Charlie Chaplin's Comic Capers

First Charlie Chaplin Strip in 1916 by E. C. Segar

The story goes that Segar's older brother who lived and worked in Chicago got Elzie an audience with Yellow Kid and Buster Brown's creator Richard F. Outcault. Outcault whose advertising agency was located at 334 Dearborn Street in Chicago introduced the novice cartoonist to someone at James Keeley's Chicago Herald which led to the budding artist being hired to produce the Charlie Chaplin Comic Capers strip. His first daily was published on February 28, 1916. The strip ran across the bottom of the paper's second section -- spanning the entire width -- making it quite a bit larger than most of the incredible shrinking Sunday comic strips in today's puny color comic sections.

In-law in Oz-Charlie Chaplin In The Army (1917)

Keeley also published five platinum age reprint books featuring the strip: Charlie Chaplin's Comic Capers, In the Movies, Up in the Air, In the Army and Funny Stunts. The most common editions of the books are 20 pages including covers, but there were some alternate editions that had more pages. These unusual editions must have had very small print runs because they're much harder to find.

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Anthony Hopkins the Painter

How many know of Anthony Hopkins' passion for painting, composing, drawing, artwork and poetry? Actor, director, screenwriter, composer and now painting is what keeps him busy. 

Here is a video of him working posted on his social media page.




Below are a few samples of his unique works.

Texas
(Image © anthonyhopkinsart.com)

Malibu
(Image © anthonyhopkinsart.com)

Aloha Nui Loa
(Image © anthonyhopkinsart.com)

Ballet On The Moon
(Image © anthonyhopkinsart.com)

Nirvana
(Image © anthonyhopkinsart.com)

Steelworkers
(Image © anthonyhopkinsart.com)

Self Portrait
(Image © anthonyhopkinsart.com)

One can browse his painting gallery here : anthonyhopkinsart.com

More info on his art here: Guardian

STANLEY KUBRICK: The Lost Tapes

This 1966 interview gives a window into the mind of Kubrick in the director's own words.

Stanley Kubrick, the director of such beloved films as Dr. Strangelove, 2001: A Space Odyssey, and The Shining, a man whose name remains, more than fifteen years after his death, almost a byword for the cinematic auteur, got into filmmaking because of a misunderstanding. While working as a photojournalist in his early twenties, he befriended an even younger fellow named Alex Singer, who would go on to become a well-known director of film and television himself, but back then he held a lowly position in the office of The March of Time newsreels. Singer happened to mention that each newsreel cost the company something like $40,000 to produce, which got Kubrick researching the price of film and camera rentals, then thinking: couldn’t I make a documentary of my own for less?

Indeed; he and Singer put together $1,500 and collaborated on the boxing short-subject Day of the Fight, which played in theaters in 1951. But it didn’t turn a profit, since no distribution company offered the $40,000 he expected — nor had they ever offered The March of Time, whose newsreel business went under before long, enough to cover their own exorbitant costs. So Kubrick didn’t make money on his first film, but he did make a career, going on to do two more documentaries, then the low-budget features Fear and Desire, Killer’s Kiss, and The Killing. Then came the critically acclaimed Paths of Glory starring Kirk Douglas, which eventually brought about an offer to Kubrick from the iconic actor to take the directorial reins on Spartacus. Next came Lolita, Dr. Strangelove, 2001, and the rest is cinema history.

Of course, Kubrick didn’t know the full extent of the cinema history he would make back in 1966, on the set of 2001, when he sat down with physicist-writer Jeremy Bernstein, doing research for a New Yorker profile. The filmmaker brought out one of his tape recorders (devices he adopted early and used to write scripts) and recorded 77 minutes of his and Bernstein’s conversations, almost a half hour of which Jim Casey uses as the narration of the short documentary Stanley Kubrick: The Lost Tapes. Only recently rediscovered, these recordings feature Kubrick’s first-hand stories of growing up indifferent to all things academic and literary, honing his “general problem-solving method” as a photographer, getting into movies as a result of the aforementioned misconception, and building the career that film fans and scholars scrutinize to this day. 

via Openculture

Sculpting in Time Reflections on the Cinema By Andrey Tarkovsky

Andrei Tarkovsky, the genius of modern Russian cinema-hailed by Ingmar Bergman as "the most important director of our time"-died an exile in Paris in December 1986. 

In Sculpting in Time, he has left his artistic testament, a remarkable revelation of both his life and work. Since Ivan's Childhood won the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival in 1962, the visionary quality and totally original and haunting imagery of Tarkovsky's films have captivated serious movie audiences all over the world, who see in his work a continuation of the great literary traditions of nineteenth-century Russia. Many critics have tried to interpret his intensely personal vision, but he himself always remained inaccessible. In Sculpting in Time, Tarkovsky sets down his thoughts and his memories, revealing for the first time the original inspirations for his extraordinary films-Ivan's Childhood, Andrei Rublyov, Solaris, The Mirror, Stalker, Nostalgia, and The Sacrifice. He discusses their history and his methods of work, he explores the many problems of visual creativity, and he sets forth the deeply autobiographical content of part of his oeuvre-most fascinatingly in The Mirror and Nostalgia. The closing chapter on The Sacrifice, dictated in the last weeks of Tarkovsky's life, makes the book essential reading for those who already know or who are just discovering his magnificent work.


