Bray Animation Project Rolls Out
posted June 11, 2011
Years in preparation, the Bray Animation Project has rolled out as an extensive research tool devoted to animated films from Bray Studios made between 1913 and 1927. The studio was headed by J.R. Bray, a pioneer of early comics who opened the New York facility as the first successful commercial animated-cartoon studio. Creator, researcher, and
The War of the Worlds Breaks Up Concrete
posted June 11, 2011
In one its This NOT Just In features, radio station KUOW, in Seattle, reported on the reaction in the town of Concrete, Washington, to the 1938 radio broadcast of War of the World, starring and directed by Orson Welles. KUOW’s Feliks Banel reported that while pockets of panic took hold in the eastern United States,
The Fate of the Original Walk of Fame Footprints
posted June 11, 2011
In 1927, three stars of the silent-film era, Mary Pickford, Douglas Fairbanks Jr, and Norma Talmadge became the first three film stars to have their footprints preserved in concrete in the forecourt of Grauman’s Chinese Theatre on Hollywood Boulevard. That memorialization occurred by accident, when the theater’s owner, Sid Grauman, asked the three stars to
Two More Chances to Catch “Upstream”
posted June 2, 2011
If you’re in New York or San Francisco, and still haven’t seen John Ford’s Upstream, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences will screen it on Monday, June 20, at the Academy Theater in New York, while the San Francisco Silent Film Festival will show it on Thursday, July 14, at the Castro Theatre
Pre-Mickey Walt Disney
posted May 31, 2011
In Walt Before Mickey: Disney’s Early Years, 1919-1928 (University Press of Mississippi), Timothy S. Susanin relates the great animator and filmmaker’s life before 1928, when he released Steamboat Willie, the film that secured his reputation and was the first Disney Studio cartoon with synchronized sound, and with Mickey Mouse. On MIAN, he answers some questions
Walt Disney Before Mickey Made Him
posted May 31, 2011
In Walt Before Mickey: Disney’s Early Years, 1919-1928 (University Press of Mississippi), Timothy S. Susanin relates the great animator and filmmaker’s life before 1928, when he released Steamboat Willie, the film that secured his reputation and was the first Disney Studio cartoon with synchronized sound, and with Mickey Mouse. Susanin, the general counsel of a
New in New Books
posted May 28, 2011
New in New Books, descriptions about new books about American remakes of British television, the role of architecture in 18th and 19th fiction and how filmmakers have picked up on that motif, how the extra-features DVD has changed the study of film, and new Austrian, Argentinian, and Brazilian film.
The U.S. National Jukebox: How It Rolls
posted May 18, 2011
The Library of Congress recently announced the roll-out of its stunning National Jukebox project, which makes available to the pubic a vast trove of sound recordings, starting from the earliest ones made in the United States. At launch, the Jukebox makes more than 10,000 recordings available for listening, free of charge. The recordings were made
Classic Russian Films On YouTube
posted May 18, 2011
How’s your command of Russian, or at least of the Cyrillic alphabet? If you’re capable, with those, you could instantly be well on your way to watching 50 of the Russian film company Mosfilm’s finest productions, thanks to its ongoing efforts to make its gems freely available on the Mosfilm YouTube channel. By year’s end,
Archiving the “Mother of the California Coastal Zone Conservation Act of 1972”
posted May 11, 2011
Like many a figure of huge accomplishment, Ellen Stern Harris (1929-2006), the “mother of the California Coastal Zone Conservation Act of 1972,” never quite got around to getting together all the records of her activities.