of the theatre organ. After the audience was greeted by local TV channel 7…