Buy it @ Amazon

One of the world’s rarest gem just showed up on YouTube

Jean-Luc Godard at Berkeley 1968
(Photo: Wikipedia)

Une Femme Coquette may not sound like anything special—a 9-minute no-budget short film, shot on a borrowed 16mm camera by a 24-year-old amateur with no formal film school training. But the short, which was the subject of our article “Neither lost nor found: On the trail of an elusive icon’s rarest film” back in 2014, has for decades been a sought-after item for art-house buffs and rare movie fiends. Filmed in Geneva, Switzerland, in 1955, it was the first attempt at a narrative film by the iconic French New Wave director Jean-Luc Godard—a pivotal figure in the evolution of movie style, who would make his feature debut just five years later, with the hugely influential and perennially cool Breathless.

Never distributed, Une Femme Coquette has had less than half a dozen public screenings since the 1960s; the only known 16mm print was tracked down to a national film archive in Europe, where it was being stored unlisted for a private owner, to be loaned out only with the personal permission of Jean-Luc Godard himself. This makes it the holy grail of the game-changing New Wave era—a film so rare that it has often been listed as lost by biographies and film history books. And it might as well have been. No other surviving narrative film by a major, big-name director has been as difficult to see—until now.

Screenshot from Une Femme Coquette

Earlier this week, a copy of Une Femme Coquette surfaced on the digital back channels frequented by obscure movie enthusiasts. An enterprising user named David Heslin has uploaded this rarity of rarities to YouTube, complete with English subtitles. Credited to “Hans Lucas,” a German pseudonym that the Franco-Swiss Godard would sometimes employ during his brief career as a film critic, Une Femme Coquette was the budding director’s modern update of a Guy De Maupassant short story called “The Signal.”

Godard—who makes a cameo around the 2-minute mark, wearing his famous prescription sunglasses—would readapt the story as an Ingmar Bergman parody for the film-within-the-film portion of his 1966 feature Masculin Féminin. While nothing is known about Une Femme Coquette’s lead actress, Maria Lysandre, the man on the park bench is played by Roland Tolmatchoff (credited as “Roland Tolma”), a cinephile and car dealer with whom Godard maintained a friendship for years, and who loaned many of the convertibles memorably featured in the director’s 1960s films.

You can watch Une Femme Coquette below. 

Link to the source article by Ignatiy Vishnevetsky @ AVClub.com

10 lesser known facts about Godfather

The Godfather
(Image - Paramount Pictures)

As the Classic film turns 45, here are 10 lesser-known-facts on The Godfather.

1. Coppola didn't want to direct it -- nor was he the studio's first choice: According to a book of interviews with Coppola, the director was not excited about the project at first, nor was the studio thrilled about him. Coppola said he was only offered the film after Richard Brooks and Costa Gavras turned it down, and that he couldn't get through the book because it seemed like "pretty cheap stuff." "Four or five months later, I was again offered the opportunity to work on it and by that time I was in dire financial straits with my own company in San Francisco so I read further," he said. "Then I got into what the book is really about: the story of the family, this father and his sons, and questions of power and succession, and I thought it was a terrific story if you could cut out all the other [lurid] stuff." Eventually, he worked on the screenplay with Puzo and "The Godfather" script was born.

2. Coppola fought to get the cast he wanted: Coppola once said that he was only permitted to cast Brando as godfather Vito Corleone after he shot an "incredible" screen test with the actor that wowed executives. Ultimately, Brando was only paid about $120,000 for his work.

Coppola also had to go to the mattresses, so to speak, for Pacino, who told The Washington Post that he was almost fired three times. Originally, the studio brass suggested James Caan, who was later cast as Sonny Corleone, to play the part, but Coppola couldn't imagine Michael that way. “[Pacino's] intelligence is what I noted first. He knows how to use his gifts,” Coppola said. “He uses what he has, this striking magnetic quality, this smoldering ambiance.”

3. Brando loved to improvise: Coppola told Playboy that Brando came up with a lot of the details that made Vito Corleone the dynamic character he was. "I told him at one point that I didn't know how to shoot his final scene, just before he dies. What could we do to make his playing with his grandson believable?" he said. "[Brando] said, 'Here's how I play with kids,' and took an orange peel, cut it into pieces that looked like fangs and slipped them into his mouth."

"I thought, 'What a ridiculous idea. Then suddenly I saw it: Of course! The godfather dies as a monster!" Coppola continued. "Once I'd seen him with orange peel fangs, I knew I could never shoot it any other way."

4. Nobody on set was confident the movie would be a hit: "If you'd checked with the crew while we were filming, they'd have said, 'The Godfather' was going to be the biggest disaster of all time," Coppola said in the Playboy interview. "'The French Connection came out while we were filming and people who'd seen the film and who saw 'The Godfather' rushes implied that our film was boring by comparison. There were rumors that I was going to be fired every day. I was trying to save money during that time, sacking out on Jimmy Caan's couch. A bad period for me."

