The General was the first movie I watched for this project, and also the first silent film I sat down and watched all they way through. I have seen bits and pieces of silent movies, but never a full feature length film before, so that was an interesting experience. I am very surprised and impressed how few times they have to resort to putting dialog on the screen. I guess you really learn to Show, Not Tell when telling is as abrupt as in silent movies. It was interesting to see a couple of scenes that I recognize, namely the barrels being thrown out the back of the train and the train falling from the burning bridge. I really thought the train falling from the bridge was fake, but after a bit of research it turns out that it was a real, full size train falling into a river. Something else I didn't think about until I was browsing around was how many stunts there were involving real moving locomotive, which was quite dangerous.
Overall, the movie was interesting and good, but not amazing. It can best be summarized as "Silent Mr. Bean on a Train"
Monday, February 1, 2010
Obligitory Introduction
Hi everyone!
I am going to be going through the IMDB Top 250 in chronological order, and I figure it would be fun to write a bit about each movie I see along the way. But first, the story of how this came about:
One of my good friends has been slowly going through the IMDB Top 250 for a year or two now (he is at 156), and this always seemed like a pretty cool idea to me. After buying a condo and the end of football season my life seems to be calming down a bit, so I decided to go ahead with it. However, instead of going through the list randomly or by my mood, I think it will be cool to do it in chronological order. This has two advantages: 1) it keeps the movies varied and forces me not to leave all the movies of one genre that I dislike until the end, and 2) it allows me to see the progression of film-making in the last 90 years. Right now I am eagerly awaiting the talkies. I am not going to be religious about the order however, so I may see newer things with friends or skip around a bit based on what netflix gives me. Also, I have already seen 65 of the movies. I hope to one day add my thoughts on each of those, but that can wait until I hit my stride. I may end up adding the AFI Top 100 to my list, it would add around 25. I would have done that already but I haven't felt like playing around in excel.
I am going to be going through the IMDB Top 250 in chronological order, and I figure it would be fun to write a bit about each movie I see along the way. But first, the story of how this came about:
One of my good friends has been slowly going through the IMDB Top 250 for a year or two now (he is at 156), and this always seemed like a pretty cool idea to me. After buying a condo and the end of football season my life seems to be calming down a bit, so I decided to go ahead with it. However, instead of going through the list randomly or by my mood, I think it will be cool to do it in chronological order. This has two advantages: 1) it keeps the movies varied and forces me not to leave all the movies of one genre that I dislike until the end, and 2) it allows me to see the progression of film-making in the last 90 years. Right now I am eagerly awaiting the talkies. I am not going to be religious about the order however, so I may see newer things with friends or skip around a bit based on what netflix gives me. Also, I have already seen 65 of the movies. I hope to one day add my thoughts on each of those, but that can wait until I hit my stride. I may end up adding the AFI Top 100 to my list, it would add around 25. I would have done that already but I haven't felt like playing around in excel.
Monday, January 25, 2010
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