5. One of the most quoted lines from the film was also improvised: Last year, The Hollywood Reporter obtained drafts of "The Godfather" script, revealing how certain lines came to be. "Leave the gun, take the cannoli," a statement uttered by Richard Castellano's Clemenza, was originally, "Leave the gun." According to the publication, Castellano said the line at the suggestion of real-life wife, Ardell Sheridan, who also played his spouse in the film.

Ardell Sheridan as Signora Clemenza in The Godfather
(Image : http://godfather.wikia.com)

6. The opening scene was inspired by "Patton": Coppola said in an interview with NPR that he was inspired to write the opening scene of the film after a screenwriter friend suggested he do something similar to what he'd done before with "Patton." "He says, 'You know, Francis, you did such a good opening on 'Patton,' that was such a striking opening for the 'Patton' movie, couldn't you do something more like that? Something more unusual, that kind of got you into it?" Coppola recalled. "After he left, I had the idea to begin in this way, with this very, very close shot of the supplicant undertaker, Bonasera, and then slowly reveal out of the darkness this -- the Don's studio as opposed to the brightly lit wedding scene. The various characters ... Brando himself, his son, Sonny, and what have you. And I rewrote the opening and added it to the screenplay."

7. John Cazale was an obvious choice for Fredo: "Godfather" casting director Fred Roos said in an interview for the documentary, "I Knew It Was You: Rediscovering John Cazale" that though it was tough to cast Fredo, once he saw John Cazale in the play "Line," he knew he'd found the right guy for the part. "He had the warmth and the gentleness. He had all the qualities that I hoped for in Fredo," said Coppola. "There was no hesitation to cast him."

8. Diane Keaton loved playing opposite Pacino: The New York Times excerpted part of Keaton's memoir in 2011, in which the actress gushed about playing Michael Corleone's wife, Kay. For her, the joy of the film was all about working with Pacino, whom she dated off-screen as well. “Poor Al, he never wanted it. Poor me, I never stopped insisting," she wrote.

9. The time period was up in the air: Coppola told NPR that though the producers wanted the movie to be set in the 1970s, he insisted that it remain true to the book, which takes place in the 1940s. "[The producers argued] if you make a movie during the contemporary period that the movie is being made, you don't have to have special cars, you don't have to have special costumes, you don't have to spend all of that money trying to create a period," he said. Ultimately, he got his way.

10. The ending of the movie was meant to be brutal: Coppola also told NPR that he thought about ending the movie with Kay lighting a candle at church for Michael, but then thought better of it. "She says, 'Did you [commit murder]?' and he says, 'No.' He lies to her. ... I just felt emotionally that when he -- that door gets closed on her just as the other, what they call caporegimes are kissing his hand, that that was the ending," he said. "To go to her lighting candles was anti-climactical [sic], so I ended it there."

It also summed up the film, the director added.

"When I make a movie I always have to have a theme, preferably in one word," he said. "When I made 'The Godfather' the theme was succession."

Info source: ABCNews

Whoever Says The Truth Shall Die - A Film about Pier Paolo Pasolini

A lot has been written about Italy’s prominent, yet controversial filmmaker, poet and journalist Pier Paolo Pasolini. This film by Philo Bregstein offers a rare glimpse into the tumultuous life of Pasolini until his still unresolved murder circumstances in 1975.

Whoever Says the Truth Shall Die is a documentary on the life and work of Italian filmmaker Pier Paolo Pasolini (1922-1975). Using still pictures, excerpts from such Pasolini efforts as The Gospel According to St. Mathew, and extensive interviews, director Philo Bregstein charts Pasolini's matriculation into one of the most controversial cinematic figures in the world.

Made six years after Pasolini's death, the 'still-fresh' and vivid accounts of people interviewed paints a much richer picture about the controversial filmmaker man, his background, personality, perspectives and the mystery behind his death. Pasolini himself is heard and seen in probing question-and-answer sessions, as are several of his friends & colleagues like poet Alberto Moravia, filmmaker Bernardo Bertolucci, Laura Betti to name a few.

Laura Betti who appeared in several of Pasolini’s films, fought hard with the Italian justice system to find out what exactly happened on the night of his death. Her version suggests a reality that perceived Pasolini – because of his radical views and sexual preference – as a public threat and often times used him as scapegoat. He was brought to trial 33 times, yet acquitted every single time.

Pasolini invited Bertolucci to be his assistant in his first film Accatone, which tells the hardships of Pasolini’s friends – the boys from the Roman slums, but using his signature heroic ambiance. The interview section with Bernardo Bertolucci deserves special mention as he (Bertolucci) poignantly concludes that Pasolini’s murder was probably some kind of crucifixion against a genius, caught in a wrong period. The film aptly ends with the heroic crucifixion scene in Pasolini’s The Gospel According To St. Matthew (1964).

The title Whoever Says the Truth Shall Die proves prophetic when Pasolini is bludgeoned to death by a 17-year-old boy, Giuseppe Pelosi.

Watch the full Documentary